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Tweak says, "Go away. You give me gas."

Alpha Peter (pbandparker) wrote in snapthread,
@ 2019-03-18 00:11:00

Entry tags:

gwen stacy, peter b parker (sv)

WHO: Peter B Parker and Gwen Stacy
WHAT: Along came some spiders
WHERE: Around town
WHEN: Today
RATING: n/a

Town was - well it was town, it was small, Peter found himself missing New York in a way that he never expected to. He'd left the city before, traveled, but New York was home, and this? Well this was not anything like New York. Where were the sirens? And the weird smells? And the car horns? And all the things that made the city... the city. He'd slept the first couple days he'd been here, but since then he found himself restless at night, waking earlier than he'd like and missing the sounds that had so often lulled him to sleep.

So he was out, wandering the streets hoping for - well anything really, just kind of checking things out he supposed, trying to see what else might need doing here. If there were spaces that needed filling in but hadn't been seen to yet, he could contribute probably, in ways that didn't mean he had to go through the door to some other other dimension.

He wandered up to some strange sort of jungle gym thing that had been set up near the center of town and frowned wondering what the purpose of it might be. "Now this - is really strange." Not that it stopped him from shooting out a web to pull himself up to the top quickly and efficiently, it wasn't quite the Empire State Building, but it was something. "Still strange though."

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itsybitsyspidey
2019-03-22 04:22 pm UTC (link)

"I was like that, too," she said. "At first I just helped people to get attention. I was kind of a brat." Gwen wasn't proud of herself for that, even though those days were definitely far behind her.

Gwen wondered if she'd ever be able to really convey to Peter how much his words actually meant to her. He was right. Bad things happened; terrible things. And what she needed to not only acknowledge but also accept, was that if she'd been able to save Peter -- both times -- she absolutely would have even at the cost of her own life. It wasn't as though she'd let either of them die.

"Everybody thought I killed him," she said. "Or, I guess, they thought Spider-Woman killed him. I was wanted by the police, which, you know, doesn't help that my dad's the Captain. It's gotten better. My dad knows the truth about me now and knows I didn't kill Peter. I found out about the multiverse and got recruited by a British Spider-Man to go find another Peter Parker in the multiverse. He was assembling a team of Spiderlings to fight this group called the Inheritors. That's where I was before I got here. Only, that Peter died too. In his world, his Gwen was his first love and she died while he was fighting the Green Goblin. He couldn't save her. It drove him mad, and he went dark until I showed him who I was. One of the Inheritors was there and ambushed us. He died protecting me. He said.. He said he could die happy because he could protect me, I don't know if he thought I was his Gwen at that moment or what, but I stayed with him until he was gone. And then I ended up here." She wiped at her eyes quickly and sniffled once.

"Sorry, I'm dumping all this on you and we only just met," she said, and shook her head. "Feels like I've known you forever though. Yikes, does that make me sound like a creep? I swear I'm not a creep."

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pbandparker
2019-03-22 05:17 pm UTC (link)

"I mean of course we were, how could we not have ended up being kind of ridiculous right at the start?" Even now Peter could admit that being Spider-Man was just plain cool. And at sixteen it had been even cooler than just cool, and to go from a pitiful nerd who was beat up far more often than he truly deserved to this a kid with super powers? Yeah he had definitely been a brat too.

It hurt his heart hearing Gwen tell her story, about how people had thought that she'd killed Peter when she'd done her best to save him. And then to find out that she hadn't lost just one Peter but two - this place with three of them had to be playing havoc with her heart. That she was talking to him at all was kind of miraculous in his opinion.

"Wow," He said softly, what else was there to say? It was more than he'd been through. He'd lost people before, failed to save them, but what Gwen talked about was on another level. He huffed softly when she shook her head apologizing for throwing all of that at him. "No, no, no, no - come on, this is - you know. Maybe we haven't known each other forever technically, but you know there's something to this whole multiverse thing, to the connection we have through that. If there's anyone here who could understand what you've been through it's me."

"I - my friend Harry. His dad was the Green Goblin, I tried to save him, to keep him from hurting anyone else or himself and in the end he still died. I took him home, I didn't want Harry to never see him again, but he blamed me for what happened. He went bad - blamed Spider-Man for his dad and dedicated himself to killing me too." He sighed, the weight of that hurting his heart even now to think of even all these years later. "Even after I revealed myself to him he wanted to kill me, I think it hurt him more thinking that his friend had killed his dad. In the end he came around, he even helped me, but he still died too - I couldn't save him." It didn't matter how many years had passed since those early days they still remained with him, just like the loss of Peter would remain with Gwen.

