"Hello, Moma. How are you today?"
Young Elara, only around the age of 1,250 in Earth years, 5 at the time, ran around the town nearest the castle she lived in up at the top. She smiled at the people who said good morning and hello to her as she passed, her little white wings tucked neatly behind her on her back. She always said hello back to them.
"Hello, Elara."
"Hello."
"Good morning, princess."
"Hi!"
Everyone on the planet knew who she was. She was Queen Rosalind's only daughter and, when her mother died, she would be queen. Besides, even if they didn't know her name or anything about her, you could tell her heritage by the color of her wings.
Pure white, just like her hair and just like every ruler that came before her.
"ELARA!" The booming voice of her tutor was heard, causing her to look back for a spilt second before turning around and sped up into a run not a brisk jog.
The young Elixiri didn't quite have her teleporting down, General Callisto, her mothers sibling, was still teaching her. They had also warned her not to teleport without supervision in case she teleported somewhere where she couldn't get back. Like underground or in the water.
"ELARA! COME BACK!"
White hair bobbing as she ran down stairs and secret passages she liked to think only she knew about. She kept going until she made it down to the training arena type field of grass and stone. This was her second favorite place, besides the Healing Garden, where she was headed at the moment.
Elara had always wanted to be a healer instead of a fighter, but that didn't mean she didn't have a knack for the latter. Even though her mother wouldn't allow her officially train until she was older.
The Healing Garden was a place that was completely surrounded by trees, no door as you had to fly up and come through the large hole in the open canopy. It was where wounded people or the sick went to seek help from healers. And Elara wished to be one of them. Or at least do that along with being queen.
Sometimes she forgot about that. That she was next in line for the throne. It didn't feel like it. Maybe that was because it felt like so far in the future, it would never happen.
Elara's little arms and legs started to kick and punch, following along with the movements of the woman she had been looking at, studying her fighting techniques and copying them. Most of the women training either had spears or swords, the latter being the more popular weapon to wield because of the control you could have over it.
Off to the side, observing their soldiers, General Callisto watched with a small smile while their niece trained as much as she could long with the older women. While they weren't the one that was throned back in the day, being the younger sibling, they had the matching white wings as their sister. The only differences between them and Rosalind was that their hair was more blond and their eyes were green, not cerulean.
The two of them made eye contact with each other as the general shook their hand in amusement of how much Elara reminded them as their sister when the two of them were young. Even when they were into their teenage years when Rosalind started hanging out with her.
"Elara!"
The young angel jumped slightly at the loud voice of her tutor coming from below in the training grounds, causing everyone down there to stop fighting.
"Elara! I see you."
She quickly turned and ran the other way, back up another pair of stairs in the direction of where the Healing Garden was. Sure, it wasn't a super direct route but it was fast and would get her away from her tutor.
Elara turned down a alley way, ignoring someone yelling at her back, "Where are you going, Princess Elara?"
She didn't hesitate before jumping off the ledge, below a few different layers of the town was the garden. As the wind was blowing through her hair as the gravity on her planet did its job. The white haired girl loved the feeling of falling. Because she knew she was going to be okay, she would catch herself before she hit the ground.
Her wings were getting ready to open until she stopped mid air. Elara's body was turned by the back of her top, the little girl seeing her mother, the Queen of Elixiri, holding onto her clothing before she could have make it halfway to the ground.
"Hello, Moma. How are you doing today?" She asked innocently enough while smiling up at the woman who birthed her.
"Let's get you back to school before another tutor quits." Rosalind said, pulling her daughter up and placing both feet onto the ground, making sure to hold onto her hand so she couldn't just disappear on her.
"Don't you think that it's time I started my training? Callisto thinks I'm ready." Elara called out her auncle when they had teleported with their second in command beside them.
Even though she was of a young age, her mother had explained to her that Callisto wasn't female or male, just a nice somewhere in between. So from on in her beginning childhood started calling them auncle, like a crossover between aunt and uncle.
"Does she?" The queen gave her sibling a pointed look with a raised brow.
"I could just begin shaking her somethings. She should be able to defend herself."
