☑ THE SHADOW | Peter Maximoff

o n e - y e a r - a g o | s e v e n

~𝐀𝐦𝐚𝐫𝐚~

Avoiding Peter was proving to be a lot harder than Amara thought it would be.

It was Amara's dream to not be associated with anyone. To not be friends with anyone, to not talk to anyone, to just hide in her room and be alone. Jean was very good at making sure she didn't get any of that.

And, even though Jean kept the group of friends small and tight-knit, Peter had annoyingly quickly become part of that small group of friends.

She supposed she should have seen it coming. They did all save the world together. They shared an experience only they would ever go through, and there was a certain amount of underlying trust that settled between them. It just kind of... happened.

It was an unspoken, unbreakable trust and respect that everyone had with each other.

But goddamn, Jean really was not giving up on curing Amara's loneliness.

Now, Amara knew that Jean was even more clingy because she thought Amara died. But, despite the constant reminders to Jean that it wasn't her fault (if anything, it was good that Jean stopped her, because Amara would rather die before It took control and decided to follow the influence of Apocalypse by taking over the planet), and that she was okay, Jean always made sure to stay by her side. Which would have been fine, if she didn't then drag her along to sit with everyone else.

Everyone else, of course, included Peter.

That meant Amara had to make a decision.

Jean didn't know about It. Amara made sure of that.

Jean simply thought that her powers had an evil influence over her; gave her an evil influence of sorts which Amara could easily be persuaded to act upon. So Amara couldn't confess to Jean what was going on, and she couldn't ask Jean to help her stay away from Peter (or vice versa).

She was either going to have to ask Jean to leave her alone (fucking good luck with that), ask Jean to not go to sit with their friends (also impossible, since Jean was all about hanging out with others, and Amara couldn't possibly ask her best friend to choose her over them), or simply begin to distance herself from Jean entirely.

She didn't like it, but that was what was probably going to happen.

As for Peter... he was cute. Seriously cute. But she had to stop thinking about him, especially like that.

"You know, I'd really like to get to know the author- what was her name?" Jean asked, flipping the smaller novel in her hands to look at the cover while both girls followed the line out of Professor Xavier's English class.

"S. E. Hinton," Amara answered, sticking close to her best friend.

Everyone was rushing out of their classes because it was lunchtime, which meant it got overwhelmingly crowded in a matter of seconds.

Jean hummed. "Yeah. I'd like to get to know the lovely Ms. Hinton and ask her why the hell she came up with names like Sodapop and Ponyboy, and then looked at another boy and went... 'ah, yes. Steve. The perfect name.'"

Amara giggled and rolled her eyes.

"It's true!" Jean exclaimed. "I'm so confused!"

"But yesterday you were complaining that the names were too weird," Amara pointed out. "Now you want them all to be like that?"