"You're not a creep, I don't think we ended up dragged here just for this, but I'm glad we got a chance to meet." He told her honestly, the multiverse was crazy and complicated - even more so than he'd ever suspected it was. But there could be good things that came out of it.

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itsybitsyspidey
2019-03-23 06:54 pm UTC (link)

Gwen had been keeping all of this to herself for a long time. She didn't want to talk about it, to relive it, to feel all of those feelings anymore. But numbness was a terrible thing, too. Sharing the harder parts of her journey as Spider-Woman with someone who she not only could talk to but who understood was more impactful for her than she could have guessed. She didn't like bringing it up, but there wasn't anyone better for her to talk to about it. Peter had been through his fair share of pain and loss. He was Spider-Man. He'd been Spider-Man for a long time.

Listening to him speak of Harry and his father resonated in her, too. Gwen had a Harry back home. They were very close friends. She'd not seen him in a while, though. Not since Peter's funeral. She understood what it must have been like for him, at least to an extent since she'd been blamed for Peter's death. Gwen hated that for Peter. Not enough people understood that they -- the Spiderlings -- were all just trying to do their best to adapt to an insane situation that none of them had asked for.

"I am, too," she said. "You get it. I don't know if I can explain how much that alone means to me. But you probably understand that, too." She smiled a little. "I'm sorry," she went on to say. "About Harry and his dad."

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pbandparker
2019-03-23 08:55 pm UTC (link)

Peter nodded, he did get it - like Gwen had told Miles they were probably the only people who could get it, what they all went through to become Spider-Man or Spider-Woman. These powers they were amazing and cool and extraordinary, but at the same time they came at a cost, and learning how to live with that took time and it took loss and while Peter wished he could spare his other Spiderlings that he knew it was part of the journey.

"I am too." He agreed with a low sigh, it had been a while since he'd relived that particular pain, it was always with him but not quite so fresh as it was like this, talking to someone who had just lost someone so close to her. "I think maybe it's part of our journey." As awful as that might be. "For us to lose someone, to miscalculate." Maybe they were all destined for that. He wondered about the other Peter's whether or not they'd had their losses yet. If they still had more ahead of them in their lives.

He didn't want to think what that meant for those who were close to them, that they were destined to die or be hurt in some way simply by being near him. It was part of what had caused him to hesitate with MJ, that fear of not being able to keep her safe, not being able to keep any children they might have safe. How could he have that in his life? That constant gnawing fear that by being near him he was putting the people he most cared about at risk.

"The important thing though, is not to close yourself off from the people who care. The ones who truly want to be close to you." He told her. He might have messed things up for himself, but he was older, he'd been at this longer and they - they still had a chance. "There's always going to be some new thing you have to go up against, some new threat, another bad guy. And it's easy to let that be your whole life, but you need more than that. To keep on being the very best Spider-Woman, you have to have people you're protecting. Otherwise it gets harder and harder to get back up again."

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itsybitsyspidey
2019-03-25 08:48 pm UTC (link)

Maybe it was part of being a Spiderling. Gwen did not like that; it didn't settle within her at all, but she understood it. It was really amazing to be able to flip off buildings and hang upside down from nearly indestructible webbing and see things really far away and everything else that came with those fancy schmancy powers. But there was a catch, a cost, and consequences to having them and using them. In her world, Peter had paid that price when he tried to gain those awesome abilities recklessly. He'd paid with his life, but Gwen had to be the one to take it. She hadn't meant to; but it happened that way. It also meant that anyone could wind up in a position like she did, or like any of the Peters, or those they'd lost. Nothing was guaranteed, and everything was a risk.

"You're right," she said. "About all of that." Somehow there had to be a balance, and maybe that was part of the journey. Figuring out how to not close herself off from opening up to others and developing bonds with people instead of being too afraid to to lose them so shutting them out was really going to be difficult. Wanting to keep others safe, but still trying to live her life as best she could. That was all part of the gig as a Spiderling, she supposed. It wasn't impossible, but it was hard. Likely, it was supposed to be hard, or else anyone could do it.

"I need to try to open up more, I think," she said. "In addition to being Spider-Woman I protect myself with a lot of witty jabs and sarcasm. It keeps people at a distance. But I need to stop that, I think, or at least ease up on it. Because you're right. Having people to protect reminds me why I'm doing this at all."