"From who?" Rosalind said with a small smile to Callisto.
"Invaders. In the events of an invasion."
"Isn't that why I have the best fighter in our history leading our army?"
"I pray the day will never come when she has to fight. But you know, a sykee must sting, a phiuchus must hunt." Callisto said, Elara smiling at the meant of the animals that they had around their little planet.
"She is a child." Rosalind snapped at them.
"But Moma..." Her daughter whined.
"No training."
Callisto stopped walking, letting the other two walk ahead. Elara looked back at her auncle, a cheeky smile growing on her face when she saw them wink at her.
***
Rosalind and Elara walked through the halls of the large castle, the ceilings high so you could fly about as you wanted. After living her for all of her life, she had studied every inch of the palace, even though she had a big, bright world for her to wonder about it, she liked the inside of the castle. And finding whatever secrets lay in the corners.
So when she stopped walking, her mother stopped as well, still holding onto her hand, it was because of something unfamiliar that she hadn't really payed attention to.
"Who's that, Moma?"
She looked and the natural smile she normally had fell slightly. Standing beside a young verison of Rosalind was a tall woman with black hair, long and sleek, and green eyes. They stood side by side together in the large painting. The woman had on a black dress that was the opposite of the gold and white dress her mother was wearing. Her mother's wings weren't in the picture, assuming she had hidden them or pulled them in so it looked more even.
The woman was gorgeous anyhow.
"She's uh-...a friend. From a very long time ago."
Elara could sense a plethora of emotions come off of her. Sadness, grief, longing, and an emotion that she had felt towards her mother but different. Love but different.
"What was her name?" The little angel asked unknowingly.
Rosalind didn't look away from the black haired woman in the painting with remorse before saying her name,
"Hela."
***
Peter, bloodied and bruised dressed in a orange soccer shirt that those nice face painted people had put over him walked through the field of different colored flowers, all of them in neat rows with the corresponding colors.
He had been slapped by MJ, beaten by Beck (who was a bad guy apparently), hit by a bus, shot at, passed out for who knows how long, thrown into a tiny jail and was now waiting for Happy to come pick him up. But the worse thing that had happened to so far was Elara yelling at him for something he said without thinking.
Sharp wind blew over him, causing some of the petals on the flowers around ripped off, Peter turning his head to see the familiar jet flying over him and landed in front of him. The stairwell opened up from the aircraft and out stepped Happy.
"Peter? Are you okay?" The man yelled at him because of the space Peter was keeping between them.
"Happy, is that you?"
"Yeah, of course it's me." He said, walking towards him before the younger man stopped.
"Stop! Tell me something only you would know."
"Only I would know...okay," Happy thought for a second before saying, "Uh...remember we went to Germany? You pay-per viewed a video in your room? They didn't list titles but I could tell from the price it was an adult film. And you didn't know how I knew-"
"Okay, fine! It's really you, stop!" Peter walked forward with some difficulty, one hand clutching his leg to help. Once he was in front of Happy, he wrapped his arm around him and said, "It's so good to see you."
"Peter, you'll have to tell me what the hell is going on here."
***
"Okay, hold still. There we go."
Happy pulled the needle and thread through his skin, glasses now sitting on his nose to see closer to the wound he was now sewing closed. Peter's body tensed and twitched slightly from the pain every time the needle went in.
"Ouch." He muttered.
"I thought you had super strength."
"It still hurts."
Another sharp pain from the needle pushed into his skin causing him to flinch slightly. "Happy, come on."
"All right, relax. Just a few more. There we go."
"Oh my god!"
"Relax."
Peter stood up abruptly, saying loudly but not loud enough to be yelling at him. Not like it yelled at Elara. "Don't tell me to relax, Happy! How can I relax when I messed up so bad? I trusted Beck. I thought he was my friend. I gave him the only thing Mr. Stark left for me and now he's gonna kill my friends and half of Europe so please do not tell me to relax."
Peter sat down in one of the orange seats across from where he had been, holding his head in his hands. "And I yelled at Elara when I shouldn't have. I'm sorry, Happy, I shouldn't have shouted at you. Or her," He let out a long sigh before saying with tears starting to form in his water line, "I just really miss him."
