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damned_institute2012-02-12 04:43 pm
tightsofmight) wrote in damned_institute2012-02-12 04:43 pm
Entry tags:
Night 61: Mission #5 [Peter Parker and Jessica Drew]
[From here.]
The first thing he noticed was the sudden explosion of clothes upon his person. And that was not literal in any way - it was just that one moment he was in his traditional smiley face shirt and sweats, and the next he was bundled up to the brim. Gloves, boots, snow pants, coat, et all. A duffel bag, mostly empty, strapped to his back. He was even wearing night vision goggles, which turned everything in sight a deep shades of green.
Briefly he wondered if this was how Norman Osborn saw the world.
The next he noticed was the cutting sensation of cold. Even through the clothes, which he was sure were the very best in toasty buns technology, the howling wind clipped him and he could imagine, if not feel, the icicles already forming on the edges of his coat. He had literally never known such a cold in his life.
Thirdly was that both his hands were occupied. In one, there was what felt like an ancient walkie talkie. Raising it into view revealed its true form as a not quite so ancient GPS. The file had said they'd need it. Due to circumstances or the limits on blink of an eye teleporty technology (which Peter found hard to buy considering they had just gone from what might be New Jersey to Ant-fricking-arctica), they couldn't just zap the pair of them into the testing facility. They had to tromp their way over through the dark of night and hope not to die of hypothermia before they reached monsterville.
In the other hand, was Jessica's. He turned to face his clone, getting the distinct impression that he'd been sent along on a mission with Kenny from South Park instead. He doubted he looked much different.
"Aren't we beautiful." How did they fit your hair in that hood would have been his next question if he wasn't certain she'd crack his goggles for it. He held the GPS between them, keeping all movements close in light of the cold. "I guess that bloopy light is us, and that bloopy light," he tapped another dot, scarcely half an inch away, with a finger gone fat with the glove, "Is where the facility is. And once we're there we just...stomp on the monsters and collect samples?" He wrinkled his nose, but he doubted she could see. Everything had come down to eyes and brows with the goggles and the coats, otherwise he might not have a nose to wrinkle in the first place. "Is it just me, or does this seem kind of pointless? They already have plenty of gross things kicking around the hospital."
The first thing he noticed was the sudden explosion of clothes upon his person. And that was not literal in any way - it was just that one moment he was in his traditional smiley face shirt and sweats, and the next he was bundled up to the brim. Gloves, boots, snow pants, coat, et all. A duffel bag, mostly empty, strapped to his back. He was even wearing night vision goggles, which turned everything in sight a deep shades of green.
Briefly he wondered if this was how Norman Osborn saw the world.
The next he noticed was the cutting sensation of cold. Even through the clothes, which he was sure were the very best in toasty buns technology, the howling wind clipped him and he could imagine, if not feel, the icicles already forming on the edges of his coat. He had literally never known such a cold in his life.
Thirdly was that both his hands were occupied. In one, there was what felt like an ancient walkie talkie. Raising it into view revealed its true form as a not quite so ancient GPS. The file had said they'd need it. Due to circumstances or the limits on blink of an eye teleporty technology (which Peter found hard to buy considering they had just gone from what might be New Jersey to Ant-fricking-arctica), they couldn't just zap the pair of them into the testing facility. They had to tromp their way over through the dark of night and hope not to die of hypothermia before they reached monsterville.
In the other hand, was Jessica's. He turned to face his clone, getting the distinct impression that he'd been sent along on a mission with Kenny from South Park instead. He doubted he looked much different.
"Aren't we beautiful." How did they fit your hair in that hood would have been his next question if he wasn't certain she'd crack his goggles for it. He held the GPS between them, keeping all movements close in light of the cold. "I guess that bloopy light is us, and that bloopy light," he tapped another dot, scarcely half an inch away, with a finger gone fat with the glove, "Is where the facility is. And once we're there we just...stomp on the monsters and collect samples?" He wrinkled his nose, but he doubted she could see. Everything had come down to eyes and brows with the goggles and the coats, otherwise he might not have a nose to wrinkle in the first place. "Is it just me, or does this seem kind of pointless? They already have plenty of gross things kicking around the hospital."
no subject
She glanced over at Peter, barely recognizable in the same ensemble, and then glanced down at what he held in his free hand. Some sort of GPS device. She paused, listening to him quietly as she shivered and trembled, wind beating at her back and really wishing that she was back at Landel's in her warm, comfy bed, while Erika stared at her because that was much better than anything involving snow, cold, and monsters.
