Angst... Sorry, not sorry.

Chapter Songs: Heathens by Twenty One Pilots for the action portion and everything i wanted by Billie Eilish for the second part of the chapter.

Headcanon of the chapter: Danielle actually hated the color yellow, she thinks it looks like pee. But, she didn't exactly choose her colors. She sometimes wishes her eyes would turn orange instead. It's one of her favorite color because it reminds her of warmth, comfort, and safety.

"Hello, hello? Spider-Man to Eris, do you copy?"

Danielle winced as she pressed a finger to her earpiece to try and readjust the volume. It was kind of hard to focus on blending in on a crowded ferry with Peter's loud voice shouting in her ear.

"Yes, I hear you," she muttered beneath her breath as she pushed past a few passengers to try and get a decent view of the rest of the passengers. It had cost her a pretty penny just for a ticket on and she already wasn't enjoying her ride. Who knew how packed the ferry would be at eleven? She figured most people were already at work by this time.

Eventually, Danielle made it to a window seat where she discreetly sat down and tried to survey the area, glancing at people left and right through the strands of hair falling on her face. She doubted anyone would recognize her, but it still made her nervous t be around people on a 'mission' of sorts without her mask on. She felt practically naked.

"Oh okay. Good," Peter replied on the comms. They had managed to figure out a way to communicate through their masks through a radio channel set up by Karen. The AI proved to be extremely helpful as she talked Danielle through setting it up on her own mask, which was now being used as an earpiece hidden underneath her hair. "You see anything?"

Danielle sighed. "Nothing unusual, but I'm not really sure who I'm supposed to be looking for," she replied. "Aaron didn't give us a name for the guy that's supposed to meet the dealers here and I have no clue if the sellers from the bridge are the same ones here," she rambled anxiously. God, why was she such a nervous wreck? This wasn't her first mission, so why was she freaking out as if it were?

"Okay. Just... keep an eye out," Peter tried to soothingly explain to her. "Assume anyone can be the dealers." Danielle eyed the crowded ferry and sighed. Like that was gonna end well.

Danielle shifted in her seat nervously as the ferry began to leave the dock from which she had boarded. The boat bobbed in the water and the frequent movement wasn't helping Danielle's already unsettled nerves. "Where are you? Are you on board yet? The ferry's already leaving," she muttered as she took a glance out the window beside her, trying to look for any signs of the web-slinger out there.

"I'm boarding right now!" His shout was followed by what sounded like an odd struggle and a loud thump over the comms. "Phew. Nice," he grunted in victory. "I'm on." Danielle took a sigh of relief. He was on board and she wasn't alone.

"Can you see anything from where you're at?" She asked, glancing around at all the windows around her, trying to spot which one Peter might've been peeking in from.

"Okay, Karen, active Enhanced Reconnaissance Mode," Peter muttered from wherever he might've been. "Okay, I'm on the second level of the ferry. I can see two men in the far corner sitting back to back to each other... I think one of them is the guy from the bridge. Who's that other guy?"

Danielle craned her neck up to try and see where Peter might've seen the dealers. The boat was still a little crowded, not to mention there were a few pillars in the way of her view of the back part of the seating area. She had to get up and search. "I'm going to try and get a closer look," she whispered before reluctantly standing up from her seat and awkwardly shuffling through the people towards the back.

"I can't talk right now. I'll call her back." Danielle assumed Peter was probably talking to Karen about an incoming call.

"Is it Liz?" Danielle prompted anxiously as she stepped past a young woman with a baby carriage in front of her. Her stomach twisted uncomfortably at the sight. There were families on this ship that was carrying deadly alien weaponry, and they had no way off. This was dangerous. Too dangerous.

"Er, no. May," Peter explained, pulling Danielle out of her scrambled thoughts. "Hey, Dronie, keep an eye on that guy. We can't let anyone get away this time."

Danielle let out a heavy sigh as she struggled to try and see where these men might've been. "Copy that," she muttered in agreement as she continued to search the seating area.

She heard the grunts and sounds of struggle as Peter probably swung off the side of the ferry towards the back. She couldn't see him through the windows, but it was comforting to hear him, to know she wasn't alone here as she continued to walk through the ship. Eventually, she made it to the back just past the pillar where she stopped to look around. She tried to make it seem like she was just taking in the scenery by taking her time, but even then she felt uncomfortable and exposed. She could practically feel eyes on her.

