NOWHERE LEFT • Peter Parker

six •

"One hundred thousand dollars?"

March 2025

After Kate was attacked, Cecilia decided to share the news of the list with the rest of the vigilantes that she knew who was on it. Most of them weren't too bothered, but her father debated putting on the suit and getting to the bottom of this himself.

After talking him down and alerting him that they had this handled Cecilia looked at the other names, the ones she didn't recognize. There were only three she was unfamiliar with, and two of their identities had been exposed to this list.

Cecilia had searched for both Marc Spector and Layla El-Faouly, and there wasn't much. From what she could tell, Marc was a marine and Layla an archeologist. The pair sort of dropped off the face of the planet together a few years ago. There was even less information on 'Squirrel Girl, just a few local newspaper articles about her stopping a random mugging or getting a kid's kite out of a tree.

There was another part of her mind that drifted to the fact that she now had to track down Spider-Man, and she was then required to tell him that there was a price on his head as well as several other people in the city. She just hoped he hadn't found it because then both her's and her father's identities would be exposed.

She wasn't entirely sure where she was going to find him but it certainly wasn't drinking coffee with Peter Parker in her father's office. In fact, after Valentine's day things between them had actually gotten worse.

Her headaches had increased and normally disrupted their plans, and if it wasn't that it was the fact that Peter seemed to be keeping something from her. She knew that he was entitled to his secrets, she sure had her fair share of them, but this was different. And she had a feeling it involved her.

His heartbeat would pickup whenever she told him about what she had done the night before, almost as if he was waiting for her to say something she shouldn't. He had also been coming up with lame excuses to leave while they were hanging out, of course Cecilia never showed that it bothered her, but it was definitely slightly concerning.

Cecilia was actually finding it hard to hold a conversation with him, and that was something that hadn't happened since the first time they had met. Part of it was because she was catching him in lies, and the other part was the piercing headache that was shooting through her skull.

Meanwhile Peter was swimming in guilt for knowing her identity, it was clear that it wasn't something she wanted to share. And definitely not with him as she kept it to herself this entire time with a steady stream of excuses for why she had a split lip and bruised knuckles.

Cecilia had been training harder than she ever had before, she knew that she wasn't physically strong enough to take Fisk in another fight, but she wanted to be. So she pushed herself harder than what was probably best, she wanted to be prepared for when they found Wilson Fisk, because he was going to pay for making her life hell. And because she had been leaning so far into her nighttime activities and persona that her daytime relationships and responsibilities were slacking.

As she watched Peter click through photos on his laptop she leaned back on her chair and sighed through her nose. Her eyes were burning to the point they almost started watering, and she couldn't focus on the document she was writing so she let the boy across from her be a distraction. It had become sort of routine for them to do their work together in one of the two offices, usually it was Peter walking over with his camera and laptop since Cecilia had more things to do in her office and it was easier for him to work anywhere.