Into the Light | Peter Parker x OC

Chapter Sixty

A/N: whew, it has officially been ten chapters since peter died...

also, i did some estimates for you guys and it's looking like this book is gonna be about 130ish chapters long, so about 20 chapters less than the last one. given that, we are about 45% of the way through it so far! which is crazy to think about, i literally feel like i started it a few months ago when in reality it's already been a year. yikes

anyway, this is a birthday chapter so normally i would say enjoy but we all know how this song goes now...

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"I love you, baby.

See you soon."
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It had been a few weeks without any more big crimes and that made her nervous.

That meant something bigger might happen soon. She had been all over it, using TADASHI for help. She wanted to tell Tony, but...she couldn't ask him to get involved with this kind of stuff now that he had Morgan. It was too risky. Besides, she was confident she could deal with this on her own. Sort of.

She turned eighteen today. That had to count for something.

Eighteen.

It seemed like such a big number. Especially to someone who wanted to stop growing. It was like the more she tried to slow down her age, the faster it went.

She was on her bed, staring at the framed picture of her and Peter in her hand, running her fingers over his smiling face. It was taken at the Winter Dance years ago before they started dating. They were standing in front of a blue sheet they used as a backdrop and some of the paper snowflakes that she and Vivian had cut out were hanging from it to make it seem like they were standing outside in the snow if snow crystals were the size of her head.

In the picture, Peter was laughing at the camera with his arm wrapped around her waist while she was also laughing and looking up at him. His eyes were crinkled by their corners and she couldn't put her finger on what exactly it was but something about him made him seem so happy. She couldn't even remember what they were laughing so hard about, but just seeing the picture made her smile. That had been a good night...for the most part.

God, eighteen. She put the frame down somewhere on her bed. It had been over a year since his death. She was eighteen now. She was an adult. It felt unreal. If only she could control time. Controlling reality felt like a waste when she couldn't learn how to use it. And even more of a waste when she knew she couldn't bring people back from the dead.

There was a knock on her bedroom door, making her look up. Tony poked his head inside and then fully stepped into the room. She gave him a forced smile. It was her birthday. She should have been happy. But happiness was something she hadn't felt since Titan, since Thanos. He might as well have snapped that away too with half of the population. Tony glanced at what she was wearing — Peter's old t-shirt. She needed that today so he bit back any remarks about it.

"Tony," she sighed when she realized he was hiding something behind his back. He smiled, sitting down by her feet on her bed.

"I know you said no presents but just open it," he said, holding out a small, wrapped gift for her. She looked at him for a moment before taking the gift from his hands and tearing off the wrapping paper.

It was his phone. Peter's old phone. She looked up at him.

"How did you...?"

"His password is your birthday," Tony said quietly, "Not the strongest password in my opinion, but...happy birthday, sweetheart." She smiled, feeling the familiar ache in her heart.