"Alright, Elle, I found the buyers. They're in the way back of the ferry," Peter called to her over the comms. "Any luck on the dealer guy?"

"Not yet," she muttered back in response. He couldn't have gotten away, could he? For all she knew this could've been the Winged Demon. And if that was the case, she definitely couldn't let him get away.

"No! Karen, stop it with the Instant Kill already!" She heard Peter shout over the comms.

Danielle furrowed her eyebrows at his words. "What?"

"It's, uh, it's nothing. Just a setting- oh, crap, Mr. Stark is calling me-"

Danielle felt her heart fall to her stomach. "What?" No, no, no, no. He couldn't know where they were or what they were doing. He'd be pissed if he found out they were going after the dealers after they had told them not to. "Peter, he can't know what we're doing."

"Don't answer! Oh, crap-"

"You answered didn't you?" Danielle said through gritted teeth as Peter went silent on the other line. Crap.

"I'm actually at school... with Elle," she heard Peter lie.

Danielle cringed at the mention of her. "No, no, no. Don't tell him I'm with you-"

"Patching Danielle in now," Karen's voice rung in Danielle's ear, but before she could protest to the AI's actions, a new voice rang in her ear.

"Hey, kids. I was just calling to say nice work in D.C.," Tony spoke into Danielle's ear as she stood awkwardly against a pillar on the ferry, her eyes still searching for the dealer still on the boat as she tried to bite her tongue to keep from slipping up.

Unsure of what to say in this very badly timed moment, Danielle could only respond with, "Thanks, Tony."

She hoped that was the end of the impromptu call, but unfortunately she was wrong. "My dad never gave me a lot of support... And I'm just trying to break the cycle of shame-"

"Um, we're kind of in the middle of something right now," Peter tried to get the billionaire off the phone as fast as possible while Danielle inwardly cursed at herself, throwing her head back against the pillar as she tried to focus on her task at hand. Though it was kind of hard to focus on finding a shady weapons dealer on a crowded boat while her partner was shouting in her ear from outside and the billionaire that was out in charge of managing them was on the phone. God, this was all so chaotic-

Just then, Danielle saw a figure from the corner of her eye. She turned to look at the figure seated in a row by himself, his front turned to the back window as he sat completely still. The man had a baseball cap on with a hoodie pulled over him with two earphones in his ears. This man couldn't look anymore conspicuous. He had to be the man Danielle was looking for. But, why did his figure seem so familiar to her, like he was someone she had seen before?

"Don't cut me off when I'm complimenting you," Tony retorted impatiently over the phone call. Danielle could hear how hard it was to be giving them praise, but she wasn't focused on him. "Anyway, great things are about to-"

HONK!

Danielle flinched at the loud sound of the ferry horn, echoing throughout the ship.

And, of course, if she had heard it, Tony had heard it. "What is that?"

"Um..." Danielle fumbled for a good answer, while Peter immediately responded, "I'm at band practice. Danielle is here with me." Okay, that was good. Hopefully, Tony wouldn't see right through-

"That's odd. Happy told me you quit band six weeks ago." SHIT! "What's up?"

He was onto them. They had to get rid of him. Now.

"We gotta go," Peter deflected quickly. "End call."

"Hey-"

"Bye, Tony," Danielle spared the billionaire a hurried farewell before pushing herself away from the pillar towards where the man sat a few rows of seats away. She wasn't sure what she was going to do, there were too many people around for her to bust out her suit and not be recognized. She also couldn't use her powers either.

But, she wasn't really thinking clearly as she slowly grew closed to him. All she knew was that this was the dangerous man that had almost killed her and Peter that night of the party and the night in DC when she had been thrown off the truck and Peter had gotten locked in a vault.

Danielle could hear a struggle on Peter's end of the line, but all Danielle could hear was her heartbeat in the back of her throat as she came closer, and closer, and closer, and closer. Until the man abruptly stood from his seat.

Danielle froze as he spun around the corner of the row of seats and ran into her side, nearly knocking her into the chairs. She steadied herself with the chair behind her, but as the man walked past her, she saw his face for only a brief moment. He had grey scruff on his chin and he was older. Her had wrinkles all over his face, but not as much as an elderly person might've had. He had very thin eyebrows and bright grey eyes that looked fierce and full of anger and determination.

This was the Winged-Demon. Danielle could feel it.

