Peter thanked his lucky stars that he had been blessed with a somewhat decent memory as he made his way back to the Power Station without any sort of map, or guidance, or almost any light whatsoever. Truthfully, the closer it got the easier it was to pinpoint the place – just follow the burning heat and you're there!
This is not a suicide mission, he told himself. I just have to activate the protocol and get into the escape pod and it's all good. Completely risk-free.
Why didn't you tell Lena what you were doing, then? A little voice in his head spoke.
He gritted his teeth. Shut up.
And now he was arguing with himself.
Shaking his head to clear his thoughts, Peter thought back to what he'd said to Crux back in the Milano, before he'd bolted out of the ship to come here.
"I'll do it," he'd said.
You idiot.
Entering the Power Station cautiously, Peter surveyed the surroundings. Where there had been several sections of a glass-like barrier separating the room from the Reactor itself, most of its panes had been replaced by metal plates that, judging by the shards scattered all over the room, had come down after the first barrier had been compromised. Peter could only count himself lucky that he wasn't there when it happened, but then counted himself unlucky that there were still a few panes left that could easily blow up on his face.
Need to be quick. He thought before moving to action.
Peter approached what looked like the manual control panel – not a computer, but a wall with manual levers and buttons – and started his search for the Emergency Protocol switch. Granted, he was just mostly hoping there would be a giant 'Press here for Emergency Protocol' button easy for him to find, but he had no such luck.
Eventually, he came across a small label in bold letters that read 'EMERGENCY ONLY' and let out a triumphant noise. It was a fairly small door close to the ground that took a few hard kicks to break the lock open, but eventually he was able to access its contents. There was a big, heavy looking lever inside, as well as a slot next to it.
"Take this," Crux had told him, handing him a key-looking item. "You'll need it to activate the Protocol."
Pulling the key from his pocket, Peter carefully stuck it inside the slot and turned, hearing the mechanical noises of something happening. Immediately after, there was a groan from the reactor behind him which may or may not have been just a coincidence, but it still prompted him to hurry the hell up and grab the handle of the lever.
"Ow!" Peter yelped, pulling his hand back. The handle was incredibly hot to the touch.
Dammit, Len I could have really used my jacket right now…
"What the hell do you think you're doing?!"
Peter's head snapped up. "Huh, what?" He said, feigning innocence before realizing that no, Lena didn't hear his thoughts and she was actually mad at him for a whole different reason.
Wait, Lena?
"Lena?" He echoed his thoughts as he stared at the – angry – woman standing on the entrance of the Power Station. "What—What are you doing here?"
"No, what are you doing here?!" She yelled at him.
"I'm activating the pro—"
"I meant what the hell did you think you were doing ditching me to go on a suicide mission?!" She snapped.
"It's not a suicide mission!" He snapped back. "And someone had to do it, because Crux sure as hell wasn't going to get up anytime soon!"
"And you didn't even think to talk to me about it?!"
"Because you'd have tried to stop me—"
"Well, look at how that turned out!"
"And whose fault is that?!"
"Yours!"
Peter scowled, realizing that Lena was suddenly standing much closer. "What? No! Go back to the ship."
"Like hell I will."
"Listen, someone needs to activate this protocol, and it needs to be done soon! We don't wanna find out what's going to happened if it doesn't."
"Yes, I realize that – but I'm not letting you do this ridiculously dangerous thing alone!"
Peter stopped for a couple of seconds. "What?"
"I'm not here to stop you, I'm here to do it with you. If we're gonna do this, we are gonna do this."
"What?" Peter repeated. "No. No, Len, go back to the ship."
Lena shook her head. "Out of the question. If you go, I go, if you stay, I'll stay."
Peter drew his eyebrows together. "This is dangerous."
Lena agreed. "And stupid. What kind of friend would I be if I just let you do this on your own?"
Peter blinked in silence, staring at her resolute expression that made it clear that there was nothing he could say to change her mind. Why was she like this?
She'd just told him.
