Lying Heart
What happens next is maddening. His father and Gwen exchange some sort of look, as if there is some unspoken understanding between them, and as Peter watches incredulously Gwen nods and his father leaves the room.
When he turns to look at her, her face is ashen, but eerily calm. He takes a breath and feels his face relax out of its scowl. They're alone now. But he can't shake this surreal feeling that he has just imagined everything, that the smoke inhalation has caused him to lose his mind, because that is a lot more plausible than the evidence that is otherwise indicating that his entire life has been a lie.
He shuts his eyes and tries to breathe evenly.
"Peter."
He shakes his head. Just by the tone of her voice he can tell she is about to try to make him see reason, try to see his father's side of the story, but Peter isn't ready for that yet.
"Hey," she says, grabbing his hand and squeezing it.
He can't open his eyes. He doesn't want her to look at him, not after she has seen him this way, unrepentant and angry. He's afraid it isn't over. He's afraid he might just yell at her, too. But when the squeeze of her hand against his doesn't let up, he knows there's no point in trying to hide from her any longer.
Her expression is soft and understanding and everything he isn't. He stiffens uncomfortably under her gaze—he doesn't deserve this from her, doesn't want to accept this from her, doesn't want to believe that someone is capable of caring for him at his most despicable. His own father wouldn't stick around after his outburst, so why is it that Gwen Stacy seems capable of a forgiveness that seems to have no limits?
"He left again," Peter says.
Gwen stares at the door and says, "I don't think he went too far."
"He better not come back."
"You don't mean that," says Gwen, and Peter is about to cut her off and say that he does mean it, that just the sight of that man makes his blood boil with years of suppressed feelings of abandonment and confusion and grief, but he thinks better of it—these are things that Gwen will justifiably never agree with, as she will, without a doubt, never see her father again.
It's a bizarre thing to feel guilty for. He has always felt responsible for Captain Stacy's death, responsible enough for it that he has, to the best of his ability, kept his unbearable promise to the man, but now that Peter's own father has risen from the dead, Peter feels even worse than before. It feels as if he and Gwen have traded places, as if he stole a father from her.
He doesn't want this. He doesn't want to see his father, not like this, not now that he knows what the man is truly capable of and how heartlessly he ignored Peter for all this time.
"I have to call Aunt May," he says.
Gwen nods, producing her cell phone from her purse. "I called her a few hours ago," she admits, "but she'll probably want to hear from you."
Peter gawks at her, not sure whether to be embarrassed or impressed. As the two compete for his attention, he asks, "How did you—? I didn't know you had a number to reach her on."
"She gave it to me that day I came down to Queens looking for you. When you were, well."
"Locked up and drugged in a basement for four days," Peter supplies. "By a guy who altered my DNA before I started first grade."
"That," Gwen confirms. She shifts in her seat, leaning in closer to him. At first Peter can't help but tense, but her intentions are clearly anything but romantic. "I'm not saying your father was right about—well, about anything that has happened in the last few—"
"I don't want to talk about this," Peter says.
"You can't ignore it," says Gwen firmly. "I know you're angry, Peter, of course you're angry, who wouldn't be? But maybe—maybe you need to just take some time, and then talk to him, let him explain."
"What else is left to explain?" Peter says, staring up at the ceiling and trying his hardest not to let his face contort with anger again.
He doesn't like this feeling, sitting here in this chair in the same basement, a different kind of trapped but trapped nonetheless. He doesn't want Gwen to be his voice of reason—Gwen is the temptation, the warning sign, the line he isn't supposed to cross, and all the previous voices of reason have told him to stay away from her. It feels like there is no order left in his universe. More than anything he wants to leave here, wants to sulk in his room and just be alone, but he is in no condition to be strolling out into the streets of New York just now.
"Give him a chance," says Gwen.
Peter doesn't answer her.
"I'm not saying it has to be today, but Peter, this is … if you don't talk to him, you're going to regret it."
The words linger in the air for a moment. Peter understands her point, can even acknowledge that she's probably right, but the hurt is so fresh and raw that he can't just give in to the idea. There is a part of him that is certain the instant he shows any sign of vulnerability, the instant he tries to make any progress toward forgiveness, his father will just leave again. He did it easily once—did it time and time again, it seems, because eleven years is a conscious, controlled kind of abandonment. And even once he came back into Peter's life it seemed that his actual interest in Peter and his life was limited at best, so limited that he didn't even bother to tell Peter he was his son.
Maybe he is ashamed of Peter. Maybe he doesn't want a son so reckless, so stupid.
No. Peter grits his teeth angrily. He's not going to fret over that man's approval, not for one more second of his life.
Instead he turns to Gwen. "Thank you," he says. "For … I mean, back there, everything you did, it couldn't have been easy."
Her smile looks exhausted, but somewhat proud. "Call your aunt," she reminds him.
He nods and starts dialing. The conversation is brief—Peter is grateful to Gwen beyond words that Aunt May doesn't seem as high-strung and panicked as she usually does, so whatever Gwen said to her must have settled her down in a way Peter never could himself. He tells her he doesn't know when he'll be home, but that he's alright, that he's with Gwen. Aunt May makes a choice comment that he blushes at but otherwise ignores. He figures she isn't aware of the full extent of his injuries or she wouldn't be making jokes, another troublesome conversation he is happy to avoid.
"I don't know what you said to her," he says to Gwen after he hangs up, "but thanks."
She sighs. "I'd say anytime, but I'd like to hope I won't have to make a call like that again."
Peter hopes so, too. Not because he isn't going to be injured again anytime soon, but because he doesn't want Gwen to be anywhere near him when he does.
