"Is Gwen okay?" Daisy asked as soon as they were safe, as soon as she didn't need to prioritize.

"I don't know," Doreen answered. "She was stabbed in the back, but I think she's had worse? I think Murderdock did worse."

Daisy was still worried, but rationally she understood that it probably wasn't a serious injury by Gwen's standards. Besides, there was nothing she could do about it at the moment.

"This isn't working," Dante said. "I saw it before he stabbed her. I would have blasted him if I hadn't been so worried about hurting her." Daisy had to keep herself from blaming him.

"We'll get there," Kamala said. "It's only been a week since she came back."

"This isn't the sort of problem that just goes away; I won't ever be able to get a close miss on her again."

Dante was right about one thing: This, the way they were, it wasn't working.

"So what happened with the horde?" Squirrel-Girl asked.

"There were too many," Daisy answered, "we couldn't stop them all."

She wasn't lying, with how many there were it had only been a matter of time before they broke through, unless Emulator ran out of power. What she didn't say, but definitely thought, was that hearing Gwen got hurt threw her off her game, which was exactly what she'd been worried about before they became girlfriends.

Gwen went straight from the hospital to her band practice. She had been angry earlier, when she was standing over Jackal just about ready to castrate the bastard, but she got even angrier when she realized that they'd lost because someone had to come save her, and this time she didn't have someone in front of her to take it out on.

That last bit was a good thing, even if it didn't feel like it. She'd need to find a way to keep calm quick before she ended up with someone convenient to take it out on and did something she'd regret.

When she entered MJ's garage, she realized that she hadn't brought her drumsticks. Why did she carry them with her if she didn't ever move the drums !

"Is everything alright Gwen?" Betty asked. It was rare for someone to show concern before Glory, but then Glory looked pretty distracted until Betty had said that.

"I forgot my drumsticks."

"That's alright," MJ said. "You keep a spare pair here, remember?" She went and got them from a shelf and handed them to Gwen as she sat down by the drums.

She started hitting them.

For a while it was just her and the drums. She felt the beat, not just in her muscles as she played it, but in her surface and, just a tiny bit, in her bones. It was heavy, and good.

Since she was the only one playing she freestyled in some off beats, and just generally made some noise. She played like that until MJ joined in with her guitar, then it was the two of them, playing off of each other. Freestyling together. Eventually she started singing.

She was singing one of their songs and Gwen adjusted her drumming from freestyle to the beat of the song.

She kept playing, between songs she practiced her freestyle and whenever the others settled on a song she'd play that. It was fun.

"Gwen?" MJ asked.

"Yeah?"

"I like the enthusiasm but you've been going at it for two hours now, aren't you tiered?" MJ put down her guitar and wiped some sweat from her forehead with her sleeve.

"You do remember that I have super-stamina right?"

"But you were doing superhero stuff before coming here," Betty guessed while slowly walking to the garage door. "Otherwise you're never late." Okay, maybe not guessed .

"Yeah... I don't really get tiered unless I've been going for at least five hours so it's fine." And Drumming barely even counted as exercise to her.

"Right. Well we're done with practice now, if you want to go home," MJ said. Betty was already half way out the door, and it seemed Glory was going to spend some quality time with MJ since she was heading into the house.

Gwen considered asking if she could keep playing for a bit, then decided to at least check her phone first.

Daisy ❤️

[Today: 18:23

Can we talk?]

[In person]

[Today: 19:30

Where?]

[Pizza Fantastico]

[Be there in ten]

"Guess I'm heading out," she said, unable to keep a smile off her face.

"Meeting your girlfriend then?" Betty asked.

"Yeah."

When she arrived she spotted Daisy sitting on the roof, five stories above the pizzeria, and landed next to her.

"Hey."

Daisy looked up at her, then away. She patted the roof next to her, silently asking Gwen to sit down, but she didn't move her hand away to let Gwen sit close to her.

She sat down a bit away instead.

"The reason we lost today was me," Daisy started. "Or you, or Dante, depending on how you see it, but it was my fault .

"When he saw you get hurt Dante told us all over the comms, since he couldn't help you himself, and when I heard it I froze. It was so bad that I forgot to dodge the charging horde, much less attack them. I snapped out of it, but I was too worried to focus properly so they kept getting through."

"Oh." She reached out, trying to console her girlfriend, but Daisy pulled away. "Nobody got hurt, right? They're all fine?" She knew the answer already, but she figured it wouldn't hurt to remind Daisy of it.

"Yeah, they're fine."

"Then I'm sure nobody holds it against you. Worrying about your girlfriend's normal." Gwen took her hand, causing Daisy to flinch. She tried not to think of what that could mean.

"Yes, but I- I can't mess up like that, I have to be better." Daisy squeezed her hand.

"So what do you want to do? What can I do to help?"

"I think-" Daisy swallowed, looking her in the eyes for the first time since Gwen got there, "I think it's best if we maybe take a break."

"You're breaking up with me?" Her voice sounded off to Gwen. Hollow.

"Sorry."

