MY EYES HADN'T MOVED FROM PETER IN AN HOUR, and I was beginning to worry myself about how obsessed I was with the boy.
Nay, not obsessed - it was my job to know where he was and what he was doing, and while it was considered creepy or stalker-ish to the imbeciles that attended this school, it was nothing more than a simple mission. However, even I would be dumb not to realise how much of my life now revolved around the boy; in a way, he had become the sun in my solar system or something like that. Even now as I sat beside him in the school library, every thought was on him and how to mend the rift between us.
We weren't 'okay', at least, not in the traditional sense. Peter was quiet today, and I wondered if it had something to do with me, but it had been so tense between us that I wasn't sure where to start with the questions. As much as I hated to admit it, Ned's presence would have been the tiniest bit useful, at least as a way to break apart the silence that hung between us.
Still, I had to try. That was the job, after all; to open him up and get him to tell me his ways, his secrets, and anything he could, really, about himself. I couldn't exactly do that when we sat in silence and stared at everything but each other. Not in this case, at least.
"What are you looking at?" I finally piped in, casually sending a curious glance in his direction. "You seem awfully into whatever's on your phone, that's for sure."
His eyes didn't move from the small screen, and the only movement that came out was the shift of his weight as he turned the slightest bit away from me. "It's nothing. Um, where were we?"
"Well, I was trying to say sorry for being rude yesterday - I am sorry, Peter. I don't know what came over me."
"It's fine."
"No, it's not. If it was, you wouldn't be ignoring me and maybe we could work on our project and not be sitting here awkwardly. Can we move forward and get to the part where you don't hate me?"
Peter finally dragged his gaze upwards, glancing at me solemnly before grabbing his pencil, scribbling something down that was almost illegible for my eyes. "It's fine, I'm fine, everything is fine. Let's just work on our project."
This wasn't something I was very good at - I had no idea how to get myself out of this situation, or how to make things better with the suddenly sullen boy. I had apologised, and had made it somewhat sincere, so what more did he want from me? This was a strange boy.
"Peter?"
"What?"
"I'm..." dammit, words, work for me for once and help me make things less awkward. "I don't know how to make things better, but I am sorry. I didn't mean what I said then, I was just in a bad mood. Things were crazy at my house, and I was stressed, but I don't hate you or your rambling. I'm sorry."
He didn't speak for several seconds, making me believe he was just going to reject that apology as well, but the Parker boy finally spoke up. "What happened?"
"What?"
"At your house. What happened?"
Biting my lip, I turned away, unsure how to answer his question. I had messed up. I had said the wrong thing. I had tried to come up with a valid excuse, something that would make him stop his sulky ways and be the awkward idiot he always was, but apparently, his new interest was in me and my 'family life'. "Um, nothing, just...you know, moving and all that - takes a while and so it's stressful."
He didn't believe me. It was evident in his eyes; he frowned and poured over my stumbled, clumsy words, unravelling my badly formed lies and realising there was more I wasn't saying. However, to my relief, he simply shrugged, "it's okay, really. Should we get started on this project again, though?"
"Oh, right, yeah." I sat up and leant to the paper he gestured to, watching his hands speed and scribble down random words that meant nothing to me but was everything to him. "How's, um, how's Ned doing?"
Peter shrugged, not moving from the paper. "He's doing alright, I guess? I haven't talked much to him, but apparently, the vomiting has slowed to a stop - er, sorry, you probably didn't want to hear about that. What I mean is, he'll be better soon. Hopefully."
Only three days left, and he'll be back. If my measurements were done correctly, and I had estimated body mass and cholesterol levels properly, he would only take a few more days to get back to his annoying self and bother us again. That meant I had to start working faster and harder to get close to Peter, else I could miss my chance.
However, those thoughts were dashed to pieces when Peter stood up in a rush, clutching at his bag and looking more than frazzled. "Um, look, I...I gotta go, okay? We'll work on this some other time, right? I gotta go!"
"Peter-" it was no use; he had fled the scene, leaving me to sit alone in the middle of a nearly empty library, surrounded with loose papers and notes I didn't give two shits about. Dammit, boy, that better have been important.
I groaned and shoved the papers into my bag in a rush too, not bothering to worry about how crumpled they were going to get. That was the least of my concerns; my job was to now figure out where he was headed and just how quickly I could get there myself. Of course, without the wonderful gift of super powers to lean on.
...
"Dammit!"
I clenched the bloody wound on my arm and gritted my teeth, cursing the sloppiness of that move. I tried to manoeuvre into a small area to watch him, thinking this would be a good place, but hadn't noticed the large broken pipe and fell against it, ripping tough skin and in no doubt leaving more than just a simple scratch. It wasn't deep, so there was no worry about permanent damage, but the surface wound had somehow hit a vein or strange pocket of blood - however that worked - and now I sat alone, mentally screaming at everything and anything and bleeding out.
Still, that wasn't good enough - Peter wasn't just going to stop because I had gotten a tiny scratch. Gritting my teeth against the burst of pain, I wrapped a worn strip of cloth torn from my shirt to it and hoped for the best - it would at least stop the blood leaking everywhere, for a little while. Not the best of bandages, but proper care would have to wait until I was safe.
