Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

I woke up in a haze, and the realization of where I was brought a sickness to my stomach. My eyes darted around the room- every machine, every tube fixed to my frail arms, the duffel bag on a chair in the corner.

Peter was standing by the window, looking out the window as though he were a statue. Bruce stood to my right, eyes glued to the monitor screen. And right next to me in a chair, so close I could reach out and touch him, was Tony. He was staring down at this hands, twiddling his thumbs. It felt as though the entire world was actively looking away from me.

I understand, I wouldn't want to look at me either.

I wonder how long they've been like this.

Then the realization struck. Tubes. What was in them?

How long have I been like this?

Sheer panic courses through my veins as I immediately try to sit upright, hyperaware of the hospital bed linen under my fingers and the cold shivers running up my back. This gets Bruce's attention, and suddenly his hands are on my shoulders, urging me to lay back down. I kick my legs in turn, struggling to get out from under his grasp and out of this entrapment. I push against his arms with one hand and begin yanking out tubes with the other.

"Please, y/n, you need to lay down, I know this is difficult."

"Please let us help you."

"Y/n I need you to stop right now."

Bruce's grip only gets firmer, but he's holding back at the same time. Like he doesn't want to break me.

Luckily for him, it didn't come to that. With my tubes out, and my brain in a haze, I only had so much fight left in me until I couldn't kick any more. My vision went blurry again and Bruce's arms guided me back to my coffin.

All Tony could do was stare. All Peter could do was run out of the room.

Chapter Text

Chapter Text

The Red Room couldn’t be compared to much else. At the time, I hadn't known of the world outside those walls, only what bits and pieces they chose to feed me. Those walls were my childhood. My life was the Red Room, and I was too oblivious to long for much else.

It was me and the other girls, each of us competing against the other for validation. We were slim, we were agile, we were strong, we were quick on our feet. We could speak twenty different languages by age nine. Each of us, trained to be the exact same, almost carbon copies of each other. Each of us, the smartest in the room, yet somehow trained to not have a single thought of our own.

Sometimes when I look back at it, I long for the same empty-headed feeling.

Our routine was the same each morning. We awoke at 5 each morning on the button. No alarm clocks, our minds had been trained to wake themselves up. Brushing teeth, combing hair, milk and the occasional toast for breakfast. Before the sun rose, we were in our ballet suits, raised on bruised toes and extending exhausted arms. Shooting range practice afterwards. 30 minutes of television a day, each of us watching the same program on our own screens, all monitored and filtered.

We practiced hand-to-hand combat, stealth, fought each other in cold blood. You couldn’t get too attached to anyone, as you could be fighting against them the next day.

The first time I killed, the red on my face felt dirty. I felt the evil seeping into my skin, infecting me, changing who I was and who I would be for the rest of my life.

The hundredth time I killed, I didn't feel a thing.

I had spent a brief time outside the Red Room. When I was ten, I had the misconception that life outside the Red Room was peaceful. It was a fool's paradise to believe that escaping and living a life among the Americans would bring me happiness. I had a mission, an undercover one.  I was to assume a fake identity, with a fake family, a fake home, a fake life. I spent years playing pretend, like a little girl playing with her dollhouse.

I got too attached.

It wasn't real.

When I returned to the Red Room, and all was said and done, I wasn't a fool anymore. Life outside the Red Room didn't have routine. It offered too many possibilities. It allowed for mistakes. It allowed my parents to let me down. It allowed me to lose my sister. It allowed people to get hurt.

Life without routine is messy. I don't like messy.

It took me a while after my mission to return to my normal life in the Red Room. They gave me the same routine as before I had left, yet somehow it seemed impossible to maintain. Being in the real world had spoiled me, and I couldn’t adjust back to training. This, as expected, was punished. There were punishments set for each of my shortcomings, intended to teach me a lesson I wouldn't forget. When I couldn't wake up on time, I was to stay up all night working out in the exercise room. After all, you don’t have to worry about waking up on time when you haven't gone to sleep in the first place. When I missed too many shots at the shooting range, they would put me in a combat match with one of the girls who was in the senior batch. The senior batch was years older than my batch, and therefore had years more training. It was a match set for me to lose, and the girls were instructed to stop beating me just one punch away from death.

