Reckless

Nearly a month passes before Peter acknowledges his father's death with any formality. They've barely spoken of it because the weight of it seems to dominate every pause, every bit of silence between them. Gwen hasn't wanted to pressure him to talk about it, but she's starting to worry that he never will when he unexpectedly tells her on a cold day in January that he wants to visit his father's grave.

It's the kind of cold that bites and nips at every sliver of exposed skin. Gwen trudges beside him quietly, burrowing her fists into her pockets, nudging her chin deeper into her scarf. Peter is quiet but not sullen. They walk a ways into the empty graveyard, their shadows short against the morning sun.

Suddenly he stops.

"So this is it."

Gwen reads the headstone. It's a little one, unobtrusive and flat on the ground, that simply reads Parker—no first name, no dates. It's actually Captain Johnson who took care of all the arrangements. She hasn't seen the grave until now, either.

She hazards a glance at Peter, not sure what to expect. But his eyes are steady, his expression thoughtful; it's actually the most composed she has seen him in weeks, or what little she has seen of him. She is all but living in his apartment now, having wordlessly moved her things across the hall a few at a time, but he is hardly ever there. He comes back at random intervals, sometimes bloody and bruised, sometimes perfectly unharmed, but always withdrawn and anxious and quiet.

Peter stands there for a few minutes, still and reverent as a statue. Gwen flounders, trying to understand her role in this. She wonders if she should stay as still as he is, or if she should try to comfort him in some way, or if she should leave altogether and give him some time alone. She gnaws on her lower lip, waiting for some sort of cue.

It feels like she has been living like this ever since it happened. She wonders what Peter wants from her, but he seems to want nothing at all, and she feels badly about it. It's not that he objects to her—they have conversations, they sleep next to each other on his little twin bed, they eat and walk around the city read their textbooks side by side. But sometimes she can see a tightness in his face, a particular set of his jaw. And then, unexpectedly, he won't look at her at all. He won't pick up the phone when his aunt calls. He'll just find something to fixate on, like his computer or the police radio frequency, and drown himself in it, inaccessible to the rest of the world.

The episodes only last a few hours, but those are the few hours Gwen feels the most useless. It doesn't feel right to try to make him talk to her before he's ready to talk, so all she can do is sit there in the excruciating silence and wait for him to come back.

Peter starts walking away from the gravestone so unceremoniously that Gwen stands there, bewildered in his wake. She thinks maybe he's just pacing, that he'll come right back, but his strides are purposeful and headed toward the entrance.

"Wait," says Gwen, without thinking.

Peter stops and she feels her cheeks heat up. She shouldn't be orchestrating this, but somehow it doesn't feel right. Like he's leaving this unfinished, brushing it under the rug again so he can spend another month buried in his grief.

He's looking at her, waiting for her to either explain her outburst or follow him. His eyes are so tired. She knows he doesn't sleep much anymore.

"What?" he finally asks.

Gwen swallows hard. "I just—I don't know. Thought you might want to say something."

Peter doesn't miss a beat. "Why? He's dead."

He says it so bluntly that Gwen can't help but cringe. She takes a few steps forward, her boots crunching against the hardened frost, but then she stops again. She bites the inside of her cheek, deciding she shouldn't say it, but saying it anyway: "Why did you even want to come here?"

If she's looking for some admission, some crack in the armor, she is disappointed. "I don't know," he says stubbornly. He shifts his weight onto his other foot impatiently. "Let's go."

"Peter—"

"What?" he snaps. When he shakes his head she sees the irritation creased into the lines of his face, but she already knows he's mad at himself, not at her. "I'm sorry," he mumbles, "I just—I'm done here."

"I'm not," says Gwen.

His voice is surprisingly even. "Fine," he says. "I'll meet you at the front gate."

She closes her eyes and listens to the sound of him trudging away. Now that he's gone she feels stupid for saying anything in the first place. She had hoped he might be ready to acknowledge this, that by coming here today he might make some progress with his grief, but she knows that it's the kind of thing that can't be scheduled or planned.