"What were you even doing there?" asks Peter. "The fire—it was at least twenty blocks away, you must have been running—"
"I was," she admits.
"That's—that's so stupid," Peter splutters. "You shouldn't have been there, that's—that's the whole point of us being like this, the whole point of us staying away from each other, is to keep you out of all this insanity, and then you go running straight for it—"
"Peter, it was just an apartment fire," Gwen cuts him off. "I had your camera and thought I might get a few shots. It was perfectly safe—"
"Until it isn't," Peter insists. "It's always perfectly safe until it isn't."
"It was perfectly safe," Gwen asserts, "and besides, even if it wasn't, I'm free to do whatever I want, regardless of some ridiculous promise you made my father."
"Ridiculous?" Peter exclaims, his voice raised to a level he has never used with her before. Her eyes widen and he instantly feels ashamed of himself. He was going to say something else, he wasn't finished, not by a long shot, but there is no point in having this conversation now. He is weak, he is irritable, he is only going to say something he regrets later.
"I'm sorry," he mumbles. "You're right. I can't tell you what to do."
Gwen accepts his apology and says, "What happened up there, anyway?"
For the first time since he regained consciousness, Peter remembers in full force what he saw up in that apartment. His heart nearly flies into his throat. "Shit."
"What?" Gwen asks, alarmed.
"I—I forgot, I—I saw—shit." Peter thinks for a moment. There is a strong possibility he imagined it, but he is sure that he wasn't in the building long enough at that point to be seeing such an elaborate delusion. He turns to Gwen and the words spill out of him near incoherently.
"The robot—the arm, I saw it, I saw one of the arms, it was probably the second robot, its arm—"
"What are you talking about? Where did you see one of the robot's arms?" Gwen asks slowly, trying to get him to focus.
"In the apartment!" Peter bursts. "In the apartment, before that piece of the ceiling came down, I swear to God, Gwen, I swear to God—"
"Okay," says Gwen, "okay, I believe you, but you're sure it was the arm of one of the robots you encountered?"
He nods grimly. His head feels so heavy, and he feels the exhaustion of the vigorous healing process creeping into his bones, but he has to fight it. He has, however unintentionally, stumbled onto something huge, the first breakthrough in this mystery creator of the robots since they first started tearing apart the streets of the city.
"It explains the explosions. It wasn't an ordinary fire, there were blasts that almost seemed timed, as if somebody had planned it that way," says Peter, and the more he talks, the stupider he feels. "Whoever is making them—he said—my father, he said that their attention has shifted. That they know about the formula, that they know it's a part of me."
He looks up at Gwen, whose eyebrows are furrowed intently, trying to keep up with him.
"It was a trap," says Peter, "don't you see?" He pauses, considering it further. "They weren't going to let me die. Whoever it was. They were going to come find me, I'm sure of it."
"Peter," says Gwen warily.
"You have to go get him," Peter says, motioning toward the door where his father exited. "He said—he said they didn't know he was back, but now whoever it was—they'll know he isn't dead. They're going to come after him, too. The formula—"
Peter stops short. The formula. He isn't the only one with these alterations embedded into his genetic code, this he finally understands. His father could never have smashed through a window on the twentieth floor of a building, lifted a burning chunk of wood off of him and swung them down on a biocable. It simply isn't possible.
Unless his father altered his own DNA all those years ago.
"The formula," Peter says, almost mumbling to himself. "They don't need it if they can get a hold of either one of us."
He's not making much sense, he knows because of the concerned way Gwen is staring, as if she is trying very hard not to question him.
"You have to go get him, please," Peter says again, so she'll know he means it.
She gets up and heads toward the door. Peter waits, sitting in the dimly lit room alone, listening to his heart throb. Thirty seconds pass and by then Peter knows his father is long gone; he isn't even surprised when Gwen walks in pursing her lips another minute later.
"He's gone, isn't he?"
Gwen nods.
"Oh." It seems disproportionately silly to be disappointed after everything else his father has put him through, but he is.
"I'm sure he just—"
The backs of Peter's eyes are burning. "No, no. I told him to leave." It is childish of him to believe that his father would stay anyway, but Peter has come to expect that kind of faith from the people he cares about. Even at his worst, Gwen and Aunt May have never left his side. Even Uncle Ben, in a way, never truly left Peter, because his voice seems to resonate in Peter's consciousness everywhere he goes.
Peter has been well-loved in his life, with or without this man who was never there when Peter needed him most. He will not let this upset him.
He doesn't realize his eyes are shutting until Gwen says, "I'll tell him when he comes back," and Peter jerks out of his semi-consciousness.
"He won't. Come back, I mean," says Peter wearily.
"He's your father, Peter," Gwen says, and even though he is trying very hard to focus on what she is saying, he feels her voice getting further away. "He'll be back."
She's still holding his hand as he nods off, and even though he wants to tell her that she is wrong, that this man left him easily once and can easily do it again, he finds it hard to be complaining about anyone leaving him when she is right here and she is all he has ever really needed.
Thanks for all the reviews, guys, I'm glad the last chapter was a success! Now if you'll excuse me, I have to get back to breaking all my fingers attempting to make bar chords on the guitar. Anybody out there who plays guitar have bar chord advice for someone with the most pathetic left pointer finger in the universe? It's like. Spiderman can crawl up a building, and I can't press my finger down hard enough to make music with it. I'm starting to feel incompetent.
THE GOOD NEWS is, I made it into round one of the Texaco Country Showdown ... which should be interesting. I can't really play guitar, it's just, people at my gigs are either trying really hard to ignore me (coffeehouses) or they're suuuuper drunk and think anyone is the shit (bars!).
Dignity. I've got lots of it.