"Yeah, I mess him too. Let's come back to the 'yelling at Elara' thing later." The last part was slightly muttered under his breath.
"Everywhere I go...I see his face. And the whole world is asking who's gonna be the next Iron Man," Peter sniffled, one of his hands going up to run through his ruffed hair. "And I don't know if that's me. Happy, I'm not Iron Man."
Happy shook his head before saying, "You're not Iron Man. You're never gonna be Iron Man. Nobody could live up to Tony. Not even Tony. Tony was my best friend. And he was a mess. He second-guessed everything he did. He was all over the place. There are only two things in his life that he never second guessed. You and Elara. I don't think Tony would have done what he did if he didn't know that you were going to be here, be here for Elara, once he was gone. Now, before we get into anything else, what the hell happened with her?"
"I-I yelled at her when I shouldn't have." Peter hung his head in shame.
"Yeah, I got that part. About what?"
He was silent for a second, replaying what happened in his head, Elara's face when she was crying, yelling at him. "I blame her for Tony's death. She hates me now."
"No...no. She doesn't hate you. Elara doesn't hate people. She strongly dislikes them but doesn't hate people. Well, maybe Thanos but that's it," Happy thought for a second before deciding that maybe he should tell him. "Alright, I probably shouldn't tell you this but, while you were gone, you know dusted, Elara asked me for your number. And every night, for the past five years that you were gone, she called you, just so she could hear your voice."
The brown haired boy gaped at him, remembering all the missed calls that had been on his phone when he woke up from an unknown number. It was her.
"You made such an impact on her in the short time that you two knew each other that she needed to feel that just for one second, you were okay. Elara doesn't hate you. No matter how hard she tries, she will never hate you. She'll probably be pissed at you for a bit but she will never be able to hate you." Happy continued, watching as Peter's cheeks started to turn slightly red and a shy smile grew on his face. "Now, you're friends are in trouble, you're all alone, your tech is missing. What are you gonna do about it?"
Peter stood up with new determination and said, "I'm gonna kick his ass."
"I mean, I mean, I mean, right now. Like specifically, what are we gonna do? We've been hovering over a tulip field for the last fifteen minutes."
"Right. Um, I can't call my friends because he's teaching their phones. Uh, give me your phone." He held out his hand for him to hand the phone over.
"My cell phone?"
"Yeah."
"Okay, here." Happy handed him the phone.
"What's your password?"
"'Password'."
"No, what is your password?"
"'Password' spelled out."
"Head of security and your password is 'password'?"
"I don't feel good about it either."
"'Ello, governor. Cup of tea? I'm gonna be in London soon." Flash's annoying voice came through the phone.
"London. They're in London."
"London, okay."
"Yeah, I need a suit." Peter said. Happy thought for a moment before walking back towards him, having been walking towards the front until he said that. He stood in front of him before smacking the side of his head.
Peter winced, holding the part he hit as he heard Happy say, "That's for yelling at Elara."
"I deserve that."
"But about the suit..." He trailed off before pressing a button at the front of the plane. The spiral circle doors opened behind him, revealing the second part of the jet. A large circular tube popped out along with multiple monitors. Metal arms pulled out and showed him different things he could do to make his new suit.
Placing his hand on one of the pads in front of him, different holographic models of suits, for anyone really, showed up in front of him to choose from.
"Okay, um...being up everything you have on Spider-Man." He said to the computer system.
Larger, transparent blue models appeared in front of him. He grabbed one of the models, opening it by moving his fingers through the air over the holographic computer, muttering things to himself.
Happy just watched him with a sad yet still proud smile on his face, seeing Tony standing there instead, the teenager reminding him of his friend.
Peter turned to him, looking back at him when he felt his eyes on him with blue holograms on his arm, trying to design webshooters.
"What?" He asked.
"Nothing. You take care of the suit. I'll take care of the music."
A/N: am I setting up a Hela x Elara's mother book? Yes, I am 😗👌