"Uh..." She said after a moment, finally looking down to what she held in her hand, and holding it up. "Is this a flamethrower?" Briefly she wondered if this was in any way a good idea whatsoever. (It wasn't. At all. Way to give the fifteen year-old girl a very, very destructive weapon.) Jessica shook her head though, lifting a booted foot that was already coated in snow and then setting back down on the ground again, only for it to sink down a few inches.
"I guess they need samples to make more monsters with or something in their Jekyll and Hyde evil labs." She scowled though he couldn't see it. "Should we get going? I'd rather not die from frostbite."
no subject
Seriously, this was offending him. He was relegated to map holder and Jessica was given their equivalent of an AK-47. Did they not trust him with it? Did she have better aim than him? (Impossible. They were the same goddamn person that was stupid to even think...) Or maybe, Peter secretly thought, it was that he was the one they were expecting to karate chop all the ugly monster things and Jessica was just on clean up duty with the flamethrower. He liked that explanation better.
"Ditto on that," Peter muttered darkly, already beginning the trek. They had a bit of a stretch of nothing but total whiteout to get through, but they shouldn't be too far off. They wouldn't have dropped them off so far that it took all night to get there. That would have been crap planning, and the military didn't do crap planning. At least not on purpose. He mulled the thought over as they walked, periodically flexing his fingers to keep the feeling in them.
"You know, Jess? I just...I don't know. What could these monsters have that they couldn't whip up..." He sent her a furtive look. Okay. This train of thought would only work in a discussion with someone who was totally aware of the eccentricities of Landel's. "Um. You know, we never talked about that thing with Captain Kirk on the board. Did we?"
no subject
She shivered and then exhaled, watching her breath frost.
There was a pause at the change of subject and Jessica turned her gaze towards Peter, raising an eyebrow even though he couldn't see it. "Oh, you mean when you flipped your nuts at me?" It wasn't mean to be abrasive, just an honest comment. She wasn't mad about it -- they had the same personalities -- therefore, they were conflicting as hell. It happened.
Jessica stepped over a large chunk of snow before adding, "You know, I think I met Chris Pine, by the way. He's kind of weird. He like, thinks he's Captain Ki --"
... Give her a second.
no subject
They had both recovered suitably from that fiasco, but thinking of it still brought along ugly feelings. They had both cut way too deep into things that shouldn't have been cut. It was the downside of knowing your opponent inside and out, he guessed.
Then Jessica was pausing. Peter could practically hear the gears grinding to a halt over the whistle of the wind. He shrunk back, a little guiltily, but mostly out of the sheer force of shame that the subject brought him.
"Chyeeeeaah. Slight...possibility he might not be crazy there," Peter said slowly. He rubbed at the back of his hood, trying for an itch he couldn't reach through the seven billion layers of fabric. "My first day here, I got in a tiff with a guy who looked like Harrison Ford because he kept telling me he was Indiana Jones. And I didn't believe him. And then some guy comes up to me. Starts asking me if my parents were just fans or what."
And here came the hard part. Peter closed the distance between them, but kept them both moving. The less time they spent out in the cold (and on this subject), the better. "And when I tell him that no, my name is Peter Parker, he starts reciting my - our whole life back at me. Mary Jane, Harry. The works. And he tells me he read all about it in a comic book."
Worst day of his fricking life.
"And then I get other people recognizing me. Even in the mask, they'd call me out as 'Peter', or something dumb and just..." He stops right there. He doesn't know exactly where else to go with it, and maybe it's best if he gives Jess a moment or two to digest this whole shindig. Because it would totally sink in and be okay with just a moment, right?
