Chapter Text
My dad used to tie my shoelaces for me. Every morning before he drove me to school, he'd kneel down and he'd carefully show me how to do it, explaining each step along the way, hoping that eventually I'd learn to do it myself. At first I liked it. He always smiled when he explained it, so calm and loving, even though he'd explained the exact same thing six times already that week. I didn't learn though, to tie my laces. My fingers just wouldn't do it. I tried and tried, but I couldn't keep the knot still, and I couldn't make the loop go round the other loop, and even when I did it right with his help it always came undone before long. So Dad kept explaining, but then it started to annoy me. I couldn't even find the words for it back then, I was so small. I could explain the nature of spacetime but I couldn't tell him 'Hey Dad, this isn't working for me', so I… started crying. I didn't want to, but the tears forced their way out. Or I suppose it's more like they snuck out. I didn't realize I was crying till he wiped my cheek and asked me, "Are you alright sweetheart?"
And I shook my head and told him, "I can't do it Dad. I'm sorry. I just can't do it. I can't do it…"
It became my personal secret. It wasn't a very good secret, cos anyone who looked at my laces could see they were a mess. But I didn't tell them why. Noir knew why. And Cindy Moon, my girlfriend. Harry knew too, not that he talked to me anymore…
I looked up from my shoes, covered in gunk from the grimy hallway outside Cindy's apartment, and knocked on her door to the tune of 'shave and a haircut'. She opened it just an inch, her living room a slim sliver of light against the darkness. Then she saw me and swung it wide open, "Peni!"
Back before Mysterio nearly destroyed New York, Cindy and I used to take photographs together. Not like selfies, more like, art pictures. Fun lil' snaps of the city. She's a great photographer. She'd take forever to get exactly the right shot. One time she asked me to web her upside down from a billboard hanging over the highway, just to get an overhead shot of the cars. It was her whole world. And mine.
"How long did you keep the door open for today?" I asked her. I hated asking it, cos it always made her eyes glass over with that empty look, draining all the joy from her face.
"About three seconds fully open," she said flatly, "Same as yesterday."
"That's three seconds more than when you started! I'm proud of you, Cindy."
She forced a smile, "Thanks."
I gave her hand a gentle squeeze, "It'll get easier."
"It won't, but…" she sighed, "Sorry."
"It's okay."
She looked at me with teary eyes, "It must be exhausting for you, coming here after school when you could be at home."
I cupped her cheeks, "Cindy, I love you. It's not exhausting. Not even a little."
"I don't deserve you."
"Oh Cindy…"
I pulled her into my arms and held her close, letting her sob all the pain into my shoulder. Softly I whispered, "You're having a bad day, that's all. It's just a bad day. Tomorrow will be better. I promise. I'll make it better."
"Why am I like this?"
I stroked her back, "It's Mysterio's fault, not yours. There's nothing wrong with you," SP//dr crawled through my hair and onto her forehead, "See? SP//dr agrees with me."
She half giggled, half sobbed, "You idiot."
Eventually she calmed down, and we held each other on her bed, listening to each other's breathing. Sometimes that's how it went for us now. With the rest of the world we had to put on a brave face, but with each other we could just be ourselves. It reminded me of how Noir made me feel, all the way over in Miles's universe, in the tiny hidden bunker deep below the earth in May's secret spider lab. I felt real.
I got vegetarian fast food on the way home using Oscorp's business account. It was the only account registered with my retina, so every silly thing I bought was expensed to the company. It also meant Norman Osborn saw every purchase I made. I tried not to think too hard about that. Instead I focused my mind on the upcoming Halloween school festival.
They always held it on Halloween. The school didn't exactly have a long tradition — it was only constructed after my dad died, but it'd quickly become the most fun time of year at Mason Banks Academy. They put little pumpkin decorations in the hall, there was a ball and a feast, with singing and dancing, and at the end the principle gave a big speech wishing students good luck in the rest of the academic year. The only reason Osborn allowed all this happiness, of course, was because he got us to work our butts off on special school festival projects.
There are two kinds of school project, and you always had to do both. One was industrial, some research and development project that Oscorp didn't wanna pay its employees to solve. Every class would be presented with the same problem, and whoever came up with the best solution got a thank you note from upper management. That's it. The other project, and the one that parents and friends and family could come visit, was the class project that each class decided in secret. We all voted on it, and then we had about three weeks to get it ready in time for the festival on Halloween.
I wanted to make an immersive VR game, but I got outvoted, so now we're performing live music instead, and that meant I had to learn an instrument.
Back home after my journey through town and my deep fried veggie burger, I plinked away at the keys of Aunt May's old piano, half-asleep. The piano was one of those classic models, all sleek and black and angular, back before 'faux wood' became the hot furniture trend. The sound was synthesized from over a million samples, or so the faded sticker next to the control panel told me. It definitely sounded pretty, but I wouldn't know if it sounded 'real' or not.
