Nightmares and Drum Rhythms Part II
After around five minutes of walking around headquarters, Miguel felt a bit better. To be honest, anything was better than how he had been after waking up from the dream.
He decided to keep away from the main areas of the building, mostly just the lobby and the main bridge. Occasionally he would use his organic webs from the spinnerets in his wrists to swing around to other pillars and, using his talons, he would climb around to get to higher sections of the building.
Miguel cursed himself for not grabbing some sunglasses before deciding to go straight from pure darkness into the bright white of the headquarters. His eyes were hypersensitive to light which was a pain to deal with, he resolved this by squinting his eyes and having a couple breaks to rub his eyes until they stopped the uncomfortable burning. Just another irritating side effect of his spider side.
As much as he tried to ignore the lingering images of his nightmare, Miguel found himself thinking about it a bit too much.
It wasn’t the first nightmare and it wasn’t going to be the last, the worst ones came after he broke the canon. Seeing his—No. She was his daughter—Seeing a version of his daughter disappear in his arms every night became unbearable to the point where he didn’t sleep. He avoided sleeping for weeks, only resting when he couldn’t function from the lack of sleep.
Jess and Peter expressed their concerns when they saw him, but he just snapped at their offers to help. That was one of the many regrets he had, even after he treated the people around him so terribly they still stuck around and he couldn’t understand why.
Especially Miles.
Miguel hates himself for inflicting that much harm onto the kid. After all, they eventually found a way to fix everything without collapsing an entire universe. Still, the thought of all he did to the kid, chasing him around with talons out and fangs bared, slamming him against a train without any thought of holding back.
It was hard to think back to what exactly his thoughts were in the moment, it was all muddled by his spider-like instincts and the pure unbridled rage he was feeling.
And to top it all off, he never actually apologized to the kid.
Shooting another web out of his wrist, his thoughts still buzzed around in his head.
Of course, he wanted to apologize to Miles but anytime he tried nothing came out. How do you say that you feel bad over telling him to let his dad die and then when he tried to save his dad you sent the entire elite group of spider people to catch the kid?
The thought of the potential reactions to Miguel apologizing scared him, the most likely was Miles not forgiving him and just leaving it at that, but what if he left or attacked him or something?
His thoughts were broken off when mid web swing a body collided with Miguel's, sending them both into a freefall. Before he could use his webs to right himself, Miguel crashed onto a large horizontal pillar using his talons to stop himself from rolling off into another freefall.
A growl escaped his throat at the sudden attack, he quickly got upright and into a defensive position looking for whoever had the nerve to disturb him.
The threatening growl stopped when his red eyes landed on none other than the white suit of Gwen Stacy, she was slower to recover than he was. He could barely hear the teen muttering a small apology as she stood up.
It was strange that Gwen was at headquarters this time, it had to be late at night in her home universe. The teen wasn’t wearing the mask of her spider suit, so Miguel could clearly see her face, her eyes seemed full of thought and there were dark circles under them.
His stance changed from defensive to his normal posture just as the two made eye contact.
“Oh! Miguel, I’m so sorry,” Gwen apologized as she dusted off her suit far too much, likely looking for something to occupy her hands.” My spidey-sense has been off recently, sorry about that. Totally my bad.”
“It's fine,” Miguel brushed it off, his brow furrowing with slight concern for the teen. “Are you alright Gwen?”
“Huh? What do you— Oh! Right, yeah I’m fine. I’ve fallen harder than that before.” She said, ending her sentence with a forced laugh.
Like that wasn’t suspicious or concerning at all.
“Mhmm…” Miguel hummed unconvinced. “ What are you doing here Gwen?” Although he tried, the question sounded more like an interrogation than a concern like he was trying to convey.
“Oh, I was just heading to the… cafeteria to get some food!” Gwen stumbled through her words with obvious fake confidence. “Gotta’ love those… um burgers?”
She stretched a smile across her face with an added thumbs up. Miguel just stared at the teen in silence until the smile was dropped and Gwen's arms dropped down to her sides.
“Yeah, you’re probably smart enough to see past terrible excuses” Gwen mumbled bouncing up and down on her feet.
“Probably smart enough?” Miguel questioned, lifting an eyebrow at the comment, he was smart enough to figure out multiversal travel and definitely smart enough to see through simple lies thank you very much.
The poor attempt at sarcasm fell flat and was just met with a slight bit of fear that was added to Gwen's expression occupied by her crossing her arms and awkwardly clearing her throat.
He let out a sigh bringing a hand up to massage the bridge of his nose. He wasn’t planning on interacting with anyone on his nightmare recovery walk but something buried deep in his mind was telling him to try and help the kid.
“It is probably around two a.m. in your universe, you should be sleeping.” Miguel said purposely relaxing his posture to seem less intimidating. Before the blonde teen could retort he continued, “You shouldn’t be patrolling this late either, so care to tell me why you are at headquarters this late?”
Gwen stared at him for a second until she turned her gaze to the ground, He could practically hear gears turning in her head. He didn’t interrupt, just stood there until the teen eventually sat down on the edge of the pillar, swinging her legs as they hung down.
They stayed like that for a minute, the two just staying in silence before Gwen finally spoke her voice quiet and slightly shaky.
“I–” She hesitated to take a deep breath and let it out in a slow breath. “I couldn’t sleep, I just have had a lot of stuff running through my mind lately and it–” another deep breath “I just don’t know…”
To be entirely honest Miguel didn’t expect this. He expected Gwen to say some snarky quip then swing away from him and they went their separate ways, of course he wanted to help but he wasn’t expecting it to happen this easily.
