Us Against The World ｡ Peter Parker [2]

6 - A Revenge Plan

"Wait, visions?" Peter was frowning, his eyes clouded with questions. I was blinking back confusion myself, trying to remember a day that had happened too many weeks ago. "Are you sure? I don't think that is it. It can't be that, surely we would know and--"

I squeezed my eyes shut again. I saw that day play out in my mind like an old video. We had been messing around with my parents' serum since I had wanted to show Peter how cool it was. How the makeup formula was something I had never seen before. He had been pretty impressed too. Then the tube of purple serum had fallen, spilling across the table. We had hurried to clean it up, my parents already coming back up from the basement levels. I had moped it up with paper towel while it dripped down my fingertips. I had a paper cut on my finger that day, fresh and exposed. I was already imagining the serum leaking into the cut, soaking up into my blood.

 "I am such an idiot." I blurted out, my voice high pitched. I was moving away from Peter, my back turned to him as I fanned my hands on a desk and leaned over, hair falling in my face as I tried to suck in deep breaths.

He stepped closer towards me. "No you're not."

"Do you remember the day we were messing around with my parents' serum?" I asked quietly, not turning to face him just yet. There was an ache in my chest, trying to claw its way out. "Remember how my parents were working with ideas for the serum to enhance human senses and how they would formalise it? They were leaning towards injecting it into someone's blood stream." I paused, heaving in a deep breath. "I had a paper cut that day."

I didn't need to say anymore, didn't have to explain what exactly had happened that afternoon. We had both been there but we hadn't thought about the consequences. We had just been messing around with something we couldn't understand. We had been two foolish kids on a high. Now, I was that foolish girl with a power pumping through her veins that she knew nothing about. 

"Visions, huh?" He sighed out behind me. I could already feel him watching me, wanting to try and make this better but there was no possible way to help me now.

Fat tears wanted to spill from my eyes. "What am I going to do?" I choked out, my teeth digging into the flesh of my bottom lip. Peter Parker was the boy with powers, he was the hero. I was just a girl standing in his shadows, watching and praying he would always make it home. I was no hero, I wasn't supposed to become something else. I was not that girl. "I can't do this."

Peter was standing beside me in a second, a hand on my lower back as he combed hair behind my ear, trying to see my face. It had been too many long months since Peter Parker had gotten his powers and back then he had suffered through trying to manage what was now a part of him. I didn't want to suffer, I didn't want to hurt because of a stupid mistake. "Hey, you're not alone. We will figure this whole thing out."

"And then what?" I snipped across at him, not meaning to snap but I couldn't help it. "I don't want to be like this. I am not you, Pete. I'm not strong enough to deal with something like this. I'm fifteen. I have a quiz tomorrow that I need to study for and I have an internship with Iron Man. I'm keeping a secret from Harry and I've got a boyfriend that swings from webs and it scares me. I can't deal with this too. It's too much." I felt my chest growing tight, my head blurring slightly and I knew what was coming. My head bowed forward, "Pete, I can't breathe. I can't--"

He saw the panic in my eyes. "Hey, hey. Florence, look at me." I was trying to suck in gulps of air but it wasn't working, everything growing worse with a familiar panic attack striking through my body. Peter was fumbling around, turning my body to face him. Hands were on my cheeks, brushing away the tears and trying to break through the spell. "Florence. Look at me." I eased my gaze away from the floor to watch him. His arms wrapped around my waist, hoisting me up onto the desk, my legs dangling. "You need to breathe. Okay? Focus on that."