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Peter should have been thirsty. People get thirsty when they get lost in the desert, right? And the Soul Stone seemed like a desert. There was sand everywhere, and he and the Doctor had been walking for so long, but they never got thirsty. He didn’t know if it bothered Doctor Strange, but it made Peter uneasy.
“Do you really think we’re gonna find someone else? Maybe we were the only ones that got poofed.”
Stephen Strange shook his head. “Too many coincidences for us to be alone here. The leaves, the smell of smoke, the odd footprints. They were too big to be either of ours. There’s got to be other people here. Thanos, in theory, killed half the universe… they’ve got to be here.”
“Okay, so we’ve gotta run into someone eventually, right? We should have run into someone by now, even if they’re, like, an alien?”
“Yes.” The Sorcerer Supreme didn’t sound too convincing.
“It’s not like this place is infinite, right?” He paused. No response. “Okay, so it’s infinite.” Peter sighed. “We’re stuck in an infinite desert, and we don’t get hungry, and we don’t get tired, and we don’t get thirsty. But we get bored, right? Can’t we at least see some mirages? Change things up a bit?”
“You need heat for mirages, and a working human brain. Need I remind you that neither of us are technically inhabiting physical bodies at the moment, nor are we near the Earth’s Sun.”
Peter squinted at the horizon. “Okay, then what’s that, then?” It looked like some sand was kicking up, forming shapes, structures, before fading back into the ground. It was… changing color, fizzing out like broken pixels on a computer screen. Doctor Strange put an arm out protectively in front of Peter, even though both of their powers were still unresponsive.
“Oh, good, you can see it too.” Peter was trying to act cool, but inside he was excited just to see something happen, even if it was dangerous. The glitching…whatever it was grew closer and closer to the pair, until it converged into a vortex in front of them, hovering above their heads. Peter dropped his voice to a whisper. “Is this an alien thing? It looks like an alien thing.”
Doctor Strange was tense, his eyes tracking the swirling colors of the anomaly. “I don’t know, but it looks dangerous. Get back.” He tried to push Peter behind him, but the boy wouldn’t budge. Something had caught his eye among the swirling shapes and patterns, something that looked familiar. Darting around Strange’s arm, he reached a hand into the portal, his head feeling fuzzy as he made contact.
“Peter, no!” Doctor Strange yanked Peter’s arm back out of the vortex, and the two looked in shock as the shifting colors settled into red and black. It was almost a relief to be limited to a few colors again, as it wasn’t easy for their eyes to adjust to seeing something so colorful after seeing only yellow and orange for so long. The vortex was loud, too, disturbing the silence they’d grown used to. It took a while for them to realize the sound that rung in the air wasn’t either of their own voices, but someone else, their scream echoing in the desert.
And suddenly, something dark shot out of the portal, and it was gone.
The desert was still again, and in front of them stood a person. For a second, Peter thought he was standing in front of a mirror as he took in the figure’s appearance, its large eyes and the spider-web pattern tracing over its skin. Something pricked at the back of Peter’s neck. “You’re like m—”
“Like you, yeah, I know.” Peter was kind of surprised to hear such a young voice, another boy around his age. He was so used to hearing adult voices from behind masks.
“This is crazy.” He took a moment to take in the other boy’s suit, so much like his but also different, with looser, paint-like lines instead of rigid metal. “Who are you?”
The other boy paused, focusing on Doctor Strange, who was squinting suspiciously at him. The boy in the spider suit leaned in close to Peter, which made Strange tense up. “Can we trust the guy in the cape?”
“Who, Doc Strange? Yeah, course. Why…?”
The boy pulled off his mask. “Hey. I’m Spider-Man. You can call me Miles.”
“Hey, me too!” Peter reached to pull off his own mask before remembering that he’d ditched it a while ago. He kind of wished he’d kept it around, even though the suit’s drained battery meant the eyes didn’t work and were therefore completely useless. “I mean, I’m Spider-Man too. I’m Peter.”
The boy’s eyes widened. “Wait. Like, Peter Parker?” Miles grinned and darted around Peter as if sizing him up. “You’re so young!”
Peter took a step back. “I’m sorry?”
Miles laughed. “No no, it’s just, the Peter in my universe—well, okay, the Peter in my universe is dead, but this other Peter, from this other other universe, he’s super old.”
Peter paled. “The Peter in your universe is dead, too, huh?”
Doctor Strange cleared his throat. “Excuse me, other Spider-Boy, you’re saying you’re from another timeline? Excuse me if I don’t believe you. No magic can penetrate the boundary of the Soul Stone, and you don’t seem to have the Time Stone, so—”
Miles just shook his head. “Woah, woah, woah. I don’t know what weird desert universe I’ve warped into, but did you just say magic? What’s a “Time Stone”? I just got here with the goober.” He pointed to a large device on his wrist that Peter had initially mistaken for a wristwatch. “Miguel said it’d let me perform an ‘autonomous multiverse jump,’ or something? I was trying to get to Earth-65, but I guess I must have entered something wrong.” Miles looked up for a second. “Hey, where’s the Sun?”
