"To our very own, Lena Potts, my lovely niece, for taking out a threat of the ocean in the most threatening, yet still diplomatic way possible. Cheers."

By the confusion on her face, Peter could tell that Lena had never taken part in a toast, before. Glasses of gold liquid, some champagne, some sparkling cider, clinked together only to her delight. The smile on her face was bright enough to light the room. At first, he was disappointed that he couldn't sit next to her, but being able to see the happiness gleam across her face was a much better gift.

Something about her had been different when she pranced off of the jet. She flung herself into his arms, wrapping onto him like a koala after he spun her around excitedly. The way she spoke, how she explained the way she demanded justice, it was like the weight in her voice had lifted. The burden of death no longer dragged her down in the arduous way that it used to. It drifted, it was still riddled amongst her elated words, but a majority of it had dissolved into the agreement that she had made with her former species.

It had been a dinner party that Mr. Stark planned, filled with the type of elegance that he was unused to. To his left was Colonel Rhodes, his laughter bouncing off the walls of the room. To his right was Happy, who, for once in his life, looked happy to be where he was. On one end of the table sat his Aunt, who had opted for a touch of makeup for the occasion, and the other end sat one of Lena's doctors, Peter thought it was her physical therapist but he wasn't sure. Across from him was Lena with Ms. Potts and Mr. Stark on either side of her. It was the first time she had worn that dress; a light, airy article that cut straight across her chest and had small straps keeping it on her shoulders. Hair wavy from her braids, she reminded Peter of classic depictions of Calypso. She flashed her eyes at him.

Some of my sisters spoke of Calypso. She was one of us until she decided to live the rest of her life on land.

Amongst the boisterous conversation, Peter half frowned-half smiled in confusion. What?

She bit the bottom of her lip, a habit she had picked up on when Peter made her nervous. He could feel the way her heart fluttered and knew that there was heat rising into her ears, followed by that lip bite, and her eyes bouncing all over the place. The interaction and sequence happened more than often, and Peter had memorized every detail.

They often said that I must be one of her direct descendants because our line of Seiren has a history of craving land. I will never know, but it is always interesting.

Peter had always thought of Calypso as a myth, but now that Lena mentioned that she was real, it made sense for her to be a seiren. The woman supposedly distracted men, the most well known being Odysseus, from their goals and aspirations. While Calypso was unconventional, she definitely still had her habits.

Odysseus was her Peirasmos.

His audible shock was masked by the adults laughing at something else entirely around them. He and Lena had escaped into their little world like they always seemed to do, communicating only with the thoughts in their heads. It was nice to be able to do that whenever they liked. It was like always going into a situation with someone on his team. And that's what they were, weren't they?

A team.

They brought the party to a parlor just outside the dining room, where the adults continued to laugh and sip champagne, while Lena and Peter found themselves drifting to the couch to politely listen. He felt a figure standing over him and found Mr. Stark holding two glasses with the golden liquid Peter had been seeing everyone drink all night. He leaned over between them, and set the glasses down in their hands.

"You each can have two glasses, go ahead and refill from the bottle on the dining table that I left behind," with a devilish wink, Mr. Stark went to find his place amongst the adults.

After his two glasses, and some quiet conversation with Lena, Peter decided that he liked champagne. Specifically, he liked the way that it bubbled and the warm feeling that it had left in his stomach once he had finished. The room was sparkling a little bit more than when he hadn't had the bubbly alcohol. He wouldn't say he was drunk; that would have been a stretch. He had definitely never had a sip of alcohol in his life, though, and it was proving itself to the drowsy feeling both he and Lena had.

At some point, her head had fallen into his lap, and she had begun to trace the bones in his hands with the tip of her finger, gliding it across his skin, chills running up his spine every so often. He watched as she concentrated, noting the way that her eyelashes flicked down and up as she blinked. They were blonde and feathery and practically invisible. Peter could only see them when he was especially close to her. He decided that he truly loved being especially close to her.

"It is far too loud in here," Lena slowly commented and yawned. "Can we go to my room?"

Peter looked around. Aunt May was still in conversation with Ms. Potts, and Mr. Stark was about to crash in and probably make a mediocrely funny joke to them. While they were distracted, it was prime time to make their escape. Giggling, they found themselves in the elevator, lips not only locked, but lips finding their way to necks, lips tracing jawlines. Her face buried into his chest and laughed, almost drowning in the sea of his biceps. Peter laughed to himself. Lena would never be able to drown in anything.

"I can drown in my love for you!" she tapped his nose as she said the words.

Skidding down the hallway towards the direction of her room, Peter playfully chased after her, only catching up when both of them had tumbled through the door, his arms folding themselves around her tiny body. They became an entanglement of limbs as they fell onto the twin bed, laughter only subsiding by the silence of their kiss falling back into place. He liked the way that her hand was resting on his chest, and he liked the way that his hand had fallen just inside of her left thigh.

He would have liked to describe where the fun went from there, but Peter Parker was no kiss and tell.

