the siren |peter parker x siren!oc|

Tranquility: Part 1

THE SIREN

ACT II: TRANQUILITY

Lena was not engaged in her modern politics class.

It had been a month, and she could not find a reason to enjoy the class. She liked Mr. Ellis. She loved the way he paced about the classroom, often going on tangents about American politics. The fact of the matter was, Lena did not care. Every ounce of what humans called 'politics' felt like old men whining about issues that they had caused themselves. Unlike most of her peers, Lena lacked the background that the class needed. She did not know human history as well as she wished she did. She had gone over it with her tutor, Miss Gomez, but it had been her least favorite subject.

Occasionally Tony was brought up in the discussion, which resulted in eyes wandering over to her direction, cautiously watching if she would react. The alibi that Tony and Pepper had developed was that she was their niece, living with them after her mother died in an accident. It was more thorough of an alibi than it seemed at first glance. Lena did not talk much to others, Peter said it was because she was still recovering from her mother's death. It also gave her a reason to be lacking in what a typical student might know. Her lapse of knowledge could always be blamed on a tragedy that never happened.

At school, she wore her hair in two braids. May had taught Peter and Peter had taught Lena, and the hairstyle was the only way to mask the fact that her hair was long enough to match The Siren's. That was the thing. No one could know that she was secretly a superhero.

The two braids made her face more open. She felt as if everyone could see it, and everyone was looking at it. The first week Peter had told her it was because she was Tony's niece, the second week he said that shock takes a while to die down, but now it was the fourth week of school for her, and both young men and women let their eyes hold onto her for a little too long, and she felt every single one. The men were worse than the women. Their energies were predatorial and aggressive. The women, while they were rare, had softer, gentler energies. She had started to understand that not all men were like Peter Parker.

The bell rang, the odd indicator that class was over, and Lena threw her things into her bag, following Peter and his friends out the door. They delved into their usual banter, Ned teasing Peter about one thing, MJ flicking Ned's ear about another. Lena usually watched quietly, laughing when she found something funny. Peter's friends never pressured her to be anything more than what she wanted, making it easier to be herself.

"Lena, you coming with us to get food?" MJ offered it nonchalantly like she did every week. Usually, she and Peter declined, needing to start on their evening patrol, but she recalled Peter mentioning going earlier. She looked up at Peter who shrugged, and then back to MJ.

"Yeah. Sure."

It was a quick walk to Ned and MJ's usual food spot. The place was small and tucked behind a corner. Not the ideal location for business, but the food was apparently delicious. They sat down at a small table by the window, each one bringing out their homework to get a head start.

"I hate The Odyssey."

"Is calculus really that important?"

"Chem makes me want to blow my head off."

The comments and complaints about school circled around the table, always skipping Lena. She would have contributed if she had known how, but most of the time she liked school. It was an anomaly for a student to enjoy what they were forced to do, but she looked forward to most of her classes, and the idea of learning something she had not known before was exhilarating.

She wrote her math problems, smoothly zipping through them, and continued to listen to them chat.

"I know that it looked like the alien guy shot first, but Ned, I'm telling you, it had to be Han."