ONE.

THE SATURDAY MORNING train to Queens had a strange way of suspending time.

Even the air seemed to resist the ticking clock. It hung around Will, damp and stale and smelling of copper. Through the scratched windows, she could see a blur of fluorescent lights as they hurtled past. She was sitting with her hands tucked under her thighs out of habit; she felt every tremble of the subway under her palms, pressed flat against the plastic seat.

Will brought her knees closer as the subway skidded around a corner with a shuddering, grating noise and the people in front of her bumped against her legs. She watched the way they surrendered themselves to the steady rhythm of the train. Even though they swayed from side to side, no one moved from their positions clutching handrails or slumped in seats. The passengers of the Saturday morning train had never seemed so calm and detached, frozen in a moment a world away from her.

But Will felt them.

It was faint, but she could still feel the echo of their emotions, like a current underwater. It crept up her neck and slid into her brain, making it ache with the familiar weight of grief and jealousy and love. Her knuckles pressed into her thighs as her hands curled into fists under her legs.

A world of human emotion is an unfairly immense burden for a fifteen year old girl, Will thought. And so is sitting next to a man who snores when he sleeps.

Her father was half leaning on the plastic seat, half leaning on her shoulder, and was getting dangerously close to drooling on her. He had fallen asleep somewhere in Brooklyn and had started snoring near Williamsburg.

"Dad," she said, nudging him with her shoulder.

When he didn't stir, she pushed her shoulder into his harder. "Dad."

She received an even louder snore in response. Will rolled her eyes. She grabbed the newspaper that lay in between them and swatted the top of his balding head. Her father jerked awake with a snort, eyes wide.

Adrian Toomes groaned and dragged a hand over his face, the fog of sleep slowly lifting. When his eyes landed on Will and the newspaper clutched in her fist, he glared at her.

"I was having a great dream and you ruined it," he grumbled.

"A great dream, huh? What was it about? Not having to gum your food?"

He reached out to flick the side of her head. "I'm not that old!"

"Uh oh!" she said in a mock Australian accent, dodging his hand. "He's angry! He's angry!"

Her father managed to poke the back of her head, although she barely felt it through her mass of curls.

"I thought we agreed no Crocodile Dundee impressions before noon."

"I thought we agreed to get donuts for breakfast, and yet here we are. Donutless."

"Your mother said our hearts are going to stop from all the sugar, so I got chocolate chip muffins instead."

Will rolled her eyes. "Yes, because chocolate muffins have so much less sugar. Practically vegetables."

"Exactly," he nodded. He reached for the brown paper bag at his side and pulled out a muffin, offering it to her. "One chocolate chip muffin, New York City subway style. Cold and squashed by at least one stranger's ass."

Will made a face, and shook her head no. Her stomach was still churning from the whispers of emotions leaking into her head. Adrian shrugged and took a large bite of the muffin.

"You're not supposed to swear in front of me," she reminded him. "I'm still in my formative years, and Mom says you'll teach me bad manners."

"Kiddo, if I did everything your mother told me to, I'd be living in a monastery without processed food, alcohol, and happiness."

Will snorted, then glanced back down at her book. It had been abandoned while she stared out the window, and the pages lay open expectantly. She couldn't focus now, though, not with the faint tugging of everyone's emotions. Her father nudged her shoulder with his.

"Hey, you okay?" he asked, a crease forming between his eyebrows.

She flashed him a quick smile. "Yeah, fine."

He raised an eyebrow, following her gaze to the other passengers.

"I thought you were getting better with crowds," he said, voice laced with doubt.

"I am getting better with crowds," Will said. "It's just the subway. It...traps things. I don't know. Being underground makes it louder."

Will could feel her father scanning her face, but she didn't meet his eyes.

"Are you sure you're fine? You look like you're about to hurl," he said finally.

"That's sweet of you, thanks. That's what every girl likes to hear."

"You're welcome. Don't hurl on my newspaper, okay?"

"I'm not going to hurl!"

"That's what people usually say right before they hurl."

Will turned towards him slightly.

"You know what, I am going to hurl. I'm going to hurl your body off this subway."

"Well, that just hurts my feelings."

Adrian shaped his face into a look of mock hurt, then turned back to his newspaper. Over his shoulder, Will could see Tony Stark's portrait splashed across the page in monochrome.

She looked over at her father. At a glance, Adrian Toomes looked like any other middle aged man, with a rapidly receding hairline and decades' worth of laughter and frowns embedded in the lines of his face.

It was the eyes that people noticed. They were at odds with the rest of his worn appearance, the eyes of a criminal in the face of a father. Bright and intelligent, they constantly darted around and took note of their surroundings. They never settled.

