Babysitting a Superhero (Stark's daughter X Peter Parker)

24. It's Complicated

All Too Well (10 Minute Version) - Taylor Swift

And I was thinking on the drive down
Any time now, he's gonna say it's love
You never called it what it was
Til' we we dead and gone and buried
Check the pulse and come back
Swearing it's the same
After three months in the grave

Peter sat at the roof's edge - his and Amara's roof. It had been 16 days since they had... parted ways? Distanced themselves? He still wasn't sure why she had done it. Why she had felt the need to.

Peter had been on patrol, trying to distract himself from the confusion that had been clouding his brain these past few days. At first, he thought he had done something wrong. Then he thought about what she had said:

"We may be friends, but there's some kind of attachment there. One that's not supposed to be there. One that can't be there."

What does that mean? Peter thought to himself.

Then he remembered how desperate he was to tell Amara the truth; reveal his identity to her. Finally tell her everything so that there were no more secrets between them and Peter realised, maybe she wasn't so wrong about this 'attachment' after all.

Maybe that was the reason! What if she could sense you were about to tell her? What if she didn't want to shoulder that kind of pressure, and that's why she did what she did? Peter thought to himself.

He decided that he would try and find her. Try and convince her that they could remain anonymous friends and that's it. He would try everything he could, because all he knew for sure, was that he couldn't lose the friendship between Spiderman and Amara. The only friendship where he felt calm and cool enough to talk to her without messing up.

Peter was broken out of his thoughts when his spider-sense went off. He stood up, searching for the source of the disturbance. When he found it, he leapt off of the roof allowing the wind to rush past him as he plummeted towards the concrete.

He shot a web to a nearby building and felt that jolt when he caught himself at the beginning of a new swing. He got into a rhythm arriving at the scene in less than five minutes - just in time to see five armed men attempting to rob a convenience store. He swung straight into action, shooting a web to pull one of their guns away and using it to hit another one to the floor. He dodged punch after punch while getting a few hits in, until he felt one of the criminals jump onto his back, covering his eyes, not allowing him to see what was happening.

He sensed something - not the armed men, but something else. She landed on the floor, arms outstretched in a fighting stance. Aura.

She was powerful, confident and quick as she dealt with the men, encouraging Spiderman to get up and help.

Together, they finished them off quickly. Spiderman webbed them to the wall as Aura walked into the convenience store to return the lost items.

When she walked back out again, she headed straight for Peter.

"Hey, haven't seen you around in a while, partner," he said.

"I'm sorry. Avengers stuff has been... crazy," she replied.

"Yeah, I heard about Lagos," after looking at the hero's fallen face at the mention of that mission, Peter quickly assured her, "We don't have to talk about that, though."

She smiled gratefully, "Thank you. So how have things been?"

"Oh, uh well classes at school are getting harder, but it's still fine. Uh, I finished building the Lego millennium falcon a couple days ago with my friend. Oh - and uh, one of my best friends just stopped talking to me and then I saw her a few days ago she decided she doesn't want to be friends with me anymore. So, all in all -"