i.
It’s three in the morning and rain is pouring outside. You sit on the couch with a steaming mug of coffee, trying not to fall asleep to the steady patter of raindrops on the window panes. It’s long past the time you’d usually go to bed, even if you worked a late shift, but earlier, you’d been at a crime scene and so had Spider-Woman — so had Gwen. You had a hard time making out most of what was going on, as did most of your fellow EMTs, but by the end of it all, the criminal hung incapacitated on a large spiderweb, and Spider-Woman was gone.
It’s not like it’s the first time you’ve witnessed Spider-Woman in action. You’ve worked with her more than a few times after you made up, even if it makes you feel a little helpless at times, watching your kid fight in battles you’d hoped your previous job would shield her from. She always arrives home earlier than you and you’d come home to her already decked out in her regular clothes.
But tonight, you’d returned home past midnight and your daughter was nowhere to be seen.
She’s probably fine, you’d told yourself as you brewed your coffee in preparation to wait out her return. The girl has superpowers, but you’d be damned if you could put your anxiety to rest before seeing her come home safe with your very own eyes.
Suddenly, you hear a crash from her room, and a “Shit!” that sounds very distinctly Gwen. You just about spring to your feet, barely remembering to set the mug of coffee down before you approach and knock on her door.
“I’m fine!” she calls. It’s too soft, too hurried; you know a Gwen lie when you hear one.
You hesitate — you certainly haven’t earned back her trust yet, at least not entirely, and you don’t want to overstep. “Can I come in?” you ask, abstaining from twisting the doorknob.
“N-no?” she replies, clearly not having expected the request. “Dad, I’m fine.”
You pause again. “You have to be drenched. That suit isn’t waterproof.”
There’s a pause, and you’re quick to capitalise on it. “I’ll get you a towel,” you declare. No response comes, and your brow pinches involuntarily as you step away from the door. You retrieve the towel and a first aid kit for good measure before you knock on the door again. “I’m coming in,” you say, almost like a question. There’s no protest, so you enter.
You’d never have been able to brace yourself for the sight — your daughter tucked away in the corner of her room, curling into herself, hair dripping, breaths coming much too shallow. You note the way the line of her shoulders locks tensely in place, and how she leans to her right, keeping her back away from the wall.
“Dad, I’m fine,” she repeats, like a mantra. “Leave me alone. Just– go back to sleep.”
“I wasn’t sleeping,” you reply, crouching in front of her and draping the towel around her.
“Then go to bed.” She resolutely keeps her eyes away from yours.
“Not until you tell me what’s going on,” you say, leaving no room for argument. Her face scrunches slightly, and your heart sinks ever so deeper when you realise you can’t tell what it means.
“I took a detour,” is all she says.
“Not to the hospital, I assume?”
She doesn’t respond. The silence sits heavy between the two of you and you wish, like you have an uncountable number of times, that you knew what to say.
“Why don’t you let me help you?” is what you settle for. It’s true — you’ve seen her sore and aching, but she refuses to come to you. She hides it until she thinks you’re not looking, and never brings up her side job. It’s almost like she’s hoping you’ll just ignore the entire half of her.
“You don’t need to,” she almost snaps, but she glances at you for a moment and her gaze softens. “I’ll heal by morning.”
“It is morning,” you say, only for her to roll her eyes, “and I know it takes longer than that.”
You see the shock register briefly on her face before she schools her features. “I can sleep it off,” she insists.
“You have to dry yourself off first,” you point out.
She purses her lips. “I will in a bit.”
You nod and stay exactly where you are. A few seconds pass and she looks up, sending you a pointed look. “Are you not going to go away?” she asks, not menacingly. You can pick out her nerves, and you nearly regret what you’re putting her through. Only nearly, though — her well-being comes first, whether she agrees about that or not.
“I will, once I see you get off the floor,” you challenge.
