I blocked Peter's phone number as soon as I left his apartment on the Tuesday morning.

I didn't go back to Midtown. Frankly, although I hate the private tutoring with everything inside of me, it beats being trapped in a dingy classroom with Flash Thompson any day of the week. And as much as I would have liked my reason for my absence to be due to an asshole like Flash, I cannot deny to myself the true and honest factor. I need sweet boys like Peter Parker to stay out of my life. I'd only ruin him.

"What message does Oscar Wilde send to readers in The Picture of Dorian Gray? Bonnie? Are you listening?" The professor glares at me intensely over his glasses as I stare into complete nothingness. The daze has returned as before. I am a shell of what once was once again. "Would you mind reading out your essay answer?" He asks me.

I shake my head to wake out of my trance and regain myself again. Honestly, I'd been fantasising about bashing my head against the window of my office in the tower in hopes that I could cave my skull in. Or at least cause a concussion, which would at least delay the session for a bit longer. I don't feel ready yet. I don't think I'd ever feel ready again. I may have to resort back to watching raindrops again.

I clear my throat and focus my eyes on the letters swirling around the page.

How can Dorian Gray remind me of Peter Parker? How is it even possible that with reading out my essay, all I can think of is him?

Once again, the teacher opens his mouth and begins critiquing my work; his voice reaches my ears in a foggy and almost inaudible groan. Whether he is impressed with my work or extremely disappointed is unclear— my eyelids feel far too heavy to be able to raise so that I could look at him properly. I continue fiddling with the corner of my notebook page for the rest of the lesson, replying in a simple grunt of agreement and scribbling something down every now and then to make it look as if I'm able to register his words. My once opinionated-self clearly hasn't attended this lesson today. I wonder if he can notice it.

It hadn't been up until the end of the session, and up until he had been marching out of the office with his battered briefcase in hand, that I realised I had spent the entire time in some sort of limbo between reality and my brain. Every thought had been racing through my mind despite having no thoughts at all. The professor talks quietly to Happy, who is waiting by the door, with a worried expression embedded into his face; brows furrowed and all. As he leaves the room and disappears down the hallway, Happy lingers by the door. He offers a sad sort of disappointed smile, in hopes that I'd manage to return it. It's difficult, and through the drunk and hazy feeling, I pull my lips up at the corner into a half-hearted grin. He nods his head and leaves, most likely running errands or attempting to track down my father.

I collect my sheets of paper and slot them in between the front cover of my notebook, before leaving. Being at the compound knocks me sick, but I know that sitting in the tower and sifting through everyone's old belongings before they left would only make me feel worse. Before exiting through the main doors, I hesitate, asking myself: will this be the last time I'm ever at the tower?

I've said goodbye many times in my life prior to this moment, though non of them willingly. I had never wanted Mom to die, I had never wanted Steve and Nat and Wanda to leave. I hadn't wanted any of it at all. Saying goodbye to the Avengers Tower is almost as if I'm saying goodbye to all of it all over again. I'm saying goodbye to that trials and challenges and to all of the trauma that shaped me into this new version of myself, and despite the majority of it being made up of things that I would never wish to revisit in a million years, somehow it stings like a fresh wound.

I reassure myself that I'll manage to sneak in one more visit to the tower before we move upstate, as I pull myself away from the doors and am thrown into the bustling streets of Manhattan. I fiddle with the necklace hanging around my neck as I squeeze through the busy sidewalks and make my way to the usual Starbucks. At this point, I'm unsure whether I'm purposely doing it to torture myself, or if I'm just in need of a good cup of coffee. I know that the familiar interior and the burnt-out false-smiles of the baristas will seem like a slap across the face, as walking in will merely remind me of all of those coffee-runs that Dad sent me on to keep me out of the compound. Walking in will remind me that we're leaving— remind me of the one thing I never, ever want to think about.

When I hesitantly strut through the doors and up to the counter, I have to bite my tongue as I very nearly blurt out Dad's usual coffee order; so used to only coming to pick something up to keep him happy and never for my own enjoyment. The badge pinned to the worker's forest green polo reads, 'Bianca,' and jogs my memory of my last visit, and how this lady makes the best coffee in the universe. Much better than the shit we got at home, where the coffee grounds are usually found in the garbage disposal, and then we moan and complain about never having any left. I order myself an iced latte, before taking a seat by the window.