What an eye-roll that deserved.
no subject
-- A comic book.
Her eyes widened at the final realization, stopping in her tracks for a moment. A comic book character. There was a comic book about their life. About Peter's life. About... her life? These thoughts kept going around in her head, the same ones over and over. These people thinking they were fictional characters, Peter being some sort of --
And then it hit her like a car accident.
"So... what you're saying..." She began after a few moments of silence, picking up the pace again. Her voice was slow, her words picked carefully. "... Is that these guys are somehow -- Chris Pine was actually Captain Kirk. And that --" A beat. "Are fictional characters real, Peter?" She wanted to sound more surprised, more scared than she really did. And there was the unsaid question of, where does that put our life?
To be honest, she was handling it better than she thought she would, but SHIELD and alternate universes that were researched there pretty much prepared her for anything.
no subject
But he hadn't, and now his only option was so shove the Cliff Notes at her and hope she didn't blue screen on him from the virtual brick to the face. "...Yeah." He cleared his throat uncomfortably. "That guy I was talking about the other day, the one that. Um. That was Indy."
The wind howled more ferociously, pushing the uneasy bubbles in his gut into intricate spins. This was the worst thing to talk about ever. "They brought him back. They do that a lot. I think...like because they're fictional, because this...Ay yi yi, because on some level we're all fake enough that they can dick around with life or death, they can snap us back in whenever they please. There's a whole thing - this whole whack of things that come with realizing this, that you're walking around with people you saw on TV or read about in books. I met Buffy the other day. Buffy. And Harvey Dent - Two-Face. The guy from Batman with the face." He held his hand up and halved his own face in a clean demonstration. "He's come down to the basement with us. But Jess, the important thing right now isn't any of that. We can talk about that later.
"What I'm trying to say is that if they can yank out whatever the hell they want from whatever they've seen on TV, then all jokes aside? We really could be going up against the Thing tonight." His heart began to beat a little faster, a little louder. These things always seemed so silly on the tube, didn't they? In the flesh, though, it was much harder to pull off a victory without that all knowing bullshit you could devise on the safety of your couch. "But even worse. If they can yank out whatever they want, whenever they want - why are they sending us up here to do it?" He stopped, staring straight at her. "No skyscrapers. No cityscape. No nutballs with superpowers. And I seriously doubt we'll be doing much acrobatics in these huge clown suits. Doesn't exactly seem like our area of expertise, does it?"
There was a blip on the GPS. Peter yanked it out, peering downwards at the screen until he realized that it was all quite unnecessary. Just ahead, in a slight dip in the snow, was a tiny, hollowed out valley in the snow. Two buildings connected by a small, wooden walkway, a snowed in helicopter, a radio tower. Long abandoned trucks and snow plows.
Peter's teeth chattered as he surveyed the spot. Definitely not their ideal turf. "Guess we're here."
no subject
The second she said it, she knew it was a bad decision. She couldn't stop herself. They loved Indy. They had seen the movies so many times that they had most of the lines memorized. And then that happened -- Peter's story, him breaking down in her arms, and she felt a swarm of guilt sink into the pit of her stomach. She went silent though, just staring at her feet as they tromped through the snow, fingers wrapping around the flamethrower tightly.
Their life was a marionette hanging from Landel's strings, she was coming to terms with. She was like a D&D character, running across the board at the roll of a die and hoping she wouldn't die from pneumonia or something. And that brought everything else here into perspective, thinking the exact same thoughts just as Peter said it. Why them? Why them of all people? Surely there were better suited folks who could get the samples from these monsters, and yet, the bigwigs in charge had picked her and Peter.
However, before she could say anything, the blip caught her attention and she broke out into a slight jog, moving ahead of him, raising her flamethrower.
