who's responsible?

Kate laughed – at the absurdity of it all. Here they were, trapped in an alternate dimension, demons attacking the streets, heroes being tapped to gather up whatever resources they could find, and yet her biggest complaint at the moment was a fleeting headache. It felt good, because it felt normal. “Super rich. Richer than the guy who made ice cream probably,” she quipped. “Course, a friend and I have this theory that having too much money means giving up your soul, so maybe that’s why no one’s tried it,” she mused, giggling a little. 

Laughing. It felt good to laugh, and Kate was trying to do it as often as possible. Like she was spitting in the face of this whole futzing dimension, proving it wouldn’t break her down. (She hoped – it wasn’t like she was made of steel. Time had proven that much.) “You think?” she asked, and a part of her believed Gwen. Or maybe just wanted to believe her, which amounted to almost the same thing. “Ooh, are you talking about lil’ ol’ me?” Kate teased, laughing again when Gwen nudged her shoulder. “If so, you’re two-hundred percent correct – course, that’s mostly because I have some of the coolest friends ever,” she said, lobbing the compliments right back along with her own shoulder nudge. 

It wasn’t a lie, what she told Gwen. She had her bow, she had her team, she had her dog, and she had Clint. What more did a girl need? Maybe these new resources would mean they’d have coffee a little while longer, too. “I know,” she said, smiling gently. “I’ve got a lot of people I can talk to, and a lot of really awesome friends. I’ve mentioned that right? Just like I’ve mentioned you’re one of them?” She beamed at Gwen, finishing the last of her ice cream cone and swiping at her lips with a napkin. “You know that goes both ways, right? Just for the record,” she said casually. She shook her head. “That is un-futzing-believable. Just burn it. Ooh, maybe demon blood will make the flames look super cool, you should ask Johnny to help,” she said, giggling a little. She paused a second, then glanced up to meet Gwen’s gaze. “You know,” she started. “There’s always room on the team for a few more totally awesome people. Maybe next time movie night gets crashed, you can call on a few teammates to help save your t-shirts from slimezillas.” 

It was nice, being able to take some time to relax in the chaos of it all. New York was in shambles once again, the world was uncertain and scary, but right now, Gwen didn’t mind it much. She got to spend some time with Kate, got to hang out with her and discuss random topics that meant nothing at the end of the day, and that was a relief. “That’s probably a good theory. Some people do some suuuper fucked up shit for money.” She’d seen too much of that back in her world, seen awful people do awful things in the name of making a couple extra bucks.

Nodding, Gwen hoped she looked more certain than she felt. In the beginning of her superhero stint, she’d been an optimist. She’d figured she could fight crime and have fun doing it, thought no one could possibly get hurt for real. Then, of course, came Peter. She fought him with everything she had, anger burning through every inch of her body, and it was only when he’d died in her arms that she realized what she’d done. The world was a dark, awful place, and while 616 seemed a lot lighter than her own dimension, they weren’t there anymore. They were somewhere else, somewhere awful, and there was no real guarantee that they’d ever get back. Still, for Kate, Gwen could hold on to some of that optimism. She could pretend she truly believed they’d get home eventually. She could do that. “You know I am,” she replied with a laugh. “You know, you do have some pretty cool friends,” she agreed with a grin.

Peter was no stranger to team-ups. He loved fighting alongside other heroes. But he and Gwen had a sort of… unspoken agreement to avoid it unless absolutely necessary. Not because of a lack of trust or anything like that – they just both knew what it was like to watch the other die. 

That was almost as strange a thought as fighting an invisible demon. They didn’t talk about it, not in specifics, not with details, but they didn’t need to. It took a long time for the guilt to fade away from her gaze when she met his eye, for the shame to stop welling up in his chest when he heard her voice from the other room. Eventually, they had stopped being just painful reminders of the past for each other, become friends – but every now and then, it still hit him. He figured it was the same for her. 

In spite of it, they worked well together. Moved fluidly around each other, had a sense of each other’s rhythm because of how similar their powers were. Plus, they both liked to talk during fights, a definite plus. “Hey, at least I didn’t say ‘it can’t get any worse!’” he yelled back. He was laughing with her, and the demon let out this strange huff – like it was confused as to why they weren’t scared. 

They probably should’ve been scared. But Invisi-demon clearly hadn’t counted on a team-up like this. Gwen kept the creature distracted until Peter’s taser webs were at full capacity – a spray of sparking web fluid, enveloped the demon, finally giving it some kind of shape. He could even see what was the head as the thing twitched on the ground. Peter and Gwen were both on the ceiling, staring down at the mess below, and he took a moment to catch his breath. And marvel at the fact that they were both pretty much unharmed. “Seems that way,” he said, looking back down. “Uh… no idea what we’re going to do with it, because I’m pretty sure the garbage guys won’t pick it up off the curb though.” He didn’t move a muscle, just in case the beastie wasn’t quite finished. “Are you all right?” he asked, glancing at Gwen. 

She and Peter had never told one another the awful details of what it felt like to lose one another, and they’d never had to. Gwen knew how Peter must have felt watching his Gwen Stacy die because she knew what she’d felt like watching her Peter Parker die. It was an awful, indescribable sort of pain, something that she hoped would never be replicated. 

