Chapter Text
How… anticlimactic, Peter thought.
He had expected a lot of unscientific and magical things on the other side of the door. It could have been a pathway to another dimension, to outer space; it could perhaps even lead to heaven or hell.
But no.
It just led to another… bedroom.
A very messy one at that.
A thin layer of dust seemed to have covered everything here, showing that the owner had not returned for a long time. A battered laptop sat open on a cluttered desk next to a disassembled circuit board and a tangle of soldering irons, the screen dark and dead. Clothes were haphazardly draped over an old wooden chair, and a pair of worn sneakers lay kicked off near a bed piled high with rumpled blankets and old physics textbooks. Vintage car posters and science fair ribbons hung crookedly on the pale walls, while scattered chemistry sets and broken LEGO pieces littered the floorboards, waiting in the shadows for unsuspecting people to step on them for a world of hurt.
Peter stepped in carefully, unwilling to disturb the place any more than necessary.
The floorboards let out a faint, dry creak beneath his socks—a sound that felt far too loud in the heavy, stagnant air. Holding his breath, Peter began to look around more closely. He drifted toward the corner of the room where a tall wooden wardrobe stood slightly ajar. Pulling it open with a soft squeak of ungreased hinges, he peered inside. The closet was half-empty, smelling faintly of mothballs and old cotton, but hanging near the back were several jackets and shirts that were clearly too large for him. A quick mental comparison told him the clothes likely belonged to a boy several years older—a teenager who had long since outgrown them, or perhaps simply left them behind.
Turning away from the closet, his eyes were drawn to a set of shelves mounted neatly above the desk. Rows of finished LEGO sets stood displayed there. Peter’s lips parted in genuine admiration as he reached out a finger, lightly tracing the smooth plastic edge of a build he didn't quite recognize, marveling at the patience it must have taken to snap every tiny piece together.
Near the base of the desk, a stack of thick textbooks caught his eye. Crouching down, he blew softly across the top cover. A gray cloud of dust puffed up into the dim light, making him wrinkle his nose. Wiping the grime away with his sleeve, he flipped open the cover—high school physics and advanced algebra. Higher-level stuff than what he was dealing with. But when he checked the inner flyleaf where students usually scribbled their names, there was nothing. Just a blank, white page, devoid of any signature or identification to tell him whose desk this had once been.
Because the room was remarkably small, Peter finished exploring it in just a couple of minutes.
That was when he noticed the other door. Aside from the green door that he kept open, which led straight back to his own bedroom, there was a second, ordinary wooden door set into the opposite wall. It was closed tightly shut.
Peter stood in the center of the quiet room for a long while, chewing nervously on his lower lip. He debated with himself, weighing his options. I should go back, a sensible voice in the back of his head whispered. I should just close it, pretend none of this ever happened, and go back to bed. And yet… curiosity is a stubborn thing, especially in a thirteen-year-old boy.
Since I’m already here, he reasoned, his heart giving a small, nervous thud against his ribs, I might as well continue.
He walked toward the door, his footsteps silent on the dusty floor. Reaching out, he wrapped his fingers around the cold brass doorknob and gently pressed down. To his surprise, it turned smoothly with a faint click. It wasn't locked.
Holding his breath, Peter slowly pushed the door open, inch by inch, until he had created a small gap just wide enough for one eye. He peered out.
Outside lay a dim, shadowed hallway, coated in the exact same layer of undisturbed dust as the bedroom. Stepping cautiously across the threshold, Peter crept out into the open space. From where he stood, he could easily see a small living room, a compact dining area, and a kitchen. Just like the bedroom, every surface was blanketed in gray dust.
Peter stood frozen in the stillness, a deep, unsettling quiet ringing in his ears. What happened here? he wondered, a cold knot forming in his stomach. Where are they? Did everyone just... vanish?
It was only then that he noticed the picture frames hanging in a neat row along the hallway wall. Drawn by a strange, magnetic pull, he walked closer, stepping carefully around a patch of sunlight slicing through the dusty air. He reached up and blew softly across the glass of the nearest frame, trying to brush away the grime to see the faces of the people who had lived here.
But to his utter shock, the photos were badly damaged. The images beneath the glass were heavily smudged, warped, and rubbed away into an indistinct, muddy blur, making it completely impossible to make out any features, names, or expressions. Frowning, Peter moved to the next frame, and the next. Every single one of them was the same—wiped clean of identity, as if reality itself had actively refused to let anyone remember who they were.
Suddenly, an incomprehensible sense of loss gradually enveloped him.
It wasn't just fear of the unknown. It was a profound, suffocating sorrow that seemed to crawl straight out of the floorboards and wrap its fingers around his soul. A heavy, wrenching sadness filled his heart, making his chest feel as tight as a clenched fist. He couldn't seem to draw a full breath, his lungs suddenly burning as if starved of oxygen.
Peter absentmindedly wondered if his asthma had somehow flared back up. Considering the thick clouds of dust hanging in the air, if it had been the old Peter—the fragile, sickly boy he used to be just a few days ago—he would have already collapsed into a full-blown attack. But this wasn't asthma. This was a weight pressing down on his chest, heavy and grief-stricken, born of a place where nobody had walked or remembered for a lifetime.
He stood there for a few agonizing seconds longer, his lower lip trembling as the atmosphere became too heavy to bear.
I want to leave, he thought, panic finally overriding his curiosity. I want to go back. The strange, gloomy apartment suddenly felt less like a mystery and more like a tomb. He felt deeply, profoundly uncomfortable all over, his skin crawling with an invisible dread. More than anything in the world right now, Peter just wanted to run back through that door, find Aunt May and Uncle Ben, bury his face in their clothes, and cry until the tightness in his chest finally went away.
