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You Matter to Me

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Summary: as a healer for the Avengers, she get to heal a lot. What happens when she doesn’t tell them that each time she heals someone, their injuries transfer to her? Eventually someone is going to find out.

Warnings: language, injuries, self-sacrificing behaviour, brief mentions of past abuse/child abuse

Word Count: 2,209

Prompt: Fantasy, magical exhaustion

A/N: day 4 of March Trope-A-Thon by @amonthofwhump

Lying in her bed, she curls up on herself. The past few missions have been horrible. She wouldn’t tell anyone, but the amount of injuries she had to heal was really taking a toll on her.

Pain. Everywhere on her body there’s pain. She feels like a walking bruise.

She cringes when the door to her room bursts open. “Help! I’m sorry to wake you, but I need your help!” Tony cries out.

Tears well up in her eyes. She just wants to rest. She can’t take it anymore.

“It’s the kid, he got beat up real bad. We think he fractured his ribs.”

She slowly raises from her spot on the bed, leaving the comfort of snuggling into her warm blankets. “Where is he?” She weakly mutters, not having the energy to put her usual sunny disposition into her words.

“He passed out on the couch,” he informs her, already striding back to the common room. She limps her way to the common room. Normally she tries to hide her pain, but after this week’s missions, she can’t find it in her.

Luckily, no one else is in the common room. It’s just a barely cognisant kid, and a person that’s too preoccupied with the kid’s health to care about anything else. She falls ungracefully to her knees, cringing as her knees meet the floor. Her hands hover over Peter’s body before she takes a breath and makes contact with him. Immediately a sharp pain grows in her ribs. Tears gather in her eyes as she continues to take away his pain.

Her head is pounding and her ribs ache. It hurts so bad. This is even worse than when her father and his friends would use her after getting into bar fights. She knew what she was signing up for, but this… this is a little too much.

When Peter gasps awake, she plops down and rests her head against the couch cushion. Tears roll down her face before she turns to cover her face with the couch. Breaths becoming laboured, she can’t hold in the whimper that escapes her mouth.

How is she going to get back to her room? How’s she going to get out of this without getting caught? The Avengers aren’t stupid. They’re going to notice that something is off. Then they’re going to make her stop healing them because they are all too good to take advantage of her. And since she’ll be of no use to them, they’ll kick her out. She doesn’t want to leave. She can’t leave her family. The only family that has genuinely seemed to care for her.

“Hey, you alright?” Peter’s soft voice breaks her out of her racing thoughts. She nearly cries at the kindness in his voice. No one else cared to ask her that question when they noticed she was in pain. In fact, her father and her friends seemed to enjoy watching her in pain. It wasn’t fair, but she knew how life worked.

“I’m fine,” she mutters, straining against the stabbing pain in her ribs with every breath. Peter takes her head in his hands and gently lifts it from the couch so his kind eyes meet hers. Her head pounds and she wishes that he couldn’t see her like this. So weak. A superhero like him would probably laugh at her for being so weak. It’s not like she’s the one taking those punches. She wasn’t the one taking the beatings and saving the world. She just took the pain away.

“No you’re not. What’s wrong? Did someone hurt you?” Peter sounds so concerned, his eyes raking over her body looking for any signs of abuse.

“No, everything is fine, Peter.”

He squints his eyes at her, his sensitive hearing picking up her laborious breaths and small whimpers. “Who hurt you?” He jumps off of the couch ready to beat anyone that dared touch his precious …friend. Nothing else. Just a really good friend.

“No one, Pete, just… just forget about it okay? I’m fine.”

“Stop saying that! You’re in pain!” Peter frowns, visibly upset at the fact that she keeps lying to him. He thought they were close. He thought she trusted him. It hurts to know that she doesn’t.

“I’m used to it, it’s fine,” she mumbles, head plopping back into the couch. Peter’s brow furrows, an uneasy feeling settling in his gut.

“What do you mean you’re used to it?”

He watches her huff out a big breath before winching and clutching her ribs. The puzzle pieces finally click into place. It’s as if everything suddenly became clear with just one miniscule movement. Eyes widening, he strides over to her. Peter squats down to be level with her, his face dead serious.

“Why didn’t you tell anyone? It hurts you to use your powers, doesn’t it?”

Tears fall down her flushed cheeks, and she curses under her breath. They were bound to find out sooner than later, she had just hoped for the latter. “I was helping,” she whines, trying to prove her worthiness. She was doing something good, he can’t possibly get mad at her for that, can he?

“At the expense of yourself!” Peter yells, frustrated that he allowed her to take his pain and make it her own.

“Well, the pain has to go somewhere!” She fires back, angry that he isn’t grateful. After all she’s done she didn’t think he’d be yelling at her. She hasn’t done anything wrong. She helped them so much.

“You shouldn’t have to be in pain because of us,” he argues, standing to pace. All of this information changes things. How many times has she saved someone this week alone? How much pain must she be in? What has she had to silently suffer through?

“Give me my pain back,” Peter orders, not wanting her to have his pain anymore. Guilt weighs on his consciousness now that he knows she is feeling his fractured rib and concussion.

“That’s not how that works Peter.”

“God dammit! Why didn’t you tell us!”

Her eyes pop out of her head. She’s never heard him this upset before. He’s never been this angry. The fact that she caused it only makes her feel worse.

