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Chapter Text

She was falling.

The contraptions of the clock tower had caused the web to snap and now she was in freefall.

She saw the alarm in Peter’s face before he managed to extricate himself from the Goblin’s - Harry’s - vice-like grip and dove for her.

The tone of his voice when he called her name betrayed his fear, the deepest he’d ever felt, the one that caused him to abandon her at the funeral first, then shortly after graduation: the fear of losing his Gwen.

At first, his determination reassured her: his web would reach her and save her from certain death, she would find herself in his arms, safe and secure, they’d cry tears of relief and comfort each other for as long as they needed, the world outside be damned.

But the distance between them seemed to increase, rather than the opposite. She could see his resolve falter and get replaced by desperation. She felt terror for a mere fraction of a second before she resignedly accepted her fate. She closed her eyes, reopened them and shed a single, final tear. She locked sorrowful eyes with him and wore a small, sad smile. 

It’s okay, it’s not your fault. I love you.

Their supposed fate, their very world changed in a span of seconds. 

The edges of her vision started to blur, and at first she thought she was going to faint - a small mercy, at least; she wasn’t going to feel the impact.

But soon she realized it was not her consciousness leaving her: the very walls of the clocktower seemed to shift, fade in and out, convulse erratically as if they were not made of sturdy metal.

She was still falling; she could still see Peter, arm and web outstretched, desperately calling for her, getting farther away - and yet no ground claimed her.

She was supposed to have crashed to her death already.

Now the very air around her seemed to act as bizarrely as the tower’s walls, going from deathly cold to unbearably hot in the span of a single breath, gusts of wind picking up suddenly and abruptly ceasing afterwards. 

Sounds and colors soon followed in this crazed dance of the senses, the first getting increasingly distorted, the seconds rapidly shifting from one to the next.

Fear morphed into dread and then bewilderment in Gwen’s mind. For a moment, she thought she was in the middle of a psychedelic-induced nightmare and had simply imagined her own death.

The ground suddenly came, colder and rougher than she’d expected. She let out a short scream, forcing her eyes closed and feeling a… rather mild bump on her back? Adrenaline snapped her eyes open again, and she let out short, ragged, panicked breaths. She haphazardly staggered back to her feet, eyes wide open, head and blonde hair swinging this and that way in confusion and panic. Had Peter saved her? Had his web actually reached her and slowed her down enough to-

This isn’t the clocktower. 

In fact, judging by the unpleasant sights and smells around her, and the not so distant blares of car horns, she was in a (rather dirty) alleyway.

Her breaths slowed down enough to allow her extraordinary mind to start racing; and yet Midtown High’s valedictorian and (supposed) soon-to-be Oxford student could only formulate one question in her mind.

What the hell happened?

Gwen slowly walked out of the alley and took in the sights around her more carefully: ad posters and people’s voices told her she was in an English-speaking country; street signs and car license plates told her she definitely was in the US, and in her home of New York - although in an area of the city she wasn’t familiar with.

She looked back at the alley she came from. 

She could make no sense of what had just happened.

Had it even actually happened?

Maybe she did dream the whole falling-to-her-death thing up. Maybe she had a wild night out (even though she definitely was not a ‘party girl’) and drank a bit too much (even though she utterly despised the smell and taste of alcohol): that would explain why she couldn’t remember how she came to wake up in a nondescript alley and-

Gwen shook her head and took a deep breath.

Harry’s maniacal laugh as he snatched her from the ground, Peter’s anguished gasp as the web snapped and she started plunging down the tower were so excruciatingly real in her mind that they could not have been simply conjured up by her imagination. 

Something must have happened between the horrific events of the clocktower and… wherever she was now. 

Gwen wanted to find Peter and make sure he’d won the fight and wasn’t in (too much of) a bad shape - he’d always needed (and wanted) her gentle care after the latest battle. That reckless boy has practically made a nurse out of me, she chuckled wistfully. She wanted to check up on her mom and her brothers, make certain that they managed to find their way back home after the uncoordinated evacuation caused by Electro’s sudden attack.

One thing at a time, Gwen.

