Chapter Text
The next couple of days were... quaint. Besides the seemingly never-ending cycle of Society stuff to deal with, once the pair got home at the end of the day, it was nice! Gwen finally had a solid place to stay, and Hobie's... cat, was sweet as well. She was aware he had a band, but wasn't too sure if she was ready to meet more new people just yet. She still had to deal with her other stuff.
Oh.
That stuff.
With everything that had been going on, she hadn't had much time to process everything that happened. Gwen mostly stayed up late with Hobie doing random stuff, since they both never had set routines. For them, it was either watching pirated tapes of unauthorized movies (the Bee Movie, because most if not all movies/shows produced in Hobie's dimension were propaganda crap from the government or endorsed by the government), building ancient Lego sets that Gwen didn't think even her dad played with growing up and taking them apart and making other things with the pieces, political bracelet-making, or tinkering and messing with random pieces of tech and seeing what would happen.
She had been keeping herself occupied doing things like that. Currently she was trying not to cry in the bathroom while Hobie was out. She didn't even really know what prompted it, but she guessed that was what happened when you pushed your problems to the back of your mind for too long. The hot tears in her eyes welled up as her nose burned, like how it always did when she was about to cry. She thought about the last words her father had said to her, which had been reciting the stupid Miranda warning pointing a loaded gun while arresting her. He wasn't able to look her in the eyes as he read it off, in a pensive tone until he'd been trapped by Miguel in the laser cage, his firearm webbed away beforehand as Gwen had cried out for him in that moment, as Jess held her back, as she watched him struggle in the cage, shortly going into the portal after. It was cruel, how their world would turn. Early in her career, she had saved her dad from a gunshot and he didn't have any hesitation to pull a gun on her, mask down or not regardless.
Gwen stood up and stared at the mirror, as her tears fell down. She wiped them away, as she noticed just how much she looked like her dad. Crying like this reminded her even more of the look he'd given her while she'd been held back. They had the same eyes, nose, and hair, down to a T. She collapsed quickly into a ball on the floor, sitting. Had she really murdered Peter? Surely it was an accident, right? It was, she swore. It was a case of the wrong place, wrong time, right? She'd been fighting him that day, and it.. It had happened so fast. There was a falling beam and he got pinned underneath it. Just thinking about that thought made her cry more. But what if, somewhere in her sub-consciousness, she'd purposely driven Peter under there, counting on the beam to fall and kill him? What if she really was the reason he had died?
The crying had escalated into sobbing. Was she really a murderer, like her father had decreed? Gwen felt utterly disgusted with herself. Her father didn't deserve to look like a murderer, and it was too painful to look like her father.
And then she got the best idea in her entire life, for a murderer, you know, besides killing her best friend. She didn't think Hobie had hair dye, but there had to be something, it didn't really matter how toxic it was. She eventually found a packet of system-sanctioned kool-aid, and recalled there was some way you could dye your hair with kool-aid. The packet had "MIXING DRINK POWDER" on it in big bold letters, with white paper packaging. It didn't specify what kind of mixing powder it was or what flavor it was, but it didn't really matter as long as she looked different. She emptied the packet with shaky hands, making a slight indentation in the vibrant pink powder with her finger, tasting the straight powder for a moment. It tasted nauseatingly sweet, heavily artificial, even for kool-aid. She mixed the kool-aid with a small amount of hair conditioner, feeling slightly more horrible for wasting the conditioner on a murderer, and then added a little bit of hot water to the concoction. She felt slightly light-headed from the smell of the 'kool-aid', which definitely wasn't a good sign, but she didn't care. She took the longer end of her hair, and ran the conditioner through her hair with her hands.
She washed it out about 30 minutes later. By then, she had been spiraling for a minute and looked like it. She did however, still have the sense to lay a towel down near the sink while she was washing it out, looking like a water-boarded cat, her hair soaked and sopping wet. She dried her hair with a dark towel, and in the moment it looked decent, but about 10 minutes later she'd felt a smidgen better and less murderous, and realized it wasn't too great. 'Not too great' was being generous in her opinion, considering it came out patchy in some spots and wasn't evenly distributed throughout her hair, even if she swore she had applied it evenly. Her hair was dyed pink in some places and others it was a sort of peach, and it looked slightly cool but it was definitely an acquired look. She could still feel the dripping of diluted science experiment-like kool-aid on her shirt, which would probably stain as well.