In the meantime, I needed to find the boy again. I reached up and out and grabbed at the metal rungs that hung, presumably acting as some sort of ladder, wincing as my newly-injured arm pushed and groaned at the strain. It was hard to pull myself up, and even harder to do so as quickly as possible, but it didn't take long to get up to the top of the roof building.
Peter wasn't doing much on the roof - he stood alone, suited up and incognito - with a cell phone pressed to his ear. The criminals he had just 'taken care of' were being taken away below him, and though I couldn't see his expression, I assumed it was probably some sort of idiotic smile at his good work.
"...it wasn't that big of a deal," he continued, pulling his mask up and off his face, exposing tousled hair and the fair skin underneath. "It wasn't even dangerous! They were just there!"
I watched him in hiding, curious as to who he was talking to but having no way of checking. It wasn't a friend, as no one knew who he was, and it definitely wasn't Aunt May. Someone else was his partner - nay, mentor? - and he was defending himself for doing the right thing, something that didn't make any sense.
He paused, assumably due to the mysterious person talking on the other side, and sighed. "I know, I just...I don't want to just stick with walking old ladies across the street and getting kittens out of trees, I want to do more! I can save the day- I just did save the day!"
Whoever his consort was, they were angry at him. Angry, but also worried, for they must not like his work with the criminals of New York. A ridiculous concern, considering that Spiderman's mission was to stop crime and save the day, but it was a valid one, probably. If I knew who it was, maybe it would make more sense.
"I'm not going to die, I-I know what I'm doing! No, I-right. Okay. Yeah. Right." He slammed the phone down, along with the torn off mask, and groaned, muttering a melee of curses and words his aunt would surely yell at. The conversation had not gone how he wanted, evidently.
It was strange how small and sad he looked, hunched over and alone, swinging his legs off a roof and watching the drama below him. He didn't look like the brave and goofy Spiderman that swung through neighbourhoods and saved the day, nor did he look like the awkward and shy boy who somehow always had some sort of smile at school - even when things went bad. No, this boy was a different side altogether, one that many didn't see or even know about.
I knew about his past; research had meant I needed to know all I could about the boy who could spin webs and soar through the sky. His parents had died from a young age, a horrific accident of some sort, and then his uncle died, just another thing he couldn't control. He had friends at school, but they didn't understand his pain or help shield him from the blows of enemies, and they couldn't make things better for him. No one could understand the pain of being alone - not in his mind, at least.
Screams erupted through the silenced room, shrill and piercing, echoing through the monochrome hallways. The rest of the children cowered in fear, trying to ignore the sounds, but it was no use; the cries of a child who laid alone and afraid were too much to ignore, the pain in their voice too great to withstand.
The girl lay shivering on her bed, hands up high and thin sheets falling off her body due to the trembling and thrashing of her legs. She stared up at the cracked ceiling, crying to no one in particular, the words falling out of her mouth illegible and just composing moans of pain and weakness that no one could fix. No one could make things easier, no one could silence the hurt, and no one could stop the heart shattering inside her chest, fragments of broken hope piercing her thoughts and making her cry out for help.
Except, she never got help. No one came to help, and when someone did show up, it wasn't to hold her and tell her that everything would be alright in the morning. No, it was to silence her, to hold her down and yell at her to stop otherwise she would be punished. The eyes that stared into her tearful ones were harsh, and unforgiving, and not the loving ones she wanted. They were without mercy and didn't hesitate to grip her shaking legs with an iron grasp and curse at her to stop. They ignored her cries for help, for justice, instead, digging deeper holes into a fragile soul and cutting deeper at the bleeding wounds on her broken help. There was no sympathy for the girl who cried.
I bit my lip, holding back tears. Tears didn't solve anything, they only made things worse, and I knew that all too well. The grip of Madame still haunted my limbs, reminding me those crybabies were punished and were useless to them. They were right; tears were a form of dwelling on the past, and I needed to look to the future. The Peter boy could cry, but I had no interest in joining the snivelling child of my past. There was no real point.
He didn't make a move to get up, and I didn't want to wait and allow him to find me. My feet made nary a noise as I slipped back down the way I came, and soon, the boy's lonely figure had disappeared, replaced with worn bricks and lonely streets. I would normally wait to watch him more, but I wasn't in the mood. It would be enough for today.
Loki one of my favourite chapters I've written - extremely dark, yes, and written far from amazingly, but it shows a side to Freya/Emily that we, of course, don't really get to see; it shows her vulnerable, and broken, and looking back on a time that still haunts her. And of course there's been that already, but I think it shows a different side, despite when she hides it. It'll be shown a lot throughout this book as she adjusts to a 'normal' life, or what she knows of one, so expect a shit tonne of these emotional flashbacks.
Credit for that lovely gif goes to @SinnofKnowledge!! Thank you for that; go check the account out, as the stories on it are great and need so much more love! And, also, please don't be shy; if you make fan art or something for this story, let me know! I've gotten a few and I know I'm absolutely shitty at actually posting them in this book, but it really makes my day that someone likes my story so much they'd make something inspired by it, and I [almost] always will see it if you tag me and show some love for that!
[ loki sounds like i'm asking you to make me things - i'm not that thirsty omg, it was just because people have asked me and i figured i'd address that here i guess? je ne sais pas. ]
Thank you for reading!