Gravity, and Perpetual Loneliness

Now Playing: Breakeven/The Script

Summary: Diana asks Peter for a pencil. Also, Nightmare closes in on Vulture.

As much as I tried to keep myself distracted, my eyes subconsciously floated over to my dormant phone the whole night at work. I wanted to call Peter to make sure that he didn't actually drown on the ferry, but then I would be bombarded with questions as to why I knew hew was there, and why I cared so much about Spider-Man after I told him that I didn't.

So, I didn't call, and tried to serve people food and take phone calls from customers instead of wondering whether or not my crush was nothing but a floating corpse in the East River.

You can imagine the relief when I sat next to a silent, studious Peter Parker the next day in Chemistry.

"What happened to you guys?" Nitara asked at lunch. "I haven't seen you speak a word to each other since Washington."

The sad part was, I barely spoke to Peter before Washington, either. He was always so damn busy. And calling him out on it was like attacking his personal life with a cannon. Of course, I had found out the hard way. And of course, I kept it to myself.

"We've just both been so busy," I lied. "It's hard with our schedules."

"Well, I hope you've cleared your schedules for Homecoming at the end of the week," Nitara said. "Harry and I are both going together. We could finally pull off that double date."

I tried to keep the awkward look off my face when Nitara brought up the idea of another double date. "Ned said he was meeting Michelle there, and they don't have dates," I excused. "I don't see why we can't all just go as a group of friends."

"Because we're on a different plane than platonic," Nitara sighed. "Either way, Harry and I can pick you up from your work Friday and drive you to the school."

I agreed. It would be incredibly awkward, but if Peter didn't change, I may not even have to worry about him being there. If worst came to worst, I could talk to Ned in the corner about Star Wars or to Michelle about true crime. It was just one night, and Peter had shown all throughout school that day that he was proficient at returning our rapport to being lightly acquainted, at best.

My mind flashed back to the only interaction we had all day. Do you have a pencil? He had asked. No, I replied.

I worked that night, and the day after. So, I had determined Thursday as the day to initiate my next plan.

"I'm calling it Operation Ignoramus Takedown," I told Nitara over the phone. "You should see the kinds of guys that work for Vulture. They've got their heads so far up their asses I wonder how they can even breathe."

I was creeping around the exterior of the warehouse, a safe distance away. I was far enough that they couldn't hear me unless I screamed, and I was hidden for any security cameras they may have had.

"Just don't get caught," Nitara said. "And whatever you do, don't hang up. If something happens to you, I'm calling the cops and telling them everything."

"You had better not tell them everything," I muttered. "We've committed our own crimes, remember? You're my accomplice. Sorry, by the way."

"I'm a minor," Nitara said. "I'll be fine."

"You'll be taking your SATs in juvie. Just don't be rash."

"You know me. Unrash is my middle name."

I wrinkled my nose and lowered my voice as I crept closer to the faded and vandalized concrete wall of the warehouse. "That's not a word."

"You're right. It's a name. Now, shut up and don't get caught."

I kept Nitara on the line as I took my phone from my ear and pulled up my camera on the screen. I was almost certain that they had some type of surveillance system in place, so I decided to use a trick I had had up my sleeve for some time.

It was still in the beta phase. And I probably should have tested to see whether it would go through walls. But when I closed my eyes and focused, the dark of the night around me was covered entirely by an intangible inky black cloud.

I needed to keep two things in mind. One, that this trick didn't last forever. And two, that because of that, I had to disable their cameras so that Vulture's idiots supposed they stopped working on their own.

The cloud worked like this- immediately, I could trigger it to spread darkness at the speed of light. But it only lingered for so long, from my experience from both of the alleys I had used it before in. The cameras they had would record a simultaneous blackout, which could be interpreted as an electrical failure, but if the cameras recorded it fading, their miniscule brains might just realize that it had been me to initiate the blackout. So, I had to cut the cameras before I got my proof of the location in the form of photography.

I looked over the bush currently concealing me. On this side of the warehouse, there were windows lining the very top of the wall. I wasn't tall enough to see through them, but neither was any other average human.

Then again, I wasn't the average human.

I slipped out of the bush and rushed through the darkness to the edge of the warehouse. Keep it in check. Don't go through the walls or you're fucked. They'll know it's you.

First, I decided to tackle the camera. On the corner of the wall, there was a 360 degree one that surveyed both sides of the wall. Strategic placement, but almost too easy for me to ignite a trail and crack through the glass with, effectively destroying it.

I yanked the hook out of the wall and placed it on the ground for good measure, so it didn't look like it had been taken out by me, but instead demolished by gravity.

Step one was done.

I jumped into the next phase of the plan. I walked back over to the centre of the wall, and dug three trails into the ground to hoist me a solid five feet into the air. I stared through the dark effortlessly at my phone screen, and pulled up the panorama, then held it flat on the glass.

The entire warehouse was visible through the lens.

Too easy, I thought as I slid my phone across the glass to capture as much of the room as I could. During the process, I peeked through the glass myself, and nearly shit myself at the weapons that lined the back wall. They weren't just guns. Some were half my size, with violet cores. One was sitting on a table as a short man took a screwdriver to the side, and spat purple sparks in every direction. His face was clearly visible in my camera. In the corner of the room, another man had his feet up on a counter, and narrowed his eyes at a computer screen.

The darkness was fading, and I resisted the urge to move the camera faster so I wouldn't ruin the photo. The man had now taken his feet down and was staring attentively at the computer screen. He gave it a tap, and I could tell he was the one monitoring the now-down security camera.

He began to turn my way, and I ducked out of sight and ran.