If he gave his aunt and uncle a scare after they opened their eyes and saw their wide-eyed, dust-covered nephew standing beside their bed at an unholy hour of the night, they certainly didn’t show it. May fussed over him while asking him to clean up and change his clothes. She pulled him tight against her chest, her soft hands rhythmically rubbing his back, while Ben wrapped a heavy arm around both of them, murmuring low reassurances until the chill in Peter’s bones finally faded away. They just held him until he fell asleep.
Of course, the leniency had an expiration date, and it expired sharply the next morning over breakfast.
"You did what?"
Aunt May’s voice cut through the kitchen like a razor blade, her spatula hovering dangerously over a sizzling pan. Across the small table, Uncle Ben rubbed the bridge of his nose, looking more exhausted by anxiety than by lack of sleep.
When Peter, sheepish and staring firmly at his plate of scrambled eggs, finally confessed what he had found in his room the night before, and that he had actually walked through it, May didn't yell—which somehow felt infinitely worse. Instead, she lectured him with a terrifying intensity about safety, common sense, and the sheer recklessness of wandering into unknown, potentially hazardous spaces.
"You are grounded from late-night explorations, mister," May finalized, crossing her arms as she pointed toward the front door. "And since you clearly have too much restless energy and zero self-preservation instinct right now, go outside. Get some fresh air. Go play at the park."
And so, here he was.
Peter hugged his old canvas bag tighter against his chest and stood absentmindedly on the edge of the bustling street corner, still reeling from the whiplash of May’s stern scolding. One minute he was cradled like a fragile toddler, and the next he was being shooed out of the house like a stray cat with too much time on its hands. Deciding obedience was the safest route after crossing a line, he dragged his feet all the way to the neighborhood park.
He arrived just as a group of local teenagers had claimed the concrete plaza near the skate ramps.
Peter leaned against a green park bench, watching, entirely transfixed. A tall kid in a faded hoodie popped the tail of his board, caught air, and executed a clean kickflip before landing with a sharp, satisfying clack of wheels hitting concrete. The small crowd of onlookers cheered, and Peter found himself smiling, a quiet wave of amazement washing over him.
They made it look so effortless.
A familiar, bitter twinge of memory pricked at the back of Peter's mind. He had tried skateboarding once, back when he was ten. It hadn't gone well. One botched ollie, a catastrophic loss of balance, and a trip to the ER later, he had walked away with a severely fractured forearm and a heavy orthopedic cast that kept him sidelined for months. Uncle Ben had quietly retired the board to the back of the garage after that, packing it away alongside Peter’s dwindling athletic ambitions.
He should have thrown it out, Peter thought bitterly, staring down at his sneakers.
For the longest time, that failure had been his primary standard. Every physical activity came with an asterisk, a reminder of what his body couldn't do. But standing there now, watching another kid carve smoothly across the half-pipe, a strange, rebellious thought crept into his head.
I could probably do that now.
He flexed his fingers inside his pockets, thinking deeply. He wasn't fragile anymore.
Peter lingered by the edge of the asphalt, watching the boarders launch themselves into the afternoon air, wondering just how much gravity would fight him if he decided to step onto a board again.
As the afternoon sun began to beat down with a relentless, baking intensity, the shade of the park trees offered less and less relief. Wiping a sheen of sweat from his forehead, Peter finally turned away from the skate ramps and let his feet guide him toward the nearest convenience store. The blast of air conditioning the moment he pulled open the glass door felt heavenly. He grabbed a cold carton of fruit juice from the cooler, paid the clerk with some of the allowance May had tucked into his pocket, and stepped back out onto the sun-bleached pavement, poking his straw into the cardboard box.
He hadn’t even taken two steps when the world exploded into motion.
A heavy, blind-sided impact slammed into his shoulder, sending him stumbling sideways. His juice carton burst from his grip, spilling against the concrete with a wet splat. Before Peter could even register his footing, a frantic, high-pitched scream cut through the heavy street noise.
"Hey! Stop him! He's got my bag!"
Peter blinked, shaking off the sudden jolt as his reflexes effortlessly stabilized him before he could hit the ground. He snapped his head up, his sharp eyes instantly locking onto the broad-shouldered man in a dark jacket who had just bowled him over. The guy was sprinting flat-out down the sidewalk, clutching a stolen designer handbag like a football, his breathing ragged and panicked.
Instinct flared. Without thinking, his body surged forward, a natural desire to chase and intercept taking over.
I can catch him in three seconds, his mind calculated instantly.
He took half a step forward—and then froze.
Just a few yards ahead, the wail of a siren tore through the air. A black-and-white NYPD cruiser swerved aggressively against the curb, its tires kicking up dust as it screeched to a halt. The driver’s side door flung open, and a stocky officer in uniform hit the pavement boots-first, drawing his baton and instantly shouting commands as he gave hot chase after the fleeing suspect.
Peter stopped dead in his tracks.
Around him, the rest of the sidewalk pedestrians had scattered to the sides, murmuring, pointing, and pulling out phones. They were treating it like a spectator sport—just another fleeting bit of afternoon drama in the city that never sleeps.
Peter looked from the sprinting robber to the professional cop already closing the distance, and then down at his own hands, still holding the crushed remains of his cardboard juice box.
The police can handle that, a quiet, sensible voice reminded him—echoing Aunt May’s sharp warning from earlier that morning about safety, common sense, and staying out of trouble. He didn't need to play hero.
With a soft sigh, Peter stepped backward out of the flow of foot traffic, blending seamlessly into the crowd of onlookers. He watched the chase round the corner for a brief second longer before he turned away, slipping his hands into his pockets and walking in the opposite direction.