It didn’t matter though, and the punishments did was they were intended to- they taught me a lesson I would never forget. Each night I sweated instead of slept, each blow that knocked me to the ground, every last pummeling I endured, was all because I deserved it. Each lesson made me a better soldier, fixed faults that were holding me back.

The only problem was, I needed it to go further than that. It wasn’t enough for me for the Red Room to punish me. I needed, no, I wanted to punish myself. Self-discipline was the trait of the best soldiers, wasn’t it?

I was 14 years old when I sat on my mattress with a pen and paper, writing out my new rules.

For each lost sparring match, a punishment of three cuts

For each time I disappoint my teachers, a punishment of a 24-hour fast

For each mistake made in class, a punishment of four hours on the treadmill at high speed.

This was the list I added to, the rules I would adhere to for the next few years. Each time I found a new way to mess up, I would add it to the list, with a new punishment. It wasn’t something I was proud about, but I didn’t have to hide it either. Plenty of girls in the Red Room did the same as me, each a bit twisted in their own way. To a certain extent, punishing myself earned validation from those around me. Each mealtime I didn’t eat, I could see the approving nods of my trainers as they passed by. I could see the jealousy on the other girls’ faces as I got thinner and weaker. I felt more graceful, less disgusting. I finally had the chance to become a different person, someone I could stand living with.

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Leaning in the doorway, I shook my head slightly to bring myself back to the present. Remembering my past struggles wasn’t going to help y/n with hers. Bruce was busy checking up on y/n’s vitals, but she seemed too agitated to answer his questions.

“Can we get the room?” she looked at me with gratitude as Bruce made his way towards me.

“Be careful with her… she might not be ready for a confrontation just yet.” Bruce whispered in my ear as he walked past me. Well-intentioned as he was, it still angered me that he wanted me to be gentle with her. Y/n can’t get better until she admits she has a problem. Surely Bruce couldn’t understand.

I walked over to her bedside, holding myself back from absolutely storming over to her and demanding she tell me the truth. As I sat next to her, I saw just how hard the illness had hit y/n. Her hair was brittle and frizzed, her pronounced collarbones were protected only by a thin layer of skin, and her face looked drained.

“Why am I here?” she asked me as though it were a genuine question, which angered me even more. She wasn’t going to play dumb to get out of this one.

“Why are you here?” there was a tint of hostility in my voice, and I was losing my patience already.

“What did Bruce tell you?”

As she asked me that question, I remembered back to what Bruce told me when I first went to tell him y/n was awake.

“You saw her, didn’t you?” Bruce had looked at me with pity.

“Yeah, she’s… different… weaker. I could feel her bones. She’s not the y/n I remember.”

“I talked to Cap about the injuries she sustained. They aren’t consistent with what she would have endured in a regular fight. The cuts, sure, but the bruises shouldn’t be there. She seems to be extremely weakened, so I ran some labs,” Bruce handed me a manila folder, “and there’s only one explanation for these.”

I opened the folder to see blood lab paperwork covered in red ink. Bruce had circled every result that was abnormal, and quite a few of them were.

“She hasn’t been eating.”

“I know some parts of it,” I spoke with caution, not wanting to say the wrong thing or trigger her. As we were talking, I began asking her more questions, getting annoyed at the secrets she was keeping from me. I understood why, of course I did. It just feels different when you’re being lied to than when you’re the one doing the lying.

All of a sudden, she began hyperventilating, and I could sense I was going too far. I quickly reached for her hands to calm her down, trying to make her feel safe. Her hands felt fragile in mine, and seeing her weakness, my anger began to fall away. Bruce was right. She wasn’t ready for harshness.

After a bit longer of her crying and us talking, the truth was finally out on the table. Hearing her talk reminded me of myself as a teenager, which gave me a daunting perspective into what she was going through. I couldn’t bear thinking about the months she spent hating herself, starving herself, hurting herself. It left me speechless how much pain we had in common, and all I could do was sit there and listen. I felt helpless to stop her suffering.