We're friends, he thought almost giddily. Friends don't let friends do stupid things… alone.
Peter mentally slapped himself back into focus.
"So now what?" He asked after a few moments of silence.
Lena blinked as well, her expression smoothing out. "We activate the protocol."
Peter nodded, letting out a breath. He pointed at the lever with his head. "That. But it's too hot to touch." He said and paused, eyes lingering on her figure before speaking again. "Take off your clothes."
"What?"
"I—I meant your jacket. I need your jacket." He cleared his throat. That's not—That's not where he wanted his mind to go at all.
Lena stared at him uncertainly before realizing what he wanted to do and promptly took off her jacket to hand it to him.
Peter took the piece of clothing and crouched next to the lever, wrapping its handle with the jacket. Carefully taking a hold of the handle again, relieved to find out it didn't burn his hand, he tried turning it. It didn't budge at first, so Peter applied more strength, finally feeling it move inch by inch… By inch, by inch… Peter was using all his strength at that point, but the damn thing was far too heavy to move more than an inch at a time. It was doable, but it would take far too long.
He let go of the lever with a grunt, wiping his hands on his pants even though that wasn't likely going to help, and resumed his previous position just as another set of hands grabbed the handle as well.
Looking up at Lena who had just crouched next to him, they nodded at each other, understanding what they had to do. After mouthing a count to three, they both applied their strength.
"C'mon," Peter grunted as the lever turned, faster than before but still fairly slowly.
"I'm… doing it," Lena responded through gritted teeth.
The lever continue to move with much difficulty until it didn't, when it suddenly turned all the way with a snap as if the force holding it back had suddenly let go, causing Peter to almost tumble into Lena.
"Did it work?" She asked, letting go of the handle.
"I don't—" Peter started, but the words died mid-sentence when the lights overhead went dark.
Everything was eerily quiet for a moment and Peter started to wonder if they'd accidentally pulled the wrong lever, until a low rumble made itself known deep beneath them. Suddenly a panel lit up next to the lever, the words 'Emergency Protocol Activated' bright in the darkness before the red emergency lights popped back in. At the same time the rumble grew, getting bigger, louder and more violent until everything started shaking around them, but its sound was quickly muffled by the startling noise of sirens coming to life.
"We- - -to go!" Lena yelled, trying to get her voice across the deafening noise.
Peter nodded vehemently and stood up – if the ejection sequence had already started, they needed to get to the escape pod fast. "We need to find the escape pod!" He yelled. Lena furrowed her brows and motioned that she couldn't hear him so he yelled again louder, "Escape pod! Find it!"
Lena nodded this time and immediately started looking around for a clue. Just as Peter was about to do the same the room suddenly jerked, nearly sending them both off their feet.
"This is not good." Peter said, although mostly to himself as Lena couldn't hear him. Another violent jerk shook the room, effectively sending Peter to the ground.
Grunting, he pulled himself up as his eyes searched for Lena. She was on the floor as well, and at first he thought she'd fallen down like him until he saw she was less sprawled on the ground, and more crouched down on her own. Not only that, but she also was intensely focused on something, which he eventually noticed it was the emergency panel itself.
Peter dragged himself closer to see what she was looking at, and found her looking at a map-like schematic next to the lever they'd pulled.
"The escape pod!" She yelled next to his ear, pointing at the small map. "That's where it is."
Squinting on the red lighting, Peter followed her finger and found the dot marking 'ESCAPE POD'. Quickly memorizing the path as best as he could, he nodded at her. "Let's go." He said.
They got up quickly, eager to get as far away from the reactor as they could. Halfway through the room, another jerk shook them off balance, and Peter clutched Lena's arm before she could fall as he gripped a nearby column to support them both. In the middle of regaining her balance, however, Lena froze.
Peter's brows furrowed as he stared at her, and he would have asked what was wrong if the sirens hadn't still been blasting at full volume. Eventually he followed her line of sight, turning around to see what she was looking at behind him.
