❝Just because you hate everybody doesn't mean everybody hates you. You have people that still need you around, and I'm not afraid to admit I'm one of them.❞
. . .in which she must find a way to navigate through a changed world and a changed heart.
[...
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☼ ☼ ☼
Andi sat quietly inside an impeccably pristine bathroom. Aurora had taken her to a rather elegant bar in the city and was working diligently to clean the teenager's wounds. Not only were Andi's ribs bruised as she'd theorized, she was covered in lacerations, and had suffered a first-degree burn along the side of her neck. Thankfully, the protection of her suit had prevented any further injury, but regardless, she was still in a bit of pain. She knew she'd heal much quicker than the average human would, but she found it couldn't be quick enough. She would push through it, however. She always did.
"You're already beginning to heal," Aurora told Andi as she gently cleaned the burn on her neck. "Those powers of yours truly are a marvel."
"I guess," Andi said quietly. "Sometimes they're just a bit of a nuisance. Sometimes I think it would've been better if someone else had gotten them instead of me."
Aurora stopped cleaning the wound to look Andi in her eyes. It was obvious she was still thinking of what Fury said to her earlier. It was clear he hadn't been the easiest on her or Peter, and while she understood they were nothing more than a couple of kids with a power the world needed, she also knew there were other ways to handle the situation.
"Look..." Aurora took a deep breath. "What Fury said to you, you shouldn't let it get to you."
"It's hard not to when everything he said was true," Andi told her. "Tony—he was wrong about me. This isn't something I can do. This isn't a legacy I can live up to. All I'm doing is disappointing him."
"Can you tell me something, Andi?"
"Yeah?"
"Why is Tony so important?" Aurora asked, leaning forward to resume cleaning Andi's neck. "Why is what he thinks or thought of you so important to you?"
Andi fought to force back the emotion building inside her, but she couldn't. It'd been a long time coming, and the face in front of her only helped the process along. "Tony was Earth's greatest hero. He was arrogant, a little moody, and an absolute dick sometimes, but he sacrificed his life to save an entire universe. I-I can't be that. I can't live up to that. I'll never be able to."
"I think the problem here is that you're so concerned with living up to everyone else's expectations of you that you haven't taken the moment to stop and think about the expectations you have for yourself," Aurora responded.
Andi thought over her words for a moment and knew without a doubt she was right. Peter was in the public eye far more than she was, but she was living in the direct shadow of Tony Stark. She was his niece, the family member that'd stumbled upon life as a superhero. She was the one he related to, the one he could confide in about the struggles of what it meant to have the entire world on one's shoulders. "I never really thought of that," Andi answered quietly.
