Archive of Our Own ^beta

There’s a spider spinning in the high, dusty corner above the doorway. She sits on threads of silver, her long, articulated legs suspending her like a circus performer on an elaborate web. She is motionless. Shiny, black, and armored.

Peter passes beneath her web twice every day, and each time he negotiates the threshold. He steps through the doorway into his apartment and keeps his eyes down. It’s the uneasy truce they’ve made. Peter refrains from brandishing a broom at what the spider has claimed, and she hangs above. He trusts her, but never completely, not to drop into the vulnerable space between his collarbones. 

The spider sits, and Peter sits too. He admires the intricacies of her web. The complexities of her home. 

She spins a net to catch the memory of his comings and goings, and Peter wonders what she remembers. 

He drums his fingers on the windowsill and looks out into the street. It’s not the worst part of Queens, really—just far enough away from the grocery store where he works to justify swinging every morning. The window looks out on a dying elm tree that half covers a mural. 

It’s a painting of Iron Man. Peter still feels a pang of sadness each time the sun catches the mural’s blue highlights, like they’re glowing. 

It’s quiet and personal now, though. The guilt has faded. And the terror of living up?

Well, that hardly matters now, does it?

“We picked a good city,” Peter tells the spider. “We picked a good world.”

The spider doesn’t answer. She catches dust and flies in her shining work of art, and she knows better than Peter who she is. 

Who does he want to be? 

He has nothing. No one. He is completely alone, utterly unnoticed, fundamentally unknown. It aches, deep in his chest. It hurts.

Peter is free, and he never thought it would mean so much grief. 

But here he is. Standing in this one scrap of the world that he owns for himself, this scrappy old apartment that he struggled to find and struggles to pay for and struggles to maintain, growing up. Here he is. 

He owes no debts anymore. He has no promises left to keep. 

Peter Parker can be whoever he wants. 

Peter moves away from the window, breathing in the car exhaust drifting in through the screen from outside. He can feel the texture of his shirt on his enhanced skin. He can hear his upstairs neighbor’s cat meowing for food. 

He kind of wants a cat. He kind of wants…

While the world tries to make you choose. 

“I’m going to go out,” Peter says to the spider.  Yes, that’s what he wants. To follow what he knows, now, what he’s always known. He wants to go out as himself. 

So he grabs the Spider-Man suit, stitched of spandex and scraps, and slips from the apartment. 

The spider doesn’t drop on him. She honors their agreement. 

\\\

A splinter of a soul glows the color of lightning. 

Splinters trail color like firefly trails, staining the physical world where they touch it, painting it. They burn like stars, and they are as strong as the soul they came from. 

Doctor Stephen Strange keeps splinters in an old flask on his bedside table. It should be in the relic room, but he’s on good terms with the Sorcerer Supreme. So he can get away with it. 

“What does it take to cure a mind curse?” Stephen wonders to the room. 

“Hm?” 

“I said, what does it take to cure a mind curse?"

Wong, leaning against the half open door with a book in hand, furrows his brow. “Halcyon feathers, usually. Why?”

“I think I did something.”

Wong goes rigid. “Oh, no,” he says. “Absolutely not. We have too much to deal with, the destabilized reality, the bleeding multiverse, the timelines. You aren’t allowed to have done anything.”

Stephen’s lip quirks up. Sometimes, he wishes he could have seen further. He wishes he could know where the footsteps he followed lead to.

“I’m sick,” Stephen says. He doesn’t know how else to explain it. “I’m losing… something.”

Wong’s frown deepens into concern. “Losing what? What’s wrong?”

“My memories,” Stephen says. “They’re wrong.”

Stephen would know. He has so many memories. So many, lifetimes and lifetimes stacking and warping and changing. A million, ten million trial runs at being human, at a story he’d thought he already knew how to write. Ten million times to see how it ended. 

Maybe, with so much in his mind, it should be easy to lose pieces. To forget and leave behind and confuse. 

But Stephen has never been good at forgetting. There are holes. He can sense them from their negative space; plot differences in storylines he’s long since memorized.

“You think…?”

“I think I’ve been cursed,” Stephen says. I think I’m losing my mind. “I don’t know what I’ve lost, and I don’t know what I’m still losing…”

He can’t finish the sentence. He doesn’t want to think about worms dedicatedly eating their way through his soul. He doesn’t want to think about his memories falling to pieces around him. 

Would it be like going insane? Would he even know?

Maybe he already is. 

Wong puts a hand on the door, cocking his head at Stephen. “I’ll start researching, then,” he says. “Are you alright?”

“Yes,” Stephen says dismissively. Because that’s what you have to say. Because there is nothing else to say. 

He watches the splinters flicker inside their little glass jar. He forgets, and the empty feeling it leaves behind makes his hands shake worse. 

There is a shape behind that emptiness. A color to the darkness, but he’s forgotten that it’s shaped like himself. 

\\\

MJ can’t fill her suitcase. 

She stands on her bed, feeling like an apathetic monarch looking upon a ruined country. Clothes and books and trinkets and pictures spread around her like the rings of an asteroid impact. 

Beside her, her suitcase lies unzipped. A layer of basic necessities covers the base; clothes she actually wore, pencils and pens and her favorite three-ring-binder, toiletries, charging cords. MJ stands sunk up to her ankles in the mattress, with enough room in that damn suitcase for her memorabilia, and no desire for any of it at all.

