Chapter Text
It’s kind of funny, really, how they disappear – the same way as the blip. One moment, they’re here, real, tangible, in the flesh. In one inhale, Peter is stuttering into the calloused grip of Peter-Three, mind fragmented in a thousand different places but stuck together by his friends’ physical touch; Peter-Two’s shaky hand curled limply in his hair, Peter-Three’s steady arm wrapped around his shoulders. In one inhale, they’re hugging, and then a breath later, they’re nothing. In the last vestiges of light cast by the setting sun, Strange, hovering above Liberty’s extinguished torch, finishes the spell with a flourish of his hands and a pinching of his brow, finishes putting the world back together and simultaneously tearing it apart, and then they’re gone.
Gone.
His friends, his alternate selves. People he’d known for less than twenty-four hours, but people he’d bonded with nonetheless – they’re gone. One moment, they’re here, and the next, they’re gold, scattered to the wind. Dust. A million particles, a trillion atoms, separated. It’s kind of funny in that moment; it’s so repetitive, and watching them – well. It feels like he’s back on Titan, like none of this ever happened. Peter inhales and exhales, watching Peter-Two, still clutching his side, pain masked behind wide, kind eyes, and Peter-Three, tousled hair standing stock-straight, shoulders sagging soggy under his genuine smile, separate and dissipate just as Starlord and the rest of them had all those years ago or maybe yesterday. Peter-Three does so with a tilt of his head and a casual flick a two-fingered peace sign, and the older Peter-Two mirrors it as he goes, and for a moment, the only Peter left has to stop the laughter bubbling up and out of his chest, because oh my god this is insane, this is just like the Blip, this is losing everything all over again, and then—
And then they’re gone. A moment passes. The gold dust doesn’t knit back together. The atoms don’t reattach into a corporeal shape. The moment is over, and suddenly, it’s not very funny anymore.
He buries his face in the crook of MJ’s neck one last time, hands grappling for the fabric of her cardigan, desperate to hold on to something, please, please let me stay, I don’t want to go, I don’t want to go, and then he’s kissing her and hugging Ned and stumbling back not of his own volition, but numb, and webbing away but not fast enough because out of the corner of his eye, he watches Ned’s face go blank and MJ’s eyes glaze over, watches them lose him, watches the world lose him, and—
Well. Everything hits him like a freight train, and he knows how that one feels firsthand. Still got the scars, hasn’t he? The big, snaking one up and down his back, the one courtesy of the man who made all this happen. He webs away, shaking too hard to hold the synthetic stuff, and crumples in some sort of alley.
He doesn’t get back up. There’s no reason to. Before, he’s had people to keep him going. Ben, and when Ben died, May. Mr. Stark, and when Mr. Stark died, Pepper, Morgan, the world. MJ, Ned, the world, the world, the world. But now, now, what has he got? Absolutely fucking nothing. That’s the answer. He hasn’t got May. He hasn’t got MJ. He hasn’t got Ned. He hasn’t got Peter or Peter, and he sure as hell hasn’t got the world. No Avengers. No anything.
Everyone’s gone. Everyone’s gone—for real this time. There’s no time travel, there’s no magic infinity stones. There’s no coming back. For the first time ever, Peter Parker is totally and utterly alone.
After it all goes down, he goes home on complete autopilot.
Home, to May’s building. He walks the streets of a Queens that doesn’t really recognise him, numb. It’s his universe, but it feels like a different one entirely: for the first time since he moved after his parents passed all those years ago, he can’t recognise the streets, can’t pick a familiar face or find a native storefront. Still, he goes home, trudges through the wind and autumn swirling litter like he’s done a million times before. His eyes remain unseeing. It isn’t until he’s standing in his apartment door that he realises this apartment doesn’t belong to May anymore – that this place is no longer his home.
“Er,” says the officer, standing in the middle of the room, “can I help you, kid?”
Peter stares at the key in his hand. In this new universe, Peter Parker doesn’t exist, so there’s no reason for him to have a key to this place. He fumbles for a second, both with his words and with his heartbeat.
“Um…I just—I was—I’m from the upstairs place, I just moved in. I think—I think I got the wrong key?”
“You think?” the officer laughs. “Alright, well, you go call your landlord and sort that out, okay? Hand the key over while you do; this apartment is under investigation in regards to the death of the owner.”