The darkness was practically gone as I ran back towards the bush in case the man came outside to investigate. There was no sign of me ever being there, except for the decimated camera, which could be blamed on faulty installation for all I cared. I had one job left to do, and that was to book it.

"D," I heard Nitara call through the phone. "D! Answer me! What's happening?"

I kept running for another minute until I deemed it to be far enough away to be out of their zone of suspicion. "I'm fine," I gasped, leaning against a tree trunk opposite to the warehouse behind me. "Everything went fine. I'm fine."

I didn't let myself rest much in terms of staying stagnant, because I wanted to put as much distance between myself and that godforsaken warehouse as possible.

"I got the picture," I continued through the phone, still panting quite a bit from my sprint. "I'm sending it to you now. Just in case."

"I still don't get why I couldn't go with you," Nitara nearly clamoured. "I haven't ever seen you pull a blackout. Just stories. D, it sounds awesome-"

"Don't freak out about it," I said in a hushed voice as I found where I had stashed my backpack from earlier, and pulled out my green jacket while taking my mask off. Hopefully, I looked like a relatively normal person and could walk home without trouble. "It sounds better than it is. I could only keep it going for a good thirty seconds."

"That's better than nothing," Nitara said. "You know, you could bring me with you sometime and we could practice."

"Tonight was a risk," I replied, setting off on the long journey back to my empty apartment. "I have to find somewhere deserted where no one will notice if I accidentally send a whole block into darkness."

Nitara laughed. "How about Vulture's warehouse after we take him down? Or, you know, I have twenty other empty ones checked off on that map, still."

"We'll see. I want to get Toomes out of the way first. I'll see you tomorrow?"

"Tomorrow," Nitara said. "And, um, I might not be in class. Harry and I are-"

I stared at my phone. Again? Not even ten days ago, Nitara had cut class to be with Harry. "You what?"

"We'll be… out." I could tell that Nitara was choosing her words wisely. "But we can still pick you up at your work. We'll be out of there by eight. Remember, you can just change in the car. Harry can sit in the front. So bring your clothes there with you."

I rolled my eyes, knowing full well Nitara could hear the gesture in my accompanying sigh. "I'll see you then."

I hung up the phone before Nitara could get a word in edgewise.

Maybe I was jealous at Harry for taking my best friend from me. Or maybe I was jealous that Nitara got to be in on the Nightmare action and still have a functioning relationship. Most likely, I figured, it was both.

I reminisced over the last couple of months. When had I ever really hung out with Nitara like we used to, before all this shit happened? We had a grand total of two sleepovers in that time. No thanks to Madison becoming suspicious, of course. It seemed my social life was crumbling apart and I didn't know who to blame it on.

I ate lunch alone the next day.

Peter and Ned were God knows where, but perhaps that was the best considering our current predicament. Which, I realised, I had no idea how I would fix. Just tell Peter I was Nightmare? That was insane.

Was it as insane as me sitting alone at lunch every day for my remaining three years of high school?

Michelle and I had a mutual understanding where we sat at the farthest opposite ends of the cafeteria table from each other. Every time we did that, I could feel her eyes observing me, even though we never spoke.

So when the bell rang after such an exhausting week, I was almost excited to go to work if it meant forgetting about the hellhole of a school Midtown was.

Friday evenings were never quiet at Queens Diner, but they were incomparable to Saturdays and all day Sundays. The red cushioned booths lining the windows were nearly full, save for one closest to the desk I sat at to greet new customers.

By seven-thirty, I had fallen into my routine, and every time someone came in to eat or pick up food, they got an earful of my work voice. I hated it, they probably hated it, but there was an unspoken agreement between customers and I that I spoke to them in a way that always ended my sentences sounding like a question.

The next time the door chimed, I hardly had a second thought before plastering a fake smile on my face and saying, "Hi, how are you doing?" before turning around only to be laughed at.

"We're doing splendid," Nitara snorted, cozying up to Harry's shoulder. "A booth, please."

I didn't reply, just sent a look of disdain towards the couple I would be third wheeling with tonight before grabbing two paper menus and slipping off the stool to lead them to the only booth left. The one directly beside my front desk.

"I'll have a strawberry daquiri," Nitara said, not even bothering to look at the menu while Harry patiently flipped through his own.

I rolled my eyes. "Even if you weren't six years away from the legal drinking age, I still wouldn't be able to serve it to you. I can get you a virgin daquiri, if you'd like."

Nitara pushed her menu away. "You're no fun."

Harry stacked his menu on Nitara's. "We'll actually have two lemonades and some fries."

I didn't even need to write their order down. "That, I can do."

After giving the order to Marty in the kitchen, I put it upon myself to clear the few booths that had since become vacant while Harry and Nitara participated in the Queens Diner fine dining ritual. It wasn't that fancy. Just bulb lights hanging from the slanted ceiling, a grey plank floor, white checkered walls and red accents everywhere. No matter how much I suggested to Marty how good it would look if we got plants or ivy for the interior, he would never splurge the money for it.

While Nitara and Harry ate, I slipped back behind the counter. Friday nights usually still had crowds coming in until late, so if anyone were to appear, I would be a the ready.

My eyes caught movement through the glass door, and I snapped my focus to the view outside. The sun was at just the right height to reflect through the glass to make me squint, but I saw it again through the gleam. Something definitely moved.

Looking past the parking lot, I could see part of the apartments with storefronts across the street. At this time of day, most of them were closed, but a figure was sitting cross-legged on one of the awnings. They were probably too far for the naked eye to see, but I didn't exactly have a naked eye. It was more like a dressed-up eye. Because what other people probably couldn't see from the distance from my stool to the awning diagonal down the street, I could make out clear as day.

The near-perfect equilibrium, the wide white eyes and the red-and-blue suit all gave away the vigilante staring down my work building.