Chapter Text
Gwen nods to the other Spider-Man who dropped in her dimension. Miguel—she recalls him saying. She admits it, he has good timing. She definitely doesn't want any prominent scars in places visible to her dad and classmates.
Her balance wavers and she steps back off the edge. A few unsuccessful steps end up with her on the ground; hissing at the sting that goes through her body.
Sirens fold over each other, red and blue light slicing through the dark. Then the pain blooms a little later, radiating from her ribs and shoulder. The inside of her mask is slick with sweat. She pauses and goes through a mental check list of injuries. Halfway through she loses track and decides to settle for resting.
Just for a minute.
Her body wants to knit itself back together. She can feel it happening, the familiar warmth under her skin as bruises softened and cuts closed. It helps some.
The sounds of the two spider people shuffling around below meets her ears.
She has to get up. She needs to see who they are without the villain causing chaos. They have those new watches and they could form a portal wherever they wanted it seemed like.
Maybe they could take her to Miles. She wills herself to get up and talk to them, follow them at least.
She’s tired though. So tired. Her bones ache in a pulsing rhythm and the world seem to blur in slow motion. The days are too long, the air too fridged for her burning lungs as she takes a deep breath.
The concrete is rough and the dust cloud murk's around her. Gwen pushes herself up on one elbow, vision swimming as her spider-sense flickers then dims. Her body stings and pops as she drags herself up.
Man, is she sick of getting thrown about all the time. Another ragged breath escapes her notice as she looks around, fallen metal beams are littered in the upper room, ceiling fragments too.
The police will have fun cleaning this, she thinks with a bitter chuckle.
Now, where did those people go? A clash catches her attention; she snaps her head in the direction her Spidey sense tells her it came from.
Shakily lifting her feet over debris, she starts the trek through the dilapidated building. The distinct sound of voices ring as she gets closer to the origin. They drift closer but she still can’t hear what they’re saying. She creeps closer, almost tripping over a broken statue that lays crumpled on the ground. Moving past it, there’s a drop off. A large hole in the floor where something crashed through the different levels.
She pauses at the tip of it, looking down and making herself dizzy in the process. Two stories below she sees the spider people. They hold the Vulture wrapped in Miguel's web. They pushed him through the open portal before them. The portal dances, projecting colors onto the surrounding walls as it bridges two worlds together and Gwen wants more than anything to jump through it.
“Wait,” she croaks, throat raw. But the portal snaps shut, swallowing them all up.
She fires a web on instinct. Nothing comes out.
She stupidly stares down at her wrist, trying the other one next with the same results.
Empty.
Of course. She’d burned through the last of it mid-fight. Rookie mistake. She won’t be forgetting to replace the fluid from now on.
Boots thunder nearby accompanied by angry voices shouting her name.
Spider-Woman.
She can tell orders are being given. She tries to spin around but sways on her feet, regretting it immediately as the city tilts around her.
She’s able to catch herself on a wall but leaves a trail of red where her suit ripped. No spare clothes to change into, so the dumb civilian card won't work. To be honest, it probably wouldn’t have worked anyway because everyone on the force knows exactly whose daughter she is.
No web fluid and no easy exit. Great.
She regains her composure and reminds herself not to panic.
Priorities.
1. Get out of here before the police find her. 2. Get home before her dad. 3… I don't know, act like she's been there? Well, all of those are easier said than done. Except three, she is an expert at fake (that turn into real) naps.
She drops back down to her hands and knees at the very edge of the hole. Releasing a shaky breath and praying the ground holds, she slides her legs over the ledge and lowers herself down further. The shelf noisily cracks as rubble and pieces of concrete fall down, down, down.
The slab shifts suddenly, sliding from under her. She clenches her fists around it and the rebar starts sliding out of its socket, taking the ledge with it.
The air is filled with the screeching of metal that Gwen is forced to listen to, grinding her teeth against the sound as it bounces around her head.
Gwen screws her eyes shut. Partly to block out the world and partly because she doesn’t want to see the colors spin anymore.
Her heart hammers in her chest, pulse exploding throughout her body, imaging herself as another body to be identified.
The ground comes to a jerking stop, almost throwing her off.
A few seconds pass that are filled with the sound of blood in her ears.
She risks opening her eyes.
The rebar caught on a fallen metal beam. Trying to slow her breathing, Gwen loosens her death grip on the ground. She has to keep going.
The sound of footfalls becomes clearer; they’re running now. Toward her. She puts one hand on the edge and slips the other one under it. With one final glance down, she heaves her body off, putting her weight on the hand that’s suctioned to the underside.
Now she’s hanging in the air. Her wrists scream up into her arms, but she makes them stop shaking. More rubble falls, this time into her face. She tries to shake it off, but when that causes more creaks, she freezes.