I figured it couldn't be that hard to learn the piano. When you're a genius, learning stuff is easy. You just read it, and it's there. I've never met a concept I didn't understand. So of course, learning the piano should be just as easy as anything else, right? Right…?
I sighed, "So why isn't it?"
SP//dr, perched atop the piano's display screen warming his butt, sent me some telepathic sympathy.
"I know all the theory," I complained, jamming my index finger into one of the black keys, "I can label the keys from memory, I know every scale off by heart. So why won't my hands do what they're told?"
It all came back to the laces. As I lay in bed later that evening I complained to SP//dr, "We should've made a VR game. That would've been easy. I could've had a beta out before sunrise."
I felt his presence at the base of my neck, warm and comforting. He sent an image to my mind of my fingers gliding across the piano keys in a concert hall, him resting on the tip of my nose as I played to a cheering audience.
"I'm the smartest person on the planet," I grumbled, "I'm the smartest person on the planet and I can't even play a freaking piano. A piano! Who even plays analogue instruments anymore? God!" I punched the bed, "This is so dumb!"
SP//dr crawled along my arm as I rolled over, resting on my thumb, stroking the little hairs on my skin with his tiny legs. I closed my eyes, "I'm sorry, buddy."
SP//dr forgave me.
"It's just hard. I don't understand it. How can I not understand it?" I sighed, "I can't play the piano… I can't help Cindy… and Harry…"
Harry hadn't spoken to me since I started dating Cindy. Turns out he'd loved me all along too. We used to eat lunch in the cafeteria together every day. Now it was just me.
"Me and you," I corrected, as SP//dr sent a wave of warmth through my mind, "We'll always be together, right SP//dr?"
I checked the time on my phone: 00:23 — well past midnight, and Aunt May and Uncle Ben still weren't back. They always got kept back by Osborn, but the past few days they'd been working even later than usual, and they wouldn't tell me why.
"Stupid Oscorp," I mumbled, "Stupid everything."
I buried my face in my pillow, "I wish Ham was here. He'd know how to cheer me up."
Then a thought occurred to me. I dragged my interdimensional communication device out from under my bed and sent a message, [Hey Ham! Do you think I could visit you today? Like, maybe even now? I know it's short notice but I really wanna see you!]
His reply came back almost immediately, [Perfect timing, kiddo! I just baked a batch of key lime pies in that oven you brought over for me. I can't eat 'em all myself, so — well actually that's a lie, I could definitely eat them by myself, but you should eat 'em with me! Will you fall down my chimney again, or is it the front door this time?]
I giggled, [Hopefully I'll walk through the front door, but put some cushions down just in case]
[Way ahead of you. See you soon!]
I almost wanted to cry. How did I meet such wonderful people by accident?
"Aunt May won't mind," I told SP//dr as I scooped my backpack off of the floor, "I'll tell her we were fighting bad guys. If I get tired during class tomorrow I'll drink some Cool Fizz, no big deal."
SP//dr wasn't so sure about Aunt May, but he wanted to see Ham as much as I did, so we ran down the stairs and picked up some soda and my not-school shoes. The mech was where it always was, out in the back yard, hidden in the trees. The city stared down at me, its towers like ghostly gravestones walling in the sky. I was lucky I could even see the sky. In the lower strata, everything was obscured by skybridges and advertising space — or worse, sewer pipes. It was nothing like Ham's world. In his world, there was more sky than there were buildings.
I'll only stay for a couple hours. I just need to clear my head.
The mech's glass screen opened at SP//dr's psychic command, and we hopped in. I sat in my pilot's chair, and SP//dr clambered into his tiny spider-sized cockpit. Then we activated the mech, and my awareness of my human body melted away, like floating on warm water, my arms and legs all numb and mushy and soft. Slowly, the electrostatic rainbow of the mech's metal organs drifted into focus, its fusion core, its magnetic fingers, the hum of its jetstream feet. SP//dr's mind overlaid with my own in a gentle hug, and I and he became we.
"Let's do this!" we said, then we propelled ourselves into the air, into the concrete jungle of New York City.
We swung out of Ditmars, rocketing across the river towards the Reed Richards Science Center. Professor Richards already helped me figure out how to get to other people's dimensions, but we still needed the facility's power grid to get the teleporter to work. Of course, this was all kept secret from Oscorp.
I reached into the hidden candy compartment built into my seat and withdrew some Gummy Planets. A few minutes later we reached Fisk Gardens, so named for all the greenery lining the mayor's skyscrapers. The Science Center was in the bottom layer of the city, down with the metropolitan drainage system and the warehouses. We carefully descended past billboards and exhaust pipes, passing by a few makeshift houses on the way. The (illegal) settlements were built out of scrap metal and discarded plastic, jammed into the gaps between support beams holding up the city's communication arrays. Some of the houses were even ones we'd helped build, and a few of those residents waved at us as we climbed through the maze of bridges and wires tying all the buildings together.
