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Gwen was (ex_first621) wrote in rooms,
@ 2015-09-27 20:29:00

Entry tags:

!marvel comics, *log, *voice, gwen stacy, harry osborn

Harry O
[Call to Harry O]

[Early morning, while still hiding in the Morgan Library & Museum, and still aged down (thanks, Gotham!). Flash isn't answering texts, and she can't get Peter to text or pick up, despite trying a bunch of times overnight. She doesn't actually know who is around and who isn't, so she tries Harry next. Ring.]

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	Phonecall: Harry/Gwen sybarite 2015-09-28 12:49 am UTC (link)
	[It is early, but he sounds very awake, picking up after only one ring.] ... Hello? (Reply to this) (Thread)

	Re: Phonecall: Harry/Gwen ex_first621 2015-09-28 12:52 am UTC (link)
	[A sigh of relief, then hushed.] Hey, Harry. It's Gwen. Listen, I know is going to sound totally weird, but I went to Gotham and some age reversion thing happened, and I'm kind of clueless about everything mostly. Are we still friends? I don't even know how old you are. Anyway, I kind of need a huge favor, and I wouldn't ask if it wasn't super important. (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

	Re: Phonecall: Harry/Gwen sybarite 2015-09-28 12:55 am UTC (link)
	[He listens, and the confusion is palpable.] Wait, what? [Then a sound as he skips ahead.] What kind of favor? (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

Re: Phonecall: Harry/Gwen

ex_first621
2015-09-28 12:59 am UTC (link)

It's weird. I don't know what happened. I left myself some notes, so I knew the phenomenon was occurring, but they aren't comprehensive notes. [Headshake.] Anyway, I kind of had a note that said to go find this hard drive for Ms. Carter, which I did - Sharon. Sharon Carter. But some agents chased me, and I'm hiding in a museum, and the hard drive needs to get to Peggy Carter. They'll be expecting me to leave the museum with it, but they won't be expecting you to. Can you come? I can give it to you to take to her, and they won't even know it ever left here. [Pause, and curiosity wins out.] Are we still friends? We're totally still friends, right?

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	Re: Phonecall: Harry/Gwen sybarite 2015-09-28 01:26 am UTC (link)
	I know what that is like. [A car door shuts and there is a muffled, polite voice welcoming him back.] I just got home, can I change first or is this like... an immediate emergency kind of favor? [He's quiet for a second.] Yeah, we're totally still friends. [Although his assurance isn't enthusiastic.] (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

	Re: Phonecall: Harry/Gwen ex_first621 2015-09-28 01:31 am UTC (link)
	They aren't going to come in here while it's open. There's too much security. It's safe to take time to change. [She notices the pause. Curiously.] Are you sure? You don't sound super sure, Harry. (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

	Re: Phonecall: Harry/Gwen sybarite 2015-09-28 01:51 am UTC (link)
	I should be there in about an hour, that okay? [Huff.] I'm sure... Gwen. [He's not going to get into it while she's like this. He aims for friendlier.] Do you want me to bring you an elaborate coffee beverage to prove it? I'm going to need the caffeine, but I don't know about you. (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

	Re: Phonecall: Harry/Gwen ex_first621 2015-09-28 01:59 am UTC (link)
	Okay. [Pause, and she knows he isn't telling her everything, but he's coming to get the hard drive, so she doesn't push.] Caffeine is totally bad for you, and those are loaded with sugar. [Grin.] Make sure they use extra caramel. (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

	Re: Phonecall: Harry/Gwen sybarite 2015-09-28 02:16 am UTC (link)
	[Smirk.] Extra caramel, got it. [Lingering pause.] An hour, okay? [And he hangs up without goodbye, before she can ask him again if they're still friends.] (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

Museum: Harry/Gwen

ex_first621
2015-09-28 02:30 am UTC (link)

Just turned eighteen and dressed in denim and rainbow under yellow, a beanie on her bright blonde hair, Gwen was on the first floor of the museum, in Mr. Morgan's Library.

She was trying not to worry about the absence of Peter or Flash, and she was trying not to be completely weird and obvious about the fact that there were five guys (she counted that morning) watching the building from all kinds of different angles. Luckily, there was a huge bank at the entrance, and that meant security was super outside. Inside, there were too many priceless things for there to be any real danger. She'd been crashing there since the night before, but that was mostly because the night security was an old friend of her dad's.

