Starkly in Love- A Spiderman x Reader

Chapter 20: The Flames

Sorry if July 28th ain't your birthday.

  "Hello," Richard whispered gently, "I wasn't sure if you'd trust me-"

  "I don't," I butted in, crossing arms defensively over my chest. My hand had slipped to my pepper spray stored in my pocket.

  He nodded, looking a little hurt. "I didn't expect you to."

  Who or what gave him the right to be hurt by my distrust. He's the one who's been knowingly fighting the people I care for.

  "I suppose you're wondering why I brought you here," he started again after a pause. I didn't bother to spare him a nod.

  "I lived here for a year with my family, but it burned down in the summer of one year due to an electrical malfunction. I was gone with Elizabeth, but my wife wasn't so lucky. Elizabeth and I got home minutes after the fire started and before any other help had arrived, so I left my daughter to try and save the only other two people I cared about.-" Elizabeth's name slipped into place, Richard/Void's daughter-"I found her unconscious in the living room and I carried her out. Maybe she would have had a chance at surviving if she wasn't 9 months pregnant and it wasn't her due date- July 28th." 

  Void had a daydreamy look in his eyes as he gazed past me and the rumble," Abigail was gone before I knew it. I didn't have a chance to say goodbye; Elizabeth was screaming by now-" he took a shaky breath-" I tried to see you, but any documents or proof of our relationship was burned along with the rest of my life."

  I watched him struggle with his emotions and win. He focused back on me and I saw something different in him. Pure anger and resentment. None of the hope or fear or anything else, just unbridled anger.

  "Then he stole you," he said, voice cool and even like a diamond.

  I felt myself overbalance and I had to step back to not fall over. The world was spinning around me. I knew this was coming. I knew the second I got his text and then saw him. Void was my manic biological father.

  "Tony adopted me after my mother died... there wasn't any record of a father..." I mumbled what Tony had always told me, and it wasn't his fault that he didn't know the whole story. He just told me what he knew.

  "He stole you," Void snarled.

  "He stole me?" I repeated, testing the words for myself.

  "Yes! He came flying in with his private jet and ripped you away from any chance of me taking you home," Void said, taking a few steps toward me. I took a few more steps away.

  "You wouldn't have been able to fund the medical treatments I needed when I was a baby to fix the problems that the smoke caused," I frowned, looking between Void and my could-have-been home.

  "I would have done whatever you need," Void said, desperation slipping back into his words.

  I shook my head. "There must have been some way to find me without all this mess."

  "What did you want me to do? Calling Tony's personal assistants and pray?" He took another step toward me and a took two more away from him.

  "I didn't want you to throw my bo-best friend into a brick wall."

  "He was fighting me!"

  "Because you were hurting innocent people and burning down buildings! What was it for!?" I demanded.

  "It was for you and Elizabeth!"

  "That's not true. It wasn't for me because I never asked you to and from the little I know of Elizabeth she would never want you to hurt or even scare anyone."