Chapter Text
It’d been a blur from arrival to end. The wizard sent them back as they were. Where Peter had been trying to rope him into overloading to death a minute earlier, now he got to drop to the ground as a flesh and blood person. No more hood, no more ragged appearance, and no more being butt-ass naked (at least). He’d found a proper set of clothes in that other world during the time he had there with the source of that new energy. Even if he was back to a nobody, he got to keep the new look. Hooray for small shitty victories.
(Not a nobody, the older version of his Peter had said. Not a nobody)
(But wasn’t he just lying?)
So he’d dropped down as a human again and overheard Peter and a blonde that ran up to him not long after. They were confused, probably mostly about why he’d suddenly stopped being blue. They had bigger things to worry about a minute later. Right. 'Cause Max hadn’t been alone in the whole revenge on Spider-Man thing. The Osborn kid shot down on a flying skateboard and it clicked for Max that, ohh, right. Osborns. Norman’d had a flying glider too. And a son.
Named Harry, no doubt.
The Goblin of this world launched at the duo nearby. When he flew back up, it was to the sounds of both others screaming and one of those screams came from in the air in the grip of Osborn. Max recognized her. It was that gal that’d been nice to him on his birthday. Gwen. He remembered the name. He always liked to remember the few people that were nice to him. And even if she had been the one trying to kill him with the overload…
To hell with it.
Max ripped the regulator off and shot up in the jerky flight he as Electro could skip around as.
At least all the Peters of the universe(s) could keep chill, since he put the stupid thing back on when it all was over. It hadn't turned out to hurt or nothing and, admittingly, there were things easiest to do as a flesh and blood human. And going home was one of them.
The door squeaked when he let himself in.
At least it let him in at all. It wasn’t like he still had his keys or ID and he hadn’t honestly expected his landlord to recognize him. That wasn’t just cause the makeover either. He just figured he wasn’t recognizable ever by a guy like that, or anyone (because he slipped under radars, he was nobody, he’d been so shocked that Spider-Man had even noticed him enough to rescue him as a stranger that one time). But the guy had squinted, seen some of him under the new updo, and gone all stuttery about how, oh Max, I thought you were dead, we thought you were dead- Yeah man, that was nice and all, but how quickly did you toss the apartment to someone else?
Apparently, not too quickly.
So here he was, stepping into something that was technically home but hadn’t ever really felt like it. What did?
Max flicked the lights on and got a big bright flashy reminder of the kind of dump he was calling home in this world.
Hell…He lived here? Felt too long ago. Real long ago.
Last time he was here was a birthday. Him alone, ready for a cake, alone, after getting back from a work where no one would see him.
Course he’d coped with that. Come to peace with it. Planned to sit around talking to himself pretending it was Spider-Man, probably. Ah, hell.
The actual Spider-Man had been talked to though, not that long ago. Not these drawings on the wall, but a real flesh and blood young white kid. And he hadn’t been calling him best friend and wishing a happy birthday like the posters on the wall had last time he was here, but he had called him ‘buddy’ so brightly and said I missed you, you were never a nobody, just the sweetest guy. Apparently, that’s what the real Spider-Man had thought after the years on his end. That guy hadn’t seen the inside of Max’s apartment and gotten scared off, clearly.
Max grimaced at the place, the whole place, the wreck of it. Trash seemed stacked up. A days old breakfast still sat stinking on the table. The worst were the walls, though. The walls with all their Spider-Man pictures and drawings and everything they represented- being alone, alone, always so alone, only one person ever had decided he was worth saving the life of and he’d thought it made them buddies friends and-
I missed you, buddy. He- just- sweetest guy-
Thing was, the real Peter had thought good things about him. Not that they knew each other enough from one meeting to be buddies but he’d still tried to talk him down after first emerging as Electro and then again and then again, in another world.
He’d liked the other world better. Its power sources were better. No one had known him there and no one knew him here, so hey, he’d made a better first impression.