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pbandparker
2019-03-26 06:43 am UTC (link)

"Oh you should absolutely keep the witty jabs, part of being Spider-Man... or Woman, is being able to have some amazing wordplay with the bad guys we go up against." Peter was quick to reassure her about that, this was part of what they did, they wouldn't be of the Spider variety without that, Peter was sure of that much. The sarcasm though, that he understood, it could be a weapon, a way to keep people at arms length, it was a habit he'd picked up as he'd gotten older, after he lost Aunt May, after MJ. It was better that way, he didn't have to need anyone, and no one had to need him either. He was fine. Handled it like a champ.

Of course he'd overlooked just how miserable it made him, and just how much it had taken away from him, not just as Peter Parker but as Spider-Man too. "Maybe we can consider this time while we're here practice." He suggested when Gwen said she needed to try and open up more."

"I think this is probably as good a group as you're going to get of people who kind of understand the pressures that you're under, and of course you've got me and the other Peters here too." He added, sure the others who were Avengers and things were great, they knew what it was to fight for what was right, to save people, to lose - but none of them got what it was to be Spider-Man unless they'd lived it like the Peters and like Gwen. "I know it's the sort of thing I can probably use a little practice with too." He added, because sure he might be older, he might have more experience than the rest of these Spiderlings, but he was still a work in progress just like them and well - it was a comfort to him as well seeing them here.

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itsybitsyspidey
2019-03-26 08:16 pm UTC (link)

It was probably for the best that she keep her sense of humor and the wittiness. Changing who she was entirely wasn't going to help her in the long run. Gwen just needed to figure out the balance between using her cleverness and wits as part of who she was and for fun, rather than as a defense mechanism to keep people away. It wasn't impossible, even if it felt like it sometimes.

She thought on his words for a moment and nodded. He was right. If nothing else, they were all kind of 'those' people who had those hero-type journeys they were on. Or at least, they were all a group of people who'd dealt with some pretty heavy shit. Their coping mechanisms varied, but she was definitely among good company.

"I can help you too, you know," she said. "If you need practice, I mean. I know I'm young and still gaining all that life experience but you can trust me." She offered a little smile. "We can all sort of try to figure it out together, maybe. Like a Spider-Family."

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pbandparker
2019-03-26 11:32 pm UTC (link)

It didn't matter that this wasn't the first time he'd run into other spider-like people. It didn't matter that he'd met another Gwen, that this was a different situation entirely, it still hit him as hard as it had then - the realization that he wasn't alone. That right here in Gwen was further proof of that, that even when things had felt like they couldn't get any worse there were other Spiderlings out there in the multiverse, and he'd gotten to meet them.

"Yeah," He agreed nodding, definitely not getting choked up. He really needed to start carrying the mask around with him, it had to be better than to pull it up over his head whenever he felt emotion rising up in the back of his throat and his heart clenching in ways that he didn't know how to put a name to. He'd needed one the last time he'd talked to Tony too - it was a thing. "Yeah I think that would be a really good idea," He agreed, a Spider-Family. Yeah he definitely needed the mask.

"I think we're always going to be a work in progress, but I hear that's how it works living in the world." He admitted, it was kind of easy to forget that when you ran around as Spider-Man a lot of the time. But so much of his life was lived outside the suit and realizing that he didn't have to be quite so perfect there was kind of a miraculous realization. "But I think we can help each other a lot, I do trust you. I hope you feel like you can trust me too - with this or anything else that happens while we're here." He wasn't the Peter from her world, but he hoped that trust went beyond this place.

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itsybitsyspidey
2019-03-28 06:59 pm UTC (link)

Even though Gwen wouldn't wish loss or pain on anyone else, she did find some comfort in knowing she wasn't alone. She'd felt it to an extent in the few times she'd been immersed in the multi-verse, but it was far more present now. There was something about this Peter especially that she felt a kinship with. Like an older brother she'd never had before. It was a feeling she thought she'd like to hold onto. It'd make being here easier.

The mask would've been good right about now to hide the fact that she felt a little emotional, but she'd already kind of bared her soul a little to him so she didn't mind if her eyes grew a little misty in his presence. It meant a lot for him to say that he trusted her. Gwen felt like a failure in a lot of ways, but knowing he had faith in her and knew he could count of her really did go a long way in boosting her confidence and self-worth. Gwen wanted to do good; she did. Her father's words resonated in her; he'd told her she needed to do better, that Spider-Woman could do so much more than what she'd been doing. Peter, this Peter anyway, seemed to believe that she was capable of that too.

"I do," she said. "We're family now. Whatever happens, that won't change."