Right now, they were narrowed and burning. Her father was gripping the paper so tightly it was beginning to tear under his fingers.

"God, I hate that guy," he muttered to the picture of Tony Stark.

She noticed a new set of lines in his face, carved by worry. Will reached out a hand and ran two fingers from his wrist to his knuckles, bracing herself. Instantly, icy, sharp anger pierced her. But she felt another emotion below it, dull but relentless. Dread, cold and heavy, snaked through her veins from his hand and settled in the pit of her stomach.

"What are you so worried about?" she asked, eyebrows pulling together.

Adrian pulled his hand away from her quickly. "I thought we agreed to ask before using weird mind powers on people, Will."

She shushed him quickly, her eyes going wide. She glanced around to see if anyone had heard, but no one had stirred.

"Say it a little louder next time, why don't you," she hissed.

"What?" he protested.

"I don't want you broadcasting to the entire train about my, my..."

"Freaky little problem?" Adrian suggested. "Come on, Will. This is the New York subway. That man is dressed as an asparagus. The lady across from me has a parrot on a leash. Feeling people's emotions is practically boring."

Will crossed her arms. "Whatever. You never answered my question."

He sighed and folded up the newspaper, Tony Stark's smirk disappearing between the folds.

"I'm just worried about business. Always business. There's always something new to worry about, you know?"

Will nodded. She had seen for herself the intricacies of dealing illegal weapons scavenged from alien wreckage. It was a delicate thing her father balanced on the tips of his fingers, always threatening to spill over. Adrian was the mastermind behind it all; Will was just a cog in the machine that helped it turn.

Still, she liked working at her father's company. Her abilities finally stopped feeling like a burden and starting having some semblance of purpose. Will had been "interning" there for years. She spent some afternoons there, and most Saturday's. They were headed to his "office" now, in a greasy neighborhood of Queens, buried under peeling billboards and cracked concrete.

There were a lot of quotation marks involved when it came to Adrian Toomes and his business.

"This is our stop," he said now, rising to his feet.

Will followed suit, edging through the statues of people towards the door. The subway shuddered to a stop. Will tilted sideways, nearly falling, before her father placed a hand on her arm to steady her. Will only felt a slight ache of his emotions, barely noticeable. She could control her abilities with her family and Michelle, her only friend. She'd spent enough time with them to learn how to numb herself to them.

He gave her a half smile, the lines around his eyes crinkling.

"Watch it, kiddo. That hair of yours only protects your head," he teased.

"At least I have hair," she retorted.

Adrian's response was cut short by the gasping noise of the subway doors being pulled apart. The two of them stepped down off the subway and onto the yellow stripe painted on the concrete. Will was still short enough that she had to jump.

As soon as the subway door slid shut behind them and the people disappeared behind the glass, Will felt a weight lift off her chest. Her mood only improved as they headed up the concrete steps into the sunlight above.

Liz hated going into the city. She said the air was too thick with smoke and exhaust to breathe and the buildings blocked the sky. It made sense that she preferred their quiet, tree lined suburb. Liz liked things to be calm and soft and orderly. And she loved nature, a rare occurrence in New York's maze of concrete. She was the founder of the school's Environmental Club, and never let Will forget to recycle.

That was one of the things that made Will and Liz so vastly different. Liz loved to save things. Will had already accepted the inevitable fate of everything. She thought it was better to acknowledge the fact that everything was dying and move on. Liz called her a pessimist, but Will preferred the term realist.

Which is why she loved the city so much. There was nothing hiding here behind neatly trimmed hedges and pane glass windows. The city was ugly and real and burning out every second and starting over again.

Now, in the late morning, sunlight crept up the edges of the buildings and slid down their sides. Will walked through a puddle of sun, her shadow pouring out from under her. She was busy watching her own feet when she realized her father was looking at her.

"What?" she asked.

"Nothin'. You just stare at things a lot. You always look like you're thinking about something."

Liz also said that Will spent too much time in her own head. Will didn't disagree with her on that one.

"Well, thinking is a wonderful thing. You should try it sometime."

Will laughed and darted away as her father tried to step on the back of her heel and pull off her shoe.

Soon, the warehouse looming in front of them indicated they had arrived. On the outside it was so old and decrepit looking, Will could practically hear it rusting. As they pulled open the doors and headed down the stairs into the darkness, however, its true contents were revealed.

The cavernous space was illuminated by huge, fluorescent floodlights. Workers toiled away below in the ghostly pale light. There was the rumble of voices and machinery, and sparks flew every few seconds. Most of the space was occupied by four assembly lines filled with men and women handpicked by her father to craft his weapons. In the back, there was a door that led to more rooms. Will was only allowed into the one filled with mats and punching bags and the one that was empty except for a chair wrapped in chains.

