Behind the Mask

TWENTY-ONE: The Stray One

**FYI next chapter is the LAST ONE! Are you in for an Avengers-ish sequel? Yay? Nay? Leave a review and let me know!**

.:::.

They left me alone for a while, wasting their energy interrogating Peter on Spider-Man's whereabouts. Peter stayed calm and collected, as expected. He seemed to be convincing them to look elsewhere. I couldn't hear exactly what was said; there was still a ringing in my ears.

I isolated myself from the outside world. I elected to become invisible, hidden beneath the bar and closed in on myself. It was eerily similar to my behavior in those dark days right after Greg's death. I wanted to be alone, removed from the violence and death around me.

I heard the stool in front of me skid across the floor as someone pulled it away. I braced myself, fearful of what this exposure would mean for me.

"It's alright. I'll get you out of here, I promise." His voice was so soothing, so unlike what I presumed.

I peeked out of my ball of invisibility and found Peter's warm eyes locked with mine. He would save me, he was a hero. It was the same feeling I had inside when he helped me escape the elevator.

"Don't look at me that way." I whispered.

"I'm going to distract them." He told me.

"How?" I spoke the word, but only my raspy breath made a sound. How would he manage to get us out of this?

I only blinked once and the scene before me changed. They hooked onto my wrists and yanked me out into the open despite my protests.

"I'm not being nice anymore, sweetheart." Red knit hat shook me as he spoke. "Where's the damn bug?"

"I don't know." I whimpered helplessly.

"Leave her alone." Peter was restrained beside me.

"Why isn't he here yet? Where is he?" I felt the bruises already forming on my forearms.

"I said leave her alone!" Peter raised his voice, earning him a shove from one of the thugs.

"He won't come for me." I was emotionless, no feeling at all. "I don't mean anything to him. If I did, he would be here by now."

"She's right." Peter agreed, playing along with me. "So let her go. She doesn't know anything, not like I do. Take me instead."

Red knit hat glanced over at them, and their response was merciless. The stubbly one held Peter in a headlock, stabbing his head with the barrel of a gun.

"No! Please, no! No!" I easily rolled back into hysterics. "No, no, no!"

"Where is he!"

He wouldn't expose himself in front of this many people. If it were just the two we started with, he may have knocked them unconscious, but we were outnumbered.

I felt the world collapsing around me. They would kill him, they didn't hesitate before. In the next few moments he would be dead, and so would I.

His eyes briefly held mine, enough to remind me that he trusted me, and he loved me. I was worth more than his secret.

Just when I thought it was our last moment, Peter roughly shrugged his shoulders and somehow escaped the grip he was under. He knocked the gun out of the stubbly one's hand. It tumbled to the ground by their feet. Peter kicked it away before the stubbly one could grab it again and wrestled him to the ground.

"Run!" Peter shouted, his voice muffled by the hands reaching for his throat. The other thugs moved into the struggle.

I wanted to run, but my ankles felt weighted. I wasn't going anywhere. A few of them started coming after me.

"Olivia, go!"

"I can't!" I glanced down at the floor beside my feet and spotted the gun. My instincts told me to leave it and run, but my brain told me to pick it up before someone else did.

As soon as the gun was in my possession, they backed away and attempted to help the others beat Peter.

It didn't take long at all for Peter to give them all a knock over the head or a bloody nose. When he stood up again, they all lay strewn across the bar like a bunch of drunken fools.

The only one left standing was Red knit hat. I followed his focus to the gun dangling in my fingertips.

I raised my hand and aimed the loaded weapon as best I could at our enemy.

This earned me a laugh. "Look at you." He mocked me. "Remind me not to underestimate you again."

I squeezed it tight in my hands, my knuckles turning white. "L-let us go, and I won't sh-shoot." I stammered.

"Let you go? Why would I do that?" To my dismay, Red knit hat revealed a smaller gun tucked in his belt. It was small, but still just as much of a weapon.

"Olivia," Peter's voice broke at the end as he realized the situation I put myself in. Standing at gunpoint with a murderer was not a place I wanted to be.

Red knit hat aimed his gun at me. "So what'll it be, sweetheart?"

I was still trembling, and I knew I would probably miss if I tried shooting him. "Let us go. Both of us."

"I already said that wasn't an option."

Something about the tone of his voice flipped a switch inside me. I was angry, basically fed up with the entire situation. "Who says you get to decide the options here? You're not the only one with a gun."

Peter became more anxious. "Olivia, don't test him, he's dangerous."

I felt empowered with the weapon in my hand. "Be quiet, Peter."

"You should listen to your boyfriend." Red knit hat hovered his finger over the trigger.

Peter reacted with the same speed and agility as before, blinding Red knit hat with a sudden spurt of webbing. I heard him pull the trigger, but the bullet went astray, into the bar beside me. Peter elbowed him in the nose and let him fall to the ground unconsciously.

He cursed under his breath, wiping his brow before looking up at me. "You okay?"

I dropped the hideous weapon on the floor and stepped away from it.

"Nicely done." He praised me breathlessly.

"Peter," I mumbled his name, unsure of what else I could say.

He seemed to understand. "Let's get the hell out of here." Peter walked by me and hooked his arm through mine. I had to hurdle the bodies as we hurried to escape through the back alley.

"You're just going to leave them there?" I asked him.