Oh shit.
The last remaining panes of glass that separated them from the reactor had several cracks that were growing by the second. Not only that, but the reactor also seemed to be behaving a lot more violent than before.
Not good at all.
Lena said something he couldn't quite catch but that he was pretty sure mirrored his exact thoughts.
"We need to get out of here."
At the same time he gave Lena a push, she tugged on his shirt towards the exit, and not a second later they both bolted out of the door. They started running down the long dark hallway, with Peter briefly wondering how far they should go and if they should just sprint all the way to the escape pod – but his thoughts were cut short by a loud explosion coming from behind them, and suddenly—something crashed into him. Hard.
Peter was unsure of the situation he was in when he opened his eyes, which probably meant he'd just blacked out. Or maybe he was still blacked out – he couldn't see a damn thing in front of him, even though he was pretty sure his eyes were open.
Breathing was also difficult, and after shifting around and discovering his movements were extremely restricted, Peter realized there was something large and heavy pressing down his chest – as well as all around him. He was essentially buried in what seemed to be a pile of debris, and a heavy one at that.
"Shit," Peter muttered as he tried to free his other arm - one of them was stuck beneath something, while the other one could at least still move around. Moving around, however, caused a sharp bolt of pain to flare through his side, and Peter sobered up at the realization that the situation might be more dire than he'd initially thought.
Moving his legs also caused pain to flash through one of them, and there was definitely a sticky wet feeling on the back of his head that probably meant a concussion at least. Cursing his luck, Peter tried pushing out in every direction, trying to get anything to move, to free himself, but nothing would budge – and what did, only caused pressure in all the wrong places. With his free hand he tried reaching his belt, hoping that maybe he'd brought a gravity mine or something, but no such luck – there was only his blasters, and he didn't want to risk using it in such tight quarters in case it'd backfire on him. Honestly, this was meant to be a simple delivery job, so he'd left most of his equipment on the Milano… And maybe he should have thought of that before running out of the ship to go on a now-more-than-ever potentially suicide mission to save a few thousand lives.
This hero thing is not for me, he thought grimly. Next time we really shouldn't—
Wait.
He hadn't been alone.
The memory of Lena running alongside him as they fled the Power Station just now caught up to him and his panic levels suddenly shot up. Lena was there, and she probably had been caught in the same explosion, blast, or whatever it was that knocked him out, which meant that she was either somewhere out there and maybe able to help him, or…
"Lena!" He yelled as loud as he could muster, although his voice ended up being drowned out by the noise of the sirens that were still blaring – and was it just him, or did they get louder and faster? Either way, it set him on a frenzy – he had no idea how much time they had until the whole place blew up with them inside.
With renewed vigor – and maybe a little desperation – Peter went back to pushing and pulling on the wreckage on top of him, even if it only ended up causing him pain instead of actually getting out of the way, when some of the debris suddenly shifted beside him.
Peter froze, briefly wondering if his efforts weren't actually just causing the debris to bury him further, until he realized the movement wasn't being caused by him at all.
"Lena!" He tried again, but given that there was no answer, or at least none that he could hear, he couldn't tell if it was really her or not.
Still, there was a chance, so instead of digging up with his free hand, he tried pushing it in the direction of the movement.
There was definitely someone down there with him, that much he could tell, and he didn't know whether he should be alarmed that she was also trapped, or relieved that, at the very least, she was still alive.
She's alive, we're alive. One thing at a time.
Pushing further with his hand while trying to ignore the biting pain on his side, Peter started to lose hope of her being in touching distance when all he felt was hard surface after hard surface. That was, until he finally bumped into something that was decidedly not metal, and definitely alive.
It felt like skin, maybe fingers – her hand? Definitely, as her fingers started feeling his, awkwardly trying to grasp them even though they were both buried under who-knows-what. Peter called out her name again in another vain attempt of communication, but she still didn't seem to hear him. After another failed attempt at pushing the debris away from him and only resulting in sort of freeing his other arm, Peter defeatedly settled back down against the ground.