Now she stands here, awkward and unsure, staring down at the grave of a man she hardly ever knew. She exhales and watches the fog of her breath in the air, thinking of how much she owes to Johnson—he made all the arrangements for Peter's father himself. It only occurred to Gwen after they left that Richard Parker was supposed to have been a dead man for years, and that his reappearance, even in death, would cause a media storm that would put pressure and scrutiny on Peter and his aunt that they could never handle. She has no idea how Johnson managed to effectively sweep a dead John Doe under the rug, or how he made the arrangements to have him buried here, but she figures he owes Peter at least that much after aiming bullets at him for years.

They've called off the attacks on Spiderman. There is still a warrant out for his arrest, but Johnson says he can't do anything about that too quickly without raising suspicion. Gwen knows this because she's been going to dinner at home now, and most nights Johnson is there, too. He and her mother really seem to be in love. Gwen hasn't had a lot of time or energy to spare wondering about it.

She turns now, back toward the entrance, but Peter is already out of sight. She figures she has to stay out here for another minute or two now that she has committed herself. She takes a few hesitant steps toward the headstone and kneels beside it.

Somewhere there is another grave, she knows. A properly marked one with the names of both of Peter's parents, in Connecticut, where his mother was born. This is the grave Peter visited two times in the last fifteen years, the grave where he assumed his parents were laid to rest after a plane crash, a plane crash Gwen is starting to doubt ever happened.

That's something Peter hasn't addressed yet: the still unanswered questions, the secrets his father must have planned to tell him in good time. She has a feeling in her gut that there are things looming on the horizon: the unanswered questions involving his mother's death, Connors and his supposed involvement with the Parkers' disappearance, and all of the unforeseeable obstacles Peter will now have to face alone.

Gwen brushes the cold granite with her fingers. She doesn't have anything to say to Richard Parker. She could thank him for Peter, for making him the man he is today, but it seems to her that his involvement in Peter's life was strictly biological: he is the man whose DNA Peter inherited, the man who injected him with a formula that altered him forever, but he is not the man who raised him.

Still, he was a man with the best of intentions. That much she understood. And now Peter is stuck living with those intentions, for better or for worse.

She stands without saying anything and walks slowly back to the entrance, hugging her arms to her chest against the cold. She doesn't see Peter. She figures he must have walked to the car.

She takes a long last look around the graveyard. The day is bleak but their surroundings are beautiful. The graveyard is nestled between rolling hills, framed by thick evergreen trees, and overlooks a sweet little town. It's a long haul from Manhattan and she has forgotten what it's like to enjoy nature without hearing a car horn honk in the distance. Out here she feels different—calmer, maybe. It's been a long time since she's felt this kind of calm. Even after their confrontation with the imposter Spiderman it seemed for days as though she was still living in it: the man's face was plastered over every newspaper and the footage of the aftermath ran on a loop on every television station, and as if that wasn't bad enough, OsCorp was surrounded by a mass of journalists shoving microphones in her face every time she tries to walk through the main doors.

"The Chameleon," the media refers to him. Days after his apprehension they learned his true identity: a Russian immigrant Dmitri Smerdyakov, infamous for his use of smoke and mirrors to impersonate people, a habit that apparently got him in plenty of trouble in his home country. It seems like every hour another story was released involving warrants out for his arrest over the past few decades—the public interest is only just starting to die down, but it doesn't make it any easier to cross a street and see his domineering, thickly featured face staring back at them from a television screen.

"Peter?"

He isn't standing in the entryway, and she can see the parking lot from here so he isn't by the car, either. She leans against the stone gates and sheds one of her gloves to pull out her phone and call him. It rings once and then she hears the echo of a ring, the sound of Peter's phone going off, within hearing range. She turns to the other side of the gate, following the noise of it.

Peter is sitting against the wall, grappling for the phone and swiping at his cheeks and trying to recover just a beat too late. His eyes snap up to meet hers, red-rimmed and streaming. He averts his face sharply, out of view, staring out at the graveyard.