"Oh, well, make-shift tie-dye, I guess. Without the rubber bands." She thought ruefully, as she ran her fingers through her hair. Wow, okay. Sure, maybe dyeing your hair with kool-aid with no prior experience was a bad idea, but 'Pink Fingers' as a band name sounded cool, she bet there probably was a band named that, but actually having your fingers stained pink? Not amazing. The bathroom still had a strong smell a lot like strawberry punch kool-aid but with more uranium mixed in it than usual. She decided to try and wash it out again, and it kind of worked and it looked a little better, and she cleaned up the bathroom and went into the boat's living quarters to go watch the pirated VHS tape of "Peter Pan" she watched regularly. Surprisingly, it was almost the exact same as her version of it that she'd watched as a little kid, with only slight differences, not ones she noticed first watch, but it was nice to focus on the differences to get her mind off of The Kool-Aid Incident.
Gwen had a solid idea about what parallels were. When she was studying quantum theory for about a week at Visions with Miles, which felt like ages ago but nevertheless, she had paid some attention to the material beforehand. By oversimplified definition, it's something that is the same, or nearly identical to another subject or thing and it happens sometimes with quantum theory, typically over and over again, making parallel universes, or coincidences. Once she'd joined the Society a couple months back, she'd gotten a more specific version of what parallels truly meant. She wasn't too sure if Hobie finding her in the living room of the boat like he had previously in the Society closet was a parallel, it probably was though. She heard the boat's main door open as Hobie stepped in.
"Hey, Hobie. How was band practice?"
"It was pretty good, actually." Hobie gestured towards Gwen's hair.
"Did you dye your hair?"
"Yeah, does it look okay? I think it didn't come out too great.
"It's a little sketchy in some parts, but nothing a little touch-up couldn't fix. What'd you dye it with?"
Complete and utter silence fills the room as they stare at each other.
.....
"...Gwen, what did you dye it with?" Hobie repeated his question, getting slightly perturbed.
"Government sanctioned kool-aid...?" She then replied, her tone sounding like she was almost suggesting it rather than answering the question, as Hobie's eyes widened, and then he blinked.
"You're joking."
"Nope."
"Christ. You want help fixing it, or..?"
"...Yeah, please."
"For future reference though, don't use kool-aid, stuff's rank, but I think 138 kool-aid's worse. It's got like all the weird chemicals and stuff in it, everything here has weird chemicals, obviously, but that stuff's basically powdered uranium."
"Oh. Welp, that's not good."
Later, they retrieved a bottle of pastel pink hair dye and started fixing Gwen's hair after washing out as much of the uranium-aid as they could. Gwen's hair wasn't horribly damaged considering she'd had the 'dye' in her hair for about an hour tops, and Gwen put the revised hair dye in her hair, with some added assistance here and there.
"So, what prompted the hair dye-ing episode?" There was the question Gwen was waiting for Hobie to ask. She knew it was going to come and yet, didn't prepare.
"...I was thinking about my dad and Peter."
"Afraid I can't really say anything positive 'bout your dad, but Peter wasn't your fault, Gwendy." He comforted Gwen in an unusually softer tone different from his usual speaking voice. Gwen knew it was mostly sympathetic, but it felt better coming from him. Most of the condolences and "it wasn't your fault"'s came from Miguel or school counselors, both sources of which felt hollow, like glass. Miguel was mostly saying it as a customary thing since he'd done it a million times over, and school counselors were, well, school counselors. Gwen hugged Hobie, wrapping her arms around him, hearing the muffled crinkling of tin foil from her hair as he reciprocated the hug tentatively.
After a little bit of crying and a little bit of joking and hooliganry and tomfoolery, it was time to wash out the dye. Gwen nearly got drowned by Hobie washing her hair out in the sink, which in hindsight would've been better to do, you know, not in the sink. But once it came out it looked .. really nice! The end parts of her hair were a pretty pink color if I do say so myself.
"You look proper like Cherry Valance, no?" Hobie joked, lightening the mood from earlier.
"...Sure, you could say that. Thank you, Hobie, for helping."
"Not a problem."
They then built more blueprints for LEGO airplanes that night.
AND FOR THE NEXT CHAPTER GWEN'LL TELL HOBIE ABOUT MILES RAHHHH OKAY GOODNIGHT YALL BUH BYE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Goodnight. :-]