Spider-Gwen 3 || The Fall

This Will Pass || Miles Morales

"You lied to me, even though you knew I'd die for you"

-Return of the Mack, Mark Morrison

"I really don't know if I should've done that."

Miles Morales was staring down at his phone screen, his heart racing as he thought about what he'd just done. The words 'Hey, can you swing by tomorrow to talk?' were on a blue text bubble, freshly sent to none other than Gwendolyn Maxine Stacy. His eyes nervously flicked up to his computer, which had a Zoom meeting with two other people in attendance pulled up onscreen.

"Miles, come on!!" Ganke Lee groaned, shaking his head at Miles's reluctance to do this. "You told us both-you still like her, alright? She hasn't forgotten what she told you, so now's a good time to bring it up!"

The second person in this Zoom meeting nodded in agreement, making her screen bounce a bit since she was laying stomach-down on her bed while looking at her laptop. "You gotta' man up and be clear with her, Miles." Mary-Jane Watson advised. "We don't know how she's going to take this, but you can't dodge it forever."

Miles sighed as MJ tag-teamed with Ganke to keep Miles from going back on this plan. Desperation to find out how to properly handle this complicated situation with Gwen had driven him to reach out to MJ on social media weeks ago, and getting her on this three-person team of theirs had been a lot easier than he'd thought. Miles had messaged her, letting him know that he was 'Miles from high school' and said that he had a 'kind of sensitive question' about Gwen Stacy. 

MJ's response: "What? That she's Ghost-Spider?"

Probably not how Miles would have handled it, but nonetheless they now had a team.

"I really thought the person that knew Gwen would be on my side with this instead of the person that doesn't know her at all-"

"Hey, I met her once!!" Ganke fired back. "At one of your training sessions-"

"Yeah, when neither of us knew she was Gwen." Miles retorted. "She'd told us her name was Max, which she still hasn't apologized for, by the way-"

"It'll come with time, Miles." MJ insisted. "She's Gwen Stacy, there's nobody out there more conscientious than her."

"Not with that thing she's wearing." Miles reminded MJ, making the redhead frown sadly.

"And that's a big reason why now is the time to make her feel things again, right?" MJ said, making Miles look to the side in thought. "She's not giving up that thing because she's afraid of facing her feelings-she's always been like that. It takes a lot for Gwen to confront what's in her heart because she's always been more about making decisions with her head. Get her thinking about it again... and maybe this will be a step towards her seeing clearly enough to know that the suit has to go."

Ganke nodded in agreement. "You want what's best for Gwen, right my guy?"

"Yes." Miles answered without hesitation. "I do..."

"Getting that thing off of her is what's best for Gwen." Ganke told Miles. "It probably made her feel more comfortable with lying to you, with fighting Oscorp as an excuse to hurt people, and to be willing to let that 'Doctor Octopus' kill her."

That last part of Ganke's comment made Miles's heart clench. He could remember Gwen's unstable wavering between being flippant about Otto Octavius's experiment that required her death, and then being brokenly resigned to a death that she seemed to not want.

MJ seemed to share a similar response, her lip trembling as her eyes grew glassy. "She needs to know how much people care about her... that we care about Gwen Stacy being the best version of herself that she can be." She spoke, taking a breath to calm her nerves. "I wouldn't have given you my blessing to do this if I didn't think it was good for her, Miles-"