Now what? He thought – and those sirens were absolutely going faster now, no denying it. Current equipment can't help, my rocket boosters would only send me crashing head first into more junk…
Peter was snapped out of his thoughts when Lena's hand gave his a sharp tug, and he instinctively tightened his grip on it so as not to lose her. He could feel her move around and wondered if she had found a way out, a small ray of hope that maybe they could get out of this mess, when suddenly he heard a noise that wasn't coming from the sirens.
"…eter? Peter?"
It was a voice, her voice, coming from his comm. With his free hand, Peter reached behind his ear to activate his mask and the comm along with it.
"Lena?" He spoke loudly – the mask helped muffle the noise, but the sirens were still blasting loudly in the background.
"I'm here!" She spoke – or yelled – into her comm.
"You had your comm with you this entire time?!"
"What?" She yelled – it seemed she was still having trouble hearing him.
"Your comm! You had it with you?"
"This is my data pad!" She responded. "I had to rig an emergency connection right now!"
He wasn't sure what that meant, but at least they could talk – Lena's modified comm had gotten them in trouble before when it was mistaken as a spying device, so this time she'd left it back in the ship until she got around to fixing it, or, maybe, just making it less suspicious. She'd still insisted on bringing her data pad along, 'just in case'.
"Well, we need to get out of here!" Peter said.
"Do you have a gravity mine?"
"No, I left it in my jacket!"
"Why?!"
"You told me not to wear it!"
"Don't you have pockets?!"
"That doesn't fit in there!"
He could hear an exasperated sigh at the same time her hand twitched in his. "Okay, what about your boosters?!"
"So I can boost myself headfirst into a concussion? If I don't have one already!"
"No, you smartass, to attach them to something! Free some of the weight on top of us!"
"Won't work! Too heavy!"
There was a pause before Lena yelled, "Give them to me!"
"What?"
"Pass them here!" Lena shook their intertwined hands to emphasize her point. "I think I can do it!"
Peter paused for a moment. "Okay. Give me a sec."
It took some work to be able to reach down his leg with his free hand and pull one booster off, and he ended up cutting his hand in the process. Then came the part of actually passing it on to her, which he realized he wouldn't be able to do with the hand that wasn't holding hers. This meant that…
Peter loosened his grip on her hand and immediately felt her hold tighten on his. "Lena." He called. "I'm going to need to let go for a second."
Lena didn't respond, but he felt her hand loosen in his, allowing him to pull his arm back.
Peter felt uneasy letting go, part of him almost afraid that she was just going to disappear if he wasn't touching her, but they were short on time. Quickly pulling his arm back, once again scraping his hand on a sharp edge, he was able pull his hand out of the hole, grab the booster, and shove his hand back in – worsening the cuts on his hand in the process. Still, he was able to push through the same path he'd used before and eventually he let out a sigh of relief when he bumped into her fingers again.
The relief was short lived, however, when suddenly everything went quiet. It was almost deafening now, no sirens blaring, no noise of any sort.
"Peter?" Lena's voice came through the comm, breaking the silence.
To say that Peter had a very bad feeling about this was putting it lightly. "Take the booster. Quick."
Lena didn't say anything and just did as he said, her fingers grasping the booster from his hand and quickly pulling it away – right on time, as everything around them suddenly started to shake.
Several pieces of the wreckage around Peter got dislodged with the movement and he had to pull his hand back to avoid getting his arm crushed. The one sharp piece that dug into his side suddenly moved, and Peter let out a strained groan when he felt it pierce his flesh at the same time another one pressed down on his chest, knocking all air out of his lungs. At first he tried pushing the last one away, but when a sharp cry cut through the air his attention shifted entirely.
"Lena!" He managed to wheeze out, his mind somehow only thinking the worst.
There was no response right away and he immediately went into panic mode as he ignored the pain on his side and made another attempt at moving the junk on top of him.
