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chapter sixteen
WEAPONIZED
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FIGHT OR FLIGHT. THAT'S the response most people have to uncomfortable or threatening situations. The flight reaction triggers first due to her hyperactive nerves, sending them on the highest alert they've ever been. Lena finds the urge to sprint almost unbearable, the desire to flee from this room, this apartment, this city nearly too much to handle. But her body betrays her. Her joints stay locked, caging her in this suddenly claustrophobic environment. She's frozen.
Tony notices the instant she finishes reading the file and quickly scans her for a reaction so he can prepare himself. His brow twitches at the fact that she doesn't move, her face blank. Then, slowly, it starts to screw up in pain. She crumbles all at once. Her brown eyes fill with tears, her lips pursing together so hard they turn white as a familiar blue outline starts to frame her body.
He quickly leans down so they're eye-level even though she won't meet his gaze. "Hey, kid. It's okay. You're safe now, and that's what matters. God, why did I do this in your room of all places?"
Lena bursts out, her voice strained, "Grab a pillow."
Tony's eyebrows crease in confusion. Then, upon noticing her hands clenched at her sides, her muscles coiled so tightly he can see the veins popping in her neck, he obeys, grabbing a throw pillow from her bed and using it to cover his face.
The blow that emits from Lena is barely controlled. Her furniture rattles, the mason jars she uses for decoration clink together, and Tony himself would have fallen backward if he hadn't caught his balance first.
Lena wonders if he can feel her agonizing pain. The burst of energy had taken every ounce of her will to contain, or else she may have obliterated the entire building. She has dug her nails into her palms. The sharp sting is nothing compared to the hole slowly working its way through her heart.
All of her childhood dreams— crushed. Her parents didn't love her. They wanted to use her to make themselves superhuman. They tested on their own infant children to perform their evil deeds. They made her this way. She's nothing but an unfinished science experiment.
"Hey, hey." Tony's voice is soft. When had he put his hand on her shoulder? She feels dissociated with everything that's going on, like she isn't inside of her own body. It sounds like he's speaking to her underwater. "Take a deep breath in, okay? Count with me."
Lena hadn't realized she's been breathing so erratically. Her breaths come in rattled, shallow gasps that don't fulfill her lungs' need for air, so she continually sucks in and out at a pace too rapid to do anything useful.
"In..." Tony makes an upward motion with his hand, inhaling through his nose as a demonstration. Lena copies him. She can only last a few seconds until her lungs start to burn. "And out through the mouth."
It takes several minutes of this routine before her breathing returns to normal. Although her lungs no longer feel like they're burning, her muscles are still tense to the point where they're starting to ache.
"I want you to listen to me, take notes if you have to," Tony says, joking in an attempt to alleviate the pain crashing inside of her like a tsunami. "I used to manufacture weapons— you could've called me an expert on them. When you were young, Stark Industries was a harbinger of destruction. It took me almost getting killed by my own creations to make me realize that was a bad thing. Let me tell you something I learned that has helped me through these years of making myself into a better man than I was: you are only a weapon if you choose to be.
"Sure, that's what Mom and Dad wanted you to be, but you know what? Screw them. You've been using your powers for good for nearly a year now. You've proven again and again that you are a hero. A little tragic backstory doesn't change that."
Lena opens her mouth, her voice wobbling and weak to her ears. "I had a brother."
Somehow, that's what makes her break. She's throwing her arms around Tony's neck before she can realize it, embracing him fiercely. She never thought she'd be hugging Tony Stark. She should be running out and seeking the comforting arms of her father. But since Pa doesn't know — can't know — the Iron Man is the only one within reach. The only person she can count on to keep her grounded to this earth.
He pats her on the back somewhat awkwardly. Lena can tell he isn't the greatest with physical contact, but she appreciates the effort. She's staining his shirt with tears that keep on coming. Her entire body wracks with sobs that she uses his shoulder to muffle, her face heating up with the force of the cries.
Pa's unsure knock sounds through the door. "Everything okay in there?"
"Yep," Tony replies in a fake lighthearted tone. "She's just getting emotional."
Lena manages to gather herself enough to release him and lift herself back into her desk chair. The contents of the file had spilled onto the floor after she'd flung herself from it, causing some of the articles and transcripts to crinkle. She watches as Tony silently puts them back into the manila folder.
After he's placed it on her desk among the mounds of art supplies, he hands her a small card. "My personal number," he explains. "Just a phone call away."
