Fade - A Marvel Fanfiction

Chapter 21: Aftermath

It's been about 24 hours since the fight and I've never felt worse... both physically  and emotionally. This headache won't go away and instead chooses to spread across my entire scalp. But I have a pain spreading throughout my whole body that beats the one in my head.

My family, the only one I've ever had, has split up. One side hates the other and vise versa. I lost my best friend and I had to rebel against the person I looked up to as a leader.  My chest feels so heavy, like it's ready to fall right out of my chest. I know that the pain isn't real and that there is nothing truly wrong with my chest. But at the same time, it's unbearable drag threatens to kill me. Between my pounding head and my heavy hear, I feel no choice but to cry through it and hope my tears carry it all away.

"Erin? Are you okay?" I hear Peter ask me. 

Hastily wiping my tears away, I turn towards him with a fake smile plastered across my face.

"Yeah, I'm okay, Peter. The day's just catching up with me." I say.

Dad left me with Happy while he followed Rhodes to the hospital. He said I was safer with him and Peter at the moment and that he'll call me once Rhodey was awake. So now I sit on the bed beside Peter's as I absorb everything that happened today.

"I wish I could say I understood but I can't. I guess... I'm here for you?" Peter says, unsure on what to say next. 

"It's okay, Peter. I'm just glad your here." I chuckle sadly while rubbing the back of my neck. From the corner of my eye, I see Peter disappear from the room, leaving me alone with my thoughts once again. I drop my head down low while removing my hand from the point of pain. Then I roll my neck side to side to try and relieve any of the pain, but with no success.

Suddenly, I feel a cold, rock-hard substance be placed on my neck. I turn my head to see Peter with an ice pack in hand.

"I'm sorry. Did I scare you?" he says laughing.

"Umm, yeah!" I yell, laughing as well. "And I'm so getting revenge, Parker!"

I jump off the bed and chase after Peter, the both of us running around my room. He then dashes into the living room and just before I could jump on him, he attaches himself to a nearby wall. With my abilities, I pull him off the wall and onto the nearby couch. I then jump on top of him and wrestle against him, Peter going easy on me. 

He eventually pins me to the ground, the both of us still laughing. But then the room becomes quiet and I realize it's just the two of us. No Accords, no civil war, no fighting. Just... us. I let myself stare into Peter's whiskey eyes and enjoy the lustful look that fills them. Tilting my head, I notice things about him that I didn't notice before. The subtle dimples he has and how amazing his smile is. For the first time in over a year, I felt something I thought I would never feel again. Lust. 

But the moment didn't last long. 

The most intense hellfire appears out of nowhere as it spreads across the entirety of my head. With no control of my powers, Peter instantly fades right through me, his hands now touching the ground instead of my wrists. I roll over, my hands gripping onto my skull as everything in the hotel room is being crushed into pieces. 

Peter runs in with Happy behind him, probably on the phone with Dad. The pain begins to go away and my powers return to normal, letting a petrified Peter wrap his arms around me. I don't know what to do or what just happened... so I stay in Peter's arms and cry.

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I wake up from another memory attack and sit straight up in my bed. With my heavy breaths returning to normal, I see a bright light shining from the bottom of my closed door. Gingerly taking off my headpiece and placing it on the table beside my bed, I walk out of my room. 

Keeping my footsteps as light as possible, I quietly push open Peter's door to see him working on a device on the ground. He seems so deep in thought that he doesn't notice me walk in and sit beside him. I carefully take the device out of his hands and place it on the ground beside me.

"Erin, I need to finis-"

"No,  you don't. You need to go to bed." I interrupt while trying to lift him upwards.

"But I need to finish it so you have it when another attack comes." he mumbles.

"What do you mean?" 

"You once told me that all your 'fading' powers come from the brain stem. Whatever happened to your powers before must have damaged it since you've had control all this time." Peter explains before jumping across me and grabbing the device. 

"You wear this like a headband and it'll pick up when your having another attack and send pulse waves to make it less intense." 

I look at the boy in awe. He stayed up for hours into the night to try and help me. Peter ignores my look and tweaks a few things on the headband before handing it back to me. I push the metallic structure onto my scalp and fix my hair to make it look better. 

"Thank you, Peter." I say genuinely. 

"Anything for you, Erin." Peter says with a goofy grin on his face. I give him a quick hug before dragging him into his bed and shutting off all the lights in the room.  Walking back into my room, all I could think about was how lucky I was to have Peter as my friend. The rest of the night, I didn't have any more memory attacks. In fact, for the first time in years, I dreamt.