RETURNING HOME THESE DAYS FELT LESS AND LESS COMFORTING. Kaelyn has had enough with the secrets and lies and she needed her answers. The girl had been through so much and she was sick and tired of not knowing about anything was going on with her. Girls these days aren't typically born with their own skin being their suit of armor. They certainly don't make a habit of stopping bullets with their bare hands and Kaelyn needed answers.

"Mom, dad," Kaelyn began the night after Tony's funeral. Her parents were sitting in their sweats watching TV — to an outsider looking in they would almost appear normal. "I come in peace."

"What's wrong?" her mother asked with a surprisingly gentle expression. Maybe they were being softer considering Kaelyn's previous outburst or maybe it was because they saw how dejected and hopeless she had been since Tony's funeral.

Kaelyn sighed before moving to sit down on the loveseat adjacent to the couch they were sitting on so she had a better look. "I don't want any more lies in this house. I want to know what you were working on while I was gone and I want to know... I want to know why I am the way that I am. I'm almost eighteen, I think it's time that I know."

"I don't really see why it matters--" her father began, but her mother cut him off before he could finish.

"Kaelyn, darling, I think it's time you knew as well. You're right, you're almost an adult, it's time to tell you the truth. The reason your father and I have hidden it for so long is that, well, we don't want you to hate us. I want you to know that everything we have ever done was to protect you."

The girl didn't know whether or not she wanted to believe this, but either way she nodded, and her mother began to explain, "Your father and I were HYDRA operatives back when your brother was barely two and you weren't even born. I know, that sounds bad now, but trust me on this. HYDRA betrayed us and they drugged me, using me as an experiment of sorts. To this day, I don't know what I was injected with. What HYDRA hadn't known was that I was pregnant. With you. I thought the experimentation was going to cause me to lose you, but instead it proceeded like a normal pregnancy. Your father and I spent the whole time while you were younger just waiting for the other shoe to drop. You won't remember this, but when you were about to turn nine, everything changed. The other shoe came crashing down. We found out that HYDRA had us and our home bugged, tracking chips embedded in our skin, the works. We didn't figure out why until we realized... whatever they had injected into me, carried into you. I knew leaving you would be the hardest part, but I-I couldn't let them get to you. So, we dug out each other's chips, trashed the apartment to kill all of the bugs we could find, and... and faked our deaths."

"So why come back? Why start working with HYDRA and all of the shady business again?" Kaelyn asked in disbelief, not trusting the words leaving her mother's mouth right now. It all seemed too... sugar-coated. Then again, Kaelyn had trouble trusting everyone these days.

"S.H.I.E.L.D found us," her father cut in, "They wanted us to go crawling back to HYDRA begging for forgiveness and by extension, back to you and Caden. Except for this time, we were double agents."

"So all of this... was fake? You were working for S.H.I.E.L.D. the whole time?" Kaelyn gasped, but her face was stoic and untrusting. "I-I don't believe you. Tony would have told me."

"Tony didn't know," her mother shook her head, "Kaelyn, you have to believe us."

Her father cut in with a surprisingly calming tone, saying, "Believing we were dead was the only way to truly set you free. HYDRA couldn't touch you if they didn't know how to get to you, so that's what we did."

"I can't believe this, I refuse to. You guys... you guys have been absolutely awful ever since you came back, you are not the parents I remember. Something... there was something more to this that you're not telling me."

"I did what I had to do to protect my children, does that make me a bad person?" Victoria scoffed, "You are behaving like a child. You said you wanted to know the truth and we just handed it to you on a silver platter. What more do you want from us?"

She stood up from the couch, her voice riddled with confusion, "If we were injected with the same thing, how come you were able to get the chip out? It makes your skin unbreakable, but you had to have broken skin."

"As I said, it went to you. HYDRA figured out it can't be injected into someone who is already fully developed, so it didn't take to me," her mother explained, but Kaelyn was believing it less and less. "Please, you have to believe us. I just... I just want to be your mother again, Kaelyn."

Kaelyn shook her head, muttering, "No, no. My mother is dead."

"Kaelyn--" her mother called after her, but the girl was already running to her room to climb out on her fire escape. As she climbed down, she called Peter as she always did when she felt like this. She felt trapped and she couldn't take it anymore.

"Kaelyn, what's going on?" Peter spoke through the phone, sounding concerned at a sudden call from his girlfriend. After everything that had happened, they panicked more often than not when they called each other because something always seemed to be going wrong.

She sobbed into the phone, "Can I stay at yours tonight?"

"I'm on my way," was all he said in answer before the line went dead. Out of breath, Kaelyn stopped climbing about four floors down from her apartment, collapsing into a sitting position with a resigned sigh.

She didn't know how long she sat there until Peter swung into her sights, pulling her into a hug before he did anything else. He didn't ask any questions, he simply waited for her to speak when she wanted to.

"They told me everything," was all she said, her voice hardly above a whisper, "I don't believe it. I don't want to."

"Then don't, for now," Peter offered in comfort as she wrapped her arms around him and he swung them across the city as they had done dozens of times. Before they knew it, they were crawling into his bedroom window and the girl immediately wrapped herself in the blankets with a blank expression. Peter kissed her gently on the forehead before saying, "I'm gonna go let Aunt May know you're here."

Kaelyn nodded and next thing she knew, she was alone in her boyfriend's bed with nothing but her thoughts. The so-called truth was dancing horridly among her thoughts as she tried with everything in her power to process it, but she couldn't. It seemed too easy, too perfect of a story. It had to be crafted up in a twisted way to make Kaelyn trust her parents again, but she wasn't falling for it. She couldn't trust them again. Who was she if she did?

After a moment, Peter returned with a gentle smile as he ran his fingers through her red locks ever so gently, letting the moment stay silent. Sometimes, she just needed things to be quiet. So much had happened and she had spent so long being overwhelmed by battle and villains, she just needed to breathe.

"I love you," she finally said after a while, letting the words leave her lips without a second thought. She never needed to hesitate with Peter; something she was more than thankful for in recent times.

"I love you, too."

it's been a while since I've updated this so here's a chapter whoo! so, I'm gonna be real, there's only two more chapters left after this one! Now that the truth is out, I'll be setting up for the third book which will take place during Far From Home! I'm so excited for the third book and I hope you guys actually read it considering this book has garnered about 1/8th of the Busted readers which I don't get? Like why would you read the first book that ends on a cliffhanger but not the sequel?? it's just weird to me