The Girl and the Superhero{Peter Parker}

Part 46 (Kenzie's POV)

          He matched my hesitance with his own. "Fury said that she was in S.H.I.E.L.D. custody for involvement in an illegal weapons organization and masterminding a plot that threatened a member of the Avengers?"

          "True. She also had me kidnapped and held hostage and then shot Peter three times in the chest right in front of me."

          At that, he looked me in the eyes for the first time. "Jo... Joanne did that? Your mother did that to you?"

          I nodded, wishing for the first time that he actually didn't have to see things the way they were in our family. "She lied to us both. I'm really sorry."

          "But... she's my wife,"  he said numbly. "How could I not have known?"

          "Honestly, you didn't know either of us." I bit back the ache of tears in my throat as I picked my next words. "And dad... she didn't  make it. The building collapsed on her after I shot it trying to escape and she - she didn't--"

          "You don't have to apologize for anything. The woman I thought I knew is dead anyways." His shoulders began to shake as he wept. A man so invincible-- so untouchable-- dissipating in grief before my eyes. The room become foggy as my eyes flooded at the sight.

          I wheeled myself forward toward him, dust flying up into the rays of sunlight in the room as I did so. Leaning over, I put a hand on his knee. "You don't have to apologize for this, either." The words came before I really knew whether or not I believed them. "What she chose to do is not your fault."

          "But if I would have been home more, I - "

          "No." I squeezed his knee harder. "You're going to torture yourself for the rest of your life if you let yourself think like that. Now is the time to do it different. Now is the time to be here." I lowered my head to look up at his downtrodden eyes. "Be here, dad. For once in your life. I just lost my mom, and you just lost your wife-- we both need each other more than ever right now."

          He tentatively put his hand over mine. "It's a nice sentiment, Mckenzie. But I don't deserve it."

          "No, you don't." I agreed. "But you didn't deserve to have your wife manipulate you and lie to you throughout your entire marriage, either. So, in a way, the good things and bad things we get that we don't deserve even each other out in the end."

          A tear fell from his cheeks and slipped between the space in between his fingers and onto my hand. I met his gaze again with an ironic grin. "There is something beautiful that happens when you have nothing: you begin to see all the things you couldn't have had when you had everything."

          And I started to feel like maybe, from that point on, my dad and I had been broken enough for our pieces to finally fit together.

**********

          I found myself staring down at my mother's freshly covered grave.

          I don't really know what to say about the service. S.H.I.E.L.D. has a secret  cemetery and burial service that they provided for us, but only immediate family and S.H.I.E.L.D. approved or employed personnel was allowed to attend. So that meant it ended up being me, Peter, my father, Steve, Natasha, Tony, Happy Hogan, and then some other guys who S.H.I.E.L.D. paid to give my mother more people who could "honor her memory." They just spent most of the time staring at the Avengers in the group, though. Couldn't blame them. 

          My brain was a sea of conflicting thoughts and feelings. I felt this immense guilt that would have been enough alone to bring me six feet under myself. Guilt for the blast that ended up taking her life, but maybe even more guilt for feeling even a minor sense of relief that she was gone. I had been trapping myself in this dilemma for the last few days leading up to the funeral, and every time Peter could see me mentally trailing off, he would say, "Kenz, it's not your fault. You weren't aiming to kill-- she was. That's why she didn't make it, and you did."