Moments like this, she feared it might be. Every time Peter leaped, her heart jumped up with him for just a second. Every time he fell, her gut seemed to hang suspended from wherever he’d fallen from like she was on a roller coaster that had just dropped. Losing her Peter was something she’d feel for the rest of her life. She’d always hate herself a little for her part in his death, always wonder if she could have done more, if it was her fault. The real challenge was learning to grow passed it, learning how to navigate life after the fact. She couldn’t save her Peter, and he couldn’t save his Gwen, but they had a chance to save each other. That wasn’t nothing.

And, hey, they made a good team. Their powers were almost identical, and their humor had always been similar. They jumped around the room pretty well in sync, trading quips and taking turns shooting webs. “That’s true! If you said that, I think I’d be out the window. I’d just go for a swing around the city or something, you know. Leave you to deal with the fallout.” They both knew that wasn’t true. Gwen would stick by Peter’s side for as long as he’d let her.

In a lot of ways, MJ was relieved that she had listed and registered when she did. If not for that, there was no denying that the public would be hounding her the same way it was Gwen. People expected to feel safe, they expected their heroes to rally around the causes that comforted them. It wasn’t a fair expectation, the heroes were people as well, deserving of freedom, but unfortunately, the message wasn’t being spread that way. Maybe it was selfish that MJ was glad she wasn’t being forced to deal with any of the associated drama, she got to enjoy the perks of being a hero without the disappointment and public rage due to her discussion with Tony, but she had worked hard to gain public favour. Losing it now would be difficult.

“You think that was a New York party?” MJ asked, laughing quietly. “I haven’t been to many that are that dramatic, maybe I need to go out more.” She paused before adding, “No, that big ones always end that way.” New Years Eve had definitely been the worst of them. “I think it would do a lot,” she disagreed. “The people want to feel comforted by their favourite heroes. If you list, it has the same affect. If anything, it shows that you’re willing to work with the public.” If New Yorkers waned heroes at all, they needed to be willing to forgive them for their mistakes. “Just because it wouldn’t be new doesn’t mean you should have to deal with it,” MJ pointed out. “Ice cream is always the bets solution.” She followed Gwen over to the couch and took a spoonful of ice cream before passing the carton over. “Okay,” she agreed with a nod. “What was Doom thinking? What does any of this get him?” Motivation was always a good place to start.

If you asked her father, Gwen was someone who had always struggled when it came to doing what was best for her. She didn’t intend to make things more difficult for herself, but she always wound up doing it anyways. Somehow, she managed to mess up just about everything. She’d told her father once that Spider-Woman was her way of making up for that, her way of fighting back against her past mistakes and becoming someone better, but it seemed like she was messing up that a little, too. Listing would have been easy, simple, harmless, but Gwen was still dragging her feet. She was still making things difficult for herself. It was a universal constant, apparently. 

“What, are you kidding? Huge crowd gathers around while the guy in charge fucks everyone over? It doesn’t get more New York than that!” It was something that absolutely would have happened back on Earth 65, and if she was being honest, that scared her a little. 616 had always been lighter than Earth 65, always friendlier and less intense. That seemed to be shifting lately, and Gwen didn’t like it. “Exactly! We gotta stop going to these big time parties, MJ. It only ever ends in drama.” Power swaps, Skrull attacks... New York had a record for weird parties. “Maybe,” Gwen allowed because, in a perfect world, MJ was right. Maybe she was stuck in her own universe, still thinking of people as unforgiving and cruel, still expecting the people of this world to demand she take responsibility for the actions she’d been a part of on her own. MJ knew this world better than Gwen did, and Gwen trusted her entirely. Shrugging, she settled back onto the couch and took the carton of ice cream as her friend passed it over. “I don’t know. Maybe he’s just --- Maybe he likes the chaos? There are people like that, aren’t there? Maybe he just likes seeing everyone running around like crazy.”

In her surprise, Steph almost dropped the baton. Not a demon spider. Thank flying fuck. “Spider…Woman?” Steph guessed, sheepishly. She lowered the baton, and tapped it once on the ground. “Hey. Totally taking requests, if you, um—take one of mine?” She asked. “Maybe you could not tell anybody that Spoiler panicked at the drop of a hat?” Neither one of them could see the other’s face through the masks, but Steph grimaced nonetheless. “Spoiler’s street cred is kinda crappy at the moment, so…hey!” Steph brightened. “Speaking of, wanna team up? It’s demon central in this part of town.”

Maybe it was egotistical, but Gwen was always a little surprised when a stranger didn’t recognize her on sight. Back in her universe, she’d been widely hailed as ‘the worst,’ which usually translated to people knowing and disliking her immediately. This world was different, and this encounter only proved that. “Yes?” She blinked owlishly behind her mask, glad that her confusion wasn’t visible. “Sure, okay. If you don’t hit me with your baton, I won’t tell anybody I spooked you.” She snorted, shrugging a shoulder. “Spider-Woman’s ain’t so great, either.” At the question, her brows shot up. “Really? What are we teaming up to do?”

