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“Gwen, there’s something I need to tell you.”
Her voice stutters, because of course it does. At least it doesn’t crack.
(She hates her voice she hates her shoulders she hates her hands.)
They’re in a hallway, and other people are around, passing by, milling about, but they don’t matter.
All that matters is Gwen Stacy, as she turns to listen, a smile slipping into place just as her eyes flash with curiosity. “Oh?” She laughs, and fiddles with the books she’s carrying. “Don’t tell me... you love me?”
“I mean, I do, but...”
“You pull that trick at least once a week, Pete. It’s cute.” She’s teasing, but it hurts.
(It hurts more than a fight with Doc Ock and Green Goblin combined, it hurts more than a bullet, it hurts it hurts it hurts.)
She tries to breathe, to get it under control, but she can’t. Her lungs start working over-time, the rhythm of the process going helter-skelter, but she pushes onward regardless. “It’s not, I do, but that’s not what I’m trying to... this is serious, Gwen.”
The smile disappears. “Okay?” She shifts her stance, weight going from one foot to another, shoulders pulling in with sudden tension. “Is this about me getting a better grade in Chemistry? Because, if it is... sorry, but not sorry, I guess.”
She laughs, because that’s funny, Gwen’s funny, but it comes out kind of off-kilter, and the concern writ large on Gwen’s face only redoubles because of it. “No, no, I... I’ve just, realized some stuff about myself, and I’m...” (She can’t say it she can’t it’ll kill her) “I’m a girl.”
Gwen blinks. “...no, you’re not.”
“I, I know I don’t look like one, and I probably don’t seem like one, but I’m... I’ve always felt, known, I didn’t belong with the boys. I’m not one of them, I’m... I’m a girl, and I love you, and I really need your support, with everything to come.”
It’s a ramble, it’s nonsense, but it’s the best she has.
Gwen isn’t blinking anymore. “Didn’t you say this is serious?” Before she can answer, Gwen just steamrolls ahead. “No, you’re not a girl, Peter.” Gwen smiles, but it isn’t kind, it isn’t comforting, it’s mocking, it’s nothing like Gwen but it’s everything like what she’s always feared. “I don’t know if you remember, but the last time you snuck into my place, we did some stuff that pretty much proves you’re a teenage boy.”
“N-no, no, I, I’m a lesbian, Gwen, I... I’m sorry, maybe I’m saying this wrong, but—”
With a hard shove, Gwen sends her sprawling to the floor. Her chest hurts, but it shouldn’t, it’s flat, but it hurts so bad. Gwen looks down at her, glare obscuring her eyes behind the glasses, and she can barely recognize her girlfriend right now, can barely see her as Gwen at all. “A lesbian? Please, whatever this is, stop it.” Gwen lets out a sigh. “It’s not funny anymore.”
(She’s crying, she’s sobbing, an ocean of tears are falling and they’re not enough to hold all the emotion, not even close.)
“I, I, I...”
“Wait, were you... serious?” Gwen flinches, and now it’s so clear: she’s disgusted. Completely and totally. “Oh. That’s... why do you think I’d b-be okay with that? Y-you should have just broken up with me, that would’ve been easier to stomach than... this.”
“...ake up...”
She’s on the floor and Gwen’s looking down at her like she’s an insect worthy of being crushed, but Gwen’s not alone anymore. Flash is there, Sally too, Harry, Mary Jane, they’re all looking down at her, sneering, seeing her for what she is and knowing how gross and disgusting and—
“Baby, wake up, I’m here, you’re okay, wake up...”
One moment Piper is in school, being tormented by her peers, and the next she’s in bed, MJ’s hands on her shoulder. She’s breathing hard, hyperventilating, having a panic attack.
“It’s okay, baby, you’re okay. Can you look for five things you can see? Tell me them if you can, but you don’t have to, you’re okay.”
Her wife’s auburn hair. The bookshelf across from the bed. The webshooter on the bedside table. Her own breasts tenting the blanket in her peripheral vision. The ceiling fan above them.
She mumbles them out, unintelligible, but Mary Jane just nods through them all.
“Good girl, you’re doing so good. Okay, next...”
Four sounds, three smells, two touches, and Piper’s coming out of it. Breathing steady, able to think clearly, her heartbeat something approaching a standard at-rest rhythm.
It’s helpful, required maybe, to focus on the present.
She isn’t a teenager, isn’t in high school anymore, isn’t drowning in dysphoria.
Piper Parker is in her thirties, she’s been transitioning for years, and she lives in a so-so apartment with a woman she adores.
She focuses on how nice it feels to be topless in bed, the sheet brushing against sensitive skin and attentive areolas. Her boobs are still growing, even as she’s started to approach her third year into DIY HRT, and she’s close to overtaking MJ in bra size at this point. Next target: Felicia Hardy.
Her brown hair used to be long, but now it’s in a pixie cut, and either way she takes better care of it these days. Right now, a few locks of it intermix with auburn from the woman beside her.
“What did I do to deserve you?” Piper groans, burying her face into MJ’s clavicle and holding her close, arms enclosing around her midsection. Maybe it’s silly, but Piper gets such a rush of gender euphoria out of moments like this, feeling her breasts rub against her wife’s. Even if it’s just for a minute, it makes the terrible voice inside her awakened by that nightmare a little quieter.
Mary Jane pretends to consider the question with a hum, before saying, “Y’know, I think after the second world-saving caper you just about covered the down payment.”