After he had pushed past her without a word, Danielle watched as he walked away. She waited a few moments, standing there frozen in her place, before going after him. He speed walked down the aisles of seats and she followed him at a relatively normal pace. Eventually, she watched him turn to the stairs which led to the parking area of the ferry. And as she exited the stairs, close on his heel, she stopped to watch him. Hidden behind a car, she saw him approach a white van parked a few yards away. He snuck up behind a man standing beside the driver's door before abruptly slamming the man's head against the van repeatedly, watching with disgust and anger as his unconscious body fell to the ground.

Danielle put a hand over her mouth to cover the horrified sound that escaped her lips.

He must've heard her because he immediately spun around in her direction. She barely had enough time to spin around, ducking back behind the car so not to give herself away.

When she knew he was no longer looking in her direction, she peeked back around the car she was behind to watch as he climbed into the back of the van. What was he doing?

All the way down on the other end of the ferry, Danielle spotted Peter and a bunch of other men with guns. She froze momentarily, pondering going to help him when her attention was drawn back to the van beside her. She drew closer towards it as the loud humming of what sounded like an engine grew louder, and louder, and louder-

"AH!" Danielle screamed when a large metallic wing suddenly broke out of the van's side, mere inches away from her face. Frightened, she jumped back, slipping on her footing and falling back onto her elbows. She watched in horror as the wings cut through the metal of the van, the rest of the Winged-Demon emerging from inside the vehicle as he hovered above the ground, just above Danielle. She hoped he wouldn't notice her as she crawled back on her hands, but he seemed more focus on what was in front of him than what was behind as he surged forwards towards where Peter was.

Oh God...

On instinct, Danielle scrambled to her feet and dashed after the Winged Demon. She stayed on his tail, or at least tried to, as she pulled out her suit piece and pressed it down onto her abdomen. It's armor encased her just as her finger came to press onto the earpiece behind her hair, the golden chrome mask coming up around the bottom half of her face, just as she witnessed the Winged Demon shoot one of the many alien guns towards Peter and the men on the other end of ferry shooting at him in return.

The bullets had no effect on the Wined Demon flying towards them, this time with a car in his talons that he tossed at them as if it were nothing, but their weapons were firing towards her. Barely able to dodge a few, Danielle flung herself behind another car as she tried to shield herself.

Eventually, the gunshots ceased and she went back to running after the Winged Demon. But when she had finally reached the area where Peter and those men had been firing at him, she found him flying high above the water, facing the back of the ferry. Peter was standing a few yards away, just above the man she recognized had come to their school looking for the 'glowy-thing.' He looked to have a glowing gauntlet on his arm that was stuck to a metal fencing at the edge of the ferry, his upper bicep covered in Peter's webbing.

He looked to be pretty stuck in there when the Winged Demon shot the weapon at the fence, frying it and unleashing the Gauntlet Man. Danielle glanced between the two as the Winged Demon called out to him, "Get to the top deck. We're getting out of here."

Gauntlet Man nodded in response and began dashing for the door on the other end of the ferry. Danielle walked out from her hiding spot still covered by the roof of the second story of the ferry to start running after him, she had to merely escape a shot fired from the Winged Demon that had been directed towards the web Peter had tried to stick onto Gauntlet Man. And as much as Danielle wanted to stay and help the Spider-Man help take down the... Vulture... she knew that in order to catch him, she needed to catch the Gauntlet Man.

She ran through the door, directly on his tail. Just like she had with the Winged Man, she trailed him going up the stairs until eventually he nearly reached the top. Before his hand could even reach the handle, Danielle threw her invisible force at him, her powers latching onto his back legs like tentacles as she yanked them out from under him, sending his body sprawling down the stairs right back down to where she stood over him.

Gauntlet groaned from the pain of his fall, but was quick to retaliate when he turned over and saw who had attacked him. With fury in his eyes, he drew his arm back, the gauntlet on his hand glowing as he threw a powered punch at her, but she was prepared.

Danielle threw her arms up in front of her in the shape of an X, creating a force around her frontal. She caught his gauntlet within her shield, stopping him from carrying out his attack, but he used this to his advantage. His foot abruptly came up from beneath her and slammed against her abdomen, throwing her back down the stairs.

She fell back a few steps, but caught herself upright on her hands and knees. Shit, that hurt.

The back of her head felt numb, but she pushed through as she charged after him up the stairs. This time when he reached the door to the stairs, she pushed his body with all her invisible might right through the door, causing him to fly into the seating area, sliding across the floor with a thud.