The books have to stay. She has space for them, but she can’t imagine packing them. The posters have to stay, the stuffed animals, the mugs, the plants. The little Lego Spider-Man figurine she found and can’t remember where she got. The sketchbooks…

The sketchbooks. 

MJ sits down with a thud, the springs of the bed bouncing beneath her. She imagines the concern on her mother’s face when she sees MJ with her barely filled luggage and an armful of the past to take out to the garbage bin in the alleyway. It can’t come with her. None of it can come with her.

None of this place, this sense of missing, can be allowed to follow her into her future. 

MJ feels a strange sort of disconnect from the biggest moment of her life so far. Flying away alone to MIT, to live her own life in a new world, feels unreal. 

MJ wants it. Wants that new world, that new life, yearns for it with an intensity she buries as deeply as she can. 

Expect disappointment. 

She could do anything. Be anyone. She could thrive and change the world; she could fail and drop beneath the eyes of the world; anything is possible. Anything. 

MJ has to expect the worst. She needs to have that certainty, that protection, because she doesn’t think she can take another—

Another. Another what?

Expect disappointment. 

So she can’t fill the suitcase. She doesn’t want her old self in a new place; she wants the fresh taste of a promised adult life and the struggle of living for herself and the reward of failing. All the rest of it has to stay. 

It’s a strange feeling, to be so certain of that, and yet so scared.

Her mother says that is how it’s supposed to be. Her mother says MJ is doing a good job growing up.

She’d worry, if MJ leaves it all behind. So maybe she won’t. She’ll take the filled sketchbooks; not for herself, but for the people that love her. 

MJ jumps down off the bed and goes to finish packing. 

\\\

“Is this ramen? Oh, good choice. I love that brand.”

The old woman chuckles, her voice throaty and joyful. Peter likes her. She doesn’t remind him of anyone, really, and she hands him another plastic grocery bag. 

“I’m a big noodle person,” the woman says conspiratorially. Her short-shaven white hair makes it look like New York snowed directly atop her and no one else.

“Same,” says Peter. “Where are we going?”

“Just a couple of blocks down,” the old lady replies. She limps off down the sidewalk, making better time now that she’s not trying to haul all those bags. 

Peter follows, the plastic slipping on the material of his suit. He sticks to them so they don’t slide off his fingers.

“I feel bad about using plastic bags,” the old woman says. “Unsustainable and all that. I might not be around much longer, but you all will.”

“Yeah,” Peter says. “I feel the same way, but the plastic ones are way easier to carry than the paper.”

The old woman gives him a look. “You should get the reusable ones. That zip shut so stuff doesn’t fall out when you swing.”

Peter blinks under the mask. “Those exist?”

“Sure,” the old woman laughs.

“I don’t go shopping in uniform,” Peter says.

“Neither do I. Don’t go anywhere in uniform anymore, obviously, I’m way to old for that.” The old woman winks at him, turning a corner. “Not like you, I guess.”

Peter shrugs. It’s too much work to hide how young he is, now; he doesn’t know anything, and sometimes he can’t pretend he does. He has no trouble with the woman’s bags. They feel nearly weightless. 

“Don’t you have better things to do than help an old bat like me with her groceries?” the lady asks.

“I’m always happy to.”

“I mean, you’re on the news all the time. Saving the world, destroying national monuments, the like.” 

Peter winces. “I, uh, had sort of a career struggle.”

“Still Spider-Man,” the lady observes.

“Yeah, but I had to… re-evaluate a couple things. Start fresh, you know?”

The lady looks at him, thoughtful eyes settling on the mask as if she can see right through it. “Yes,” she says. “I think I do.”

Peter looks down at his hands. Fresh produce and fruit swings from his left arm. He doesn’t feel like them, shiny and healthy and worth a few dollars. He feels bruised. He feels sun-wrinkled and old. 

Maybe that’s what freedom is, though. Maybe that’s the price for getting a second chance. 

“So,” the old woman says. “What kind of ramen do you like, friendly neighborhood Spider-Man?”

\\\

There are sketches in MJ’s books. 

A full page spread, to be specific; a study of a single face. Different expressions, different lighting. The drawings are in-depth and almost personal, but MJ doesn’t know the youthful face she’s sketched here. 

That’s not uncommon. MJ finds photoshoots and references online on the daily. She goes out to people-watch and draw strangers at cafes. She doesn’t need to know them. 

But this one feels different. It’s in one of her older books from a few months back—but she’d seen the face for the first time only a few weeks ago. She was sure of it. The boy who’d ordered coffee the day she’d accepted MIT didn’t have the kind of face someone forgot. 

But maybe she had. Maybe he’d ordered coffee from Peter Pan during a quiet day months ago, and MJ had managed a couple of sketches. New York is big town, but it isn’t infinite.

Really, though. What are the odds?

\\\

Stephen can be dramatic at times. Wong tells him so, hypocritically, at every opportunity—but it doesn’t change the exaggerations. 

They know quite a bit about the multiverse, in truth. Frighteningly little implies barren library shelves and hushed whispers, but the sorcerers of Kamar-Taj are built off the structure of realities. Differing universes pound in their veins and drive their thoughts and fuel their magic. The concept isn’t alien. It’s home.

What Stephen means is that they don’t know everything. And they can’t fix it. 

Stephen sits in the curved windowsill of the Seal of the Vishanti, his wrists painted with the colors of a shredded timeline. The barbs of the multiverse spear into their world, hooking it and wounding it and bloodying it. Stephen can feel it tugging at his mind. All the Mystic Artists can, and it makes Kamar-Taj tense with the energy of sorcerers who, for the first time in thousands of years, don’t know their fate. 

