Mercy ▷ Peter Parker

TWENTY SEVEN. UNSTOPPABLE FORCE

2 months later

Healing went for Nora went about as well as you'd think it would.

The first few days were rocky. Nora spent most of her free time at the hospital. She didn't want to go home, it was too quiet. Yes, her brother and sister were home, but not as often as she thought. Aliya had a job, Rafe had his life, most of the time it was her on her own, forced to listen to voice in her head telling her that it was all her fault, that her father was half dead because of her, that her siblings now barely had a mother left while she had no one. To fight this voice, she drowned it out with the din of the hospital, there she could distract herself enough to listen to something else.

So, she practically made her father's room into a second bedroom, she wouldn't take the bus home anymore, and if she did, she'd take the city bus to the hospital. There she would do her homework, watch over her dad and, in the short few weeks she was there, try and reconnect with Cindy. Nora was so shocked when her old friend had asked who she was that night, that she had ran out of the room. She returned a few days later, as if she hadn't bolted out but nothing had changed. Cindy still looked at her with unknowing, slightly frightened eyes at the girl who, to her, seemed to be out of her mind. It hurt, looking into those eyes and seeing yourself as a complete stranger. Nari still had no idea what had happened to her daughter, claiming she just showed up at their new house with no recollection of where she was or who she was.

Nora would've stayed longer, to try and reconnect with her friend and salvage what they once had, but something always stopped her, and that something was the white and gold suit she had folded in her bag.

For awhile, the line between Nora and Mercy became rather blurry. If she wasn't in the hospital, she was out on the streets, sometimes with Peter, but mostly she was on her own. Not that Peter abandoned her, in fact, he didn't even know she was going out to fight without him. Those guns those men had used that night were something she had never seen before, and if they had gotten their hands on them, then chances were there would be more where that came from. She just needed to find out where they came from, and if that meant doing it on her own, then she would.

Right now, she was curled up in the armchair beside her father's bedside, textbook opened as she took down some last minute notes. Summer had come and gone and sophomore year was rearing it's awful head so she had taken to her books for the last few weeks, trying to get her summer reading done. Nora rolled her neck, feeling the yellowing bruise from hours ago become aggravated at the action. Visiting hours were coming to an end, but the idea of packing up her stuff and leaving him made Nora so uneasy. She rubbed the side of her face, the cool feeling of her palm making her sigh before she stood up, stuffing her chemistry book into her bag, careful not to touch the gauntlets. After slinging it over her shoulder, she looked over to her dad, watching his scarred chest rise and fall, wounds unlike the doctors had ever seen before, and bent down to press a kiss to his forehead. "See you tomorrow, dad." she whispered before she walked out into the hallway.

The subway ride home was filled with spotify playlists and checking various social media accounts of hers. She checked a few snapchats, sending a few to Michelle who was asking if she needed to do the human best friend thing and come over to talk. Nora appreciated her want to try, but declined politely. Although a smile did come to her face at the fact that Michelle(or MJ, because her friends called her that) called her her best friend. It was boring, uneventful, which made Nora surprisingly uneasy.

For the past year, her life had been as chaotic as it could get. With her double life, she was constantly on the go, which made her forget how boring and mundane her real life was. School was unbearable at times with how slow everything went. She couldn't wait until the clock turned to 2:45 when she could switch into her costume and play hero for a few hours, but when summer came around, it was hard to balance her real life with her much more exciting superhero life, especially since she had promised her siblings she wouldn't let it take over her life.