People shouted and scattered as she entered the room. She felt off-put by their reactions, but she figured it was just because they knew what was about to happen when they saw an Avenger in their close proximity looking ready for a fight.

Gauntlet Man scrambled to his feet as Eris stepped closer. She stood her ground, her feet planted firmly to the floor and her fists clenched at her sides. Her eyes glee a dim gold color just above her mask. This would've scared the living daylights out of any sane person, but Gauntlet Man wasn't someone willing to go down without a fight it seemed. Unfortunately for him, neither was Eris.

Gauntlet man threw yet another powered punch towards Eris, to which she ducked underneath it, spinning around just in time for him to catch her off guard with a powered punch right in her stomach. The small Enhanced girl flew across the room, her back hitting the wall of the ferry with a thud and her body falling to the ground with a smack. That looked painful.

For Danielle, it totally was. Her body felt like a walking bruise as she pushed herself up to her knees. Gauntlet Man took his chance while she was down and raised his arm up over her head, ready to rain down Hell on this girl as he stood over her. But Danielle didn't give him the chance.

With quick thinking, her hand came up to envelop the gauntlet with her power. His arm remained frozen mid-air, his body quivering as he tried to break it free from her invisible encasement. He pushed harder, and she pushed back just as hard. Slowly, the small girl stood up from her knees with ease, her hand still held up with his gauntlet in her hold. She stared in his eyes, her eyes an overpowering gold, as she slowly began to push down on him. She pushed, and pushed, and pushed until he was the one now on his knees.

His teeth were bared and his body was stiff as he tried to fight against her powers that were pushing him down. He kept trying and trying to push himself back up, but she was just too powerful.

Danielle had every intention to keep pushing until he gave up, but suddenly a bright purple ray of light shot out from beneath them, right in between her and Gauntlet man. Danielle jumped back, her hold on him gone as she stumbled away a few feet to gauge what was happening.

Her and Gauntlet Man watched on opposite sides of the ray as it tore through the rest of the ship. A bright light of burning power ripping through the ground, walls, and ceiling splitting the entire boat in half. What was going on?

Danielle never got an answer because her attention was caught by the abrupt movement of Gauntlet man from across the beam of light. She saw him take this opportunity of distraction to dash back to the outside deck, heading towards the top deck. Shit!

Eris broke into a sprint as she ran down the ship, keeping up with the Gauntlet man. She brushed past passengers and ducked through doorways until eventually she reached the stairs to the top deck at the same time Gauntlet Man did. He shoved past her before she could make a move. She clearly stumbled back, but quickly caught herself to continue her pursuit. But it was too late.

Gauntlet Man took his chance to jump off the railing, landing directly onto the wings of the Demon. Danielle caught herself on the railing as she watched in anguish as they got away. God dammit-!

"Oh my god-!" Danielle gasped as the ship shuttered and lurched, a crackling sound of metal groaning and breaking apart rang in her ears as she latched herself onto the railing for her life. The boat beneath her rattled and shook and she slowly felt the boat shifting... "Peter, what's going on? What happened?" She called into her comm. "Peter?!"

"The weapon! It-it exploded-!" He replied, clearly out of breath and unsure of what to do himself. "The ship is breaking down the middle. Elle, I need your help!"

Weary of her footing, Danielle pushed herself off the rail and slowly climbed back into the seating area. It was chaos. Families and passengers alike had dashed towards the edge of the ship, away from the middle where a large, jagged, and charred crack grew larger by the second. The ferry was falling apart, and it was going to sink. She had to do something.

"What... what do we..." She struggled to formulate a plan to fix this. How were they supposed to fix this? "What do we do?"

Peter was silent on the other end of the comms when suddenly an idea struck him. "Karen, uh, give me an x-ray of the boat and target all the strongest points," he ordered the AI. Danielle glanced up between the two pieces of the ferry slowly separating, through the jagged break she saw Peter swinging in, shooting webs in an intricate pattern trying to hold the ship together. He was going to save them.

Danielle let out a sigh of relief before turning to the passengers beside her. "Okay, I need everyone to move away from the edge! Stay back and stay seated, please! It's going to be okay," she reassured them. The passengers seemed to listen as they backed away further until their backs were pressed against the farther walls. Mothers held their children, friends held the bars on the seats, and lone passengers clung to the walls like a lifeline. They were gonna help them out of this. Both her and Peter. Together.