Maybe he could’ve got a nice apartment there. Clean. Like the one they'd trashed. And if he wanted any pictures of Spider-Man, they’d be ones with both of them in it. Real actual selfies. No more paraphernalia, memorabilia, whatever big word. No more stuff of a lonely man that could be used to pretend he had someone with him talking.
The whole place looked like a shrine or something. It wasn't the same to him, after all the accidents and the power and clashing with Spider-Man (all three of them) later. It just looked like the wreck of a house of someone who was probably a wreck in his head or something.
Was that him?
That other Spider-Man- Peter- the kid whose mom (was it his mom? He’d forgotten) got killed that night-, he’d been big on the idea of giving them a better chance after they got sent back to their worlds. That’s what it’d been. A better chance. Cause they’d all realized that if they just went back as is, it’d be to death. And the kid hadn’t liked that. Max definitely hadn’t liked that, but he didn’t expect some Spider-Man to fight his magic wizard friend just to keep them from going back to die. That should’ve clued him in that the kid was nice enough. Not a pretentious savior complex prick, like Otto had thought he was back when he’d been the least on board with the whole ‘fixing’ thing, because it made them sound like the pet projects for some big moral show instead of people. What was it the guy’d said? Fix us? Like dogs? It wasn’t a fix in the end, just an attempt to get them a chance at not immediately dying. Even if it had meant taking the powers away from guys like Flint or Connors (and Max had been so uncomfortable, so worried, that they would try to ‘fix’ him too, when he liked having these powers, when they made him someone with an ounce of power over his life), it hadn’t been what they’d tried with everybody. More just neutralizing crazy tentacles or his own constant slipping in and out of an energy form. All physical things.
Fixing made them sound like pets alright. Like people that needed spading. And now Max couldn’t get Otto’s voice out of his memories. Now, while he looked on at all the Spider-Man pictures on his walls and remembered living here the day his life as a human ended.
They’d been a messy bunch in that world, that was fair enough. But it wasn’t just some chip fix here, some chemical fix there. Sometimes people got turned into giant frickin lizards. Or sometimes they got dumped into an experimental tank of eels or fell into something that turned them into sand. The world was weird. All the different world things. But there were plenty of problems going on behind that stuff. Flint- the sandman dude- he’d chatted with Max before they gotten separated but after the whole thing had gone to shit at the apartment. Guy had a family and it wasn’t perfect. They didn’t have enough money. He wasn’t perfect. That wasn’t gonna just up and get fixed just because he wasn’t made out of sand anymore. Or the Goblin, who’d liked that name when it was him out and about. There’d always been problems with him. The Goblin felt like he’d always been there, mostly buried, before the green serum let him out. Get rid of the serum and did that fix the issues with his kid that Norman was so worried about? Did it get rid of all the voices in his head? Not Max’s problem to know a real answer for, so to him it was just a rhetorical point: cause, see, the voices in his head weren’t gonna disappear just cause he could control whether he turned into a bunch of electricity or not. Those voices had been there a long time. They were just him, after all. Not some other guy in his head. Just him, talking to himself. Saying things like they don’t care, they won’t care, they hate you, they thought you were ugly they thought you were disposable they didn’t even care if you died, they think you’re a freak now, go home stay away from them all, they hate you, you’ll never be loved, no one wants to see you, freak.
He felt more confident than he remembered feeling before, but it wasn’t like he was a completely different person. He wasn’t as ready to fry anything that annoyed him or insulted him in his head or just accidentally got in the way when he lost control. He’d gotten called buddy by the actual Spider-Man, not these pictures. He’d looked in a mirror and the voices inside that said he was stupid worthless hated ugly couldn’t deny that he actually looked pretty fine. The new outfit and hair and that still electrical crackling in his eyes were working, man. He was working this look.
Was that gonna be enough?
