Domestic Terrorism, and Why Not Just Put It In Rice?

Summary: Diana and Peter make sense of everything that has happened thus far, and clear the air with others.

"Before we get to anything," I began, listening to the sirens getting closer to the beach. "You called the thing Vulture was attempting to steal a Chitauri energy core. What the hell is that?"

Peter's tone turned to confusion. "I don't actually know. Why?"

"Then how do you know what it is?"

"My suit," he explained. "My suit's technology identified it. It was developed by Mr. Stark, you know. The Tony Stark. It can do a ton more than identify alien material. Why do you want to know?"

My brow furrowed. "How did you know it was going to explode?"

"My suit told me," Peter said, exasperated. "Ned and I found one from a night I was trailing Vulture. He accidentally brought it with him to the Washington Monument… do you promise not to tell anyone this?"

I almost laughed. Here we were, discussing our top-secret identities, and Peter wanted me to keep a secret about Washington. "Promise."

"It blew up the monument," Peter said, and I froze. I may have been pretty out of it that day, but I remembered what a hot mess it was and how freaked out the media got.

"You… blew up the Washington Monument?"

"It was an accident," Peter said, flustered. "It wasn't Ned's fault. It was technically mine. It's a long story."

"Just checking," I breathed. "Just making sure. Keep going."

"It got sent through the x-ray. Ned didn't know what would happen, and he was just following the rules, but I didn't get the chance to tell him it would react to radioactivity like that. Next thing you know… pwoosh." Peter imitated an explosion with his arms in the sky. "The same thing happened here. The plane crash would have triggered it to explode. And I know Vulture's the bad guy and everything, but… I hope he's all right."

"Wait," I said, hooked on Peter's first sentence. "Did you say it went through-"

As if on cue, I felt my body freeze, and my esophagus felt like it was stapled shut as I shook with a cough. I tasted the blood before it spilled from my lips, hot and metallic, and I barely had time to turn onto my side to spit over the web. As I twisted my body, my torso burned with a rush of pain, and the suddenness made my head spin.

God, I was a wreck.

Peter was at my side in an instant, and I could feel his hand lightly touch my shoulder as my body shook with more coughs. "Diana," he said at one point. "Hey, are you good? Is that blood?"

Yes, it's blood, I thought, dumbfounded at his uncertainty. "Give me," I began, "give me a minute."

Peter only gripped my shoulder tighter, and I could feel his eyes gazing into the back of my skull. "Diana, if you're hurt, we should go, we should get you help."

I laughed immediately, and more blood escaped my smiling lips. "You want me to walk into a hospital and tell them what, exactly? Then pay a billion dollars? This isn't life-" Another cough, another spurt of blood. "This isn't life threatening, Peter."

"My aunt," he offered. "My aunt is a nurse."

"I'm assuming your aunt doesn't know you're Spider-Man, either," I said. "Not a chance."

Peter was quiet, and was probably scrutinizing the rest of my body that wasn't facing him. In other words, my poorly bandaged torso and the blood creeping down the back of my neck from my temple matting into my hair. If it was life-threatening, I concluded, I would probably be dead by now. That thought made sense, at least at the moment, and was the most comforting thing I could hold on to.

My voice was raspy from a throat coated in blood. "Don't sweat it. This isn't even the first time. This has happened. I was gonna say something," I mused. "Now I forget."

Peter was rubbing his hand up and down my shoulder as I hacked up more blood. "You mean… this is normal for you? For… your powers? Can you heal on your own?"

"No," I breathed. "My powers don't heal me. In fact, it's quite the opposite. I…"

My thought trailed off, and I chased after it in my mind, but it was too far gone.

"Diana," Peter said, and I snapped my head up, which had been slowly sinking towards the web. "What do you mean, they don't heal you? Are you sure we shouldn't get help, because I can get in touch with people, and we can keep things confidential."