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pbandparker
2019-03-29 03:00 am UTC (link)

"Yeah, yeah we are." He agreed, it was - a lot. But it was true they were family, brought together by shared experience and the understanding that they were the same in a way that so many were not. He hadn't been prepared for this kind of thing when he'd met Miles and even with that experience tucked into his belt this was something he hadn't been ready for either. To find someone like Gwen, not once but twice and have that connection with her that felt like maybe they could really support one another and be better for it.

"Okay, okay this is -" he laughed a little scrubbing a hand over his eyes, caught up in the way all of this threatened to overwhelm him. It wasn't a bad thing, he'd done plenty of crying in his day, though usually it was alone in his shower, but still, he was a pro at this sort of thing, and still getting caught by it like this was tough. "I've been on my own for a while so you know this is a ... lot."

And he was seriously just doing the best job of handling it, they didn't call him Peter Parker for nothing. Whatever that meant. "Whatever happens, I'm glad we got a chance to meet, it's always good to have the reminder that we're not alone, even when it feels like we are." And for now they weren't alone, not even close to it, and that was a comfort as well.

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itsybitsyspidey
2019-03-31 09:33 pm UTC (link)

It was a lot. Gwen understood that. Even though this was kind of a weird, off-putting situation there were some positive things that had come out of it. Meeting him, being part of a little Spider-Family was really something she was grateful for. To have others who really understood what it was like to be a Spider-Person was a relief, even though she wouldn't wish that hardship or feeling of loss on anyone else. There was always going to be someone who understood her, and she in turn could offer that same reassurance. Gwen liked that concept. It made her feel like she was actually doing something. It added to her purpose, and that was gratifying in of itself.

She nodded. "I'll be around to remind you that you're not alone if you start to get mopey. I fully expect you to do the same to me." Her head tilted a little. "We should round up the other Peters and have a Spider gathering. We could even do it here. Swing around together. Or we could have a meal of some kind." Even if they all sort of operated better solo, that didn't mean they couldn't all meet together as a family every now and then. It'd be kind of surreal to be surrounded by Peter Parkers but she also was very comforted by the thought, too.

"Maybe you and I can meet every now and then, too. Have lunch together or go for walks. I dunno. Just something so we don't become Recluse Spiders."

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pbandparker
2019-03-31 10:48 pm UTC (link)

"Yeah, yeah I think that's a great idea," Peter agreed, they could all of them get together, on their own - away from the others who meant well, who were friends in some cases and just find a little time for them as a cluster. It'd be good for them, Peter thought. It'd be good for him, and Gwen as well, and he could only imagine it'd be good for the other Peters. They all could use a little support from time to time, at least in his experience.

"Meals could be good too, there's nothing that brings me out of hiding quite like the promise of a meal," And there were things they could talk about like that, whether it was the formulas for web fluid, different fights they'd been in, fears even if they wanted to get deep. Or just to talk to someone who quite simply got it.

He huffed a little when she suggested the two of them meet from time to time as well, recluse spider - yeah she was definitely Spider-Woman. "I'd like that a lot." He agreed. "Keep each other up to date on the state of things, the webs we're weaving, all of that." He nodded, it was a good idea, something maybe he should have come up with, but Gwen was maybe just a little more on the ball than he was at this point in their lives. And he was okay with that. He was working on getting better.

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itsybitsyspidey
2019-04-02 12:01 am UTC (link)

Gwen had been distancing herself from her friends back home, for fear of anything bad happening to them because of her. It'd caused some serious issues with her band, and the relationships she had with those girls. It was also incredibly lonely. But here, being around other Spider-people and individuals who all had gone through some pretty tough shit over the course of their lives as 'heroes' or whatever they were, it felt safer to be a little more open. At least, she definitely felt like she could be with this Peter. Mr. Stark was pretty cool too, but it was still different than talking to Peter. Even though she did want to go home, she didn't want to lose him. Hopefully, if they did go back home she'd be able to find him in the Multi-verse again.

Comparing things like web fluid and what their suits were made of would definitely be something she could go for if the subject came up. Gwen knew a little bit about how some Peters had made it themselves. She hadn't, but maybe they'd understand how her web fluid was made and could replicate it since hers was infinite barring a climate with no moisture in the air sprung up. Otherwise, just being around other Spiderlings just sounded like a good idea. Even if they all just went swinging around town it'd be fun, anyway.

"Good, then we're totally doing it," she said, both to the two of them meeting up regularly and having groupings with the other Peters. "They're just gonna have to go along with it." She smiled. "So, how about we swing out of here and get some coffee before we retreat back to our respective webs?"

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