He thinks the world is ending again. It does that sometimes—but usually he can remember why.  

The Cloak flutters on his shoulder, questioning as Stephen flicks his shaking fingers in consideration. ‘Why’ should be obvious; the destruction of the Infinity Stones and the abusing of the timestream has made the walls of their world fragile. Their sibling realities have begun taking advantage. Strong, feeding on weak.

“They’re too close,” Stephen says to the Cloak. “How did they get this close?”

The Cloak taps at him. Stephen taps back. “I think I did something,” he says again. 

He doesn’t remember. He should remember. 

“What’s wrong with me?”

Perhaps it’s as simple as his human mind falling apart. Perhaps it’s a result of the multiverse, tearing holes in his brain as it had torn holes in his reality. But this has a sharpness to it. A precision. 

A surgeon’s precision.

What did I do?

The Cloak draws tighter around him, and Stephen stands from the window. The relic room stretches out behind him. Stephen moves through it, his perception tangled with the wards of the Sanctum, checking in on the magic under his protection. It’s as strong as it can be. 

Stephen feels the universe, singing for his aid. Like it always does. This world that always needs the hand of its inhabitants to survive, this world that they must work to preserve. 

(He hopes it isn’t his fault, this time. He doesn’t want to kill anything else.)

Stephen Strange is an agent of fate. An agent of the future, following the curve of the timeline toward the next sunrise. It all leads somewhere. There is no escaping it. 

He’d fought fate for fourteen million lives. He’d learned. 

What am I?

“Come on,” Stephen says. “Let’s fix this.”

\\\

The outside of the airport is sleek and dirty. There are shadows in the ceiling and nooks in the wall, plenty of space for a determined spider to hide away, watching the boarding zone and feeling like he’s somewhere else. 

MJ and Ned stand in line, their carry-ons tossed over their shoulders. Ned is showing MJ something on his phone, and his eyes are bright with laughter. MJ smiles. Peter sees the curve of her lips as she replies with something so witty he can almost hear it from behind the glass. 

He doesn’t imagine himself beside them. But he does sink back into his ankles, breathing out against the fabric over his mouth, and smiles through a strange twist in his chest. 

Peter’s delighted for them. He knows them so well; knows the slant of MJ’s shoulders that indicates her happiness, sees the way Ned vibrates on his toes with excitement. They’re at the gate to their futures. 

College awaits. More school, more life, blending into itself and reaching into new ages and new stages. One of a thousand doorways and choices and accomplishments, each just as special as the next. 

Peter knows they’ll always feel like this. Always feel like they’re standing on the edge of the unknown, because tomorrow is unknown. The ending is unknown. 

This story has yet to be written. 

Peter sees the boarding gate open and the line begin to shuffle forward. MJ and Ned tuck their phones away and hoist their luggage, waving their boarding passes as they nod toward the security at the counter. The woman gives them a thumbs-up. In the window, Peter does too.

He hopes it’s nothing like they imagined. He hopes it’s better. Harder. He hopes MJ isn’t disappointed, and he hopes Ned remembers he’s magic. 

Peter presses his hand to the window, once, as he might to start his once-secret handshake. His smile widens and trembles all at once. 

He hopes they never look back. 

Then he turns and swings away into the morning, the car horns and pigeon cries embracing him. 

\\\

“I keep following the patterns,” says Wong, frustration is his voice. “The multiverse has… currents. Like convection in the Earth’s mantle.”

“Hm.” Stephen understands. 

“But they don’t lead me anywhere. Well…”

“Stumped, are you, Sorcerer Supreme?” Stephen says with a hint of a smirk. Wong rolls his eyes at him. 

“I keep following the patterns,” Wong repeats. “But they lead me back here.”

Stephen’s fingers freeze where they wrap around the teacup. He feels tension climb up the back of his neck, sinking spider-legs into his brainstem. 

“What?”

\\\

MJ’s first class spends fifteen minutes explaining the rules on the syllabus and then begins immediately to lecture on quadric surfaces.

She doesn’t remember why it feels like she’s stopped drowning. She doesn’t remember why this tiny hint of normality hits her so deeply. It’s like she’s been waiting a thousand years to learn again, no strings attached. 

Joy expands in MJ’s chest. The pen she uses to take notes leaks blue ink all over her fingertips, like the sky cracking open above the Statue of Liberty.

\\\

“It’s as if these universes are lost. As if they’re clinging to us, not because they want to hurt us, but because they don’t know where else to go.”

What am I? 

\\\

In November, Peter sews pockets into the suit so they can hold the candy left over from Halloween. He likes a snack every now and then. 

He stands against the brick wall outside a grocery store in a cold part of town. The Smarties he’d stashed away have powdered from the fight and covered his hands like tree pollen. He stares, wide-eyed, at the man he’s just saved from being mugged in the alleyway. 

The man is young, barely older than Peter. His face is flushed with adrenaline, and he’s still shaking despite the danger being over. On the wet, dirty ground between them lies Peter’s mask. 

“Sorry,” the man says. He crouches and hands the mask back to Peter. 

Peter can’t think. His mind isn’t working. He hadn’t meant to—he’d been careful—

“Hey, uh, dude?” says the man awkwardly. “You okay?” 

“You can’t know,” Peter hears his voice say.

“Know what?”

