Chapter 7

There it was again. That all too familiar ache in her chest. The shortness of breath. The nauseousness. Gwen was no stranger to these feelings. She had lived with them her whole life worrying about her father in his line of work. And now she was going to repeat the whole damn pattern again, with Peter and his alternate lifestyle.

Her father had died a hero to the people of New York, and that's what the people would remember him as. To her, he had always been a hero, but he had been her father. He had become a name on the wind in the city after his death. Papers wrote articles. People talked. Did you hear what happened to Stacy? Stacy saved the City, Captain Stacy VS Godzilla. But they didn't know who he truly had been. A family man, through and through. He would wait up for her to return home from study dates, he had tucked her in at night when she was a child. He had bought her ice cream when she fell off her bike. And all she had left of him now where the memories, and she didn't want that for Peter. She didn't want him to become another faceless name they would pass around on the subway. She wanted a real, flesh and blood boyfriend, who wouldn't jump out windows during arguments, fight dead beats in the subway station.

She wanted someone to come home to, some normalcy. Peter was indeed a hero, and maybe that's all he should be to her.

Her heart had other ideas, however. When she thought about Peter, not Spider-man, she found the dorkiest grin on her face. He made her laugh. He gave her pleasure. She could confide in him. And he kissed like fuckin Elvis. Whoo daisy.

She wondered when he'd return, if he even would by nightfall. She hoped he was okay. She showered and dressed, her eyes glancing back to her window every now and then, looking for any glimpse of red and blue. She was passing by her bedroom on the way to OsCorp to finish up a few things before he internship officially ended when she saw him. He was panting, slumped against her wall and clutching his side.

"Peter!" She cried, dashing over to him and helping him onto her bed.

"It was horrible, Gwen, I..." He hissed as she gently pried his fingers away from his side to get a good look at his wound.

She frowned when she saw there was a mound of webbing and dried blood underneath of it. "Peter, how do I get that off?"

"I'll do it." He sucked in a deep breath, and quick as a flash removed most of it. As soon as the webbing came off, a trickle of blood leaked out of him.

Gwen examined the area. On his side, just by his ridbcage where two small diagonal marks. It looked almost like he had been branded. Gwen bit her bottom lip. She had seen something like this before at OsCorp. A new kind of gun that shot cartridges that released toxins into the bloodstream. No bullets. No mess. Just an untraceable poison that would kill you within an hour. It was a new kind of war brewing at OsCorp, at least that's what they had told her. But it couldn't be... how would they get out on the street?

Still, she couldn't take any chances. "Peter, when were you shot?" His answer would mean life or death. Maybe she'd have time to remove the cartridges before they dissolved. That was the best case scenario.

He squeezed his eyes tight against the pain.

"About fifteen minutes ago. Maybe twenty."

Gwen shot up and over to her purse, and fished around in it, cursing loudly. A cry of triumph, and she rushed over to him with a pair of tweezers, a mirror, and a flashlight. "I need you to do exactly as I say. Okay?"

"Okay."

"It's going to be alright, Peter." She said, taking a deep breath. She handed him the flashlight and turned it on. "Keep that there." She grabbed the tweezers, and began to poke around the edges of his ruptured skin. He groaned. She swallowed the lump in her throat and thought back to the beginning of her internship at OsCorp, when she worked in the biology department. She began cleaning cages and then graduated to dissecting poor dead mice that succumbed to OsCorp's dreams of a bigger and better things. It would be like that. Except that Peter wasn't a lab rat, and wasn't dead.

"Sorry." She whispered, poking again. His cry was louder this time, and she had to concentrate on keeping her hands steady and not that face that she was hurting him. Swollen, inflamed skin greeted her fingertips. The sooner she could pull out these damned things, the better. She went almost all the way around it before she felt the edge of the first cartridge. Thank God! The cartridge was still in tact and had not dissolved yet. She doused her tweezers in alcohol and turned to him. He watched her with a mixture of pity and pain. "Here we go." She said, keeping her hand steady, and reached into his skin.

….

Half an hour later, two bloody cartridges, roughly the size of sim cards sat on a bloody paper towel as Gwen stitched Peter's wounds. Maybe she should become a medical doctor, and give up science. She teetered on that thought, until she saw Peter's face, still clenched in pain.

Nope.

No way. She wouldn't be able to do this on a daily basis. She'd stick to the dissection. "Alright," She said with a final snip. "All done."

He relaxed his jaw, and sat back in her bed. He let out a small sigh as his back hit the headboard.

"How do you feel?"

He shook his head, adverting her gaze, his eyes trained on the cartridges. "What the hell are they?"

"They're from OsCorp, I'm pretty sure of that." She said. "They carry poison and dissolve in the blood stream. I'm assuming your abilities slowed that down."

"How did they get outside of OsCorp?" He asked.

She shrugged, "Your guess is as good as mine."