"It's completely deserted." She said after a moment, approaching the snowy valley. "No sign of any monsters either." At least, so she was assuming. Unless this was going to be all Jurassic Park.
no subject
A lot more implied in that than there should be. He couldn't come outright and say he'd swiped Indy's pistol and put the barrel to his temple, but Jess was smart. Obscenely so, if it wasn't too egotistical to say. He shuffled his feet. Or rather wriggled his toes uncomfortably in the snugness of his boots, a gesture unseen through the ungodly amounts of snow around their ankles. "One day when this Silent Hill bullcrap is behind us, I will explain, okay? I will explain and it will make sense and none of this magic voice-snatching schlock will stop me."
But that was a matter to put behind them, and Peter was all the more glad for it.
"For now," Peter remarked grimly, pocketing the GPS and adjusting the bag on his shoulder. "Come on. If anything's in there it will probably know we're here already. They didn't exactly camouflage us."
He took a step forward and slid as elegantly as he could down to the bottom of the slope. Wasn't like he could websling on over. And he'd never tested the fluid against these temperatures in the first place. It might have just frozen instantly on them. Snapped clean through.
Hitting the bottom forced him into a run, but he put a stopper to the force before approaching the first building. Cautious, he cast a solemn look back at his clone and advanced towards the door. A ginger hand took hold of the knob.
"You've got the flame thrower. You want to cover me when this opens?"
no subject
Jessica didn't want to think on the subject. She spent a lot of her time trying not to think about emotional stuff, trying not to break down and become -- well, him. She focused on missions, on the goal at hands. SHIELD helped that, helped give her that attitude she needed, and it made her existence easier. The clone slid down the hill a little more gracefully than how she assumed Peter did behind her, stopping to wait for him and then trailing after as they headed towards the building.
"You got it."
Her spider sense wasn't going off. That was a good thing, at least. She waited for him to open the door before slipping past him, flamethrower raised. The inside of the building was dark, looked like it hadn't been touched in quite a while. There were empty beds, mattresses torn and blankets thin and ripped. No sign of any people or monsters. Jessica lowered the weapon, her boots echoing off the metal floor as she pressed her glove against one of the mattresses and a cloud of dust rose.
"Bet this place gets a five star rating on Expedia." She found herself murmuring, waving a hand to clear the air.
no subject
Wanting very much to just get this whole trip the frick over with and maybe go check around for some penguins to coo over (you'd do it too), Peter gave up on the mattresses and gravitated towards the next door. Prying it open led to a short hall, the end of which seemed to herald the existence of a rec room if that ping pong table had anything to say about it. Mind you, it was looking as dusty and forlorn as everything else. To his left, there was a door to what should be a lavatory, seeing as how immediately next to it was an open frame into a humble kitchen. Peter curiously edged it open and confirmed his suspicions. Musty old toilet and shower, there you are. In a space about four feet wide, too.
"Welp. We can cross the Kingpin off our list of tenants. It would take like, twelve pairs of Spanx and a bar of butter to get him into the can." Low blow, but if anyone deserved it-
And the spider sense was flipping.
He didn't bother calling out to Jess. No point. Peter's head whipped around and his eyes snapped to the shadowed thing coming in from the cold. It had followed them in. Vaguely human shaped and sized, but on all fours like an animal. The odd sheen of it struck him first, the light catching on wet, rippling edges. Deep red.
Then Peter realized what made it so strange. It was all muscle. Literally. The thing had no skin.
A thud from behind him jerked his attention back around. Two more had materialized at the rec room, one on the floor and the other having hopped onto the ping pong table. They seemed to boggle at him, wide eyes staring without lids, the jelly of the brains exposed. If they had possessed anything like a long, floppy tongue Peter might have called them Lickers and started panicking about being trapped at some Umbrella Corp offshoot. One cocked its head, the wetness of muscle moving on muscle making for the world's least wanted sound effect. Lord help him not to hurl right now.
"Oh, guh-ross," Peter remarked with a near impossible twist in his face. The things were revolting. And fast, because his spider sense blared again and the things were charging at him. He couldn't worry about the one at his back (or more, it could have brought friends). That was Jess' job. He'd take the ping pong pals.