…

It wasn't the first time that her screaming had woken him.

What was abnormal for Lena was the thrashing and yelling that followed. The way he felt her fist came down onto his chest as he struggled to reopen his eyes and assist her. The blow came with an unnatural amount of strength that was hopefully unintentional.

"Wake up!" were the first words he could say before snaking his arms around her waist and burying his face into the crook of her neck, "L, wake up! You're dreaming!"

He could feel her terror, which was almost the worst part. Along with their open book of emotions came empathy that had almost brought Peter to tears. Lena in this current state of not fully asleep but not fully awake was suspended in unrelenting terror. Her demonous sisters had sent her the worst nightmare yet as a punishment for her threat and their agreement. There was nothing either of them could do about it. The seiren had a mental tie to her that Peter wished he could cut with the world's largest pair of scissors.

"YOU TOOK EVERYTHING FROM ME," Lena bellowed. Her hands were balled into fists, and Peter could feel the sweat from her bare shoulder start to bead and transfer onto his bare chest.

He cooed at her, soothingly shushed her, ran his fingers through her hair, but this dream had been different. If he closed his eyes for long enough, he could barely make out the images of the creatures clawing at every part of her body, tearing her apart and doing the same to the people in her life that she loved. Peter, Tony, Pepper, Happy, MJ, Ned, they all were drowning or having their throats torn out, or being dragged down to the bottom of the Atlantic.

Sob after sob, Peter was starting to see that he wasn't going to be able to calm her down easily.

Kissing her forehead, he whispered that he would be back as he pulled on his pants and shirt from the night before. If he knew his mentor correctly, he knew just where he would be able to find him.

There was the harsh sound of metal colliding with metal when Peter entered the shop, and the figure of Tony Stark sweating and working was just across from him, and the source of the sound. It was almost 5 AM, and this was where Mr. Stark had spent his night-going-on-morning. He popped off the protective goggles and looked at the half-awake Peter, the look on his face as if he wasn't believing what he was seeing.

"I-I know I just woke up like 20 minutes ago. Lena just had...a really bad nightmare. Can you...drive us somewhere?" he asked, hoping the man would somewhat understand.

Mr. Stark's left hand dragged across his shiny, sweat-dripping face, and much to Peter's surprise he said, "Sure. Where to?"

…

By the time that Peter had successfully gotten Lena's body to the car, she had stopped crying and resorted to a violent sort of shaking, which he wasn't sure if that was an improvement or not. Still, he held her, and spoke to her softly, and traced circles on her shoulder. He knew how deeply sad and horrified she was, he could feel it on each one of his bones. Their connection had given him a special empathy reserved just for her, and it was painful to feel her in so much agony.

Approximately 45 minutes later, Mr. Stark pulled into the parking lot for their destination and put the car in park. Peter was the only one to move, going to the other side of the car to pull Lena from the seat and carry her to where Peter knew she would find healing. She had to.

It only took a couple of minutes to reach the edge, and he set her down in the sand, hoping that she would recognize the texture and open her eyes. She did, and when her eyes flittered open, she was greeted with the mix of a pink and orange sunrise over the Atlantic ocean.

Why did you take me here? She asked.

He was still standing. Instead of saying anything (partially because he didn't know the whole answer himself), he pulled her to her feet and walked with her to where the waves were crashing into the shore, but just as their bare toes almost touched the sea foam-

No.

He insisted, "One step. I won't let you fall."

When she looked at him, her eyes were swollen and bloodshot, and red marks showed where she had violently torn her hands across her face to yank the tears away. Biting her lip again, nervously, she stepped forward into the salty water, that curled around her toes as they started to morph into what would add up to be a tail. Without fail, she slipped, Peter holding his arms out to catch her from behind.

They sat in the shallow water for a good while, the waves encircling them, her tail stretched out farther than Peter's legs. He could feel the rate of her heart declining as she stared out into the open water, inhaling the fresh, crisp, spring air. To Peter, it was a mystery as to how he knew this would be the remedy to her troublesome dream, but he could only guess that was all a part of their special connection.

She shifted forward, tearing off the white dress from the dinner party and plunging into the sea, allowing herself to fully submerge. He didn't worry, he just waited for her to resurface, knowing that she needed to feel the Atlantic ocean wash over her to fully regain the strength that her former family had taken away from her only because they could. It was them trying to hold power over her, when in all actuality, Lena was the one with real power.

Peter wanted to show her that there was strength in existing as a human being. While she had the special abilities that set her aside from the typical human, what made her special was not only the fact that she was a seiren, but also that she was human.

He watched as she broke into the surface, her face masked behind her hands. When they slid downward, Peter saw the exhaustion that had found its way onto her features.

Thank you.

He nodded.

Peter returned to his apartment that night, knowing that Lena would likely not find her way back to sleep. When he shut his eyes, falling asleep in his own bed, he found that she had implanted a dream for him, cultivated by her, where they sat on that beach forever, watching as the waves rolled in.