The Weight of Us ｡ Peter Parker [3]

28 - Is Falling Down

The weight of the nitinol against my organs was a sickening anchor, ready to pull me down to the ocean bed where I could lay with the creatures of the deep and watch the world crumble and burn with the rippling water above my head. At least on the bottom of the sea everything would be calm and peaceful and not broken.

Panic dotted my vision, black around the edges and unfocused. My lungs, despite the wind on my face, felt like they were struggling to fill with air and my entire body was stiff like ice. It was a nightmare, the kind where I would wake to the shadows and not be able to move an inch, a demon pressed against my chest and promised all the ways in which I could never breathe freely again. Had Tony ever been stuck in his suit? Had something like this happened to the greatest hero in the world? Did he want to die simply to end the torment of not being able to move his fingertips?

I could taste salt on the back of my throat where my tears wanted to dribble down my cheeks and soak against the metal. I wanted to scream but there was no use. Hundreds of civilians were fleeing around me and the screaming only blurred into one large cry for humanity. I couldn't even tilt my chin upwards to find Spider-Man jumping between drones. I couldn't even summon the anger of having Elliott Mercer turn her back on me and run into the crowds, disappearing like the wrath she had always been.

"Holy Thor, she's stuck!"

Voices suddenly rose through the chaos. They were familiar, like a spotted cloud in the sky on a weak summer day. They drifted closer, just hovering over my shoulder. I tried to move my head, but T.A.D.A.S.H.I.'s metal was too heavy and only continued to press against my ribcage. My tears almost fell when somebody's face appeared from the black edges. His jawline was blurry, but after blinking a few times, his face cleared up and I saw the worry in his eyes.

Colton Parsons pressed his palms to my cheeks, shaking my head a little bit, maybe trying to wake up the fire sitting inside my stomach. "Hey, snap out of it." He turned to the bubbly pink haired princess on his right. "Gwenny, grab my sonic screwdriver."

"The pink or blue one?" Gwendolyn Poole questioned.

I couldn't tear my eyes away from his face. "Make it pink, make it blue, doesn't matter."

Gwendolyn shuffled around in the backpack that hung over Colton's shoulders. His gaze returned to my own and knocked a few times on the chest plate of my suit. "Stupid electromagnetic bullet, huh? Weird to think somebody in this reality have them on hand. Who did this to you? I'd like to meet our world hopping friend."

"What are you doing here?" I could not begin to process the logical reasonings that two people that liked to jump through dimensional worlds had stumbled across me standing in the middle of London with a very crazy man ready to destroy half of Europe and kill my boyfriend. "You're supposed to be safe and far away in your world."

Colton half grinned, lowering his gaze to the front of my suit. Gwendolyn made a gleeful pop with her lips when she found his sonic screwdriver, whatever that was. "We like to live dangerously," Colton mumbled, the words almost lost on the roar coming from the bridge above our heads. "Thankfully for you, Mary Jane mentioned you were in London with some guy named Beck. Long story short, Gwenny did a little illicit research—"

"We're not really supposed to go snooping in the otherworldly archives, something about messing around with the timeline, blah, blah, blah." Gwendolyn winked playfully and turned her attention upwards to watch the bridge. "But I couldn't help myself and thank the Space Sisters Gamora and Nebula, I did, because today doesn't end well for a lot of Europeans."

Colton lowered his flashing screwdriver to the middle of my suit. I watched with strange curiosity, as the screwdriver started to spin and slowly, it was making a hole in the nitinol. "We kind of jumped into your world without a plan, but hey, where's the fun in calculated risks?" he asked, very focused on his work. Gwendolyn tapped him on the shoulder, drawing his attention to the bridge finally. "Well, that's not good. Flo, can you take one giant breath for me?"