@spidcrgwens

As far as someone to share a name with, Gwen wasn’t half bad. She was a great superhero, in the industry (it really was becoming that with the influx of heroes) for all of the right reasons. Most importantly, Gwen Stacy never gave up. When things got difficult, she fought like hell, and when New York City literally turned against her, Gwen never once backed down. It was pretty remarkable, and in many ways, Jessica believed that Gwen deserved the title of Spider-Woman a lot more than she did.

As a result, Jessica decided to surprise Gwen with something nice. It was nothing overly exciting, unfortunately, but no one disliked pasta, especially not from the Italian place that Jessica frequented. “Got us takeout lasagna,” she announced as she let herself into Gwen’s apartment. Jessica handed her the box and a fork before flopping down onto the couch beside her. “So, what do you make of all this list stuff?” They hadn’t spoken about it, largely because the threat hadn’t been large enough for Jessica to worry about it until Doom turned the public against them. Clever move, but god, she hated the man. No one could convince her that it wasn’t a deliberate play for control. “You gonna do it now that we’re in so much trouble?”

When she’d first heard that there was a Spider-Woman in 616 too, Gwen had naturally expected an alternate version of herself. Maybe that was sort of an arrogant way of thinking, but it had made sense. It had been the wrong assumption, though. This world’s Gwen Stacy had been dead for years now, and this world’s Spider-Woman was far better than Gwen had ever been. Jessica Drew was, more than anyone, someone Gwen found herself wanting to live up to. If she could be half the hero Jess was, she’d be happy. She’d be proud. 

She was also, as it turned out, a pretty awesome friend. She proved as much when she let herself into Gwen’s apartment carrying a takeout bag that smelled, frankly, incredible. Gwen’s mouth watered the second Jess entered the apartment, and she let out a dramatic sigh. “You’re my hero,” she replied simply. “I’m taking the Smiths posters off my walls and replacing them with pictures of you. I’m gonna get a Spider-Woman bulletin board where I draw hearts around your pictures. I’m gonna write ‘Mrs. Gwen Drew’ in the back of all my notebooks.” A little dramatic, sure, but Gwen was totally starving. Spider powers took a lot out of a girl! “It fucking sucks,” she grumbled, scooting over to give Jessica room. “’Hey, guys! Sign my weird list! I promise nothing bad will ever happen! You can trust me even if I am the sketchiest guy on planet Earth!’ What a joke!” At the question, she shrugged. “I’m not sure,” she admitted. “MJ wants me to, and I’ve been thinking about it. I feel like listing now is doing it for all the wrong reasons, you know? How about you?”

Secret identities seemed, on the surface, to make things a whole lot easier. It meant that two lives, one that was perfectly normal and acceptable and one where the wildest of situations could develop in a split second, could be kept separate, meant that the person could have the best of both worlds and didn’t have to give up either of them for the other. Matt, though, knew that wasn’t the case in reality. The heroes that were out to the public were targets, yes, criminals knew exactly who they were and where they lived and weren’t afraid to use that to their advantage, but they didn’t have to hide. They didn’t need to lie to the people that they were closest to, didn’t need to juggle a thousand and one things on the side. They had people who cheered for them, people who cared about them as people and as heroes simultaneously, and no end to the amount of people around them who understood what they were going through and were willing to help.

Matt, though, was a lawyer. If he was revealed to be a vigilante, that wouldn’t be the case anymore, and all those people that he had helped before could be put in jeopardy. He couldn’t put that at risk any more than he could put his family at risk, and that meant being careful every single second of the day, ensuring that he didn’t reveal his identity through small details. He worked with some of the most intelligent, perceptive people in the city, and thus far none of them, besides Kirsten, had come up to him and asked what the hell was going on with him, whether he was sick, whether he was certifiably insane. He counted that as a win, let out a breath of relief every day when he got home and closed the door behind him.

Now, though, that seemed to be hanging in the balance. Nothing remained steady for long, nothing was able to be relied on entirely, even his secret identity. If a stranger knew it, what was to stop her from going out and revealing it to the world? “Other people know? I thought you just said you were the only one!” Then, slowly, Matt realised why she was saying that. “Do you – do you think I’m going to hurt you?” It wasn’t that far from the realms of possibility considering the vigilantes that were out there, but Matt had never subscribed to that. “I’m Daredevil, I don’t do that. I - I just want to know who told you.” So he could go break their legs. Totally normal, healthy response!

The Murdock of Gwen’s universe was terrifying in that he was a calm, calculated man. Gwen didn’t think she ever remembered him so much as raising his voice. He had complete control of every situation, smiled with a cold certainty that said he knew exactly how any given confrontation was going to end. He’d seemed inhuman in a way, like he was missing the parts that typically made people feel grief or guilt or anything sympathetic at all. He’d gotten angry, sure, but it was a collected sort of anger, the sort of anger he’d act on in a very deliberate sort of way.