Peter dropped the bag and leaped high, kicking down his heel like an axe as the first breached personal space. The blow hit its shoulder with a loud crack, snarls following. The beast was broken, but not down for the count. Good to know.
He latched onto the roof and scurried back out, leaving Jess with the mattresses and anything coming in from outside as he drew the others back towards the rec room. No way he was going to try fighting anything in a hallway too narrow to fart in.
no subject
The buzzing continued even louder, and there was no doubt in her mind that Peter was confronting something similar, if not the same. She had to get out of here. She had to get them out of here. Jessica tried to call out for him, but she only managed to get to "Pet--" before the monster lunged at her, and the clone scrambled away, doing a full backflip to avoid its strike with the skill of an Olympic gymnast. The flamethrower flew from her hand, clattering to the ground behind her as the creature kept lashing at her.
She couldn't look back. She couldn't check to see if Peter was okay because she knew the second she tore her eyes away from this thing it would get her and gut her and she couldn't have that.
It threw itself at her again and she jumped upwards with a "Yikes!", landing and propelling herself off of its head with a crack. She landed in front of it and in one smooth movement, dropped to her knees, spinning around to slam her foot into its face before rolling back into a crouch. It fell back with a shriek and she could hear Peter and the other ones moving. But it was getting back to its feet and there went her spider sense again, another one coming in through the open door. The first launched at her again and Jessica fell back against the ground with an audible thud.
Crap, crap, crap, crap.
One hand moved to punch the creature in the face and the other -- the other scrambled for the flamethrower behind her. This was taking way too long. She was being sloppy, getting her tuchas handed to her. Jessica pulled her legs up to her chest and just as she kicked the creature off and the other skittered in, she managed to grab the flamethrower and pull the trigger and --
It exploded. The creature on top of her fell back, bursting into flames and the other let out a shriek, but all she could think about was absolute, severe pain. Like nothing she had ever felt before. Her eyes widened and she was staring down at her hands that once held the flamethrower but were now unrecognizable. Her mittens were no more and her fingers -- her fingers. It was like nothing she had ever felt before and Jessica fought back the urge to scream because her fingers were completely torn to the knuckles, burnt off with no remains. No fingertips, the charred mass of muscle bleeding from the edges and to top it all off, flurry of webbing dripping from the stubs.
All she could do was breathe and stare at the explosive mess that were once her hands.
no subject
What in the freaking hell??
A punch for pooch. Its skull snapped under his fist (whoops...) and it hit the wall with a horrid crunch, and the pearly white of the outdoors peaked in through the premature crack behind it. Something howled from behind it, and there was a furious scraping. Barking. Hissing.
And crap crap crap, Thing One and Thing Two were coming at him, springing off the pool table. Peter dodged, jumping to the wall adjacent before immediately kicking the table over top of the two. There was an unearthly howl of pain, but his focus was on the incoming invasion. A seamless mess of talon-like fingers were scraping through the drywall, scooping out wood, cords, and insulation alike. Looked like someone had taken over for the dogs.
They had to leave.
Peter didn't wait for the creatures to burst inside and give him a Romero ambush. He had more sense than that. He was already swinging back into the hall, feet clattering on the flimsy floor with the urgency of his sprint.
"JESS!!"
A burst of flame. A veritable comet in their midst. Peter stumbled back, shielding his face as his ears rang with the blast and stricken with a single, terrible thought: flamethrowers made jet streams. Not fire balls.
The smell of burnt flesh hit him before the chaos cleared. The smoke was immediate. Something was burning. The building. A creature, he could see it writhing there, going ashy and loosing that unholy shriek. And over there was his clone. Her face was fixed in agony, eyes owl wide as she stared down at the charred, oozing stumps of her hand. Peter stood in the door frame, transfixed.
"...Jes-"
Spider sense. Peter turned, but felt the talons pierce his thigh before anything could be done. They sunk in deep, inexorable. A searing pain that had him half convinced that he'd caught on fire down to the bone. He screamed, and the teeth followed. They covered a much more shallow ground than the talons with the snow suit in the way, but when they immediately set to tearing Peter was hard pressed to remember a pain more brutal.