Peter lifts a hand, bleeding a little from a slice the thief had made at him with a switchblade, and gestures to his face. The young man’s face clears.

“Oh, don’t worry. I’m not going to like… track you down or anything. I can’t afford a real phone, really. No face recognition here.” He gives a nervous, uncomfortable laugh, his hand with the mask still extended toward Peter. 

Carefully, Peter takes it. It tangles in his fingers, and he doesn’t put it on. Not yet. 

“Sorry,” the man says. 

“No, it’s… okay,” Peter replies. “Um. Have a good trip home.”

“Yeah. Thanks. I mean—uh, thanks for the save.” The man rubs his hands. The evening is getting colder. 

“It’s what I do,” Peter says.

“You’re so young.” The words fall from the man’s mouth like he hadn’t been able to stop them. Like they’ve been torn from him. “You’re like me.”

Peter runs his thumb over the mask in his hand. “I don’t know. Maybe,” he whispers.

“I’m Simon.”

“Hi, Simon.” Peter raises his eyes. “I’m Spider-Man.”

Simon laughs. He reaches into his pocket, and when he withdraws his hand, there are a couple crumpled dollars in it. Embarrassment flickers across Simon’s face. All the same, he extends his hand to Peter again. 

“No.” Peter shakes his head. “That’s not what I wanted. I don’t—that’s not why I do this.”

“I didn’t mean it like that,” says Simon. There are maybe four bills in his hand. Four dollars and twenty-five cents, which Simon offers Peter like they’re a gift. Like they’re everything he has. 

Maybe they are. 

“You should go home,” Peter says. He doesn’t move. 

“Yeah.” Simon stuffs his hand back into his pocket. “I’m sorry. For the mask thing.”

“It’s okay,” Peter says, even though its not. No one in the entire multiverse knows what his face looks like under the fabric.

Somehow, he can’t bring himself to hate that someone does now.

Just a guy. A normal guy. He doesn’t know Peter’s name, though he might’ve once. Peter feels a little lighter. 

“Nice to meet you,” Peter says with a smile, because no one can see him smile when he’s wearing the mask. 

“Bye, Spider-Man.”

\\\

How many lives saved is a worthy sacrifice? 

How many lost is inevitable? 

\\\

MJ’s favorite professor teaches physics. 

She’d never thought physics would be her ‘thing’. It isn’t, not really, but it’s hard and she enjoys the challenge. She thrives in the class, following the calculus in a way she’d never gotten the chance to before. The professor notices as the semester nears its close. 

“Did you know there could be a multiverse?” Doctor Nathaniel Richards asks her offhandedly. His office hours are empty but for her, working diligently at her desk of choice in the corner. 

MJ pauses. Her pencil lifts. Something lands, a ripple in a pond, in the back of her thoughts. 

“Yeah,” MJ says slowly. “I think I did know that.”

“I find it fascinating,” Richards tells her. “I hope my research will allow me to contact other universes—not too far fetched in this day and age, is it?”

MJ snorts. “Far from it.”

“What would you ask another you?”

MJ looks up. Behind Dr. Richards, the clock shows 1:20 AM. It’s been broken since the beginning of the year. 

“Nothing,” she says. “This life is the only one I can live. I’m the only help I need for that.”

\\\

The end of the world is a slow process. So slow, Stephen stops noticing it after a while. 

He studies the curl of time, the facets of dimensions. He maps the multiverse as it creeps in on them. As it crowds beside them like a lion, falling into step, herding this vulnerable universe toward a warring destiny. 

The wrong fate rings warning bells throughout their world. Stephen tries to shield the timeline from it, but Wong is right. It all seems to need this world. The multiverse drifts back to it, sprouts from it, every time. 

What makes a new universe? The split of a choice made one way over another, the infinite possibilities of a single soul. Fate is the path of that soul through each of the branches of choice. Fate is the path that soul must take. 

Infinite choices in a single dimension. Infinite worlds crowding them out of the multiverse. How can anyone hope to stitch this back together?

They seem lost. 

It doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter what is needed, what is desperate, what is dying. Not to fate. 

It can’t, or everything falls to pieces. 

\\\

It snows on the first night of Hanukkah, and Peter watches the lights shine through the flakes like burning embers. But cleaner. Newer. The window that borders his booth at the coffee shop reflects the street lights. 

Peter’s never been to this specific café before. He likes it. Nursing his latte, he leans his temple against the glass. 

It’s been a good day. A better than good day, really. He feels light, satisfaction drifting like the snowflakes inside his mind. 

“Hey, little man,” says a cheery voice to his left. Peter turns his head, expecting one of the employees. Instead, he’s met by an older man with grey-bronze hair and a mustache that looks like it could do with a little more regular attention. 

“Hi.” Peter straightens. 

“Mind if I sit here? It’s pretty crowded here today.”

“Oh, go for it.” Peter pulls his bag across the booth and onto the bench beside him so the man can sit down. He looks… tired, Peter notices. Sad, almost. 

Peter quickly looks back down at his coffee. His fingers drum on the lid, and he takes a sip to wash the words from his lips. 

“What’s your success?” the man asks.

Peter blinks at him, confused. “What?”

The man gestures toward his shirt. Peter glances down and remembers the sticker on his collar; a bright gold firework with the words ‘I Did It!’ in swirling font. 

“Oh.” He flushes. “I, er, it was just a joke. ‘Cause I passed my GED test today.”

