NOWHERE LEFT • Peter Parker

sixteen •

"I was testing your tingle."

May 2025

For the first time in months, Cecilia's mind was clear. She could feel her heart beat inside her rib cage and the blood moving in her veins. She could feel the split wounds on her body pulling themselves closed as her stomach rose and fell with each breath.

She could hear Kate's fingers tapping against the keyboard of her laptop, and she could smell the pages of Yelena's book as she turned them. They were doing research on the formulas that Peter had given them.

Everything around her faded to background noise, creating the familiar soft hum that played in her ears. The last time she had attempted this she was left bleeding from the ears and crying in her father's arms. Things were different now, she felt lighter and ready despite what her father thought.

She couldn't get the conversation out of her head, the way he was certain she couldn't handle it. That only he could solve this problem, but Cecilia was determined to prove him wrong.

Her grandmother was right, she's stubborn just like her father, but they didn't realize she was more so. She just had more forethought to actually come up with a plan before charging in head first, or at least that's what she liked to tell herself. Cecilia knew her father was mad, but so was she, and she had every right to be.

He had been training her since she could walk, whether she realized it or not. And for what if not this? This was the exact scenario she had in her head at the age of 13 when he'd set her up at the punching bag.

Her father didn't know that Wilson Fisk had been haunting her nightmares since she could remember, he didn't know that instead of being scared of monsters in her closest, she was terrified of very real and very dangerous men in power. That this man had a choke hold on her entire childhood and none of them even realized.

Matthew Murdock didn't realize that if Cecilia was given the chance she'd kill Wilson Fisk, regardless of what it did to her after. He had gotten away with too much, and although she believed he'd get what was coming to him, her patience was waning. Perhaps he did understand, and maybe that's why he fought her so hard on it, but it didn't matter.

Her hands were already stained with murder, and nothing would change that. What was one more? Someone who really deserved it.

Cecilia's ears perked up as she heard a familiar heartbeat standing in her doorway, one that she could finally recognize. She wasn't sure how long he'd been standing there but she didn't open her eyes, instead she slowly reached out and grabbed a book off the bed next to her leg before hurling it towards the door.

"Shit!"

Cecilia cracked an eye open once she heard the book connect with his palm as his fingers wrapped around it and he stared at her with a wide eyed look. She gave an innocent smirk in response before she stretched her legs out.

"What was that for?!" Peter exclaimed as he stepped into the room and tossed her book onto the desk in the corner of it.

"I was testing your tingle," She responded with a shrug causing the boy to crack a half smile and roll his eyes.

"How long have you been standing there?" Cecilia questioned as she tilted her head lightly and made room for him to sit on the edge of her bed.