She walks across the ceiling to the safety of the lower levels floor and when she’s clear of the hole, she drops down to her feet, the shock vibrating up her legs and settling in her knees.
She winces, too exhausted from the whole diabolical to keep standing. She crumbles into a corner and pushes her back against the wall. Knees folded up to her chest and her forehead resting on them as one of her hands—that isn’t clutching her head—drifts to the ground. It runs over the dents and cracks, relief flooding through at the feel of solid ground. It pauses when the footsteps come to a stop above her.
“Careful, the ground’s unstable here,” a female cop calls out. More footsteps follow the individual. Without raising her head, Gwen stays as still as she can. Even though they can’t see her and they probably couldn’t hear her, one voice makes her go rigid.
“I want any signs of Spider-Woman photographed and collected as evidence.”
Dad.
When they finally move on to go look somewhere else, Gwen’s whole body relaxes again.
Getting home took more than an hour.
She moved like a ghost, slipping though allies and ducking into shadows when lights got too bright. Every step tugged at her sore muscles and a siren felt too personal.
At one point she crouched behind a dumpster, letting herself rest for sixty seconds before hopping back up. Her pace was slow—creeping even. Eventually it started raining (not unlikely living in New York). It poured down onto her like tiny bullets. They soaked through her suit and coated her skin and hair in one slick layer of slush.
When she reached her building and scaled the side until she made it to her window, she paused to look to the sky. With her eyes closed she could imagine she was somewhere else entirely, maybe swinging or walking. It wouldn’t matter as much as the company.
Don’t fantasize Gwen; it hurts less this way.
Crawling into her bedroom brought more comfort than she wanted to admit. The room hugged her.
Home.
It smelled like wood, maybe a hint of spaghetti from an incident two days ago.
Now she peels the shoulder of her torn suit down and winces when she sees the dark blue. It's surrounded by a stream of oozing blood that stretches from the base of her neck to down under her armpit, ending on the middle of her shoulder blade.
Nothing fatal and not anything she can’t heal from. With a sigh, she realizes she should probably disinfect it.
Grabbing the first aid kit out from under her bed takes most of her effort. Sluggishly, she thinks she should probably go faster but right now she doesn't care. She runs through excuses for the blood stains in her head, she could clean them off the wall, but an excuse seems so much easier right now.
After it’s disinfected, she lets the suit jump back up.
After sliding the first aid kit back under her bed, she stands and starts to crawl into bed. It doesn't matter that she's soaked, doesn't matter that her feet squish in her boots, and the white parts of her suit will need to be bleached.
Again.
Except she freezes when the creaking wood planks stop outside her room. It’s familiar even in her sleep-deprived state. She swore the door hadn't rattled closed or the sound of her dad settling in didn't ever happen.
“G-Gwen?” A sound suspiciously close to a gun cocking bounced through her head. She sucks in a sharp breath as horror etches itself into her every feature.
She can lie, rattle on and on, but it won’t take away from the truth: she’s standing here, soaked and shivering, holding the mask between her fingers.
“Yeah,” a whisper pushes through.
George sees everything at once.
The cuts in the suit, the blood on the wall, the mask, the shaking fingers.
His baby girl, his enemy, the person who murdered a boy who was like a son to him. His daughter's best friend. His daughter.
She hurt Gwen and he can’t let that happen. But Gwen. It can’t be her. Not his girl: his blood.
So, he grabs his gun.
He has to protect his family from this imposter.
Gwen needs him.
He lifts it up.
Peter deserves to have this. He needs to bring this monster to justice. Gwen needs to heal, she needs someone to protect her from the world and it's his job.
“No,” he says, the world splitting around him.
“I can explain—” Gwen shakes her head, still not turning around.
“Spider-Woman is dangerous.”
Gwen digs her teeth into her lip until she tastes copper. “Dad,”
“No. You have the right to remain silent.”
“Dad, stop!” Desperation takes root in her voice.
“Anything you say can and will be used in—”
“Stop!” She spins around, catching him by surprise.
He points the gun at the center of his target, finger resting on the trigger. “Keep your hands where I can see them!” he shouts at her.
She complies, raising them in a calming gesture while her broken eyes meet his.
He flickers his gaze up and down her, resting on her face, the curve of her nose, the freckles she has, the eyebrow pricing he had told her no about. He remembers when she asked him—begged. He told her no over and over, but she eventually convinced him.
He remembers everything while staring at that face. Teaching her to ride a bike on vacation, coming home to her smiling at him, making dinner even when he wanted to collapse in bed. Helping her with homework and hanging up her drawings with pride on the fridge. He remembers cheering her up with ice cream when she was down.
He also remembers how he just wanted to help her get better. Heal from Peter. He couldn’t though and, apparently, she hid who she was from him. All those times he talked about catching Spider-Woman hoping it would make her feel a bit better. She lied to him for years.