How long until he had to job hunt or decided to go rip his neutralizer off to become pure energy instead? How long til he had to leave this mess of an apartment and see people outside? So many people constantly that never saw him never wanted to and when they did see him it was all his mind needed to say they were thinking about what a creep he was a freak an unlovable friendless freak.
How long til he started talking to himself again cause he felt like he scared off every opportunity to get a flesh and blood person to talk to? It’d get worse the longer he holed up here. Right now, it didn’t seem so bad. If a guy like Flint or even Peter- his world's one, not the other two even if they were nice- showed up, he could chat. Probably easily. Most likely wouldn’t even scare them off. It helped to have confidence, that was the truth of it. Since becoming Electro, he had enough to feel more like an actual person with power and respect and that meant he could sit down in some stranger’s apartment and chat with a guy made out of sand about how life could suck sometimes.
He just had to stay that way. Had to not get holed up. Had to get rid of things that’d scare away people he invited over, like a Spider-Man shrine probably would. An Electro shrine probably would too. Pity.
Even with that extra confidence, he still thought the doubts and nagging that were currently mostly quiet in his head weren’t that wrong. Only a real freak would have all these posters taped up everywhere. This apartment was disgusting cause its owner was.
Yeah.
So.
Quote unquote fixing was about the obvious stuff, like needing to be stable and not pure energy. No kid in a lab was gonna make him not a weirdo. That was a head thing, wasn’t it. This whole wreck of a shrine to loneliness was a head thing.
Ah shit. He was crazy, wasn’t he. Hot damn but all the worries were right.
Yeah but so what? He couldn’t afford therapy. And technically he'd drowned the last guy who'd claimed to be his head doctor.
What could he afford? Oscorp had erased all evidence he’d even existed as their employee. He definitely didn’t have that job. And he’d rather fry most of those bosses and coworkers from the inside out than work with them again. So no money from that work, nope.
He didn’t mind the idea of stealing, especially from Oscorp. He could slip the stabilizer off, get in, burn more of that shitty place down, and take more of the money they’d stolen, kept, from him in the first place.
But he did mind dying.
And it seemed like enemies of Spider-Man universally- multiuniversally?- got killed off. Died even right when they thought they were about to win.
So maybe attacking Oscorp would land him back on the Spider-Man to-kill list that the guy probably didn’t even know he kept but that Fate sure did keep for him.
He guessed if nobody put two and two together and pinned him down to the blue electric guy that’d only destroyed a little bit of stuff, then he could potentially get a job again. And then waste away feeling like crap and get no free time to use for a psychiatrist person anyways. More of a worthless life up in front of him and wasn’t that fitting since he was worthless-
Ah shit.
Yeah, he needed something. This internal talk was gonna eat him alive. If he sat too long in this apartment with his only friends being a bunch of Spider-Man drawings taped to the wall, then it’d be back to before. He might even grow out the combover again.
Hell no. Max was a new man. And this apartment and all the old that it stood for? It could go.
Max crossed the room and ripped off the tacky papers on the wall. They’d been really nice the last time he was here and now he just thought they were-
Well, time and place. He knew who the actual guy was behind that mask. And if that guy wanted to do something like say, hey Max, looking good, ready to conquer the day, and happy birthday, well, that guy could say it with his actual voice.
He frowned at all the papers in his hand and drooping from tape or laying on his desk. It was a mess. A right mess, Max. You’re a mess. This is why people won’t lo- nope. Stop that, shut that up. It’s just a messy room and yeah the Spider-Man memorabilia was a little strange in hindsight but, but, but it wasn’t him being worthless.
He carried the pictures over to his trash and shook the ones that were extra tape sticky off his skin.
Well. Now what? Clean up here and then what?