A light bulb exploded above my head. "Oh! No, I remember! I remember. The x-ray. The x-ray! You said the Chitauri energy core, the x-ray, boom."

I could hear the frown in Peter's voice. "You're not making any sense."

I leaned back over onto the webbing, and laid flat on my back. For now, I seemed to be out of blood to expel from my body. "I am," I said.

Peter finally met my eyes. "You're not. I really think I should call someone. No one has to know you're you, or what happened."

I huffed out a laugh. "Look around you, smartass. It's kind of obvious we crashed your boss's super important plane." I turned my voice into a whisper. "Maybe let it cool down before you go crawling to Stark, okay?"

Peter's eyes turned sad. "Is that why you don't want help? Because it's Mr. Stark?"

I stared at Peter, saying nothing, as his words hung in the air.

"Wait," I said. "X-ray. Energy core. Explosion."

Peter looked helpless. "Diana, what are you going on about?"

I waved my arms haphazardly in the air. "This! It happened again! The Chitauri core, radiation, boom! Explosion!"

Peter nodded. "Yeah, the Chitauri core is sensitive to radiation. We already knew that."

"You're missing the point," I urged. "The Chitauri core. Vulture was after that because he makes his space shit with it, right?"

"…Right."

I grinned like a maniac. "That's how this all started! He shot me! In a fucking alley, he just shot me like a crime lord! Like a video game! Boom!"

Peter ran a hand through his dust-and-sand filled brown curls. "You're still not making sense. I get that you have a… thing… with Mr. Stark because of your dad, but he can help if we ask. I promise."

"Shut up about that already," I said, sounding more exasperated than Peter currently looked. "Radiation! The elevator!"

Peter looked down at me. "You know, you do kind of seem the same as Washington. Um, no offense, and I don't know if this means anything to you, but you're kind of delirious, and I think that's a borderline medical emergency? So, if we go to Mr. Stark, he can-"

"Quiet. I'm a genius. You said so yourself. Let me dumb it down for you," I said, holding eye contact with Peter, who held it questionably. "I was given powers from a Chitauri energy core. Chitauri energy cores are sensitive to radiation. When I went to the Washington Monument, I got, like, x-rayed or scanned or something. Then this happened. And here, there was radiation too! From the plane crash, and now I feel like shit too! I'm not a medical anomaly."

Peter sighed. "Then what are you?"

I smiled. "It's my kryptonite! Nitara was trying forever to figure it out, but nothing made sense until now. It's just radiation sickness."

Peter paled. "Just radiation sickness?"

"Don't tell anybody, will you? It's kind of my weak spot."

Peter held my arm. "If you've got radiation sickness, we've got to go get you help, like, now."

I waved him off. "Last time I just slept and it went away. Chill. It should just go away on its own. I'm not even coughing up blood anymore, see?"

Peter leaned back, looking exhausted. "Does this mean you're not afraid of elevators?"

I was silent for a moment. Then, I said, "does this mean you can swim?"

I watched as Peter's cheeks turned pink. "What? Who said I couldn't swim?"

"You might want to talk to Ned about that one. And maybe clarify it with everybody on Decathlon."

Peter cupped his face into his hands and mumbled something incoherent.

"Hey," I said. "We all have to make sacrifices for being a hero."

"Shut up," Peter mumbled. "People are gonna think I have even less talent than they already do."

I whacked Peter with my arm. "You shut up. You're literally the smartest guy I know. I have an IQ of the Hulk compared to you."

"You're amazing at Chemistry," Peter countered.

I hummed. "I'm getting a nineteen in Spanish."

Peter sat up. "Percent?"

I shrugged. "Yup. Madison doesn't know. I know I could probably do better if I tried, and stopped being Nightmare so much, but it's so damn boring."

Peter leaned on his elbows. "I guess I get that. When I think about my future, it honestly doesn't have anything to do with high school. But Aunt May wants me to do well, so here we are."