"You got any better ideas?"

I didn't.

I expected to shield my eyes from the sun, but it was nighttime now. It took a long time to get home. Peter didn't trust anyone we came across, taking us in the opposite direction. He soon decided to just fly us home, but we still couldn't be seen without the suit. He turned down dark alleyways and hidden passageways to get us home.

When we landed on his balcony, I expected to feel safe. I knew we would be safe now, but we had barely escaped alive. Something still felt wrong and uneasy. Chase was still dead. I didn't think I would ever be the same again.

Peter read my expression and tucked my head under his chin in a hug. He rubbed my shoulders and raised my chin with his fingers to check my mental state.

In doing so, he looked down at his own hand with a horrified expression. I lifted his wrist to see for myself.

It was covered in something dark and sticky. It glistened in the city lights shining off the balcony. "Oh, god."

I came to a realization and checked everywhere on his body for a source of the blood. He flipped on a light, and my stomach heaved at the dark redness that was also stained in his shirt.

"Oh, Peter!" I scrambled to peel off his shirt. How could he be hurt? He wasn't shot, was he? Why wouldn't he say anything?

"It isn't mine. It's not from me." He insisted.

I hesitated before flipping the shirt up over his chest, right beneath the blood stain. I blinked several times before I realized he was absolutely fine, not so much as a scratch on him.

I looked back up at him, confused by where the blood was coming from. Someone was definitely bleeding, and if it wasn't him...

Peter was propping my left arm in the air, holding it delicately as he examined my shoulder. His face was white.

I looked down and saw the same red stain soaking through to my skin. There was a tear in my sleeve on the outside of my arm.

"Oh, god..." I spoke out loud, tugging my sleeve up to my shoulder.

Sure enough, a gash the width of my finger was cut out of my shoulder. I must have been grazed by a bullet, the stray one.

I stared at it, listening to Peter apologize over and over again for something he didn't do. Once I snapped out of my trance, I was surprisingly calm. "Do you have a first aid kit?"

Peter was surprisingly not calm. "A first aid kit? You need a doctor! Doesn't it hurt? Why didn't you say something? God, I'm so sorry!"

"It's not deep enough for stitches. And I didn't even realize it happened...it doesn't hurt." I ignored the sting I started feeling. "Do you have a first aid kit or not?"

He hurried through the apartment, searching in cabinets and closets for the kit. I sat myself carefully on his bed and decided to peel of my shirt to get better access.

He nearly tripped over his own two feet bringing the first aid kit to me. He stared at the dried blood on my arm and I thought he was going to be sick. "Are you okay?" I asked him.

He scoffed like it was no big deal. "Fine." He said. "What else can I do?"

I examined my shoulder and the gruesome sight with all of the dried blood. "I need to clean it." I said, and he was off again.

I pulled out a large bandage and disinfectant to use. After I wiped the blood away it wasn't nearly as gruesome as we predicted.

"Are you sure you don't need a doctor?"

"It's not as bad as it looks." I showed him the gash without the excess blood. It was only about two inches long. "See?"

He subtly leaned away from me.

"Baby." I muttered.

"Olivia, you've been shot!"

"No! It's just a graze, nothing more than that."

"It could have been more than that."

"Yes, but it wasn't."

I started pressing the bandage down and caught Peter staring with that guilty stare again.

"I'm sorry."

"Peter, please."

He held his tongue for a moment, long enough for me to understand his concern. "You're dealing with this well."

I shrugged. "Greg had a similar cut once, when we were young." I smiled nostalgically at the memory. "He sliced his leg on a rusty old fence. He didn't want our parents to find out, so he walked me through the nursing process."

Peter chuckled. "Isn't that kind of dangerous?"

I was smiling, but those stubborn tears managed to fill up my eyelids. I nodded. "He was lucky."

Peter reached for my hand and squeezed it for comfort. "He would have been proud of you."

I laughed through the tears. "He would have killed me for getting involved. And none of it would have happened if I hadn't gotten involved in the first place."

I expected him to tell me that wasn't true, but he stayed quiet.

I couldn't read minds, so I just asked him. "Do you regret it?"

"Regret what?"

"Doing what you did for me, in the elevator."

"What makes you think I regret it?"

"I don't know, you just look...disappointed. I don't know." I dropped my eyes to the floor again. "Maybe I should go home."

"Why do you always do that?"

"Do what?"

"You run away when you're afraid to tell me how you feel. You can walk into a bar full of bloodthirsty criminals and aim a gun at their leader, but you can't just talk to me?"

"Peter, without me you wouldn't have even been put in that situation with bloodthirsty criminals."

"I am put in that situation every day!"

"But you shouldn't have me as an extra burden!"

We were face to face, similar to the position during our first fight. This wasn't a fight, this was how we somehow managed to get our feelings across to each other. We were different than most couples, and we were definitely aware of that.

"I don't regret it." He said firmly. "Do you?"

I did regret it at first, but it was moments like this where we were so angry but so in love that it ended up becoming a hot mess in my head. "No."

He didn't say anything more, crossing his arms around my waist and pulling me closer to him. I tried to raise both arms to curl around his neck but cringed at the pain I didn't want him to see.

He held my arm down before I could hurt myself and kissed me for the first time in almost a day. I decided right then and there that there was no way in hell it would ever be that long again.