The man lights up, and his voice is genuine when he says, “oh! That’s great, little guy! Congratulations.” 

“Thanks.” Peter smiles, tucking into his coffee again. 

The man looks up when the barista moves over to pass him his drink. He gives her a quick thank you, holding the cup like he’s trying to cage the warmth, and turns back to Peter. “You celebrating with anyone tonight?”

The snow falls silently against the window. A little of Peter’s happiness fades. 

“No,” he says. “I don’t… I lost someone close to me earlier this year. And then I lost everyone else. So it’s just me now.”

The man’s face softens. “Oh. I’m sorry.”

Peter shakes himself. “It’s, ah, okay. I shouldn’t have dumped that on you when you’re just trying to enjoy your coffee.”

“It’s chai, actually,” the man says with a wink, “so feel free to dump.”

Peter chuckles, leaning back in the booth. “Glad you didn’t say ‘tea’ after that. Someone told me once that chai is just another word for tea, so it’s redundant.”

The man hums. “Yeah, it was originally used for Ayurveda. I liked it way better back in 6000 BC, but you modern Americans gave it a nice twist. I like the sweet.”

Peter laughs, enjoying the man’s dry humor. “I bet. What brings you to the 21st century, then?” 

He means to play into the joke, but the man’s face falls into something strangely solemn. “Well, I’ve actually… I’ve lost someone too.”

Peter blinks. “Oh. Shit, what happened?”

“I don’t know.” The man shrugs helplessly. “One moment we’re at the end of time together, and he’s telling me he’ll be fine, and the next… well. I’m looking for him. I think he might’ve come to this decade to find his brother, but I can’t be sure.”

Peter cocks his head. “I could help you look.”

The man laughs tiredly, taking a drink of his tea. He shakes his head. “I appreciate the offer, but there’s really nothing you can do.”

“You’d be surprised,” Peter argues. “I—”

He breaks off as the man fixes him in a sharp, brown gaze. There’s a knowledge there, a certainty, that makes Peter’s spider-sense tingle. 

“It’s okay,” the man tells him. “If he doesn’t want to be found, he won’t be. But I’ll just have to hope he’ll change his mind, the greasy little weasel.”

“Yeah,” Peter says. “I hope you find him.”

“Thanks, little guy.”

Peter rolls his eyes for show. “My name’s Peter,” he says.

“Nice to meet you,” the man replies. “And I’d tell you mine, but I’ve found that here in the 2020s, people find it strange.”

Peter remembers the last words a wizard had spoken to him and laughs, a little sadly. “Not as strange as some people I used to know.”

“Well.” The man takes a sip of his tea. “In that case, you can call me Mobius. What do you say I buy you one of those pastries as an excuse to buy myself one too? We can celebrate your test together.”

Peter’s chest warms, and he gives the man a thumbs up. “Sure,” he says. “That’s really kind of you.”

The man winks. “Break sweetbread for the future.”

\\\

(Stephen pretends he doesn’t understand. Time drags splinters of the universe out from under his feet like the riptide on a beach, and Stephen pretends he doesn’t know why. He battles monsters at Wong’s side and travels through dimensions with the Cloak. He does magic. He wields time. The world ends so slowly that he loses track of it, and loses track of his own lies along the way. 

He is an agent of fate. He is…)

He is standing in front of the Seal of the Vishanti, staring at another version of himself. 

He can’t pretend anymore. 

\\\

Peter stuffs a towel into the crack above his window to insulate the apartment from the cold air. It’s gotten below zero, and he doesn’t want the spider to die. 

She catches the fly that had been distracting him while he drafted his Daily Bugle application. He’d been waiting until after the GED test. But it was harder than he’d imagined; it’s not like he has a lot of accomplishments he can put on a resume. The fly bothered him relentlessly while he tried to decide if his Stark Internship was legitimate enough. 

He'd swatted at the fly and remembered Pepper wouldn’t remember who he was if the hiring team called her to confirm. 

Two days later, the spider is wrapping the fly tight within her web. Peter takes it as a thank-you. 

\\\

It's their fate. You can't change that anymore than you can change who they are.

\\\

“Do you ever think about home?” MJ asks Ned the fifth day of finals. They’re woozy from lack of sleep, and they stare up at the ceiling without much verbal filter between them. 

“Not as much as I thought I would,” Ned admits.

“Yeah,” MJ says. “Me neither.”

“It’s nice to move on.” Ned’s voice grows a little quiet. “Be myself, you know? Though I still don’t know who that is.”

MJ nods slowly. It is nice to move on, though sometimes you don't know what you're moving on from. 

\\\

In the grand calculus of the multiverse, my their sacrifice means infinitely more than my their life.

\\\

Peter watches the stars on the roof of Midtown Tech. Just once. 

He dries his tears on the sleeve of the Spider-Man suit, and he never goes back. 

\\\

“Things just got out of hand.”

Stephen stares at the sharp smile on his own face. The figure, bled black where he stands on grey wooden slats, has an aura of inversion. Realities leak through his footprints, warping the Sanctum around them. Between them both, a storm has gathered in the window. 

Between them both, the multiverse yawns. 

“What do you want?” Stephen asks. 

The other him presses a hand to his chest, looking offended. “Don’t you recognize me, Stephen Strange? Didn’t you call me here?”

“I did nothing of the sort,” Stephen says. He raises his hands, magic flaring along the tips of his fingers. 

