When George woke up Gwen was still on the couch with him, sleeping under his arm. He carefully got up to make breakfast and before long his daughter joined him in the kitchen and gingerly sat down at the table.

"Dad?"

"Yes, Gwen?" He put her fried eggs and bacon on the table and went back to make his own.

"Can I skip school today?"

"I know you're sad about your girlfriend breaking up with you, but you know that you can't miss any more classes."

"You could tell them I'm sick," she said with a shrug, her lack of energy giving away her mood.

"Look. They call me every time you skip a class, so I know you do it fairly often, even just this Monday. I know being a teenager isn't easy, but you can't just skip out on your responsibilities every time you feel like it." Besides, it was a Friday; she could stay home the next couple of days.

"Fine." Gwen slowly began eating her eggs. She didn't say another word, didn't look at him, she just poked at her food and ate it.

"Cheer up honey, as soon as you get through school you can come back home. I'll cook you your favorite dinner and you can have all the ice-cream you want."

"We're out of ice-cream."

"What?" He checked the freezer. "I just bought two tubs last Sunday. How could you eat all that without feeling sick afterwards?"

Gwen shrugged. "I eat more."

"What?"

"I mean that I," and she made her sleeve turn to her weird black goo thing, covering her hand with it, "need more food than Gwendolyn did."

Right, because she eats for two now.

"I suppose I could swing by the supermarket after work, or you could do it."

"I'll just go to sleep after school."

He hadn't seen his daughter that sad in a while. She'd been in a pretty bad place when her mom, and later Kevin, died, but he hadn't been able to help back then. In the former case because he hadn't been doing any better and in the latter because Gwen had shut him out completely.

He wanted to do better this time, wanted to help her using his experiences, but he just didn't know enough about her situation to help her, and asking might chase her away again.

"Alright," he said. "I'll get the ice-cream on the way home then.

"And whenever you're ready to talk about it, about why she broke up with you or just how you're doing, I'll be here. And you never know, I might actually know a thing or two about how to help you get through this."

Gwen nodded absently like she wasn't paying attention, then went back to silently eating.

Gwen put on headphones before she got out of the house and listened to sad music. The day hadn't really started but she already knew it would be a tuff day to get through.

She didn't pay any attention at all during first period, but at least the teacher hadn't bothered to tell her to pull out her headphones.

"Com-on," Glory coaxed, "we have to get to get you to second period now."

Gwen let herself be pulled along by her friend, feeling bad for making them, not just Glory but all of them, go through so much whenever she felt down.

During second period, still with her headphones on, she forced herself to pay attention at least a little to distract herself from her thoughts.

It barely worked.

When she and Glory went to the cafeteria she distracted herself with hearing what her friend had going on lately. Glory didn't have a lot to talk about, probably because she wanted to avoid speaking about her own girlfriend, so when they made it to the table where their other friends were Gwen switched her focus to Betty instead.

Betty always had a lot going on. That meant that she was usually out doing her own things when one of them suddenly wanted to do something, which was somewhat annoying despite how hypocritical it would be for Gwen to complain about it, but that day she couldn't be more thankful for it.

For the rest of the day she clung to Betty like a life-line. As soon as class ended she'd run to her side and fully immersed herself in her friends life. She learnt a few things that surprised her, mainly just how many people Betty knew.

For any one student it wasn't that surprising, she'd long known that Betty was as social as MJ was, but it felt like they had talked to half the school by the time they got out of school for the day.

She'd keep going, spend some hours with her friends, enjoy herself, but talking with so many new people had left her more drained then she'd expected and she just wanted to go home.

Daisy looked across the lounge room. The team was taking a break from training, had been for almost half an hour.

Gwen was often late, even to training with the team. She'd find a mugger or two along the way and her father's influence would make it impossible for her to look the other way.

Because she was late so often nobody had thought much about it when she didn't show up at the start of practice, but it wasn't like her to be more than a couple hours late (in those cases she had usually run into one of her rogues gallery and decided that she didn't need backup) and by that point she was three hours late.

"Are we sure Gwen's alright?" Ms. Marvel asked.

"Yeah, maybe Murderdock's back, maybe she's really hurt or he captured her or something," Inferno said, stirring up the worry in Daisy's stomach.

She tamped it down. "We can't be sure of anything, but I think she's just skipping practice today."

"That doesn't sound like her at all ," Patriot said.

He was right, of course, Gwen took super heroics just as seriously as she took music, seriously enough that she was considering S.H.I.E.L.D. training over music college, so there weren't a lot of things that could make her skip practice altogether.

The guilt she had already been feeling for the better part of an hour dug itself deeper into her gut.

"I know," she said, "but I think that today she might."

"Ookay," Squirrel Girl said. "That's not strange at all."

"Did something happen?" Inferno asked, glaring daggers at her. It was obvious what he meant, but only he and Patriot knew about them dating so the others were slightly confused.

"Nothing you need to worry about."

After a moment of tension Patriot cut in, "Well if you don't think she's in trouble right now we should probably get back to training."

It was break time again and Dante was done beating around the bush.