This Murdock seemed different. There was something in his expression at her words, something almost like fear. She’d never once seen that on the Murdock she’d known. He’d never been afraid of her, not even when Gwen was afraid of what she might do to him. Maybe this man was acting, maybe he lacked some of the control of his alternate counterpart, Gwen wasn’t sure. “Uh,” she replied eloquently, searching for a way to get herself out of the situation unharmed. “They totally know! I was lying before. Your jig is up, Muderdock!” She snorted at his stammering. It was an act, right? It had to be an act. “You couldn’t if you tried,” she told him, but her voice shook a little. Gwen liked to pretend she was fearless, but she’d always been anything but.

By the sounds of it, Wanda and Gwen had vastly different experiences as superheroes. She supposed that was only natural, Wanda had been an Avenger from the beginning while Gwen worked on the streets. That said, her stories were always entertaining. Wanda couldn’t imagine super villains monologuing seriously. “Does that really happen?” She asked, laughing quietly. “I would like to hear more details about these super villains you meet. Do you think they would like to meet me?” She would absolutely love to witness it! Although adding Scarlet Witch to the mix may change their carefree demeanour. “Yes, the yellow brick road!” She agreed with a smile. Daisy had been very adamant that she watch Wizard of Oz and in order to make Daisy happy, Wanda had complied the second they were both free. “I would never leave Johnny,” she replied, a little surprised that someone could suggest it, even joking. Wanda was extremely protective over her loved ones and the idea would bother Johnny, he had a fear of abandonment. “You could forgive him for stealing your chips,” Wanda pointed out.

Gwen wasn’t sure if the villains of her Earth were different than the ones of 616 or if she just got stuck with the weirdos, but judging by Wanda’s reaction, intense monologuing was not a typical villain thing. Who knew? “Dude, they do it all the time,” she laughed, nodding her head. “I don’t think any villain in their right mind would want to meet you, but I can totally ask! You know, I used to have a guy who only robbed sandwich carts? I miss when things were that easy.” She’d do pretty much anything to go up against the Bodega Bandit instead of actual demons. It made things so much more complicated! Wanda’s smile brought an impossibly wide one to Gwen’s face, and she nodded her head. Watching Wizard of Oz had been worth it for Wanda’s ecstatic expression alone. “Yeah, I know,” she replied, mock wistfulness in her tone. Johnny, for all his faults, made Wanda happy. That meant Gwen had to like him a little. “Uh, I’ll carry that grudge until I die, thank you very much!”

@spidcrgwens

The outskirts weren’t Steph’s favorite place to go, nowadays. 

In Gotham, that’s were all the action went down. In the Tricorner, Two-Face had squirreled away a couple hideouts. Below Dixon Dock, Penguin’s personalized lair served as the source of his smuggling business. In the New York City that was yanked out off Earth, it was demons lurking at the edge of town instead of mobsters. There was no chance in hell for Steph to take on one of them alone and live to tell the tale, but this little errand was a shot in the dark. Turk Barrett supposedly knew everything. Steph figured Turk, of all people in the city, would have some dirt on Cluemaster.

Slipping from shadow to shadow, Steph hurried as near to the where Turk was rumored to live. Demons, Steph was expecting. Spiders on the other hand—

“Holy shit,” Steph breathed as she came upon the biggest spiderweb she’d ever seen. “Hello?” She called, brandishing her baton like a baseball bat. If she was dealing with demon spiders, she wanted to be ready. “You better be more scared of me than I am of you,” she threatened, lamely. “That’s what all the articles say!”

If she were smart, Gwen would have stayed far, far away from the outskirts of town where the demons ran rampant. She would have stuck to the area around Stark Tower where she could be home in an instant, would have kept to the parts of the city that were safe and protected. Unfortunately, a radioactive spider bite apparently came with the added bonus of a complete loss of sense, and Gwen found herself out on the outskirts anyways. 

A web trap was a pretty decent way to catch a lot of demons in a small amount of time, and she got to work pretty quickly in making one. She was expecting a few demons to fly by and get caught. What she wasn’t expecting was a stranger dressed all in purple holding a baton.

“Uh, don’t shoot?” She dropped down from the web curiously, hanging upside down on a web rope a few feet off the ground. “Are you gonna hit me with that? ‘Cause if you’re taking requests, I’d like to make one of you... well, not hitting me with that.”

@spidcrgwens​

Weirdly, MJ was insanely relieved that she had listed now that Doom had leaked their secrets. He had no information about who was behind the masks, MJ wasn’t remotely connected to Iron Spider, but she didn’t have to deal with the demands of the public. It seemed incredibly stressful to her, and immediately, she started worry about Gwen. The second she and Daisy left the party, most of the crowd calmed and sent home, she had rushed to their floor of Stark Towers and had burst through the door, short of period, only to find Gwen rifling through the fridge. Honestly, MJ expected to find her friend seriously upset, but Gwen was resilient, one of the toughest women she had ever met. MJ should have known better.

“Hey,” she greeted, offering her a half smile. “So… that was some party,” MJ said awkwardly. As she spoke, she wrapped an arm around Gwen in a half hug and leaned her head against her friends’ shoulder. “You may want to list now, y’know? Save from all of this drama, I don’t want you to be treated badly, Gwen. I love you, you know?” MJ’s explanation was nowhere near coherent, but she hoped that Gwen would understand her concern and thought process. “I really, really don’t want you to be publicly persecuted,” she finished, pulling away from their embrace. “But what I do want is ice-cream,” as she added that, MJ reached into the freezer and pulled out a tub of Ben & Jerry’s. After retrieving two spoons, she wordlessly handed one to Gwen.

