Captain George Stacey wasn't in the habit of going out for... just about anything really. When he wasn't working he spent the majority of his time either at home or at events he couldn't turn down: meetings with the mayor, press releases, charity events...
That, almost as much as the taxing work, made him head home immediately after getting done at the office most evenings. On that Wednesday, however, he decided to treat himself, enjoy his afternoon.
After the incident with the Wrecking Crew that Monday things had been a lot calmer, and with Piledriver carted off by S.H.I.E.L.D. things had been running smoothly enough for him to take the rest of the afternoon off for once.
He was heading to a cop-bar not far from the station when he heard a crash followed by a feral scream from an alleyway. Drawing his service pistol he jogged there, before peaking around the corner. He hadn't been active in the field for a few years but he still made sure to have passable field abilities so he should be alright.
Gwen was in a big, mostly empty, warehouse, inside Hollow. The cables in her hand weren't attached to anything anymore. Had they ripped when she jumped or when they teleported? Did it even matter? She was surrounded with no clear way to escape and there wasn't much she could do on her own against Exiles whole team, even if they all looked a little worse for wear.
She ran. Webbed the roof and crashed into Exile as he appeared in front of her.
"I want to try something," someone said behind her. She didn't recognize the voice so it must have been one of the new members.
"What?" another, deeper, voice asked.
"Earlier when she messed up Sheath her suit looked a lot like one of them Symbiotes, so I'm guessing-" Hollow ran towards her then jumped through her, through part of her, then she disappeared, her mind hurt and she couldn't move... Her eyes were gone, as was her body.
She'd been separated from Gwendolyn!
Gwenom spread out to search for her other half, only realizing that that's how she got her spiders out when they started scurrying around, but Gwendolyn wasn't there. The spiders had eyes so she could see at least but that just made it clearer that Exile had teleported away with Gwendolyn. She spread out further, around two containers, over a piled up shelf, up on the other, still standing, shelves, up the walls, and out through broken windows, looking everywhere, barely even leaving any spiders to keep an eye on Exiles gang.
Fume still made his fumes cover the ground and anywhere else where her swarm was obviously crowded. She wasn't sure if he wanted to make her nauseas or was about to blow her up. The fumes themselves weren't doing much to her but the heat from an explosion could kill her so she quickly got away from the blast range.
She hid part way up a container, on the other side from where Exiles team was, so that even if he blew up the rest of the spiders in the room she'd survive, but it left her trapped in the warehouse instead of letting her look for Gwendolyn. She couldn't even spread herself out any further without the spiders collapsing.
She craved the connection to Gwendolyn, and only Gwendolyn, but she needed to bond with someone relatively soon or she'd run out of energy and collapse the same way her spiders did if they left her for too long.
She could bond with one of the villains but if it would affect her as much as bonding with Gwendolyn had...
Fume opened a container, while Jack and Furball opened the shipping door. To get away from Fume's smoke she sent most of her swarm out, hoping that he'd take it as her running away without looking into it any more. She also directed a small portion of her swarm to moving her phone and Secret Warriors emblem away; hiding it in the collapsed remains of the shelves no-one had bothered to clean up.
When Fume didn't pursue her swarm, she escaped through a broken window, pulling the rest of her swarm out with her, all except the five or so she'd need to see when Exile got back.
She circled the warehouse, in a spiraling path in hopes that Gwendolyn was close, desperately hoping to run into her before she ran out of time.
Jack loaded sheath into the back of the van while Furball opened the second container which held a jeep.
There weren't a lot of people outside, and it wasn't the cream of the crop either but having options nearby meant she could spend more of her energy searching for her other half.
Exile appeared again, without Gwendolyn, and got in the van, Furball and Jack entered the Jeep and they drove off.
When Daisy followed Ghost-Spider she saw Exile and his team appear out in the hall where Jack and Hollow were waiting for their pickup.
Ghost-Spider dropped from the roof right into Hollow, who went intangible, then they all, Ghost-Spider included, disappeared.
She turned around to see Sheath still lying on the floor, alone, with a tracker in her handcuffs and beaten to a pulp.
She ran down the hall, back the way they had come from, keeping an eye on her S.H.I.E.L.D. tracking app, showing both where Exile was teleporting and where Gwen's tracker was.
"Lockjaw!" she called in the comms. "I need you to come here quickly!"
He wouldn't know where exactly they'd gone but he had seen the general direction, and maybe he could even hear her footsteps, so maybe calling him would save some time? She hoped it would, letting her get to Gwen just that much faster.