But she knew the agents outside would get tired of waiting for her to come out, and they'd eventually create some kind of ruse to get her out in the open. She needed to make sure the hard drive was with Ms. Carter (the second Ms. Carter) before that happened.

She looked up at the tall wall of books, messenger bag hugged to her middle, and she waited for Harry, still uncertain about their friendship, but completely trusting that he would see this through for her.

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Re: Museum: Harry/Gwen

sybarite
2015-09-28 03:23 am UTC (link)

He'd taken a shower to eradicate the memories that came along with a night of clubbing. The alcohol and molly had worn off long before dawn, and the hot water felt like being exposed to crafty little knives. He made the shower a quick one, scrubbing confetti out of his hair and traces of somebody else's body glitter off his skin. The shower gave him time to think about Gwen's phone call and the reciprocation of getting involved. He wasn't worried about his own safety or anything, and was really more curious about the manner in which she'd aged down. Obviously, he'd been through something similar. But not only that… Harry wouldn't help but want to think that she might not have been the new not-Gwen. Maybe she was old-Gwen again.

Harry got dressed quickly after that. Sobered, and that wouldn't do, so he smoked some wax while his driver readied the car. It helped with not thinking too much about whether or not he'd let her "be" Gwen when he saw her.

True to his word, Harry walked into the library on the back end of his quoted hour. With him, a pair of frozen frappes with mountains of whipped cream and extra caramel on the summit, as requested. It took a bit of navigation to find her, but he was a little stoned, so all in all, the timing was impressive. He thought so. Eventually spotting where she was, hugging her bag, Harry got close.

"This has to be one of the nerdiest hideouts in existence." He pushed one of the drinks at her and sipped the other, already forgetting what he'd been so worried about. She looked just like he remembered.

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Re: Museum: Harry/Gwen

ex_first621
2015-09-28 08:10 am UTC (link)

Gwen was nearing impatience by the time Harry arrived, despite her certainty that he was in the allotted time-window provided. It wasn't that she was worried the agents would come inside or anything, but she had a feeling this thing with the hard drive was kind of heavy. She was always telling Peter that it wasn't his responsibility to save the world, and she thought maybe she gotten mixed up in that precise kind of scenario herself. So, she was totally heel-bounce nervous, even in the awing presence of the Gutenberg Bible, which was totally old and totally fairy tale, but still pretty impressive.

Luckily, Harry arrived before she could start thinking about the ludicrousness of religion as a way to pass the time. And despite her personal assertion that she was prepared for anything, she wasn't actually prepared for the Harry that walked through the door.

He didn't look any older than her.

She'd totally constructed a mental reality in which old-her was in her thirties, and she expected everyone she knew to be of a similar age, but Harry looked exactly the same age as her, and she gawped, open mouth and delayed witty retort to his criticism of her most epic of hiding places.

But she recovered, scoff and eyeroll, and she took the frappe and sucked on the straw too fast (total brainfreeze), and then she hugged Harry, unaware of weird clone things. "I'm sorry I didn't choose the Bahamas of hiding places. Jeez." She stepped back, rocked onto the heels of her chunky shoes. "Thanks for coming," and, "you're so not thirty."

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Re: Museum: Harry/Gwen

sybarite
2015-09-29 06:55 am UTC (link)

"I'm not thirty," he agreed. The hug hadn't been entirely unexpected, and he briefly wondered how he was meant to react to it. He hadn't seen the new Gwen, he'd been extremely determined not to see the new Gwen, and now she wasn't new Gwen at all… so he calculated that a hug was alright. This realization was delayed thanks to being just a little high, and he didn't quite hug her back. By the time he realized that he wanted to, Gwen was already rocking back on her heels.

He sucked on his straw and tried to stop staring at her. "I'm eighteen." A better late than never addendum. The timeline was strange, and he didn't think about his age very much because it felt all twisted up with worm holes and shit, but he knew that Gwen cared about little details.