The list leaking wasn’t exactly great. Following her discussion with MJ, Gwen had been considering listing Spider-Woman’s abilities with everyone else’s when the list suddenly became public domain, and she’d pretty much ditched the party as fast as she could. She knew what would happen next, of course. It would be the same thing that happened in her own universe. Spider-Woman would become a pariah, people would demand responsibility she wasn’t sure how to give them, and even if she did list her powers, it would  be viewed as an attempt to escape public scrutiny. It was a lot to grapple with, and a year ago, Gwen would have been panicking. Today, though, after everything she’d been through in the last year, she was able to shrug it off pretty easily and solve her problems with a snack.

Glancing up as the door opened, she flashed MJ a smile. “Hey,” she replied easily. “It was a very New York party. I guess we should pretty much just expect that kind of stuff now, huh?” She returned the hug easily, taking comfort in her friend’s affection. “I love you, too,” she replied. “I’m thinking about it. I’m not sure it’ll do much, listing now.” The damage was done, and anything she did to combat it at this point was just a feeble attempt to control the fallout. “It wouldn’t be a new thing for me, if I were,” she admitted. She didn’t talk much about the trials she’d faced in her home dimension, but MJ knew more than most. “Ice cream is probably the best solution.” She took the spoon gratefully, making her  way over to the couch to sit and patting the cushion next to her. “We can talk it out,” she offered. “Go over the craziness of that party.”

There was a reason that Matt kept his identity a secret. In a world where superheroes were becoming more and more common, teams were being formed left, right and centre in order to protect the public from the next big threat, and villains emerged on each street corner, revealing himself to be a vigilante didn’t seem like that big of a deal. Matt knew that wasn’t the case, though. Once that genie was out of the bottle there was no getting it back in, and he didn’t know what would happen in the world around them in the meantime. His family could be threatened even more than they were before - the memory of Claire being kidnapped by the Russians was still fresh and painful, even now - his law license could be suspended or even revoked, and his enemies would know exactly where to go at any time of the day in order to carry out their revenge.

If this girl, this stranger, this person that he had never heard before in his life and didn’t even know the name of, knew who he was, or had heard who he was, then what did that mean? Would the D.A soon call him into her office and ask what the fuck he was thinking when he put on the Daredevil mask, when he took his oath to serve under her, to uphold justice as best as he could? Vigilantes and lawyers were on opposite ends of the spectrum, they were different areas of society, and that meant that by the truth being revealed, everything could fall down around him on both sides.

Matt listened around them, even though his own heart was pounding hard in his ears. No one seemed to be paying attention to them besides a few cursory glances down the alleyway, which was a small mercy in and of itself. “No one else knows?” Matt asked, voice still low, even though he felt like screaming. Frank’s response to this would be simple, as would Elektra’s, but Matt didn’t even let himself consider it. “How can you? How do you know me? Who are you?” Maybe this was a misunderstanding, maybe he was reading things wrong, but she had said the Devil. Who else could she have been talking about?”

When it came to leaping before looking, Gwen was sort of a pro. She’d always been bad at considering the consequences of her actions, always been prone to overestimating her own abilities. Back in her universe, she’d taken on dirty cops without a second thought towards here own safety, had launched herself at supervillains with half-baked ideas still bouncing around in her head. More often than not, it ended poorly for her. It ended in her falling out of the sky towards the city below with nothing to hold on to, ended with an angry cop holding her up by the front of her costume in one hand and reaching for her mask with the other, ended with her on a rooftop mouthing off to a man who’d killed dozens of people. 

Tonight, in this alley with a man she honestly believed to be one of the most dangerous in any universe, she wasn’t sure how it would end. She thought she might be able to get away if she acted fast, thought she might be able to leap up high enough to grab a hold of the nearby fire escape and scamper off to safety, but she wasn’t entirely sure. More than that, she wasn’t sure she could get away without the man in front of her tracking her down later. The Matt Murdock of her universe had figured out her secret identity pretty easily, and he’d never been above using it against her. Gwen couldn’t let that happen here, and she knew it. Not only did she have her people to protect -- Peter, MJ, Harry, all of them -- but she also had the other Gwen’s loved ones to think of. Murdock could easily go after this universe’s version of her mother, act out against the siblings that only existed in 616. Gwen couldn’t let that happen, couldn’t let people who didn’t even know her die for her stupidity.

Norman Osborn had always said that it was beneficial to set upon any task with a list of goals, things that could be accomplished or gained from any given situation. And there is always something to be gained or accomplished, Harry, anyone who says differently is an idiot with an idle mind. Harry had approached the President’s party as an incredible opportunity to accomplish several things–first of all to be seen, stable and charming and every bit the old Harry Osborn, to add to his credibility as the CEO of his father’s company. His second goal was to make as many useful connections as he could while people were in good spirits, just drunk enough that everyone was everyone else’s friend, never enough that it could be called an exploration. He was clean now, he was doing most things over the table. Apart from the cards he kept close to his chest, of course. 