“Do you hate me?”  she held her breath as she waited for the answer.

“No. I could never hate you. You’re the only thing that keeps me going most days.” And I wasn’t lying. I had fallen in love with this girl, this beautiful broken girl, and I couldn’t imagine ever falling out of love with her. Of course I couldn’t tell her that, so I stuck with my carefully chosen answer. “And I understand what you’re going through. And I know how to get you out of it.” I shriveled up a bit inside, telling a lie I wish was true. I had no idea how to help y/n. Helping her through this felt like running blind in a darkened forest. It left me shivering and frightened. To hold her future in my hands, to be responsible for her future happiness… I was more scared than y/n could ever imagine.

Chapter Text

Good god, I’m a slobbery mess. Crying, worse, wailing into my hands. My face just caked in my own snot and tears. Absolutely disgusting. But did I know how to stop? No, of course not. This is all I know; all I can do.

Here I am, sitting in a hospital bed, drenching my gown in tears, chest heaving as my lungs fail me. Gasping for air, I bring my knees closer to my chest, making myself as small as possible.

How could I have told her? The biggest secret I’ve ever kept, one I’ve been holding on to for months, just out in the open? Nat is never going to see me the same again. She’ll hold my hand for now, say everything’s alright, and the second I’m back home, she’ll never speak to me again. So much for being in love.

I spent the rest of the night squeezing my eyes shut to slow the tears. I had sent Natasha back home on the excuse that I needed some space. The truth is, I couldn't risk saying the wrong thing. When I finally opened my eyes, soft rays of light were peeking through the curtains. Slowly paced footsteps were nearing my room, so I quickly dried off my tears using the hospital blanket and pretended as though I was asleep.

Half a minute later, a hand gently rubbed my back. I opened my eyes to see Bruce standing by me with a frown. Behind him was a wheelchair connected to an IV.

"Wake up, Y/n. You’re coming home. Tony set up all the Med Bay stuff in your room so you don't have to stay here."

"oh, okay. Thanks." I spoke softly and carefully. Nat was the only one I'd really spoken to since the accident, and that hadn't gone so well. As I spoke, I noticed how much my throat hurt. Whether it was from being previously intubated or from crying all night, I'm not sure.

"Well, when you're ready, try to swing your legs to the side of the bed. You'll need help getting into the wheelchair."

Each of my muscles was stiff as stone, and it took all my strength to heave myself up. It felt like I had gained 20 pounds, and I looked like it too.

"Ok, now I'm just going to put one arm around your waist and you're going to hold my other arm for support. All you have to do is focus on keeping your legs strong. Okay?"

I simply nodded.

The second his arm went around my waist, my mind began racing. Could he feel my bones? Even worse, could he not feel my bones? My breath got stuck in my chest as I feared the worst. WAIT. If I'm going home earlier, does that mean the rest of the team's found out about my problem?

"Y/n, focus!"

In my panic, I forgot that I was barely standing, and my foot slipped. With one swift motion, Bruce caught me and shifted me into the wheelchair. I winced in pain as I felt a sharp stab in my side.

"Are you alright?" He crouched down in front of me, his hands on the wheelchair's arm rests.

Without a single word to him, I clutched my side, feeling something warm and wet. When I looked down at my hand, I saw red.

"Your stitches must have ripped. That’s okay, I'll be right back."

After he left, I heard him talking to Tony in the hallway. Did he actually think I couldn't hear them?

"I told you, she's not ready for this. She couldn’t even stand, now she has to get new stitches!"

"She's coming home, Bruce. She can't be some dead body in a hospital. We've all suffered injuries in the field, what makes this any different?"

"C'mon man, wake up. She did this to herself, and at the hospital she has constant monitoring from the nurses. What's to say she doesn't do something stupid at home?"

"She doesn't need nurses, she has us. Look… I can't… please we can help her. Figure out why she did this…"

"She won't want that, Tony. She did this in front of us for months, maybe even years. She won't want our help."

"Please." Tony's voice was getting crackly now, and I felt nauseating guilt as I heard him cry.

