Another Chapter 32 preview. Peter and Elektra.

(With Peter and Elektra)

Taking a deep breath and clearing her mind, Elektra does her best to ignore her surroundings to immerse herself further into her meditation. The only sounds are the tree's leaves rustling by the slight breeze the cavern seems to carry and the water droplets from the stalagmites that echo all throughout the cavern. She ignores all of these distractions to achieve the perfect mindset of meditation. 

Centering herself is paramount in meditation. Finding a sense of calm to better build a mental acuity and hone her techniques. It has taken her years of harsh and rigorous training to achieve the level she has gotten to. 

But she is finding it difficult to do such a thing now because of her task. Which is to train someone else to achieve what she can do.

Said someone is proving to be a very difficult student.

Her eyes may be closed but she can feel Peter's presence. He is sitting across from her attempting to meditate. Attempting and doing a very poor job of it. 

“Your mind is not clear,” she addresses with her eyes still closed. 

He doesn’t respond verbally but he does grumble. He refocuses on his task. Taking deep breaths and slowly exhaling. Trying his best to clear his mind of any thoughts. 

“…”

“…”

“…”

“…Your mind is not clear.”

“You don’t know that,” he retorts. To which she doesn’t verbally reply but instead opens her eyes and raises a brow in challenge for him to deny her observation. He feels her eyes and opens his own before he gives indignant frown, “What? You’re a telepath now?” 

She is. But he does not need to know that and it’s not how she knows he isn’t meditating properly. 

“It's your breathing,” she informs him, which is the truth. 

He gets a perplexed look, “My breathing?”

She closes her eyes again as she explains, “When we began, I told you to clear your mind and focus on your breathing. When you are not, your breathing changes. It’s subtle but it is different from when you are focusing.”

This is actually a skill she picked up from Mathew. It’s how he sometimes predicts a person's next action. Like how someone takes deep breaths when about to commit to a dangerous act or even subtle when they are about to speak. In this instance, she can tell how long Peter is focusing on his breathing and when he is not. 

“How do I clear my mind when I have to think about my breathing?” He jokes but also asks genuinely. 

She opens her eyes and gives him a blank look, “It’s that sort of mentality is why you cannot focus,” she says referring to his joking nature. 

“I’m able to focus,” he retorts before he looks down and draws circles on the ground, “I just don’t see how meditation helps with that. I mean I know that the science behind meditation has been proven several times but it’s also too varied for it to be conclusive. And let’s not forget about all those quacks and con artists who take advantage of gullible people and give real yogis a bad name.”

She gives him a peculiar look for his line of thinking before she comments, “Your mind is far too scattered and erratic. You need to focus on what’s in front of you.”

He looks her in the eye and she him. He doesn’t blink while she gives him a stoic look. 

“Not me,” she says. 

“You said right in front of me,” Peter jokingly states with a shrug. 

She resists the urge to roll her eyes at his lame attempt at humor and says, “In confrontations with your various enemies you’ve been taken by surprise more often than not. A feat that is supposed to be impossible.”

“Hey, they learn from every fight and so do I,” he argues, “I may not always come out unscathed but I do come out on top.”

“If you had more focus, then you could do more,” she counters. 

Peter snorts before he sardonically replies, “Sure, cause it’s that simple.”

“You’d be surprised,” she coolly shoots back, “I've done enough research on you to know how much more effective you can be if you had more discipline.” 

That is what she has surmised at least. Based on his battles with villains, he could have easily won each one if he took them more seriously. 

“I’m plenty disciplined,” he declares before he mumbles out, “Present situation notwithstanding.”

“The present situation,” Elektra starts with a hint of annoyance, “Is a prime example of you not being disciplined as you say. You are tasked in learning how to better hone this sense of yours. I’m here to train you in how to do it, to give you a baseline to continue when we leave. Yet while I’m focused and committed to doing this, you're not.”

That is why she is primarily annoyed. He hasn’t put any real effort into learning how to meditate. Despite him being so intelligent, he lacks the mentality to perform a simple task. 

“I'm sorry,” he says genuinely, making her look at him curiously as he continues, “You got dragged into this because of me.”

She raises an observant brow at him, “Matthew mentioned you have a guilt complex,” she says before she clarifies her reasons for her annoyance, “I’m not bothered by this situation, I’m bothered that you are not taking it seriously enough.”

That is the truth. She isn’t as bothered by the fact that a spider god has bargained with her to train Spider-Man, but the fact that said hero is being a difficult student. She didn’t think it’d be this hard to teach him. 

She is starting to regret not coercing Anansi into giving her the information she desires in her own way. 

“I am,” Peter claims somewhat childishly, “I want to get out of here as soon as possible. I promised those girls that I’d leave the craziness of my life at home and we would enjoy a nice normal vacation.”

Elektra supposes that is a rather romantic gesture but not important at the moment, “Set aside your motivations. Focus on the task right now,” she tells him. 

He sighs again before he goes back to attempting to meditate. Elektra follows suit. She finds herself pleasantly surprised when he lasts longer in focusing on his breathing. But she then becomes aggravated when it’s gone still less than a minute later. 

“You know I used to be a teacher,” he says, making her look at him with a hint of annoyance in her eyes, “One of the things I learned is that not every student learns the same way as others do. Some require a more hands-on approach, while others need specific instruction to get the lesson through.”

Her aggravation leaves her and she thinks about his advice. He does indeed raise a valid point. She knows that not everyone learns a lesson the same way. Different and even special methods are sometimes required for better education. In her younger days, when she was in Columbia University, she did notice how different each student learned. Some focused on the lessons and cling to the professors’ words, while others daydreamed yet still managed to pass those courses. They were accused of cheating and some did but others used different methods to learn the lessons they were supposed to learn in the class. 

Perhaps that is what she needs here?

She looks at him and inquires, “Do you have something specific in mind?”