He’s shaken plenty of hands already and feels pretty confident of his success when he spies Gwen over by one of the tables of food, looking as beautiful as ever and genuinely smiling. She didn’t do enough of that as of late, none of them really did, but he didn’t care about everyone, he cared about Gwen. Unequivocally good hearted Gwen, who deserved it and probably the entire world. He was going to work on that, but for now he’s settled on taking the offered bit of sandwich on a toothpick and smiling warmly. “Wow, this is actually really good, and I don’t throw that around lightly. Is this going to be the next big food trend–resource cache to table? Are people going to swear off eating things that aren’t from the resource cache because it’s somehow unethical?” He laughs and shakes his head. “Resourceitarian? Resourcean? The name needs work clearly.” 

Things with Harry had been... complicated there for a while. Gwen felt guilty about how bad it had gotten, berated herself for not having seen the signs sooner, but in the end, what had happened had happened, and it wasn’t something any of them could change. All they could do was move on, learn from their mistakes, and be better than they had been. Harry, for his part, seemed to be doing much better. Gwen was proud of her friend’s efforts, unbelievably so. Seeing him around the party now, schmoozing and shaking hands with all sorts of powerful people, it was easy to pretend none of it had ever happened. She found her smile widening as he made his way over, found the weight that always seemed to be settled on her chest easing the way it only ever did when she was with one of the people who were most important to her.

She laughed as he took the sanadwich, nodding her head at his expression. “I told you it was!” She grinned, taking another one from the table and stuffing it into her own mouth. One wouldn’t think spider powers would make someone so hungry, but they really did! “Did you think I would lie to you? I never lie about sandwiches, Harry. Sandwiches are very serious business.” She laughed again as he continued speaking, feeling lighter than she had in a while. The party definitely had ulterior motives, but it also had food and drinks and her friends, and that made her willing to overlook the rest for the time being. “The name needs work, but you might be onto something with the concept. I bet some hipster overhears us and starts in on it tomorrow with a hashtag.”

In this second, Peter wished for something he never thought he would. He wished he had Daredevil’s powers again, because maybe they couldn’t see this thing, but with senses like that, he would’ve heard it, would’ve smelled it, would’ve been able to know exactly how big it was, and whether it had any friends on the way. “You’d think!” he shouted, grinning in spite of himself. He might not have had super-senses, but he had Gwen fighting by his side. What more could he ask for? 

Well, one less bump on his head would be nice, and an un-interrupted movie night, but that was beside the point. He smiled down at Gwen from the ceiling, to reassure her he was all right. “C’mon, is that all you got?” he yelled down to the beastie. “Because I gotta say, not impressed.” 

He watched Gwen’s movements, the way she clung to the creature. It took serious strength to pull that off, the thing had to be bucking like an angry bull, judging from how Gwen’s body jerked. It was nerve wracking to watch, always was when they were facing something like this. His Gwen and her Peter had died, it was hard to believe history wouldn’t repeat itself. But he had to trust in her abilities as much as his own. “We’ll buy the industrial sized bottle,” he promised her, lining up the shot based on Gwen’s positioning. “When I say so, let go!” he shouted, manually shifting his webs to fire a very specific kind of webbing. “Go!” he yelled, and then he fired the taser web, hoping to at least hit some part of the demon. 

Though she’d been living with him for nearly a year now, Gwen didn’t often fight side-by-side with Peter like this. It was hard on her -- and him, she’d wager -- to watch him get thrown around like this remembering the Peter she’d lost, hard to see him fly through the air without thinking back to the way she’d thrown him, the way she’d fought too hard, the way she hadn’t realized who she was fighting until it was too late. But tonight, they hadn’t been given much of a choice. They were here together, they were fighting, and if Gwen had anything to say about it, they were going to be winning. “If they did, they sure didn’t listen,” she huffed, smiling under her mask in spite of herself.

This Peter, she knew, was a lot stronger than the one she’d lost. Physically, it was made obvious due to his more muscular frame and the lack of glasses with lenses as thick as Coke bottles, but it went a lot deeper than that. This Peter didn’t feel so woefully inadequate that he’d turn himself into a monster just to be special, didn’t worship someone who didn’t deserve to be put on a pedestal in the slightest. He was different, stronger, and most importantly, he was alive. Gwen intended to do everything in her power to keep it that way. “Oh come on. Have you never seen, like, any movie? You don’t ask the demon if that’s all it’s got! That is the worst plan!” Despite her words, Gwen was laughing. Maybe she’d hit her head one too many times throughout the course of her career as Spider-Woman, but the situation was a little funny.

