Chapter Text
It takes Gwen weeks to mentally settle into her new life, to accept that for the foreseeable future she’ll be sleeping in chrome-plated bunks and surrounded by more of her own kind than she could ever have imagined. It’s a stunningly weird blend of utter loneliness and unprecedented camaraderie—and yet, it still feels too easy to settle into a rhythm, to sit with the fact that she’s left behind her New York and what’s left of her family.
She’s gone on a few missions by this time, at least, jobs that help her feel less like an itsy bitsy homeless spider and more like a Spider, capital S. Gwen knows she’s just a trainee, always assigned a Spider-Buddy whenever she goes out to nab, say, a rogue Octopus (or in one universe, a Señor Squid) or whatever other convoluted catastrophe the multiverse has decided to cook up.
Jessica goes with her a lot. She shows Gwen things she never thought of and corrects her on some of the things she did. There’s one Spider she’s worked with a couple times now, Hobie, whose dedication to his anarcho-rocker-punk persona non grata lifestyle is grating at first but slips enough times for Gwen to see the potential hiding beneath. But for a society made of hundreds of Spiders, she actually works with very few new characters over her first month.
One day Gwen wakes up and her watch is buzzing: she has a new mission featuring a Rhino with two horns, one in the normal place and the other…well, maybe his universe had some very interesting evolutionary requirements for rhinos. And her partner for this fetch quest—
“You know, Miguel never pairs us with ourselves,” is the first thing Peter B. says when Gwen walks up to him. “And I get it, cohesion, compatibility, communication, blah blah…”
Gwen snorts. “You’d rather work with Peter Parkedcar?”
“Dude. He’s got a great trunk—”
“Okay, can we go?”
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The mission, in fact, is deeply disappointing. This particular Rhino is a slow-moving, lumbering beast (the location of the second horn makes it somewhat difficult to move, apparently) and even with his layers and layers of armor, after a couple rounds of glitching the wuss gives up and begs them to take him home.
Apparently, these are the kinds of missions that Lyla thinks are suitable for a Gwen-in-training.
“I was really counting on the adrenaline to carry me through skipping breakfast,” Peter says, after they’ve thrown the Rhino into the processing portal. “Now I’m hungry and I’m bored.” He pauses. “Want to go to that Rhino’s universe and Google rhino pics?”
Gwen’s fear of what she might see honestly outweighs her curiosity. Not to mention, Miguel would flip. “Hungry Peters always make bad choices,” is what she says instead. “Let’s grab a burger.”
Technically, Spiders are supposed to minimize their time in other ‘verses to avoid cross-contamination or canon violations, but so far Peter’s “burgerverse” tour hasn’t gotten the stern O’Hara treatment. Some universes don’t even have burgers, in which case Peter just goes for chicken nuggets. A multiversal constant, apparently.
The second they get to a burger joint, Peter groans. “Great,” he says, “it’s one of those universes.”
“Do they season with roaches? Because I already found out I still don’t like eating bugs—”
Peter waves a lazy hand. “No no, it’s fine. Just fine. You’ll see.”
When the burger comes, Gwen stares down at it. The perfect cube of bread on her plate stares back up at her. She pokes it hesitantly. “So…”
“It’s still a burger,” Peter says casually, grasping the cube like any other burger and taking a big bite. “Beautiful on the inside. But I mean, come on , isn’t the whole point to lick your fingers after?”
It is good on the inside. If she’d closed her eyes, Gwen might only have noticed a slightly different ratio of bread to bits. “Do you think they still stick the little flags into these?” she asks absently as she chews.
Peter regards his cubeburger for a moment. “Well, I guess they could stick up to five in if they wanted to.” He squints harder. “Though I always wondered, why not a sphere burger…”
Gwen rolls her eyes fondly and continues eating her burger, looking around the place. If not for the cube, she’d think she was right at home. Her watch beeps; looks like their Rhino’s been sent back to his.
