Chapter Text
“Gwen Stacy”
“1995-2014”
“Beloved friend and daughter”
Huh.
Well… this isn’t weird at all.
Gwen Stacy stares down at her own grave.
She’d seem some weird things since she started superheroing around but… standing at a gravestone marked with her name and adorned by flowers from her friends and family and loved ones… that’s gotta be up there with the weirdest things. Including that one time she saw Rhino’s underwear. That one was REALLY weird.
Oh yeah.
And she’s in another universe.
Again, that’s weird. But at least it explains why she’s staring at her own ghost.
Huh. Spider-Woman. Ghost-Spider. Maybe it wasn’t just a cool name after all.
Maybe that’s her place in all this.
Gwen takes a breath, looks around herself.
The graveyard is eery, of course it is. Snow-capped gravestones surround her, the white powdery substance glistening in the reflection from the streetlights. It’s dark.
She shivers. Takes another look around. Then kneels down at her grave.
Gwen looks through the flowers. There are two bunches that look fresher than the rest. Lilies, and a single rose.
She recognises the lilies. They’re her mom’s favourite flower. A small part of her heart breaks off and falls down into her gut, settling there.
Gwen begins to ask herself who the rose is from, but stops herself before answering. She knows all too well who it’s from.
Who it’s always from.
This is the seventeenth time Gwen Stacy has stood over her own grave in the last few weeks. The rose is an ever-present at each.
The lilies show her how long it’s been since she died.
Well, since the “other her” died.
If the lilies are there, and fresh, it means she’s not been dead long. Her mom usually stops visiting her grave after a month or so. She still stops by from time to time, but… things get busy. She doesn’t blame her. Gwen hasn’t been to her own mom’s grave in… too long.
The rose, though. The rose is always here. Doesn’t matter how long it’s been since she died. There’s always a single rose.
In every other universe.
She noticed the trend around the third or fourth time she visited her various graves, so she decided to stick around long enough to figure out why.
One day, on one of her more routine trips to another New York on another Earth, she had a little more time on her hands after preventing an incursion, so she hung around the usual graveyard, just out of sight. She didn’t have to wait more than an hour or so for a man to walk up to her grave with a fresh rose and a forlorn expression.
The guy was in his thirties, in his prime, probably. The hint of red-and-blue spandex poked out from the ends of his shirt sleeves. He didn’t look like he had the energy to hide it anymore.
He walked up to her grave, placed the rose gently, spoke softly to her memory, and left in a hurry.
Next universe she visits, next grave she visits, Gwen does the same thing. She waits half a day this time.
Around evening time, the figure shows up. A little more hunch to his back this time. Gwen notices that first. It’s like Peter B at HQ says, they all got back problems.
This Peter places a rose too. He doesn’t stay as long. Speaks a few words, tidies up the other flowers and pieces around the grave. It’s a terrifyingly practiced movement.
Gwen watches him from behind. She stays high enough up to remain unseen. She can hear him, even as his whispers.
“I’m so, so sorry, Gwen. I’m sorry.”
He turns around to walk away again. Gwen sees his heart breaking with guilt, his face contorted into a mask of regret and self-loathing.
Gwen thinks. Is this what she does to people? Leave them full of regret and anger? She’s seen the faces of the other Peters back at HQ. They all look at her like they’re sorry or they miss her or they love her, or all three. She literally walks around that building ruining people’s days, she thinks. She’s a constant reminder of their failure, just as their faces constantly remind her of her own failure.
Peter.
Back in the present, Peter is startled by something. Probably his spidey-sense alerting her to Gwen’s presence. She has to move.
Just as she prepares to swing off, Peter looks in her direction. She sees his face. And wishes she never had.
His hunched back? It’s not just because of the web slinging. This Peter Parker is old. Like, really old. Older than Peter B, older than her dad. He’s got grey hair. Plenty of layers to keep his body warm. And that same look in his eyes, that look of pain and hurt. Still, after all these years.
Still broken. Still a Parker. Still blaming himself.
Gwen thwips away before he can properly get a look at her. That evening, before returning to Nueva York, she climbs to the top of this New York’s Empire State Building. She cries for a long, long time.