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Peter Parker's New Groove Ch. 13 (MCU)
🕑 Added 2021-02-02 19:08:07 +0000 UTCA/N: *whistles innocently*
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Stepping into the elevator, Peter waits for Friday to open the conversation, despite them both knowing already that she was there, all around him.
“Good afternoon, Peter.”
Half-smiling, half-grimacing, Peter rubs a hand through the back of his hair as he looks up at the ceiling.
“Good afternoon, Fri. I’m guessing you already know?”
“… I couldn’t possibly speculate on what you might be talking about, Peter.”
Peter lets out an explosive breath at that, rolling his eyes. He knows better, and they both know he knows better. Friday is a frighteningly powerful AI. Peter trusts her of course, the fact that she did her best to dissuade him from just having her tell him Black Cat’s identity that night is proof of why he should. She’s a powerful AI, sure… but before that, she’s a good person.
In the end, she’s no more a danger to the world then the flesh and blood people that Peter hangs with on a regular basis. After all, to have the power to defend the world from threats like the Chitauri or their ultimate master, Thanos… you had to be pretty powerful and capable of lots of destruction in the first place.
Regardless, if Friday didn’t want to admit she’d likely somehow had eyes back behind the bleachers when he and Felicia were doing their little tango, well… Peter would let her maintain that thin subterfuge, he supposed.
“… I found out Felicia Hardy is Black Cat today. Turns out she goes to my school… and had a crush on me as Peter Parker of all things.”
“Oh my. Did that revelation go over well?”
She sounds so very earnest and curious, like she doesn’t already know. But she also has that synthetic quality to her tone that makes it all but impossible for Peter to truly read her like he can flesh and blood people.
“As well as it could, I suppose. We uh… we ended up fucking behind the bleachers, and now she says we’re boyfriend and girlfriend.”
“Congratulations, Peter! My oh my, you certainly managed to snag that kitty cat, didn’t you?”
Offering a wan smile to the ceiling of the elevator, Peter shakes his head.
“… I may have also stumbled into a relationship with the new Police Commissioner’s daughter as well today. Gwen Stacey and I had a quickie in an abandoned classroom during lunch period…”
When her voice comes over the comms again, its teasing and perhaps a little husky despite its synthetic quality.
“Well, well, Peter. You do move fast, don’t you? You’re quite the Ladies’ Man.”
He’s not surprised that she’s not upset, after all she’d made her feelings on him having human lovers alongside her quite clear. Her encouragement while he’d been fucking Felicia as Black Cat up on that rooftop would have been evidence enough of her feelings on the matter. Even still…
“Fri, I feel like you don’t quite understand how much of a mess this is. I don’t know what I’m supposed to do, honestly. Felicia SAID she didn’t mind me fucking other girls, and I know how you feel on the matter… but she seems to think she’s like… my main lover or something. She quite literally said ‘Just remember who you belong to and we won’t have any issues’. What the heck am I supposed to do with THAT?”
There’s perhaps half a beat of silence at that, which for an Artificial Intelligence like Fri, is an eternity. When she does finally respond to his small rant, she sounds amused… and perhaps just a little territorial.
“Mm, thinks you belong to her, does she? Well, we’ll see about that Peter. Not to worry. If that particular pussy cat gets too uppity, we can put her in her place right quick! As for your tryst with the Police Commissioner’s daughter… who’s to say that can’t blossom into something more, if you just let it, hm?”
Peter blushes at that, remembering Gwen and all she made him feel. There were also the few strange vibes he’d gotten from her, but altogether, he’d mark the experience down as incredibly positive. That image of her walking down the hall and stretching her arms over her head as she led him away from the cafeteria remained firmly ingrained in his psyche. Hated to see her go but loved to watch her leave sprang to mind.
Regardless, he’s long since recognized that this elevator trip is taking an eternity. And given Stark Technology is the most advanced there is in the whole wide world (if not a good portion of the Universe as well) it’s equally obvious that Friday is manipulating the elevator ride in order to make it take as long as she needed.
Since they were catching up, Peter didn’t really mind all that much, but if all Friday was going to do was encourage his bad decisions and tease him for shacking up with not one but two girls at his high school in one day, it was probably time that he got to work doing his actual job here at the tower… ya know, interning for Mrs. Stark.
