Ghost Spider swung through the streets of Gotham with a smile on her face, even if it was hidden underneath her mask.

The takeover attempt had been thwarted, she had managed to talk to the Batfamily about the misunderstandings and left on decent terms, and the police had even issued a statement that cleared her name of any suspected crimes that the media had been smearing her with.

She was actually able to freely swing through the city without worry, and it felt fantastic!

“AAAAAAHHHHHH!”

A feminine scream cut through the air. Ghost Spider shot a silk line at a nearby building and quickly changed direction. She kept an eye on the ground while she searched for the source of the scream and spotted the source in short order. Three men had cornered a young woman in an alleyway and were slowly approaching her, one of them brandishing a knife.

Ghost Spider didn’t hesitate to jump down at the thugs crowding in the narrow space. A quick bit of webbing yanked the knife out of the leader’s hand and a few quick punches later had all three of the attackers unconscious on the ground. A few seconds after that they were webbed up and ready for the police to grab them.

“Oh thank you so much! I really thought I was in trouble and then you just swooped down and POW! Took them all down!” the young, blonde woman Ghost Spider saved said excitedly. Privately, Ghost Spider thought the bright blue long sleeved shirt and the red skirt was an odd choice for Gotham but didn’t comment. She was just happy the woman didn’t seem too upset by her near mugging.

“Oh no, just happy to help.” Ghost Spider waved off the praise. “Do you want me to stick around until the police show up? This must’ve been rough on you.”

The blonde smiled and pointed at something behind Ghost Spider. “Don’t worry about that. They just got here!”

Ghost Spider turned surprised that somehow a police cruiser had shown up completely silently. One of the officers was already out of the car and directing people away while the driver was just beginning to get out of the car.

“Ghost Spider, glad to see you after the other night. You did good.” Detective Montoya said warmly after she got out of the car and walked up to the spider themed hero, one hand extended for a handshake. One Ghost Spider accepted easily enough.

“Detective.” Ghost Spider nodded in greeting. “I’m just happy to do my part. I live here too, you know!” she joked.

“And keeping busy by the look of it.” The Detective looked at the three still unconscious muggers. “Well, we can take it from here. Just as long as my partner can stop gushing about his little girl to actually do his job!” she said sarcastically as the other policeman walked up to the pair.

“Well it isn’t every day your daughter saves the city, Renee.” George Stacey joked back, taking the sarcasm in stride.

“Really?! Like you haven’t brought it up every chance you get since it happened…”

“You shouldn’t keep annoying Renee, dad. She might stop bringing the chili you love so much to the barbeques.” Ghost Spider said with a laugh. Another followed it when her dad pulled a face at losing out on Renee’s special chili recipe.

“Yeah well…” her dad grumbled.

He shook his head and began pulling Ghost Spider in for a hug. “Before we go, Gwen, I just wanted to say; nice job saving the day, bug girl.” Ghost Spider frowned as her dad’s voice changed for some reason, becoming cold and mechanical.

Then, without warning, her dad stabbed his hand through her chest. Ghost Spider stared in incomprehension at the point where his forearm disappeared into her ribcage before slowly looking up into her dad’s face.

Instead of the warm eyes of George Stacey, a metallic skull grinned back at her with toxic green lights burning in it’s sockets.

”Hope it was worth it.”

-o-

Gwen shot up from the bed she had been lying in, only to fold back in on herself as her chest flared in pain. She realised pretty quickly that she was breathing like she had just run two marathons back-to-back and was dripping in cold sweat.

A dream.

She scoffed even though it hurt. Nightmare was more like it. Definitely not how she wanted to wake up after…

Memories of exactly what she had done the last time she was awake filtered to the front of her mind and Gwen immediately wondered if it was possible to die from mortification.

She unmasked Barbara... She unmasked TO Barbara… And to make everything even worse, she did that hopped up on drugs in the middle of the Batcave. So there was a negative chance that there wasn’t some kind of recording of the incident so she couldn’t try and convince everyone involved that it didn’t happen.

“What the hell is my life lately?” Gwen moaned, laying back down and covering her eyes.

The cloth privacy curtains surrounding her bed parted allowing a still unmasked Barbara to enter.

“You want to talk about that?” the redhead asked in a neutral tone.

Gwen groaned. “I don’t suppose you’d accept a ‘no’?” She asked halfheartedly.

A short silence stretched uncomfortably.

“Yeah, I didn’t think so.” Gwen caved pretty quickly. “Where do you want to start?”

“How about the big one.” Barbara crossed her arms and leaned on one of the poles holding the curtains up. “How’d you figure me out? And who else do you know?”

Gwen cringed. Not exactly a topic she wanted anyone looking too deeply into.