After a long pause, Bruce finally made his decision. "Two weeks. She gets two weeks at home at the Compound, but if she gets worse, we send her right back. If we decide she needs professional help, we have to let her."

"Thanks, buddy. I knew you'd see reason."

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A few hours later, Tony wheeled me up to my room. It had been completely converted. The bed was hooked up to several machines, including monitors and emergency precautions. In a corner, where there had once been a dresser, there was a pile of gifts, like flowers, teddy bears, and chocolate. Of course they all gave me flowers. Nobody knew me well enough to know I hated flowers. Perhaps that’s my fault for not indulging much about myself in the several years I worked with the Avengers. I guess I assumed they'd ask. I guess we both assumed things about each other.

Forcing myself to look away from the chocolates, I looked around the room for the missing dresser. Instead, my eyes caught glimpse of an extra door. It was new, and looked like it was built only days ago.

"What's behind the door?" they were the first words I had spoken to Tony all day.

"Just an extra space for you. You can check it out once you get back on your feet."

"But why? Why all of this? All the flowers, the gifts?"

"Let's just get you into bed." After I was all settled in, he sat at the edge of the bed. Just like Natasha did at the hospital.

"Look, I know you probably want me to back off. I know I'm not your real dad, but ever since I adopted you I have loved you as my own." He grazed his hand on my cheek lovingly. "I'm here for you. But you have to tell me what we're up against."

Tears welled up in my eyes as I realized what I had been doing. I was betraying Tony. My own father. But I couldn't be transparent with him, I couldn't drive him away like I did Natasha. "Who else knows?" If I can assess the situation, I can at least attempt some damage control.

"We'll keep it quiet if you want. Right now it's just me, Bruce, and Natasha. Everyone else only knows about the injuries from the mission. No one told Peter, but I think he's catching on." He took a deep breath and looked at me with concern. "Listen, I won't if you don’t want me to, but I'm thinking of telling the rest of the team. You could use all the support you can get, right?"

"NO!" My reaction came out louder than I had hoped, showing just how far gone I was.

Tony quickly pulled his hand away from my cheek. He opened his mouth to say something but decided against it.

 "Sorry, I mean no thank you, I don't want them to know."

"Oh, baby." He stumbled on his words. It was the first time I had ever seen him do that. "I'm sorry. I won't tell them. Don’t worry, I'm going to take care of you."

All of a sudden, I felt angry again. I'm tired of the bubble wrap. I'm tired of the pity eyes. With my voice raised, I said, "How? How could you, of all people, possibly take care of me?" The second the words left my mouth, I wanted to reach out and pull them back. "I'm sorry, I didn't-"

"No, it's okay. You're right, I haven't been the best in the past. I didn't realize what was happening to you. But please trust me, I'm going to get you out of this." He cupped my hands in his and felt how cold my skin was. He could almost hold both of my wrists with one hand. A silent gasp escaped from him as he leaned down, pressing his forehead to my hands. "Oh, baby, what have you been doing to yourself?" he whispered sadly.

I couldn't stand to look at him, so I turned my head to the wall next to me. He had hung a framed picture there, from my first birthday with him and the Avengers. I was only six years old when he adopted me and gave me the world. Tony deserved better than me. I wish I could kill myself so he could forget about me altogether. “I’m sorry.” I whispered back.

When I finally turned my head back, Tony planted a soft kiss on my forehead. "Get some rest. I love you." He tucked in my blanket and got up to leave.

“Dad,”

“Yes?” 

"Thank you. For everything."

He gave me a soft smile. "You deserve the stars, my lovebug."

When he turned to the door to leave, he saw Peter standing in the doorway.

Chapter Text

A couple days ago

"Here you are!" Ned plopped down next to me in the hospital lobby, shoving a vending machine soda into my hands. "Wow, these hospitals are really huge. It took me forever to find you! Do you think the doctors ever get lost in these halls? Like they walk into the wrong wing on accident and all of a sudden their late for their-" Ned stopped talking immediately after he turned to see my face. My eyes were blood red. I was not in the mood to joke about hospital hallways. "That bad, huh?"