She checked her Blackberry phone, and was relieved to find out it remained unscathed in the ordeal against Max Dillon and Harry Osborn. Relief turned into frustration when she realized she couldn’t get any signal; in addition, the date on the phone showed as ‘9th of July, 2014, 21:53 ’ - which was clearly wrong, judging by the warm sun resplendent in the sky. 

With a sigh, Gwen marched into a nearby shop, determinedly ignoring the stares of apprehension of the other clients; she certainly was disheveled after the events of the previous(?) night, but that was the least of her worries. 

In fact, she was somewhat surprised by how… calm the people appeared. Electro had just blacked out Manhattan last night (but was it last night?…) and businesses reopened the next day with nary a worry?

She shook her head once more and tried to clear her thoughts. One thing at a time, she kept repeating herself. At first she intended to ask questions to the cashier, but the aged man’s furrowed brow (again, she did just come back from two consecutive fights and a long fall to her supposed death) convinced her otherwise: asking where and when she was would attract too much suspicion. Peter’s paranoia has rubbed off on me.

Instead, she noticed a copy of the Daily Bugle (a NY-based newspaper she had never heard before, weirdly enough) and prayed she’d not lost her wallet; she hadn’t, Gwen sighed in relief, and paid for a copy of the newspaper before quickly making her exit.

The more she read, the more she became confused.

The first thing she noticed were the scathing words used to refer to her on-and-off boyfriend’s super-hero persona: ‘Spider-menace’, ‘unrepentant criminal’, ‘reckless vigilante’, and such. Spider-Man had his fair share of detractors (especially back before the whole nasty Lizard affair, when her father was still alive…), but she’d rarely seen such open hostility from a newspaper towards him before.

Secondly, she couldn’t help but frown at the large Spider-Man photo on the cover: the webslinger seemed… shorter and thinner than she’d remembered; his costume was altogether different from the one he’d used - the one she’d seen many nights when he’d appear on her fire escape window with a cheeky smile and tousled hair, waiting for her to open, and come down and kiss her, before she’d start to patch him up after the latest patrol…

God, I hope you’re OK, Peter.

She refocused on the newspaper’s pic of him. Peter wasn’t the type to leave a spare suit lying around, waiting just to be found by Aunt May. And yeah, he definitely was taller and lankier than in the photo. She started reading the article about him, and… simply put, she was left baffled.

The dates were all wrong - the article was written as if they’d lived 10 years in the future, in 2024. There wasn’t a single mention of his fight against Max and Harry; she instead found herself reading about a supposed world saviour by the name of ‘Iron Man’, a catastrophic event she’d never even heard of called ‘the Blip’, a superhero group(!) by the name of ‘the Avengers’ and a final promise by a J. Jonah Jameson to eventually unmask and hand over to the authorities her beloved masked vigilante.

Gwen’s honest first thought was that she’d just bought a weird satirical newspaper. But the more she walked around the streets, the weirder she started to feel. The city was unmistakably New York, and yet… it seemed altogether slightly unfamiliar to her. But most importantly (and worryingly), the world around her legitimately acted as if they lived 10 years in the future .

She’d even abandoned all pretenses of appearing ‘just fine’ and went out of her way to ask the current date to multiple people: she managed to get crazed looks and the same answer from them all: July 9th, 2024 .

What the fuck is going on?!

Gwen started to hyperventilate, her legs wobbled under her, and she had to lean on a wall before throwing up what little she’d eaten the day - decade? Seriously, what was happening?! - before.

She pinched the bridge of her nose to calm her coming headache, pointedly ignored the worried looks around her; after her heavy breathing calmed down, that famous Stacy temper she got from her father resurfaced and she made a decision: she needed to find Peter and understand if either the world had gone crazy… or just her.

Chapter Text

She fell.

Because of course she did, when the Vulture grabs you, gasses you into semi-unconsciousness, flies you high up and suddenly releases you (with a cackle that sounds amusingly similar to a squawk) to let gravity do its job.

And to think the day was going so well…

Gwen Stacy was on her way to at least try and recover a semblance of normal life. Well, as normal as the life of a superhero who willingly gave up her secret identity and spent a year of her life in prison would be.

So… not normal at all, really.