There was loud clapping from behind her on the other side of the ferry. "Yeah! Spider-Man and Eris!" A male passenger cheered from where he sat. Danielle turned to smile at him when suddenly one of the webs attached to the wall beside him abruptly snapped.

"Oh-!" Danielle gasped as the ferry lurched beneath her feet. Passengers started to scream and panic all around her as more and more webs began to come apart under the weir of both halves of the ferry. Frantically searching for solid ground, Danielle stumbled to the closest pillar still standing and grabbed on. She looked around and watched the scene play out in horror. She could feel everything.

The vibrations in the air around her shifted as this moment in time slowed down for her to comprehend. She could feel the panic and the fear coming off of the passengers as they clambered to grab ahold of something to stay upright. She could feel the metal frame of the ferry creak, shake, and groan in protest as it slowly came falling apart. She can feel the angry water in the lower decks rushing through the bottom half of the ferry, threatening to overtake the whole boat. She could feel the tragedy about to occur if she didn't do something- she had to do something.

As if it were second nature, Danielle threw her hand out, her palm outstretched and facing one half of the ferry from where she stood on the edge of the other half. She took a deep breath in before narrowing her eyes on a specific general area of the other half of the ferry. Slowly, she pushed her consciousness and her powers out across the open wounded the ship. It began to latch onto the other half until it was partially encased.

Danielle gritted her teeth and strained her mind, but she kept on, only this time instead of pushing her power out, she was pulling it in.

She'd never done something of this mass since before the incident at the Raft. But, she couldn't think of that right now. Now as a blood curdling scream ripped from her chest through her mask as she pulled the two halves of the ferry back together with her mind. It burned. It felt like cold, ice frozen in her veins, spreading like a wildfire throughout her body starting from the palm of her hand where it was extending from all the way to her head. It hurt and it burned and it pained her, but she kept pulling, and pulling, and pulling, and-

Danielle... an unknown, yet somehow familiar voice echoed in the back of her mind. Something stirred within her, causing her to pause momentarily. Who was that?

Oh, Eris...

Something caught Danielle's eye as she stared straight ahead. Her gaze swept past the passengers on the other half of the ferry until it landed on the window behind them. In it was a reflection. It was a reflection of herself, only... it wasn't herself. In that reflection she didn't have her mask on, and she was pale, and she had dark circles under her golden eyes... that were almost hidden beneath her unruly blonde hair...

It was Her... No, SHE was Her. If she kept this up any longer, she would end up like Her.

No. No, no, no, no, no, no-

"NO!"

With a shove of her hand, a large wave of invisible force shook the entirety of the ferry, knocking back people, the two halves of the boat, and Danielle herself, who fell onto her back and kept falling until her feet hit the wall behind her.

What just happened? What was that?

Danielle lay there on her stomach, disheveled and confused from what had just occurred with her powers. She tried to piece it together, but it just wasn't making sense. She had killed the Entity when she had tried to kill herself. She was gone along with the abilities she had given Danielle. But why was she there in the reflection and in her head?

Because it wasn't Her in that reflection... it was you.

The teenager shut her eyes and tried to push away the intrusive thought. Her hands bunched up into fists, one of them slamming onto the floor beside her head forcefully. "No," she moaned as she tried to push herself back onto her feet. "... please."

The metal beneath her creaked and groaned and the sounds of cheering and sighs of relief caught Danielle's attention. The uncomfortable churning feeling of guilt in the pit of Danielle's stomach was no longer there, instead replaced with gratitude when she look up and saw Spider-Man lowering himself from a web as the two halves the ferry came together. Had he done it? Had Peter really saved the ferry?

"Hey, Spider-Man," a familiar voice called behind Danielle through the glass window above Danielle's head. "Band practice, was it?" It suddenly dawned on Danielle that they had not only gotten caught, but now Tony was there to bail them out of this mess. Good God, they were screwed. But, in the moment, all of Danielle's concerns were with what she had just done. Or rather, what she could've done if she had released something greater... God, what was wrong with her?

Carefully, Danielle eventually managed to clamber to her feet, just in time for Peter to run up to her. "Elle, you okay?"

"I'm fine," she mumbled from behind her mask, but she knew he could probably tell she was lying.

"C'mon," he urged her with the squeeze of her hand before he ran after the Iron Man suit she had seen flying by outside. She watched him jump off the balcony of the ferry, but she didn't follow. What was the use?

She was doomed whether she stayed on this ferry or not.