The other Strange looks unamused. He takes a few steps forward, and lightning cracks outside the window. It strikes somewhere else, sending a violent shudder through the dimension. The sensation lances through Stephen. He stumbles

“Stop,” Stephen hisses. “My universe is fragile enough as it is.”

“That’s why I’m here,” the other Strange says.

Stephen bares his teeth. “You’ll have to get through me first.”

Rolling his eyes, the other Strange reaches out to brush the polished railing beside him. It turns black where his fingers make contact. Stephen sees the scars on them, too, though his doppelganger's hands don’t shake. 

“Always so quick to offer yourself up in righteous sacrifice,” the other Strange says. “And so slow to think about the consequences.”

Stephen takes a step back when the other takes a step forward. They stalk each other, the teeth of universes wide around them. 

“I’m not here to conquer this pathetic little dimension,” the other Strange says. “I’m here to help you.”

Stephen nearly laughs. “Forgive me if I doubt that.”

“You called me here,” his double says. His dark eyes are unmoving. “So I came.”

“Again, I did nothing of the sort,” Stephen hissed. “You are breaking my universe. You are bleeding thousands of timelines through, and I can barely stitch the wounds.”

“Oh, shut up.” His lip twitches up into that smirk again. “We both know who’s responsible.”

Stephen’s hands clench. He doesn’t answer.

“Come on.”

“Leave.”

“When I just got here?”

“Leave!”

The other Strange’s face twists, so suddenly it makes Stephen’s steps catch. “You’re going to shatter this fucking dimension,” the double snarls. “You’re going to kill us all.”

Something in Stephen’s chest, flavored of Titan’s sands, shatters. “Don’t you dare. ”

“Stop pretending.”

“You can’t blame me for this too,” Stephen hisses. His heart is pounding in his ears. “It was the only way. It was the only way.”

He circles his other self, drawing orange through the blackened shadows that trail from the double. The Sanctum creaks quietly around them. Moaning in pain. Stephen aches along with it, and he wants—he wants—

“It was your choice,” the other Strange says.

Stephen laughs darkly. Emptily. “No.”

“I was your choice.”

“I didn’t bring you here!” Stephen snaps. “I never meant for any of this to happen.”

“You created it,” the other Stephen says. He takes a step inward, and this time, Stephen doesn’t step away. He can see the silver in his double’s eyes. “You created me.” 

Stephen closes his eyes. "How? What did I do?" 

"Sit down," says the creature wearing his face. "And have the decency to offer me a cup of tea while I tell you how to save your cosmos." 

\\\

MJ draws the Statue of Liberty from the point of view of someone free-falling from its crown. Her art professor displays it on the pinboard outside the room for a few weeks, then sends it to Harvard for an installation. 

It isn’t a long trip to see the gallery. MJ’s piece is tucked away beside others dubbed political commentary, and pride has her chin lifted high.

She stands in the center of the ballroom and watches the students and visitors bustle about around her, orbiting nothing at all. Unbidden, thoughts of the multiverse come to her mind. 

MJ cocks her head, looking at her piece from a new angle. 

Some small mystery slots into place. 

“Oh,” MJ says. Her voice is lost in the sound around her. 

\\\

Stephen spins his teacup in circles with one finger. The contents don't taste like he’d expected with magic clogging his tongue. 

His doppelganger takes a long drink. Longer than he should, like he’s been parched for years. His touch turns the painted ceramic blue-black. 

“I’m you,” says the other Strange.

“Yeah,” Stephen replies dryly. His voice is still shaking. “I noticed. Which universe are you from?”

“Millions,” the other Strange says. He waves a hand, and his teacup fills to the brim again. “Just like you. Energy can neither be created nor destroyed, you know.”

Rain lashed the tabletop between them, leaking through the Seal of the Vistani. Stephen raised his hand, catching the droplets. “So what?”

“So where do you think it goes when you die and rewind? What do you think every denial you make becomes?”

“You are the versions who died.”

“Exactly.” The other Strange lifts his cup to his lips. “I am the shadow of your choice to live; I am from the timelines you abandoned, the loops you left in the Dark Dimension. A shred of my soul for every part of yours you gather up from the broken ground to continue on.”

“The inversion.”

“Not the inversion,” he says, “the shadow. The consequence.”

“What do you want?” Stephen asks. There are sparks pulsing through the soaked mahogany table beneath his spread hands. 

“To help you realize,” his other self says, “that your stubbornness is going to destroy all of us. That you are the largest danger left to this universe you care so much about.”

Stephen rubs his face with a hand slick with rainwater. “You act like I haven’t heard that before.” 

“Then why haven’t you listened?”

“I do. I have. Why do you think I—” He breaks off, the words clogged in his throat. 

Why do you think I died enough times for you to exist? 

The other Strange huffs. “What’s your plan, then? Your universe is being crowded out of the multiverse by your own timelines, and now—”

“What?”

“Stop pretending.” Black eyes settle on his, until Stephen’s drop down to his hands. 

“A choice that goes against fate makes a separate universe,” Stephen says. “Isolated from your own by your lack of memory.”

“Fourteen million memories of fourteen million choices makes a multiverse tied to one fragile little mortal timeline,” his other self finishes with a smirk. He takes another long drink of tea. 

“I’ve forgotten… something,” Stephen says. “Some part of it is gone, because I erased it somehow. The signature is my own." 

“I know. That's what allowed me to come here-what showed us both that we can still fix this." 

"What did I forget?" Stephen asks. A spark of something that feels like it might someday be hope gathers in his chest. 

