𝐝𝐞𝐣𝐚 𝐯𝐮, peter parker

liv. breaking news

chapter fifty-four
breaking news

NINA THOUGHT she had imagined it. The sound all around her became muffled long before she saw it on the monitors▬her hand had been gripping her phone in a shaking grasp the moment she read the post on the Daily Bugle's Instagram page. She didn't believe it at first, but the video could not be mistaken▬his name spoken so loud into the square in front of hundreds of people, raging online and going viral in a matter of mere seconds until everybody in New York and the world was front seat to the horrific spectacle▬

Peter Parker was Spider-Man. Nina stared at his school photo plastered on every monitor across the city, she heard the gasps and the chatter▬the pictures taken of Spider-Man frozen, horrified on the top of the lamppost. Peter Parker was Spider-Man. It was Mysterio's final trick▬his final, last hurrah. Even from the grave he was able to manipulate the world into believing his last plot twist▬and it left the city (the world) gobsmacked.

Nina held her breath in horror, unable to tear her eyes away from Peter's face on the large monitor above the Pennsylvania Station. Even if the chatter was rising, and the streets were still alive with loud, unbearable noise ... Nina didn't hear any of them. All was silent except J. Jonah Jameson's voice and the pounding speed of her heart.

"That's right, folks! Peter Parker," he continued. "A seventeen-year-old high school delinquent▬"

Nina's thoughts were cut off when she suddenly stumbled forward. The crowd around her was getting thicker▬she hadn't even realised until she glanced around, and found people already looking at her. She was pressed shoulder-to-shoulder in a mosh pit of spectators who stopped all that they were doing to rush over with their phones raised and their eyes wide. But their attention was no longer on the news above, but instead on Nina▬who was centred amongst them all.

She stumbled into somebody in front of her. A middle-aged woman who spun around and gasped so loudly, Nina winced back. "Oh, my God!" she cried as if seeing the sight of something so terrible. Nina jumped to the side when she felt a push against her▬she spun on her feet and stared, so shocked she could barely comprehend, right into the lens of someone's camera phone.

"Oh, my God!" the woman was still saying, pointing to Nina and grabbing everyone's attention that still hadn't noticed her.

An entire crowd turned onto the young girl in the midst of it, and Nina couldn't speak▬hunching up with a sickening fear when they all just seemed to abruptly close in. "She knows him!" some where saying. "That's Spider-Man's girlfriend!" others cried. "Are you Spider-Man's girlfriend?" more questioned. More raised their phones, they took photos and recorded videos.

Someone grabbed her arm and pulled her around to face them. Nina forcefully tugged her arm back and stumbled into a person behind her. They freaked out and shouted, "Spider-Man's girlfriend touched me!"

"I▬I'm sorry▬" she held her hands up, starting to tremble. Nina wasn't scared of crowds, or of tight spaces▬but suddenly she felt as if she was in that elevator all over again, pummelling to the bottom of the Washington Monument▬and she could not breathe. "I'm so sorry▬"

The same person grabbed her again and she could barely hear what they were asking her over the buzz of so many different voices▬the loudest, was her own, frantic breathing. She shook her head, trying to get away▬but there was nowhere for her to go; nowhere for her to move.

"Hey! Answer his question!" the first woman told her loudly. Nina spun to her, blinking back the sudden blur in her gaze.

"W▬what?" she choked.