"Yeah."

Ned draped his arm over my shoulders and gave me a light squeeze. "This is just day one. She'll have time to get better."

"Maybe you should go. I'm not the best to be around right now."

"No way. I'm your guy in the chair, remember? That applies here too."

Ned has always been my best friend. For as long as I can remember, he's been there for me. Aunt May likes to joke that he's her second son because of all the time he spends at our apartment. I slowly lean over to his side and rest my head on his shoulder. "Thanks, man."

"Wanna talk about it?"

"I don't know, she's just not the same. She was a shell. I can't- she-" I was talking a mile a minute, and I had to stop to catch my breath. "She looked like a ghost just lying there. Like she was already dead. And then all of a sudden she wakes up, and she's alive, but you can tell she doesn’t want to be. And she's just pulling at everything, it doesn't matter what. She won't listen to Bruce, but she could hear him. Seeing him trying to hold her down was just… I never want to see that again. And then she goes back to being I dead. I can't lose her, Ned, I can't…" I look down at the soda still unopened in my hand. My super strength has left dents in the can. I'm so frustrated I crush the can even more, breaking the metal and letting the orange drink spill onto the floor.

"Woah there, buddy." Ned sits up and takes the can from my hand, awkwardly placing it on the table in front of us and checking his pockets for tissues. When he looks back at me, he sees tears streaming down my cheeks.

"What do I do, Ned?"

"Oh, Peter. I know this is hard. But you can't do anything about it. You just have to be there for her and-"

"WHAT?" I cut Ned off, pushing his arm off my shoulder. "This isn't the common cold. This is serious. I can't believe you'd actually expect me-"

"I know. I know, I know, I know, okay? But what do you think you can do? These things take time. And all you have to do is be there for her."

"I'm Spiderman. I help people. I can't sit around when there's a better way to fix this."

Turning to face me, Ned spoke to me sterner than he was before. "This isn't a job for Spiderman. This is a job for Peter Parker. Sit with her, talk with her, support her. When this is over, you'll be glad you did."

Breaking into light sobs, I said, "That's the thing. I did support her. That's what started all of this."

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A few months ago

It's raining outside, and crisp leaves have fallen to form a blanket on the ground. A few of us from the team have met up at the track to get a couple of miles in and spend some more time together outside of missions. Mr. Rogers and Bucky were already three miles ahead of us. Sam was hoofing it as fast as he could, muttering furiously under his breath about Mr. Rogers. Natasha preferred to run alone, and had her own bubble around her. Y/n and I were in the very back, running a bit slower so we could talk at the same time.

"Ned's coming over to build his Lego Deathstar tonight, do you wanna join?"

"Oh, um tonight really isn't a good time for me, I'm, uh, really busy with school." Y/n was stopping several times during each sentence to catch her breath.

"Really? I'm don't think we had any projects recently?" Was y/n lying to me?

After a long pause, y/n finally replied, "oh, yeah, no projects, just stuff I've procrastinated on.

The next fifteen minutes, we ran in complete silence. I could hear the sound of our shoes beating the trail, the strong wind's gushing, the sound of kids playing in the leaves. I could also hear y/n's incessant tapping on her smartwatch. When I turned my head to see what she was doing, I noticed that she seemed annoyed too.

"What's up with the watch?"

"Oh, I'm just checking the time."

Why would that annoy her? Maybe it's just that she's tired of running. Afterall, it is pretty cold out. "Do you wanna take a break? We passed a bench about a minute ago."

"No, no, I still have a lot of energy to burn."

About two minutes later, she was tapping on her smartwatch again. "You're checking the time again?"

"Yeah, just don’t want to lose track of time." She gave me a smile and pulled her sleeve back down over the watch.

"oh. Well, what time is it?"

She took a long pause before finally replying, "huh, I guess I forgot. Probably somewhere around 10."

Why was she being so off?

Later when we got back to the Compound, we met Bruce in the kitchen. He was pouring a green smoothie into glasses for all of us, and on the table was a pile of sandwiches.