"Madison never gets off my ass about it," I vented. "But it's like, in this line of work, I'll probably be dead before thirty. No sense in wasting time doing things I hate instead of enjoying what I've got."

Peter's eyes widened. "Okay, that's morbid. But… this isn't exactly work. You know, if I got you in touch with Mr. Stark, you'd be pretty financially comfortable."

I rolled my eyes. "What are you, his ambassador? You don't even have his tech. By the way, what's up with the shitty suit? Aren't you guys in touch?"

Peter's voice became quiet. "Actually, not really. I'm not sure what he's going to think about this. Last Monday at the ferry, he got sort of mad that I kept tracking Vulture and the weapons, and now that I actually took him down… I'm hoping he can give me my suit back and that things will be all right. But seeing as we just crashed his jet, I somehow can't see that happening."

"Wait," I halted. "Did you say he took your suit last Monday?"

Peter nodded. "Yeah. Why?"

I thought back to a few hours ago, which felt like eons. In the diner, looking out the window, staring at Spider-Man in his suit across the road. He was watching me the whole time, and Nitara and Harry barely didn't notice him.

But if Peter didn't have his suit, how could that have been him?

I started to feel a cold sweat come over me. Spider-Man earlier was a dead ringer for the hero, or else I would have noticed if it were some kid's cheap costume. Peter had no reason to lie, so that meant what? That I was just seeing shit now? Was I losing my mind?

"Nothing," I said. "I just wondered. And… I don't want anything to do with Tony Stark. You can stop asking."

"Okay, okay," Peter said, then paused at a new sound. I heard it too- a concealed buzzing.

"My phone," Peter said, taking it out of his suit in a pocket I didn't know existed. "It's Ned."

I inched closer to Peter and saw the caller ID- a really unflattering picture of Ned was on the screen. "Well, aren't you going to answer it?"

Peter blinked. "What should I tell him? He knows about me being Spider-Man. Not you."

"I'll be quiet," I said, and gave a slight nod to his phone. "Better hurry."

On the fourth ring, Peter answered the call, and put the phone on speaker. "Hello?"

Ned's voice came through the phone. "Uh- Spider-Man! You're okay! Um, I haven't heard from you, and was just checking in-"

"Ned," Peter said into the phone. "Are you alone?"

A slight pause. "Negative."

Peter's brow contorted in confusion. "Who are you with Where are you?"

"Well, I haven't been able to get into another classroom," Ned said. "They've all been locked. I might've started a new rule about that. It was so bad, I was just sitting in the chemistry room, and then-"

"Ned," Peter said shortly. "This is important."

"Right, sorry, sorry," Ned rambled. "We're on the far side of the field. I'm with…" There was a brief pause on the other side of the line, and I couldn't hear any distant voices, so I assumed Ned went on mute for a second. "I'm with Nitara."

My eyebrows shot up, and Peter and I stared at each other. I reached over to the phone and put it on mute.

"Nitara knows I'm Nightmare," I clarified. "I left her before coming here."

Peter nodded and unmuted the phone. "Um, Ned, are we on speaker?"

"Nope," Ned said. "But, um, we met up earlier in the school. "But you'll never Believe it. Nitara works for Nightmare."

Peter and I exchanged glances again, and I couldn't resist saying, "Well, duh."

"Who was that?" Came Ned through the phone. "Wait, P- Spider-Man- are you with Nightmare right now?"

"Uhh, yeah," Peter answered. "Yeah. She's right next to me."

"Dude," Ned said, his voice getting higher. "That's so awesome!"

"It's on speakerphone," Peter said. "Just so you know."

I pressed my lips together.

"So Nightmare can hear me?" Ned said. "Oh, my God, hi."

I opened my mouth to say something again, but paused. What if Ned recognised my voice? Yeah, Peter and I had really poor sensory skills when it came to recognising each other, but if I talked too much, the conversation might sound like any one we'd have had at school. Sooner or later, Ned would figure it out.