“Oh,” says Peter, because he’s not sure what else to say. The officer stretches out his hand, and like an idiot, Peter moves forward hand over the key to his house, his place, their home, the home he was raised in. “Um. Well—thanks?”
The officer tips his hat and ushers him out the door. Peter goes.
The next day, he breaks into what’s left of Happy’s apartment. Somehow, the room Happy leant him wasn’t too damaged, but the boxes he brought and never unpacked are gone. There are no photographs in the room. The ones in the hall show a smiling Happy and a grinning May, but that’s it.
He leaves, and buys an apartment two blocks from May’s old one. The walls are thinner, and the sirens howl all night, but Peter doesn’t mind. It gives him something to do. The first week after the second blip – just him this time, and no memorial – he alternates between scrubbing the walls of his apartment, staring at the walls, and fighting crime. The second week, he factors in studying for his GEDS. The third week, he scrounges up the courage to write out a speech and go and visit his best friends, because – well, they’d promised, hadn’t they?
One month after everything, Peter walks out of MJ’s work and leaves his best friends to themselves without even trying. One month after everything, Peter gives up—falls down, and doesn’t even try to stand again. For a superhero—for Peter Parker, it’s pathetic.
He comes back after failing to explain everything, letter still in his pocket, cold coffee in his hands, and drops dead on his mattress.
Peter Parker doesn’t exist, and one month later, there’s nothing left to try for. One month later, there’s nothing to get back up for. One month later, there’s nobody to be – un-pathetic for.
One month later, Peter-Two is swinging comfortably through the streets of New York, trouble-free. Well. Not trouble-free, because it’s New York and he’s a crime-fighting friendly-neighbourhood Spiderman, but as trouble-free as his previous month compared. He’s in his New York, at the very least. In his own universe.
And that’s it. One month later, Peter-Two’s all healed up, obviously – his stab wound healed completely within a 48 hour period – but traces of Peter-one’s world still remain behind in ways his superhuman mutated healing can’t erase. For one, fights seem just that little bit harder now, as if the moment his poor mind had gotten a taste for team action it’d hung on tight and never let go. For another—well. That’s about where the list ends, but that’s not the point; Peter-Two misses the other Peter Parkers.
The multiverse is weird like that, he snorts, shooting a web and tugging on it. One month later, he misses the boys he’d met for no longer than five hours – his alternate selves he’d never really gotten to know but still bonded with. He misses them, people he’d hardly known. He misses them, them , complete and utter strangers.
“But—are they?” he muses, muttering against the soft fabric of his mask. The length of his web tightens as he swings and loosens as it falls behind him. Peter lets it go mid-swing and shoots another, aiming it at a nearby streetlamp. It groans and bounces under his weight as he falls, but holds. Stays steady. “Are they strangers?”
His question squeezes through the spandex and settles in the snow below the alleyway he’s swinging through. There’s no one to hear Peter-Two’s question, but he knows the answer.
No, he decides. No. They were alternate versions of myself—me. I knew them, even if we met fleetingly. I knew them. I got them.
And – he did. Even fleetingly, he understood the kid – Peter-one. He and Peter-Three, they understood what he was going through, and not just in the sad, sympathetic sense; Peter-Two’d lost Ben just shy of a decade ago now, and Peter-Three had lost his Gwen, though that was probably a fresher wound than his own. He’d been able to help the kid, help Peter-Three, help himself and all those villains. He’d helped on Peter-one’s planet – universe – more than he’d ever helped in his own, and –
And Peter-Two misses it. He misses them, his alternate selves. He misses helping and that level of exhilaration that comes hand in hand with it. He misses helping and saving and them and understanding, understanding. Peter-Two misses them. He misses them . They’re not strangers, and Peter-Two wants to help more. He’s had, what, an extra ten years on Peter-three, and an extra twenty on Peter-one; he knows he can help. He knows they need his help—god, Peter-one—he should be there, he should find a way there, help him work through the grief he knows all too well, help—
His web snaps, and frantically, Peter-Two flicks his wrist to shoot another. It sticks and lands—on an unfamiliar building.
“No,” Peter-Two breathes. “No way .”