She was really here. Like, really. Suddenly, he was really glad that he'd had the foresight to get high because if not, he would have surely been overcome with inopportune emotions. As it was, his bleary blue eyes were noted with a kind of sad happiness when he looked at her. He swallowed some of the frozen coffee sweetness, and it was a little difficult because his throat was tight just like it got all of the times when he thought about how she'd been taken away from him.

"Sorry," he said belatedly, forcing himself to look somewhere other than her. He settled on the ceiling. "So what do you need me to smuggle out of here?"

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Re: Museum: Harry/Gwen

ex_first621
2015-09-29 08:53 pm UTC (link)

She wasn't entirely surprised that he didn't readily return the embrace. She and Harry had been friends since they were small, but in high school he'd kind of become super popular, and she toed the line between outcast and not, and they just didn't move in the same circles anymore. Peter was his best friend, and Gwen wasn't even sure how much Harry knew about the stuff Peter did in his pjs. So, it wasn't that they were strained or anything, but they weren't super close, not like when they were small and made all kinds of plans for futures that were completely intertwined. It made her kind of sad, but she still trusted the foundation they'd built enough to ask him to come, and she was super glad he had.

"Me too. Eighteen. Um, last week. And graduation is in a few days for both of us. At least it is where I'm from, and I know the timelines are kind of messed up, and I'm not going to ask why you're young, because I think I deliberately refrained from informing myself about future stuff, so I totally shouldn't ask." She had no idea of any of the bad things that awaited her (or him) after graduation. She was a blank, and the only really terrible thing that had befallen her life was the death of her dad the year before.

So, whether she was his version, or whether she was a clone was a completely unanswerable question, given current circumstances. And she didn't even know it was a thing that had happened. She didn't know about Goblins, and she didn't know about hotels - she was trying super hard not to ask about the latter.

She took the coffee, and she sucked sugar through the straw with only a few seconds of guilt over the sheer toxicity she was sucking into her body. "Oh. Right." She reached into the messenger bag, and she pulled out the hard drive and handed it to him. "It's super important, and it needs to get to Peggy Carter. There are a bunch of agents outside, but they're looking for me. They won't follow you."

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Re: Museum: Harry/Gwen

sybarite
2015-09-29 11:35 pm UTC (link)

With a young heart and an often confused mind, Harry was actually glad that Gwen didn't ask the tough questions. Whys and Wheres and Hows? He wouldn't have known what to tell her anyway, half of his more recent memories felt like nothing more than vivid hallucinations. But for once, he didn't feel like the only one who was halfway in the dark. Even if the solidarity was only imagined, it relaxed him visibly. Even more so than whatever had blown his pupils wide and dark.

He took the hard drive from her and turned it over in his hand. "Whats on it? Or is it one of those things were if you tell me, you'll have to kill me?"

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Re: Museum: Harry/Gwen

ex_first621
2015-09-30 02:42 am UTC (link)

Gwen hadn't ever encountered drugs. Her life had been fairly sheltered, and while she wasn't oblivious to the challenges faced on the streets (her dad was a cop, after all), she hadn't ever experienced the symptoms first hand. At this age, she hadn't even gotten drunk yet, and so she noted the wide black of his pupils, and she made a mental note to look into it later. She wasn't sure how long she was going to be stuck here, and she reasoned it was better to use her time sensibly - assuming she could get out of here alive, but that wasn't a concern for right now. Right now, was about the hard drive.

"It's mostly an older woman's diary. I don't think you'd find it super interesting, but I think the stuff in it is important to her aunt. That's who Peggy Carter is. She's on the journals. You'll contact her and meet her somewhere?" It was probably super telling that she trusted him with the hard drive, which she was convinced was actually totally worth killing over (or killing her over, at least).

"Go, okay? And let me know it gets there safe? I'll wait a little while and try to get Peter or Flash to reply to me. If that doesn't work, I'll figure out some other safe way out of here." She could totally do this.

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Re: Museum: Harry/Gwen

sybarite
2015-09-30 04:22 am UTC (link)

"Yeah, I'll contact her." Harry promised with another glance down to the hard drive. He tucked it into a white suited arm and set his barely touched coffee drink aside on a surface that would probably make museum personnel frown due to condensation. He didn't understand how someone's diary diary could be so problematic, but he believed Gwen when she said that she'd been followed here. Which was why his expression crumbled a moment later when she insisted he go.