Her jaw tenses, and you know your plan is working. She huffs, and pushes herself off the floor with trembling arms and a wince. When she’s up, she sways slightly before leaning her right shoulder against the wall. She composes herself, playing it off as casual. “See? Like you asked.”
You sigh and wonder, not for the first time, why stubbornness had to be one of the traits she’d inherited from you. “Are you that determined to keep everything from me?” you ask, and when a little voice tells you that it wouldn’t be all that unreasonable — that distrust — you shove it unkindly to a recess of your mind.
Her lips part in the beginning of a response, but her eyelids press shut and she tips forward momentarily with a sharp inhale. Instinctively, you reach out to steady her by the shoulders, and when you realise what you’ve done, your heart skips a beat, waiting for her to shrug your hands off or to squirm away. You don’t expect it when she doesn’t move to pull away. Something within you settles when she relaxes under your gentle grip.
Your lips twitch into a smile just for a moment, despite yourself, when she shuffles closer to you and presses her cheek to your chest. “Fine, you win,” she grumbles, but her voice wobbles slightly, and you still when you hear a tiny sniffle. You bring your arms around her, careful not to squeeze when you still don’t know the extent of her injuries.
She exhales and leans ever so slightly heavier into you, so you take it as your cue to pick up the abandoned first aid kit and lead her to the couch, an arm around her shoulders for support. She tells you where it hurts, and you get to work disinfecting the cuts and scrapes as she leans against the backrest; you turn off the lights save for a lamp when she reports, almost sheepishly, that the fluorescents worsen her headache. You comment that a headache could come as a result of blood loss. She doesn’t respond, and you come to regret the remark when she avoids looking at you throughout the process.
The silence that settles is less suffocating, with the knowledge that you’ve managed to ease her — or really, wear her down — out of hiding. You’re convinced, a couple of times, that she’s dozed off as warmth seeps back into her body, but proved otherwise when she inhales a little sharper at a dab of disinfectant-soaked cotton ball on a particularly raw spot or when she stiffens at the needle on her skin. Still, you feel the urge to fill the silence, perhaps out of a desire to reconnect, to encourage her to open up.
"You know, I'm alright with Spider-Woman,” you begin, and cautiously, she meets your gaze. Something twists in your gut, a peculiar sensation, when you catch the pinched brow and the faraway look in her eyes, just before she comes back to you. “I just don't like that she's you."
A pensive pause follows as you reach for a plaster. She scowls slightly and waves your hand away from the box when she realises what you’re digging for. "Well, I'm the one who got bitten. You gotta deal with it," she snarks in response, glaring at the plaster you hold victoriously in your hand.
"It’s not that I think someone else would be better at it,” you explain as she sighs in defeat, watching as you press the plaster onto a small cut, with a care that could only be reserved for your child. “I just don't like that you get into dangerous situations."
She hums, and it sounds to you like incredulity and a pinch of teenage scepticism.
"You do a good job," you admit, a word of praise you’d kept to yourself for fear of sounding like you enjoy watching her put her life on the line or worse yet, encouraging complacency. But you’d learnt from a friend that sometimes, you need to be told you’re going in the right direction, that you’re doing someone proud.
She stays silent at first, too much weighing on someone so achingly young. You finish your job as a makeshift medical practitioner with a sincere apology that not much can be done for the widespread bruising besides ice and sleep.
“Thanks,” she whispers, hesitant as she stares at the floor. You pat her good shoulder lightly — your way of saying no problem or of course or I love you or any combination of those possibilities.
She goes to dry off more thoroughly and change into comfortable clothes, and you wait until she emerges from the bathroom in oversized clothes that make your chest ache because they make her look smaller and younger than she already is — too small, too young to have gone through what she has. You hover incessantly up to the point of bringing her a glass of water and tucking her in. She grumbles about no longer being six, but as you leave the room, you could swear that you see her eyes just a little shinier than usual.
ii.
It’s a weekday morning and Gwen leaves for school in half an hour, but the door to her room remains closed. She’s a creature of habit — she never sleeps through her alarms, and sticks to her morning routine almost religiously. Usually, she’d have emerged from her room half an hour before now.
