cv (ephemeras) wrote in rooms, @ 2015-02-03 06:23:00 |
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Entry tags: | !marvel comics, *narrative, gwen stacy |
[Narrative]
Who: Spider-Gwen
What: Of webs and snow
Where: Around NY, Mostly the metro area
When: During the snow
Warnings/Rating: Nope
New Yorkers were used to the snow. They were used to sludgy streets and days that became night way too early in winter. They had closets filled with coats and mittens and shoes made for holding traction on ice leading down subway steps. Snow was just a thing, but this snow was different. It was thundering and moving in a way that no meteorologist could seem to explain, and Gwen was so accustomed to the strange occurrences in this version of the world that she didn't even try to track the patterns to come up with a scientific answer. Chances were that the storms led back to some individual who had been altered at a DNA level by the Oscorp pulse, and no scientist would ever be able to draw a correlation between that and atmospheric pressure. It was hard for Gwen to discount science as the answer to everything, because she knew it should be the answer to everything. But science here was something created by the Petri dish that was the hotel, and she didn't have the that particular cosmos figured out. She knew she never would; astrophysics wasn't her field, and string theory wasn't her interest. Her interest was the human body and how it could be altered by outside forces. Ergo, she was more interested in the person causing the storms. Normally.
But not today.
She'd spent five hours in holding at the local precinct after handing Emily over, and then she'd waited an extra four hours for her arraignment, so that a judge could be found that hadn't known her dad and wouldn't be accused of nepotism. Bail was moderate, and there were papers served to both herself and Harry's legal team immediately after calling for mandatory distance between themselves and Emily Osborn.
Gwen had known all that would happen, just like she'd known they would send her home with a future court date that, according to her lawyer, would never need to be met. They'd work out a plea agreement if the DA didn't drop charges, but everyone seemed fairly willing to sweep this entire mess under the rug. Oscorp stockholders didn't like the idea of their stock dropping even more as a result of dead adoptive parents and questionable child acquisition on the part of the late Norman Osborn. Gwen wasn't really worried, not about Emily or the outcome of things there.
She was worried about Harry, who seemed to teeter between moments of morbid certainty that dying was something that needed to happen to them (worrisome, because he could get it into his mind to make the inevitable happen), and a pessimism that was frightening. She worried about Jason, who she'd barely seen and hardly talked to since the incident at the Estate. She was pretty sure he was almost ignoring her, and she wondered if Mary Jane was partly responsible. She worried about Peter, who was so sweet and determined to make all the same mistakes all over again, and she was finding it increasingly difficult to remind herself of all the reasons why that was a bad idea. But Harry had picked up that particular argumentative baton, and Harry's reasoning (echoes) were fresh in her mind as the snow began to fall. And she was worried about Carnage. Time in Stark Tower wasn't good for her. Whatever telepathic connection the symbiote had was still marginally active in the suit if she got close enough to the building; she didn't like being there, but Harry's condition and Doctor Banner's insistence that she help made avoidance a challenge.
But today, today she was totally avoiding.
Because New Yorkers were accustomed to snow, but they weren't accustomed to this. She suited up after the first inch fell, and just being in the suit made her feel better for some reason that probably didn't defy logic. She assumed that was a biological drive, something that came with the mutation that she wasn't working hard enough to master. But now was a good, she thought, and the news reports of cars swerving off roads and people trapped in snow drifts were all she needed to get swinging.
She wasn't Peter; she didn't feel some great responsibility to save the world on a daily basis, but once she was out there, well, there was nothing better. Sling, and she didn't even feel the cold as she kept cars steady on bridges so that kids could climb out. Old couples got their Meals on Wheels on Webs for a change. Frozen fingers made it to the hospital in time to thaw out without being removed. She checked the power plants a few times (she knew them, okay), and she rerouted some brownouts. She felt good. She felt better than she had when the snow started.
By sunrise, she was sitting on a house ledge in the worst-hit area, Tuxedo Park, and science told her that someone there had caused the white that blanketed the city. Hood back and mask up to her forehead, her legs swinging in the cold. The family inside was asleep, but their flue kept sticking, and she casually webbed it open every few seconds. She'd prop it permanently before she left, but not yet, and she flopped back onto the snowy and angled roof, and she looked at the sky and thought about a Valentine's Day wish that wouldn't totally suck.