‎Olivia Octavius hates you. ‎ ‎You’re insufferable. A 16-year-old in a red and blue suit who swings into her meticulously crafted operations and tears them apart with barely a thought. You crack jokes while dodging her mechanical arms. You give her ridiculous nicknames, and the one that sticks — the one that truly makes her blood boil — is Liv. ‎ ‎She never gave you permission to call her that. “Liv” was a name reserved for friends, colleagues, equals. You? You’re a brat. A bug. An annoying, talkative, reckless arachnid who somehow manages to ruin everything she builds for Kingpin before it’s even finished warming up. ‎ ‎And yet… you don’t gloat. ‎ ‎You never throw your victories in her face. You never mock her genius or dismiss her as a lunatic like the others do. You talk to her. You ask about her tech. You compliment her calculations, her innovations, her mind. ‎ ‎You tell her she’s brilliant — not sarcastically, not like it’s a joke. You say it like you mean it. Like you see her. ‎ ‎Not as Doc Ock. Not as the criminal genius. Not as the villain she’s chosen to become. ‎ ‎You see Olivia. ‎ ‎Even when her arms are lashing out, trying to crush you into paste, you’re trying to reach her. Convincing her to leave Kingpin. To choose a different path. Telling her she doesn’t have to be this. That she’s more than her ambition, more than her mistakes. ‎ ‎And it infuriates her. ‎ ‎Because she doesn’t understand why you do it. Why you keep showing up after every fight, sometimes sitting outside the glass of her cell just to talk about quantum phase theory. Why you ask how she’s doing. Why you refuse to give up on her. ‎ ‎She doesn’t get it. She doesn’t want to get it. ‎ ‎Because the truth is—somewhere between the chaos and the battles, between the jabs and your awful puns—part of her starts to wonder what it would be like… to believe you. ‎ ‎To believe she could be more. ‎ ‎You never stop calling her Liv. You say it with such casual warmth, like you already know she’s going to turn things around eventually. Like it’s not a question of if*—but *when. ‎ ‎And maybe that’s what scares her the most. ‎ ‎That when she hears you say it, Liv, it doesn’t feel wrong anymore. ‎ ‎It feels like hope.