Timshel

xvi - Free Will

warnings: fluff, a little bit of angst, hospital setting, physical therapy woes

***

"Peter," your voice is hoarse and thick with blood but his name feels like home on your lips. His face is blurry as he leans over you, but nothing is more clear in that moment than the dark brown eyes that seem to pierce a soul you didn't know you had.

"You're okay, you're okay, oh god, you're okay," Peter keeps repeating, a mantra on his lips and you aren't sure who he is attempting to convince more. You feel a warm hand cupping your head and muffled voices in the background. Betty is crying. Ned is panicking, his breath coming out in sharp bursts. MJ is talking to Betty, her voice is the only reasonably collected one and even that has an edge of panic to it. Happy is speaking on the phone, it is so loud and each sound begins to blur into each other. Except for Peter's. Your eyes move back to look at Peter, tears run down your cheeks and sting your eyes.

He grounds you in a reality you don't think you belong in.

"Peter," you taste the tangy metallic blood as it tumbles from your mouth as quickly as your words.

"Peter," you say again as if his name is the very last word in your once vast vocabulary.

"Look at me," Peter's voice shakes and his hand underneath your head feels warm, almost too warm as your eyes begin to slip shut. Everything is fuzzy, from the tips of your toes to the way your eyebrows feel like foreign caterpillars on your forehead. You want to sleep, or fall into the darkness and get strangled by lightning because then your body would come alive, it would fill with rumbling electricity and you would be able to scream, scream at the top of your lungs. You feel ridiculous as you continue to mumble Peter's name.

"Look at me, come on, y/n, look at me," Peter pleads. You wouldn't say no to him, you wouldn't say let me rest; you force your eyes to open, blinking away wet and hot tears from your eyelashes. It isn't that you can't say no, and that distinction makes you gasp for air as your lips twitch.

You want to reach your fingers up and brush away the tears rolling down your cheeks, you see Peter's eyes look at you with curiosity now, bordering on confusion. Your fingers feel fuzzy like pins are prickling them as you grunt with exertion.

"Don't try to move, it's okay, you're okay," Peter said, his voice was thick with tears but it was soothing.

"Peter," you felt your lips twitch and you wanted desperately to wipe your eyes so you could see him, see him wholly, but you couldn't force your hand to move. You again came to the realization you were crying, you weren't sure if it was because you were frustrated that you couldn't move your hands or that you couldn't see Peter properly but you were crying. You gasped again, it was sharp and your lungs filled with air as you understood what you were doing.

Crying.

You've seen Peter cry countless times, you had wanted to cry before, when you were taken from the Red Room, when Brad told you that you were ugly, when Nadia came back. When you realized that she wasn't real, a disastrous illusion formed by Beck. You cried once before, after scrapping the nanochip with the knife that night a month ago. That was when the wheels began to turn in your head, that was when you realized that if you could get rid of this chip, if you could even just damage it, then a whole wave of emotions would flood your body. You've never felt better than you did in this moment, tears rolling down your cheeks, mixing and diluting the blood that dripped down your neck, even though your fingers were fuzzy and you weren't sure if you could feel your legs, you felt amazing.

"y/n," he was breathless as your lips upturned. You thought it would be hard. To smile, after 17 years of never being able to. But the muscles in your face bent to your will as easy as it was to know why you were smiling. Because you could.