"Peter?" Came Lena's voice not from his comm, but somewhere outside. Peter stopped pushing at the debris and deactivated his mask to make sure he heard it right, and just as well, Lena called his name again and he definitely didn't need his comm to hear her.
"Lena!" He called back louder. "Are you okay?!"
"I'm out!" She said. Relief washed over him at her words – at least one of them wasn't trapped anymore. "Where are you?"
"Here!" He spoke and tried to push at the thing holding him down, only to stop when it made the metal piece dig into his side further.
"Peter?" Lena called again, sounding closer this time.
Instead of pushing things away, he found a gap between the ground and the debris big enough for him to stick his hand through, in hopes of signaling his location to her.
"I'm here!" He yelled as loud as he could.
After a couple of seconds, he spotted a shadow approaching through the gap. Something then touched his hand, and much to his relief, it was Lena kneeling down to peer through the hole. He couldn't see her entire face, and what he saw was bathed in the red emergency lights – but it was her nonetheless, and the situation suddenly seemed a lot more optimistic than it was a minute ago.
"Hey." She said. "How are you doing down there?"
"Could be better. Could be worse."
"Okay." Lena took a deep breath. "Okay. Okay. I'm gonna get you out. Just hold on."
Lena got up, leaving Peter to stare at the empty space. He thought he saw some shadows move, so he waited patiently as Lena worked on a way to get him out.
Nothing happened.
"Lena?" He called.
"I'm… trying." She answered, voice sounding strained. Peter could hear groans and the occasional sound of metal, but nothing that was holding him down seemed to move out of place.
After a few moments, he called her name again. "Lena?"
"I'm trying!" She snapped, but her voice seemed to be less angry and more… desperate. "It's just… it won't budge." She paused. "Peter, can you try giving it a push?"
Peter let out a grunt as he surveyed his situation again. "Yeah?"
"Then do it. On the count to three."
"I—okay."
Peter pulled his hand back and on three tried pushing again with all his might. He could hear Lena doing something, could feel the metal digging deep into his side, but still, nothing that mattered actually seemed to budge. A cold feeling washed over him.
He was really, definitely, trapped down there.
If the tremor from before hadn't been enough to set him free, something told him that he was trapped much deeper than he'd initially thought. Sure, maybe Lena could find a way to get him out, but that would take time.
And the clock was ticking.
Peter sucked in a breath at the realization, not only of what the current situation was, but of what would be happening soon and how they'd be caught up in it… if he didn't do anything about it.
His breath hitched as another realization hit him.
Something had to be done, and he had to be the one do it.
"Lena." He called her name once more.
"Just give me a second!" She snapped again, sounding a lot more frantic this time.
"Lena!"
"What?!"
Peter gritted his teeth and swallowed hard. He didn't want to say it, didn't want to even think about it, but he knew he had to do it.
"You need to go." He said.
"What?"
"You need to leave!" He snapped, part of his mind annoyed that he had to repeat the words he'd been dreading to say out loud. Why are you making this harder?!
There was a pause. Peter anxiously waited for a response.
"…I'm not going to leave when you're still trapped down there." She finally said.
Not the response he was expecting.
Peter would have thrown his hands up if he had enough room. "Exactly!" He said, his voice growing louder and more agitated than he intended. "I'm trapped – can't get out! But you're not! And this place – it's going to blow up any minute now, so please just leave."
There was another pause. In his mind, Lena would stop arguing, realize he was right, and then get the hell out of there before she got caught up in the blast that would definitely kill him dead in an unknown amount of time and – okay, thinking about that last part suddenly caused his panic levels to shoot up through the roof. If his chest wasn't being constricted he was pretty sure he'd start hyperventilating then and – okay, maybe he was hyperventilating.
Goddammit, he was trying to keep a clear head here and his body definitely wasn't helping.
Peter had been so focused on trying to keep his breathing in check that he didn't even notice Lena kneeling back down on the floor, only realizing she was there when he caught sight of her face through the same gap from before.