"But we only just started dating..." Her eyes were stinging but she didn't feel any tears on her cheeks. Maybe her surface was stopping them? "We only became girlfriends yesterday ."

"And it already led to us losing a fight, Gwen. Until I can make sure that won't happen again, until I can be an impartial leader again, I think it's best if I distance myself from you, and if you want to help me, please help me with that."

Gwen didn't know what to do. She wanted to tell Daisy not to do it, she wanted to make it too hard for Daisy to go through with it, but she also didn't want it to hurt Daisy any more than it already was.

She jumped from the roof and swung away whilst crying, tears finally flowing down her cheeks.

It was late. Her dad would be home and he might worry if she stayed out too long so she swung home, to where there was ice-cream. Ice-cream and the one person she was sure wouldn't ever tell her to leave him.

She wanted a hug.

Why did breaking up have to suck so much? And it wasn't just breaking up, Daisy had asked her to stay away from her, they couldn't even hang out as friends anymore.

If that's how it's going to be , Gwen thought, I might as well just quit the team.

She felt like punching something. A wall, or some other hard thing; didn't matter what. Hard enough to hurt her hand, hard enough that the pain could distract her. She could always throw herself at work, like she had done during her identity crisis, even if it'd leave her dad worried.

Gwen landed in an alleyway and changed her surface to civilian clothes. The walk home, she was already sure, would suck. It would take too long; she'd have to stew in her thoughts...

She already missed Daisy.

While walking home she let her thoughts distract her from the world around her, enough that she barely registered the eyes of some creep following her. If he tried anything on her, he'd deserve whatever steam she let off on him anyways.

Daisy wouldn't approve of that line of thinking, she still remembered the way she had looked at her after she beat up Sheath, but what was she going to do, cut her out of her life ?

She kicked a tin can. Littering wasn't something she approved of, and that wouldn't change any time soon, but at that moment she appreciated having something to kick.

They had lost the battle, and it had been her fault. Daisy blamed herself but if Gwen hadn't stopped long enough for Hollow to stab her nothing would have gone wrong... And Daisy wouldn't have broken up with her.

She kicked the can again; far enough that she worried it might hit one of the three other people on the street. She turned into the alleyway, ready to punch the wall, when her Spider-Sense went off.

It wasn't the way it felt when a common criminal was about to attack her, not even with a knife or gun, this was a super-villain.

She threw herself forward, rolled, then spun around to face the Jackal. His claws were sharp but they weren't as dangerous as a knife. Unless he had coated them in something, probably to knock her out.

When she was knocked out he would take her to his lab for some tests or, more likely, his twisted idea of a date.

"Tisk tisk tisk, you know I like it when you play hard to get, but you don't need to throw yourself away after inviting me in like that." He brandished his claws. "You'll hurt my feelings."

She felt offended on multiple levels, not only had he diminished her obvious contempt for him and insinuated that she was attracted to him, despite him being older than her dad, he'd also called all their fights her 'playing hard to get.'

But more than anything else, she was happy. Happy to finally have something to punch, even if it meant dealing with the Jackal again.

It was time for him to learn that she was Gwendolyn no more, he was dealing with Gwen .

She charged in close, under his punch, and uppercut him. She kept going, punch after punch until he fell to the ground, which seemed longer than it should considering how hard she was hitting him.

It took her a couple of seconds to see the blood, not just on him, or her fists, but also on the wall he'd been leaning against. And the ground, slowly spreading around him. She carefully checked his pulse, which thankfully was still there, because despite how much she hated him, she didn't want to commit murder. Or manslaughter.

She was pulling out her phone to call 911 before she even remembered to check if he was a clone.

"9-1-1, what's your emergency?"

She was checking his wounds when she realized that she hadn't been fighting the Jackal at all, just his Warren clone in a Jackal suit, rotting skin and all.

After the paramedics picked up the clone she jumped down another alleyway and switched back to civilian clothes. She walked home, sat down at the dinner table and ate.

Her dad didn't say anything to her while they ate and she was about to go up to her room when he said his first words to her since she came home.

"Did something happen with the girls today?"

She didn't answer, her brain taking a while to process his line of thought. "No." She didn't want to talk about it.

"You know you can talk to me about anything, right?"

"Yeah dad, I know." She turned to leave again. "My girlfriend broke up with me."

She didn't know why she told him, not like he could help considering the reason Daisy had given. She noticed tears where flowing down her cheek and briefly wondered when she'd started crying, but was brought back to the moment when her dad walked up to her.

"Oh, honey. It'll get better. The first time breaking up is extra hard but it always gets better eventually." He was stroking her back, and as much as she wanted to hear him say that, she couldn't get herself to believe him.

Instead she just hugged him, as tightly as she could without hurting him, and cried.

"If you want we could get you some ice-cream and watch a movie together."

She nodded and sat down on the couch while he got the ice-cream and found a good movie for them. He even got her a nice blanket for her and held his arm around her shoulder while they watched it.

And while he fell asleep and her tears slowly dried up, she watched a second one, still cuddled up beside him with her ice-cream.