young avengers → infinity war & endgame [p. parker]

THE WAR: SEVEN

"We're not just our failures. As much as they hurt, we learn from them. Then we go out there and do our best to make up for them-- Even though we never will. We save people. We save as many as we can to make up for the ones we couldn't. That's all we do."

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THE WAR

SPACE

     "Hey, you okay? You've been staring off into space, no pun intended." Valeria recalling the flashback that came into her mind went before her eyes as she felt Peter sit beside her on the floor. To no one's surprise, there weren't any comfortable seating in a super villain spaceship. "Um, yeah. Is Tony okay? Are Strange and him still fighting?"

"You know him, humor is his best defense mechanism. Wait... don't tell, Mr. Stark I said that." Peter's care for Tony always made Valeria a bit more happier than she would be. The boy admired him so much, and unbeknownst to Peter, he meant a lot to Tony as well. "Your secret is safe with me, Parker."

Her words made Peter's face drop a bit, immediately looking away as he noticed Valeria stiffen a bit. He didn't want her to notice the look he knows he has on his face, but he couldn't help but react the way he did. Valeria understood this, she'd kept enough secrets from him as it was. She knew she'd promised to tell him the truth once they got back home, but her heart was telling her that it couldn't be. If there was a time for it, it had to be now.

Peter was still looking the other way, jumping a bit when he felt her fingertips softly land on the top of his free hand. Turning to face her, he took in the details of her face. She looked worried, her eyes following the movement of her fingers on his hand. Bits of her raven hair began to fall to the front of her face in which Peter can tell she was a bit grateful for. Valeria was always closed off, from the moment he first saw her walking down the halls of Midtown High he could tell. Everyone always took it as a sign of the girl being stuck up, thinking she was too good for anybody and anything. Peter would be lying if the thought never crossed his mind, but that changed when he got assigned as her lab partner. Even though it was short lived due to his lack of punctuality, Valeria was far from stuck up. She was smart and the rare occasion that he caught her laughing when he stumbled into the library, messy as ever because he'd just changed out of his first Spidey suit in a nearby alley, it was full of warmth. Peter recalls a question that Ned asked him time after Valeria had moved during a conversation about how close he and Valeria were becoming.

"You think if you hadn't screwed up being Valeria's lab partner and you guys would have became closer before, you still would've been so head over heels for Liz?"

Peter would guess that he still would have been, although he was unsure. Liz was the schoolboy crush that everyone experiences at least once, and he was lucky for it to be reciprocated at a point in time. He was grateful he'd experience that before whatever this is with Valeria, because he was sure that he didn't want to lose her over some Spider-Man business. He knew she understood his responsibility and need to be Spider-Man, but every hero needed a reason to come back into reality. A humanity trigger of sorts, Valeria Amaya was his.