Nepenthe: Something that can make you forget grief and suffering.
Peter doesn't want to admit it, but he's got tears in his eyes as he watches Gwen waving at him from the plane window, all smiles and joy and happiness. She is about to set off to Oxford, to the United Kingdom, to a place that Peter's never been and he's not sure if he's ever going to go.
Not for the first time, he wonders if it would kill him to just casually latch onto the plane and go along for the ride. He's been through worse, after all. But he's not too sure about the air pressure at 30,000 feet or thereabouts, and also isn't sure how Gwen might react when she disembarks and finds him, wind-swept and ragged, at the immigration counter, waiting for her. He can't imagine she'll take that very well.
He watches and tries very hard not to cry as her plane begins to back out of the terminal, begins to taxi and coast down the runway, and he's never been a religious person but he prays to whatever higher beings are out there to let her have a safe flight and to come back from the UK sans the London Look. When it comes to Gwen's appearance, Peter hasn't been too picky (she went through the goth phase, too, although that was a time they silently, mutually agreed not to speak of), but he thinks he would prefer it if she had all her teeth upon return.
Peter watches her plane take off, waits until it is just a sparkling dot in the far horizon, before stuffing his hands in his pockets and shuffling back into the airport, head hanging, dejected and lonely.
His fingers brush against a little papery object in his right pocket of his jeans, and he wraps his hand around it before pulling it out, wondering what it can possibly be.
A piece of paper, folded into what looks to be sixteenths, covered front and back with Gwen's long, elegant scrawl.
He smiles, carefully unfolds it, and begins to read.