In one corner, where the ceiling could split apart to reveal the sky, her father's landing platform and mechanical wings stood. His helmet and jacket lay on hooks expectantly. Everyone steered clear of this corner, except Mason. His position as Adrian's friend and creative genius was clear through his desk's proximity to the platform.

As Adrian transformed from father to businessman, easy grin replaced with a serious frown and glasses slid onto his nose, Will headed to Mason's table. He was tinkering with some piece of metal and a glowy purple thing, eyes focused behind goggles and tongue sticking out of the corner of his mouth. Will came up behind him quietly.

"Avocados," she whispered in his ear.

He shrieked and jumped, half sliding out of his chair. The piece of glowing metal, which was vaguely gun-shaped, clattered to the worktable. He turned around, eyes narrowed.

"Really?" she asked. "You're scared of avocados? They're like, the least threatening vegetable."

"Avocados are fruit," Mason grumbled. "And you snuck up on me."

"Twitchy," Will said.

"Creepy," he shot back.

She slid into the stool next to his. She placed her chin in her hands and her elbows on the table, scrutinizing the weapon in front of him.

"What's that supposed to be?" Will asked, kicking her legs under the table.

"Anti-grav gun," Mason said, lowering his goggles back over his eyes.

He swatted her hand away from the gun with a large, gloved hand.

"How does it work?" she asked.

"Like I would ever tell you that," he snorted. "You'd figure out a way to get your grimy little hands on some alien tech and make one yourself."

Mason held out a hand expectantly without looking up. She realized he was waiting for her to hand him a tool. Will scanned the scattered tools on the desk before grabbing a tappet wrench and handing it to him. He looked from her to the wrench in surprise.

"Huh. Didn't even think about using a tappet wrench."

He used it to tinker with the gun, ignoring the spray of sparks that erupted.

"You've been spending too much time around here," he added.

"Maybe I'm just naturally gifted with wrench knowledge."

"And maybe I'm Oprah."

"No, there's no way. Oprah wouldn't be caught dead in that outfit at work."

"Are you kidding? This is the perfect outfit for work, because I wear this apron like someone's paying me to."

She laughed as he struck a brief pose. An oil stained apron stretched over his chubby frame, cinched by a worn tool belt sagging with pieces of metal. A wool skull cap was pulled over his blond hair, and a pair of goggles obscured his blue eyes. He had a wide, friendly face and a frizzy beard that always had crumbs or grease in it. Will liked to think he looked a little like Santa Claus, if Santa Claus was younger and blew things up for fun.

"So, what does the anti-grav gun do?" Will asked, chin in palm.

"Traps your target in a field of energy that reverses its magnetic properties. But I haven't ironed out all the kinks yet. Last guy who used it ended up plastered on the ceiling."

"Cool," Will grinned. "Can I try it?"

He shot her a look.

"Can you, a fifteen year old girl with arms as resistant as uncooked pasta noodles, use this, a piece of hyper deadly sci-fi weaponry?"

"Yeah!"

"No. That's a big no."

"You never let me do anything fun."

"I never let you get yourself killed, you mean."

A hand was place on the table between them. Will looked up to see her father standing over them, glancing down over the top of his glasses.

"Yes, and I thank you for keeping my daughter alive, Mason," Adrian said.

He turned to Will. "I have to go over some documents, and I don't want you messing with Mason. Why don't you head into the back and work on some of the moves Schultz's been teaching you."

He called out Schultz's name. Schultz, a tall African American man with sleepy eyes and fists the size of boulders, looked up. Adrian waved him over, and he ambled towards them obediently.

"What's up, boss?"

"Go teach Will something new, will you?"

"What's the matter? Getting tired of Bring Your Daughter To Work Day?"

"Ha, ha. I don't pay you to be a comedian, Schultz, I pay you to work. So go show Will how to dislocate a knee cap or something."

Schultz nodded and gestured for Will to come with him.

"Dad, you want me to go fight? I can't fight in jeans! They're like denim straight jackets."

Adrian gave her a stern look. "You think if someone attacks you, they're going to wait for you to lace up your running shoes and put on some comfy pants? Real world, remember, Will?"

Will sighed. "Real world. Right."

She gave her father a salute, then followed Schultz's bulky frame to the room in the back. One concrete wall was covered with a mirror, the floors barely visible under blue mats. A lone punching bag hung from the ceiling by a rusted chain. Schultz kicked off his shoes, and Will followed suit, using the edge of the mat to pull her shoes off. They moved to the center, where they stood facing off.

