A/N: So... there are descriptions of self-harm in this chapter, if you aren't comfortable with reading that, then just skip to the end.

Thank you to everyone who has read/reviewed/favourited/followed :)

anonymouscsifan: I am so excited for Apocalypse, and I have seen the Quicksilver commercial. It was pretty funny ;) Thank you for your kind thoughts :)

Disclaimer: I don't own X-Men.

Chapter 23/Chapter 25

June 18th, 1972.

"Holy shit!"

"P- Peter?!" Nora stammered, desperately trying to hide the bloodstained glass. "What're you doing here?"

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Nora had been away from school for the past three days. She'd called him just before to say that she was about to travel. He'd appeared a moment after. But only saw the brilliant flash of light from underneath her front door.

She phoned him the moment she returned: asking if there was any important homework due the next day. That was all she said.

Her voice had seemed off, and she'd barely said goodbye before ending the call.

Peter decided to surprise her.. He brought blueberry pie and orange soda, her two favorite foods. (She dismissed all arguments that stated they were not 'proper food.') He'd hoped that they would have been able to spend the afternoon together, just talking about where she'd gone.

But when he got to her house, Peter found something that he would never forget.

She was in the bathroom, back to him. She wore a black short-sleeved t-shirt. The shortest thing he'd seen her wear since Rosie's party.

Then he saw the blood.

.

Her wrist. What had happened. Oh god, she was bleeding. The sink was stained red. He wasn't sure if the cuts were fatal.

Peter ran off, reappearing a minute later with a full ambulance medical kit in tow.

"What the hell happened to you?!" He cried. He sat her down on the closed toilet seat. She tried to push him away, to get out of the bathroom so she could clean up in private. But he was having none of it.

There were tears in her eyes as she saw Peter glance at the vanity counter top; spy the bloodied piece of glass.

He stared back and forth for a few seconds, eyes flickering between the glass and her wrists.

Glass to wrists; glass to wrists; glass to wrists. Then over again. The realization took only a moment, but it seemed like a lifetime.

She tried to speak, but her voice came out as a croak. "Peter… It's not what it looks like-"

"Really? 'Cause I'm pretty sure it is."

Nora clamped a hand over her mouth, but the sob was still heard.

November nineteenth, 1845. Allentown, Pennsylvania. That's where she'd gone. The exact time and place of Tom's death.

After all these months… she'd nearly forgotten about him. The old scars were faded red lines by now.

But then everything had come flooding back. Seeing him, on his deathbed. Surrounded by his family. He had looked happy. He'd made a life in his new time, and was loved by many. But she knew the look in his eyes. He was missing his real family, in his real time.

And she had been the one to take it from him. She had taken it all.

How could she have let herself forget? She was an idiot, letting herself forget the second-biggest mistake of her life. It was all her fault.

Peter said nothing as he stuck a variety of multicolored band-aids over the two cuts. And in doing this he saw the previous scars. After this was done, he took her hands in his, kneeling on the bathroom's cool tile.

Nora sniffled. Peter bit his lip, unsure of what to say.

"How often?" He asked after a minute, head bowed.

She shook her head, "Not for a while now."

He shook his head, "Then… why now?"

She shrugged him off and stood up, still a bit unsteady on her feet. He tried to help her, but she brushed off his chivalrous attempts.

"I- I- I don't know..."

She stumbled out of the small bathroom, heading towards the kitchen.

"You don't know? That's all I get?" Peter appeared beside her. "Come on Nora, I'm your boyfriend, for god's sake!"

She whirled around. "Oh yeah?! Well, if you're my boyfriend, then I guess I'd better just TELL YOU EVERYTHING ABOUT ME?! HUH!?"

Peter took a step back, shocked by her outburst. Then he whispered, "I just want to know why someone I care about would willingly hurt themselves..."

Nora sighed and wiped away the tears staining her cheeks. "I don't- I don't know, Peter… You wouldn't understand..." She whispered. "Maybe I just need to feel something?"

"Feel something? Are you not alive?" He laughed, trying to lighten the mood. But her next words certainly did not.

"Well, I certainly don't feel alive."

Nora collapsed in the single chair at the kitchen table and put her head in her hands. Standing awkwardly in the door frame, Peter had no idea what to do. When Wanda'd been caught cutting, their Mum had been the one to 'deal with it.'

"Please… just leave," she muttered.

"Nora, I-"

"GO!" She cried, throwing her hands up in the air.

He tried coming towards her, but then she was gone. She'd paused time and gone off to who-knows-where.

.

With the world paused, Nora was able to do anything she wanted.

Sneak into a movie? Simple. Steal England's crown jewels? Done. She could even break into the Pentagon, the most secure building in America, if she felt like it.

But sometimes, she did things that were a lot more personal. Like right now, for instance.

As Peter moved towards her, she snapped her fingers. He was stopped in mid-step.

She got up, slowly, and walked over to him.

Face to face they stood, only one aware of their situation.

"Why..." She murmured. "Why do you have to care so much? Why… Why did I get stuck with you?" You and all your glory, she thought.

She screamed, right to his face. "WHY?!"

He heard none of it, saw none of it. He would never know of this. Never know of how she collapsed at his feet, sobbing for nearly ten minutes before she left the state.

For Nora, it was a week-long excursion with a hundred lonely hours of self-cosntemplatation.

And for once, she did feel lonely. She wanted to go back. To talk it out with him. So after five days of the world being in a time-stop, she let it go.

For Peter, and everyone else who cared, their 'silent-treatment fight' lasted two days.

Each missed the other dearly. But their prides were so big that neither wanted to be the one to cave in first.

Unsurprisingly, it was Nora who lasted the longest. After forty-eight hours, eleven minutes, and twenty-nine seconds of normal time, Peter couldn't take it any longer.

He appeared on the doorstep, and then in the kitchen -where it seemed she hadn't moved an inch from where he had last seen her.

In an instant, he grabbed her and they were both in the bedroom.

"Peter?! Wha- Ahh!" Nora squealed as he burrowed them both down into the sheets. She found herself clutched to his chest, their legs intertwined.

"I know you must have your reasons… But for me, it makes no sense whatsoever. I don't understand why you would do this… And you don't have to make me understand-"

"Peter, I-" She began."

"Please," he murmured into her ear. "Please promise me that you'll never hurt yourself again."

Nora breathed in his distinctive scent, her head buried in his chest. He cared. She need that. His caring.

"I promise," she whispered.

Peter knew there was something else. Something she wasn't telling him. But he wouldn't pry.

No. He wouldn't. She would tell him on her own time.

Nora didn't tell him the completely version of Tom's story -not for a long time. But. That day was the last time she cut for a long while.

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Now. I'm sure the ending seems a bit cheesy, and too 'fairy-tale' with the whole 'sweeping-her-off-her-feet-thing' for some people. At least, looking at it now, that's what I see. The chapter's super short, but it's an important step in their relationship: Nora overcoming some of her issues.

And for me, this ending has a deeper and more personal meaning. I was at a point in my life, and even still am with self-harm, where all I wanted was for someone to sweep me off my feet and whisk me away to somewhere where all the shittiness in the world didn't exist.

And so I guess I embedded some of that in this chapter, and some in Nora's story as well.

There's my meagre explanation. Thank you all for reading, I can't express in words how much it means to me that people are reading my story.