Really, what was he going to be doing with his life now? He couldn’t go back. He refused to go back to that unseen fool of before. He could pull the regulator off and go live as electricity, but it’d mean missing things like the taste of stale old birthday cake or the sensation of skin against skin anytime someone shook his hand (or sand against skin, if that someone was Flint), or a better handle on the anger in his brain. Not that his handle on it as is was very good, but it was a lot more neurotic as Electro. It was hard to keep in one spot as electricity. Hard to not just dissipate, scatter away, and wasn’t that his fear anyway? Disappearing?
There had to be something he could do that used the new him- human and non-human both. The new him was good. He liked it.
Hm. Max sat down with a slice of old cake from the fridge and chipped away at it. Happy Birthday to Max. Got bit and ripped by eels and tortured by a doctor and sent to a new universe with better tasting power sources before that universe kicked him back to the stale old electric grids. What a lot of great presents that was.
And in the in between time, he’d gotten to level a lot of Oscorp while the kid that’d rescued him from the docs-
Oh. Harry Osborn. Kinda an awkward subject after he’d realized Max was helping Spider-Man keep Gwen safe. He’d given himself a makeover too and it wasn’t necessarily an improvement. For one, the teeth were worse than Max’s old ones pre-universe swapping. And his hair reminded him of that comic villain, the Joker, he thought it was (Max had never followed a whole lot of comics). But even if they’d both gotten makeovers, they recognized each other. And Osborn had seemed pissed to see Max on the other side. He was spitting and hissing and being a mess, but the words he shot at Max were audible enough.
They reminded him of the ones back when they’d first made their alliance.
I thought we were already friends? That look of guarded betrayal, one step away from being out in the open.
Or even before it. When he’d been pleading and pleading for Max to break out and join him.
I know what it’s like to be thrown away!
Please please I need you!
They… were relatable words, to be fair. Max had a hard time feeling they were real just then. He’d been betrayed by the world recently, betrayed by his hero, tortured, and the kid was one of the richest pricks in the world. How would he know the depth of loneliness that a guy like Max knew?
But he could still tell the pain was real and their goals aligned and he went with it.
He was gonna go with it all the way to the point where Fate said he was about to die and a wizard’s spell had different ideas.
It’d been easy to side with the younger-Peter when he returned to this world. Now, it wasn’t quite as easy when he remembered all the betrayed spitting from Goblin.
Why? No, I needed you! Why?
Don’t throw me away!
Not like everyone else- unsaid.
Not like everyone had to Max, he thought privately.
Oh, but he had tossed the kid aside. And, outnumbered, he couldn’t exactly stop Spider-Man from shutting him down. When Max went digging for answers a few days later, he found out (through more private sources than just the news, since they weren’t saying anything about the dead mogul’s missing son) Osborn had landed himself in jail.
It didn’t sit all the way with Max.
Leaving another guy that was all alone, alone.
“He was your old friend, wasn’t he?” he asked Parker. The kid was uncomfortable with his sudden presence, clearly, and had been since Max popped up on his place’s roof to meet him. But younger or not, he was the same guy as the Peter Parker that had tried to give him a pep talk at the Statue of Liberty.
Not a bad guy, not at all. The type of kid that really did try to look out for the little guys. Guys like Max used to be, before he was turned into a god.
“Yeah,” Peter had eventually answered, looking away. “But I couldn’t help him. I couldn’t give him the help he wanted. I don’t know- I don’t think he wants me around again.”
Trying to kill his girlfriend was a good indicator that, yeah, he didn’t feel like staying friends.
But hey, mistakes were mistakes. If not for the fact that Max liked Gwen, he probably wouldn’t have thought much either way about Osborn trying to kill her. It just wasn’t how he worked. So, from his view, the kid wasn’t so bad.
Just alone. Discarded. A nobody born into a role that should’ve let him be a somebody other than the pawn of a bunch of lawyer people.
Hm. Maybe he and the Spider-Man here could get put to good use. They were the only links Osborn had left.
And Max didn’t feel like leaving the kid discarded, not after his Peter had traveled universes just to make sure he knew he always had remembered and respected Max after all.