Peter opens his mouth to say as much to Fri, only for the AI to override him before he can, her voice suddenly coming through the comms with none of the teasing quality to it before. In fact, if Peter didn’t know any better, he’d say he heard the faintest note of panic.
“Peter, something has just come up and I think you may just have the best shot of defusing the situation in a speedy fashion. Unfortunately, the Creator is not currently on the premises today. She’s currently halfway across the world.”
Blinking, Peter barely needs to think about it.
“I’ll help Fri, of course I will. What’s the issue?”
He barely notices the shift as the elevator picks up speed and begins to move downwards, having clearly been taking it’s time going up and almost having reached the original destination. As it moves down, Friday’s voice comes through again, sounding both relieved and perhaps a little distressed still.
“Thank you, Peter. The situation is thus. When Vision was killed all those years ago, his remains were remanded to the Creator, to do as she liked with. There was always a chance of bringing him back in some way or form, as well as the simple fact that his body is made of precious metals malcontents would die to get their hands on, leaving conventional burial or cremation something of an… impossibility.”
Peter slowly nods his head at that, tracking so far. Vision… he hadn’t had many interactions with the android before his demise, truth be told. They’d fought on the same side in Germany, but after that… they were like the outside edges of the Venn Diagram that made up all of the Avengers and their allies. They both sort of floated around Toni’s orbit in particular, but without ever coming into contact with each other, more often than not.
“You may not be aware of this, but Vision and Wanda Maximoff struck up a relationship in the time period between what the media called the Avengers Civil War, and Thanos’ first assault on Earth. They were seeing each other before Vision’s death. When Wanda was brought back by the second Snap, she asked the Creator for permission to see him, permission that the Creator magnanimously granted.”
Whoa. That was… a lot. And maybe a little surprising. But at the same time, Peter supposed he could sort of see it? More than that, he supposed he really had no room to question it. If he barely knew Vision, well, he knew Wanda Maximoff even less. He did remember her in the final battle against Thanos, however. He remembered her raw fury; he even remembered her heated line.
“You took everything from me!”
Yeah, in hindsight that made a lot more sense now that he had the context to see what she meant.
“Unfortunately, Ms. Maximoff is currently experiencing a breakdown while visiting Vision’s remains on one of the lower levels. She is ignoring my attempts at communication, and I fear what she will do if left to her own devices. If you could speak to her, if you could get through to her, perhaps we can stave off catastrophe.”
Right. Shit, time to be a superhero. Peter rolls his shoulders and does his best to limber up as the elevator begins to slow. He doesn’t have his costume on right now… but you don’t always need the costume to be a hero. And sometimes it was downright counterproductive. Wanda was powerful, Peter knew that much, but it sounded like what she needed right now wasn’t a fight… but a friend.
“… She has destroyed all cameras and mics on the floor, Peter. As such, I will not be able to assist you once you are inside. Not until I can get a body down to back you up. Please, be careful.”
“Don’t worry about me, Fri. I’ll be fine. Open the doors.”
“… As you wish.”
The elevator doors open onto one of the Tower’s subterranean floors. The basement level is made of concrete and metal, and while the entrance hall directly off of the elevator is mostly intact, a little further in, Peter starts seeing the damage. Swallowing thickly, the young man creeps closer, until he begins to hear what sounds like a violent tempest.
Turning the corner, he finds himself face to face with a wall of whirling red energy, Wanda’s power made manifest undoubtedly. Through little gaps in the swirls of chaotic energy, he thinks he can make out Wanda herself on the other side in the middle of a large room. She’s knelt there over something he can’t quite make out.
“Wanda? Wanda Maximoff, can you hear me?!”
She makes no indication that she can hear him, certainly not through the loud, swirling tempest of her own power that she’s currently in the eye of. If she truly is having a breakdown like Fri said… he has to get in there. He has to put a stop to this. Only, he’d seen what her powers could do. She’d put the smackdown on Thanos of all people, if only for a moment.
But heroes didn’t shirk away from danger just because it was scary. They didn’t back off just because they were afraid. Heroism was courage in the face of fear, not the absence of fear itself. Squaring his jaw, Peter prepares to push through the bright red storm of energy in front of him. He starts to lean into it, half-expecting to be blown to pieces, half-expecting to have to fight every step of the way if he was going to get to Wanda’s side at all.