“You know,” Peter says, “I’m still stuck thinking about these teams.” At this point he’s ripped the cube apart and is digging into the mess happily, pausing periodically to lick his fingers. “Me, you, Noir, Peni, Ham, no-brainers. But what about, like, Ptarker?”
“Dino-dude?” Gwen says, flashing back to the first time she saw the giant T-rex swinging around.
“Yeah! How many universes are there where the dinosaurs won? Who’s compatible with that? Who even speaks dino?”
Gwen hums as she finishes her cube. “Well, they must have some cognates if his first name is Pter.” She leans back in her chair and stretches. Darn good cube, honestly. “Maybe there’s a Gwenodactyl out there somewhere.”
She says it lightly, but there’s a deeper side to that joke: she’s seen so many Peters at this point that she thinks part of her brain has shut down from all the constant quipping. She’s met some Margos, Malalas, (no Miles , part of her whispers), and of course a few Jessicas. But no other Gwens, for some reason.
Peter knows what she’s thinking about, if the look on his face is any indication. He’s also done with his mess at this point, and reaches over to take her empty plate and stack it on top of his. “We should probably scram before Miguel comes and drags us out.”
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Do I even want to know?
Gwen ponders this as she drowses in the bunks, tries out some of the ton-weight machines, and all the other things she does to kill time while at HQ. The other Spiders can help with missions and then go home to their lives. She’s stuck kicking around in what’s essentially a giant convention center—granted, one with holograms and wormholes opening and closing constantly, but still. She’s essentially at a live-in Comic-Con at this point.
That thought is enough to make Gwen groan and activate her watch. It’s dusk now, and while Earth-2099 always has a few Spiders swinging around, there are none here that know her.
She pulls up CRAWLER, one of Miguel’s long-winded monikers with a full name she can never remember for what is essentially a multiversal search engine. The system indexes information from a network of bots who automatically visit other universes, download the entire Internet, and then pop out of existence again. Gwen Stacy must be in there somewhere.
G and W are the only letters Gwen manages to get in before Lyla pops up with a cheery wave. “Heeey there, 65B,” the flickering woman says, flashing between three relaxed poses in a second.
Gwen grits her teeth. “How’s life, Clippy?”
“Ha ha, hilarious,” Lyla says, doing a flickering twirl. She winks out of sight, and her next line comes from over Gwen’s shoulder. “Tough mission today.”
“Wow. Thanks.”
Lyla flashes right in front of Gwen's face with an eerily perfect Clippy grin. “I see you’re attempting to enter an existential crisis. Would you like any help with that?”
“Gah — ” Gwen swats at Lyla, but the AI is already gone. “For all you know, I could’ve been looking up the Gween Goblin.”
“Careful what you wish for,” Lyla singsongs, before appearing in a mime’s impression of an armchair. “Anyway, Gween, this is my mandatory psychological warning for self-seeking searchers. That’s you, by the way.”
“Do I have to sign a waiver?”
“Nope! Give me a shout if you go insane!” With that, Lyla disappears.
“I miss paperclips,” Gwen mutters, before looking back down at her watch. This time, there are no interruptions.
GWEN STACY: 1,226,327 RESULTS. UNIVERSAL DENSITY ESTIMATE: 0.36. VARIANTS INCLUDED.
Okay. Not bad, honestly. This is also bearing in mind that from what Miguel and Lyla have said, less than 1% of the “potentiality web”, “causative probability manifold”, or whatever surrounds the 1610B Collider Event has been indexed at this point. But what about…
FILTERING BY BITE EVENTS: 4 RESULTS. ENLISTED: 1 RESULT.
Gwen stares at the number. One. One. One out of four . No wonder she hasn’t met any other Gwens. For a moment, she almost gives in and calls for Lyla, but shakes it off. So she’s unimaginably unique. Fine. Her amygdala hasn’t yet decided if that’s something to interpret as loneliness or triumph.