“Because I knew this would happen!” She cries. “I knew you guys would be mad and kick me out! I deserve a place here after everything I’ve done. I don’t want to leave!”

“You can’t keep taking other people’s pain,” he frowns, dead set on conveying this to her.

“Yes I can. I’m helping! I’m doing something good! Why don’t you understand that? Why can’t you appreciate the fact that I am willing to help you guys?”

“Because, you’re not supposed to get hurt doing it!”

“What is going on out here?” Steve, Bucky, Sam, Clint, and Natasha walk in having just finished training. She sends Peter a death glare, daring him to say anything.

Although he sees her intimidating stare, Peter doesn’t care. This has to end now.

“The pain doesn’t just go away,” he explains, “every time she heals us, the pain is transferred to her. She takes all the pain for us.”

Steve furrows his brows, his serious concerned mama bear face on. Crossing his arms and stepping forward, he asks, “is this true?”

“N-no! Of course not!” She lies. Her eyes flit around the people in the room, heart beating faster.

“She’s lying, she probably can’t even stand up right now because she is in so much pain,” Peter confidently states.

Narrowing her eyes at Peter, she swears to kill him in his sleep. How dare he tattle on her? “That’s not true! He’s making this all up,” she protests, trying to make her voice sound strong.

“Then stand up,” Natasha challenges, one of her perfect brows raising.

Cursing under her breath, she places a hand on the couch to try and push off the ground. Grimacing, she grits her teeth and tries to lift her body off the ground. Breathing heavily, she uses her other hand to try and get into a standing position. Whimpers, so quiet that only the enhanced are able to hear, escape from her as she struggles to stand.

Peter is by her side in an instant, not willing to watch her put herself through more pain. “That’s enough,” he mutters, fed up with her disregard for her own well-being. Why is she being so careless?

Steve frowns as he quietly talks to the people around him. She can feel his disappointed countenance chipping at her soul. He has that effect on people. She never wanted to disappoint her heroes. She can take it, she just needs some rest, and she’ll be fine.

“We can’t continue to let you heal us.” Is the verdict that Steve murmurs, upset by how long this has been going on. How could no one have noticed? How could they have been so careless as to think that the pain just magically went away?

He’s disappointed. Disappointed in himself for not noticing sooner, disappointed in himself for letting a mere kid take all of his pain and suffering that he should have just endured. Why did she never say anything?

“You’re released from duty,” Steve concludes, standing up to leave the room. He can’t stand looking at her, now knowing all of the pain he has caused her.

“Captain, please. Don’t do this! I was helping!” She protests with everything left in her. She doesn’t want to leave her family. She doesn’t want them to get hurt or die. Not when she has the ability to save them.

“Enough!” Steve bellows, stopping in his tracks. “You’re out of here, got it?”

Tears well up in her eyes and her lip starts to wobble. Steve had never used a tone like that with her before. It hurts. “So what? You’re just letting me go now that you have no use for me?”

Steve falters. That’s most certainly not what he meant.

“You’re just like my dad!”

A sentence that cuts deeper than any stab wounds he’s ever received. She’s told him about her home life, about her piece of shit father. And to be compared to him makes his soul break.

Calling out her name as she pushes past him, he desperately tries to right this wrong. She doesn’t stop, though. She keeps running, tears cascading down her face.

Running a hand through his hair, he curses. This is not how it should have panned out. All he wanted was to make sure that she’s safe and out of harm's way. He didn’t want to be the one to harm her. In fact, that’s the last thing he wanted to do. What, after all she’s been through, she deserves better.

“Let me,” Peter says, stopping Steve from running after her. Steve aquieses, figuring it would be better if he could calm down before talking to her. He’s just so upset that he’s been passing off his pain to a literal child. Okay, maybe she’s not a child, but she might as well be one for fucks sake.

“What do you want?” Peter cringes at her angered tone, a twinge of hurt underlying it. She still has tears in her eyes as she rushes to pack her clothes in a duffle she had sitting unused in her closet.

“Steve didn’t mean what he said. He’s upset that you lied to him—to all of us.”

She scoffs, harshly shoving the clothes in the bag. She whimpers, realising that probably wasn’t the best decision with all of the injuries she is dealing with right now. Peter rushes to have her in his arms. He sits down on the ground, gently pulling her with him. “You gotta stop hurting yourself, sweetheart.”

She grumbles in his arms, trying to get out of his grasp. Peter just shakes his head at how stubborn she is. She’ll be the death of him, he’s sure about that.

“Why do you care?” She mutters out, anger and resentment lacing her tone. She doesn’t want to believe that anyone can care about her. Whenever she thinks that, she always gets hurt. No one cares about her. The only reason people act nice to her is because they want to use her powers to heal themselves.

“Because… you’ve been hurting yourself for far too long,” he murmurs, relaxing his hold now that she isn’t trying to squirm away.

“I just want to be wanted,” her voice is muffled with the sound of her small cries. Tears stream down her face, and she curls up into Peter’s warm embrace. He sighs and runs his hand gently through her hair, careful not to make her headache worse.

“You are,” he speaks under his breath. “Everyone here genuinely cares for you in their own way. You are so important to me… to all of us.”

She muffles a sob against his shirt. “You… you don’t mean that…”

“I do. I mean every word of it. You matter to me. You matter so much.”

Peter keeps on mumbling little words of praise and encouragement as she falls asleep in his arms. He will let her know what she is worth. No matter how long it takes. She deserves the world.

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