One month later, Peter-Two falls through the multiverse. He swings and tugs and flies and falls, and lands.
“Hey, man,” says Peter-Three, when the world stills. He’s the same as he was a month ago, same sharp jawline and sloping nose and half-formed worry lines scattered at his hairline. He throws him a smile behind his five o’clock shadow, stuffing his mask into the neckline of his suit and bending down to where Peter-two had fallen. “You’re in my alleyway.”
“Hey, yourself,” says Peter-Two. He can’t stop his grin. “I missed you.”
“And here I was thinking I was the sap,” says a different Spider-Man, a different version of himself—but the same one, really. “Come on. Let’s figure out how you got home.”
Two months after the first universe collision and one month after the second, Peter-Two is sitting in Peter-Three’s apartment, workbook open on his knees, a slice of greasy pizza in hand. Peter-Three is sitting cross-legged on the ceiling, whiteboard marker in hand. He’s dripping cheese all over the floor, but Peter-Two doesn’t seem to mind. Gravity is a bitch when you’re part Spider, Peter-Three thinks. At least Peter-Two gets it.
And he does get it—and not just in the not-minding-about-the-ceiling-cheese-rain; Peter-Two gets his brain. They’re on par, although Peter-Two doesn’t get as sidetracked as he does, and is a lot more gentle when they come up stumped. For the past month, they’ve been doing just that, working through the world’s best answers to all problems (mathematics and science), trying to figure out how they got through to each other, trying to figure out if they can do it again. It’s taken a lot of equations thus far. And a lot of beer. And a lot of reading. As it turns out, the multiverse and string theory are very convoluted subjects. There’s no precedent for getting tangled up in either, so they’ve gotta make everything up as they go along. A month later, they’ve been working to solve the puzzle of the multiverse. A month later, they’ve dived right in and come up empty handed.
From the floor, Peter-Two cranes his neck up and shoots him a thoughtful look, head tilted. Peter-Three shivers; it’s almost as if his older counterpart can sense the negativity in his head. “Sorry,” he finds himself saying, apologising even though he hadn’t publicly slandered his own name. Peter-Two tilts his head back. Peter-Three looks away.
“Okay,” he forces himself to say, spitting the words out from around his slice of pizza, “hit me. Let’s walk through it again.”
“Right,” says Peter-Two, cheerful. “Okay. So—when that Wizard guy performed that spell, he pulled our universes forward—to fix Peter-one’s.”
“All together,” Peter-Three tacks on, chewing thoughtfully. “Like a hair braid. Your universe and my universe and Peter’s, under, over, loop, tie.”
Peter-Two stares, bug-eyed. “Right. Sure. Anyway, when he altered the spell, the fabric between them got pulled tighter and tighter. Strained.”
“Like the skin over your knuckles. White-tight.”
“Exactly. And when he contained the—the magic thing—”
“Spell?”
“Spell, right, thank you. And the altering corrupted the spell? Peter-One told this part really badly.”
“Corrupted,” Peter-Three nods. He swallows the pizza and sticks three fingers to the roof of his apartment. Slowly, he lowers himself down. “The corruption broke through the white-pulled-tight parts of the universe.”
“Which was us,” says Peter-Two.
“Which was us,” Peter-Three confirms.
“But when he sent us back, that universe-hair-braid should have undone. He fixed the tears, and the universes went back to their spots, and we went home.”
Peter-Three crosses the room to stare at the whiteboard. “Hm. So—if you’re still able to travel through the multiverse—”
“Then something must’ve happened on Peter-One’s end to re-do the universe-hair-braid and allow us to slip through.”
Peter-Three uncaps the whiteboard marker and stares at the various theories and equations they’ve got going. For a week, they tried to calculate and mirror the swings Peter-Two performed in order to come here, and failed. He glances past them, and looks at the big highlighted words. WIZARD, reads one. SPELL, reads another. Yup, Peter thinks. We’re definitely so close to cracking this. Not at all failing.
“Wait,” says Peter-Two, all of a sudden. “Gimme that.” Peter-Three doesn’t need to look in his direction to know he means marker, and he lobs it through the air for his alternate self to catch. He does. “Spell. The spell is what drew us to Peter-one’s universe. What if the Wizard guy performed another one?”