She removes the filter and goes back to the main list, feeling oddly like she’s spying. Sure enough, there are Gwens of all shapes, sizes and colors; she spots one variant of herself called “Gayatri Singh” and wonders again if the multiverse’s sense of humor is the same as Peter’s. But there are plenty of recognizable Gwens in the mix, as well. And next to an alarming number of those listings…
DECEASED. DECEASED. DECEASED. COMMITTED. COMMITTED. MISSING. DECEASED.
Gwen knows she signed up for outcomes like this the instant she put on the mask, of course. Mentally, she’s okay with the possibility that one day she might show up as DECEASED in this list as well. But if only four Gwens in this database were ever bitten, what happened to the others?
She picks a DECEASED Stacy at random: Earth-120703, a universe with a Spider-Peter (of course). Rogues gallery comprises the Lizard, Green Goblin, Electro, Rhino, and others. Cultural and physical similarity index to her own universe is 87%. A fairly standard universe, then, so where does (did) she fit in? She hits ISOLATE , and Gwen Stacy’s story scrolls across the screen.
Born: Queens. Oscorp employment. Died during 120703-2014 altercation between Spider-<Man> and Electro; involvement unknown. Image and sentiment analysis indicates 76% chance of archetypical assistant relation to Peter Parker. 94.4% chance of additional romantic attachment.
Fine. Fair enough. Knowing herself , Gwen is sure that if there is any chance at all that she was an “archetypical assistant” to Spider-Man, it’s all or nothing. It’s fair to assume that she died helping him, somehow. And as for the romantic angle, well, whatever. She’s sure the algorithm had a few good Instagram images to go off or something.
As she continues to scroll through the list, however, she becomes aware that there is a slight problem. Gwen Stacy, it seems, almost always catches the ol’ spider bug one way or another. Clearly, she has a type. And whenever that happens…it doesn’t end well. The best case scenario seems to be that she and Spider-Man split up, move to different continents, and forget about each other’s lives. In the worst cases, even Spider-Man dies too.
On a hunch, Gwen tries something. EXCLUDE BY INTERACTIONS: SPIDER, SPIDER-MAN, SPIDER-PERSON. First, she notices the number of results: 317. And of those results: ALIVE. ALIVE. ALIVE. ALIVE—
It’s just correlation, Gwen tells herself furiously. You know what everyone says about correlation. But it’s hard to deny the results staring her in the face as she scrolls through them.
All of a sudden, there’s an electronic crackle and a very annoying, overly pink set of heart glasses appears in front of her. “So! How are we doing?” Lyla asks, hands on hips.
Hurriedly, Gwen closes the results list in front of her, as if that would do any good. “Me?”
“Yes, you,” Lyla says. “You’ve got that dramatic plot point heart rate, girl. Peak crisis!”
Gwen resists the urge to rip off the watch and toss it in one of HQ’s many washing machines. “I am not having a crisis,” she grits out. “I’m just focused.”
“The first step in managing anxiety is to recognize it,” Lyla intones in a shockingly bad British accent. “Then, focus on your breathing…”
“Noted! Can I, I don’t know, pick a different personality? Someone cool and actually British?”
“Is your name Tony?”
“What?”
“Nothing.” Lyla flickers through a cartwheel in reverse. “Anyway, don’t forget to breathe!” Then she’s gone again.
Gwen squeezes her eyes shut for a good ten seconds, trying to refocus, but her brain seems like it’s already done making conclusions. The generous way to summarize said conclusions is that every Spider around here is a walking ticket to her own doom.
She sighs and gets up from her bunk, pulling on her mask and heading out to one of the many available views of Nueva York. Gwen isn’t having a crisis—she’s not , she isn’t—but some fresh air would definitely help right now. Despite herself, she takes some deep breaths as she heads out to a balcony.
It’s completely dark at this point. Gwen looks out at the glittering 2099 skyline, so surprisingly similar to her own, except for the silver space elevator extending far into the sky. She knows that from here it goes to the Moon, then to an interplanetary shuttle system that ends on Mars.
If she’d never been a Spider, could she have had anything close to this? For all Gwen knows, a 93-year old lady is hobbling around the city this very instant with no idea of what she could have been.