“Someone’s got an ego,” Piper says, taking in deep breaths through her nose. MJ smells like sweat, faint perfume, just a hint of the Thai food they’d had for dinner. “Gotta be careful with that; next thing you know, you’ll end up a living planet.”
“Eh, I could pull it off.” She kisses Piper’s forehead, gives her superheroine a squeeze, and whispers, “If you’re feeling good enough to joke, you’re feeling good enough to spill. What happened?”
Piper shudders. “It was...” If she tells Mary Jane to back off, that this was something she’d rather share with her therapist, her wife would let her. It isn’t like Piper can tell Mary Jane everything that eats her up inside, every insecurity and source of strife, not even close. But... she could tell her this. “I was in high school again. Or maybe college, I don’t know, it was sorta mixed together.” Trying to think back, to recall solid details, she can’t get any handle on the setting.
Only the events.
“I was... trying to tell Gwen. Come out to her.” Piper closes her eyes, squeezes them shut as hard as she can. “It... didn’t go well.”
“I’m so sorry, babe.” A soft kiss, pressing against her cheek.
“It’s not the worst, I’ve... it was bad, though. Really bad. And I don’t know, if...” The words trail off because she can’t finish the sentence.
Of course, with MJ here, she doesn’t have to. “You never got a chance to tell her. To know, for sure, how...” A hand cups Piper’s cheek, and Mary Jane gently tilts her gaze to the side, away from the ceiling, so they can look at each other directly.
MJ is crying too.
“She was my friend, Piper. My best friend. I’d like to think I knew her well.” The pain in Mary Jane’s voice is a sibling to Piper's own; not quite a twin, not that identical, but certainly related, both of them borne from love for a girl long dead and long buried. “She wouldn’t hate you. Wouldn’t demean you. Maybe she wouldn’t get it at first, but she’d try.” Just like MJ hadn’t gotten it at first. Just like she’d tried.
“You don’t know for sure, though,” Piper says, another tear sliding down her cheek.
Mary Jane shrugs. “We probably never will. But I believe, Piper.
“I’ve got to.”
It’s weeks later, and Piper’s a little outside her usual stomping grounds.
There’s something strange going on, something tingling her Spider-Senses, and she’s not the only Spider to get the memo.
Slinging from one building to another, Spider-Gal nearly collides with the dimensionally immigrated Friendly Neighborhood Ghost-Spider. “Whoa!” she cries out, but they’re both quick on their feet, and a few webs and jumps later, they’re standing on a building, laughing about it.
“It’s been a bit,” Piper says, because it has. “How’s my dimension treating you?”
Ghost-Spider (she has to think of her as that, and not her given name, if just for her own sanity) shrugs, but there’s something jerky about the motion that tells Piper she’s hiding something. “Could be worse. Gotta say, you’ve really...” She gestured in an hourglass shape at Piper’s figure, her voice full of good humor. “...filled out.”
“Y-yeah, I... thanks.” It’s awkward, like a lot of interactions with Ghost-Spider are awkward, but it’s nice to hear.
“Can you...?” She does a twirl with a finger, and Piper sighs but obligingly turns around, showing Ghost-Spider her back. The alternate universe doppleganger of her first girlfriend whistles. “Damn, those hormones hit you like a truck. Are you the cakiest spider around?”
Piper’s face feels like it’s on fire, she’s so glad the mask hides the blushing. “N-no, I, uh, think Jessica’s still winning in that department.” Her, or Silk, but Piper’s fine with third place.
For now.
“Well, for whatever it’s worth, Petra—”
“Uh, it’s Piper, actually.” Did Ghostie not get the memo? MJ said she handled it.
Ghost-Spider laughs, and it’s painfully familiar. The cadence of it, the little snort near the end.
And Piper thinks of the nightmare, and can’t help but start talking. “Are you... I mean, you sure seem to be, but... you’re cool, with me being...?” She gestures at herself in the same way Ghost-Spider had before.
Looking into the white of her mask, Piper’s pretty sure Ghostie’s raising an eyebrow behind it from the way she slightly tilts her head. “Obviously? Hell, Piper, I’m... you don’t seriously think I’d be a transphobe, do you?” It comes out hurt, and heated, and it makes Piper feel like shit for even wondering.
“No, I, I guess not, I just...” She looks down, focusing on a vent belching heat into the cool winter air rather than on the friend she’s betrayed. “I never got to tell my... y’know. And, sometimes I wonder, or worry... and I know you aren’t her, just like I’m...” She finally manages to shut up, thankfully.
“Hey.” Ghost-Spider takes her hand, and even through their costumes, it’s warm. “I’m not upset. Or, not that upset. I can understand, with... y’know. Why you’d wonder.” She sighs. “I wonder. About my P... my Parker. Like, was he... she... were they like you? Questioning, hiding, not brave enough to say anything yet? Or is this just another difference between our universes?”
Of course she’d wonder that.
Piper nods. “No way to know.” She squeezes Ghost-Spider’s hand. “Thanks.”
“No big deal.” Ghostie bumps her shoulder into Piper’s.
The tingling that brought them to the same part of town gets worse, and Spider-Gal admits it’s time to move on, to focus on the bigger picture.
But as she runs to the edge of the roof, and Ghost-Spider does the same, and they both cast out a webline to a nearby building, Piper smiles under her mask.
“Even after everything that’s happened... it means a lot that you’re still my friend, Gwen.”
Ghost-Spider doesn’t reply, probably because she doesn’t know how, and they both swing off the lip of the building.
Neither of them can ever know the truth, not about the person they lost.
But they’re both here. They can know each other.
That’s something.