Tempest ━ Peter Parker

02 | patrick-peter parker

"Do you—do you need me to get you anything, uh—"

"Go outside," she heaved a breath, and her fingertips started to spark. "Close the door."

He looked pale as a sheet and desperate to help, but obeyed the second a hiss of air came from her throat, and her veins rippled with the weight of herself.

This happened sometimes. These moments of panic, where she burned green and her mouth filled with acid and she thought she might die. Sometimes it happened every week. Sometimes it took months. And every time she'd bury herself in an alley or go home or if it was really dire, go into a school bathroom and pray it was empty, so she could bite down on her hand to muffle a scream as the sinks shook and the insides of the stall were singed. Janitors kept having to replace doors and fix broken pipes. They didn't know why. She did.

Her lungs clogged up when she took a deep breath, energy bundling in her chest before travelling up, up, up her throat to nestle there, and she couldn't breathe. She used the method she'd been taught as fast as she could before she freaked out again. Her nails curled into her palms, stinging her flesh, pinpricks of static feeling like a kiss that killed.

The method to expel her madness varied. Usually the first step would be to clear her head and discard her memories, but with a literal superhero outside her door and the ghost of Strucker's hands around her neck, it was futile. Memory was all she was surrounded by. She had to diffuse the present instead.

She tucked herself into the static. The noise settled in her brain, a thick buzzing sound that she felt in her jaw. She could feel the energy slicking through her veins, prodding the inside of her skin and shocking her. Five years of this, five years of storm and silence had moulded inside of her, something she could not separate. Something she could only displace. Pressure swam out from her chest and down into her arms, scalding as it went. Her veins cooled around her lungs and grew brighter in her biceps. The static travelled further, relieving her legs and her hips and her shoulders but scarring the insides of her forearms and hands where it gathered. Taking a deep breath, feeling the signs of electricity crossing between her fingertips, she pushed it all out.

It took a lot to get everything out slowly. A lot of energy and a lot of control. Levina was running short of both. Squeezing her eyes shut and trying to relax everything else, static connected between her hands, roping together and firming until a great green ball the size of a baby pumpkin emerged. It lived for a moment, held up by the forces in Levina's hands, before detonating out like a dying star. The green washed over her room. When she opened her eyes, there were fresh burn marks on her walls again and tears were sliding down her face. Her skin had lost its colour.

She choked out a breath, keeling over her bed. It's over, she panted, but her body was taut and still trembling. Her head pounded for a few seconds then stilled. A long, heavy sigh came out of her, and she coughed out an extra spark. It was fine. She was fine.

It took a minute or two of studying her room and breathing heartily to plant herself back in reality. Once her eyes stopped watering and her heart cooled, she wobbled to her door and cracked it open.

She wished she hadn't.

Peter was standing there, back to her, stiff as a board. For a second she thought he was too freaked out to turn around, but then she saw what he was looking at.

Her kitchen table, basking in rays of sun.

And at that table, standing with his hands on his hips, was Boddy.

Oh. Oh.

FUCK!

"What are you doing in my kid's room, son?"