So why not sooner? I had dealt with enough miscommunication for a lifetime.

"Listen, I can't talk for too long," Ned said. "Nitara here has been trying to get in touch with everybody, and she reached our friend Harry, but there's still this Diana person she's been trying to get a hold of. She's friends with Peter, you know, your photographer? So I think-"

"Oh, for God sakes," I blurted out. "Put Nitara on. She works for me, remember?"

There was a moment of silence. Then, a tiny, "Nightmare?"

"Yes," I said.

There was a shuffling over the line, and soon enough, Nitara's voice was filling the air. "Nightmare! Jesus Christ, do you know how worried I've been? I told you not to get killed and I haven't heard from you since I last saw you! I have- Diana's bag from the parking lot but I can't find her, do you know where she is?"

I rolled my eyes at Nitara's attempt to be incognito in front of Ned. "We're across the water," I said. "There was a bit of a dilemma. But… we won."

Nitara went quiet. "You… won? As in, you beat Vulture?"

I grinned and nodded, until I realised Nitara couldn't see me through the phone. "Yeah. Spider-Man and I did it together."

Nitara let out a small sigh. "And you're safe?"

I looked at Peter, who wearily smiled, then at the city lights below the hammock. "Yes. We're safe."

"Good," Nitara said. "We can celebrate when I see you again. Why the hell haven't you answered your phone?"

"You never called," I said, confused.

"I did, moron," my best friend scolded. "Seventeen times."

I hadn't checked my phone the whole time- I was busy fighting on a plane- but Nitara didn't need to know that yet. Still, surly I would have felt it vibrating. Cautiously, as if I knew what was going to happen, I pulled my phone carefully out of my back pocket, and when I saw it, my heart dropped into my gut.

Nitara's phone didn't even look this bad when she crushed it against concrete.

The screen- well, I was pretty sure part of the screen still resided in my pocket. The rest was a crackled mess spanning from the top corners of the phone halfway down. It was bent unnaturally, and various chips and interior parts were kind of just dangling from the body of the phone.

"Bad news," I whispered, not sure if Nitara could hear. "My phone cracked."

"Cracked?" said Nitara. "Does it still work?"

The crash had been a bit of a blur, but the first part of my body to hit the beach had definitely been my backside, where my pocket was. "I don't know," I said, sounding hollow. "Maybe if I put it in some rice."

Peter laughed out loud at that.

"Fuck this," I told him. "Nitara, put the phone on speaker."

Nitara went silent, doing what I asked without question. Peter whispered, "what are you doing?"

"Clearing the air," I said. "You don't have to, if you want."

"Mrs. Nightmare?" Ned was back.

"Hi, Ned," I said. "It's Diana."

Nitara inhaled a gulp of air, but Ned didn't catch on. "Diana? Wait, are you with Spider-Man and Nightmare? Wait, wait- do you know?"

"I'm not with Nightmare," I deadpanned. "I am Nightmare."

Silence.

Then, "Can I have your autograph?"

"Diana," Nitara said through the phone. "Did you just-"

"Nitara, it's Peter," Peter said suddenly, leaning closer to me and the phone. "I'm Spider-Man."

The phone line went dead.

Peter looked my way. "Did they just hang up on us?"

"Fame isn't everything, clearly," I muttered. "How come you told her?"

"You told Ned," Peter said. "I think things can be a lot more clear in the future if we're all honest with each other. Tonight, I realised… when I realised Vulture was Liz's dad, I knew I screwed up. You told me earlier not to get messed up with her, and I… ignored you. That sucked. I don't wanna distance myself from people again."

"I was in the wrong," I insisted. "I mean, not totally, but I shouldn't have pressed you without explaining the whole situation. That was manipulative and messed up, and I'm sorry."

"You meant well," Peter said. "I think that's when I realised I had to get you back."