After Tony exits her bedroom, Lena can hear him speaking to Pa, their low voices sounding muffled through her door. She sits stone still and worries her bottom lip with his card clutched between her thumb and forefinger. It's only when her hand begins to ache that she realized she's been gripping it too tightly.
Her movements robotic, she pulls her phone out of her back pocket and texts Graham, red.
They have a color coding system for the events that happen in their lives. A green is everything is fine, I just have something I want to tell you. Yellow means something kinda bad happened. Orange is please meet me wherever I am, I may be either emotionally or physically harmed. Red means come as fast as you can because something terrible happened.
Graham texts back almost immediately.
GRAHAM CRACKER: hang in there. omw.
He arrives after Tony leaves, and Pa lets him in the door without complaint. Him showing up randomly is nothing out of the ordinary. He must think that Lena wants to tell him about her new scholarship, so he points her friend in the direction of her room and doesn't ask questions.
As soon as Graham walks in, she knows he can tell that an outburst had happened. Due to the number of times she's exploded at his house, he's gotten used to the microscopic details that anyone else would have missed— the way her papers are now jumbled, the crooked poster on her wall, how her curtains are caught on the latch that locks her window.
Lena is still perched on her desk chair, legs tucked into her chest and red-rimmed eyes distant. Her coping mechanism has been playing Zero to Hero from Hercules on repeat. When he walks in, she wordlessly hands him the file and pauses the music.
Perplexed yet intrigued, her friend takes the folder and sits down on the edge of her bed. Lena's eyes switch back into focus to gauge his reactions. His eyebrows crease as he reads, his face gradually pinching the more he absorbs the contents.
Lena's legs shake as he stands up and tentatively sits beside him. She can't bear to look at what he's reading, averting her eyes to the floor instead. It's an agonizing wait. It seems to take him eight years to get to the end, but that may just be the dread steadily pooling in her stomach and making the seconds stretch into millenniums.
When he finishes, Graham snaps the folder closed and sets it on the opposite side of him. Then, without speaking, he gathers her up into his muscled arms. She gratefully returns the embrace with fervor. Sometimes, there's nothing more comforting than the arms of someone who knows you better than you know yourself.
"You're my hero," Graham says quietly, "no matter what your past says."
She hugs him tighter and tries her best not to burst back into tears.
-♕-
Lena isn't ready to share the news of her parents with Peter or Ned the next day at school. Although they've become close in the vigilante-and-sidekick kind of way, she isn't comfortable with dropping such a bomb on them just yet. The only people who know are Tony and Graham.
She'd passed Earl Angstrum on her way to the elevator that morning. Her stomach had immediately knotted up at the remembrance of his significance in her file. He'd always seemed ordinary enough to her— when she was younger, he'd sometimes babysit her when her parents weren't home and she couldn't go to Graham's. Her average neighbor, a S.H.I.E.L.D agent sent to keep an eye on her? If she hadn't seen the document herself, she wouldn't have guessed it. Which, it seems, is the point.
Cindy doesn't ask why Lena is so quiet throughout the day. Instead, she acknowledges that it's not the time to question it and stays silent for a change all throughout lunch.
"Hey, guys!" Liz announces, causing the entire population of the cafeteria to turn in her direction. Her perky voice helps to engage her audience as she holds a megaphone close to her mouth. "Just a reminder that today is the last day to buy Homecoming tickets, so, um... yeah."
Lena turns back around with a huff through her mouth. Cindy, unable to hold it in any longer, blurts, "Are you really not going?"
She recalls her promise to think about it. She'd made it a few weeks ago, but, to be truthful, she actually hasn't thought about it. It might be different if she had someone to go with. Graham is already going with a friend from band named Kaitlyn and all of her other friends have dates.
Except...
"Um, I might have someone to ask," she admits quietly.
Graham chokes on his grapes. "You do? Who?"
Cindy nods aggressively in interest, hands clasped together on the table.
"Peter," she replies.
"Parker?" Cindy gushes, her face breaking out in a grin. "Okay, not to be weird, but he's totally boyishly cute. But aren't you the same height? That might be awkward for slow dancing..."
Lena lets her friend ramble to herself as Graham recovers from his choking incident and relaxes. He carefully swallows before saying, "You'd better ask him quick."
"If he says no, I'm not going," she reminds both of them. "I don't want to go alone."
Going to the dance stag would be fun while she and her friends were all dancing together, but the slow dancing would give her too much time to think about her stupid feelings. Standing on the sidelines during the love-themed songs doesn't sound like it would be a good time.