Of all the Gwen Stacies she’s seen now, is she the most screwed of all? Fate seems to love sacrificing Gwens to the big spider in the sky. What else could that mean for her, a literal Spider-Gwen? Or is she in the eye of her own personal storm? Is that why her Peter had to die instead? Should she still be talking to Peter B.? Does Jessica matter?
Breathe, Lyla’s terrible British accent echoes, and just the thought of the AI seeing her like this has Gwen clutching the guardrail and standing up straighter. She can handle this. Another deep breath. Keep digging, Gwen.
Slowly, she activates her watch. Maybe this time she’ll just start from the Gwens who are alive, no other assumptions. There’s got to be something she missed.
But when the screen appears, one specific Earth is already highlighted in the list: Earth-8. Gwen Stacy appears to be alive and well in this universe—and moreover this is one of the only four known Spider-Gwens out there. What is this? “Lyla! What did you do?” Gwen hisses, but now no flickering woman appears. “Lyla! ”
Nothing.
She sighs in frustration and gives the listing a cautious tap. Immediately, without any input from her, a newspaper headline scrolls across the screen.
AMERICA’S FAVORITE SPIDERS TANGLE THE WEB!
Gwen buries her face in her hands. “So tacky,” she groans, but it’s too late to stop reading now. The picture that follows makes things worse. It’s her, mask still on, dressed in a ridiculous veil and wedding gown. She’s posing. She’s unbearable. “Lyla. This is a deepfake, right? It’s a deepfake. Or a Banksy.”
Of course, there is still no response to that. Out of sheer morbid fucking curiosity, Gwen scrolls on. There are pictures of happy guests—she spots Peni and Ham in one photo—various nasty-looking spider-themed cakes, party favors galore…
And then something else hits her. “Spi-ders?” Gwen mouths, turning the word over in her head. It’s plural, all right—but that just makes no sense. Each universe gets one Spider. That’s something Miguel has made very clear, exactly the reason that he blames a certain Spider-Boy so much and so often. Then how…
An idea enters Gwen’s head, then, but she brushes it aside.
She keeps scrolling through the massive article, almost reading through her fingers to shield herself from the soul-sucking sappiness wafting off of the page. It’s got to be ending soon, right? And then, all of a sudden, it does, and Gwen is left staring at the giant photo at the end of the article.
At her hands, clasped in those of the Spider opposite her. At the veil. At the ridiculous top hat perched on top of the groom’s head. At the matte black suit, and the familiar spray-painted spider emblem stretching across his chest—
“LYLA!”
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“Maybe some things are supposed to be just for us.”
“That’s a nice way to think about it,” Gwen says, but as she looks out at the skyline of this New York, she can’t help but think that if the Spider Society has its way, then this view—this universe, and everything in it—is just for Miles. Only for Miles. Man, the look Jess would give her if she knew Gwen was here right now with him.
But she can’t help it. It’s just good to talk to him, for reasons she can’t even fully articulate.
He scoots up next to her, and it’s great, she’s been missing this for a whole year, but the amazing silence around them just reminds her of the invisible cage surrounding Miles’s universe. She’s going to enjoy this while she can, though. No regrets.
Miles is sneaking glances at her out of the corner of his eye, now, sending a warm rush through Gwen with each glance. And she finally decides: if this might be the only moment she gets to have with him, she’s okay talking about this unspoken thing they have.
“In every other universe,” she says, “Gwen Stacy falls for Spider-Man.”
Miles’s hand is moving, ever so slightly, towards hers.
“And in every other universe…”
She almost doesn’t finish the thought, almost starts moving her hand in turn. But she thinks of rows and rows of Gwens, of all the stories she’s filed through like albums in a record shop. She thinks of the pain and the loss she’s seen in those worlds, not just for her but for anyone who cares about her.
“...it doesn’t end well.”
And as Miles’s hand stops, Gwen closes her eyes, sighs, and thinks of some of those abominable party favors.
Yeah.
Whatever’s in her future, those have got to go.