It’s this knowledge that has you knocking on her door. You hear some soft movement and the sound of sheets, a telling sign that she’s still in bed, and a soft groan that instantly has your concern spike. You open the door and approach her, shuffling so you don’t surprise her. She meets your eyes and you see the dark eyebags and her face a shade paler than usual. She scrunches her eyes shut and grunts as what you think is a replacement for a greeting.
You press the inside of your wrist lightly to her forehead as she shivers, and you find that it’s hot to the touch. “You’re sick,” you say, brushing stray strands of hair away from her face.
“No ‘m not,” she mutters, not very convincingly.
“Yes you are,” you respond matter-of-factly.
“Ridiculous,” she insists, rubbing at her eyes sleepily. “Gimme a bit.”
“You’re not going anywhere,” you say, pulling her blanket snugly over her shoulders.
She protests in vain and attempts to get up, but she makes it as far as sitting upright and pauses there long enough for you to return with a fever patch and force her back down with a stern look.
She admits defeat once she’s decided that convincing you she’s perfectly healthy is too Herculean of a task, but she absolutely refuses to let you take the day off and haul her to a clinic, so you settle for making sure she has food for later and setting a glass of water by her bed.
You fret a little longer until her reassurances progress from “it’s okay” to “oh my goodness Dad just go to work already”, and then you reluctantly leave with a final reminder for her to call you or her friends if she needs anyone.
You worry constantly throughout the day, and the day feels so long it’s just about unbearable. You find yourself wondering if maybe, despite her stubborn refusal to see a doctor, you should have taken the day off just to stay at home and make sure she wouldn't be alone.
The moment you get off work, you rush madly back home like your life depends on it. When you finally unlock the door and step into the kitchen to find the small labelled boxes of food empty, you nearly shed tears of relief — a reaction you know is probably quite over-the-top, but one you find warranted nonetheless.
And if you open her door to find a Spider-Man sitting on her bed behind her, stroking her hair as she dozes, and another Spider-Man sitting on the floor by her bed, cross-legged and arms folded, like a personal bodyguard… you don’t bring it up afterwards, even if you feel a little smug about it; you revel in the way it settles on your shoulders like a warm blanket, the knowledge that she has a team to trust, and that she trusts you, at least enough to heed your advice.
iii.
You wake up to the muffled rapping of knuckles against your bedroom door. The first thing you notice is that it’s raining, the drops hitting your window fading into the background like white noise. The next thing you notice, courtesy of the clock on your bedside table, is that it’s half past two in the morning.
The door opens and Gwen leans against the doorframe, slouching at an angle too purposeful to be casual. She has on her band hoodie — the one she’d told you, two years ago, was her favourite, and that she would only wear it under specific circumstances for fear of the laundry machine ruining it early. It’s still fairly oversized on her, but under the hood, you can see the exhaustion in her eyes.
“Dad, do we have heat patches?” she asks, tone undecipherable.
The request immediately sounds the alarms in your head. “Yeah,” you say, sitting up. “Why do you need them?”
"Nothing!" she claims, hurried and defensive. "It's just cold."
"We have blankets for that," you say, eyeing her suspiciously.
You watch as her eyes widen momentarily in panic, gaze shifting away from you. She nods once, slowly. "Right. Yeah. But I already have a blanket. And heat patches are, you know," she explains unconvincingly, "hotter. Warmer."
You raise your eyebrows, clearly displaying your incredulity, but you oblige, reaching towards your bedside table to retrieve a heat patch from the drawer. You sit back against the headboard, prize in hand. "There you go," you say, proffering the packet to her.
She bites her lip and enters the room. When the patch is within reach, you pull it back and leave her standing beside the bed with her arm outstretched. You get the odd, reminiscent sensation of being a parent to a younger child and denying them candy. "Before I give it to you," you start, watching as she sighs and her shoulders deflate, "tell me the real reason why you need it."