Many people hated her and believed her guilty of her supposed crimes, and she knew it. She put on a mask - the ‘Stacy frown’, trademark of her long-deceased mother, her dad told her once, so long ago it seemed like another life. She pretended it didn’t hurt when the people she saved called her names afterwards; she did a bad job of hiding her pain when people would outright flee from her presence like she was a vill.

Well, that is what the media told them I am, isn’t it?

Gwen tried to focus on the (admittedly not many, but precious) good aspects of her life that still persisted.

There were people who believed her innocent (usually among the younger groups - there definitely was a generational gap) and defended her on the streets and social media.

Her father George had already accepted the fact she was innocent of the murder of Peter Parker, the best-friend-turned-into-a-frickin-Lizard even before she went to prison for it. The testimony of the former NYPD Captain (who had long pursued the masked vigilante) was apparently worth jack shit once it was discovered Spider-Woman was his daughter, however. The ‘peaceful unmasking’ of Spider-Woman became international news overnight; if the world knew that Captain Stacy had already discovered the webslinger’s identity even before then, he’d have probably been thrown into the cell right next to hers. 

Or maybe the farthest cell from mine. They probably think I’d convince dad into planning a Stacy family prison breakout. 

Gwen’s rekindling of her relationship with her father was… a slow process, which involved a lot of tears, hugs, a bit of alcohol (only a teeny bit for momentous occasions, but she didn’t feel bad for keeping her love of liquor a secret from her dad; plus the spider-metabolism helped with hangovers anyway) and a fair share of arguments (he still didn’t like the concept of vigilantes, urgh). Still, it felt as if a part of her soul was being healed day by day.

The Mary Janes adjusted quicker - in fact, far quicker than she’d expected. The missed calls, suddenly abandoned sessions and sometimes shoddy performances ( being Spider-Woman means adopting the 'I'll sleep when I’m dead’ mentality ) of the band’s drummer now finally had a logical explanation.

She knew that her band cared and covered for each other every time despite the arguments and the tension that occasionally rose up. Yet the fact that Em Jay, Glory and Betty kept contact with her even after she went to prison and were the first (alongside Dad, of course) to welcome her back into the free world as soon as she got out meant everything to Gwen. There was a lot of happy crying and laughing and singing band songs that day.

She still was somewhat of a… persona non grata with the Parkers, however. Despite her dad’s words and promises that she was innocent, May and Ben were reluctant to welcome her back into their home. It hurt a lot at first, until she (sort of) understood why: while the old Parker couple believed Gwen Stacy innocent, they couldn’t stop blaming Spider-Woman for being the one at the start and end of it all, in a way: she had been the object of Peter’s obsession… and the one who made sure that obsession ended violently that terrible night years ago.

It still hurt after she realized that, but the shocking pain of getting the cold shoulder from the Parkers dulled to a sad ache she could keep in the recesses of her mind. She hoped their pain would fade too, overtime, and she could be welcomed back into their arms.

Oh, and she had a, well, a passenger on her. She felt a bit of an ass calling it a ‘thing’ after it had given her back her powers, and some more. At the same time, it felt weird saying she was the host of an alien, a genetically altered symbiote - unless she wanted to scare someone, that is.

And she did use that scare factor in the maximum security SHIELD prison she was thrown into. She certainly didn’t stumble into run-of-the-mill Bodega Bandits in that place, and some of the worst dregs in there thought they could team up and try and beat the itsy bitsy spider who had gone up that particular waterspout in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. 

Most of them got their asses handed to them fair and square and learned their lesson; a few of them were persistent however (or too stupid; or sadomasochistic!), especially the ones who were as ‘enhanced’ as Gwen was. 

In those particular cases, she’d let Venom take over for a minute or two. And when you find yourself face to face with a black gooey monster sporting razor-sharp teeth and claws, ever hungry for correct ‘nutrients’, well… any fighting spirit the other prisoners had quickly disappeared.

If she was truthful to herself, she enjoyed using the ‘make the bad guys shit in their pants’ card way too much, but she couldn’t use it willy-nilly out of prison; she didn’t want to give the world an excuse to justify her being imprisoned again - or worse, kidnapped and experimented on (plus, Nom-Nom understandably scared the hell out of innocent people as well).

So… she kept it a secret - outside of her father and the Mary Janes, that is (she wouldn’t be able to keep it hidden from them anyway; Glory’s stare when she was keeping her spider-identity a secret was piercing enough that she should probably consider a career as an interrogator).