"You want me to just leave you here?" He frowned hard. A line formed between his eyebrows, and Harry seemed at once pained and insulted when she mentioned Flash and Peter in the same breath. Yeah, okay. He got it, he wasn't a superhero or whatever, but neither was she.

"But you won't have the hard drive anymore. They can't take it from you. Can't you just leave after I do?"

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Re: Museum: Harry/Gwen

ex_first621
2015-09-30 04:27 am UTC (link)

"If I leave, they'll think the hard drive is leaving, which means I can't go. They'll think you're a patron, and they won't pay any attention to you, since they're looking for me to try and slip past them," she informed him, like she'd been thinking about it for a long time. "If I leave after you do, they'll still think I have the hard drive, and they'll pursue me. If I have to, I'll call an old friend of my dad's, okay? I'm going to be fine. I already lost them once getting here."

She shrugged her shoulders with youthful confusion, and she knew there was more to all of this than Ms. Carter being locked up somewhere. "I don't know why they want me, but they mentioned me and Doctor Banner, and they knew I was going to Ms. Carter - the other Ms. Carter - to her place. But none of that matters right now, or I would've left myself information about their interest in me. I didn't leave myself that information, and I don't think that was just an oversight. So, if the only thing I thought was important involved getting to that hard drive, then it's the thing we need to focus on. Okay?"

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Re: Museum: Harry/Gwen

sybarite
2015-09-30 04:49 am UTC (link)

"Okay," he tried to follow her logic. She didn't seem worried, only about getting the hard drive where it needed to go. "Okay," Harry repeated without realizing it, and he attention strayed to the exit of the museum. He was chewing on his lip and she wanted him to leave. He wanted to, she was asking something so simple of him, but there was this deep discomfort brewing in his chest. It was like some misplaced deja-vu, and that wasn't weird considering his jumbled memories, but this was different somehow.

And then, all at once, he knew why. "But you're in a library!" Was he shouting? His voice seemed too loud, fighting to gain leverage over the panicked skip of his heartbeat. This was a museum, but it was also a library, and she couldn't just ask him to leave her here. Not after what happened last time she was at a library by herself.

He paced a bit, rubbing at his eyes with one hand while he held the hard drive close with the other. He lowered his voice in a whisper to himself, "I can't believe this." Then, like lightning leaping from cloud to ground, he looked at her. Conflicted and hurt, "Don't ask me to do that."

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Re: Museum: Harry/Gwen

ex_first621
2015-09-30 05:51 am UTC (link)

She wasn't worried. Okay. No. Correction. She wasn't too worried. She didn't have any reason to be, because she wasn't particularly fatalistic, not at this point in her life. In fact, she was kind of in a totally immortal phase, which was maybe kind of Peter's fault. He was always around to save her from stuff, and she kind of thought herself as capable as him, even though she didn't have any of the powers to go along with that capability. But she didn't think the agents outside would kill her, because death wasn't particularly high on her list of future concerns. Picking a college was totally at the top of that list, and Peter being busy all the time was high on that list, but dying via agents outside this library didn't even register on the scale of concerns.

Not that she wasn't planning on being careful, because she was planning on being careful. But it was standard careful, not some heightened version of it. So, when he screamed, she kind of just stared. She could see the signs of panic on him, but she was at a complete loss as to why he was exhibiting those particular signs.

"Harry." He paced, and she grabbed at his arm, tugging his hand down from where it was rubbing his eye. "We're technically in a library within a museum, but why does that matter?" She was completely confused, cornflower blue regarding him with absolutely no understanding of the conflict he seemed to currently be dealing with. "Okay, tell me what I'm not asking you to do, so that I can un-ask."

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Re: Museum: Harry/Gwen

sybarite
2015-09-30 06:04 am UTC (link)

Harry was frustrated, yes. Panicking, definitely. But he didn't think there was any way that Gwen could not be making this connection on her own. She'd only just got through with dying at a library, getting torn apart, or eaten, or whatever had happened to her. It was the kind of thing that Harry spent a lot of time determinedly not thinking about, except that now he was thinking about it and he couldn't stop. His fucking head wouldn't stop, and his breathing tripped, inhales coming a little bit faster until she grabbed his arm and jarred him out of whatever loop his stoned paranoid had let him slip into.