"Can we talk," he said to Daisy. "Alone."

"Alright." She led the way out to the hallway, while everybody else was still in the training room.

Unlike earlier this was only a short break, five minutes, so they wouldn't have a lot of time before they needed to get back.

"Did you fight with her?" he asked.

"No, but we did break up." She let that statement hang for a while. "If that was all-"

"No. Things were going great between you, it was written all over Gwen's face, and you also seemed happier than usual. What happened?" He couldn't read her at all half the time but it had at least looked like she'd gone out of her way to be closer to Gwen a couple of times.

"It isn't really your business."

He understood that relationships were very personal, but it was still frustrating.

"At least talk to Rayshaun about it, if we're not good enough friends for it." He was about to go back into the training room when Daisy sighed.

"It was going well, but it was getting in the way of what we're doing here, of being a team."

"What do you mean?"

She leaned her back against the wall. "I mean I can't treat my girlfriend like just another member of the team, and as the leader I can't afford to be partial to her."

"You do know that just breaking up isn't going to make you care about her any less, right?"

"I also asked her for some space. Hopefully we'll grow apart soon enough."

Sometimes he did get a read on her, though he never really knew if he was right. He hoped he was, at least just that one time.

"That's the biggest load of bull I've heard all week. Gwen's feelings for you weren't just a silly little crush, I think she might actually love you, and from the looks of things you broke your own heart too when you broke up with her."

"It still isn't that simple, Dante. When we're in the field lives are on the line and if I make the wrong call I'm putting both the team and any civilians nearby at risk.

"Dating Gwen was getting in the way of me making the right call, so I ended it."

She looked even more heartbroken than before, but he didn't know what else he could say to help convince her, and he honestly wasn't even sure if he was right anymore.

Because Daisy was right , people could get hurt or die if they messed up, and if she wanted to get over her feelings for Gwen to do her job better, helping her let go of them would be what a good friend did, right?

"Do you think it's impossible for the two of you to date without it getting in the way?"

"I don't know."

"Are you going to talk about it with Rayshaun?"

"I don't really have much of a choice since he already knows we were dating."

He nodded. "Alright."

They stayed in the hallway for another minute before going back inside, but neither of them said another word.

After training was over, and after having made some adjustments to their latest strategy for defeating Exile, as well as trying to optimize their other game plans, Daisy and Rayshaun took a well earned rest in the lounge room.

"Want to throw some hoops," he asked her.

"No, I think I might just lie down for a couple of hours," she said while sitting down on the couch, silently wondering if it would be fine to take the whole thing for herself.

"Suit yourself." He picked up the basketball and got to it. "Want to talk about it?"

"About what?"

"You've been down all day and then you tell us Gwen isn't coming today..." since Rayshaun was playing basketball, and playing shrink, she decided it would only be fitting if she took the whole couch.

"There isn't much to say, Emulators swarm got past me because I got too worried about Gwen. Since I can't afford to mess up like that again I broke up with her and asked if she'd give me some space."

"You're seriously breaking up with her over that?"

"There's a reason most companies and agencies, S.H.I.E.L.D. included, have a policy against dating your coworkers," she said with a shrug, "I'm learning to accept that."

"That's mostly about power dynamics, if one of them has a higher rank in the company, or to prevent any fallout from potential breakups. It isn't about you worrying over her safety."

"Well there's that too, I'm the team leader, I shouldn't have favorites. And if we date for any longer a breakup would be that much worse."

Rayshaun stopped, placing the ball under his arm. "Worse than Gwen not showing up for training."

"We could actively get in each other's way."

"You can't even use your powers when you're close to each other, why do you think we're training every day?"

Daisy rolled her eyes. "You know what I mean."

"I don't think either of you would let your fights get in the way of saving people, so the worst that would happen is that you refuse to work together, maybe get in the way of practice by constantly fighting. Honestly doesn't seem much worse than what we've got right now."

"So you also think I should get back together with her."

It wasn't the biggest deal, really. Gwen obviously wanted them to get back together and Dante, who got along better with Gwen than her, had sided with Gwen. Not really a surprise. But Rayshaun was her friend, her former partner, and she had hoped at least one of their friends would side with her.

"I didn't say that. If you don't want to that's fine, you don't have to justify yourself, but you also don't need to justify wanting to be with her. You do you, basically.

"Don't worry so much about what you think is for the best, because it's almost impossible to predict that, just think about what you want. And no matter what you choose, the rest of us will have to learn to work with it, just like any other team dynamic. "

Rayshaun went back to throwing his hoops. He didn't talk anymore, probably to leave her alone with her thoughts.

Thing was, she already knew what she wanted, more than anything else. She wanted to be a good leader, do her job well, and do whatever was best for the team. Even if that meant she couldn't date Gwen anymore.

The speakers where blaring 'Big girls don't cry'. She had hooked up her phone to them and put it on her 'sad songs' playlist... at some point. She didn't know when, but it didn't matter. Gwen was sad, so she wanted sad music.