But his other self shakes his head. "That's not what's important," he says dismissively.

"Of course it—" 

"No. Forgetting is what saved this universe. What bought you a little more time. Energy can neither be created nor destroyed, remember? The act of forgetting, of severing a multiversal connection… that bought you another year against the collapsing timelines." 

"What are you saying?" Stephen asks, his voice growing cold. 

"I'm saying you have to make another sacrifice," his other self says. "Just not to me, this time." 

Stephen is on his feet. He doesn't remember standing, the Cloak flaring around his shoulders. 

"No," he says simply. 

His other self looks impassively up at him. His eyes are reversed in color, Stephen realizes. Black on the outside. 

“What do you care what gets forgotten? What do you care for me, for the timelines you never lived?”

“They’re—” Stephen’s hands shake. Rain skitters between himself and the shape across the table. “They’re my contract. My—I learned, I remember, I am the guardian of our timeline's fate—"

The other Strange stands, too, in one swift movement that ruffles the collar of his pointed Cloak. Between them, the rain reverses. Flows back upward, toward the storm of grey in both their eyes. 

“There is no such thing as fate,” the other Strange says.

Stephen snarls. Something crackles, magic the color of sunhearts. “You’re ignorant. You are the version who died, you never saw—”

“I did see!” his other self’s voice climbs. Tea spills in brown and black through the rain that pounds between them. “I saw it all. I know you, Stephen Strange, shatterer of time, restitcher of death. At some point, we both had to stop pretending.”

“There was no other way.” 

“It was your choice!” Stephen snaps. The word lands within his other self— himself— like a blade between his third and fourth ribs. 

“Don’t you dare say that to me,” Stephen hisses. The rain is whipping to his words now, the storm controlled by his movements. “I saw fate. I fought it, I died for it, goddamn you. I suffered for it more than any mortal creature should have to suffer for it—until I was no longer mortal. No longer human. Until I understood. Time is fixed and we are fixed within it, and I have to save—”

“We deserve better!” his other self roars. 

Stephen smiles, a slash of teeth under dark eyes. “This is our destiny. We’re nothing, not to the multiverse.”

The other Strange raises his hands, runes stitching through the air around him. They glow blue, green, brown. “Stop it,” he says. “Enough of this.”

“My universe is out of order.” Stephen straightens, towering, immortal. “And I will put it back. Whatever it takes."

“Listen to yourself,” the dead timelines plead. 

“Why are you here?” Stephen asks. “What are you trying to convince me of, anymore?”

His other self extends a scarred, still hand through the rain. “Millions of universes are yours ,” he says. “They lead back here because they are you, lost, drifting, with nowhere else to go. Because you know. You know this world has no set ending.”

“Demon.”

“Monster,” his other self snaps back. The rain glints with the light glowing in their eyes. “This doesn’t have to be up to you. It doesn’t always have to be our responsibility—sometimes it’s just our mistake.”

“Leave.”

“This story isn’t yet written. You have as much say in the ending as anyone else, you can make any choice you want.”

Stephen laughs. He won’t sacrifice his universe. Not again. 

The darker Strange tries to step forward. The rain pushes him back, and he has to raise his voice. “You are allowed to be human! The multiverse doesn’t own us; it is nothing but souls and choice, and it wronged us.”

“I told you to leave.”

“You can do what you need. You can let go of those memories. You don’t have to be drifting endlessly in an unfamiliar multiverse, clinging to this timeline because it’s the only shred of home you have left. You don’t owe the universe your soul. There is no contract.” 

The rain shrieks. The universe bleeds. 

The other Strange closes his eyes. “You did what you had to do. And it wasn’t fair, but it wasn’t fate. It’s never been fate. It’s never been predetermined.” 

“This is your last warning.”

“Listen to me!” his other self screams. “You have to stop this!”

Stephen takes a deep breath, feeling power rise and settle behind his tongue. His fingers twist. He draws banishment from the fabric of his bleeding universe. 

“Why are you so caught up on fucking dying, Strange? You are the one of us who lived. So live, damn it!”

“For what?” Stephen’s voice is nearly lost to the storm. “What is left?”

His other self looks up. His face is nearly desperate. It’s an odd look on Stephen’s own face. 

“You are,” the other Strange says. “You can move on, Stephen.”

Stephen’s hands hang in the air between them. Rain and magic drip from them, drying on the tea-stained table. Blood and the splinters of a soul, soaking into the wood. 

“I don’t deserve that,” Stephen says. “Not after what I— what I chose.”

Something flickers in his other self’s eyes. “Neither do I.”

They stare at each other. The wind is dying, fading like fourteen million deaths between them. The rain on Stephen’s cheeks tastes like salt. 

“Don’t do it for you, then,” the other Strange says, finally. “Save the universe, instead.”

“I want…” Stephen’s throat feels dry. There is silence in his ears. 

I want to be human again. 

“The past doesn’t matter,” his other self breathes. “I don’t matter. It’s the future that matters. The future and the freedom it can give you.”

Stephen looks down at his hands. Magic burns across them like flames on the surface of oil. Dancing. 

Waiting for him. His choice. 

Stephen breathes in. 

\\\

Peter’s invitation comes over email. He crows loudly and pumps the air with a fist, and in his excitement, the apartment doesn’t seem so empty. 

He says Peter Parker, and the interviewer in his suit and silver glasses doesn’t bat an eye in recognition. For once, it feels good. Peter makes his own first impression. He makes a good one. 

