A/N: helloo
y'all i wrote the epilogue for this story and had a couple friends read it and we all agreed it was super depressing and bittersweet and i'm so tempted to just summarize the rest of the story and post the epilogue bc i want you guys to read it so bad!! i am so proud of it, i cannot wait to see your reactions when you read it in the future!!
anyway, this chapter is the one that gets the climax rolling so we should be wrapping this arc up in five or so chapters and then: INFINITY WAR!! which can only mean violent lethal destructive pain :)
for now, enjoy the pre iw chapters bc nothing is ever the same after iw in this book...
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"Tell me what hell is going on."
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"Alright, load up! Everybody on the bus!" Mr. Harrington said into his megaphone the next day. It was too early in the morning to give him a megaphone and they had all collectively decided on hiding it from him but he found it somehow.
"Er, Mr. Harrington?" MJ said, tapping his shoulder while standing on the stairs by the door of the bus. He turned over his shoulder to look at her. "Everybody's already on the bus. We're just waiting for you."
"Right. Of course. I was just uh...just making sure we had no stragglers. Anyway, off we go!" he said, climbing onto the bus and the doors closed behind him. He turned to the team, thankfully lowering his megaphone before he spoke. The bus began moving and he nearly fell. He cleared his throat, composing himself. "Alright, academic decathlon! Now I know some of you are disappointed we're not leaving the state this time for the competition, but think about it like this: less chance for you to die, right?"
"Bo-ring," Flash mumbled under his breath. Mr. Harrington gave him a look.
"Flash, feel free to throw yourself into life-threatening situations whenever I'm not in charge of you. Although— I would highly advise against it," Mr. Harrington said.
"What's Mr. Harrington's first name?" Ned whispered to Peter. They were both sitting with their girls, just across the aisle from each other. Peter thought about it.
"Uh, I don't know. Mister?" he said, making Ned laugh. MJ glared at them, shushing them and they both shut up immediately.
"Once we get to the expo center, please stick together. And don't take off your name tags! They're very important!"
"Sir, I'm gonna need you to sit down safely," the bus driver said to Mr. Harrington over his shoulder.
"Er– right. Yeah, okay. I'll give the rest of the instructions at the expo, don't worry guys!" Mr. Harrington said before finally sitting down. The entire bus breathed a sigh of relief. It was just too early for Mr. Harrington and his instructions right now.
Adelaide glanced at Peter, realizing he was bouncing his knee nervously. She frowned, reaching out to hold his knee.
"Are you nervous for the decathlon?" she asked him with a confused smile, "Pete, you do know that you're easily the smartest person on this bus right now, right?"
Peter forced a smile. If only he could tell her that he wasn't nervous about the decathlon, but rather what was going to happen at Rikers Prison today just a little bit away from their decathlon. He swallowed, his hand going to his backpack that held his suit.
"No, yeah, i-it'll be fine," he said, but Ada didn't look convinced.
"What's wrong, love?" she asked softly.
Peter wanted to tell her, but he didn't want her to worry. He could handle this on his own. If he told her, she would only insist on helping him and if things went south and she got hurt, Mr. Stark would shoot him into space. Probably. Most likely. Either way, he wasn't keen on finding out. His first priority was keeping Ada safe.
"Nothing. Just...Just a nightmare I had last night," he lied.
"Oh," she said, "Do you want to talk about it?"
"Not really," he swallowed, trying to not break out into sweat from his anxiety. She squeezed his knee reassuringly.
"I'm here, okay?" she said with a smile. Peter looked at her and nearly told her everything. He hated lying to her. Even if it was for her own good. But he knew that the second he told her, she would be stubborn and insist on going with him no matter how many times he said no. Besides, Phin was also on this bus and if she overheard that he was onto her, he might never be able to stop the jailbreak.
"Okay," he nodded, taking her hand from his knee and holding onto it tightly the rest of the ride there.
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After having spent another night at the Parker's, there were still no calls or messages from Tony. Happy was the only one who had dared to talk with her. In retrospect, he was also the only one who had tried to be there for her last summer even when Tony and Pepper weren't. The more she thought about it, the more she realized that Happy was always there, through the good, bad, and ugly.
She should really buy him a present or something. What would Happy Hogan like? Adelaide frowned to herself. Maybe an art kit? Or a pack of colored markers? Either way, for someone who was rarely happy himself, he always tried to cheer her up.
Like last night, for example, he had just stopped by to drop off her clothes and backpack, when May invited him to have dinner with them and he immediately said yes. Happy rarely made last-minute plans. Once, she had peeked into his pocket planner and the man had his entire year planned out, down to the time.
Yet all throughout dinner, Happy had been...well, happy.
It was really odd to see. In fact, even Peter had noticed something different about him. Not only that, but May had laughed more during their dinner than she had laughed all year. Which had admittedly slightly offended Peter because he had dropped some of his best puns on his aunt and she only gave him a chuckle or a smile. Nowhere near the level of the laughter Happy had caused during dinner last night. In fact, Adelaide didn't think Happy had made anyone laugh that much over these years.
Adelaide was consumed with her thoughts when Peter squeezed her hand, making her snap out of it.
"We're here," he said and she looked past him, out the bus window across the aisle. He was right. The bus had stopped and they were here.
"Alright, everyone!" Mr. Harrington said, standing up first, "Stay together! I cannot lose any of you today. The parents would never let me live it down. Anyway, everyone out in a single file line!"
They all got off the bus and huddled around the sidewalk together for Mr. Harrington to give further instruction. Adelaide looked around. There were many other buses offloading their teams in front of the expo center too. The center itself was moderate in size, but, nonetheless, Adelaide was excited. She had missed their last competition because of the whole Sandman, Vulture thing, but she really wanted to compete this time because she had actually prepared for it.