She stared at him for a moment, lips pressed together in a tight line until she finally spoke. "You're being ridiculous. Now shut up and help me move these."
Lena made a move to get up but Peter interrupted her. "I'm being ridiculous?" He exclaimed, voice bordering on hysteria. "What part of 'No matter how much we try we can't move anything so I'm definitely, one hundred percent, absolutely trapped down here' did you not understand?"
She scoffed. "What part of 'no, I'm not going to leave you here alone to die' did you not understand?!"
Hearing the words said out loud brought back the panic from before – of course he'd die if she left him there, probably very painfully as well – dammit, brain – but that wasn't even the worst possible outcome he could think of. The worst outcome would be her staying there and ending up dead just because she was trying to save his sorry ass.
And he would much rather save her life instead.
Peter gritted his teeth, pushing back the panic. "Do you think I want this?" He said. "I don't, I really, really don't, but I…" His breath hitched. "You can't—I'm not—I'm not going to drag you down with me."
Peter looked at her, staring right in her eyes, silently begging her to just do as he asks because the clock is ticking and goddammit, he's not sure when he started putting someone else's life above his but he's not going to let her die if he can help it.
She didn't say anything. His anxiety grew with each passing second until he actually stopped to focus on her eyes, or rather on the way that they also seemed to be trying to tell him something. There was a sad look there, he was pretty sure they were glistening under the red lights, but there was also a stubbornness present, a look of determination and resolve that was so incredibly Lena that he actually started to wonder why he ever thought he could convince her in the first place.
"Peter." She said sternly. "I am not going to leave you here to die."
Peter feared he was playing a losing game, but he still tried. "If you don't, you'll die too."
"I'm not leaving you."
And as if on cue, everything started to shake again.
The metal pushed deeper into his side but he paid it no mind – he was entirely focused on Lena as he silently begged her to just please leave now. She wasn't looking at him, however, as her attention had been diverted by the sudden tremor.
"Lena," he tried one last time, "please, just go."
She looked back at him. Her eyes were set in a mixture of resolve and resignation, and he just knew that she wasn't going anywhere.
And that thought both alarmed and comforted him, in a way.
Everything was still shaking, Peter briefly noted, and yet nothing seemed to dislodge from atop of him. He seemed to be well and truly fucked.
Lena suddenly moved then, not to get up, but to shift her arm in a way to push her hand through the gap in the wreckage. Some part of him wondered what she was trying to do, as all the energy had seemingly abandoned his body and left him in a tired, defeated state, unable to process complex thoughts such as why is Lena reaching her hand towards me?
Meanwhile, another part of his brain decided to provide an answer.
Take my hand.
Peter.
Take my hand.
A stab of guilt suddenly shot through him and it hurt far more than any wound in his body. His eyes burned as the memory tried to push itself to the forefront of his mind, his one biggest failure playing on repeat inside his head no matter how hard he tried to push it back down. His head was invaded by unwelcome trains of thought, echoing somehow both past and present feelings, and Peter just stopped fighting it.
I messed up.
I failed her.
It's too late for me to make it right.
For a moment all he could see was his mom. There she was, deathly fragile on her hospital bed, hand weakly reaching towards him, eyes filled with hurt and disappointment as her own son stubbornly refused to comply with her one last request –
And then he blinked and suddenly there was Lena, right in front of him, only half visible through the wreckage, hand trying to push through the debris to reach him but not quite getting there – and this was the present, this was real, she was real, and they were both going to die.
I messed up.
Again.
I'm sorry.
A stray thought entered his head about how this was his – and Lena's – last moments, and how in her last moments, right here, right now, she was still reaching out to him despite it being all his fault.
He doesn't know why – his mind can't quite process it right now – but he does realize that, even though he's essentially failed her in every other aspect, he could at least make one thing right.
So he took her hand.
It was a small gesture, requiring practically no effort on his part, but it almost made him feel better about their impending doom.
It also made him feel selfish – it was his fault she was there after all – and his mind suddenly started going through several different scenarios in which he was able to keep them both, or at least her, out of harm's way.
