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chapter ten
IN THIS TOGETHER
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LENA SPENDS THE REST of Sunday feeling like she's swimming through syrup. Her parents had immediately sat her on the sofa, wrapped her in a fluffy blanket, and made her hot cocoa. The television is playing some Filipino drama — Ang Probinsyano, from the looks of it.

She carefully sips the cocoa as to not burn her tongue. Her phone buzzes with a text that she has to dig from the blankets to read. Eventually, she locates the device, squinting at the messages from Graham.

GRAHAM CRACKER: i heard what happened on the news. my parents, owen, and max are freaking out and so am i !!!

GRAHAM CRACKER: none of my texts are delivering are you dead

GRAHAM CRACKER: i tried to send you a good luck text before the decathlon but it didn't go through. i even got up at seven and everything :/

Normally the messages would make her smile, but now they just twist her gut. She'd thought her odd feeling was because of the trauma she'd gone through. Now, though, it's apparent that it's actually the pain of not knowing. Her body is craving answers but also filled with dread upon awaiting the confirmation that her friends had been keeping things from her.

Lena waits until the cocoa is gone to get up and tell her parents she's going to bed. It takes several minutes for her to get to her room; her parents hug her and wish her goodnight for what seems like forever. But once she closes her door, she remembers that her wig and voice changer had fallen in the lake and bangs her head on it in frustration.

Time for a new plan.

She tugs a yellow hoodie over her head and replaces her leggings with a pair of sturdier jeans. After shoving the first pair of shoes she finds onto her feet (a pair of white sneakers), she quickly assembles a sleeping figure out of pillows under her covers just in case they decide to check on her.

After building a shape that roughly resembles herself, she pulls the hood over her head and opens her window. The autumnal night breeze greets her with a gentle caress on her face. It feels strange not using her powers without her costume, but she's careful to be as silent as possible as she makes her way down the fire escape and in the rough direction of Peter's house.

She knows that they have to settle things. If they don't, she won't be able to sleep with how many questions are bouncing through her mind. How could you keep this from me? Why did you keep this from me? Did you order Graham not to tell? Did he agree to leave me in the dark?

Lena yanks her hood up when it starts to slip due to her speed. She'd tucked her hair inside the hoodie, so she probably looks like a boy, but that's okay. The neighborhood streets are empty except for music pulsing from a club a few blocks over. The wind whistles in her ears as she runs, drowning out the sound of the atrocious dubstep.

She locates the apartment building with minimal difficulty. At first, she'd completely overshot it and had to backtrack. Then she had trouble remembering if it was this one or that one and had a short battle with herself. After a nearly five-minute-long debate in her head, she determines that yes, it definitely is the one she's standing in front of, and begins to hurry toward the alleyway between complexes to find his floor.

Lena has to crane her neck upward to an almost painful extent to see all the way to the top of the building. Granted, she'd been tucked into Peter's chest when she'd arrived through his window, but she remembers what his room looks like. Plus, he almost always keeps his curtains open. It's a superhero thing; they easily get in the way.

From her spot on the ground, the only part of his bedroom that she can see is the color of the paint on his walls. The familiar gray stands out against the other windows, which either reveal nothing but blinds pulled down or much brighter colored-rooms inside.

Lena tugs the hood tighter for good measure. Then, sensing that she might draw too much attention to herself by climbing the fire escape halfway up the building, she decides to do things the cooler way. She turns her palms downward and concentrates until a steady burst of energy emits from her hands. It blasts her up into the air with a shriek that she quickly clamps her lips shut to muffle. Quickly, she rotates her hands and moves closer to the brick wall, bracing herself as she steadily soars toward her targeted window.

She just barely catches herself on the windowsill, gripping onto the frame and balancing on the balls of her feet. If she leans anymore backward, she'll topple down into the alleyway below.

It looks like Peter's sitting on his bunk bed and toying with a yo-yo. Her eyebrows crease in confusion as she watches him boredly flick it outward and catch it in his palm. Then, she realizes she has much more pressing issues than why he's using a yo-yo and knocks on the glass.

He jumps up from the bottom bunk with a start. At first, she wonders if he's going to stand there all day, open-mouthed in shock, or actually let her in. Her calves are beginning to ache from crouching like this for so long.

Luckily, Peter shakes himself out of his stupor and stumbles toward the window. He unlatches it and slides it open. "Lena? What—"

"Move," she commands blankly, which, she admits, is pretty rude considering it's his own apartment and bedroom, but she's fairly certain she'll actually fall if she has to sit like this any longer. "Please."

He hastily steps backward to let her in. Lena does a pretty sweet somersault off of the windowsill, using a blanket of energy to bounce off of before landing on the hardwood floor. She teeters dangerously to the side prior to regaining her balance. Then, shoving the hood off of her head, she untucks her hair from the inside of her sweatshirt and huffs out a breath.

For a moment, they stand there in silence. Peter stares at her in utter bewilderment. His eyebrows are creased, mouth pulled to the side and lips parted like he tends to do when he's confused. He's wearing a graphic tee that says "Find x (it's right here)" that would normally make her laugh and a pair of black sweatpants. It takes her a moment to remember that he has absolutely no idea what she's doing here.

The words are stuck in her throat. She'd known she had to come here to fix the mess between them, but she'd never actually worked out what she wants to say that doesn't involve yelling and swearing.

Lena decides to start with, "I want to know what happened."