"I can't." It was a whine, but no sort of tantrum. He couldn't tell her because, as he reminded himself in that moment, Gwen had no idea. It wasn't just her dying, either. She didn't have an idea about any of it. So this is what it felt like to be erased, no wonder everyone had been so completely done with him when he'd lost his memory.

Harry's shoulders dropped, defeated. He looked sad. "I'm just… worried. About you. You said they're waiting for you out there."

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Re: Museum: Harry/Gwen

ex_first621
2015-10-01 07:54 pm UTC (link)

She watched him. She was hoping that his behavior would give her some clue about what was going on, because then maybe she could allay his fears. Okay, so maybe it was the agents outside, but he'd seemed completely nonplussed about them earlier, and she knew she was missing some big (and maybe terrible) piece of the puzzle. But how bad could it really be? She was alive in the future, so it wasn't like she died or anything. She wasn't even like messed up, right? She'd left herself coherent notes, and the things included indicated a life that was maybe super brave and not tied to a lab or microscope.

But Harry was totally panicking; she wasn't sure she'd ever heard him whine like that. His shoulders dropped a second later, and she didn't like the sad expression that settled on his features. It reminded her of when his mom died, and she kind of wanted to hug him again. She considered pros and cons for a split second, and then she just did what she wanted to, and she hugged him, careful not to slosh the sweet coffee drink all over his designer duds.

"I won't go anywhere alone. Deal? I can hang out here until it's safe. If I can't get Peter or Flash to answer, I'll wait for you to come get me." Which was totally anti-feminism, but making him feel better was more important than her own need to kick ass for women everywhere.

"Just go find Ms. Carter, okay?" She nudged at him.

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Re: Museum: Harry/Gwen

sybarite
2015-10-02 06:11 am UTC (link)

She didn't get it at all. She had no idea why he was worried, why she was frustrating him. So, this is what that felt like. He got it now, he understood. This was what it was like for everybody else when he forgot important stuff. Harry shook his head, unreceptive to her nudge. He barely swayed, and he didn't smile. Rather, he looked to the floor with eyebrows drawn in, pinched center and petulant. "Yeah," he murmured as a kind of confirmation that he would go. That was what she wanted, and she didn't care that he was worried about her. She didn't care because she didn't know, and she only didn't know because of whatever was going on in Gotham.

Not that it mattered really, because even if she had known, Gwen's everlong sway toward danger was a constant. How many close calls had there been before her actual death? Harry wasn't sure, he couldn't remember them, but he was sure that they were there. He was sure that there were numerous close calls, and there would be numerous more until she died again. But worrying was fruitless because it would all keep happening, this would keep happening.

And maybe he couldn't stop it, but he could stop from worrying about it so much. That was an idea. "Yeah, I'll go find her." A promise, as he tucked the hard drive inside of his white jacket.

Then, "Just... be careful." And he turned around to leave her, just like she asked. Even his frozen coffee drink was left behind to melt.

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Re: Museum: Harry/Gwen

ex_first621
2015-10-02 04:57 pm UTC (link)

She didn't know what was causing his face to turn in expressive thought. But he murmured and agreed, and she felt a real desire to understand the future that caused him to look at her like that. It wasn't even concern, not alone. It was something with history behind it, a list of things that caused it into being, causality, and she recognized that all these things had been deliberately left absent in the information she'd provided to herself.

But, she couldn't focus on that. She had to make sure the hard drive got where it needed to go, or all this would be totally for nothing. So, she put all additional thoughts of curiosity behind. "Thanks, Harry."

She watched the hard drive disappear into his jacket, and she repeated the contact information as she knew it - Peggy Carter, Peggy C on the journals, aunt of Sharon Carter, and then she nodded when he told her to be careful. She'd talked to Jason, too, and he would help if she couldn't get in touch with Peter or Flash, though she didn't really want to think too hard about the possibility of neither Peter nor Flash existing in this future. No, she was going to think positively, and she had three options to get out of this place with assistance; she'd be fine.

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