If it had been raining, perhaps I'd be watching the raindrops roll down the glass, seemingly desolate and miserable. Almost tiny drops of melancholy showering down from the clouds. Instead, I watch the water droplets trickle down the plastic cup of my iced latte, my hands turning slightly numb from the cold. But I have to say cold, right?

I trace over the condensation collecting on the cup, and follow my fingertip over the black marker which spells out my name in a rushed scribble.

Astrology shows us how the positions of the stars and the movements of the planets have a supposed influence on events and on the lives and behaviour of people. The astrological sign Scorpio, in Greek Mythology, comes from the story of Orion, the son of Poseidon and Euryale, whom was said to be the most handsome man alive. He and Artemis were hunting partners. This made her brother, Apollo, jealous. He went to Mother Earth and asked her to create a giant scorpion, which then stung and killed Orion. By a different myth, Orion threatened Artemis and her mother, Leto, that he would kill every animal on our planet, which made them angry enough to send a scorpion into a battle with Orion. The scorpion kills Orion with his sting and Zeus raised them both to the stars so mortals on Earth can understand the punishment for excessive pride.

Whatever the myth, Orion gets stung and killed by the Scorpio, either because of excessive pride or because of love and jealousy.

This only seems more ironic considering Scorpio is a fixed sign that comes after the autumn has begun in Libra. From a point of Libra's fallen Sun and the darkness that has come, the end of life as we knew it since the spring, Scorpio is the fixed quality of this change. This is exactly why we observe it as a sign of death.

Perhaps that's why death seems to haunt me no matter where I go or what I do, almost as if I am the literal physical manifestation of Death itself. I really hope not. Though I certainly feel as though I am on my last legs; a sun reaching the final stretch of life before it burns out indefinitely.

I attempt to distract myself with school work and rewrite my literature essay with the free time I can gather during my session of spiralling in the middle of Starbucks. Halfway through rewriting the concluding section of the ending of the paper, my eyes begin to wander. They settle on a woman with peroxide hair hanging down to her shoulders and wine-red lipstick perfectly swiped over her lips; Cupid's bow defined perfectly. Her lips hold a cigarette, before she removes it from her mouth and exhales great big enchanting curls of smoke. I envy her. I suppose one more won't hurt.

I fish through my bag, rummaging through the stray pencils and gum wrappers to find my carton— Nat's carton— but they're not there, though my lighter is. Panic floods through my body, as it dawns on my that I could have possibly lost the one thing that I know hasn't been shoved in a storage locker upstate that I don't have access too.

It's not just that— the fact that the object itself is something so personal and meaningful to me just proves even further that perhaps I truly am Death in human-form. It's almost as if I'm this sort of abyss, consuming and drawing in all of my surroundings into complete oblivion to never be recovered. It's getting bad again.

I search every inch of my brain for some sort of idea on where I could have left them, retracing my steps. Then it dawns on me; I left the pack on my dresser this morning. I fiddle with the lighter in my hand, nervously flicking on the flame and skimming over it with my fingertips— feeling nothing at all. I watch as my finger reddens slightly, and despite the intense stinging, I stay completely still. I don't jerk my hand back or scream out in pain, I wait until I can feel the skin start to be pulled tightly. I'm not sure why, and it's not until I accidentally graze against the piping hot metal that I gasp out in pain and completely drop the lighter from my grasp completely.

I stick my finger in my mouth and attempt to cool down the aggressive, seething heat. I curse myself under my breath, for being so careless, while I wrap my burnt fingers around my iced latte so that they cool right down to proper temperature, before packing away my notebook and bolting from the coffee shop all the way back home.

As soon as I get through the doors, I make an immediate turn to my bedroom, hardly sparing a second to cast a glance at Pepper sitting on the sofa.

"Bonnie, could you come here please? We need to talk." I hesitantly turn to her, just wanting to find a cold compress to place on my charred skin, and to make sure that Nat's cigarettes are safe.