Gwen looked absolutely devastated to be seeing Cassie again and she felt her heart break at the sight. Gwen didn’t deserve to feel this confused and terrified merely at the sight of her, but Cassie hadn’t explained that she was back because of her father, and the idea of uttering those words made her throat feel tight. Taking a deep, calming breath, she imagined what Scott would be doing in this situation. He would most likely make a joke to diffuse the tension between the two of them, but if that didn’t work, her dad was a brave man. He would be honest — at least as much as he could be — and Cassie intended to do just that. It would be one of the hardest things she ever had to do, she’d cared deeply about Gwen and this finalized losing her due to her accident, but Cassie was a woman who had won faced the Power Broker! She could handle this, she had to.

“I’m here,” she said quietly. “Um, I’ll buy your coffee and then I’ll explain, okay?” Cassie offered quietly. After a second, she realized that wouldn’t exactly prove that Cassie was in fact herself. “We dated for a while, our favourite diner was the 1970s one in Brooklyn. Once we thought it’d be a great idea to wear roller skates there,” Cassie said quickly. For a moment, she wanted to break down in tears because absolutely everything in the world was hard, but she resisted the urge. “Yeah, you did,” she said quietly. Turning towards the barista, Cassie ordered two coffees, filled them with sugar — they needed it — and then lead Gwen into a corner of the cafe. “My dad brought me back,” she said quickly, her words quiet and filled with emotion. It was always best to rip off the bandaid.

Before she was a superhero, Gwen had dreamed of becoming a scientist. She loved the simple answers science provided, loved the way it made everything clear cut, black and white. In science, there were no half-answers, no partial truths. Things either worked or they didn’t. You either solved your problem or you went back to the drawing board with more information than you’d had before. Life, real life wasn’t like that. In real life, you couldn’t operate solely in absolutes. In real life, you realized the villain you were fighting was the man you loved just a second too late, you were separated from your home with no way back to it, you opened the door to find your girlfriend’s father in tears and knew what he was going to say before he opened his mouth. And then, sometimes, there were moments like this. Impossible moments that didn’t make any sense, where you didn’t know if you ought to celebrate or run. Gwen didn’t know how to deal with Cassie’s sudden return to life, didn’t know how to cope with seeing ghosts everywhere she went.

“Okay,” she echoed quietly, not trusting her voice to go any louder. She wasn’t sure what was scarier -- the thought that Cassie was real or the thought that she wasn’t. If she was real, did that mean Gwen had failed her? Did that mean she should have been fighting for her, should have been doing everything in her power to save her when she’d given up? If she wasn’t real, it probably just meant Gwen was crazy, which was a little easier to grapple with. Being crazy seemed less cruel than failing Cassie so completely. When Cassie spoke, saying things that only she could know, Gwen nodded. That ruled out the possibility of an impostor, at least, though not the possibility of Gwen imagining the whole thing. No one in the cafe was staring at her, which seemed like a decent sign that she wasn’t talking to herself. All evidence pointed, impossibly, to her dead ex-girlfriend standing in front of her. She followed Cassie to the corner in a daze, bracing herself as the other woman spoke. When the words were out, Gwen swallowed. “How?” Scott being behind it made sense, at least. Her father would have done the same for her, and she knew it.

“Well, clearly, they were an – ow,” she muttered, grabbing her forehead as brain-freeze. A small price to pay, honestly.“Genius,” she finished. “But my question is, how come it’s the twenty-first century and we don’t have an instant cure for brain-freeze? It makes ice cream like, way less fun. Not totally un-fun, but you know what I mean,” she said, waving a hand in the air. 

She was being a little ridiculous, she knew, even for her. But it’d been so long she was outside of a training room without a giant demon in her face, or that nagging urge to patrol the city, so she was going with it. “Tell me about it,” she said, glancing up at the sky. It would be just her luck for another demon attack to hit, wouldn’t it? Luckily, she brought her bow just in case, it was slung over her shoulder. “They’re amazing,” she said honestly, grinning at Gwen. “They might seem like total futzing idiots, because they kinda are, but they’re also the best people I know.” Was it wrong to try and sell her team a little, after what happened to MJ? She felt the little flash of guilt, and she swallowed it down with another lick of ice cream, brain-freeze be damned. 

How are you – it was a weird question. She bit her lip for a moment, then shrugged. “Avoiding that question, mostly,” she admitted, smiling gently. “But I’m all right, I swear. Are you okay? I know movie night is like, uber sacred, they really attacked during movie night?” 

It was clear what Kate was ow-ing about, and Gwen let out an unfortunate snort that lead to the ice cream in her mouth finding an exit through her nose. Talk about instant karma. “Clearly,” she agreed once she’d recovered from the ordeal. “That really is a good question. You’d think someone would’ve gotten on it by now. God, think of how rich they’d be!” Was she seriously considering throwing herself into an effort to reduce brain freeze? Maybe! Who could blame her? Being rich would solve a lot of her problems!

She hadn’t realized how much she missed this sort of thing until just now, hadn’t realized how desperately she’d needed time spent with her friend until she was here. “It’s gotta end sometime, right? Maybe we’re over the hill of it now.” There was a cautious sort of optimism in her tone, though Gwen wasn’t sure she believed it for a second. She had a feeling things would get worse before they got better. In New York, they usually did. “I believe it. I don’t know all of them, but the ones I do know are pretty great,” she smiled, nudging Kate’s shoulder with her own. Kate and MJ were two of the best people she knew, and while she still had a lot of confusion regarding Cassie, there was no confusion about what sort of person the other girl was.