"Eat up, we have a mission this afternoon. One of Rumlow's contacts was spotted at a military base, he's expected to be in DC by this evening and we're expected to swing by and 'pick him up'." Bruce handed a glass to y/n with a smile on his face.

She lifted one of her arms to grab the smoothie, but then decided against it. Lowering her arm, she said, "No, thank you, I don't think I can stomach any food so soon after that run."

"You'll be fine, dig in. Bruce made some of your favorite BLTs." Tony took the glass from Bruce's hand, set it on the dining table, and put one of the BLTs on a plate next to it. "C'mon, you can't have an empty stomach."

"Thanks, dad." Y/n slowly walked over to her seat, and sat down. By the time she was done with two bites, the rest of the team was almost done with their first sandwich. I sat at the seat opposite to her and just watched. Once she had finished everything on her plate, save for the bacon she picked out of the BLT, Y/n excused herself from the table.

When I looked to Ms. Romanov, I noticed her eyes following y/n as she ran up the stairs. "You should go check on her, Peter. And spend more time with her. I'm sure she must get bored on evenings with nothing to do."

"Nothing to do?"

"Yeah, she slept the entire day yesterday just because she said she was bored." Ms. Romanov said it like it was common knowledge, and I felt so stupid for being so easily lied to. Why is y/n making excuses to get away from me?

"Oh, ok. I'll go up now."

"Hey, Pete, while you're up there, will you tell y/n to swing by the workshop later? We left her new suit in a box on the shop table." Tony had been working on a new suit, so y/n wouldn’t have to keep borrowing one of his spares.

When I got to y/n's room, the water was running in her shower, along with the exhaust fan. On her nightstand lay her smartwatch, which she had been glued to while we were running. Looking around, I realized that I hadn't been in y/n's room in a while. We used to hang out all the time, finishing homework, designing new tech to show to Mr. Stark, eating gummy worms, geeking out over old movies. In the past few months though, Y/n's been too busy to do any of that. Her room was just as I remembered it, with posters of her favorite shows on the walls, an army of stuffed toy animals by her bed, and a bookshelf filled with the most traumatically romantic novels of all time.

"Hey, Y/n, do you wanna go to the movies later?" I put my ear to her bathroom door to hear her response. Instead, all I heard what the nauseating sound of her puking. I could hear her gagging, breathing heavily, and coughing. "Y/N ARE YOU OKAY?" I began banging on the door.

The vomiting stopped instantly, followed by y/n's angry voice, "PETER WHAT ARE YOU DOING IN MY ROOM?!?"

"I just came to ask if you wanted to go to the movies later, like maybe after the mission…"

"THEN DO IT WHEN IM NOT IN THE FUCKING SHOWER!"

Without saying another word, I quickly backed out of her room, confused at what had just happened.

A half hour later, when I was downstairs watching TV, Y/n came downstairs in leggings and a hoodie. As she headed out the door, Mr. Stark stopped her.

"Where are you headed?"

"Just out to the mall with some friends, I'll be back before the mission."

"Ok, well, have fun. Anyways, not sure if Peter remembered to tell you when I sent him upstairs, but I made you a new suit. It's in the workshop if you wanna stop by after the mall."

Hearing this, y/n turned to me and gave me a sad look, as if she were apologizing for yelling at me upstairs. "Thanks, I'll be there."

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Y/n wasn't going to the mall. What friends could she possibly be going to the mall with? Ned and I are her friends. At least we were her friends…

"Hey, Pete, how come you're not going with her? Everything okay with you two?" Mr. Stark asked while walking towards the couch I was sitting on.

"Yeah, we're great, I just wanted to conserve my energy so I'm at the top of my game for the mission."

"Hey, good for you, showing some responsibility. Just don't forget to live a little, okay? God, don’t become a partier like me, but I don’t think a trip to the mall would kill you."

Where could she be going? Should I have gone with her?
"You know what Mr. Stark, that's really good advice, but I think I'm going to… uh… go take a nap… yeah, I'll see you later…" I quickly bolted upstairs, passing my room and going straight to y/n's room to look for clues. Her room was a mess, the bed was unmade, and she left clothes strewn all over the floor. Her desk had at least five coffee mugs on it, and a protein bar wrapper stuck out from under her pillow. Ew.