He sat up, wincing slightly. Gwen rushed over to his side and grabbed his hand. "Easy, okay? New York will be okay without you for one night."

He hung his head. "I'm not so sure about that."

"Well, it'll have to be."

He lowered his face into his hands, the expression of terror on that young girl's face filling his vision. "You weren't there, Gwen. You didn't see what I saw."

She frowned, knelt down to him, and like he did the night before for her, she pried his fingers from his skull, and cupped his face in her hands. "You know you can talk to me. What happened out there?"

He paused a moment, letting the reality of having a confident fill his soul. Gwen was the type of girl you could give government secrets to. Someone who wouldn't betray your trust, even though you had hurt her beyond repair. He didn't deserve her, but he was glad she was there. "I knew... I knew something was going down. I got there as fast as I could. There was a girl on the ground, about to be raped by these thugs..."

Gwen drew in a sharp breath, finding his eyes, and squeezing his hand.

"I took them out, got shot protecting her. I left her with Felicia and came here." He paused, "Her face, Gwen. She was depending on me. It's not something I'll ever forget."

Peter wrapped her arms around his neck, pulling his head to her chest and playing with the hair at the base of his neck. She held him like that for awhile, the burning question at the back of her mind. Who the hell was Felicia? "I'm sorry," She said instead. "It must have been horrible for you. Who is this Felicia?"

Peter gulped. He didn't know what exactly to say here. He finally decided on the truth, and let the cards fall where they may. The least Gwen deserved from him was his honesty. "I don't know, really. I locked her up a few times. She's been trying to help me. She calls herself the Black Cat."

"She's trying to help you... and you sent her to jail a few times?" Gwen asked, her eyebrows raising so high they almost disappeared into her bangs.

"It's complicated."

"I'll say."

"This is what I have to do, Gwen." He said after awhile. "And I don't know where that puts us. I wish I had all of the answers, but I don't." He stared deep into her eyes, "You matter to me most."

"I know I can't have you." She whispered. "And I know you made your promise, and I hate it. I hate this life you lead, and I worry for you. I'm so scared that one day you won't answer my phone call and..."

"Gwen," He whispered, pulling her close to him again. "Hey, shh, don't worry about me, okay? I'm smarter than the boneheads in this city. Quicker. Tougher."

"And what if there's another Lizard?"

"Then I'll strategize."

"Peter..."

"Look, I can't just not do this. If I can help people, I'm going to do it. They need me."

"I know. " She said, and snuggled into his chest.

"Even if it gives up my happiness."

"You have nothing to prove, Peter. You don't owe anyone anything..."

He sighed. Yes he did. He did owe someone. Someone he'd never get the chance to see smile again, all because of his inaction. "Did I ever tell you about the night my uncle died?"

"No," She whispered.

"It was so stupid. I looked right into the eyes of that man. He ran right by me. He stole from this convenience store. The clerk chased him. I was mad because he had given me a hard time. I let the killer go. I could have stopped him so easily... the next thing I know, there's a gunshot, and my uncle is on the ground, his blood soaking into the pavement..."

Gwen put both hands to her mouth. He never talked about his uncle after he died. It was a topic that was off limits. It was an unwritten rule. And here he was, spilling his soul to her. "Oh my God, my Peter."

Peter let that sound of that linger in his ears. Her Peter. Damn that sounded good. "I want to be the man he saw in me. I owe him that."

Gwen pulled him close to her. "You are," She whispered as he wrapped his arms around her as best he could from the pain. Forget their relationship for tonight. They could just be two lost souls that found one another. Just for tonight.

….

If Peter had known that just hours before, he would have come in close contact with Uncle Ben's killer, he may have acted a little differently. The man with the star tattoo stood in the same alley he had encountered Spiderman that day. He was waiting for his employer to show up, and he was nursing his pounding head over a bottle of Jack Daniels. Bright lights washed over him and he shielded his eyes as a dark limo rolled toward him. The back window came down half way, and a voice spoke in the darkness. "Did you get him?"

The man decided to chose his words carefully. He pondered this a moment, brought his left hand up to scratch the stubble of his beard. The star tattoo on his arm glowed in the moonlight. He knew his employer was a powerful man, and he studied him in the darkness. It was supposed to have been so easy. He, along with his crew had been given a girl to have some fun with. She was the bait. As soon as the bug showed up, all he had to do was shoot him with the gun provided. Done deal, and he'd be paid handsomely. He had done his job. "Yeah, I got him."

"No complications?"

"There was a woman with him, but she was no trouble."

"Did Spiderman notice your tattoo?"

"No. Kept it covered, just like you said."

"Good."

A paper bag came out of the window of the car and hit the man with the star in the gut. He greedily ripped the bag open. The smell was intoxicating. This was the finest cocaine known to man. "Thank you," He said.

The window rolled up, and the car backed down the alley. The man with the star tattoo was too preoccupied with his payment to notice that the car had stopped at the end of the alley. And two large men had come out of the car and began walking toward him.