Imagine his surprise when instead, the red swirls of her uncontrolled power… part before him like nothing. Imagine his surprise when Wanda’s power almost seems to welcome him like an old friend, allowing him through without so much as accosting him. It still closes back up behind him though as he goes, and soon Peter finds himself next to the brunette Sokovian in the eye of the storm of power she’s created in the midst of her heartbreak.
Dropping to one knee beside her, Peter puts a hand on her shoulder as he calls out again, this time directly next to her.
“Wanda! Wanda, you have to stop this!”
Startled out of her despair by his presence, the older woman flinches back away from him, turning her head to stare at him with wide eyes. Her disbelief and surprise only last a moment before she shakes her head and seems to refocus on other things.
“N-No… no, I c-can do it! I can bring him back!”
It’s only then that Peter focuses not on Wanda herself, but what she’s doing with her hands. Before her, the thing he couldn’t makeout before… it’s Vision’s remains. The android’s body, with it’s crumpled in forehead where the Mind Stone used to sit, and his greyed out lifeless eyes. Peter remembers the synthetic being having a lot more vibrance and life to him, but right now he just seems so dead it’s heartbreaking to look at.
Wanda though… Wanda has her hands on him, on Vision’s body, and those hands are PULSING with her power. The storm of energy he’d walked through to get here, Peter belatedly realizes, was just the aftershocks of what Wanda was willfully trying to do. Her powers had always baffled him, just a little bit. He’d heard she could do everything from Telekinesis to Hypnosis with her Energy Manipulation.
But bringing the dead back to life. Peter grimaces and waffles for a moment before putting his hands on Wanda’s shoulders and trying to begin pulling and prying her off of Vision’s form. He’s not sure it’s the right choice, but he has to do something.
“It’s not going to work, Wanda. You have to let him go. He wouldn’t want you to lose yourself like this.”
Peter doesn’t actually know that for certain, but it SOUNDS good to him at least, and in the midst of the maelstrom that Wanda’s power has created, he’s having a hard time thinking up anything better. Wanda, however, reacts poorly as Peter leverages his physical strength to pull her away.
“N-NO!”
She tries to push him off of her, he’s fairly certain, only for her telekinesis to wash over him like a particularly pathetic wave. At the same time, one last burst of her power thrusts out of her hands and into Vision’s body before she crumples back into Peter’s arms, sobbing helplessly into his chest. As Wanda’s power fades around them, Peter just holds the older woman, letting his eyes drift shut as he tries his best to be there for her despite their lack of a true relationship.
“It’s okay, Wanda. It’s okay…”
Except, he’s proven a liar a moment later when a smooth, British tone fills the air and both Peter and Wanda jerk in their embrace to look over and see a familiar android floating above them.
“Oh Wanda… what have you done?”
The look on the inexplicably active Vision’s face is not a good one, even as Peter stares wide-eyed at the glowing yellow gem in the android’s forehead. What HAD Wanda done? Judging by Vision’s tone, nothing good. As Wanda chokes on her tears, it looks very much like the two of them are about to have words with one another.
Peter doesn’t know what he’s supposed to do. Should he… just stay quiet and let them talk while being an obnoxious third wheel? Should he help Vision convince Wanda of the value of letting go, as it sounded like the synthetic being was about to? Or should he take it a step further and use Vision as a distraction to physically knock Wanda out and get her somewhere she could get the help she so clearly needed?
Friday could be moments away, or minutes away. And Peter was stuck in a half-destroyed room under Stark Tower with two of the most powerful members the Avengers Roster had ever had.
… The Universe was definitely out to get him, at this point.
Comments
Alun Lewis
Honestly, Vision's remains ending up with Toni make a hell of a lot more sense than what the MCU has indicated via "WandaVision" - that SWORD got a hold of Vision's corpse from either Wakanda or the un-Snapped Avengers to experiment on for FIVE YEARS - happened to Vision's remains after Infinity War. Cuz at best? SWORD is guilty of theft and the OG Avengers come off looking pretty poorly for not making sure Vision was safely buried/secured. Though I have hopes that one of the last two remaining episodes of "WandaVision" will clarify how SWORD got ahold of Vision's body in a way that doesn't make Tony, Steve or Natasha look careless.