"So much more work to do…" I said to myself as we finally left the main residential stratum (stratum two), and reached the dark and damp ground level: stratum one.
So much work, but I'd make sure I did it. I'd save everyone in the city, whatever it took. That was my promise to them after the sacrifice they made for me, the sacrifice of not tearing the city to pieces during their rebellion against Oscorp's corruption.
The Science Center's sign was just like I remembered it: missing half its letters. We strolled through the garage entrance. Betty Brant had already gone home for the night, so we'd have to let ourselves in. We parked the mech in the middle of the room, in the shadows, then we hopped out in front of Betty's office. Inside was a button that would lower the floor in the garage, granting access to all of the Science Center's technology. The door was so weak that we could probably just tear it open, but then Professor Richards would be mad. He'd probably be mad anyway, if he knew I was using his portal out of hours.
I crouched down to examine the gap beneath the door. If I'd come just a few hours earlier, Betty would probably be there, the office's yellow light streaming into the garage.
"Maybe we should go home," I said, "I can message Ham and explain."
I held my head in my hands. Even if it was possible to go back now, I didn't want to. I didn't wanna see that piano. I didn't wanna fall asleep and wake up to just another school day. I thought I'd gotten over Mysterio, but no, his influence was still there in my life, polluting it. The more I thought about it, the more certain I was that I should see Ham.
All at once I stood up and clapped my hands together, "I won't be gone long. I'll apologize to Aunt May," suddenly it occurred to me, "Shoot! I forgot to block the tracking device! Agh, now she'll know where we are!"
SP//dr, climbing down my leg, reassured me that he turned the tracking off before we even left Ditmars.
"Thanks buddy! You're a lifesaver!"
I watched him creep under the door. I couldn't see through his eyes exactly, but if he chose to he could send me anything he saw through his mind's eye. We shared an imagination like that. It's our shared imagination that makes the mech work. We have a unique genetic bond — well, almost unique. The only other person who connected with SP//dr as well as I do was my dad.
"It should be the button next to the touchscreen, the one above the slider," I didn't need to say it, but I always found I thought better when I could verbalize those thoughts aloud.
Sure enough, the button was there, right where I thought it was. With a strength far greater than his size he shoved the button down. Immediately the floor behind me began to descend.
"Quick, SP//dr!"
He scurried onto my hand and we sprinted for the mech. We landed right on top of it as the elevator sank deep beneath the concrete. When it finally jolted to a stop it took me down with it. My feet slid on the mech's nano-armor, my knees gave way, and all at once I fell on my butt.
"Ow…"
I shifted the mech, then pulled a lever to send the secret floor back up. Now all I had to do was find the teleporter…
The labs looked strange in the dark. Gray and lifeless. I kept expecting some monster to jump out at me as I shone my phone's torch down the long hallways. The portal room was especially eerie. A cold concrete cube with a metal ring pressed into it.
"We need to turn the computer on first," I said, my voice echoing in the emptiness.
I literally sighed with relief when I flipped the lights on in the teleporter control room. The carpet's quiet blue, the soft white of the plastisteel desks. My mind went back to when I was little, to the slim line of light coming from the hall beyond my bedroom. I could almost hear our old TV.
I shook my head, "I can't think of that right now."
SP//dr directed me to the computer from his vantage point atop my nose. Once the computer was on the rest was easy. I set the co-ordinates for Ham's world then started the portal up. Through the control room's window I saw the metal ring glow fierce blue.
I walked down into the concrete cube, towards the teleporter. Just the sight of that swirling vortex set my mind at ease.
"Key lime pie," I sighed happily, "That's what we need, SP//dr. Some pie, and maybe a hug," I wiped my eyes, "Ham'll understand."
I closed my eyes and stepped into the portal, imagining vistas of clear blue sky, sparkling rivers, and little houses with little porches and little gardens to match. I saw Ham's bright eyes and his springy tail poking out of his pants. That's what got me through the hard times with Mysterio. My spider-friends. Knowing they were there. Knowing they'd root for me.
I opened my eyes expecting to tumble down a chimney, but my feet were on solid ground. The room I was in looked nothing like Ham's house, or any house from Ham's universe. The portal behind me was still open, and I was about to go right back in when I heard a harsh voice call my name.
"Peni Parker."
I felt him before I saw him, my spider-sense burning like a hot stone pressing into my head. This wasn't the comfortable sensation I got near Peter B or Miles. This was different.
"Who are you?" I asked as he stepped out of the shadows in his neon blue and red suit, "Are you… a spider-person?"
"I'm Miguel O'Hara, Spider-Man of Earth-928," he stood right in front of me, flexing his height, "And I've had just about enough of your shit."