Chapter Text
We were in May’s living room in the early morning, waiting for Peni to hand the goober to Peter. Noir trying to understand the colors in the rubix cube, porker helping him out. I was sitting cross-legged in front of him, pointing out colors when he asked.
I’m in my proper suit now, not having to hide it and all. That was an interesting conversation.
“This is.. purple.” “No” Peni slips (glides?) into the room
“Blue?” “No” Peter takes the goober from Peni as she hands it to him.
“It’s Green.” I say, pointing at it just to make sure. “Oh”
“Soo.. what was it like with us for you?” Gwen asks, looking over to me.
“Uh, you guys weren”t really.. nice to me. Took things over like it was your world with little intention to help or train me to deal with the used-to-Spider-Man villains. It did help me learn abou—”
“Hey did I ever mention that my uncle is the prowler?
Collective activation of the spider-sense triggers right before the doorbell rings and Doc Ock breaks the door.
“Cute place, real homey.”
“No, why.”
“Oh great, it’s Liv.” Is May friends with her?
A Frankenstein’s monster looking guy walks in from the kitchen, I should probably know his name but it’s not my world- anymore. “This is going to be interesting”
Scorpion walks behind him, aiming his tail towards us. Talking about us being little spiders in Spanish.
Ock starts the fight by attacking Peter for the goober, Gwen helping him out. Noir jumps walking-dead guy with Porker and scorpion shifts attacks onto me. He threatens me in Spanish, preparing to fight.
“Ya know, this would be a whole lot more menacing if you were speaking something I could vaguely understand. Like Italian or Russian or just straight up German.”
Peni pauses our fight for a moment while SP//dr stood up and deadpanned. “Or that”
Through our fight, Scorpion stabbed through May’s plate cabinet, making me wince. She won’t like that. I vaguely see her throw out the dead-guy with her bat as I join into Peter’s fight to grab the goober away from Ock.
My spider sense goes off right before I see the prowler shadow. I look towards the window I know he’s going to jump through, waiting to see..
“Eyoo! I saw you could use some help! Ho ho this is so chaotic! OH! I brought mini-you. He seemed very lost when he appeared here with me. This Is mini-you right?” Prowler gets ready to attack again when he gets hit in the face with Pav’s bracelet.
Everyone freezes for a second at the two new spiders entering. Mini-me starts flickering like I did the first time around when I found out. Which doesn’t make sense when he shouldn’t know about Uncle Aaron.
When Prowler got back up, he tackled Peter who took the goober, teling Mini-me to run. He throws Prowler out the wall which spurs something in everyone else.
“You gotta go man.”
Gwen and Scorpion went upstairs, Ock throws SP//dr and Peter out the front, and Dead guy walkin’ runs out with Noir and Porker. A crash is heard upstairs as Pav and I get outside
“You take Gwen, I take Peter?” “Yep”
We split, Pav swinging up to the roofs where Gwen went to help her. I grab onto one of Ock’s tentacles, holding on for dear life as she whips me around, nearly colliding with Peter. It goes on like that, grabbing on, punching, dodging. It gets into a good rhythm with us until I hear it.
The gunshot. I’ve heard a lot of them, but none are SO.. triggering as that one. Knowing exactly what it ment.
I think the fight ended. I can feel someone- Pav beside me, holding me. We’re on the ground, on a roof. The others are in front of me, talking.
“Hey, you’re back.” Pav murmurs.
“You ok? You blanked out for a bit. Was it that sound?” I nod
“My uncle,” I whisper. He nods
“If you don’t mind,” Gwen starts, I nod to her. “Can you tell us who you are? You probably came through a collider explosion.”
“We didn’t-” “Miles O’Hara, this is Pav.” Pav stares at me, in a way that I assume meant confusion, with his mask still on.
“We should find Miles, the other one, the fella that was with us.” Noir says, getting the attention shifted.
“I thought you were with them.” Pav whispers, I lean closer to him while listening to their brainstorming on where to find him.
“My running theory is that the timeline corrected itself when he was brought to the group. The only other person who should remember that I was with them is you since you brought the mini-me to us and I woke up in his place.” I could feel wince
“Did you see, uh, Them?”