"I'm glad you're taking this into consideration," Cindy says with another gleeful smile, stretching it even bigger in an attempt to make Lena stop frowning. "You can borrow one of my older sister's dresses— you're the same height and she has a red one that would look amazing on you."
"Thank you, Cindy," Lena says from the bottom of her heart. She knows that her constant pressure about the dance is only because she wants her to have fun. "Really."
Cindy beams, tucking a strand of pin-straight black hair behind her ear.
Homecoming would be the perfect opportunity to get her mind off of the chaos in her life. The dance is only three days away. A night of non-stop dancing would preoccupy her, which is why she wants a date. Without one, she'd get a break, which means all of her thoughts would come crashing down on her in the middle of the dance.
During sixth period, Lena's nerves get the best of her and she excuses herself to run to the bathroom and let a little energy loose. She almost causes the paper towel dispenser to fall off of the wall with the force of the blast that expels from her. However, she manages to keep herself slightly in check by mentally repeating her old mantra with more aggression.
Not a weapon. Not a weapon. Not a weapon.
Afterward, Lena leans over the sink, her hands clutching either side of the ceramic bowl. She brushes a section of wavy hair out of her face before looking up at herself in the mirror. She looks like she's been hit by a truck. Her eyes are lined with purple underneath them due to lack of sleep; she'd forgotten to break out the concealer that morning. Her skin feels papery and raw from so many tears shed. Instead of brightening her complexion, her yellow knit sweater and black skirt only make her appear sickly.
She turns on the faucet and quickly bathes her face with cold water to wake herself up. It makes her face slightly pink, but that's better than having no color. After drying her skin, she exits the bathroom—
And runs straight into Peter.
"Holy—" she gasps as she grabs his shoulders to keep him from getting knocked onto his butt. "Sorry."
"It's no problem," he replies, rubbing his forehead where their heads had smacked together. He's glowing in spite of the pain. His royal blue Midtown Tech crewneck is oversized on him, but he looks on top of the world with a giant hall pass looped through his fingers. His appearance makes Lena's heart flutter in her chest. "I have something to tell you."
Lena's heart thrums in her chest as she recalls Graham's words from thirty minutes ago. You'd better ask him quick. It's now or never.
"Me too," she rushes out, forcing out a grin. Her hands are suddenly sweaty. What happened to her usual confidence? It's like she's been zapped of it ever since she'd been presented with that damn file. "You go first since I ran into you and all."
If Peter gets his news out first, maybe he'll be more inclined to say yes. Why is she so nervous about this? They're friends now. Friends take each other to dances all the time.
"I asked Liz to Homecoming and she said yes!"
Lena feels like she's been sucker punched in the gut. She physically takes a step back with the force of the shock. Somehow, she hadn't seen this coming whatsoever. She'd assumed Liz already had a date because she's Liz Allen and everyone loves her and she has a million friends and—
She cuts her racing thoughts off and looks at Peter's expression. He really is glowing, his entire face overtaken by his beaming smile. His brown eyes are alight with happiness. She can't ruin this for him.
Lena forces a smile that she hopes looks real. "That's great, Peter. I'm really happy for you. I, uh... I know how much you like her."
The boy's cheeks flame with a blush that turns even the tips of his ears pink. "Yeah." He ducks his head, then looks back up at her as he rocks on the heels of his Converse. "What did you have to tell me?"
"Oh..." Lena trails off, her mind racing for any thought that seems remotely good. She can't tell him about Tony's promise to help out with college— that'll only make the memory of his suit being taken away fresh in his mind. "My mom said she'd make bibingka today and I'll bring some to you tomorrow. I was supposed to keep it a secret, so act surprised when I give them to you so I'll feel a little less guilty."
Peter's smile widens even more. She's certain that if it gets any bigger, his face will split in half. "Awesome! Thank you so much, Lena. You're the best."
Lena's heart tugs as she echoes his words from moments ago. "It's no problem."
"I've better get back to class before Mr. Hapgood thinks I'm skipping Woodshop," Peter says as he points behind her, signalling the direction he needs to go in. "I'll see you later?"
"Yeah," she says in a slightly choked voice. "See you."
She feels foolish that she thought this would work.
_______
my poor bby lena is having an existential crisis and doesn't even realize it
this will (obviously) be a very monumental part of lena's character throughout the rest of the book, so if she doesn't seem like herself, just remember that fact!
-kristyn