USM 2021 Bingo

Lost in the Woods (Part 5)

Chapter 5: Silent Night

BOOM! The final chapter everyone! Let's wrap this story up.

Peter settled against the shack to watch the ensuing fight, careful of the skewed wood to avoid adding splinters to his list of acquired injuries throughout the night.

He could already see Fury's vein bulging in his forehead because Peter was going to give him another stress ulcer as soon as he got back and reported this. But it wasn't his fault this time, he had an accomplice.

Speaking of said accomplice, Sam was an absolute powerhouse, harnessing all that wondrous cosmic energy into a Nova-sized battering ram that knocked into the Chitauri squadron so hard it sent them scattering like an explosion of toys from a rambunctious kid. He was more of a blur than a person and Peter could barely even see the glint of his helmet when he stopped long enough for the naked eye to catch up. The Chitauri tried to shoot him, and if Peter hadn't spent the last hour getting beaten and held captive by them, he might've felt sorry for the suckers. Sam was too fast to hit, and even when it looked like one of them might get lucky, he deflected it with a beam of his own and destroyed any hopes that alien had at getting a promotion.

Snow was near the top of Peter's list of things-he-tolerated-but-was-rapidly-growing-a-dislike-of, but even so, the glow of the Nova Force illuminating it made drifting flurries actually look pretty, and wonder swelled in his chest. The same kind of child-like wonderment he got as a kid during Christmas when the lights were up, and everything smelled like Christmas cookies and pine-needles. The forest didn't smell like cookies, and the stench of melting weapons didn't exactly have the same nostalgia that pine-candles did, but Peter would take it.

The fight moved away from the shack and he had no intention of following it into the forest. He was more than content to stay propped against his wall and watch the light show from a distance. Sam's witty one-liners (Peter was proud to say he's been cultivating Sam's quip-game like fine wine and his boy was getting better with each witticism and snark) were muffled by the squabbling orders of the Chitauri as they were coerced back into their spaceship. It took a few minutes for it to get airborne, but Sam filled the time by blasting off its outer weapons and screwing with their communications system so it couldn't call an SOS. The whine of the engine could be heard from Peter's position, and the crunching of trees as it blasted off was deafening. The take-off sent a ripple of snow and loose branches across the clearing, and Peter wiped snow from his face in time to watch Sam go after it, chasing the spacecraft into the clouds where they both disappeared.

It was quiet in their absence.

Maybe a little too quiet.

Without the sounds of a battle to fill the silence, Peter was becoming all too aware of the groan of the crippled shack and the howling of the wind as it tore through the trees. It was child-like to be afraid of the dark, but it was something every person had an innate fear of, and the shadows looked so much darker without Sam's light to brighten the empty spaces. He waited patiently, pretending he wasn't scared and that it was totally fine leaving him alone, until a blue light appeared in the sky and flew down like the most attractive falling star Peter's ever seen.

Sam touched down barely 10 feet away, but Peter wasn't going to wait for him to make the entire walk back and pulled himself to his feet with a heaving breath. Sam opened his arms, as if to embrace him, and Peter all-but collapsed on top of him, sighing "Ahhhhhhhh," as he was enveloped by the warm tingling Nova Force.

Sam patted his back sardonically, rolling his eyes with a smile so wry it could give Ben a run for his money, "You're the cookie monster of warmth, you know that right?"