"Dad, please," she begs, a last-ditch attempt for mercy.
"Fine, just tell me if it has something to do with why you're awake at 2.30am."
She purses her lips. "Yeah, it's raining and it's cold."
“And it’s not something that can be resolved with an extra blanket,” you finish, crossing your arms. The packet, still in your hand, ends up splayed flat against your chest, almost like a taunt.
She exhales sharply through her nose. “Damn, okay, I don’t need the patch then.” She moves to leave.
When you realise she’s genuinely given up, you call her back. “Just take it,” you tell her, relenting. She eyes you warily as she reaches out, slow and steady, like she expects you to snatch it back. You don’t, and she holds it to her chest for an extended moment as she stares at you, like she’s six and deliberating whether she should own up to having broken a glass in the kitchen trying to get water or milk unassisted.
“My back hurts,” she blurts, eyes determinedly fixed on the floor. Her gaze flits toward yours, and when she sees your eyes soften in concern, she looks away again. “It’s– I don’t tell you because it’s– like, it’s weird,” she quickly offers in explanation, clearly expecting you to scold her for keeping it from you.
“And why is it weird?” you ask, because her ramble has done nothing in the way of clarification, though you think you already know the truth of why she takes to toughing things out all by her lonesome. One of these days, you should really bring up the idea of therapy.
“I don’t know,” she says, like it was a ridiculous question to ask. “I’m barely 17.”
“That doesn’t make your pain any less valid,” you say, feeling a bit proud of quoting your therapist.
She ignores the statement, biting her lip as an awkward silence ensues. “I’m going to…” she says, gesturing at the packet in her hand and pointing towards the door. You nod and she steps away, but halts again at the doorway.
“Can I…” she starts, hesitating. “Can I stay here? When I’m done with this?” she asks, shaking the packet in explanation.
It’s about the very first time she’s initiated any sort of interaction with you after your falling out, at least without necessity, and you still when it hits you — she’s extending an olive branch. You can’t really pick apart everything that’s going through your head now, especially not at the crack of dawn when you’re convinced your mind is still a little bit asleep, but you know there’s fear — fear that somehow, you’re going to fumble and say something wrong and push her away again.
“Never mind, that was– that was silly.” She laughs, aiming for levity but falling just short. “I don’t know why I–”
“No, of– of course,” you interrupt, realising your lack of response has unnerved her, and the last thing you want is for her to think you don’t want her troubling you. “You can join me.”
She exhales shakily and nods. “Okay,” she whispers, barely audible as she steps backwards out of your room.
Yes, you’re scared, undeniably so. But you haven’t dared to hope that you’d have the chance to right your wrongs, to rebuild your relationship with your daughter to what it once was, years ago before you unknowingly became her enemy.
Now that you seem to have been offered a chance at redemption, you’re certainly not going to say no — hell, you’d fight tooth and nail to make sure she’s never hurt again.
When she reappears in your doorway, her shoulders are considerably less tense, and she’s hugging her stuffed penguin to her chest. Your lips twitch in poorly contained amusement.
“What?” she challenges, but there’s no bite, only a hint of mirth. “I like him. He’s soft.”
“I know,” you say, with a solemnity she scowls at.
When she climbs onto the bed beside you, she lowers herself onto her side so gingerly it stirs an ache in your chest, an urge to soothe, to hug her and pray for your body to syphon the pain away from hers; it pains you to know that you’re the reason you can’t do just that.
“One to ten, how much does it hurt?” you ask instead.
“It’s not that bad,” she deflects, pressing her chin to the penguin and closing her eyes. “It’s just worse when it’s cold or raining. Or both.”
You hum in acknowledgement, and wonder if she’s closing her eyes because she’s trying to sleep or because she’s trying not to look at you.
“Do you feel safe? At home?” you ask, voice small and uncertain. Do you feel safe with me? You have no inkling of what she’ll say — you know she won’t say no, but you also know it most definitely isn’t a 100% yes.