"Hey," she says. He doesn't want her to see this, he doesn't want her to come any closer, but this time is different. This time she will.

He hears her approaching and his entire body seems to tense. A noise escapes his throat, like he's going to try to say something, but after a couple indistinct croaks and one long, throaty gasp, he buries his head in his knees.

She sits beside him. His shoulders are shaking and he is suddenly ominously quiet, holding his breath as if he can swallow down his misery. She waits for him, pressing her shoulder against his shoulder, leaning her head into the crook of his neck. Finally he exhales in a sharp, chest-seizing breath, gasping and sniveling, breaking like a dam. His limbs seem to sag and he sinks into her readily and gratefully and Gwen snakes her arm around his shoulders and lets him cry.

The words come out strangled and almost incoherent: "If I had—if I had just …"

It's an idea that seems to define them. There are so many thoughtless instances, so many inconsequential run-ins and words and poorly-timed moments that have led them here. Gwen has spent entire nights awake imagining ways she could have saved her own father, but at least she wasn't there when it happened. She can live with the knowledge that there is little she could have done. Peter will be reliving those last moments for the rest of his life.

She knows better than to tell him that it isn't his fault, that he can't beat himself up this way. He is telling her because she is the only one who can understand. He is telling her because he needs someone to hear it.

"I turned away for a second." His voice is wet with mucus and anguish. He turns his head back toward her but isn't really looking at her, isn't really looking at anything, with his eyes scrunched and his nose twisted and skin of his cheeks blotched on his face. "Just a—a second, and when I turned around …"

"I know," she murmurs.

She rubs his back, feeling the beat of his heart through his jacket. She doesn't know how long they sit there for. The sun starts rising higher into the sky and the frost around them starts to melt and they sink into the muddy earth together.

She thinks about how far they've come. She thinks about the first time she saw Peter, all scrawny and wiry with a camera awkwardly dangling from his neck, and she thinks about the first time she really saw him, that day out in the courtyard when Flash beat him to a pulp. It's strange to her that those seem like the unbelievable moments now, the ordinary, arbitrary moments, because in her mind the ordinary has become unusual: she is so used to all the insanity that has happened since that it seems strange to think that there was ever a time when the two of them were just normal high school kids whose biggest concerns were getting good marks for college and making it to class before the first bell.

Now when she looks back it feels like the years have gone by extraordinarily fast. She feels old, she feels like she knows too much. It's terrifying how quickly these situations seem to devolve in the scientific world, and it's terrifying how little the rest of the world really knows about what's happening between OsCorp's walls. She thinks of MJ, thinks of the rest of her classmates, unfettered and unburdened, completely unaware of the danger on the horizon.

Would she trade even a second of this to remain ignorant? She looks at Peter, another victim in OsCorp's crossfire, essentially raised as an experiment. She wonders what he would give to go back and change this, or if he would at all.

She wonders where they would be now, if they were the same normal kids they were in that high school courtyard all those years ago. She likes to think that they would have found each other without all the chaos involved in the beginning of their relationship, that they would still be this intensely in love and that somewhere, in another universe, she and Peter could have been happy and plain and safe.

The quiet is disrupted when Peter jerks his head up to look at her. He sucks in a breath, sharp and painful, and the words burst out of him: "Everyone around me—is everyone just going to die?"

She tries not to react. She has been afraid of this since his father died—that he would start thinking the way he did before, thinking that he couldn't let anyone too close to him because of the danger. But she has come too far and waited too long for him to change his mind about the promise and let her down again.

"Yes," she says. He looks up at her, stricken, and she says more firmly, "We're all going to die, Peter."

