The Start, The Pool, and The Book
“No, no, I swear.” America insisted, taking another shot before continuing, “I just… fucking ended up here. Fell through a dimension or two. Maybe time travel? But whatever. My powers are just like that.”
“I categorically refuse to believe that your origin is just like that.” Quentin snarled, though the effect was much less pronounced when he was hanging off the edge of the table, looking a second away from collapsing.
Kate giggled, ever the cheery drunk, “I mean, I became a superhero after the other Young Avengers crashed into a relative’s wedding, so who am I to judge?”
“Don’t any of you have cool origins?” Quentin asked, “We’re superheroes! What happened to those corny origins that everyone had?”
“You’re one to talk, Mr. Genetics.” Ramone pointed out, earning a high five from her girlfriend. Quentin grumbled but didn’t say anything for a little while.
Gwen smiled to herself, taking a sip of her own drink and soaking in the atmosphere. This should be the perfect setup for an after-credits scene, but for what movie? No, it was probably an opening introduction. She hated those because they always ruined the vibe they had been building up.
She had almost believed that Quentin had fallen asleep when he cracked his eye open, “Hey, so Gwen, what’s your story?”
“Huh?” She blinked, turning to look at him, feeling oddly put on the spot.
“Your story.” Quentin repeated, as if he thought she had simply misheard, “Your super-secret origin story that you don’t want anyone hearing. What is it?”
“Why would I tell you?” She asked, steely edge creeping into her voice, “Then it won’t be super-secret.”
“But we’re your friends!” Kate jumped in excitedly, turning the puppy-dog eyes on her, “You never talk about your past. At all. I don’t even know where you came from, or your favorite pastimes! What’s with that?”
America wound an arm around Gwen’s shoulder, sympathetic and understanding, “You don’t have to say anything if you don’t want to.” She warned, “I get it. If you’re really uncomfortable with it, we’ll back off. No need to force you to do anything.”
“N-no, it’s fine.” Gwen replied, looking at her hands, pale and wrinkled from all the time they spent inside hot spandex and leather. The truth was, her origin story… simply wasn’t there.
She didn’t remember it. She thought she did, back before she woke up and realized how much of a comic book she was living in. But now she knew that she wasn’t real. Not anymore. (Maybe hadn’t been ever? God, that hurt to think about.)
And she hadn’t been written with a backstory.
She couldn’t help but wonder sometimes, about all the possibilities. She wasn’t the only one. There was a lot of content out there, made by fans, or even actual comic writers, subtle inferences pointing in all different directions, all those hints piled up into stories that were plausible, but never truly there.
A Schrodinger’s Origin Story, if you will, all fighting for dominance in her head as her true history. And boy were there a lot of them.
Sometimes, her guilty pleasure is pulling herself out of the comics and into the whitespace, wandering off the beaten and printed book canon into the much more amorphous world of her unofficial media, and peer in to look at the ways she came to be, each one as real to her as anything else was.
Which wasn’t that real? Oh, whatever.
Her earliest had to be that day at a friend’s pool. Maybe Diamond’s, since she was the only one Gwen could remember having a pool, but that didn’t make much sense in the long term. Memories were fluid and constantly changing. Diamond might not have even existed until… not very long ago. Not before her Love Unlimited arc, certainly.
Gwen had learnt that comic runs were a better unit of time than actual time, and even that was flimsy at best.
Still, she was there, at a pool party, on her floaty, and then, she closed her eyes, laid her head back and this… unsettling feeling of calm washed over her. Calm and… quiet.
She jolted up, nearly disbalancing her floaty and throwing her into the pool and looked around herself to find that… she was not in her friend’s pool anymore. This was a different pool altogether. Big, and fancy, and devoid of any people.
Gwen wasn’t wearing her regular two piece bathing suit anymore, either. It was thick, and pink, and covered her entire torso and arms and hands and even her head. Tight, unbreathable spandex that was covering now… how?