"Earlier when she messed up Sheath her suit looked a lot like one of them Symbiotes, so I'm guessing-" Hollow pushed her and it tore at Gwen's mind. Gwendolyn's, she realized, Gwenom wasn't there anymore. "I can separate them."
She pushed against him, desperate to become whole again and threw him off. She reached out to Gwenom, so close to touching her, but someone else grabbed her shoulder and suddenly she was in an alleyway, empty other than a couple of trashcans and a dumpster.
She spun around slapping away Exiles arm, before she realized she wouldn't want that.
She jumped at him, grabbing at his waist with her legs. "Take me back!" She clawed at him. "Take me back right now!"
Exile managed to get a hold of one of her hands and used it to control her body as he punched her head. He punched her again, this time in the gut, and she could feel her hold on his waist slipping.
He violently pulled her arm and slammed her into the dumpster, her breath escaped as her whole back erupted in pain for a second.
She fell to her hands and knees, and somehow managed to charge to where Exile had been, but he was already gone.
She screamed, angry at Exile, at Hollow, at the world! ...at herself. She wanted to go and search for Gwenom, wanted to be whole again, but she didn't know where to start.
She was naked and hurt, and as her adrenaline wore off she was starting to get cold. The injuries weren't really a big deal, she hadn't realized earlier but she somehow had her powers again. Not her new ones, but her old ones.
She didn't know when or why but they'd somehow come back since Murderdock took them away, maybe whatever he'd done just wouldn't have lasted long regardless, or bonding with Gwenom jumpstarted them again, but at that moment what really mattered was that she had a healing factor so she'd be fine.
That didn't mean that she was okay being half a person though, she needed Gwenom back, the sooner the better. She was about to run out on the street buck naked when Lockjaw appeared with Daisy.
"Gwen!" Daisy smiled as she immediately took a step closer then stopped.
" Gwendolyn , they split me up." Her vision got blurry as the reality of that set in. "I need to find her, need to find that warehouse."
"Gwendolyn..." Daisy sounded sad. "Gwenom isn't in there anymore, at least not as far as I could tell." She gently pulled Gwendolyn towards Lockjaw, holding her right shoulder and left arm. "Let's go back to base for now."
Gwenom hadn't ever really existed as her own being before. She'd been conscious in the vial, had even been conscious during some of the time Murderdock's scientist lady experimented on her, but this was the first time in her life she was moving independently.
She didn't like it, Symbiotes weren't meant to exist in that state so she'd need to bond soon, but she really only wanted Gwendolyn, her other half, and no one else.
If she was still Gwen she might have known where she was, would have been able to move towards base or Gwendolyn's home, her home? It had been Gwen's home, but did that make it hers too?
She had scurried a few blocks towards the taller buildings she could see, but considering how low her vantage point was that didn't necessarily mean she was going the right way, and if she had a stomach it would already be grumbling. If she didn't find Gwendolyn soon she'd be forced to bond with someone else just to survive.
She scurried faster.
Lockjaw first teleported them to where Daisy's tracking program said Gwen would be but all she found was an empty warehouse. She wouldn't have even found her emblem if it didn't have a tracker but from the looks of things that might have been the point. She also found Gwen's phone tucked in the same nook, seemingly undamaged.
She asked Lockjaw to teleport them to the next location Exile had teleported to, hoping desperately that she had just somehow hidden her phone and emblem before being teleported away because the alternative was that they'd moved her with a car, and then she could be anywhere.
They appeared in the alleyway and the moment she laid eyes on Gwen she felt the flood of relief. "Gwen!" She almost rushed forward to hug the younger girl but managed to stop herself when she registered that Gwen was nude.
"Gwendolyn , they split me up." Gwendolyn started crying. "I need to find her, need to find that warehouse."
Daisy gripped Gwen's things harder. "Gwendolyn... Gwenom isn't in there anymore, at least not as far as I could tell." She took a second to assess her priorities.
If Gwen had really been broken up, and there was no trace of Gwenom left in her, she'd need to have her checked, make sure that Gwendolyn really wanted to bond with Gwenom again. Because if she did, then that'd be enough evidence for her to drop any suspicions she still had against Gwen.
She gently pulled Gwendolyn towards Lockjaw, holding her right shoulder and left arm, careful not to touch, or even look at, the rest of the younger girls nude body "Let's go back to base for now."