The silence was getting loud, he briefly noticed Gwen's hands curling into balls as if she was preparing to push herself up to leave.
Without thinking it through he felt himself step forward to join Gwen on the edge of the pillar. He planted himself a good distance away from the teen but enough to continue having a conversation.
The view from the edge of the pillar was breathtaking, seeing the complex structure of the headquarters below them. The few spider variants look as small as actual spiders from their vantage point. Miguel had to squint slightly from the bright white reflecting the lights bothering his sensitive eyes.
“Did something happen on your earth?” He asked, keeping his gaze down at the sight below them. There was no use in avoiding the subject, something was definitely up and he wanted to help or at least try to help.
He couldn’t see if Gwen had any reaction to his sudden question but he could feel her look at him for a brief second before speaking. “Nothing happened, It's honestly stupid how much I’m thinking about it.”
What was it? Miguel wanted to ask that but decided against it, he once heard something about being too forward in situations could make it worse.
“It isn’t stupid if it is bothering you this much.” He said shifting his sitting position so he was leaning against his arms that were placed behind him as he looked up at the pillars above them. “You said something about your powers acting up, that can happen if your mental health is suffering.”
He heard Gwen shift beside him, the teen taking less time to respond.
“Oh,” Her voice was calm like she was accepting Miguel's words. “Yeah, that tracks. Peter mentioned something about that before.”
Miguel was getting worried for the kid. The first time they met she had just revealed her identity to her father and eventually used the spider society as an escape from the aftermath. That probably wasn’t the best move on his part but the fresh pain on her face influenced his decision in the moment. It turned out alright though, even after he forcefully sent her home after the chase with Miles. That wasn’t his best moment either, he was beginning to see that he had a lot of those.
“Do you—” He cleared his throat awkwardly, unsure whether this was a good idea or not. “Are you okay to talk about it? Whatever is bothering you could affect your performance as Spider-Woman and I don’t want to send you on missions if you aren’t fighting at your best.” He quickly tacked on the last part, making sure that it was clear he was just being a good boss.
There was a moment of shocked silence, during which Miguel's thoughts jumped around in his head. The thoughts of regret and how this was just a mistake, why would Gwen talk to him about this stuff? She had a dad that she could talk to, and Peter was there for all the spider-man-ing questions and concerns. This was stupid, he was stupid. Why was he doing this? He should have just stayed in his room and taken another dose of the spider drug to knock himself out.
The silence and his thoughts were broken by the sound of Gwen speaking.
She let out a little laugh before talking, “It's honestly kinda dumb, but I used to be in this band, the Mary Janes, and I was their drummer. I really like playing the drums, it's just beating your emotions and thoughts away using wooden sticks.”
Miguel could hear the smile in her voice as she spoke about the band, an underlying tone of sadness or regret made itself known the longer she spoke.
“Practicing with the band was how I got away from it all. I would just clear my head and play the drums, it was like free therapy!” Gwen laughed, her voice cracking and sounding wet with tears. “I quit the band though, I still play the drums but lately every time I pick up my drum sticks I just think at while I’m doing this, while I’m sitting here having fun, there could be someone out there dying or–or getting hurt and they need Spider-Woman there to save them!”
She took a deep breath, seemingly gathering herself after getting worked up. Miguel just sat there absorbing the teens words, his own mind processing them. It was understandable how she could feel this way, like the weight of the world was on her shoulders. So many others felt the same way.
“You’re not alone in this Gwen.” He said because it was the only thing he could think to say at the moment. “I know you know that, but it's easy to think that you have to be out there. Patrolling all the time so anybody who needs you can get your help.”
Miguel straightened his posture from the hunched over position he had fallen into during the conversation.
“But,” He said after a pause. “You need yourself too, taking care of yourself so you can take care of others. It’s hard to get away from the idea that anytime you’re doing something you enjoy that you should be out being a hero but it's possible.”
At this point he was speaking without overthinking his words, just saying what he thought needed to be said and hoping that it worked.
“Wow…” Gwen muttered as she fell backwards to lay flat on her back while keeping her feet still dangling off the edge. “Who knew Miguel O’Hara could give something other than orders?” She quipped, and when he would usually feel the urge to snap back he just felt like a little light was flicked on inside his chest, causing the edges of his mouth to perk up in a smile.
“Trust me, I have plenty of orders to give you once you get your life under control.”
He pushed himself up off of the pillar, stretching his back that was stiff from sitting so long. Gwen stood up as well, her eyes having a red rim from the tears that were shed.
The two made quick eye contact before it was quickly broken by Miguel walking away from the edge of the pillar.
“If you ever need a private place to do your drumming thing,” He said while inputting something on the goober screen on his wrist. “Go to the training room and tell Lyla to generate a drum set, the whole room is soundproof and you can pretty much generate anything.”
Gwen looked at him with a genuine smile before walking closer to Miguel and giving him a quick playful punch on the shoulder. “I can see why Peter says you’re all bark and no bite”
He glared at the teen, although there wasn’t any real heat behind it. “Don’t test me, I can see what happens in the training room so don’t go burning it down with the rest of your friends”
The blonde teen just laughed and held her hand out to shoot a web, hesitating and turning back to Miguel.
“Thanks for talking,” She said quietly, “ I think I really need it.” She gave Miguel one last smile and swung down to the ground floor.
He looked down at where she landed, watching the teen to make sure she was heading back to her universe to get some proper sleep. Once he saw her disappear through the orange portal he made his way back to his quarters to get properly ready for the day.
The images of his nightmare no longer lingering in his mind