Where was she? How did she get here? Why wasn’t she freaking out more?
Above her, an Iron Man suit went whizzing by, and somehow, that made Gwen calm down easily. She took a breath, and let herself relax, lying back down, lazily holding a katana in her right hand – where did she get a katana? – and took a sip from a drink.
Maybe she had thought that she was just in a dream? That would explain why she was so calm. However, she quickly found out that no, she wasn’t in a dream.
Gwen Poole was going job hunting.
There wasn’t a lot that a high school dropout prone to depressive episodes and no impressive qualities could apply for, but her parents were right! She needed to pull herself together and try to get something sorted out. She was going to turn twenty in a couple months, and she had no prospects. That was just embarrassing.
But no one was willing to take her. She tried every store in a five-block radius, and it was rejections all the way down. Not even the comic book store wanted her, and that was the only thing she could do right. As she trudged back home, Gwen was starting to remember why she didn’t like to spend time with real people.
Except… something caught her eye.
The strange occult shop on the way from her house and the comic store. She’d never seen it before, but it looked big, and well-stocked, but only one person was sitting inside, despite the people hovering around the area even though it wasn’t peak market time.
Maybe they’d be looking for someone to do inventory? She could do inventory!
In fact, now that she looked into the display window, some of this stuff was really neat. There was a book with a bright blue cover, with yellow words swirling over it. Worlds Between the Light. And underneath, in smaller, white script, travel to new universes with only the power of crystals and imagination. Basic psychic medium nonsense.
But she couldn’t stop looking at it. The book was calling her. Wanted her to pick it up and open it and read it. So when Gwen walked inside, she wasn’t doing it of her own volition. She was just following the book’s wishes.
“You mind if I look at the book in the window?” Gwen asked the cashier, only half aware of her own voice.
“Sure, go ahead.” They replied, barely paying attention, “It has a bit of a magnetism to it, but don’t expect anything to happen. You need crystals and stuff to really make the magic work.”
“What magic?” A new voice asked. Gwen looked up as the door swung open, revealing Teddy, schoolbag slung over his shoulder as he looked at her with wide-eyed innocence.
“Transportation magic.” Gwen explained, waving her hands spookily. Teddy laughed, but she was too busy pulling the book out of its place in the display and flicking through it, “Ooh, look at this, it looks just like…” She squinted at the image in front of her. A street in a metropolitan area, with superheroes charging through it, fighting some off-panel villain with pink lasers. All very normal. For a comic book.
Not a book promising to transport her to another reality.
“Hey, look, it comes with an incantation!” She cried, looking at the spell next to it, and eagerly began stumbling her way through unknown words. Funny, saying it almost felt… electric. Like real power was thrumming through her veins.
“Uh, Gwen, stop.” Teddy begged, nearly breaking her concentration. But she managed to hold on, the words spilling out less from her own accord now, and more as if they were being compelled to do so.
“Gwen, you’re glowing.”
“This- this shouldn’t be happening.” The cashier had joined in with the distracting clamor. Gwen was almost done with it, she just needed a few more lines.
A hand latched onto her bag just as she reached the last line. There was a flash. A wave knocked her into a raw, brick wall, nearly breaking her nose. She turned around, looking desperately for the hand that had grabbed her bag.
There was no hand. But part of her bag was lodged into the wall. Teddy must have been on the other side. She reeled backwards, breath catching. Oh, God, her brother was dead.
What had she done?
What had she done?
Back on main street, the fight was raging on, exactly how the book had shown it.
She’d gotten there. In the Marvel Universe. But goddammit, it was not worth it.
A boulder flew by her and smashed an unfortunate redshirt passing by the fight. Gwen cringed as a piece of viscera nearly landed on her shoe. That would be her soon if she didn’t figure something out.
Quick reconnaissance told her that there was a costume shop behind her. Big Ronnie’s Custom Battle Spandex, to be specific, with superhero costumes in the window, advertising them to be battle-ready.
A plan was coming together in her head.