Ultimately, though, there was nothing left to do.
Peter squeezed her hand.
I'm sorry, Len.
I've been a terrible friend.
She squeezed his hand back.
It's okay, he assumed is what she was trying to say with her eyes. That or, you're a screw up, Peter.
Maybe both.
Peter tried to take a deep breath, forgetting and immediately remembering the fact that his chest was still being constricted against the ground.
Until it suddenly wasn't.
He was floating. But not in the I'm-dead-now-I-have-ascended-to-a-higher-plane kind of way. He was literally floating off the ground, his entire body becoming almost weightless in that familiar way of a place that has—
No gravity.
Peter blinked, snapping back to his senses as he actually started taking in the situation. It wasn't just him that was floating, it was everything, including the debris he'd been trapped under. The pressure on his body had been lifted and he finally felt free – also including the droplets of blood floating out of the now-released wound on his side, which he promptly covered with his free hand.
And he finally took a look at Lena, his view of her no longer obstructed by the debris, and by the surprised and hopeful look on her face, he could tell she was thinking the same thing he was.
Gravity is gone.
There's a way out.
Lena's hand tightened around his and he felt himself being pulled, not towards something, but into a surprising, but not unwelcome, hug. It was almost like he could feel her relief through it – or maybe it's his seeping through – as the hopelessness that had been hanging in the air suddenly dissipated, and with it came the realization that they weren't in the clear yet.
Lena apparently came to the same realization as she pulled away and spoke, "We need to go now."
Peter couldn't agree more.
After making sure he had a firm hold on her, Peter activated his remaining booster and it propelled them down the corridor. It took some maneuvering around the floating debris, and having only one booster didn't help, but eventually, thankfully, they found the small hatch that read 'ESCAPE POD' on the door. Peter couldn't contain the sigh of relief that escaped him the second he saw the words, and Lena promptly moved from his hold to get the door open.
They wasted no time getting inside, and the first thing Peter noticed was that the artificial gravity was still functioning inside the pod, as crossing its threshold caused his and Lena's weight to suddenly pull them both back down, with Peter hitting his injured leg against a panel in this cramped space that definitely wasn't built for two. The second thing he noticed was just that – only one person was meant to use this pod at a time, with the two of them throwing themselves into the single seat available and finding themselves pressed against each other.
"Definitely not made for two," Peter spoke out loud as he shifted around trying to relieve the pain on his wounded side. Lena let out a vague sound of agreement, but she was already focused on getting the engine started as the pod's intended capacity held no significance in the fact that they were both going to use it anyway.
"Peter." Lena called after a moment. "Pull that lever," she said, pointing to the panel above them.
Peter did as he was told, somehow only now realizing that Lena's shoulder was, in fact, bleeding through her shirt, which was limiting one of her arms' movement. It seemed that she couldn't get to some of the panels with her injured shoulder, so he had to be the one to do it as she relayed the instructions. It took them both a few seconds of hurried fiddling with the pod's controls, but eventually they got the engine started.
"Let's get out of here." Peter said.
"You don't have to tell me that." Lena answered, pushing the button that would finally propel them out of there.
IT'S DONE. IT'S FINALLY DONE.
I hate this chapter.
You guys don't understand how much I struggled to get this thing done. 10k+ words! It just wouldn't stop growing!
At first it started with an idea for a dramatic scene, which I then realized I would have to write the set up for said scene, and then when I finally got to the scene I wanted I just didn't know how to actually write it. There were a lot of rewrites, which was why it took me so long (ok, so not the only reason) and I'm still not satisfied at how it turned out. But still, here it is, enjoy, and we can finally go back to the silly fluff!
Like, seriously though, I apologize if anything in these two chapters seemed rushed or weird or anything, but I've spent too much time on these already and if I don't post it now, we'll never move on to better things.
Regardless, enjoy! Thank you everyone who's still reading this story, I really appreciate it!