Peter-Three blinks. “What was the spell originally? Peter wanted—”
“He wanted everyone to forget he was Spider-Man,” Peter-Two murmurs, pressing the nib of the marker to the board. A second passes, and then his eyes light up. “Peter—do you remember—when we were on that big bronze dinnerplate—”
“Yeah,” Peter-Three breathes, rounding on him. “The sky? It was open, and Peter went up to the Wizard—”
Peter-Two drops the marker. “The spell was originally botched. Corrupted. Peter said something to him, and he fixed it. How?”
“Reversed the spell?” Peter-Three tries, and then stops. “Oh my god. Oh my god. Dude, are you thinking what I’m thinking?”
“I think I am. The spell—”
“Was for everyone to forget him. And—oh my god—”
“Peter Parker was erased from his universe. Peter Parker was erased from his universe! He did that to save his world, but we were still drawn in—the universe hair braid!”
“Yeah! Yes! So the white-tight-pulled parts – us – Peter was erased from his universe, but we were still sort of attached, intertwined, so—”
“So the spell ripped a Peter-sized hole in the universe! And because there’s a lack of Peter in one world—”
“ We can travel through the multiverse! There’s a Peter-sized hole in the universe, and we can travel through it!”
“Consciously!”
“With—magic?”
“No science? Fuck!”
“Language! But—magic! Magic. God, this is—this is insane.”
Peter-Three lets out a shaky laugh. Peter-Two follows, doubling over, and then they’re both laughing, stumbling around the floor of his apartment and crashing in a wheezing heap next to their useless equations and fruitless attempts to understand. “Fucking hell . Jesus Christ. ”
“Watch your mouth,” Peter-Two wheezes. “Oh my god. It wasn’t Science. It wasn’t Math. We didn’t need either—it was a spell. ”
Peter-Three jams his fists in his eyes, and laughs again. “I hate magic.”
“…but it’s kind of cool, though.”
“Oh, god, yeah! I wanna know how the Wizard does it. Like, what’s the physics behind teleportation? Those portals—that requires energy, I saw the sparks. Does it ignore the Law of Conservation of Energy?”
“Damn. Damn. I don’t know. I bet Peter would, though. We should ask—”
He cuts off. Peter-Three stops imagining the ways in which magic can and can’t work, and sits up. There’s a look of absolute horror on Peter-Two’s face, and for a moment, he looks every day of his age. Peter-Three takes in the lines carved into his face, the familiar strain of worry his eyes and mouth curve into. There’s nothing but sheer horror in the older man’s expression, and as Peter-Three raises his gaze to meet his counterparts, he feels his own stomach drop in understanding, in worry. They’ve got different faces, but Peter-Three knows what those lines mean, even if he’s never seen them in his own reflection.
“Peter,” he says, sort of dumbly. He’s too shellshocked to correct that line of negative thinking. Absent-mindedly, he raises a hand to his chest, fingers tracing the outline of his Spider-Man emblem through his skater shirt. If it weren’t for his enhanced senses, Peter-Three doubts he could even feel his own touch; his pulse is going through the fucking roof, and his mind is—everywhere. “Oh. The spell. The hole. Everyone forgetting— Peter. Oh my god.”
Peter-Two scrubs a hand over his face. Peter-Three watches him choke down a sob, and then straighten up, eyes glazed, jaw hardened. He mirrors his stance.
“Are you thinking what I’m thinking?”
Peter-Three nods brusquely, crossing the floor of his apartment on shaky legs. He double-taps the web shooters he never really takes off and aims it at his mask slung over the back of his dining room chair. It arcs through the air and he catches it square-on (something that still, after all these years, impresses him) but he’s too distracted — too worried to care now. He shoots another web at the countertop, where Peter-Two’s mask lies. “I think I am.”
“Let’s go infiltrate the multiverse.”
“Magic-style. Let’s go save Peter.”
“ Help Peter,” Peter-Two corrects, voice impossibly gentle. Peter-Three knows the difference between helping and saving, and he nods, pressing the older man’s mask into the palm of his hand. “We helped him before, and he needed us then. Let’s go help him again.”
“Friendly neighbourhood Spider-men to the rescue,” Peter-Three murmurs. He takes a breath. “This is crazy. Okay. No science, only magic. That’s—that’s something I thought I’d never say.”