Luckily for both her and Peter, they had quickly hopped a ride on one of the rescue ships heading back to the port with the rescued passengers. They didn't bother staying for the clean up, neither of them could bare it. But it was like a train wreck. It was a disaster, but they just couldn't look away. Especially since they were the ones who caused it, unintentionally.

So, instead of cowering back to Peter's apartment or Danielle's Penthouse, Eris and Spider-Man sat side-by-side on the edge of a building overlooking the bay, just above where they almost sunk ferry sat perched out on the waves. When the teens had both sat along this perch, neither spoke a word as they removed their masks and just watched in guilt as rescue helicopters and boats flocked to the ferry.

They sat in silence for almost an hour just watching people evacuate from the unstable vessel in the water until Peter eventually spoke.

"You're messing with things you don't understand..." Danielle looked up at him questioningly. "That's what he said to me on the ferry before the alien gun exploded. The Wing Guy. He told me I was messing with things I don't understand... I guess this goes to prove he was right," Peter muttered, defeated as he gestured vaguely to the damaged ferry down below.

"I had no clue what to do. I just... I did what I thought was right and just... webbed it up. And then it just exploded and..." he trailed off with a sigh, his head bowed as his fingers nervously played with the fabric of his mask lying in his lap. "People could've died. We could've died."

Unsure of what to say to that, Danielle diverted her gaze from Peter back down to her own mask lying in her hands. She hadn't bothered to retract it back into a small button, instead she just ripped it off her face just to get some air. She never realized just how big it was until now as she held it in her hands, measuring it's size and pretending to be so encaptured by it's odd design so that Peter wouldn't ask about the incident on the ferry with her.

But, she knew Peter. He wasn't someone that was easily willing to let something go. Especially when it involved something or someone important to him.

Eventually, he turned to glance at her side-long. He studied her odd and tense body language and picked up just how shaken she was from whatever had occurred earlier. "What happened with you down there?" He asked. "You said you were fine, but I saw you trying to hold that ship together... Something happened to you and you just..." he trailed off again, only this time it wasn't out of frustration, it was just because he wasn't sure how to describe exactly what he saw.

Danielle remained silent.

"Elle," Peter placed his palm on top of her hand that lied on her lap. She looked down at in contemplation. "Talk to me. Please."

The brunette sighed. What was she supposed to tell him? Everything? Who she was- what she was? What her powers were and what they entailed? Was she ready for that? Was HE?

"I don't... I can't..." she paused for a moment and sighed. "I don't want you to see me as what everyone else sees me as," she eventually replied, her eyes still glued to his hand on hers, unable to look up at him.

"What do they see you as?"

A liability. A threat. A danger. A monster. There were many things she was to the rest of the world. But to Peter she was... She was Elle. She didn't want that to change. Why did it have to?

"You told me that when you first got your abilities you were scared. You never really explained why it was scary, but I always just assumed you meant the abruptness of the situation..." Danielle sighed. Here went nothing. "You and I, we differ in that way. You were scared of your abrupt abilities, but I... I'm always scared of my powers..."

"I don't think there's ever been a moment I haven't been scared of them or what they can do. Ever since I got them, they've been unpredictable and uncontrollable. I've tried to learn, to train, to better myself in order to maintain them, but... I realize now that it was never my powers that were uncontrollable... it was just me," she explained.

Slowly and hesitantly, Danielle looked up at Peter, meeting his haze with guilt-ridden eyes. "You are a hero," she told him firmly. He looked like he wanted to say something, but she beat him to the punch as she continued. "You swing from buildings, you save civilians, you stop the bad guys. And you do it all without ever worrying about hurting someone by accident. But me... I step on eggshells with myself every second of every day just doing the simplest of tasks. Because if I don't..." she trailed off when her voice cracked at the end of her sentence. She hadn't realized she was crying until the sobs shook her body and she was staring back down at her lap, only her vision was blurred from the tears.

"Elle," Peter tried to reach out to comfort her, but she snapped at him.

"No!" She shouted, swatting his hand away and pushing herself off the ledge nd back onto the roof of the building. She spun back around to face him, she looked frustrated, and angry, and desperate, and upset, and guilty, and just... all around tired as she began to dig into him. "You don't know what it's like. To be afraid of your own mind! Afraid to lose your grip on your control for even just a second because of what you can do just by feeling something!" She cried out. "You don't know what it's like to be a monster!"

"You're not a monster, Danielle-!"

