Reconcile › P. Parker [2]

016. you can't trick us

› CHAPTER SIXTEEN ‹

Raleigh drummed his fingers on the side of his thigh while his leg bounced. His foot knocked onto the metal of the flooring of the jet, creating a soft and continuous pattering sound beside the hum of everything else. His eyelids were heavy with exhaustion, but the thought of his friends being hunted down by Quentin in London and the other innocent bystanders getting hurt or killed kept him wide awake. Quentin had already put him through hell, and he wasn't about to allow him to put any others through that. That included himself and Peter, who knew what he was capable of. They couldn't allow him to get to them again.

Regret and guilt bubbled inside Raleigh's gut the longer he thought about Quentin and about all the times he had been in a room with him. And the longer he thought about it, the more he realized each time something weird happened. The first time he came face to face with Mysterio without their identities masked, his arms became covered in goosebumps. And he hesitated in believing Quentin when he said he was from another Earth, despite the idea not being too out of their world, considering time travel was real. Some part of him knew something was off about him.

He should have listened to that gut-wrenching feeling rolling in his stomach all along because it was the same feeling he had before he had turned to dust and a similar feeling he had when Tony ended the war with the final snap. It had always been there. And yet, he ignored all the internal warnings because he was desperate for someone to take the place Tony left behind. He frantically wanted someone to talk to, and he fell into the trap Quentin had planted. And because he ignored them, not only did he get hurt, but so did Peter, and now all their friends are in danger.

"You know..." Raleigh said, his voice thick with bitter hatred. "I think a part of me knew all along that Beck wasn't what he said he was. I-I don't know how, but all the signs were there."

Peter, seeming to know where Raleigh's thoughts were going, turned to him. Raleigh was staring down at the contraption creating his suit. "It's not your fault, Raleigh. It's nobody's fault but Becks. He's just... I don't know. He's not good."

A pitiful laugh escapes Raleigh's mouth. "Yeah, I'd definitely say he's not good." He turned around and met his best friend's gaze. The humming from the computers creating their suits carried between them, on either side of them, but it was just background noise for them. He rubbed his shoulder, which had pain patches sticking to it, and sighed. "It's just frustrating. So much happened with you-know-who, and after all that, I should be better at what I do. I should have known why my stomach was in knots when we first met Beck and that something was wrong with him, but I ignored that, and it seems like any time I have these feelings, something has gone wrong."

"That's what we'd call your intuition." Happy suddenly popped up beside the two teenagers, causing their heads to snap towards him. Raleigh's mouth dropped open and his hand falls back to his side. Intuition?