Reckless
"You never came in yesterday," says Owen, looking at her out of the corner of his eye in a guarded manner.
She sits down next to him in the lab, something she normally wouldn't do, but she has shown up late enough in the day that there are journalists and unfamiliar scientists milling around the place and she doesn't want to sit quietly and make herself look open for questions that the more experienced researchers would be better off answering.
"Yeah, I was with my mom," says Gwen, because it's not completely a lie.
"Oh." His shoulders seem to relax a bit and he hazards a glance at her from his work. "Hey, what happened to your head?"
"Um," says Gwen. She forces a smile and it comes out as a nervous laugh. "Skateboarding accident."
Owen nods. "With, uh—with Peter, I guess? I mean, I know he has a skateboard and all."
"Yeah, I saw him yesterday," says Gwen noncommittally, finally realizing why Owen is acting so bizarre. She can't help but start to feel a little awkward herself, now that she knows that the boys were unwittingly discussing her on what seemed to be a semi-regular basis. It's always been a little strained around Owen, of course, because she has always known that he liked her, but now it feels exponentially more uncomfortable.
Owen doesn't say anything for a moment. "You guys got dinner or something?"
"Owen," she says, already exasperated by the situation.
"Sorry."
He looks so on edge and disappointed that she takes a breath and says, "No, we didn't get dinner."
Owen nods and they're quiet for awhile. Gwen pores through some documents on procedural changes in the lab now that they're finally allowing a select few people in the media tour the facility, then she reaches for files of all the new interns she is supposed to lead around OsCorp sometime in the next few weeks. Out of the corner of her eye she can see Owen staring at a manual with an absurd degree of concentration, and she notices he hasn't turned the page in about fifteen minutes.
After a half an hour or so, the lab clears and Owen and Gwen are finally left to their own devices.
"How are Bonnie and Clyde?" asks Gwen as casually as she can.
Owen's head snaps up. "They're fine," he says. At her expression he says, "Oh, wow. I forgot to tell you. Like, a week ago—they just went back to normal, it was the weirdest thing."
Gwen looks at him skeptically. She remembers all too vividly their grotesque, distorted features—there should be no coming back from that. "You mean they're acting normal again? They're just used to it?"
Owen shakes his head, looking relieved. "No, they look completely normal, too. I have no idea how it happened."
Gwen sits there for a moment, processing it. It's unbelievable. It sounds like a freak show. And god, she can't help that she really wants to be a part of it. She knows that there's no possible way she can do any kind of research on them here at OsCorp, not without getting caught and getting herself and Owen into immeasurable amounts of trouble, but she really wants to see for herself if she can begin to figure out what happened to them.
"Nothing all that weird has happened to them in at least three days," Owen adds. "I'm hoping I can just put them back, with all this media attention nobody has really noticed that they're gone yet."
"What about Bonnie's tumor?" asks Gwen, who hasn't really been listening. "Did anything happen to it?"
Owen taps on the lab manual, looking pensive. "I can't really tell. She hasn't had any major improvements, but I don't have any kind of equipment at home. I've kind of been keeping them in my closet."
An alarm goes off on Gwen's phone, indicating that it's time for her to leave and get to class. Owen already knows what it's for, but instead of turning back to his work and saying good-bye like he usually does, he stacks his papers and neatly puts them in a folder and moves to follow her out the door.
"I've got a meeting with a professor," he says by way of explanation. "You headed to the chem building?"
"Yeah," she says, feeling a little self-conscious that he knows her schedule so well.
"We'll walk together, then," he says, using a chipper, almost forced tone that she hasn't heard in the few years she has known him. It's all the confirmation she needs that he is starting to see her as a competition between him and Peter. What Owen doesn't understand is that there's no point in winning this competition when one of the players has given up at the starting line.
They walk briskly, and Gwen is careful to make sure the conversation remains in a neutral zone. Owen politely asks about MJ and Gwen is all too happy to update him on her latest adventures. He's chuckling at the end of a story about an audition with a dog for a pet food commercial gone terribly wrong when Gwen turns around.
"What?" asks Owen unevenly, still breathy from laughing.
Gwen blinks and looks around them. She isn't sure why she turned around, but now she has stopped in the middle of the sidewalk and people are starting to get annoyed with her for blocking the flow of pedestrians.
"Nothing," she says. She feels jumpier than usual, but after yesterday, who could blame her?
He accepts this and they keep walking. "What ever happened to the dog, anyway? Did they seriously still keep it cast in the commercial after it tried to eat her hair?"
"I never found out, the commercial apparently only aired in the Midwest, so—ow!"
Gwen feels pressure at the base of her ponytail and only then does she realize that someone is yanking it back; her first naïve thought is that maybe it's MJ with one of her overenthusiastic hellos again, but this is violent and mean and beyond her petite friend's abilities. She cocks her elbow back on reflex and hits someone just in time to get her balance, and gets a view of Owen's startled, wide-eyed face.
