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***
"Here, take it."
Peter lifted his head, finding a glass of water just inches from his face. The glass was covered in droplets of condensation, the cold water inside swaying slightly with Colleen's movement. He hadn't been paying attention, but the fact that he hadn't heard her approaching spoke for itself about the lightness that bordered on the supernatural with which Colleen moved.
"Thanks." He accepted the glass gratefully and took a long sip. 'My God, how long has it been since I drank water?' The feeling of relief was immediate; his shoulders relaxed involuntarily as his body finally received something that felt essential at that moment. He hadn't even realized how thirsty he was.
Beside him, Colleen sat down on the tatami with her legs crossed and brought her own glass of water to her lips, drinking in silence.
They had just finished the hour-and-a-half training session.
Sixty minutes were dedicated to instruction. Colleen taught movements, stances, and commands in Japanese, repeating each new word until they stopped feeling foreign and became part of his reflexes. "Mae geri, yoko geri, mawashi geri," she said, and he kicked forward, to the side, and with a hip rotation, each movement a little cleaner than the last, though still far from the perfection she demanded.
The other thirty minutes were sparring — easily Peter's favorite part. There, in the center of the tatami, with Colleen in front of him and the outside world forgotten, he put into practice everything she had taught him. The blocks, the counterattacks, the evasions that required him to read her body before she even moved.
Today had been, without a doubt, his best day. Peter managed to stay on his feet longer than ever before, defending a sustained series of attacks and even finding openings to counterattack at times. Even so… he never hit Colleen. On at least three occasions, his strikes passed within inches of her face, but something was always missing. Timing, precision, reading… or maybe all of it together.
She didn't make it easy either.
Colleen moved like water — fluid, constant, impossible to hold. She dodged without seeming to dodge. It was like trying to hit something that was no longer there the moment you decided to attack. Every opening Peter thought he found simply ceased to exist the next instant.
He was eager to move like that without relying on his spider-sense. Because when he managed to combine the two... he would become untouchable. At least, that was what he hoped.
Another thing, this one somewhat uncomfortable, was that Peter simply had no idea how serious Colleen was being during the fights. She never let anything show on her face. There was no way to tell if she was using ten percent of what she knew or fifty. If she was actually trying or just playing with him.
But now, glancing at her out of the corner of his eye and noticing for the first time drops of sweat on her face — small pearls of moisture running down her temple, sliding along her jaw, glinting under the dim light of the dojo — Peter figured she must have put in at least a little effort today.
"So, how did I do?" he asked, bringing the glass to his lips once more.
Colleen finished drinking all the water in her glass before answering, setting the empty glass down beside her. "Good, but..."
'And here comes the dreaded "but." Definitely the worst word in the vocabulary after a compliment.' Peter thought as he waited for her verdict.
She turned her face toward him, her dark eyes observing him with a strange look, as if she were dissecting every movement he had made over the past hour and assembling a mental report—but missing a piece. A very important piece. "There's something strange about your strikes. But I don't know what it is..." Colleen looked away right after, clearly bothered by not being able to define it better.
'She's starting to notice I'm not giving my all?... I don't know if I should be impressed or scared.' Not wanting to let the subject go any further, he shifted position, bracing his hands behind him and leaning his body slightly, adopting a more casual tone: "Now that I think about it, are we really just going to pretend it's normal for you to have dressed like a ninja to attack me in the dark?"
Colleen raised an eyebrow and asked dryly, "Are you going to go back to that?"
"Of course I am." Peter turned on the tatami to face her, a smile beginning to form on his lips. "Tell me, how long were you there waiting for me?"
"Long enough."
"That's not an answer." He wasn't going to give up that easily.
"It's the only one you're going to get."
"Oh, come on, I'm just curious to know how long my sensei stood in the dark waiting for me," Peter continued, leaning a little further forward, only then noticing a rosy tint he had never seen before slowly rising across her cheeks.
Colleen was getting embarrassed.
"If you really want to know," she began, her voice coming out quicker than usual, "I wasn't just standing there waiting for you— I was training."
"In the dark?"
"It improves perception." The answer came quickly, as if she had already prepared that justification before he even asked. "Training without visual support forces the body to rely on other senses. Hearing. Touch. Intuition."
"And that ninja outfit?" He pointed to the black clothes she was still wearing.
"That is not "ninja" clothing." Colleen made a point of putting invisible quotation marks in the air with her fingers, her eyes narrowing. "It's normal training attire."
"Funny… because I've never seen you wearing that 'training attire.'"
Colleen frowned and stood up, walking away. "You talk too much."
"Where are you going?" Peter asked, watching her move away.
"To get more water." She replied without looking back, disappearing through the door that led to her house.
***
"How exactly did you convince me to come?"
"I offered to pay?"
"Hm, true." Colleen said that as if she were making an unpleasant discovery about herself — that she was, apparently, susceptible to offers that involved free food.
The two were outside a corner pizzeria, sitting on metal chairs, the kind that wobble dangerously if you shift even a little. Peter and Colleen were facing each other, separated by a plastic table with a red and white checkered tablecloth that had seen much better days.
They had changed clothes before leaving the dojo. Peter wore the same clothes he had worn at school. Colleen, on the other hand, had taken a shower, let her hair down so that it now fell a little below her shoulders, and put on a gray hoodie that was too big for her, black jeans that had paint stains on the left knee, and white sneakers that had once been white, but were now more of a dirt-stained cream.
She looked younger in those clothes, more like a nineteen-year-old girl than the fighter she actually was.
"Why did I hear a tone of resignation in your voice?" Peter asked, drumming his fingers on the table.
"Your imagination." Colleen turned her face toward the street, resting her chin lightly on her fist as she watched the cars go by. "By the way, where did you get the money to offer me dinner? I thought you were poorer than me." The question was direct, unfiltered, the way she did everything.
Peter let out a small huff. "I got a small bonus at work."
"Your job... taking pictures of that masked vigilante?"
"Oh, you remembered." Peter said, a bit surprised. He didn't remember mentioning the details of his job to her. It must have come up in some offhand comment during training. "And yeah, exactly. If you pick up tomorrow's edition of the Daily Bugle, you'll see my name printed on the front page. Really small, in the corner, but it'll be there."
"Hm, cool... I guess," she said, looking back at him.
Peter narrowed his eyes slightly. "…That 'I guess' was pretty discouraging."
"I'm just saying." She shrugged. "It doesn't exactly seem like the safest job in the world. That Spider-Man is always in the middle of some mess… explosions, buildings breaking, dangerous people." Colleen paused, studying his face a little more closely. "Have you ever thought that maybe being around all that isn't the best idea? Sooner or later, luck runs out, Peter. Statistically, luck always runs out."
He lightly tapped his own arm. "That's why you need to turn me into the next incarnation of Bruce Lee, sensei. Or Jackie Chan. Or Jet Li. I'll take any of the three."
"So that's why you want to learn how to fight? So you don't die taking pictures of some guy in spandex?" Colleen asked, sounding a bit disappointed.
'Why do I feel like I'm being judged?' Peter thought, going silent for a second before continuing. "For the most part. And you, Colleen, what made you decide to become an instructor so young? It's not every day someone your age decides to open a martial arts school. Especially alone." He took the opportunity to learn more about her.
"I..." Colleen hesitated, frowning and lowering her gaze, focusing on a spot on the table. "I want to help people. I want to teach those who can't protect themselves how to protect themselves. Give them the tools so they won't be victims."
***
Disclaimer: This story and its characters belong to Sony Pictures and Marvel Comics (Disney). This is merely a fanfiction written by a fan, with no intention of infringement.