"I may not be, but there is one inside of me," she stated.

Peter, dumbfounded and confused, pressed on. "What do you mean?"

He watched as she nervously bit her lip, almost as if she regretted saying anything in the first place. She turned away, pacing for a moment as she inwardly debated saying anything to explain her previous statement. It was too late now, she'd already said so much. He deserved an explanation. He had a right to know.

"I... I have a monster inside of me," she eventually muttered. "I don't know who She is or what She is, but... She's powerful, and She's uncontrollable, and She wants to take over my mind and destroy... everything." Peter stared at her, his expression unreadable. She expected him to ask more questions like he always did when she tried to explain anything about her powers, but he just stayed silent. She wasn't sure if this was a good sign, but she kept talking anyway.

"I've had Her trapped in the back of my mind for years until She eventually broke out that day in the Raft, the place I went after Germany." She saw Peter's eyes widen at the mention of the jail she had been in prior to what he had done to help put her there. "I... I had to kill myself in order to keep Her at bay, and as a result... I lost a piece of myself. A piece of my powers. A piece of my control. A piece of my mind..."

"On the ferry, when I started to exert too much of myself, I saw something," she continued to explain. "I saw myself as Her. A soulless, uncontrollable, all powerful entity capable of nothing but destruction and chaos. I saw what HYDRA made me to be. Eris," she spat the name as if it were a curse. Maybe it was one.

Peter stared at her, long and hard. He looked like he was contemplating saying something, and when he finally did- "Elle-" the sounds of rocket boosters interrupted him, drawing both teen's attention over to the flying metal suit approaching the building until it was hovering over the roof a few yards away from them.

"Previously on Danielle and Peter Screw the Pooch: I tell you to stay away from this. Instead, you two managed to hack a multimillion-dollar suit so you could sneak around behind my back doing the one thing I told you not do to," Tony's voice scolded the pair from inside the suit. Danielle bit her cheek, already so emotionally and physically exhausted form the past few hours and unsure if she can handle a lecture or an argument. She just wanted this day to be over.

Peter glanced sidelong in the suit's direction before turning back to glance at Danielle. Her eyes were cast down and he can see she was clearly exhausted. He figured it was better just to take the verbal beating from Tony now instead of facing the backlash later. "Is everyone okay?" He asked, sure that if Danielle knew that she hadn't hurt anybody it would be easier to convince her just how wrong she was about herself.

"No thanks to you," came Tony's reply. Peter saw Danielle wince at his response and something within him flipped like a light switch.

"No thanks to us?" He snapped back, climbing from off his perch in the ledge to approach the metal suit.

"Peter," Danielle tried to call after him, but he didn't listen as he tore into his mentor. All his repressed frustration and anger coming out in this argument.

"Those weapons were out there, and we tried to tell you about it. But you didn't listen! None of this would've happened if you had just listened to me," he seethed. Danielle caught onto the 'me' part and knew that this wasn't just about them, this was personal for him. She watched as Peter approached the suit that had now lowered itself to just a foot off the ground. "If you even cared, you'd actually be here right now."

Suddenly, the metal suit opened up to reveal itself not to be empty, like Peter and Danielle had thought it to be before. Tony stared down at Peter as he stepped out of the suit and stood before him. Peter stumbled back slightly and Danielle stood straighter.

"I did listen, kid. Who do you think called the FBI, huh?" Tony prompted. Danielle's eyebrows furrowed had those been the men shooting at the Winged Demon on the ferry that had surrounded Peter? Tony really hd listened then, huh? He believed them. He didn't think they were kids, he just wanted to keep them out of danger...

"Do you know that I was the only one who believed in you?" Tony continued, furthermore proving that he really did respect them as more than kids. "Everyone else said I was crazy to recruit a fourteen year old kid."

"I'm fifteen," Peter corrected him, pushing Tony's own anger and frustration over board.

"No, this is where you zip it, alright? The adult is talking," he snapped. Behind Peter, Danielle flinched. She had had enough shouting for one day, she couldn't stand to hear more now. "What if somebody had died tonight? Different story, right? 'Cause that's on you. And if you died... I feel like that's on me. I don't need that on my conscious."

Peter didn't seem to know what to say. He at least knew he had made a mistake when Stark had explained the fact that he did in fact believe the two, blowing his argument about him not listening out of the water. What more was there to it other than they just didn't listen to what Tony had told them? "Yes, sir," he stammered.

"Yes."