He leaves the office with a spring in his step, his spider-suit soft under his clothes. He tucks his hands into his jacket pockets and looks up toward the sliver of sky between the towering buildings. The warm weather is coming. 

He’s going to be twenty soon. How wild is that?

He’s growing up. 

The sun shines through the storm of magic no one will ever know his role in calming, and the multiverse whispers its gratitude into the warmth on his face. Peter never knows it. 

But he doesn’t have to. He owes the past nothing, after all. 

\\\

Stephen breathes out. 

\\\

MJ slips into the open seat beside the young man at the outdoor table. The restaurant’s umbrella has a hole in it, and it lets the sun in at just the wrong angle, blinding her. 

“Hi again,” she says. 

The young man stares at her. His brown eyes are wide with an emotion she cannot hope to fathom, frozen with his Coca-Cola beading condensation on his hand.

“H-hi,” he stutters. 

“You’re Peter, right?” MJ asks.

The man nods. His cheeks are a bit red when he looks down into his drink. “What are you, uh…”

“I’m on summer break,” MJ says. “Back from my first semester at MIT.”

“Congratulations.” Peter sounds genuine, but some part of his voice is controlled. MJ nods. 

“I’m gonna sit here.” MJ points to the table, her tone booking no argument. Her sandwich will be a few minutes, but she can take as long as she needs.

“Do you know me?” Peter asks quietly. 

“No,” MJ replies. She shrugs.

Peter reaches for his fork and nods. He chews silently on his salad as MJ sets down her backpack and leans back out of the glare through the torn umbrella.

“I should though, shouldn’t I?” she says. “Know you, I mean.”

The man looks at her. He hesitates, calculation in his gaze, and MJ looks back coolly. 

“Yeah,” he says eventually.

MJ nods. “Knew it. I’m always right, you know.”

Peter’s lip twitches up. “I do.”

“So I’m right about this too, aren’t I? You’re Spider-Man.”

The fork slips out of Peter’s fingers. MJ catches it and pokes his shoulder with it. The fear on Peter’s face is almost funny, though she knows it shouldn’t be. She doesn’t mind not understanding. She doesn’t mind not remembering. 

Moving forward and leaving behind. 

“Yes,” Peter says, voice so quiet it’s almost nothingness. “That’s right too.”

Moving forward and rediscovering. 

“Cool,” MJ says. “What kind of salad is that?”

“What?” Peter blinks. “Oh, it’s, uh, got strawberries and chicken. It’s really good.”

Moving forward.

Peter looks at her. MJ looks back, her fingers tapping slowly on the metal lattice table before them. 

“I’ll never remember, will I?” MJ asks. 

“No.”

“Okay.” 

She’s going to be an engineer someday. She’s going to change the world someday. MJ thinks about it, thinks about whether she’d remembered to ask for pesto on her sandwich or not. Thinks about a life she doesn’t think is going to disappoint her. 

“Want to—” Peter’s voice falters. He takes a breath and tries again. “Want to go get coffee sometime this summer?”

“No,” MJ says, shaking her head. “But there’s a Shakespeare in the park performance tonight. I have two tickets. It’s Tempest. ”

“Oh.” Peter smiles.

“I hope you like storms.”

\\\

Peter lingers halfway up a crane, catching his breath as he wrings out his wrists. The hot summer air makes him sweat through his suit. His head pounds, and he wishes his suit had cup holders. 

The thought makes him chuckle a little. He rests a hand against a nearby pylon and grabs his foot to stretch his hamstrings. 

“Spider-Man?”

Peter shrieks, nearly tumbling from the crossbeam. He lifts his web-shooters and spins. Only to feel his heart drop and lift all at once. 

A man hovers in the air before him. Or rather hangs, suspended by the elegant folds of a red cape, his bright eyes fixed on Peter with a sharp energy that seems almost out of place on his face. He looks so much younger than Peter remembers.

So much happier. Like maybe he is finally surviving, and Peter thinks he knows the feeling. 

“Hi,” Peter says, and lifts his hand to wave.

“My name is Doctor Stephen Strange.”

“Yeah, I know,” Peter laughs. “You were in that fight against Thanos, way back when. You’re pretty cool.”

Stephen’s brow furrows. He looks so comically taken aback that Peter laughs again. 

“Thanks, I think,” the doctor says dryly.

“Yeah, sure,” Peter replies. “What do you want with little old me?”

“I like to keep track of my possible allies,” Stephen says with a shrug. 

Peter blinks. “And that’s—you think I can help you?”

Stephen smirks at him. There’s wit and power and strength in his eyes; weathered, but no longer so ancient. So tired. Peter wonders what happened. 

“Something tells me you play higher level games more than you let on.”

Peter huffs. “Should I be offended?”

“That was clearly a compliment.”

“Shut up, wizard.”

Stephen waved a hand, and a shock of static made Peter yelp. He glared at Stephen, who was still wearing that smirk. 

“Okay,” Peter says.

Stephen nods. “Good. You know where to find me.”

He’s gone a half second later. Peter looks at the empty space where he’d been and smiles. He's m ade an good impression on this second chance, he thinks. 

“Yeah,” Peter says to the empty air. “I think I know where to find me, too.”

\\\

In the corner of a dusty apartment in Queens, a shiny black spider drops from the ceiling and onto the floor. It cleans its front legs against the wood. 

Then it scuttles away into the crack between the wall and the floor, forgotten.