Will barely came up to his chest.

"All right," Schultz said, rubbing his hands together. "Let's do something defensive today. We've been doing a lot of offensive."

Will shifted her weight from foot to foot, already feeling a nervous kind of energy igniting in her veins. She flexed her fingers.

"Okay, let's try a few. You're tiny-

"Hey!"

"-basically a midget, so we need to use your weight effectively. Remember, wait for them to attack. Let them make the first move, then you defend and respond."

"Strike the attacker's offensive move first with one hand, then attack them with the other," he continued. "Drive your other first into their lower side, stomach, or back. Those are spots that are hard to defend against."

He feigned a punch, which Will blocked lightly. She pretended to drive her other fist into the soft spot beneath his ribs.

"Good," he nodded, dropping his fists. "If you want to disable them, you can push forward and throw a knee into their quadriceps. Hurts like a son of a bitch. Here."

He showed her the spot on his thigh. He guided her knee through the motion, her leg only gently pressing into him so as to not cause any real damage. She repeated the motion without him, over and over, until he nodded.

"Good, Will." Schultz cracked his knuckles. "Now, I'm going to come at you for real. Try to use to moves we just learned to fend me off."

She breathed in and out.

"Ready?"

"Yup."

Will felt her muscles tense, locking her in a defensive stance. She watched Schultz's eyes travel, trying to determine his next move. Her skin felt electrified. He paced for a moment, then lunged.

Schultz knew Will never threw the first punch. But he didn't know that it wasn't because he had taught her to, or she was scared, or she was too small. It was because when she waited, she knew. When Schultz's bare fists collided with hers, she could feel exactly where he was going to strike next.

She was waiting for a punch, but he dropped down and swung his leg around her ankle instead. She stumbled, but grabbed his leg, causing him to freeze. As soon as her palms wrapped around his ankle, she felt the poison of a fight. It was muted, since Schultz wasn't really trying to hurt her, but the razor sharpness of determination and the burn of anger lingered.

This was Will's weapon. She used her hands, but not as fists. Schultz thought she was just observant. Will knew the truth, that her powers told her where he would strike next. It was an indescribable feeling, a kind of concentration. When he was going to kick her, she could feel his energy rushing towards that part of his body, like the spread of a forest fire. Punches were different. They pierced her, hands turned to arrows, clear and determined.

Will felt his fist coming before it began to sail through the air. She blocked it, ignoring the sting of the impact, then drove an elbow into Schultz's side. A man made of iron, he barely flinched, but Will wasn't done. She spun, aiming a kick at his solar plexus. He stumbled, and she stomped on his foot. Once he was off balance, she drove her fist forward. Schultz dodged it, regaining his balance. He grabbed her forearm. The muscles in his arm tensed, fist drawing back, when a voice interrupted them.

"Will!"

She turned to the sound of her name, but Schultz was already in motion. His blow should've struck her in the jaw. But Will ducked without casting a glance in his direction, narrowly missing the missile of his fist.

"Jesus!" Her father was standing at the edge of the mat, face frozen in a flinch.

"Nope, just me, Will," she said. Her heart was pounding, injecting the end of her sentence with breathlessness.

Schultz stepped back away from her, chest barely heaving from their brief fight. He looked from Adrian to her, expressionless. He usually was, although Will knew she could access his emotions with a brush of her palm.

"You good, kiddo?" her father asked, glancing at Schultz's massive frame hidden under his hoodie.

"Great," she said, straightening up.

"Man, I don't know how she does that," Schultz said, shaking his head. "Always knows what's coming before it hits her."

"Must be her special powers," Adrian said with a half smile.

Schultz laughed. Will didn't.

"Hey, Will," her father said, jerking his chin towards the door. "Come on. I need you for something in the other room."

Will thanked Schultz with a quick smile. He responded with a nod of his head, and she stepped off the mats to follow her father. She didn't bother putting her shoes back on, the cold of the concrete seeping through her socks. Adrian didn't take her back out into the main warehouse, but rather pushed open the rust-colored door next to the exercise room.

"Time to use your magic, Will," he said. "Moira caught the guy who's been lifting weapons from our shipment, and I want you to find out what he's been doing with them."

He held the door to the interrogation room open for her. Will followed inside, instantly feeling a drop in temperature. The bare room crawled with a frosty chill. Adrian stepped into the corner, leaving Will faced with their prisoner.

They were suddenly a very different Will and Adrian than they had been on the train earlier.

The man strapped into the room's single chair was short, but his arms were corded with muscle. There was blood on his face and shirt; Moira had probably broken his nose. When he saw Will, he laughed.