They seemed weirded out by Nom-Nom, maybe even a bit scared, but they respected and trusted her enough that they simply told her to be careful.

So far, this was the life of Gwendolyn Maxine Stacy, age 21, known to the world as Spider-Woman (and many other epithets, some good, most of them bad), while she set off back home after a tiring, yet fun session with the rest of her band.

She was grateful of the fact she hadn’t gone rusty with her drumsticks after a year of inactivity (though she didn’t know how much the spider-senses and her black gooey passenger played a part in that). Most of all, she was absolutely elated by the passion the band seemed to exude now that their fourth member was returned to them. Any worries she’d had of seeing her band move past or replace her disappeared with the first group hug she’d got from them as soon as her ‘year of penance’ ended. She felt comfortably, warmly back home.

Of course, with her secret identity now revealed, they all knew things would certainly change for the Mary Janes. Betty suggested leaning into it (“Cat’s out of the bag anyway, might as well make good use of it”), while Glory was somewhat worried that doing so would risk attracting the wrong kinds of people to their concerts - both the “Can you do a backflip, Spider-Woman?” and the “I’m your archnemesis, Spider-Woman!” crowds; plus, Glory wanted Gwen to shine for her talent behind the drumset, not the spider-y ones.

And if Gwen knew Em Jay half as well as she did, she was probably torn: she’d certainly love the eyes of the world upon her and the band (being the lead singer kinda gave you a big head)… but she’d hate for them to become famous only as ‘Spider-Woman’s band-members’: that was not the fate she wanted for the Mary Janes, and Gwen vehemently agreed with her.

For the time, they’d decided to let things play out and see how they would develop after the first few gigs.

Gwen let Venom morph her casual torn jeans and tee-shirt into her staple black and white hooded suit with a pink web pattern on the hood and arms and light blue ballerina-like feet (she practically didn’t need to spend a dime for clothing anymore thanks to her passenger, though she still kept the habit and still wore undergarments, she didn’t want Nom-Nom everywhere on her skin, thank you very much) and started swinging back home.

That’s when Adrian Toomes decided to ruin a perfectly enjoyable, non supervill-topped day.

Gwen’s spider-sense barely managed to alert her of his arrival - too late for her to escape his talons, but early enough she wasn’t left completely unprepared. 

“Did you seriously think I would just forget about you after our latest fight, Spider-Woman?!” the Vulture ‘greeted’ her.

“Aww, it’s nice to hear you care about me, Adrian.” Gwen quipped, buying time for a counterattack.

“I’ve long waited and prepared for this rematch, hero !” he practically spat the last word, “and this time, you’ll find it not so easy to get rid of me!”

“Well I’m glad of your attention, Featherboy, but I’d rather our flight end quickly, I’ve got places to go.” She hadn’t seen her father since yesterday, and she wanted his input regarding the whole ‘Spider-Woman’s band’ issue. 

Once they were high up enough that civilians wouldn’t be harmed in the fight (she didn’t forget about the Vulture’s gas attacks), Gwen quickly made use of her superhuman strength to escape the grasp of his talons; she then rapidly shot a web that connected onto his body and allowed her to swing around the Vulture, right onto his back. She aimed to make short work of his wing harness. Uh, maybe this fight will end quicker than I-  

A jolt of electricity coursed through her body, making her yelp and her arms go rigid. The Vulture laughed wickedly.

“I’ve seen you’ve found one of my new surprises I’ve got in stock for you already!”

Gwen, now in freefall, regained control of her body and quickly shot a web; she started to swing around from building to building, following the Vulture from below. Guess the old ‘get on his back and mess him up’ trick isn’t going to work anymore.

“You know, I also have something new to share with you, Adrian! Or rather, some one !” She swung hard enough to almost reach his elevation, left the grip on the web and then let a Venom-tendril shoot up towards him; it connected to his leg and it stuck there.

Vulture looked back and let out a gasp of surprise, eyes popped open: to his sight, it seemed Spider-Woman had suddenly elongated her arm; in the span of a second, the symbiote pulled Gwen up, and she used the momentum to throw a well-placed punch to his shocked face. Which of course temporarily dazzled the villain, who started rapidly losing altitude.

