[Kübler-Ross | Stage Two | Anger]

[daretodo]

The kitchen table's been overturned and the splintered remnants of a chair are scattered across the floor, along with broken plates and glasses, silverware. In the living room, a bookshelf's collapsed in on itself, the end table responsible for its destruction still hanging through the slats of one of the shelves. One of the couches has been torn

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[daretodo]

I'm perched on the edge of my desk when I hear a noise at the front door, the end of the marker pushed between my lips, but I don't move until I hear my name. Then I jerk forward, feet slipping onto the floor to find my balance, and I half-stumble towards the hallway, stepping over discarded books and papers with a gracelessness born of anger.

The way Pepper calls out only for me says she isn't expecting to find Mary Jane, if her coming into my house uninvited wasn't evidence enough. She knows, then. Gossip travels quickly in a place like this, I shouldn't be surprised, but still I wonder who told her, even as I'm glad I don't have to break the news. Maybe that makes me selfish, but in this, I think I'm entitled, just as I'm entitled to my privacy. There's no law that says she can't come in here, but that doesn't matter. It's the principle of the thing. You don't go through a door that's shut without asking. Locks are made for honest people, but doors are kept closed for a reason. And as I pass by the bedroom I refuse to think of as mine instead of ours, the one whose door's been shut since that Sunday, a voice at the back of my head whispers a question I don't want to answer.

As I turn out of the hallway, I catch a glimpse of red hair too light to be Mary Jane's, and stop short when I get a good look at Pepper's face. My own expression contorts, raw and ugly for a fleeting moment before I force it all down, and school my features into a mask not nearly as effective as any of the ones tucked away in the other room.

"Get out."

[wildlyconflictd]

The flicker of unrestrained emotion that crosses Peter's face before he catches himself absolutely breaks her heart. When he tells her to leave, she indulges in feeling wounded for a slim moment before her better sense kicks in and she levels him with a surprisingly steady gaze.

"No." Her tone leaves no room for argument, nor does the way she steps into the room and bends to pick up an upturned table.

[daretodo]

I get there before she does, kicking the table out of her reach. It spins towards the wall with a clatter, coming to an abrupt halt across the room when a leg snags around the corner of the couch. My breaths are labored, coming heavy and quick.

The effort of trying to keep it together is taking everything I've got, the strain evident in my voice as I bite out, "Leave it."

[wildlyconflictd]

She isn't going to tell him to stop it, she isn't going to tell him to play nice. Were the shoe on the other foot, she can't say she wouldn't be in a similar place emotionally, or that her typically collected demeanor wouldn't give way to a need to simply burn things down.

It's the helplessness that's the worst part. The inability to do anything about it. As a dyed in the wool control freak, she's intimately acquainted with the feeling.

She isn't going to tell Peter to play nice, not now.

"Do you want something to hit?" she asks, completely serious.

[daretodo]

The laugh that tears itself from my throat is harsh, mocking. Her meaning is clear enough, but the offer's absurd coming from the mouth of Pepper Potts. Whatever training she's done here would never hold up against my years of practical experience, and in my state, taking into account the discrepancy in our skill levels isn't something I'm either able nor want to do. If I'm going to pick a fight, it'll be with someone I'm not too busy being worried about actually hurting.

I wouldn't even take Tony up on a similar offer -- not unless he was in the armor.

"Not you."

[wildlyconflictd]

Emotions are high enough that Pepper wants to throw something at his head for the easy way he mocks her. She presses her lips together in irritation instead.

"I wasn't suggesting me," she says, and all but flings the bag from her arm onto the underside of the overturned table. "I'm not as stupid as you apparently think I am. But if you want something to hit, I will find you something to hit."

[daretodo]

I've never just been handed things. That's not my life. Barring the day I was bit by that spider, gifted with powers beyond any kid's imagination, I've worked for everything I have, and I've worked on my own. I don't know how to process what she's offering, its concept too foreign for me to make sense of it, and so I don't, dismissing it out of hand.

"Like what?" I ask, throwing my arms out to my sides in a wild shrug. "Like what, Pepper? Do you have a Rolodex filled with thugs for hire? The address of whatever son of a bitch brought us here?"

[wildlyconflictd]

She lets the sarcasm roll over her. There isn't much else that she can do without making the situation worse, and fortunately for them both, she's got a lot of experience in not reacting to these things.

