There was a tiny part of her that felt guilty she was making him feel how she had felt all those weeks ago. She was trying to force him to say the right thing, to say the thing that would make her feel better. She was standing on his doorstep, trying to get him to talk to her. Even if he said some stupid thing, it would be better than him avoiding her, which he had been doing. He barely turned up for the classes they shared anymore, and when he did he sat as far away from her as possible, slouched in his seat and staring out the window as if he wasn't even in school.
And it hurt. Out of all the people, ever, he would understand what she was going through. Her father died at the hands of something he had created, and she had helped the whole thing end up how it did, and so they were both guilty and they both needed each other.
Or at least she needed him. "My father died. And he was with you." She talked about the funeral, and tears sprung to her eyes, and she hoped he felt shitty. And when he lifted his hand to wipe away a stray tear, she half stepped forward, thinking that they were going to have each other again. That he would kiss her and he wouldn't tell her everything was going to be okay, because he didn't know that (nobody did). But he would murmur incoherent things into her hair while holding her close, and that would be enough to allow her to start to heal.
But then the walls were up again. And he kept repeating "I can't do this," as if that somehow explained everything.
And it was only when she was standing in the downpour, the rain hitting her umbrella, that it hit her. He wasn't saying that he didn't want to see her anymore. He wasn't saying that he didn't have feelings for her anymore... "He made you promise, didn't he?"
His silence told her everything she needed to know.
That night, she was staring at her computer, as if by sheer power of will her essay would be magically written. That somehow, if she made herself sit there, her brain would stop thinking about Peter (about how he shouldn't be listening to her father, about he's fucking Spider-man who never listened to anyone but himself and now he's following orders from a dead man? That just didn't make sense), about her dad (about how she knows she shouldn't because you should never think ill of the dead, but she hates him in that second. She loathes how controlling he is and how he's made this all so much worse for her and she knows he meant well, but it was selfish to force her to live the life he wanted her to), about the lizard that, while she's still alive, might as well have killed her when it got a chance because it ruined everything she held dear.
And then she hears it.
The sound that she'd heard several times before. The sound that usually gave her such joy because it meant the arrival of her own personal sunshine. The boy who always managed to cheer her up without even bothering to try.
But now he's her own personal raincloud, who seems determined to make her hurt even more than she already was. And that's why she ignores him. She doesn't look up, though she knows he's there. She doesn't smile or turn away or anything. She just pretends like she has no clue. That's what he wants, presumably. To survey her but not be surveyed. To stare at her but not be stared at.
Eventually it gets too late for her, and she has school the next day, so she shuts her laptop, leaving the document empty. And the second she steps up to shut her blinds, there's a whoosh and he's gone in a blur of red and blue.
And she's alone again.
...
He turns up every evening at 8pm, on the dot. Even if he's just there for a minute before he swings off to where he's "needed," he's there. Watching her, making sure she's alright. She doesn't look at him, doesn't acknowledge that she knows he's there, but by the way she's not even trying to talk to him at school, acting like they were months ago, he knows she knows.
It's killing him, she has to know that. He could barely get the words out when she came to his front door, could barely stand to watch her walk away, or to watch her cry. The worst part is that he could make it go away. She'd grieve her dad but she'd have him by her side, just like she was by his side when he was grieving Uncle Ben.
But it has to be done, he promised her father. He tries so hard to be a good person, to do what's "right," and breaking promises is never right. Never ever. Especially when it's a promise made to a guy who's now dead, a guy who died trying to help you. Because he didn't have to do it.
Late at night, after leaving Gwen's or leaving the crime scene, he wonders the thought process behind Captain Stacy's decision. There was the decision to let him stop Dr Connors (he refuses to think of him as the lizard, even though he knows that he had no control over it), which was presumably for the good of the city. A part of him obviously knew that the only way to stop a superhuman was to send another superhuman after it. Then there was the decision to help him. They could probably have stopped Dr Connors at that point, so why didn't the Captain just let Peter die? Sometimes Peter thinks that it was so that he could ruin Spider-man at a later date, either by arresting him or outing him, or whatever. Other times Peter thinks that it was done because the Captain knew just how strongly Gwen felt for him.
But if the latter was the case, then why make him promise to stay away from her?
She's not doing well, Gwen. Every time he sees her she's scribbling furiously in her notebook at school, or staring at a blank computer screen at home. The culmination of losing both Peter and her dad is starting to mess up her future, and Peter can't stand that.
He knows that he's making it harder for her to move on when he's visiting her every night, but all those feelings are still there and he's not strong enough to fight them completely. He chuckles without humour when he thinks that. He's strong enough to take on and win against a 10 foot lizard, but not strong enough against the powers of a teenage girl with the blondest hair you'd ever see and the biggest eyes and the most perfect legs...
He's strong but weak. He's just the biggest oxymoron there ever was.
...
He's been visiting her every night for a week when she's not there at 8pm. She went out for a meal with her family (though they're not much of a family without Dad), and she didn't want to go back to her room to figure out that she missed him. Just his presence sooths her, makes her forget about everything for a little bit and focus on how it felt to be in his arms, soaring across the skyline.
But then he leaves and she's so angry because why does he get to leave? Why does he get to change her life completely and then leave? He gets to swing and sort everybody else's problems out but he never stays to sort out hers.
So on this night, she refuses to go back to her room on principle. Determined to be strong, and not rely on him one little bit. He made his decision (or rather, he let it be made for him) but that doesn't mean he gets to half go back on it.
It's near enough midnight when her Mom sends her to bed, saying it's late because she has school in the morning, and she succumbs to the desire to sleep. She stumbles into her room, and to her window to shut her blinds, and...
... he's there. Staring at her with his mouth open and eyes wide and it's the first time they've looked at each other in the time of this weird arrangement. "I- I'm sorry." She gasps out, dropping the blinds down and falling into her bed, sleep not on the horizon.
It's only the next morning that she realises that she had nothing to apologise for, and that's why she storms up to him in class.
"Are you ever going to stop being such a dick?" It comes out very matter of factly, of which she's glad. Conversations with him would be impossible if she showed the emotion that was constantly causing her pain. He doesn't reply, so she sighs and turns away.
That night, instead of sitting at her computer, she sits on her bed. Staring at the window and waiting.
8pm passes. She wonders if maybe he's in trouble, but that's never stopped him before.
9pm passes and she thinks he's definitely in some sort of danger.
10pm passes and she hasn't heard any more police sirens than the usual night.
11pm passes and she makes herself cocoa, scalding herself on it in her hurry to get back to her room.
The hands turn to midnight.
He's not coming.