As she was looking around, she caught Phin's eye who gave her a nervous smile. Adelaide returned it just as Mr. Harrington raised his megaphone.
"Here we go," Flash mumbled.
"Attention, Midtown Decathlon!" Mr. Harrington said and the megaphone screeched loudly. They should have all burned that thing when they had the chance. "Proceed inside the building to check in!"
Their teamed sighed loudly, shuffling inside the building as a group. The other teams were eyeing them like they were aliens or something, but, of course, Mr. Harrington was oblivious.
"One of you fake an emergency and maybe Spider-Man will come in and take that damned thing out of his hands," Flash grumbled to them, "Here, Parker, let me throat punch you really quick."
"Don't think Spider-Man is going to show up if you throat punch me," Peter mumbled.
"How do you know? We've never even tried," he said. Peter glared at him and Adelaide sighed.
"Flash, let it go," she said to him, trying to keep the two from fighting and causing a scene. The other teams were already giving them strange looks, the last thing they needed was a fight to break out so they looked even weirder.
"Fine, but only because you said," Flash grinned at her, winking for good measure before walking up ahead of them again. Peter glared at the back of his head, silently conjuring subtle ways to knock him down without letting it trace back to him. Flash had gotten on his nerves ever since he found out he was dating Ada. Like he thought Peter didn't actually deserve her or something.
Once they were all inside the building and checked in, they had some time to kill before the competition started. MJ announced that their team has been assigned to a certain group of rooms down the hall to study in and they all shuffled there together. In total, they all had three rooms right there on the first floor for them to use.
Peter grew more nervous, checking his watch repeatedly. Soon, they would start moving around at Rikers and he needed to be there before it was too late. But Ada wasn't leaving his side and he couldn't think of a believable enough excuse to leave. Then it hit him.
"I need to use the bathroom, I'll be right back," he said to her before hurrying out of the room with his backpack.
He quickly found the bathrooms and luckily, all the stalls were empty. He changed into his suit before stuffing his clothes into his backpack and throwing it on his shoulders again. Then, he unlocked the small window high up on the bathroom wall and crawled out.
Sorry, Ada, he thought.
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They still had time before the actual competition so Phin had asked her if she wanted to do some practice tests together and Adelaide agreed. After asking Mr. Harrington, they both went into the neighboring room that was assigned to them and opened up their books.
"Gummy?" Phin said, pulling out snacks. She held out a gummy bear towards her.
"No, I'm good, thanks," Adelaide declined.
"They're really good," she insisted, "I got them from Delmar's." Adelaide looked up from her notes at the gummy. Peter got her gummies from Delmar's all the time and she liked them, maybe not as much as he did, though.
"Alright," she shrugged, taking it and popping it in her mouth, "thanks."
"No problem," Phin nodded, putting the packet away. Adelaide frowned. Did Phin eat one? Or did she just give one to her and put it away? She realized she was being paranoid and looked back at her notes. She blinked a couple of times. The words looked kinda blurry. Weird.
"So I was thinking of going over the questions we missed last time," Adelaide said to Phin, flipping through her notes. Phin nervously twisted the pencil in her hand.
"Um, yeah, sure," she mumbled distractedly. Adelaide glanced up from her notes, frowning slightly.
"Everything okay?" she asked. Phin stared at her for a beat too long. Long enough to make it strange.
"Fine. Everything's fine. What were you saying?" Phin said, flipping through her own notes. Adelaide's frown deepened. There was something she wasn't telling her. Adelaide's head hurt a little bit, making her wince.
"What happened?" Adelaide pressed.
"I think we should go over questions fifteen and sixteen," she said, ignoring the girl. Her eyes were on the pages, but her focus was clearly wandering and she was twisting the pencil in her fingers like crazy. A weird feeling settled into the pit of Adelaide's stomach. Something was off. The room...her head...
"Phin..." she said.
"We should probably review the first practice test we took too," Phin continued, her voice getting shakier with each word.
"Why aren't we sitting with the rest of the team?" Adelaide asked. She suddenly realized this had been the girl's idea. To sit in a separate room, away from everyone else.
"And maybe the second practice t-test too," Phin said, sweating now.
"Phin!" Adelaide shouted, slamming the table. The girl flinched but didn't look up from her notes. The small ache in her head grew worse from that noise and the room swayed. Adelaide squeezed her eyes shut
"I-I made flashcards," Phin continued, sweating profusely now. Adelaide gritted her teeth, suddenly clasping Phin's wrist tightly.
"Tell me what hell is going on," she hissed, gripping her wrist tight enough that she knew it was painful for the girl. Phin finally looked up from her notes. Her eyes were wild and terrified, but her body was steady. Adelaide knew the girl had a plan. Only people with a plan were that steady.
A phone buzzed on the table. Both girls glanced at it. It was Peter. They both looked at each other again.
"I'm sorry, Adelaide," Phin whispered, her eyes filling with tears.
And that was the last thing Adelaide heard before she passed out.
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A/N: it's startingggg!! one final climax before pain city-- ahem, i mean infinity war. we're gonna see a new character in infinity war as well, one that you'll like, hopefully ;)
and, of course, there's something at the end of this climax that i know you will LOVE so i'm also super excited for you to read that!!
anyway, i recently rewatched all the hunger games movies and am currently in the process of rereading the books so, naturally, i wrote some fanfic/blurbs stuff for that so if you feel like crying, go check out my hunger games blurbs books!!
question: what would you guys write as the epilogue for this book?
see you nexttt week :))