ʟᴏꜱᴛ ᴄʜɪʟᴅʀᴇɴ || 𝟙

ᴄʜᴀᴘᴛᴇʀ 22

She gasped as her body slammed against the floor, knocking the breath out of her, groaning faintly as her shoulder blades protested, droplets of sweat dripping down to her already soaked tank top.

"I'm sorry! I'm sorry!" Peter pleaded, as he leapt down from the perch where he had been hanging, upside-down.

"It's fine," she croaked for the fifth time, pushing herself off of the wall. The energy that she had been attempting to conjure was dissipating between her fingertips again. Ever since her training session with Clint, she never managed to form a full shield, the best she could do was some half-assed sheen of purple electricity which didn't stop Parker's web grenade.

Or the stun web. Or the web taser.

That last one hurt like a son of a bitch. Embarrassing too. It took her a solid fifteen minutes to stop wriggling around like a fish out of water and she just knew that he was laughing under his mask, relishing her discomfort, karma paying her back for the encounter they had in Brooklyn.

"Need a break?" Peter asked as the sun reached its highest point in the sky. Pulling off the mask, he rubbed his tired eyes, they had both been training since 7 a.m., on her orders. She was the one that had dragged him out of bed, quite literally, boxers and all, getting almost a quarter of the way through the compound before he finally woke up and relented to getting ready and meeting her there instead.

"I guess four hours has been good enough for half the day," she arched her back, cracking her neck, relishing the pop of her joints.

"Oh thank God," he whispered under his breath, much to her amusement. Despite the fact that he was supposed to be training her, it seemed a lot like the other way around.

"We haven't even gotten into combat training." she said, as he paled. "Seriously Parker, you call yourself a "superhero" but you have no idea how to defend yourself when it comes to hand-to-hand?" she questioned, frowning judgmentally.

"Hey, I know how to fight," he defended himself. "Sort of..."

"Really? I meant without the fancy suit and that-," she mimicked his web shooters mockingly.

"I mean, I am stronger, faster and more agile than the average male of my age," he counted off his physical attributes, holding three fingers up, as if somehow that trumped everything else.

Grabbing his hand, she twisted it behind his back, sweeping his legs out from under him watching as his body landed on the floor with a painful thud.

"Point proven! Point proven!" he yelped frantically, slapping the floor with his free hand, the other strained to its breaking point.

Releasing her death grip on his wrist she blinked rapidly as the world around her blacked out for a millisecond and like a bad black and white television connection, it slowly flickered back into reality. Suddenly, it felt as if lead had been injected in her veins, weighing every single cell down, as if gravity had renewed its hold on her tenfold, pulling her down to the core of the Earth.

"Whoa," Peter quickly recovered from his takedown, steadying her. "You're still blacking out from trying to control all that energy."

"I can kick your ass in three seconds but this is what takes me down?" she grumbled, brushing his hands away, stalking off.

"You're welcome!" Peter called out, rolling his eyes.

It was always so hot and cold with her. Yesterday with Morgan, it had been the third time he had seen her allow herself to show a smidget of emotion.

One, when she found out that Steve and Nat were dead.

Second, when she found herself staring down at her own grave.