"I-I'm sorry."

"Sorry doesn't cut it."

Peter could feel the tears of frustration pricking the edges of his eyes as he clenched his jaw, fighting them back. He didn't need Tony Stark to see him cry, not right now when he was trying to show that he could still be responsible after after screwing up so badly. "I just wanted to be like you," he admitted whole-heartedly.

"And I wanted you to be better," Tony bit back at the kid, punching him right where it hurt. But he wasn't done there. "And don't even get me started on you," the billionaire raised his voice again, this time his anger directed to the teenage girl standing s few feet behind Peter.

"No, Mr. Stark, this wasn't her fault," Peter tried to defend her. "I gave her the idea to help me. She had nothing to-"

"Peter, it's fine," Danielle cut in, reassuring him with knowing look.

"Oh, it is far from fine," Tony said through gritted teeth as he advanced on her. "What were you thinking?" He bit out.

Danielle sighed. "I just wanted to help."

"No. No, if you wanted to help, you would've kept him out of trouble, not run head-on into it like you always do," he scolded her. Danielle shrunk back. She felt like a child again. The same little girl that had first gotten yelled at by Steve after that party almost a year ago. She felt little and insignificant again. "See, him I would've expected this from because he's new-" Tony gestured behind him towards Peter. "But you..." he trailed off, his anger getting the best of him as he took a moment to calm down briefly.

Danielle glanced up at him through her eyelashes, defiant from his words that he knew were getting to her, probably even hurting her. Good, he wanted them to hurt her, make her so how big she colossally screwed up.

The brunette could see just how disappointed he was in her, how angry and upset he was with the both of them, but more specifically her. She was expecting him to be brutal eith her, but nothing could've prepared her for his final blow...

Tony glanced up at her and scoffed. He shook his head before looking back at her, his eyes locking with hers as he said, "He would be disappointed in you."

Danielle's chest clenched and her fists flexed at her sides. She blinked once, twice, trying to blink the tears away at the harsh words he had just unleashed upon her. Tony didn't even have to say a name to get her to understand just who he was talking about when he said that. Just by the look of the tears on her face he knew. He even felt a little regret about it, but she needed to hear it.

He watched as a plethora of emotions swept across her face, and more specifically her eyes, as she stared back at him in response to his remark. It was shock, confusion, hurt, anger, realization, guilt, and then they just looked lost. She blinked once and he could've sworn he saw a flash of gold just before the teenage girl that was standing not but a foot in front of him suddenly vanished in the wind.

Shit...

"Well, that was one aspect of her powers I definitely didn't miss," he muttered to himself.

"She can... She can teleport again?" Peter stuttered from where he stood a few feet away, completely flabbergasted by what he had just witnessed. And judging by his reaction, it was something he hadn't gotten used to about her just yet.

"Yup," was all Tony replied before turning back to the kid and getting back down to business. He would have to sort something out about Danielle later. It was moments like these he was glad she had a brother. "Okay, it's not working out. I'm gonna need the suit back," Tony exclaimed as he clapped his hands together in uncomfortable gesture. He was read to get this over with. It was like a bad break-up or something, only with his overly attached prodigy.

Like expected, the kid looked shattered. "For how long?"

Here came the hardest part... "Forever." Damn.

Across the city, a few miles away, a teenage girl that had just been standing on the roof of a building with Tony Stark standing a foot in front of her was now suddenly on the terrace porch of her Penthouse in the blink of an eye. She hadn't even realized it at first until she sunk down to her knees, her vision blinded by the bubbling tears now free flowing from her eyes.

The first son shook her body and there was nothing she could do to stop the rest that came as she crawled into the concrete corner of the terrace and curled up into a ball, sobbing and crying as she cursed herself for being such a monumental fuck up when it came to everything she tried to do right. Why couldn't she get something right? Just once? Why?!

She was right earlier. Being Eris really was a curse.

A/N: Little bit of action... lots of angst. Angst heavy chapter. Sorry guys. I know it's a shitty time rn and you'd rather read anything but angst bc I'm sure we all get enough of it in real life, but it had be here. It has a purpose. Angst can be our friend sometimes. Hope you enjoyed it this time.

Reviews:

zikashigaku: I had way too much fun writing Aaron's POV, tbh. I may do t again sometime with another character. I like writing unexpected POV's of the main characters, an outsider's perspective. And, oh yes, you guess it. It was definitely a train wreck. And now to deal with the aftermath.