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 so tired though. It’s been such a long day and she just wants to stay still. She takes a deep breath despite the protests inside her. The concrete is rough, and dust surrounds her. Gwen pushes herself up on one elbow, vision swimming. Her spider-sense flickers then dims. Her body aches and pops as she drags herself up. Man, is she tired of getting thrown around. Another ragged breath escapes her notice. Looking 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 decapitated building. As she gets closer to the origin, the distinct sound of voices ring. They drift closer but she still can’t hear what they’re saying. She creeps closer, almost tripping over a broken statue. It 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. It’s bridging 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 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, angry voices shout her name. Spider-Woman. She can tell orders are being given. She tries to spin around but sways on her feet, regretting it immediately. 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, everyone knows 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 (real) naps.
She drops back down to her hands and knees, crawling to the very edge of the hole. She releases a shaky breath, praying the ground holds. She slides her legs over the ledge and lowers herself down further. The shelf noisily cracks, rubble and pieces of concrete fall down, down, down. It bucks under her, she tightens her grip. The rebar starts sliding out of its socket, taking the ledge with it. The air is filled with the screeching of metal. Gwen screws her eyes shut. Partly to block out the noise and partly because she doesn’t want to see the world spin any more. Her heart hammers in her chest, pulse exploding throughout her body.
The ground comes to a jerking stop, almost throwing her off. A few seconds pass, filled with the sound of blood in her ears.
She risks opening her eyes.
A piece of 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. The sides of her vision unfocus then fade back in. 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.
Bringing her other hand down, she starts swinging across the ceiling to the safety of the lower levels floor. When she’s clear of the hole, she drops down to the floor. The shock vibrates up her legs and settles in her knees. She winces, too exhausted from the whole diabolical to keep standing. She lets herself crumble into a corner, pushing her back against the wall. She folds her knees up to her chest and rests her forehead on them. One of her hands, that isn’t clutching her head, drift to the ground. She runs it over the dents and cracks, relieved to feel the solid ground. It halts 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.”
Her 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, a siren felt too personal. At one point she crouched behind a dumpster, letting herself rest for sixty seconds. Her pace was slow, creeping even. Eventually it started raining, not unlikely living in New York. It poured down onto her, tiny bullets hitting her shoulders and head. They soaked through her suit and coated her skin and hair. 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 even walking. It wouldn’t matter as much as the company.
No. Don’t fantasize Gwen.
Crawling into her bedroom brought more comfort than she wanted to admit. It hugged her. The room. Home. It smelled like wood, maybe a hint of spaghetti from an incident two days ago.
Now, she peels the shoulder of her suit down. She winces when she sees the dark purple and blue across it. 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. After it’s disinfected, she lets the suit jump back up over her shoulder.
Sliding the first aid kit back under her bed, she stands 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 ever happened.
“G-Gwen?” A sound suspiciously close to a gun cocking bounced through her head. She sucks in a sharp breath. Not just from her injuries. She can lie, rattle on and on but it won’t take away from the truth. That she’s standing here, soaked and shivering, holding the mask between her fingers.
“Yeah,” a whisper pushes through. It feels so heavy coming out that her body collapses forward as it comes out, then straightens again.
He 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, 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.
Time fractures around them.
“No,” George Stacy says, the world splitting around him.
“I can explain—” Gwen shakes her head, still not turning around.
“Spider-Woman is dangerous.”
It’s not a question.
“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.
“Keep your hands where I can see them!” he shouts at her.
She complies, raising them in a calming gesture. 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. 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 had 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 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 holding a gun at 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.
“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. She wants his support now that he finally knows. She craves it, a need deep in her chest. 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 voice’s tight. Not loud, but worse. Controlled, like he still needs to keep her safe from herself.
“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 are 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?”
That lands harder than any punch or hit she took today.
“I am your daughter,” she asserts, and her voice cracks in a way she hates. “I didn’t stop being that—”
“Enough.” His voice sharpens, slicing through her sentence. “Turn around.”
Her heart stutters and her face crumbles. “Dad—”
“Turn. Around.”
Gwen considers a hundred options in a blink. She could run, she could jump through the open window and not look back. She could fight. Heaven knows she has the adrenaline for it. Her body even tenses out of instinct, muscle memory itching 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.
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 in her chest and throat.
“I didn’t mean to hurt anyone,” she says quietly. “I never wanted this.”
“I know,” he replies, and that’s somehow worse. His voice drops, frayed at the edges. “That’s the problem.”
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 which sorry it’s for anymore.
“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. “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, not staying in denial. She wants to hear him say it, acknowledge what he’s doing to his family.
Instead, he exhales slowly, shakily. “Stand up.”
She obeys. 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. 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.
Rain streaks down behind her, blurring the city into watercolor smears of light and darkness. The cuffs rest heavy 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.