Re: Marvel hospital: Gwen & Peter
"Two casseroles?" she asked, and she managed a hint of deliberate shock, "she's getting way slow." She liked Aunt May. She'd only met Uncle Ben once, but she'd liked him too. Her smile when she spoke of his aunt was genuine, even if it didn't do anything to eclipse to worried sadness in her cornflower blue eyes, but sometimes talking about entirely mundane things (like casseroles) helped. She'd forgotten how much they used to joke about things back home; no one here joked much, not like he did. But she wouldn't be surprised to learn he wasn't hungry. During periods of emotional distress, the brain kind of shut off the need for other things as it tried to deal.
She knew he was top of his class when it came to guilt. She wasn't big on it herself. It didn't serve much of a purpose in her estimation, and while she was currently running through probabilities in her mind, they weren't something that would torment her the way guilt tormented him, not for an extended period of time. She'd told Meredith she wasn't even responsible for Flash's injuries, and she'd meant it. Flash made a choice to go rescue Meredith; no one had forced him, and he'd accepted the associated risks as a result. Maybe that was just logic, but the same brand of thinking meant she didn't hold Peter responsible for any of the losses in her life either. "Flash decided to go help someone who needed it. It was dangerous, and he knew that. You're not responsible for not going. I'm not even responsible, and I could argue that he would've gotten out when Meredith did, if I hadn't been in there. I know that's true, but I can't hold onto that responsibility. It won't make him better."
For a moment, she thought he was going to refuse the invitation to sit, and her cheeks began to suffuse red as a result. But, ultimately, he sat, and she exhaled, and she turned her body a little bit, unthinkingly open to pay more attention to whatever he was saying. She regretted that a second later, when he began talking about Mary Jane, and she reached across him for the water bottle, just so she could busy herself with tugging the sticky label off while he talked. "What was it like?" Not looking up? Nope. Not looking up. The water bottle label was super interesting.
But his question about Flash and inevitability, that did make her look up. She didn't want to disclose the results of Flash's surgery to anyone. It was really Flash's to tell, but she was upset, and it was so easy to fall back into the habit of telling Peter things. She sighed, a shaky thing with no tears falling, but with the threat of them on pale lashes. "In the comics, he joins the Army because he wants to be like Spider-Man," she said in a whisper. "He was saving his friend, and he was injured, and he lost both of his legs." She didn't add anything more, and she didn't clarify; she figured he'd get it.