Peter's tongue swipes across his lip as he glances at the wall beside her and shifts his weight. "Like, all of it?" Her expression alone is enough for him to know the answer to that. He sighs, shifting his gaze to the floor between them. "All right. Well, when we were looking at the glowy thingy, Ned realized that they must have been mixing alien tech with ours. That's all we found out. But then, after we left and Graham went his separate way, we realized two of the guys from the heist were tracking it. So, when they were looking in Woodshop, I attached a tracker to them. Ned and I stayed up all night as they kept moving. They stopped in Maryland, and at first I thought there was no hope in following them."

She feels dread brew in her stomach. Maryland isn't that far from Washington, D.C. He'd never intended to rejoin the team— he'd just been using Nationals as a way to chase the Vulture guy and his crew.

As if reading her thoughts, Peter nods. "So, yeah, I went to D.C. Ned hooked up my suit to his computer and disabled some protocols that Mr. Stark had installed. When you guys were going to the pool, I was actually sneaking out to follow the tracker. I found them, but they called in Vulture and he had some sort of really weird tech that allowed him to just — get rid of ceilings and walls. He trapped me inside this truck and I got knocked out. I woke up in the Damage Control Deep Storage fault — which just so happens to be the most secure vault ever, by the way — and it took me forever to get out. I really was planning on getting to Nationals in time, but..."

He trails off, finally looking up to search Lena's eyes. It takes her a moment to process everything he'd said, but one thing still doesn't make sense to her.

"Why did you lie to me?" she asks, her voice cracking on the question she's wanted to know the answer to for days.

"I - I didn't lie..."

"Bullshit," she fires back, an echo to their conversation at the hotel. Her eyes are beginning to burn with tears even though she isn't sure why she's about to cry. Wet anger and exasperation must be catching up to her. He'd just lied about lying, and she's so sick of being left in the dark. "You told me you were making improvements on the suit. You said you weren't hiding anything, but from what you just told me, it seems like you were hiding a hell of a lot from us. The thing is, Peter, we're wrapped up in this shit show together whether you like it or not."

She takes a rattling breath, the tears blurring her vision. Even so, she can tell that he's trying to hide his shock. Crying in public isn't something she tends to do often. But everything is happening so fast and it's so much that her brain is beginning to realize that it's home to a sixteen-year-old girl with hormones.

When she continues, her voice cracks again from the thickness of the lump in her throat. "I thought that day at Ristretto was the beginning of a team. I thought we were starting to become friends. And friends..." She rubs at her nose with her sleeve. "Friends don't lie. Not about this stuff."

It takes Peter a moment to form his words this time. The expression on his face reveals that he's always had them in the back of his mind, but speaking them aloud is harder than thinking it. He balls the hem of his shirt into his fists nervously.

"I didn't want you getting hurt," he finally admits.

It takes a beat for this to register. "What?"

Peter fiddles with his shirt's hem again, searching for a way to elaborate. "You were unconscious when Mr. Stark pulled us out of the lake, obviously, so you didn't know what it was like. As soon as we hit the water, you stopped moving, and I realized you didn't have the same healing or strength powers as me. He grabbed us both and set us in the park. I think he guessed you were Havoc, especially when I kept blabbering how you were unconscious and stuff. It was really scary.

"You were, like, deathly pale. No color in your face. I thought you were dead until Mr. Stark reminded me to check your pulse. It was barely there. My mind kept traveling to what would happen if we had to take you to a hospital, because if we took you there in your suit, your identity would be revealed. And you were so weak afterward. May even asked about you for three straight days. I just... going back, following them? You had only just gotten better. I didn't want you to be in pain again. And, yeah, you're mad at me, but at least you're not hurt."

He rubs the back of his neck, eyes staring at the floor again and face masked with slight guilt.

Lena's throat continues to ache. "You still could have told me."

"I know," Peter mumbles. "And I probably should have. It was kinda suckish of me to lie."

"Kinda?" She's able to crack a tiny grin that's gone as quickly as it had come. "I'm sorry for being mad and threatening to drop you from a very high place."

"Apology accepted," he says, his posture loosening as the tension in the air between them lessens. "I'm sorry for being a bad friend."

Lena nods and tries to keep more tears from falling. "Apology accepted."

Just then, the door opens and May walks inside. Her mouth is open as if she's about to say something, but she stops short at the sight of Lena. She blinks and squints through her massive eighties-type glasses. "Lena? When did you get here? And why are you crying?"

"Not that long ago," she answers, wiping her face with both of her yellow sleeves. "I came over to tell Peter about this movie I saw where the dog died."

"That's always the worst." May pouts. "Poor dog. Can I make you another cup of hot cocoa to make you feel better?"

"No, thank you," Lena says. "I appreciate the offer, but I need to get home."

"Alright, hon. Peter, come walk your friend out."

"May," Peter whines, cheeks starting to flush.

His aunt merely gives him a meaningful look before turning around and heading back into the hallway. Peter sighs and raises his arms, letting them fall back and hit his legs with a soft pat. Lena sniffles and gives a feeble laugh at his embarrassment.

After insisting that she doesn't need a to-go cup of cocoa for the walk home, Lena stands with Peter at his front door. He twiddles his thumbs absentmindedly as he leans against the doorframe while she pulls her hood back up.

"See you tomorrow?" he questions, voice tentative and allowing her to say no if she wants to.

Lena manages another small smile. "See you tomorrow."

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*cue high school musical music*

gah my smol babies. here's the angst i've been preparing you guys for, but of course it wouldn't last too long because they both understand the other's reasoning, and tbh lena's kinda shocked and flattered that he didn't want her to get hurt again. (& sorry if it seemed rushed but we love an understanding duo)

you may have noticed that i changed the cover! i didn't really like the other one and i feel like this one captures the essence of lena's character better and hailee is so cute wow

-kristyn