Chapter Text
A man stepped out of a car, and a ring slipped off his finger.
It hit the concrete with a bounce, with a quiet noise nobody except Peter could hear. He stopped, in his tracks, with both his hands clasped around the straps of his backpack. He wasn’t in a hurry to reach Midtown High, where an exam waited for him in his first period English Lit class, but maybe he should have been.
He’d replay that day, over and over, many times in the future, and imagine what might have happened if he hadn’t stopped. If he’d kept walking. If he’d made it, somehow, safely to school. But those were just fantasies. Future Peter knew there wasn’t anything, really, that could have stopped something as inevitable as Tony Stark getting his own way.
“Oh, hey, Mr. Stark,” said Peter, tearing his attention away from the ring sitting in the ditch, and forcing his eyes to meet Mr. Stark’s sunglasses. “Uh, what are you doing here?”
Peter’s ears began to ring. The little hairs on his arm stood straight up. His spidey senses scratched and clawed at him, begging him to listen.
“I was in the neighborhood,” he told him. “Thought my favorite spider-ling might need a ride to school.”
“Oh,” said Peter. He scanned the street, looking for the threat, but there was nothing. No aliens falling from the sky, not even a petty criminal searching for a purse to snatch. There was nothing, no one, except for Peter and Mr. Stark.
“You feelin’ alright there, Pete?”
“Yeah,” he said. He shook his head, trying to shake the dread away. “Yeah, yeah I’m good.”
“Good,” said Mr. Stark, hitting him with a smile that looked a bit out of place. He put his hand on the open car door. “Come on, I have a suit upgrade I wanna show you on the way.”
“Awesome.”
A warm breeze combed through his hair as he climbed into Mr. Stark’s car, out of the sunny day and into the dim lighting and air conditioning of the sleek, black Audi.
It’d been a beautiful day for a kidnapping.
Too gorgeous, actually.
Peter never imagined horrible things could happen on a day like that one. Not before, at least, when his world had been colored in brights that had nothing to do with what the weather was up to outside.
After he saw the world in drab, dull greys, and occasionally but still too often, splashes of dark red.
Peter clicked his seatbelt into place just as Mr. Stark shut the door behind him. The Audi rejoined traffic automatically, without a driver, and before Peter could ask why Happy wasn’t driving them, Mr. Stark handed him a metal bracelet. It glowed with the same shade of blue as an arc reactor. He accepted it, and handled it with care, as if it were very fragile and it might break if he breathed on it the wrong way.
“Do me a favor and put that on,” said Mr. Stark.
He slid it on his wrist without hesitation and admired the way it looked on his arm. “Oh, cool. Is this the upgrade? Is it nanotech?”
“Something like that.” Mr. Stark tapped his phone a couple of times, and the bracelet shrank until it secured, tight, around Peter’s wrist.
An eerie calm pulsed through Peter’s body, numbing his distressed spidey sense, but somehow, kindling a deep sentiment of unease. He didn’t like feeling trapped. Something that Mr. Stark knew, and this bracelet, whatever it was, felt suffocating.
“Hey,” said Peter, his head snapped up as the Audi turned. “I think there’s something wrong with your nav system. Midtown is the other way.”
“There’s nothing wrong with my tech, Petey,” said Mr. Stark. “You’re not going to school today.”
Peter blinked. “But I have a Lit test.”
Mr. Stark let out a booming laugh, a sound so uncharacteristic and dark that it sent chills down Peter’s spine.
He frowned, confused, and let his back hit the car’s seat, unable to resist a wave of drowsiness that attacked him out of nowhere. Peter watched Mr. Stark, his heart thumping away, as the man took off his sunglasses and met his stare. It was an instant revelation. The truth sat there in the cold and empty eyes of this man somehow wearing Mr. Stark’s face.
A rush of adrenaline shook the tiredness away. He tugged at the bracelet locked around his wrist, but it wouldn’t budge. He pulled at the car door handle in vain, and when that didn’t work, resorted to using his fists, attempting to smash the windows open. His fist blared with pain, but the window remained intact.
“So dramatic, aren’t you?” said Fake Mr. Stark, in a bored tone. “Just relax, kid, we’ll be home in a jiffy.”
“Home?” asked Peter, unable to keep the tired, whiny panic from dripping into his voice.
“Yep, your real home.” He quipped.
Peter took a deep breath in. He needed to think, but his thoughts swirled around in a misty haze as the tiredness crept back in.
Think, he urged himself, come on Spider-Man.
He was stuck in a car with a maniac who looked like Mr. Stark. They were driving further and further away from the streets Peter was familiar with, and he’d willingly imprisoned himself with some kind of bracelet that was zapping his powers, turning him into an exhausted and powerless shell of himself.
That last word, powerless, floated around in his foggy mind, drifted in and out of his consciousness until a cord snapped deep inside him and he was desperately scratching and clawing at his own skin, until his wrist started to peel and bleed.
“For fuck’s sake,” said Fake Mr. Stark. His arm turned glowy, only for a second, and then it was covered in blue and silver armor.
One fast movement and he seized Peter’s arm.
“Stop,” he ordered, with a dangerous chill lacing his voice.
Peter stilled, though his breaths still came fast and heavy, and Fake Mr. Stark released him, with a soft shove. He tried to reel it in. His breathing. His panic. The tears he fought back, and the fatigue that threatened to overtake him. He felt like… someone else. Younger. He felt stupid.
He lost the battle to remain sitting up, and let his head slump against the window, where he idly watched as they passed building after building, speeding off somewhere unknown, somewhere away from May and Ned and MJ and the real Mr. Stark.
Peter’s eyes fluttered, but he fought to keep them from closing.
“Please just let me go,” said Peter, forcing the words out, thinking about May coming home from work, thinking about her watching the sky grow darker and darker, waiting for him to return.
“Don’t beg, Pete,” he told him. “It’s beneath you.”
“Who are you, even?”
Mr. Stark turned and looked at him. “Oh, that’s right. How rude of me. I guess we haven’t officially met. I’m Tony Stark.”
“No you’re –“
“-not your Tony Stark. Can you imagine? What a miserable man that guy turned out to be,” he said. “No, not him. I’m Tony Stark, but better. Some might say superior, even.”
“Not me,” said Peter, with a raspy voice, a definite sign his body was giving up, no matter how badly he fought to stay awake. “I wouldn’t say that.”
“Oh really? You wouldn’t?” he asked, an eyebrow raised, and with a hint of shock “Well, you will.”
“Don’t hold your breath.”
Fake Mr. Stark smirked. “Why don’t you take a nap? You seem a little grumpy.”
Peter channeled his remaining energy into shooting Fake Mr. Stark a glare. He took a slow, steadying breath, then frowned again.
“Wait, that doesn’t make sense,” said Peter. “There can’t be two –“
“Stop fighting it,” he cut him off. “Just make it easy on yourself and go to sleep. First trip through the multiverse is hell, even for someone like me.”
“…Multiverse?”
His head swam and remembered, or tried to, the conversation he and his Mr. Stark had had about the possibility of a multiverse. Not something we’ll ever have to worry about. That’s what Real Mr. Stark had said. Peter heard it, heard the memory, and saw the man with kinder eyes and a warmer voice, reassuring him. As his eyes slipped shut, he managed to convince himself that this was all just a nightmare.
Until the cold voice came back.
“That’s a good man,” said the imposter, as if Peter were choosing to fall asleep all on his own. “It’ll all make sense when you wake up.”
But Fake Mr. Stark was a liar.