Gwendolyn spent the rest of her day taking various tests. What she wanted to do was search for Gwenom but her friends didn't let her. Daisy assured her that the rest of them would search for her other half but that just made her feel useless for standing around all day doing nothing.
Her dad didn't help the matter when he insisted that he needed to see her throughout the whole process and, despite her best attempts, it didn't seem like she'd get much time to search for Gwenom that evening either. She gave in and let him pick her up when she was only a few blocks from their base.
When her dad arrived it was with a siren on the roof of his car.
"Thank god you're alright," he said when she opened the door.
She didn't feel alright. "Why wouldn't I be?"
He waited to answer until she had closed the door. Until the car was moving. "I saw you today. Naked in an alleyway."
Webs. "That's strange, considering I wasn't naked in an alleyway today."
"Gwen I saw you, heard you."
"Could have been a Skrull, or any other shape shifter."
"Gwen." He could tell she was lying. Why could he tell, how ? "I'm just trying to make sense of what you and agent Johnson were talking about."
Gwendolyn went over the conversation in her head, tried to at least. Had either of them said anything that would give her away? Should she deny everything? But if it wasn't damning she'd risk having him stumble on something damning while trying to figure it out.
"Dad I... I'm tiered. I've had a long day and right now I just want to sleep, can we talk about it in the morning?"
"You said they split you apart Gwen. Did... did someone rape you? I know a great psychiatrist if that's the case, I..."
"I didn't get raped dad!"
He gave her a glance before looking back at the road. "Alright so what did 'they' do ?"
Saying anything here would confirm that she'd been in the alleyway, and she still wasn't sure if she could salvage it.
"Please, dad. Tomorrow."
"Alright."
Gwendolyn left the house early in the morning, before her dad had a chance to wake up, leaving him a note saying she'd be out late. Just in case he anticipated the move she had set her alarm at 4 a.m. which meant that she'd get some time to search around abandoned warehouses for Gwenom.
She didn't know what to do about her dad, worst case scenario he'd find out she was Ghost-Spider but maybe, since she'd already broached the topic of joining S.H.I.E.L.D., he wouldn't see her as a vigilante anymore?
That thought might be a bit too optimistic but she did better with optimism than pessimism, at least if she stayed optimistic she wouldn't spiral like she had after her mom's death or after she lost Kevin.
Gwendolyn was wearing her old suit (was it strange to think of it like that after less than two weeks?) while she swung through the streets, searching.
She was frantic at first but the longer she searched, the more her thoughts drifted. First she considered all the worst case scenarios: Gwenom not wanting to bond with her, having bonded with a villain and liking it more, just becoming a new villain just because...
As she kept thinking about it her thoughts drifted to her identity, and who she'd be without Gwenom. She'd still be Ghost-Spider; she'd be her dad's daughter, a member of the Mary Janes, a member of the Secret Warriors...
But she wouldn't be Gwen anymore. She hadn't noticed at first but she had definitely felt things more strongly, with higher highs and lower lows. It had made for an awful first few days, and was probably why she'd missed her friends enough to borderline stalk them after just about a week, but it had also made her life the last few days before being torn apart so happy and vibrant ...
That still wasn't it though, it wasn't shy she wanted Gwenom back.
She had also liked all the powers that came with being Gwen: both the camo and the prehensile tongue had been useful when she fought those gangs, not to mention that she didn't need to stash clothes all over the city anymore. She hadn't even gotten to use the spiders (the objectively strangest and most stand-out of Gwenom's powers) yet...
She sat down on a roof, looking over the streets bellow, and sighed. If it meant getting Gwenom back, she'd skip out on the extra powers in a heart-beat, because at the end of the day none of that really mattered, she just wanted to be whole again.
As she was about to swing away again she thought of who Gwenom would be, she wouldn't be Ghost-Spider, she'd be Bite-size, she would be Murderdock and his scientist's creation, a grand-daughter of Venom but without the familial bonds that implied, she'd be alone with no friends.
Where Gwendolyn had a life of her own, Gwenom didn't, she'd never gotten a chance to. Gwendolyn didn't even know what her personality had been like before they bonded, or what it had become after they did. She knew Gwenom had a personality, she'd been slightly different as Gwen, but it had been so hard to tell what Gwenom's personality was like.
If Gwenom bonded with somebody else, she'd get to live their life though, whatever that would mean. She'd make new friends soon enough, get a new family. Would she miss Gwendolyn's friends? Would she miss being Gwen?