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Gwen couldn’t stop staring. She was aware of this, mostly because she was certain she hadn’t taken her eyes off of the flash of skin next to the strap of Glory’s tank top.
Small black letters were printed on her skin, in a sans serif font Gwen couldn’t remember the name of; she just knew they used it on the X-Files.
“I want to believe,” the tattoo read.
In what? Aliens? Everyone knew they were real by now.
It didn’t surprise Gwen that Glory had a dorky tattoo—at least not as much as it surprised her that Glory had a tattoo. And not as much as it surprised her that she couldn’t take her eyes off of it.
She didn’t touch the skin of her tattoo, even though she wanted to. “This is new, isn’t it?” She couldn’t be sure, because she couldn’t remember the last time she’d seen Glory wearing anything other than a sweater or a hoodie.
When Glory turned to look at her, she smiled. She seemed smug, almost. Why? “I’ve had it for a few weeks now. It’s almost healed.”
“It looks good,” Gwen said. An understatement.
“That’s not all of it, you know,” Glory says, and plus the strap of her shirt until Gwen can see...
“Spider-woman?” She cannot breathe, because there she is, from the clearest picture J. Jonah Jameson ever managed to acquire (which makes it the most iconic), crouching next to the letters. “So you want to believe in Spider-woman?” Maybe if she understands the tattoo, it won’t torture her like this.
Glory turns around, taking Gwen’s view of her tattoo with her. “I do believe in Spider-Woman. Anyway, haven’t you seen this? People respond to editorials by Jameson with this. People like Spider-Woman, because she’s good, and Jameson is an asshole.”
Gwen hadn’t see those responses, but it did cheer her, kind of. She was mostly overwhelmed. “But...why a tattoo?”
Glory smiled at her. “It’s a declaration.”
She found herself speechless and breathless all at once. She could hear something like an implication there. “Glory,” she said slowly. “Do you know?”
And if she knew, then didn’t it mean something to tattoo someone into your body? Even a name or a design meant something, Gwen thought, and Glory had her picture. If she knew Gwen was Spider-Woman, then she had chosen to put Gwen there, like a heart with Mom written across a banner. Or a girlfriend’s name, her traitorous brain suggested.
“Gwen,” she replied. “I know.”