She whips around to see what he's staring at and her jaw drops, too. It's the man from yesterday. She can't even believe it—of all the nerve, in broad daylight, and isn't he supposed to be dead?
"Spiderman?" says Owen dumbly, not reacting.
The imposter moves forward again, reaching for her, and just darting a few feet out of his way unwittingly puts them into an alley. Still, they are in plain view. She wonders what on earth he could be trying to accomplish. He seems sluggish and stupid, nothing like the man who said cunning and terrible words that haunted her all of last night—something is wrong with him, and after a quick glance she sees the hole on the top of his mask and the rip in his side that are both still oozing with fresh blood, and she realizes that these are probably the injuries Peter assumed killed him the day before.
She can't even blame Peter for thinking it—with injuries like that he probably shouldn't even be alive, but she supposes if he has somehow adapted Peter's abilities, he must have his speedy healing, too. She doesn't want to know how bad it was yesterday if it's this bad now.
Owen crashes into the alley just as the imposter Spiderman advances on her, and Gwen almost feels badly about extending her foot out and kicking him.
"What's going—why would Spiderman—"
"He's a fake," says Gwen through grit teeth, because he's getting up again, "could you help me here, please?"
Owen nods. "Right," he says, and then, to Gwen's immeasurable frustration, he starts rooting around in his backpack.
"Jesus, Owen, what are you—back off!" she yells as the guy comes at her again, looking deranged and hopelessly in over his head. It reminds her of something out of a zombie movie. She balls up her fist and moves to punch him but he catches her hand in mid-air and he's still surprisingly strong. She feels him trying to crush the bones of her fist and yanks her arm back, stumbling a bit and shaking her hand out gingerly.
"Close your eyes," says Owen.
She takes her eyes off the man for a split second to look at Owen. "What?" she splutters, but then she sees the can of mace in his hands and clamps her eyes shut and holds her breath just in the nick of time.
The man starts howling immediately, doubling over and screaming in a language she recognizes as Russian. She knows he isn't breathing it in, not with whatever mechanism he has that allows him to navigate through his smoke bombs, but it must be aggravating his wounds unbearably.
She squints and darts forward. He will never be this vulnerable again.
"Gwen!"
She hears the surprise and edge of panic in Owen's voice, but it doesn't stop her. She reaches out, finds the seam where the mask and the suit meet, and rips it off.
The man splutters and moans, reeling to get out of her sight, but it's too late. Even thought her eyes are stinging from the dissipating cloud of mace, even though she hasn't seen this man in over two years, his face is unmistakable.
"Oh my god," she says, temporarily paralyzed.
He wriggles backward, away from her, like an animal shrinking from the light. In one swift movement he reaches again for a smoke bomb and sets it off—she wonders what the point is, since she doubts he's any better off than they are without the mask, but she is too astounded to ask questions. She flees the alley, almost running smack into a breathless, terrified Owen.
"Are you okay?" he asks, gasping through the smoke.
She nods curtly. There's a small crowd of people ogling them from the street, but she pushes past them, assuming that Owen will follow.
"C'mon," she says, "let's get out of here."
Owen balks at her, struggling to keep up. "Shouldn't we—shouldn't we call the cops or something?"
What are the cops gonna do? she almost yaps. He'll be long gone by the time they arrive, injured or not. She straightens her shoulders and starts walking away purposefully and says, "No. We've had enough media attention since the last Spiderman incident, I can't do that to my family again."
To her relief, nobody tries to follow them. Owen spends the last five minutes of their walk spouting off about how insane that was, and asking again if she's okay, and speculating with all these bizarre theories that she doesn't pay any attention to. She says she'll call him later but promptly forgets as soon as he starts to leave. Once he is out of sight she turns on her heels and leaves the chemistry building, walking outside to collect herself before class.
She can't do this. She doesn't want the burden of the secret she just revealed. She finds a bench, a miraculously empty bench, and sits down on it for a long time, watching the traffic pass and wondering how on earth she is going to tell Peter that the man who is hunting him down and trying to kill him is none other than his father.
She runs past her apartment to grab a few things like textbooks and her sneakers and toiletries because as much as she hates to admit it, Peter is right about the two of them becoming targets, and her apartment is as good as marked. She considers calling him to tell him what happened, and knows that she should, but she can't stomach the idea of talking to him. It's already tense and awkward, and then what? She marches up and tells him his father has gone insane and is for some reason speaking in Russian?
After eating dinner with her family and helping Tyler with his calculus homework, she shuts the door to her room and pulls her hair out of its ponytail and kicks the drawer where she keeps some old sweats to sleep in. She is just grazing the seams to take off her shirt when she hears a rap at the window.
She whips around, only realizing about halfway through the motion that it could only be one person, and when she sees him in full uniform at the window she scowls at him.
He knocks again.
She smoothes down her shirt self-consciously. "What do you want?" she hisses, embarrassed and knowing he'll be able to hear her with his freakishly good senses.