I looked up at the sky. Besides the massive smoke cloud, the stars were a beautiful sight, and nothing really felt more perfect than right now. "Do you want to go out with me?"

The phone started ringing again, and I looked down at it and Peter, who held it in his hand. "Are you kidding? Of course I do. Every time we've moved farther away from each other, the universe just seems to blow up in our faces. It seems like the only thing to do."

I rested my head against his. "Are you going to answer that again?"

Peter sighed. "Ned again. It kind of feels like they're interrupting."

I let out a soft laugh. "Let them."

When we answered the phone on speaker again, Nitara and Ned were both there.

"Sorry!" Nitara said.

"We just needed a minute," came from Ned. Both of their voices sounded like they had been worn dry.

"Why do you sound so tired?" I asked.

"Yelling," Nitara said, out of breath. "Screams of joy. Peter Parker, you sly motherfucker, when were you going to tell me I lived in the same building as Spider-Man himself? How have I never seen you?"

"It's a gift," Peter explained. "You're on the third floor, right?"

"Yup," Nitara said. "Where are you?"

"Fourth," Peter supplied. "North corner."

Nitara huffed. "You bastard. You're right above me. You're noisy as hell, you know that?"

Peter laughed. "Well, I'm hardly ever home, it's just Aunt May and I who live there… wait, is the dance still going on?"

"The lights are still on at the school," Nitara said. "But it's close to midnight. You guys have been gone for a while. Diana, I have your stuff, so if you're good to meet up… I know you're kind of far away, but I can call an Uber or something to pick you up since your phone's trashed. We'll ride and meet you. I'm sure you're tired."

"Understatement," I breathed. "That sounds good. You know what would be better?"

"What?"

"Food," I said. "I haven't eaten since my break at work. You should pick something up along the way. Peter can text you our address for the Uber."

"Coming right up. On me. You earned it. Hold tight, okay? I'm getting it now and text when we're almost there. My dad's not home tonight, so we can all come to my place, alright?"

"Madison," I said, becoming alert. "Oh, shit, if she's called me, I can't get it."

"I'll text her, too," Nitara said. "And let her know your phone is out of commission."

I sighed. "She's not going to be happy about that."

"Well, too bad. You don't have to see her until tomorrow. We're on our way, okay?"

"Okay," I said, quietly. "See you soon."

This time, we hung up accordingly, and Peter slipped his phone back into his suit pocket.

"Do you always carry around your phone? How come it's in perfect condition?"

"My new suit has a protective pocket," Peter exclaimed. "Mr. Stark developed it specifically. If you want, I can-"

I smiled and hit Peter's arm. "Shut up."

The conversation went quiet, but it was on a good note. We sat on the hammock for quite a while, staring at the scene below. Emergency vehicles were now surrounding the plane, and a news van was there as well. It looked like Peter and I would be taking the back way out of the park.

Peter silenced the next few incoming calls on his phone. "Popular much?"

"No," he said. "Well… they're all from Happy. Who I work for, who works for Mr. Stark. He's kind of the one who's supposed to track what I do as a hero. It's funny, because he never used to answer my calls until now…"

"Let it ring," I said. "Tonight is ours."

And so, we let it ring. We were busy enough enjoying our time on top of the world, and would deal with the aftermath when we came down.

A/N: Holy Fucking Dialogue. It has been a fat while, sorry about that! This is the start of part 2, and serves as a bit of a recovery chapter, so not much action. Buildup will be more in the next chapters coming, which may also be a while, but my semester is almost over, and I think my unhealthy SNK obsession is gradually decaying into a healthy SNK obsession, so I'll be focused on both of these. My co-op term is in the winter, so with less school, I'll be posting more than once a season, lmao. Chapter 21 was so long ago, yet I vividly remember posting it in my tent in Killarney on cellular just before I went portaging. Time flies when you're not writing, am I right?

Till next time, and I hope you enjoyed the chapter,

-Nic