"Really, man? A little girl? That's what you think is going to make me talk?" he scoffed.

"I'm not going to make you talk," Will said, taking a step closer. "I'm just going to make you tell the truth."

His face remained impassive. She gave him a pleasant smile, then placed her hand over his, wrapped in chains.

"Go ahead, Dad."

"What's your name?" Adrian asked, stepping slightly forward until the shadows lifted from his face.

"Nico."

Will felt his lie. It rippled under her skin. Lies were a unique combination of guilt and fear that she felt coiling in her stomach like a snake poised to strike.

"Lie," she said softly.

The man stared at her in alarm. Her hand tightened over his.

"What is your name?" her father asked again.

"Fine, it's Ricardo."

"Lie."

"What is your name?" This time, she heard the cool, even tone of Adrian's voice, steel laid flat.

"Who cares? He won't be anyone once he leaves this room anyway," Will said. "Ask him something that matters."

"You've been stealing my weapons off our delivery trucks. What are you doing with them? Who are you working with?" her father asked instead.

"I just sell 'em online. Don't know who's buying."

"Lie," Will said.

She watched her father bend down to grab something from behind the chair. Only a second passed before there was a gun in Adrian's hands, pointed at the man. It was larger than a normal gun, with an oddly shaped barrel and a pulsing light at the base. One of his own creations. Will knew he wouldn't really hurt him, but her fingers twitched anyways.

"I'm sure you recognize this," Adrian said, still in his polite businessman voice. "Since you've taken enough of them from me. Do you know what it does?"

"Yes," the man said. A waver had worked its way into his voice.

"Then, I'm sure you don't need a refresher. Now, should I repeat the question or do you remember it?"

His eyes flickered from Adrian's face to the chains around his ankles to Will's hand on his. There was the empty kind of fear on his face that came along with these interrogations. Will saw a father and his daughter, but he saw a man with a gun and a girl who could read his mind.

"Whatever. Not worth getting blown up for a quick buck. I've been sellin' them to this guy. I don't know his real name, but his screen name is MrGray3. That's all I know, I swear."

His eyes never left the gun.

Will looked at her father. "Truth."

Adrian nodded. He lowered the gun, and Will took her hand away.

"Schultz!" he called out. The man appeared in the doorway, his frame nearly blocking the light. "Do me favor and make sure this man wakes up on the other side of the tracks with a bump on his head and nothing else, would you?"

"You're not going to kill me?"

"Only if you don't keep your mouth shut. I'm not a monster."

This was Will's cue to leave the room with her father. He closed the door behind them, but Will heard the distinct thud of Schultz knocking the man out. Her steps faltered slightly. Her mind wavered at the edges, as it did every time she used her powers.

Will was five when she first realized there was something strange about her.

It had been hot outside. She remembered the sticky heat on the back of her neck and in the creases of her palms. Liz was carrying her on her back as she jumped from puddle to puddle of warm summer rain. Will's arms wrapped around her sister's neck, her palms brushing Liz's shoulders.

Elation had risen in her, but it didn't feel right. It didn't fit inside her, like a broken bone that had healed wrong. It was the first time Will was old enough to realize it was an emotion that didn't belong to her, a trespasser in her body.

It didn't take her father long to figure it out after she did. And it didn't take her long to figure out he was lying about where his money came from.

She knew about his business. She was the only one. He knew about her powers. He was the only one. It was an unspoken partnership, cemented eight years ago.

But Will felt their secrets growing. Every day she spent with her father felt less like a respite, and more like a burden on her conscience.

"Dad?" she asked hesitantly. "We're not the bad guys, right?"

He turned to face her, brow creased. He put his hands on either sides of her, looking her in the eyes. Adrian's gaze locked her in place.

"Will. Times have changed. We live in a complicated, delicate world now," he said firmly. "We do as little damage as possible to keep what matters safe."

"You didn't answer my question," Will said quietly.

"No, Will. We're not the bad guys. We're the guys who do bad things for good."

She felt it, steady as the moon and the tides.

"Truth," she said softly.

Adrian Toomes smiled at his daughter and she smiled back, her guilt forgotten.

AUTHOR'S NOTE: if you were wondering why the quality of my writing decreased drastically, it's because wattpad (or maybe it was me bc i'm an idiot™) deleted the second half of the chapter and had to start over. this was essentially a whole bunch of exposition packed into one chapter, so now that that's out of the way we can get down to the fun stuff. although i have no plan for this (pt 37193837 go me) so your guess about what happens next is as good as mine. lol i'm out

( dedicated to mags, my wife, meme dealer and stealer, and cuddle bug. thanks for always being my hype man )