“It’s Dick’s fault.” She blurted suddenly.

Thankfully, Gwen had already practiced a somewhat logical story.

Barbara remained silent and just raised an eyebrow. As another cop kid, Gwen recognised the tactic. Let the suspect talk without giving them anything to latch on to. A lot of the time people would give away more than they meant trying to convince the interviewer of their story.

“After I got into that confrontation with Nightwing I couldn’t shake the feeling he was familiar somehow. Then I realised that he moved a lot like Dick the few times anyone could convince him to spar at the GCPD academy hangouts…” because if there was one way to guarantee a fight, it was to gather up a bunch of men with training in some kind of martial art and add alcohol. “...then I started thinking about how he spends most nights at the ‘gym’. The same one that he refuses to bring anyone to, but you seemed to know all about. Once I realised that that was just you covering for him spending time as Nightwing it wasn’t much of a stretch to think that the redheaded vigilante running around with Nightwing could be the same redheaded girl Dick hung out with…” She trailed off with a shrug.

Barbara dragged a hand down her face. “Well, I guess it’s a good thing most people hanging around us on campus can’t recognise people by body movement and aren’t going around at night picking fights.” She sighed and refocused. “Who else do you know.”

’Way more than I should’ Gwen couldn’t help but think to herself.

Out loud she said, “I don’t really have solid proof I could show you for anyone else. I mean I’m guessing Kara is Supergirl, because she showed up kinda out of nowhere and you vanished right after.”

“Ooh man, she’s going to be pissed at me for that.” Barbara muttered, although Gwen wasn’t sure she was supposed to hear that. “Alright. I’m just glad it was you and not one of the crazies with a grudge. Next, where and how did you get that suit? The last time we asked...you kinda weren’t all there…”

Gwen huffed. That was an understatement. Though funnily enough her drugged up self didn’t exactly lie.

“I couldn’t tell you the ‘how’ but the ‘where’ was some random back-alley after the...the thing with my father.” Gwen needed to pause for a second, her nightmare briefly coming to mind and making her shudder. “I got it then.”

Barbara nodded solemnly and thankfully didn’t push for more details. Chances were she would ask later, but she was nice enough not to press after bringing up Gwen’s father.

“Any plans then? You did just help us save the city and all.” The redhead was going for joking, no doubt trying to bring up Gwen’s mood, but all she managed was to piss off the blonde. Then she made it worse…

“You should also know Dick isn’t taking the whole identity thing well. He’s got some issues he’s working through so he might avoid you for a while.”

Help THEM save the city was it? Yeah, they helped. Brought in the ringleaders and used connections Gwen had no hope of mimicking at the moment. But that was after SHE had done most of the work. Found out the plot, followed up on leads, ruined some of their plans, and got stabbed through her goddamn ribcage in the process! And now she was being told that the same person that had told her to get lost when the city was on the brink of a massive gang war had ‘issues’ and she should politely accept that?

No.

“Well that's too bad for him.” Gwen snapped, surprising Barbara. “It’s not like he had to deal with trying to take down a mafia family trying to take over the city after killing his dad, getting his name smeared by the media, and being treated like a criminal by the local superheroes for no reason! The same superheroes he’d then need to pretend like nothing was wrong in his alternate identity because they were some of the few friends he had!”

Barbara’s eyes widened and she paled at the outburst, as if just realising how stressed Gwen was dealing with them in her two identities and how everytime they kept rejecting ‘Ghost Spider’ Gwen was hearing the rejection from ‘Dick’ and ‘Barbara’.

“So Greyson can take his fucking ‘issues’ and go fuck himself with them!” Gwen shouted, breathing heavily by the end of her rant. She took a deep breath to try and calm herself that was mostly successful, but her anger was still clearly present. “The only thing I am going to do is wait until I can go home and not come out for a few days. Because the fucking mafia ransacked it. Again!”

Gwen fell back on the bed, lightly panting but glad she managed to let the other girl know what she felt.

Barbara was left gaping slightly, suddenly unsure of herself. She hadn’t really considered what Gwen might’ve been feeling, too caught up in her own feelings about the reveal, and now she wasn’t sure what to do…

“Gwen... I-” she tried.

“Save it. I don’t want to hear it right now. So just do whatever you need to so I can go home. I don’t want to interrupt you from patting yourself on the back for all my hard work.”

With that Gwen laid back fully and turned on her side so her back was facing the heroine. Barbara made some false starts at conversation, trying to deal with the sudden rift in their relationship, but Gwen didn’t engage. Finally, after being ignored for a solid few minutes, Barbara said goodbye and left the medical area, wondering if there was any way to fix this mess.