She hesitates before responding. “It’s complicated.” She sighs and continues, “I feel safer now than– than I did for the past two years.” It’s a stab to your heart, not intentional per se, but one you know you deserve nonetheless. “But sometimes when I look at you…”
She opens her eyes to meet yours, and you see that there are tears threatening to spill. “Sometimes I still see the gun,” she confesses quietly as she shifts her gaze to her penguin, away from you. “I don’t hold you to it anymore. I mean, it was shitty, but I don’t hold a grudge for it. I just– I want to feel safe with you and I know I can now, but sometimes my brain just– it shows me that.”
“I’m sorry,” you whisper, an overdue apology too delicate to be voiced any louder, “for pointing a gun at you. My daughter is more important than proving a point, and I’m sorry I couldn’t see that.”
“After–” she chokes, unable to utter the name. “After Peter died, you were so hellbent on hunting Spider-Woman down. And the worst part was that you were doing it for me.” She’s crying now, silent tears slipping towards her temple as her breaths shudder. “And then it was about justice, and I couldn’t– it started to feel like you were hunting Gwen instead, and I thought I’d done something to deserve that, as your child. Sometimes,” she mumbles, and you have to strain your ears to catch the last part, “I wondered if you preferred having a son.”
The revelation twists sickly in your gut. In your obsessive pursuit of an unidentified vigilante, you’d ended up neglecting your daughter. Your daughter whom you’d made think that you hated her for being her authentic self, your daughter who’d wondered if you’d gone along with her coming out in silent apprehension.
Your daughter, who sometimes still looks at you and sees the barrel of a gun.
“I’m sorry too,” you offer, the guilt settling heavy and stifling in your lungs, “for not showing you that I loved you. Love you. In the ways that matter.”
She lets out a muffled sob, and it hurts, the way she tries so hard to suppress it. You hold your arms out in an offer, and she wastes no time in shifting into your embrace, tears sinking into the fabric on your shoulder.
“I missed you,” she says, more earnest than you think you’ve ever heard her.
“I missed you too,” you say, and it comes out overflowing with relief.
iv.
“Dad?” Gwen calls, standing at her doorway.
You look up from your work on the couch and meet her gaze.
“My band is performing this Saturday, in the evening,” she continues, a little nervous. “It’s at that place near the school; you know where it is.”
You raise your eyebrows and a smile tugs at the corners of your mouth. “I didn’t realise you rejoined your band.”
“Yeah, um,” she flounders, “that took a bit of explaining.”
You grin at the pinkish tint her cheeks have taken on. “It’s great that you’re in a band again,” you reassure, entirely honest, when she appears at a loss.
“Thanks. And… it would be cool if you came to the event,” she says, finally extending the invitation which you knew had been coming the moment she mentioned the performance.
“I might,” you say and wink at her conspiratorially. She smiles and flashes you a thumbs up before retreating to her room.
And on Saturday evening, you attend the concert — of course you do — arriving as early as you possibly can to stand in the front row.
Your relationship with her is a precious thing; you cradle it gingerly in your palms. Nowadays, it's a little more solid, carries a little more weight, but sometimes you still find yourself worrying that some of it will seep through the crevices like water.
But she is, in a word, beautiful — there is so much to Gwen Stacy without the mask, and it crosses your mind, at least once a day, how fortunate you are to truly know her. She's your light, your pride; you'd do whatever it takes to be the father she deserves. It's all you can do to have faith in your effort and it scares you to no end — parenting without rules to follow, without a book to play by.
But you know that she knows: you try, and it's what matters most to her. And there are only so many directions you can run, only so many places you can go, before you seek a home. You've made sure she knows she has one with you. You find her when she needs someone, in the hopes that eventually, she’d meet you in the middle.
She catches your eye and grins, waving enthusiastically at you from the stage, and your heart swells when you know: at last, your daughter has come home to you.