Resilience | ✔

Chapter Twenty-Eight

"I'M THE SCAT-MAN!"

Marley bolted awake.

"Ski-bi dibby dib yo da dub dub, yo da dub dub—"

"Holy shit, Peter," Marley grumbled, rolling over to grab her phone. She accepted the call and Peter's horrendous ringtone stopped. "Jesus fuck, dude, what the hell do you want? It's—" she pulled the phone away from her ear to check the time "—three in the morning!"

"I just saw Jackson."

The note of fear alone in Peter's voice would have been enough to wake Marley up. Combined with what he'd actually said - I just saw Jackson - 

She was on her feet in a heartbeat, fumbling for her bedside lamp. "What?"

"I'm on patrol and I just saw Jackson." She heard the faint shhhthwp of him shooting a web. "I'm following him. I think he has a gun."

"Oh my God—" It came out unbidden. Marley's thoughts were a blur. "Where are you? I'm coming to you."

"What? No! Tell your dad!"

"If I tell my dad, he won't let me anywhere near that man," Marley growled, "and Jackson is mine to deal with."

She didn't mean a word of it. She wanted Peter to push back, or say that he'd already called Tony. She didn't want to ever see Jackson again. But she knew that if she didn't deal with him herself, she'd always have anxiety about it. She'd never be able to trust that he was truly locked up in jail. She headed for her closet, making a fist with her free hand to keep from shaking.

"Okay," Peter said, and she almost cussed him out for not having a backbone. "I'm at—wait, how are you getting here?"

She considered. A car would be too slow. She could take Tony's suit, but he might literally kill her. A Quinjet it was then, and she could bring her solar-powered blasters. The prototype she'd had going when she flew in the suit had turned out better than she'd hoped; she'd been testing them out in training ever since. "By Quinjet."

"Okay. Let me know when you're in one and I'll get Karen to send you my real-time location. He's still on the move."

Marley put her phone on a shelf and started getting changed, switching pajamas out for jeans and a sweater over long underwear. "Walking or driving?"

"Walking right now. My guess is that he'll be walking for a while. Cars are a lot less stealthy."

Marley shrugged into her favorite leather jacket. Then, just to spite Jackson, she grabbed one of her bi flags, one of the big ones, and tied it around her waist like flannel. Fuck you, sir. She slid into her combat boots and grabbed her earpiece from her nightstand. People in the compound (read: Tony) had weird sleep schedules, and she didn't want anyone to get suspicious about her talking on the phone while wandering around at 3 am, so this way she could hear Peter but have her phone in her back pocket. She turned out her light and slipped out of her room.

The compound was quiet. That wasn't unusual, but it wasn't the norm, either. Some nights she'd come out and hear Tony blasting Metallica or hammering something or hollering at Rhodey as he invariably handed Tony his ass in Mario Kart. She crept down the halls to the lab. It was dark, all the machines shut off, and she sent a silent thank-you to Pepper for forcing Tony to sleep tonight. She grabbed her solar-powered repulsors out of their charging station and headed for the hangar, sliding the gloves on. She'd had to make them go up to her elbow so they'd charge faster and hold energy longer. They kind of looked like she'd cut the toe off a pair of knee socks and was pretending they could do damage, but she was fine with that. She'd just have to come up with a lighter fabric for summer.