Not every superhero, and not every person, had the incredible people in their lives that Wanda did. She was incredibly lucky and it was something that she never once forgot. “No, I think we’re used to be confused and hoping that we can find the threats, especially after the Skrulls,” Wanda said darkly. “Unfortunately, that’s not the case. At least we’re not distrustful of each other again,” she said with a sigh. At times the amount of dread and foreboding was exhausting, but that was when Wanda once again turned to the support network she’d been lucky enough to create. “Home before we know it,” she agreed with a smile. “Just um, do you know the Wizard of Oz saying? Click your heels?” Wanda asked, not knowing the exact wording. She had seen the movie only in fragments. “That’s great! I can’t relate at all,” she said with a laugh. Johnny wasn’t the cleanest person in the world, though he treasured his clothing. “You’re welcome,” she replied, grinning. Wanda was genuinely happy for Gwen and Stark Tower was an excellent, safe location, allowing her to worry about Gwen slightly less. “Just because Johnny is always talking about sex doesn’t mean I’m not! Besides, he does that to bother you.”

If nothing else, the superhero life boasted great company. Without Spider-Woman, Gwen wouldn’t have had most of the friends she had. She never would have met people like Wanda or Kate, and her bond with Peter, MJ, and  Harry would be vastly different than it was. She was incredibly grateful for that. “Not knowing who the bad guys are is pretty much the norm now, huh? I miss the days when the bad guys wore all black and monologued their whole plan halfway through the fight. Can we go back to that, do you think? I’d love to go back to that!” She never thought she’d miss Vulture so much! “Right, the yellow brick road,” she agreed with a grin. They hadn’t actually had Wizard of Oz in her universe, but it had been one of the first things she was introduced to here. Apparently, it was a staple. “You should move in with us. Just leave Storm to his own devices and snag the other spare bedroom!” It was clear from her tone that she was joking; she knew Wanda well enough to know she wouldn’t be moving out of the apartment she shared with Johnny any time soon. “He doesn’t exactly have to try to bother me!” Okay, maybe her cheeto-related grudge had gone on a little too long now, but Johnny’s habit of breaking in to her old apartment to sleep mostly-naked in her roommate’s bed was also irritating! 

Years ago, Gwen’s father told her that when leaders were scared, when they felt their power slipping, they went for a major distraction to draw the public’s eye away from what they were doing. This party felt like nothing if not that, and if he were here, her dad would have told Gwen not to go. Unfortunately, he wasn’t here. He was off in another dimension somewhere, and though Gwen was smart enough to recognize the distraction for what it was, she wasn’t smart enough to let it keep her from having a good time. She kind of needed a distraction.

The party was a really good distraction. The food they were serving was a lot better than what she usually ate at home, and the demons didn’t seem to be interested in messing with the crowd. For the first time in a while, Gwen found herself in decent spirits, and she grinned widely as she leaned against the snacks table. Seeing someone approach out of the corner of her eye, she turned towards them and felt her smile widen at the sight of Harry. “Pretty good party, huh? These sandwich things with the toothpicks are incredible. Here, try one!”

Why invisible? What kind of world evolved creatures like that? Was evolution even a thing here? Why them, why were they being attacked now? He had a lot of questions, but like Gwen, one was more important than the others. “How dare they? It’s just poor form,” he called back, grinning when he saw her grab her own shooters. Now it was starting to become a fair fight.

If only they could see. Apart from the indentations in the carpet, which vanished whenever the creature leapt up or flapped its wings, it was impossible to guess where the next blow was coming from. They needed answers, answers would give them some kind of advantage. He was tired of having this many questions in his head, a feeling he never thought he’d experience.

When he hit the wall, his skull bounced off it with a crack, and he didn’t have anymore questions for a few seconds. He blinked up at the hole in the drywall, and slowly his eyes focused again. When he looked back towards Gwen, he saw her floating in the air. “Oh my god,” he said, shaking off the pounding in his skull. He rolled towards his second webshooter and pulled the mask down over his face at the same time. “Lucky for you, Karen’s recording this whole thing!” he shouted back. “Can  you find it’s head?” he asked. “Does any of it feel –” His spider-sense flared up, and he backflipped up to the ceiling. He felt a rush of wind, maybe a tail swipe, blast past the place he’d been. “Different,” he finished, looking down at her. He had a perfect shot, if he only knew where to aim. 

Gwen knew that she and Peter were luckier than most when it came to the invisible demons. They had enhanced senses that could help them pick up on the demons’ comings and goings, had a spidey-sense that would warn them of danger long before the beasts took a swing. That didn’t mean they couldn’t be offended at the attack. “It’s like nobody ever taught them manners! Don’t you guys have, like, demon parents who teach you about this kind of thing?”

It was frustrating, swinging at something you couldn’t see. Gwen only knew she hit the things based on the feeling of her fist connecting, which wasn’t the best system around. She’d be more willing to work with what she had if she was the only one at risk, but after what had happened to the Peter of her universe, she was understandably protective of the one she had left.