Peter shrugged. “Your guess is as good as mine.”
Miles blinked. “Oooo-kay. So, does your desert-Earth have, like, some kind of lab I can use, or an Aunt May I can go to for help with the goober, or…”
“Wait, how do you know my Aunt May? And what does she have to do with the…” Peter searched for the right word. “Glitchy watch thing?”
“You usually call it a goober.”
“Uh—Okay, the goober? Man, your timeline must be weird.”
Doctor Strange scowled. “Excuse me, cutting in again. I can’t help but notice you are taking to the concept of ‘alternate timelines’ remarkably well. Are you sure you know what you’re talking about? It takes years of training to even begin to comprehend the complexities of the universe, the way reality doubles back on itself in a web of—”
“Nah, Doc.” Peter shook his head. “We’ve seen movies.” He looked at Miles. “I’m assuming. You have movies on your Earth? Like, Back to the Future?”
“Yep.”
“Nice.”
“Yeah.”
“…”
“If you two are done,” Doctor Strange said, “we need to get moving again if we’re ever going to catch up.”
“Oh yeah, what are you guys doing, anyway? You look terrible.”
“Hey!” Peter didn’t think he looked terrible. Well, he hoped. It had been a while since he last had the luxury of using a mirror, or even being around a moderately shiny surface. He ruffled his hair self-consciously.
Doctor Strange gave up on waiting for the boys to hurry up and started walking away on his own. He called out behind him, “You’ll excuse us for not looking our best. We are dead, after all.” Strange was glad they couldn’t see the worry on his face. It was exhausting trying to mask his own panic with eye-rolls and sighs.
“Wait.” Miles ran after Strange, and Peter followed. “What do you mean, dead? You don’t look dead. Just dead like, tired.”
“Oh yeah, we’re pretty dead.” Peter had mostly desensitized himself to the concept. He half-heartedly wondered if that was healthy. “Wait, the Doc said we’re only here because we’re like, souls, right?”
Strange didn’t answer.
Peter continued. “Right? We don’t have bodies. They disintegrated and now we’re trapped in a glowy rock thing. Does that mean—Miles, are you dead too? Did Thanos come to your Earth?”
“Uh, no. I got here with the goober, remember? Who the heck is Thanos? Some kind of Avengers thing?”
“Yeah, an Avengers thing. You know,” Peter grinned. “I’m an Avenger.”
“I know. You usually are.”
“Oh.”
“Yeah.”
“Cool.”
“So…” Miles wasn’t sure how to phrase the question. If he’d teleported into some kind of afterlife dimension… Was his Peter Parker here? Was Gwen’s? And was it limited to superheroes, what about everyone else? What about Uncle Aaron?
The man in the tattered red cloak cleared his throat. “If you’re not dead, how are you here? The Soul Stone can’t contain physical forms. It just doesn’t make any sense.”
Miles blinked. “Huh. I dunno. Maybe…we shouldn’t think about it too hard?”
“This is important,” said Doctor Strange. “You can’t just—”
“Sounds good to me.” Peter shrugged.
“But—”
“Don’t really care.”
It hurt Strange to hear Peter sound so dismissive. Like he didn’t want to question the one thing connecting him to the real world, because if he did, it might disappear. When they’d first started their trek through the desert, he was full of so many questions, so much energy despite their situation. Now, he sounded just as scared as Strange felt. It didn’t help that he didn’t know how much time had passed. He didn’t know how long it would be before Carol Danvers reached Earth back in the real world—with every passing minute, he doubted whether they’d ended up in the timeline he’d seen back on Titan.
“Hey!” Miles broke the uncomfortable silence. “Maybe I can get you guys out of here. I think this thing can take multiple people… You’d have to be quick, but I think we can do it. And you don’t even have to worry about glitches, trans-dimensional travel is super safe now. Miguel worked it all out.”
Peter began to respond, but Doctor Strange cut him off.
“Out of the question,” he interjected. “We need to remain in the stone. Any deviation from the timeline… could be catastrophic.”
For the first time since they’d met, Peter got truly angry at Stephen. “But this is a way out, Doc! Isn’t this what we’ve been waiting for? We’ve been walking through this desert for so long, we’re never going to find anyone else.” Peter’s voice broke. “Don’t you have anyone you miss?”
Strange sighed. When he started this postmortem mission babysitting the young superhero, he’d braced himself for the non-stop chatter of a Gen-Z kid. He hadn’t expected to care about Peter, or feel so unable to protect him.
“As I recall…” Strange began, trying to maintain his appearance as a stoic, authoritative sorcerer. And not the man who was quizzing Peter on obscure song lyrics just hours earlier. “It is vital that I remain in the Soul Stone until the remaining Avengers start their mission. It is also crucial that you stay out of the main timeline… But I suppose there’s nothing that says you can’t hide on another Earth. As long as you come back before the final battle.”
Peter’s face immediately brightened. “Really? You think so?” He turned to Miles. “You can bring me back?”