"GYYAAAAAH - GET THE FU-GYAAAAAH!!!" He battered it blindly. At full strength the head punctured so easily, spraying him with viscera and soaking his glove, but the damage was done. Peter pulled away with a leg that seemingly been dunked in a wine vat, a mess of grape pulp and a dangling strip of flesh flopping out of his pants. One step and he was about to faint.
Another leaped over its dead brother. Peter didn't think twice before batting it through the wall, failing at suppressing his screams. One hand on his leg, he shot as many a web he could manage at the hall, trapping the beasts there for a time. Seething, biting through his lip and breathing in a haze of tears and mucus, he shot the next web at his wound.
"GGHHHK-fffffuck..." He slumped against the wall, coughing. Smoke. Smoke, fuck it, this place was burning. Peter sobbed and hacked again, venturing forward to find Jessica in the haze of flames and smog that had beset the cabin.
"JESS. JESS G-GET OUT!!"
no subject
Red swirled with the white pooling before her, illuminated with orange and yellow from around her. Her face was pale, sweating, she was suffocating from her own pain, from the smoke, from --
And then Peter was screaming and her spider-sense was blaring and despite everything, her head snapped upwards and back and she barely caught Peter getting a piece of his leg ripped out and him webbing the creatures back and she was shrieking, "Peter! Peter!"
And reality came back to her.
She had to fight through the pain. She had to fight through losing her fingers. Tears were rolling down her cheeks but she staggered forward, pushing herself to her feet as the fire furled around them. (She couldn't breathe. Was she dying? Was this it?) Jessica spotted his figure pressed against the wall, calling for her and she forced herself past the flames, past the burning in her hands and her face and everything.
"I'm not -- I'm not leaving you. I won't."
The clone stumbled, hands pressing against her chest, the webbing sticking to the fabric of her clothes, and she was hacking, choking on the smoke before pressing her wrist against his shoulder forcefully. "Peter, climb -- climb onto my back. I'm going -- I'm going to get you out of here."
Oh god, they were going to die. This was it. They were going to burn to death.
no subject
Peter stumbled forward as well as he could, gripping her by the shoulders as she pressed her wrist to his. Her wrist, and there was a latent string of reddened web goop leading from her coat to his, connected by the stumps. The acidic smell hit his nose like a freight train, but it was soon buried under a heady wave of smoke. He coughed violently, turning his face from hers.
"No no no - not with those things. You'll die." He squeezed. Maybe too hard, but he needed to stay steady and get his arm around her shoulders at the same time. "H-Hobble me out-" The instructions died under a new fit of coughs. A beam crumbled from overhead, some three feet away from them. The sparks leaped to and fro.
"Come on! Come - c-c'mooon."
no subject
But they had to move.
Jessica didn't bother arguing with him. She looped her arm around his body, lifting him up and holding him close. If anything, the web emerging from her hands helped hold him against her, dragging from her stumps to his jacket. Her spider sense was going nuts, as the roof continued to fall around them but she hurried, trying to lead him as quickly as possible to the door, flames curling around them.
It felt like forever, but finally they made it out the door and Jessica almost fell to her knees, feet crunching deep in the quickly melting snow. She pulled Peter as far as she could from the building, collapsing after a moment. However, there was no time for rest as she immediately made for his leg, web dripping from her hands.
"Let me -- let me try -- " It was a struggle, but she managed to string some out, trying to cover the huge gash as best as she could. Every movement caused her to grit her teeth in pain though. Her spinnerets were ruined.
no subject
"They gave me mine. Just. Please. Let me. Your hands will freeze off," he said with a puff of steam. Things were already feeling frozen where his pant leg had been ripped open. Finishing the job, Peter shot another couple of layers around the wound, sealing all the gaps in the suit and cementing Jessica's webbing into place. Thank god they had compensated for the shooters with his sleeves. It felt like there was an attachment, an extra tube. He's have to look if he got the chance.
