She had always been intelligent. One of her earliest memories was of sitting on her dad's knee, correcting him as he recited a nursery rhyme. He'd cuddled her close and called her his smart girl, and the desire for that approval had carried her through life. Intelligence was, at times, a double-edged sword. She couldn't return to her small apartment and pretend that she didn't understand what had occurred the previous evening. Even if she'd wanted to, it wasn't in her to do it. She'd spent years trying to forget things, but nothing was ever really forgotten.
She tried to sleep, but after an hour of tossing and turning, she found her on the living room floor, papers strewn around her and names written on each in sharp, efficient black. It was the scientist in her, she'd always thought, that made her prefer mad scribbling to electronics.
The names on the paper were written in black, with corresponding names written in red.
Persephone - Gwen Hades - Harry Eurydice - Mary Jane Orpheus - Peter Demeter - Mom Zeus - Dad Charon - Flash?
During college, she'd gotten in the habits of writing out pros and cons, theories and countertheories, thesis and antithesis. Writing out these names didn't help, and she didn't need to add her own to know how she fit into the equation. Anger wasn't something she normally equated with herself, but she knew this had been a long time simmering. Since her dad had died, and since her mom had lost herself in a bottle, and since Peter and Harry and Mary Jane. And she was too intelligent to ignore the mythological implication of Spring. But her Spring was somewhere in California, and she didn't even know what gender it was. And like the Spring in the myth, she'd left it behind forever.
She considered, for the briefest moment, that the pirate could actually be Harry, but she discounted the theory quickly. If the evening was, as the journals indicated, about secrets then Harry Osborn's would have nothing to do with sailing the seas. She knew her childhood best friend well enough to know that. Just like she knew that the entire modernization of the myth was erroneous. Harry had never loved her in the way Hades had loved Persephone. His confession from their dinner still resounded in her mind, but she knew better than to attribute that kind of adoration to him.
Leaving the papers behind, she stood, and walked over to the window, where the sky was as bright as it ever got in New York. She wasn't one for resolutions, but she was tired of living her life wrapped up in envy. She wasn't ever going to trust Mary Jane. That was just a fact now, but she didn't need to give her such monumental importance in her life. She had this new symbiote to focus on, and Loki to take care of. She had a career that she loved. In defiance of all odds, she was alive.
That was enough, wasn't it? That was plenty.
She glanced over her shoulder at the papers, and then she walked over them to grab her keys. She'd go visit her dad. He always knew what to say, even if he didn't say anything at all.