“No, I woke up in class before I met Gwen.”
“That’s good. Right?”
“Yeah.”
“Alright, so Visions Academy then right?” Gwen pipes up, gaining everyone’s agreement.
They start to swing there, led by Gwen. I stand up, pulling Pav with me.
“Just follow along, the whole thing happens tonight and it’s barely morning so I think they’ll explain.”
We make it to Visions Academy, moving through the window to get in.
“You ok? We’ve all been there, you know, for me, for me it was my Uncle Ben.” Peter says, placing a hand on his left shoulder.
Noir places his hand on his right one. “For me, it was my Uncle Benjamin.”
“For me, it was my father.” Peni looks to the side.
Pav knocks my shoulder lightly, having me lean back onto him.
“For me, it was my best friend.” Gwen says
“Miles, the hardest thing about this job is.. you can’t always save everybody.”
“Look, it was my fault. You wouldn’t understand.”
“Miles, we’re probably the only ones who Do understand.”
I tap Pav’s side, standing upright. The focus went to me when I started moving.
“I know it’s hard, better than anyone, but it will get better.” Pav sits on the bed, there but not a focus.
“When It hurts, just try and remember that thei- his legacy, his life continues with you. Ok?”
Before he could respond, the door started turning, Movement spurred as we jumped onto the ceiling to avoid Ganky Lee walking in. “Start a Riot” can be heard very loudly playing through his headphones. Pav’s hanging with the group, I’m perched in one of the corners Ganky has a view of, invisible of course, watching Peter direct the group until Ganky grabbed the comic book and saw them all. Moving quick, I stopped him from hitting his head on the ground.
“A warning would have been nice Coffee Coffee.”
“Naan Bread, Chai Tea.” He hits me up the head.
“What?” Pav helps me guide him to the bed.
“Hm? Oh, inside joke”
Noir and Peter give each other a look under the masks before Noir guides Peni and Porker outside the window. Pav looks at me before I guide him out myself. I sit on the wall higher up from the window, letting Pav listen. We hear Miles question what’s going on and Gwen saying bye to him, flipping underneath the window.
Peter starts telling Mini-me that he wasn’t ready. Pav slides higher up, taking hold of my ankle until I scoot down to him.
“This doesn’t feel right. Peter’s planning to sacrifice himself right? You mentioned that before.”
“Yeah. It did suck, but my dad will come to tell me about Uncle Aaron and instead encourage me. He’s the reason I got control of my powers.”
“Still sucks.” I shrug
Peter swings out of the window, one by one we follow, unknown to them that Mini-me was watching.
“So, can we talk about the craziness yet orr.”
“Give it a second, we move at sundown so we have a bit of time.”
The spiders land on a roof close to the area we need to be, they’re formulating the whole plan with each other. Peni asks if we’re going to join in where we tell her to give us a minute.
“So, you’ve been here before.” “Yep.”
“And this is the past in your life. By two years?” “Mhm”
“And we’re going to go through the collider with them?” “I think so” I hear Porker say something about us.
“But you were here before and I brough mini-you, but things reset? So now they think mini-you was with them this whole time?” “Yeah, pretty much.” Peni looks back at us
“Woah.. Am I missing anything?” I count them on my hand.
“Uh.. I got bit twice, I told them and removed my mask and they don’t remember it, aannnd.. my powers are in flux.”
“What about your um—… what?”
“Yeah, so apparently either we’re not immune to radioactive spider bites or not when we travel to the past.”
“I’m definitely telling your dad. Speaking of..” The spiders break up and Gwen and Peter hesitate, trying to talk to us.
“I haven’t talked to anyone other than my uncle since I got here.” Peter walks up
“So therapy?” Peter pauses again, hearing that question.
“Ew no, I’d rather get hurt again.” I knock his shoulder walking to peter. Pav gasps dramatically.
“I Will put you in therapy you self-sacrificing idiot!” He jumps onto my back, making me stumble forward.
“Alright, then go yourself!” A small fight mainly consisting of shoving starts, Pav still clinging onto me.
“Um..”
“I don’t need therapy, I’m amazing!”