If she had slapped him clean across the face she thinks she thinks he might look less horrified than he does now. He stares at her for a beat, his face still slick with tears but his expression far from it, growing indignant. "You know that's not—you know what I mean," he says, "I mean die, Gwen, like your dad, like my parents, like Connors and Uncle Ben—"

"No," says Gwen, "No. Don't do this again, I won't let you do this again. You can't just get rid of me—you said it yourself," she insists, because he's opening his mouth to protest, "that living apart from each other, it's like living like we're already dead." She looks at him, unyielding, her words final and certain: "And if, god forbid, anything ever happened to one of us, I don't want it to be when we're alone and gray and old and wondering what might have been. I want to be with you. I want us to be together."

Peter doesn't move, his eyes set steadily on the ground in front of them. "Gwen," he says. "I can't ever … if you're with me, you'll never be able to …" He looks at her a little helplessly, not sure how to say it even though they both know what he means. He gestures vaguely and says, "It would never be the way you pictured it. Your life. You know."

Gwen can't lie to herself. She doesn't see this ending well. And that's a truth that she has to face now, face it and then never look back. She can't really picture a future where things settle down, where Peter lives long enough for them to get married or have children or let Spiderman retire for good, but Gwen has always had a hard time picturing herself having a normal, predictable life. Her father always knew that about her, right from the beginning, and she's starting to think her mother is coming to terms with it, too.

She squeezes his shoulder with her hand and leans in closer, as if the pressure of their bodies together can leave an impression on her skin, can keep him with her forever.

"I don't care," she says simply. "I would always, always—always rather be with you."

Peter doesn't say anything. She knows that it isn't a nice thing for him to hear. She knows it would be easier on him if she could just give this whole idea up, if she could will herself not to love him, and then he would be forced to move on and never feel the guilt of involving her in this. It's the kind of love that can never be unselfish or uncomplicated but it's the only kind of love she knows.

He leans toward her just slightly and cups a hand to her cheek. She meets his gaze and they stare into each other, and she feels that same happy lurch in her stomach, one that she hasn't felt in a long time—a reminder of simpler days, before the guilt and the broken promises and the weight of an entire city on their shoulders. His eyes slide closed and he guides her head forward with his hand, pressing his lips to her forehead and holding her there, in a moment so intimate and loving and sad that Gwen feels it crushing in her lungs.

It isn't permission, it isn't acceptance—he is never going to feel right letting her stay with him. But it's the closest she's going to get.

He pulls away from her and she swallows back her tears, embarrassed by how emotional she is all of a sudden. It strikes Gwen how truly alone they are now. Yes, she has her mother, and he has his aunt, but the people they have relied on, the people who have fundamental understanding of the complications and burdens in their lives, are gone. Sometimes when they're lying on his mattress at night she listens to the sounds of the city around them and everything seems so overwhelming, like the universe might swallow them whole.

"It's getting late," she says, but neither of them move. She rests her head on his shoulder and listening to the sound of their breathing as it punctuates the quiet, and closes her eyes.

Eventually they will get up, walk back to the car and start the long drive to Manhattan. Eventually they will laugh again, and hold hands on the street, and talk about things that matter instead of everything in between. And it's the promise of eventually that gets Gwen through this, through right now, when everything feels like it has fallen apart.

Peter slouches and says to nobody in particular, "What are we going to do?"

It's a question that isn't looking for an answer. She shifts her body away from him and offers her hand and says, "Come on, Peter." She gives him a watery smile, and he gives her a crooked expression in return. Her Peter is still there. She will be patient, she will wait for him for however long it takes. She sucks a breath of cold air into her chest and says, "Let's go home."

I just want to thank all of you so much for reading this and sticking with me and leaving your encouraging and helpful and sometimes downright hilarious reviews. It's been a crazy past few months but I always feel better when I hear from you guys. I'm happy that I finished this, but yikes, life's not gonna be the same!

I also want to thank those of you who went out of your way to find my music stuff on Facebook, I really appreciate your support and it totally makes my day. If on the off chance I ever get real person famous, I trust all of you to pretend that this very large and nerdy work of fanfiction never happened, the same way Peter trusts Gwen with his secret hero identity.

So long for now, fellow fanfickers. See you approximately forty minutes after the midnight premiere of the sequel in 2014.