RIPPLE ( peter parker.. ) ✔

003. Peter's List Method..

Peter Parker was onto solving this problem with all the skillset he gained from attending an awfully good high-school and "almost" attending a fantastic college -there was only so much he could attend when he put on that mask the entire day, save for two or three hours in which he'd miraculously swing in time for Aunt May's lunch. He talked about listing the unknown factors of the equation by the name of Wendy Weber, he went as far as sitting down, improvising a table out of a chair.

Yet as soon as his hand caught the pen Wendy gave him, he managed to scribble perhaps only a few lines, then in her process of calming down, she heard the little thud. That was Peter's head hitting the chair. He has been fighting back fatigue for so long, alas it won over his goodwill of trying to calm his new friend down and perhaps avoid a future case of jumping into danger when she just made him aware she wasn't looking for that sort of thing.

The initial shock wore off of Wendy the second Peter pulled her away from the vicinity of the window, leaving her just with the numbness of admitting to the tragic reasons which should be behind everything. Whatever she could usually do -she started feeling real stupid for not having found a name for those abilities already after all this time- did not save her into this new "No" cycle, Peter did... And I've been so lost in my own head that I didn't even thank him, Wendy thought, highly disappointed with herself.

She's been rudely keeping her distance, tapping the glass of her watch as some impatient child tapping the showcases in a candy store. Only the store was off limits and they couldn't afford anything from it. There was nothing she could do to ever affect the watch she was wearing and the idea taking it off just created an empty pit of her insides. When Peter's forehead dropped on the chair's surface, Wendy began staring at the true epitome of all she has been avoiding: he was the embodiment of all the feelings she didn't allow herself to feel anymore, not before reaching her one true home.

Care, which she now owed. Worry, which she was now bound to have, because it wasn't only her search which the unknown variables affected. Guilt, that, in front of a hero, she wasn't much to begin with, just a childish, careless traveler.

Peter was breathing slowly, finally relaxed.

He definitely returned from some sort of battle, Wendy's thoughts sung on the symphony of Peter's gentle snores. Across the carpet he had pointed out in the midst of his exaggerating, loud rants as ugly, Wendy dragged herself closer to him and the chair. Beds were as rare as casseroles in Universe 2709, so that was, she reckoned, the most comfortable sleep to get for now.

A battle, but not in his own universe, Wendy kept talking with herself, insider her own mind. Peter definitely doesn't know the Multiverse like I do. They don't like travelers who get involved with anything outside their own home...

There was a reason why she ceased taking everything so seriously on her travels, while she stopped seeing her own life as anything more than just a game she must continue on playing until she reaches the final destination. There was a reason even to why she has been trying her best for the last hundreds of universes to not interact with the "important" people of the world she visits; impacting lives and taking side quests was... dangerous, not necessarily for herself, as much as it was for those whose home she invaded the natural order of.

That reason haunting her, spiraled back into her mind's eye while she looked at Peter and sensed the scent of danger off of him. Multiverse residue danced around his whole body, trapped on his clothes, in his hair, glowing on his skin if one knew when to look or how to squint.

Wendy recalled Tony Stark, the hero of Universe 1, all of a sudden. That first universe had been different and were it not for the help of Iron Man, Wendy perhaps would have never understood the half of the small concept she clings to now: multiverse travel, the watch, the map idea, the lesson about "homes".