“Uh huh, hero complex and toxically-high self esteem.” Porker and Noir start another conversation with the rubix cube.
Pav makes an offended sound, “You take that Back!” He shoves my face away, still on my back. Gwen looks pained.
“Never!” I finally get him off of me and loosely pin him on the ground, he pulls out one of his golden bracelets, hitting my head with it a bit too hard.
“Ow.”
“…oops”
“You two done?” Peter’s on the side of another building, ready to start swinging to the collider.
We got up and started following the group, Gwen slowed down a bit to ask us, “Were you two friends before this? You don’t seem to be from the same dimension.”
“Yeah! Me- we’ve been friends for months now. Let me tell you, it was definitely weird doing my thing only to find this guy swinging around, confused, trying to fight his villain in Mumbattan.” She ignored her confusion and continued swinging.
“Are we just going to be the weird ones?” He’s swinging upside down
“Nah, we’re just new.”
“-es”
“Miles!”
Huh?
“Please wake up! I need you right now!”
What happened? Why’s Pav yelling?
Explosions are happening around us. We’re surrounded by rubble. Something flies over us..
A gasp of dusty air and back against a rough wall sets me into the present.
The collider went off. It broke, and something went wrong?
“Did this happen the first time? Cause this was never mentioned!” He’s whispering, might’ve been the entire time.
It didn’t activate. It was set off, but instead of anyone going in, it exploded on us. The villains attacked us, almost completely unfazed. There’s something wrong with this whole thing.
“Where are the other spiders?”
Pav doesn’t answer.
He ducked his head away from the rubble we’re hiding behind, hiding from the direction.
Slowly, so painfully slowly, I look over the rubble to see Noir and Penny. Hiding away the second my mind confirmed, I reached for Pav.
“This never happened.”
“Do you think it’s cause we’re here?”
So many things set this off; this can’t be real.
Waking up as myself, the power flux, May’s place, this entire paradox. It shouldn’t..
“This isn’t real.”
“Miles, don't you dare go into shock on me right now.”
“Pav. Think about it. Through all of this, did we ever get hurt? At times when we should’ve? Right now, when I was out, there’s no blood on my suit, there’s no dirt.” He’s starting to see what I mean.
“How’d we get here?” His eyes go wide.
“An anomaly.” Barely a whisper.
“Right. So how do we get out?”
“Sugar coated?”
“Oh no.”
“I think we either have to defeat someone, which wouldn’t make sense, or.. die.”
“We’ll probably die anyway.”
A grenade lands in front of us, shooting up dirt and stone.
“Yeah, that didn’t do anything to us.” Pav facepalms, groaning at the realizations.
“Stupid Idea-”
“Miles I will hurt you if you get us killed painfully.”
“Different stupid idea; go through the collider.”
“Did you forget that it blew up?”
“Exactly! That was the way out. Why would it blow up if it wasn’t?”
We look back over to Fisk’s building. Most of the top of it is destroyed, the whole area of New York looks like a battleground.
“We get in, turn on the collider, jump in and wake up.”
“Got it.”
“Miles?”
Mom?
The collider’s on, Pav and I were about to jump in.
The window to the control room is still broken. But in the control room, like last time, is dad. But unlike last time, mom’s there too.
“Mami?”
“Miles!”
I swing over to my parents. When I land, they hug me close.
“Oh, miles I was so worried! Where have you been? Why are you here?” Mami asks, checking me all over for injuries.
“What are you doing?” Dad asks, pulling me close. “This is dangerous! Come on, we’re going home.”
I take a few steps, ears filled with their worry, when I get stopped. Webbing is encasing my wrist.
“Miles?” Mami asks again.
The webbing goes all the way to Pav’s hand. He looks desperate, white eyes wide. His mouth is moving, but I can’t hear a word.
“Miles, let's go home.” Dad says again.
“I love you two.” I give them both a tight hug, the webbing being tugged more desperately with each second.
“Goodbye.”
They both reach out to grab me, but I turn away, running to Pav and grabbing onto him as I jump out of the room and into the collider.
“Miles?” Gwen?
“He’s awake! Miguel! They’re awake!”