Peter-Two chuckles. “It is pretty crazy.” With one final deep breath, he tugs down his mask, adjusting it over his eyes. Peter-Three watches him blink through it, then shake out his fingers and toes. He marches over to the window. Peter-Three pulls his own mask down, and follows. “Alright. Let’s go help Peter.”
Two months later, Peter is frequenting his favourite spot in Queens, New York City, USA; the roof of Midtown High. Two months later, he doesn’t go here anymore, and not just because he’s graduated; officially, Peter Parker never went here. Officially, Peter Parker doesn’t exist. Never existed.
Even though the world’s forgotten him completely, Peter hasn’t. His memories are still the same, which is a bummer. No matter how hard he tries, he can’t let go of the past—of Ben, May, Ned and MJ. Everyone’s forgotten him, but he can’t bring himself to do the same, despite how much it would help, because—well. Two months later, he’s given up on keeping his promise.
Truth be told, Peter’s not sure why he’s here. Thinking is hard these days, and sifting through the flooded grain silo that is his mind produces next to no if not zero answers, but he thinks he might be here to subconsciously rub salt in his raw wounds. To sit and sulk and seep, festering in a shadow he can’t quite stitch on. Or maybe it’s just comfort. Maybe he’s here to pretend. Either way, it doesn’t matter.
Tonight, he’s sort of kind of injured. It’s sometime in the early morning if the blossoming orange and powder pink sky and distant, vermillion sun are anything to go off, and he really should be heading back to the shithole he calls his apartment to stitch himself up or do whatever physical care he needs, but there’s a certain lethargy in his limbs, and he’s bone-tired, and he can’t force himself to care. About the injury. About the world.
A year ago (or six, if he’s counting the blip) Peter would’ve gone to the Stark Tower or Compound for Mrs. Cho or Mr. Stark. They would’ve helped with open arms. Six months ago (or a couple of years) he would’ve asked May to do it, or even Ned, who’d gotten quite used to tending to his wounds. Tonight, he can’t ask anyone. Tonight, he doesn’t care; the ache in his heart hurts more than the laceration across his ribcage.
“My name is Peter Parker,” he whispers to the wind. There’s no point in trying; he’s given up. He speaks anyway.“You don’t remember me, but I—”
He cuts off. Buries his face in his hands. Tries again.
“You don’t remember me, but we were—I was—fuck. Fuck. This is pointless.”
Around him, the winter bites, the wind whistles, takes his words and drowns them. New York City weather is harsh. He’ll never make it.
“Oh, I wouldn’t say that.”
Beat.
Peter stops. In one split second, he stops breathing, stops moving, stops thinking. He scrambles up, falling into a defensive position, hands ready, fingers curled on his web shooters. In one split second, he—
Straightens up. Blinks. Takes a step forward, and—
“Oh my god. Oh my god.”
On the top of his favourite building in Queens, New York City, the world, two familiar silhouettes hang from the aerial tower of his former school. On the rooftop, Peter Parker sucks in a deep breath, and tries not to cry.
In tandem, exactly like that night two months ago, Peter Parker and Peter Parker jump down, falling in the same landing position he does, legs bent and arms spread. Unlike that night two months ago, Peter-Three lands and takes off running, arms wide. Unlike that night two months ago, Peter-One doesn’t need an introduction; he knows who they are, and miraculously, they seem to know, too. Unlike that night two months ago, Peter doesn’t try and hold back his tears, his emotions; for the first time in two months, he takes in the two familiar faces, revells in the familiarity they recognise on him, with him .
Not for the first time, he falls. For the first time in two months, two months that’ve felt like years, fucking years, eons, epoches, he can’t take it anymore, he falls, but this time—
This time, there’s someone there to catch him.
“Hey. Hey, Peter. It’s okay. We’re here—Peter, c’mere. We’ve got you. You’re okay. You’re okay.”
Two months later, everything’s fallen apart. Peter doesn’t have Mr. Stark, and May’s gone. He hasn’t got Happy, and he doesn’t have MJ, doesn’t have Ned. The world’s forgotten him, and he’s down and out.
But two months later, he’s not alone. Two months later, the sun rises, and Peter Parker doesn’t watch it by himself.