But the important matter was Jess. Peter gave her a weak smile, his cheeks bunching over the scarf to give away the expression. "I'll do yours. Okay? We're going to be okay."
And as gently as he could, he returned the favour. He didn't stop until he was sure the cannisters were half empty; between the wall of webbing inside the cabin and the bandaging he was doing now, the military's paltry offering for the night was not lasting worth a damn. Jessica's hands now looked like swollen cotton swabs, encased in thick white strands. He hoped it would be even remotely warm enough to last them through this.
"We have to keep moving, Jess. We have to go back. We'll be done for if we stay." He swallowed thickly. His leg. Shit, he wasn't sure he had another mile in him. Jess could leave. She didn't have her hands, but she could run. If something followed them, he was making sure she got out safe.
He'd already died once. Technically. Even if it was a big fat hallucination stunt on Landel's part, he had still felt that last helpless moment and the quiet that came after. And besides, knowing about the comic book thing kind of took the punch out of death in the first place. He could handle this. He could.
Shivering madly, Peter stared at his clone. His face. But pretty, girlish. He could say that now. If she was his sister then it was fair to say she was pretty and he wanted her to be happy. Slowly, he lowered the scarf around his mouth, and moved hers down too before placing a dry, frigid kiss on her cheek.
"I love you Jess. I really do." God. Still crying, and now it was soaking the rims of his goggles. He could feel it freezing to his face. "So you have to promise me you're going to be all right."
no subject
She didn't argue with him though when he stopped her from webbing his leg, nor when he started webbing her hands either. They pain was still searing but she could feel the cold slowly numbing it over and she just watched quietly as her hands became web mittens.
"The mission though, Peter- -" She found herself arguing, despite everything. People were depending on them. And if they... her gaze slowly met his and it was a lightbulb shattered when she realized what he could possibly thinking as she then stared at his leg. "No. No, no, no." She was still murmuring her refusals as he kissed her cheek, eyes watering now at this, instead of anything else. Not the pain, not the fire, but the realization that Peter was giving himself up.
"Stop it, Peter. Stop it." Tears were running down her face, glossing over her goggles and mixing with the ash. "We're going to be fine. I'm going to get you back Don't you dare say something like -- like that." Her voice was shaking, choking, because she knew exactly what he could be thinking and that made everything a hundred times worse. "Come on." Somehow, she had forgotten completely about everyone else between the span of two minutes, simply because it was about Peter now. And for her, it always would be.
Jessica moved, pulling him close to her and wrapping his arm over her shoulder to lift him up. "You're going to be fine." She found herself repeating this over and over like some sort of mantra.
no subject
Honestly, he was baffled that she even cared at this point. Maybe it was because Peter had been here longer, but he was beyond the idea of even completing the mission in the first place. Screw Landel's. Whatever consequences they might have back at the institute, they could face. And if the army really wanted them as recruits, they wouldn't let them die horribly out here. They'd have to bring both him and Jess back. Alive, if not in one piece. Surely Aguilar and his goons could see the sense in that.
And shit, now she was crying too. She'd caught on way too quick, and Peter felt awful for even considering staying behind, but it was true. He was the real gimp here.
But he couldn't let that keep her in this spot. If she wouldn't go without him, he'd hobble as far as he could. Otherwise this would all be useless. "Jess - Jess stop it." He swept her close, a brief and frantic hug, gone as quickly as it came. "Let's go. We just have to go. Now. Nothing has to happen as long as we just leave and put these stupid things-"
And the spider sense went wild. Peter jolted, looked frantically back at the burning building, and missed the thing that leaped out of the snow on the other side of him.
It caught him by the arm, talons first. Peter toppled with a yelp, the world spinning white and red with the storm and the glistening muscles of the creature on top of him. He sunk deep into the snow, disappearing several inches under the surface within half a second. Disoriented. Screaming. Trying to punch the damn thing off but the goggles got half knocked off and he couldn't see a fucking thing with the black rims in his eyes, but he could feel the teeth already. Peter screamed, loud and piercing as he felt muscle leave the bone for the second time tonight.
"JESS!!"