osborn estate: gwen & pete
[As much of a hard time as she gave Pete about never being alone with her, it wasn't the main thing on her mind as she returned to Marvel and took a taxi to the Osborn Estate. Unlike Pete, she wasn't worried about the potentially occupied state of the Osborn family home. The lawyers and PR firm had let everyone go after the incident with Emily's nannies, and the goal had been to replace the staff after Harry returned from the vacation Gwen had convinced everyone he'd gone on to recover from the death of his beloved dad.
It had been a deliberate move, one calculated when she realized the panic room in the Estate was the best option for holding Harry without the Avengers deciding what crimes he might be responsible for. But, then, Gwen was the only one who knew that the pulse was actually Harry's fault, not his dad's. Unless Harry told Mary Jane at some point, but that didn't matter anymore.
She was trying not to think about that. For all the warnings everyone had issued in the months (years) leading up to this, she'd never believed that Harry could hurt anyone he cared about. Jason always said she saw the good in people, but maybe that wasn't the best thing. She had a bruise that took up the entire side of her neck to prove it. Her dislocated shoulder was just mottled bruising beneath a Spider-Man t-shirt now, sweats and sneakers and her blonde hair tugged back messily. She didn't look great, but she was too practical not to realize she looked better than most of the parties in this fiasco. Flash was gone, and she assumed he'd returned to his other door and the pie wife they joked about so many times. Mary Jane was dead. Harry- Harry was altered by some serum cocktail that she had no idea how to combat. And Peter had lost another girl he cared about to his best friend.
She slipped her key into the lock of the echo-quiet estate, and she didn't bother calling out. She knew her way down to the basement without looking, even with the curtains drawn and the lights dark; after all, she'd lived here more than anywhere else in the past year. She hesitated for only a second at the bottom step, and then she walked into the wide-open room. Lab to the left. Panic room the right.]