He rips the mask off and she's surprised to see that he is scowling right back. "Let me in," he insists, which only serves to throw her off more. She doesn't know what exactly she was expecting, but she thought he might show up a little more repentant than this after their fight. She is the one who should be on the offensive here, not him.
She begrudgingly unlocks the window and turns her back as he pushes it open and slides into her room. "What?" she asks again. She can't look at him, not knowing what she knows. She's afraid that the second she does she'll just burst and tell him and make everything worse than it already is.
The sound of the window shutting is louder than she would have liked and she flinches, staring at the door.
"Why is it that I have to find out secondhand from Owen Paisley that you were publicly attacked by that fake Spiderman?"
Gwen tenses. "You saw Owen today?"
"Sure did," says Peter, his voice closer now. He doesn't say anything for a moment, and Gwen realizes that he's waiting for her to explain. "Well?" he asks.
She turns so that half of her body is facing his. "I thought you'd be glad. Turns out he's not dead after all."
"No, Gwen, I'm not glad that he turned out to be alive and came after you. I didn't mean to—I certainly didn't want to kill him, and if I'd had any idea if he was alive, I wouldn't have even let you stay in the city."
"Let me?" Gwen repeats, incredulous. She is so boiled up now that she has no problem looking him straight in the eye, but he's staring at the floor now, his hands balled into fists and looking frustrated and upset. "Let me, huh. Well thanks, Peter, I'm so glad you've granted me permission to live my life—"
"Do you not see what's happening here?" Peter interrupts her, his voice so elevated that they both freeze and stare over at her door for a moment. He continues, undeterred, "You don't understand, and don't get angry with me for saying it, because you don't. I've been dealing with this for the last few years. Once someone tries to hunt you down like this, they don't stop. Nowhere is safe. And you're just a girl, Gwen—I said don't get angry with me for saying this, you know I'm right."
Her cheeks are already flaming and she is pointing a finger at him uselessly, so much frustration brimming under the surface that it seems to be blocking any coherent words from coming out of her. He mistakenly takes this as permission to continue.
He takes a breath, his posture strung out and his features seeming to sink into his face with exasperation. "You can't—what happened today, you can't just not tell me, Gwen, you can't. I shouldn't be hearing it from Owen, I should be hearing it from you."
Gwen purses her lips. "Are you mad because I didn't tell you, or mad because I spent the day with Owen?"
As soon as she says it she regrets it. She is not this girl. This is beneath her—beneath MJ, even, the queen of boy drama. She fully knows that Owen has nothing to do with this, but she is angry and hurt and embarrassed for the other night and as long as they're angry with each other, she can put off dealing with it, and put off telling him the truth about his father.
Peter's eyes widen. He opens his mouth but doesn't seem to draw in air. Finally he says in a quiet voice, "All I want is for you to be safe."
He is only standing a few feet away from her but she feels the distance between them mounting with a terrifying speed, as if she has cut a chasm into the floor at her dresser, dividing the two of them. He stares at her. He is so desperate for her to understand, and she does, but she doesn't want to. She can't handle his eyes on hers so she averts her gaze to the floor. He turns, toward the window.
"Peter," she says uselessly.
He shakes his head. "I'll be more careful. I'll watch over you. It'll be okay."
The way he says it is so impersonal, like he owes her a debt and there is nothing else between the two of them. She knew she would strike a chord with the line about Owen, but she wasn't expecting this. He seems robotic and passive, like he is out of emotions to spare for her, and she can't really blame him for it when she has spent the last day pushing him to the edge.
"I shouldn't have said that," she says, her feet rooted to the ground.
She is hoping he will turn around. She is convinced that if he just looks at her and sees the sincerity in her expression that he will relax and be familiar and normal again, and for a moment she is certain he is turning to face her and then he takes the mask in his hand and jams it back over his head.
"Don't worry about it," he says, his voice muffled.
There are a hundred things she could say as the pries the window back open. She could tell him she understands, tell him he's right, tell him she's sorry. She could tell him she loves him. She could tell him, the same way she always does, to be careful.
Instead she watches him leave as if it is happening to someone else. The window closes with a snap and he disappears into the night, leaving nothing but a cold gust of wind and an empty, useless apology Gwen didn't have the nerve to say.
Sorry sorry sorry sorry sorry. (Gwen won't say it but I will). I'm a terrible updater. We've been super busy with like four hours of rehearsal a night for this show, which is fun and all, except for some reason my character gets beaten up a lot and I've just discovered my hatred of stage combat, particularly when your character is the one that's always falling down (woke up this morning feeling like I'd been hit by a bus, and also there is a three inch gash on my boob I'm not even going to BEGIN to try and explain). It's Spring Awakening, though, so it's like. If you don't get the shit beaten out of you at some point, where's the fun.
So anyway. I'm going to try and keep the updates more frequent. I literally haven't been able to write for a week, though - apparently we're in school to learn or something? So I have to keep studying for these tests. Ridonk, I know.