Pepper clears her throat as I turn to look at her, placing the carton of Nat's smokes on the coffee table. She stands awkwardly, her expression almost impossible to decipher. My immediate reaction is to yell at her for snooping through my room and to stay out of my business— she's not my mother. She senses this, as she catches onto my increasing rage as I go to burst into my bedroom and lock her, and everyone else, away once more. I know it's dramatic and juvenile and irritating, and it's definitely less than healthy to respond to any sort of discomfort or inconvenience or anything that reminds me what it feels like to actually experience anything other than completely numbness, by blocking everyone out. And I can't deny the guilt I feel over completely blocking Peter out; knowing deep down that the thought of intimacy and vulnerability terrifies me. Even if he'd be the one person that I could ever let myself completely give in to.

"Vision was looking for you, he went into your bedroom and found these and brought them to me. I haven't told your father if that's what you're concerned about. Come, sit." She takes a seat on the sofa and gestures to the empty space beside her, which I take with evident uncertainty.

"So, is this what you're doing now? What, Bonnie, smoking?"

I don't reply. Just pick at the black nail polish on each end of my fingers.

"Aren't you going to talk to me?" She sighs helplessly, before edging closer to me, "Look, I'm not mad at you, I'm just concerned."

"Yeah, so is everyone. I don't get it, why can't you all just leave me alone? I'm fine, Pepper." I can't manage to bring my eyes up to look at her.

"Well, a lot of things are changing and everything is happening pretty fast, we're just worried that maybe you're not holding up as well as you say you are."

Dismissive, I sigh. "Yeah, whatever. We done?" I pull myself up from the sofa and sling my bag over my shoulder, before slyly sliding the cigarette packet off the table and into my pocket.

"No, actually, we're not." Her tone is more stern this time, colder, which takes me by surprise. She has always been warm and kind and the kind of person who I would perhaps call a maternal-figure if I hadn't been stuck in this everlasting limbo between grief and living again. It stings.

"I've scheduled another appointment with your psychologist—"

I groan in protest; knowing another meeting with Dr Greene trying to pin all of my childhood trauma on my mother and pointing out the obvious cracks within my person, might just push me over the edge. "Is that really necessary?"

"Yes, it is. And you can complain all you want but you're still going, Bonnie. You can't just expect to be better without helping yourself—"

"Yeah?" I cut her off, "And what the fuck do you know about getting better?"

"I know enough to know that it's something that's definitely not going to happen to you if you keep going down the path you are!"

"Save me the dramatics, please. This isn't Shakespeare." I roll my eyes and trail off to my bedroom.

"Dramatics? You want to talk about 'dramatic?'" Pepper begins to shake slightly as her eyes gloss over and tears threaten to spill. Her lip trembles as her voice cracks out of her throat, "What's 'dramatic' is the fact that you think that you can treat everyone in your life like shit and get away with it because you're hurting, when all we're trying to do is help you!" She grabs her stack of folders from the coffee table and storms out of the door, leaning me dumbstruck in the middle of the living-room with the sound of her high-heels tapping down the hallway.

It takes me a second before I'm able to move, and I drag myself into my bedroom.

I hadn't intended for things to get this bad, and I'm not naive or oblivious to my own crippling mental state and my unlikeable personality. But it's almost as if I am drowning in the waves of all of the words that I have not yet said— of all of the intricacies that I have not yet faced nor confronted.

The more of the water I swallow, the more I am drinking in the acknowledgement of my own toxicity— the water is poison and I am both the producer and the consumer. I am unable to fight the current; too strong for my frail frame and lack of perseverance. Diminished determination. I am unable to drink myself dry; the poison and toxic waste shutting down my body.

Either way I am dying. Drowning.

And it rains and rains, and I fall deeper and deeper.

I close my eyes and count to ten, breathing in and out with my best attempts to keep myself from shaking too vigorously.

And I try that trick Dr Greene preaches— that counting one. When it comes to the part to count the things that I can see, I reluctantly open my eyes and immediately wish I hadn't. The first thing that I see is a photograph of Steve, Nat and I posing like Charlie's Angels at the Statue of Liberty years ago. It happens almost instantly and there is no way that I would have ever been able to control it in the slightest. My cracked mental state is perfectly mirrored in my surroundings as everything becomes too overwhelming, and I end up striking a thick crack in my wall, very nearly shattering the window. I am never going to be able to control whatever the fuck is inside of me and causing me to destroy everything within a ten-mile radius.

I hate myself even more for wishing he was here.