"If you want a punching bag or a person or… I don't know, a crash test dummy! I will figure out a way to get that for you, Peter. If I could figure out a way to pull the island's puppet master down here so that you could punch him in the face, I would, but I can't, and I'm sorry," she spits out, and then hastily wipes at the corners of her eyes before she can start crying again. "But I'm not going to just leave you here alone."

[daretodo]

"Why not?"

The threat of Pepper crying is like the gasoline to my lighted match, and I can feel the rage building inside me. I'm selfish in my grief; whatever friendship she had with Mary Jane can't compare to my marriage. A marriage that's now broken. Dissolved. One half of a whole thrown into the ether, back to a world with a brand new Peter Parker leaving me, as always, alone.

"She did!" I exclaim without thinking, giving voice to the same thought that's plagued me since it first happened, that she left, that she's gone. The brutal truth of my own words stuns me into silence, and I take a halting step back, nearly stumbling when my foot finds a piece of debris instead of the floor. My face goes blank, tears springing to my eyes before I have the chance to stop them, though my hands stay willfully at my sides.

[wildlyconflictd]

It hits Pepper like a physical blow, not just what Peter's said, but the way he looks, that angry facade wavering so that she can glimpse the pain beneath fueling it. For a moment she doesn't think she could speak even if she knew what to say, and then she isn't sure how to respond once she can. There isn't anything right or appropriate, and absolutely none of it will be welcomed under the circumstances, she's sure.

"No," she finally says, because she knows that, if nothing else, Mary Jane would want that distinction made. "She wouldn't and she didn't. She would never have gone on purpose, not without you."

[daretodo]

"I know," I say on a pained exhale. Each breath's shakier than the last, and my eyes flutter shut, tears spilling hot down my cheeks. Leaning forward, I press my face my into my hands, not wanting to be seen like this, not wanting to share this. This my burden to bear, now. No one else's. Because while I know, underneath my rage and grief, that what Pepper's said is right, that Mary Jane would never have left by choice, it's hard not to feel anything but desperately alone. Abandoned.

"I know, but--"

[wildlyconflictd]

"She loved you more than anything in the world," Pepper quietly says, directing her pained expression to the mess of the room so that she doesn't have to look at Peter's face. "If you'd been the one to go, I'd be standing here having this same conversation with her." Albeit probably in a less thoroughly destroyed environment. "I wouldn't leave her alone, either," she adds, cutting a look back to Peter. "Not just because I care about her, but because I know you wouldn't want me to. And I know she wouldn't want me to leave you here, either."

Swallowing back the lump in her throat, she takes a careful step forward but then halts, uncertain. She'd reach for him, wants desperately to at least hug him, but is afraid he'll lash out at her again.

[daretodo]

When she mentions caring about Mary Jane, the urge to kick in some more furniture nearly overtakes me, but my anger's less potent than it was a few seconds ago, and the impulse is fleeting. A stillness settles over me, though I'm still breathing fast and shallow. I let my hands drop to my sides, my head bow forward. I dare not look at Pepper.

Despite Pepper's assurances, I can't help but think Mary Jane would be handling this better than me; she was my rock, my port in the storm that is my life. She could do what few others were ever capable of, keeping me sane throughout all this madness. Were our positions reversed-- But I can't think like that. There's no what if. She's gone. I'm not. Period.

How much more do I have to do lose until I'm done?

"Please, just--" I whisper, then stop, realizing I don't know what it is I'm asking for.

[wildlyconflictd]

Pepper has never been very good at this. At being comforting. It's something that she's worked on since appearing on the island, having found herself with genuine friendships for the first time in years, but she's never excelled at it. Still, she can't just stand here and see Peter looking like that and not do something.

Stepping forward, she pulls him into a tentative embrace, afraid that he'll snap at her or push her away. There isn't anything she can possibly say that would be any more helpful than this, though, so she holds on and hopes that this once, he simply lets her.

[daretodo]

For a long while, I just stand there, utterly unmoving save for my labored breaths. Pepper's my height -- taller, actually, in heels. There's no mistaking her for Mary Jane when I close my eyes, no mistaking her for Aunt May or anyone else. There aren't many people I'd let see me like this, not many people I wouldn't just push away, and I don't know that Pepper would've necessarily stood apart from them until just this moment.

Something inside me breaks. My next exhale is a sob. There's no turning back from here. Arms circling her waist, my fingers curling, tightly, in the fabric of her shirt, I let my forehead fall forward onto her shoulder.