Years.
“Dad,” she pleads. She’s looking into the eyes of the man who raised her.
The one who loved with his whole soul and taught her to keep her chin up. He taught her how to be courageous and to do what’s right, even when no one else would. He taught her how to defend herself; he took care of her when she couldn’t.
Now he’s the one trying to shoot her. Reading her rights.
“How long—have you been lying to me?” A look of hurt washes over him.
Gwen opens her mouth to answer but hesitates. She tries to take a small step forward only to stop and sag numbly. “I thought about, I’ve thought about telling you. But you can see why I didn’t. You can see why I didn’t tell you.”
She wants him to understand why, to plead her case, but most of all (even if it's illogical) she wants—craves—his support now that he finally knows. A desire baked down into her very being. But a look of betrayal is all she’s granted.
He blows out a sigh that turns into a tsk.
George’s hand trembles.
It’s small, almost imperceptible, but Gwen sees it. She’s always been good at noticing the quiet tells. The way his jaw sets before he says something he doesn’t want to, the way his thumb presses harder against the grip when he’s scared but pretending not to be for her sake.
“You lied,” his voices tight.
“I was trying to protect you.” It spills out before she can stop it. “I was trying to protect us.”
“From what?” He bites back.
She swallows, her hands still raised, shoulders burning as exhaustion gnaws through her muscles. Her spider-sense stays quiet, like it’s curled up and refusing to look at this moment.
“You think I don’t know what danger looks like?” he continues. “You think I don’t recognize it when it’s standing in front of me wearing my daughter’s face?”
The words collapse her lungs (how do you breathe again?) as silent tears fill her eyes. Is—is this all her fault? How can it not be? There is no good left in her, it's all been swallowed up by the ravenous pit inside. “I'm your daughter,” she asserts but...is that still true? She is no hero and never was. All that comes from her is pain.
“Enough.” His voice sharpens, putting an end to this pointless debate. “Turn around.”
Her heart stutters and skips. “Dad—”
“Turn. Around.”
Gwen considers a hundred options in a blink.
She could run; she could jump through the open window and never look back. She could fight, heaven knows she has the adrenaline for it, her body even tenses out of instinct as muscle memory itches under her skin.
But then she sees his eyes again. Not the captain or the cop.
Her dad.
She can’t fight him, not when he finally knows it’s her. She’s too tired of fighting him.
This is what she deserves. So, she lowers her hands slowly, turns, and presents her back to him.
The room feels smaller without seeing his face. The rain ticks softly against walls, absurdly calm.
“Hands behind your head,” he orders.
She does it.
Cold metal presses between her shoulder blades. The gun doesn’t shake anymore.
“On your knees.”
Her legs nearly give out anyway. She sinks down, knees hitting the floor with a dull thud, the pain barely registers compared to the weight settling on her chest.
“I didn’t mean to hurt anyone,” she says quietly. “I never wanted this.”
“I know,” he replies without any conviction, he's already lost all that. “I'm sorry too."
She hears him move closer, the leather of his holster creaks. There’s a pause—long enough that she dares to hope…
Click.
The handcuffs close around her wrists. The sound is final. Heavy.
Louder than the thundering sky outside.
She flinches anyway when he tightens them, not because it hurts, but because his hands are so careful with her. Too careful, like he’s afraid she’ll break.
“I’m sorry,” she croaks out. She doesn’t know how to keep doing this. “For Peter,” she adds because that one has lived between them like a ghost for too long.
He goes still behind her.
“For lying,” she pushes on because she still has to try. Never stop trying. “For all of it.”
For a moment, she thinks he might say her name. She wishes he would. She wants him to feel the amount of pain she does in this moment. She wants to hear him say it, acknowledge what he’s doing to his family.
Instead, he exhales slowly, shakily. “Stand up.”
She obeys and the cuffs bite when she straightens, she turns halfway back toward him.
He doesn’t meet her eyes. He steps back, gun lowered now but still in his hand. He doesn’t trust her enough to put it away.
“I’m not calling this in yet,” he says. His voice is raw, scraped down to bone. “I need… a moment.”
She nods. That's all she can do now.
“You’re going to sit on the bed,” he gestures. “You’re not going to move and you’re not going to make this harder than it already is.”
A sad, almost-smile flickers across her mouth. “I’m really bad at that.”
His lips twitch despite himself. It vanishes just as fast.
She sits without fanfare.
Rain streaks down behind her, blurring the city into watercolor smears of light and darkness as the cuffs rest heavily behind her. Spider-Woman’s contained, captured and subdued for the first time. Gwen Stacy’s cracked open.
George watches her like he’s memorizing the shape of her, like she might disappear if he blinks.
“I don’t know what happens now,” he says quietly.
Neither does she.
The room settles into silence, thick and fragile, holding its breath around them.