Then I noticed her night stand. When I had come in earlier during her shower, y/n's smartwatch was on her night stand, but now it wasn’t. She was wearing it, which meant I could track it. There was no chance she was at the mall, and she'd been acting weird for a while. Obviously tracking her was the right thing to do… right?
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"Dude, I still don't understand why I'm doing this. She's like, your sister, like you know I love you dude, but this is kind of an invasion of privacy,"

"Ned, just track her watch. It's all cool, I promise she won't be mad." That was a lie. After she snapped at me earlier, I was certain she would be angry about this.

"Ok, Peter, I got her location, she's at that park we go to to test out drones. By her speed, I think she's just going on a run. I told you this wasn’t necessary, but anyways it's all here on the drive."

"Cool, thanks." Grabbing the drive from him, I bolted out of his room. Why was she going on another run after we just ran so many miles with the team?
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About ten minutes later, I reached the park. The cold weather made me sniffle a bit, it was terrible weather to be running in. The drive was plugged into my phone, and I zoomed in on the red dot to see her location. Instead of running, or moving at all, the red dot stayed in one place. Maybe she was taking a break? I guess that makes it easier for me to find her.

As I jogged over to the red dot, I thought about what I would say when I saw her.

Are you mad at me?
I'm sorry I went in your room.
Are you hiding something from me?
I want to talk to you. We don’t talk anymore.
Are you okay?

When I finally got to her, none of my prepared speeches mattered. My eyes widened as I saw her, sweat stains on her hoodie, emaciated carcass fainted on the side of the track. Blades of grass and specks of dirt in her hair, her cheeks still a bit red from the cold.

"Y/N!"

Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit.
Wake up, wake up, please wake up.

I was on my knees beside her now, holding her top half on my lap and shaking her shoulders. Her chest was slowly rising and falling, as though she were in a coma.

Wake up, please, I need you, please, I'll do anything, how do I fix this?

"Y/n, Y/n, can you hear me? Move a finger, or can you open your eyes? It's me, it's Peter,"

After some more shaking and yelling and begging, Y/n's panicked eyes fluttered open slightly. She was disoriented and scared, like she had just reentered her body and didn't know how to operate it.

"Peter?"

"Y/n, I'm here, what happened?"

Then, startlingly quickly, Y/n stood up as if to show she was okay, only to reveal how dizzy she was by immediately crashing to the ground. Still conscious, she sat up, struggling to keep her eyes open.

What was happening right now?

I didn't know what to do, because what do you do when you find your sister passed out in the park? Following my instinct from saving civilians as Spider-Man, I carried her on my shoulder, but instead of taking her to the hospital, I took her home. She was half-awake, and couldn't say much except for the occasional "Peter".

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A few hours later.

I was in my room, playing video games to distract myself from what had just happened, when I heard a clatter in y/n's room. Rushing to her room, I saw her crouched down, reaching for something she had dropped under her bed.

"Hey."

"Hey."

"Listen, Peter, you didn’t have to see that, but thank you for getting me home safe. Let's just forget about it and get ready for the mission, yeah?"

"Y/n, you need to get more rest. I'm telling Mr. Stark, I have to tell him all of it."

"What do you mean, 'all of it'? What do you think you know?"

"You aren't eating, you're weak, and you're just passing out all over the place. I know what's happening."

All of a sudden, y/n's hostility returned, as though a few hours of rest had given her the strength to fight me again. "You don’t know anything, and you don’t have to tell dad anything either. If you do, I'll leave, and you know I won’t come back. Is that really worth it?"

"This is important, please, you need help."

"No, it's not important, and I have it under control." With strategic sweetness, she gave me a smile and walked over to give me a hug. "I know I have a problem, but I can fix it. Don’t tell dad. I'm okay."

Her hug melted me, and I somehow felt hope that she was telling the truth. "Okay."

"Thank you."

"I love you."

"I love you too."