I Can't Make You Love Me || Peter Parker x OC

Chapter 39: Hostage

⚠️Content Warning ⚠️

Infinity War feels: part 2. Mild gore

Pepper's perspective

After the events of this morning, my mood seemed to be soured for the rest of the day. Tony was gone, but not just gone; he had recently left the atmosphere and was blindly traveling to wherever that cursed spaceship was headed to. That was over 12 hours ago, and my hastily declined phone call that confirmed my worst nightmares was the last time I spoke to him.

Fearing the worst when a group of superhumans came through a portal, desperate for my husband to help them 'save the fate of the universe,' I made my way home very soon after Tony left. I called Happy, who was also aware of Tony's predicament, and we watched fearfully as the demise of the world around us was broadcast on public television. Locally, reports of death and destruction from the landing of the spaceship this morning were flooding the news, but internationally--all the way as far as Edinboro, Scotland--there were stories of an alien species calling themselves The Dark Order causing mass destruction near a train station.

Through the ceiling-to-floor picture windows that wrapped around the lounge of the compound, the first breaths of sunlight shone through, casting glares on every object that it could reflect off of. Looking out at the sunrise, it occured to me that this marked a full day since he left. It was March 28th now, and I had still yet to hear from Tony.

Next to me, Happy was zoning in and out of consciousness, trying to stay alert with everything that was going on, but also worn out from a full day of anxious waiting. I was in a very similar state, the constant weariness of both pregnancy and marital panic slowly eating away at my alertness. Coming out of yet another wave of exhaustion, I was just barely able to see what was being shown on the tv, but when the cloud of sleep was finally cleared and I was able to see, I immediately regretted it.

At the end of last year, it was revealed to the world that a global superpower, one that possessed metals more precious than gold and technology advanced decades ahead of where even Tony was, had been hiding out from us since its creation. Wakanda has been shown to be many things in recent news, but a lethal war zone of alien warfare was about the last thing I would ever expect of it. The live video feed, shaky from the constant movement of what I assumed to be a helicopter, didn't seem like much, but every now and then, a burst of pure light or a tremor powerful enough to shake the trees would rumble the landscape. For me, knowing that a vibranium-influenced dome surrounded and protected the city, it horrified me to know that there was now something on this earth powerful enough to destroy even that. The only thing that could do that couldn't possibly be from Earth, and if what Tony told me about the ship was true, that might be the case after all.

"Oh my god," I said breathlessly as a blinding flash of red and yellow light seemed to disintegrate the very trees around it. The earth bent to the will of whatever caused an explosion of that magnitude, but the distance that the footage came from didn't allow me to see what it was.

Following the initial explosion, a series of smaller, multi-colored flickers of light peeked out the the remaining trees, tracing a path across the strip of forest. There was a flash of red, and then a deep rumble that shook the ground. Afterwards, a combination of red and blue poked through, followed by a brilliant green, which triggered a reciprocal of everything that had just happened, a whole rainbow dancing through the Wakandan forest. The lack of information was greatly frustrating, especially considering the magnitude of the things that the whole world was seeing.

In the very center of the circular area, something that looked like a firework just barely moved the leaves. Every color imaginable, and even those that I can't describe, were spread across the country. Mere seconds later, the camera went dead, but not before the whole world got to see a ripple of pure energy so powerful that it decimated everything in its path for miles. Gray static filled the tv for several seconds before it switched back to the now panicked new anchors as they stared in horror at the image that everyone else had just seen.