She realized immediately when, in the middle of a song, the volume dropped. She realized, but she didn't react. She wanted it to be loud, loud enough to drown out her thoughts, but opening her eyes, standing up, and walking over to her phone seemed like a lot of effort to turn up the volume.

She stayed still; face down on the couch for the rest of the song. She thought of Daisy, of her smile, her laugh, her gentle touch during their last date, holding her hand. Gwen was sure that cuddling with her would cheer her up, but then that was the problem: Daisy didn't want that anymore.

'You're beautiful' started. It was one of the better songs on her playlist, and she didn't want to keep suffering through that abysmally low volume for much longer anyways, so she rolled over.

Looking at her phone, she slowly worked up the energy to stand up, because sadly the cables weren't long enough for her to put her phone down anywhere near the couch, and she had left the remote for the speakers under the TV.

She took the three steps to get to her phone, increased the volume, took another three steps back to the couch, and lied down.

"I lowered the volume for a reason," a voice said before it turned down the volume again.

Why hadn't she grabbed the remote while she was over there? It didn't matter, she wasn't about to stand up again anyway.

"Do you want some ice-cream?"

She looked up; her dad was there, holding out an open tub of ice-cream and a spoon. She took it from him, muttering her thanks and started eating it.

The ice-cream was good and as she ate it she slowly got up, sitting instead of lying so she could eat better.

Her dad didn't have much time on Fridays, he usually had to stay late to make sure everything was prepared for the weekend which meant he shouldn't have been back yet, much less have had time to buy ice-cream for his daughter, but he was there, and he had gotten her ice-cream on the way home.

When she'd eaten half of the ice-cream she got up and went to the kitchen where her dad was working from his laptop. She gave him a hug, not too worried that it would take him out of his work.

"Thanks dad."

"No problem honey." He looked at the clock. "Should we order 'Bao Pa Kao' now?" He was really spoiling her; Bao Pa had the best 'sweet and sour pork' in town, easily one of her top five meals.

"Yeah. Can you get me some 'Sautéed Lotus root' on top of the usual?"

"Sure." He fished out his phone from his pocket and ordered the food.

While he did that, Gwen snuck a glance at his paperwork.

He was going over the special provisions for the Warren-clone's cell. According to the doctors he could be released from the hospital that Sunday so her dad had to organize a prisoner transport, in case the Jackal attacked, and a biohazard cell in case the cellular degradation was a sign of an infectious strain of the carrion virus.

She felt some guilt over almost killing someone, especially a clone made by Jackal since their lives where already short and painful enough without a several days' long hospital stay. The fact that it was a clone of the Jackal only made her feel slightly better.

Her dad put his phone back into his pocket.

"Do you want to watch a movie with me? After you're done with that." She nodded to the computer.

"I'm not in a rush, it can wait to tomorrow." Her dad saved the paperwork he was doing and closed the laptop. "What are we watching?"

Gwen shrugged. "Something funny?"

"So we'll want chips and popcorn for snacks then instead of ice-cream?"

Gwen gave him a weak smile. "I still want ice-cream."

She was leaning against her dad's shoulder, eating another spoon-full of ice-cream, as they watched the movie.

It wasn't a rom-com; neither of them had even considered watching one of them. Not because of their reputation as bad, what they were watching wasn't any better, just because anything with romance would have her thinking of Daisy. Sadly Zoolander had a romantic sub-plot.

Whenever Matilda and Zoolander had a moment Gwen quickly looked away.

"We can watch something else you know," her dad said.

"No, it's fine." Gwen was looking at the floor, still avoiding the TV.

"Are you sure? Because if this reminds you of her..."

"She isn't anything like D- Isn't anything like her."

"If you're sure..." He kept looking at her, either to make sure she was fine or in case she'd say something else.

She didn't for a minute, then: "I don't think you can help me. She didn't break up because of anything I did or said, so getting back together isn't very likely." She leaned back in the couch. "And getting over her isn't possible either."

"Do you see her at school?"

"No..." She wasn't sure how to explain things without mentioning meeting Daisy every day. "We just frequent the same places I guess."

"Well in my experience getting over someone isn't so much about the other person, or forcing away your feelings, as it is about accepting that you aren't going to be together and focusing on other things. Before you know it you'll stop thinking about her so much."

"Maybe." She fidgeted with one of her spiders. "But what if I don't want to get over her."

"Honey," he looked at her sympathetically, "you said getting back together isn't likely."

"Yes, but!" She sighed. She really wanted to be with Daisy.

"So why did you break up?"

"She wanted to focus on her job." Her dad suddenly recoiled, like she'd just told him about a swim in a septic tank, but with a flash of worry in place of the disgust.

"So, uh, how old is she?"

"Twenty?" Her dad visibly relaxed.

"Alright. Well if you're lucky she'll find a way to get ahead at her job without sacrificing her private life and the two of you can get back together, but until then I think focusing on your music and S.H.I.E.L.D. application might help."

Her heart stung at the mention of S.H.I.E.L.D. She'd hoped to use her application or getting in as an excuse for why she was dating Daisy but she supposed that she didn't need to worry about it anymore.

"Yeah. I guess."