~Broken Family~

Run Away, Simba

Life was boring now. It dragged on, and it was all Gwen could do in the morning to get up out of bed.

Wake up. Accompany Billy to school. Arrive at her own school. Sit through classes. Go home. Ballet. Repeat.

It was a dull existence, and it started to eat away at Gwen's insides. Sometimes she wondered if it was possible to save the world at all, and whether or not they could bring everybody back. It couldn't have been too impossible. After all, she'd been bitten by a random bug in the basement of her apartment complex and gotten super agility.

The night after Harley left for Tennessee, Gwen knelt on her bedroom floor, listening to the soft snores of her foster sisters. Her hands reached underneath her bed and she pulled out one of her old backpacks, which contained her old suit she had made with Peter. She ran her fingers along the faded, worn fabric, pausing by every hole, tear, and stain. They each had a story to tell, each symbolized an adventure with her best friend.

Now he was gone, and so was his little brother.

She buried her face in the fabric and cried.

***

Gwen was awakened at six that morning to her phone buzzing urgently on the nightstand next to her bed. One of her foster sisters smacked it with a pillow.

It's a weekend, I shouldn't have to get up this early...

Groaning and disoriented, trying to blink the sleep from her eyes, she pushed herself upright and squinted at the phone's screen, which seemed brighter than a searchlight.

The contact name read Tony.

Her pulse jumped in her throat and hot panic flashed through her. There could only be two reasons Tony would be calling her this early: it was either an accident or this involved Harley.

"H--hello?" she gasped as she tiptoed out of the room, breath rattling.

Take a deep breath, she begged herself. You don't know if anything's wrong yet.

"Gwen," Tony choked disbelievingly, as if he hadn't expected her to answer. "Harley's gone."

A white wall of shock slammed into her, knocking the still-rattling breath out of her. "What?!"

"He ran away." He forced a harsh laugh, and this time Gwen heard a siren wail in the background. "Again."

***

Gwen's car screeched to a halt outside Tony's cabin, where the flashing blue and red lights from a police car stung and stabbed at her eyes. Two more ominous S.H.I.E.L.D. cars were parked next to it, and Gwen started to wonder if they were just the Tony-Stark-Police now. She jumped out of the car, the chilly early morning wind whipping through the t-shirt and sweatpants she had hastily tugged on, her tennis shoes slipping on the ground, muddy from the dew.

"Tony!" she called, sprinting over to the front steps where the old man sagged, his face in his hands. As soon as he heard Gwen's shout, he looked up, eyes bloodshot and sunken. Pepper hugged an arm around his shoulder, looking just as beaten down. "What's going on?"

"I told you over the phone," Tony said huskily, "Harley ran away."

"But when did---how---?"

"His mom called the police," Pepper explained, the tears on her cheeks shining in the flashing police lights and the warm orange sunrise. Too pretty a sunrise to be happening with such horrible stuff happening, in Gwen's opinion.

"Said something about being 'not ready,'" Tony growled in a dangerous, wobbly voice, eyes fixated on something unseen. "He acted funny all evening and apparently she went out to 'get the mail.' She came back and he was long gone."

"Well, where did he go?" Gwen demanded. "Isn't anyone looking for him?"

"Oh, believe me," Tony snapped, "we've got all the remaining Avengers I'm still in contact with on it, Happy took out his own personal search team down there, they should be arriving any minute now, and the Rose Hill police, no matter how skimpy they may be, are looking for him, too."

A cop materialized behind Gwen. "We're trying our best to alert Tennessee state, Mr. Stark," he said apologetically, "but this was still a pretty recent case. We need to wait at least---"

"Forty-eight hours," Tony growled underneath his breath, cussing as he tore up a fistful of grass. "I know."

"Can't we go look for him?" she asked, tugging anxiously on one of her braids.

Harley was out there somewhere alone, probably lost inside of a dumpster.

Tony nodded. "Obviously. We were waiting on you. We're leaving right now, let's talk on the way."

Gwen blinked in surprise at that. "Me? Why?"

He snorted, stumbling over to his car parked in the gravel driveway and opened a door for her. She glanced inside and saw Clay give a nervous wave from where he waited in the backseat.

"Don't play dumb with me. You still love Harley, and whether or not the feeling is mutual, you're still the person he trusts the most. I think---"

"Let's just floor it," Pepper interrupted. "To Rose Hill. Now."