Miles shrugged. “Sure. Hey, I can introduce you to the rest of the squad—Gwen, Peni, Peter—I mean, the other Peter. A couple of other Peters.”
“Aw man, other versions of me… Is one of them evil? I bet there’s an evil me. With a goatee…” Peter looked at Doctor Strange. “I mean, never mind.” It took a moment for Peter to register the sadness in the doctor’s eyes, as opposed to the usual aloofness. “Oh. You can’t come, right? I can stay here, with you—”
“No, Peter, I will be fine.” Strange pushed Peter towards Miles. You were right, we have been walking through the Soul Stone for so long. It won’t hurt for you to be around some other people for a while. That is, if this, uh, “goober” works.”
Miles grinned. “It’ll work! Watch!” He pressed a button on the side of the watch and a holographic display hovered above his wrist. He jabbed at a few options impatiently.
“Woah!” Peter moved over Miles’ shoulder to see what he was doing. “Looks like something Mr. Stark would build.”
“Oh, this is way more advanced than Stark tech.” said Miles. “Well, I’m assuming. Unless your Tony Stark is super advanced in comparison to the one in my—well, you get the idea.”
“I guess this is goodbye then.” Doctor Strange still stood uncomfortably behind the two boys. Peter’s stomach dropped.
“I’m really sorry I’m leaving you, Doc.” Before Strange could reply, he ran over to the doctor and gave him a hug. “I hope you find the others soon.”
Strange didn’t move. It was like he didn’t know how to respond. Like no one had hugged him in a very long time. Not wanting to make him any more uncomfortable, Peter let go and scurried back to Miles.
“Hey Miles, is it ready yet?” Peter looked back at Strange.
“Yep, gimme one sec.” Miles swiped at a few more controls.
“You better do some research while you’re over in that other timeline, Peter Parker.” Strange had recovered from the hug. “I’m going to quiz you when this is all over.”
“What, like, he wants you to do science homework in another dimension? That’s rough.” Miles commiserated.
“Nah,” Peter shook his head and smiled. “music. Doc quizzes me on song lyrics and like, riffs and stuff. Hey, do different Earths have different music? Oh, man, this is gonna be SO cool.”
Strange allowed himself to smile, just a little, at how happy Peter seemed at just the thought of being anywhere but this desert. It was almost like seeing his old self again.
“Hey, you ever heard of Post Malone?” Miles asked, and Peter nodded. “Man, his stuff is the BEST.”
Strange sniffed. “Never heard of him.”
Peter laughed. “Well, I’ll send you a link. When we’re back on our Earth, when it’s over. Maybe I can teach you about modern music.”
“Okay, this is it.” Miles pressed another button on the holographic display, and the technicolor portal whirred back to life in front of them. “Grab my hand.”
Peter grabbed Miles’ hand without hesitation, looking back at Doctor Strange as an afterthought. “Thank you, Doc.” Peter meant it.
“Here we go!” Miles pressed one last button, and both boys felt every molecule in their bodies start to buzz. Peter was blinded by bright light, colors he hadn’t even imagined existed—
And then he fell to his knees. Miles and the portal had disappeared quicker than they had arrived, leaving Peter surrounded by nothing but sand. He felt a hand on his shoulder.
“Peter…”
“No!” Peter shouted, turning away from Strange’s hand. “I don’t understand—”
“It’s possible his technology wasn’t meant for disembodied souls, Peter. I warned you the Soul Stone couldn’t restore or contain physical forms—”
“I know!” Peter’s voice was hoarse, as if the sand-but-not-sand of the Soul Stone had finally worked its way into his throat. “I know. I didn’t want to think about it, because if I thought about it—I knew it wouldn’t work. But he mentioned an Aunt May—there’s another May out there, Doc, and she lost her Peter.” Peter wanted to cry, but it felt like the sand was everywhere now. It was drying out his eyes. He knew he should stand up, get his face away from the ground, but he couldn’t. “I can’t go back to my Aunt May, but maybe I could have helped another one.”
“I’m sorry.” Doctor Strange suddenly wished he’d spent more time with children—nephews, coworkers’ children, anyone—so that he’d know what to say to Peter. How do you console a teenager? How do you console a teenager who’s just lost everything he’s ever known?
“I am Groot.”
A sound made its way over the desert horizon, in the odd way that sounds echoed in this borderless spirit world. Peter’s head perked up, locking eyes with the doctor.
“…what did you just say, Doc?” It didn’t make sense. It sounded like gibberish.
“I said I’m sorry, but I heard it too—Over there. can you see…?”
Two shapes, at first dark blobs, backlit against the bright sunless sky, but growing clearer every moment, crested the horizon. Peter and Strange started running, against every instinct in their bodies begging them to slow down, they’d been walking for so long—and they saw the two shapes do the same. There were two people, or almost people. A man in a distinctive red outfit. Star-Lord, Peter remembered he’d called himself. And next to him, a tree, or a person, he couldn’t tell. It looked like something out of the Lord of the Rings movies.
Peter Parker laughed as he and Doctor Strange ran towards the two Guardians. Maybe this nightmare was almost over after all.