“What have you done to yourself, you stupid girl?!” he asked in shock once he found his bearing back.

“Say hello to Nom-Nom!” she replied cheerily, “He’s here to stay!” 

She let the symbiote shoot a tendril directly onto his face; enraged and now essentially flying blind, the Vulture started losing control of his movements mid-air - yet he still had an ace up his sleeve: he instantly deployed his infamous gas.

Gwen’s spider-sense flared up: the gas made her violently cough; she could feel her mind getting dazed already. This stuff is stronger than last I remember.

“My new formula will make short work of you, Gwen Stacy! ” 

It still felt incredibly weird when civvies and vills used her actual name instead of her superhero one. She tried to resist the gas effects, but her coughing fit only got worse; in the end, she had to reluctantly abandon her grip on him to get away. Still, she shot a web that connected to his chest, long enough to let Gwen effectively dangle at a safe distance under him.

The Vulture was just ready to deploy his sharp mechanical talons to cut the web off, but then he took notice of his momentarily stunned opponent. A wicked idea formed in his mind.

Instead of cutting her off, he started flying up, fast . The sudden movement jolted Gwen out of her confused state. She shot a Venom-tendril that connected to his left wing and started pulling him down, but the gas had left her shockingly weakened. She wondered if the symbiote was left equally exhausted, because they both should have easily outmatched the Vulture in raw power.

The Vulture reached higher and higher - worryingly more than she thought he could fly up. He really has some annoying new upgrades, I’m almost impressed. He no doubt intended to let her fall from such an altitude she’d probably pass out before she had the chance to connect to a structure and swing to safety. 

She had no choice but to quickly Venom-pull herself to his level: avoiding a direct touch (she did not want to get zapped again), she utilized the symbiote tendrils with the goal of ripping the wing apart, forcing the Vulture to fly down to lower pastures.

Big mistake. 

That’s when one of the metal ‘feathers’ of the suit suddenly sprung out. It pierced through both the symbiote tendril and her right arm to which it was connected.

A piercing cry rang through the air, audible only to the Vulture at that altitude.

“I told you I had prepared for this fight!” He shrieked back, excited at the prospect of an imminent victory.

“Fucking Shitbird…!” Gwen hissed between gritted teeth. She had underestimated him in her hurry and he was winning - fair and square she would say, if the roles were reversed. She pointedly ignored the lancing pain in her arm: she could examine the damage later, right now she had a flight to stop.

But it was then that the Vulture decided to abruptly let her drop with a bird-like squawk, followed by a jubilant, evil-sounding laugh.

Gwen looked down at the city below rapidly getting close, ready to swallow her up. A resounding ‘Shit.’ echoed in her mind. I’ve really fucked up this time. 

Her thoughts raced; she - and the symbiote too, she could sense it - shifted their entire focus on trying not to pass out mid-fall. She could probably try and shoot a web from her remaining arm at an angle so that her deceleration wouldn’t be too abrupt. It’d probably hurt a ton , she’d likely break her functioning arm, but she didn’t think her spider-enhanced genes and Venom would let her die.

She certainly would not be able to keep fighting though. 

I can’t believe I’ve lost to the Vulture. I really need to get back into my supervill-fighting jam. She didn’t have a single challenging fight since her release from prison; she’d take care of common criminals when she patrolled the city, but for the time being she’d decided to let Spider-Woman fade into the background for a bit, in order to take care of the much more pressing Gwen Stacy-type issues, like her father, her band, the Parkers and-

She was slowing down mid-fall. She thought at first she was losing consciousness, but her spider-sense was practically ringing down her neck and scalp like she’d never sensed before and she’d never felt so awake. Hell, she could even feel Venom being on such high alert it was buzzing on her skin.

She thought the Vulture had done something to her: she glared back at him, but he was staring at her high up in the air, getting farther (slower than he should have, she noticed), with a puzzling look on his face.

It wasn’t her senses, it wasn’t the Vulture. She kept slowing down. Why the fuck am I slowing down?!

And then the world around her went bonkers. Skyscrapers glitching as if they were a holo projection, houses appearing and disappearing, colours changing, shapes fading in and out, air going from biting cold to desert hot… Was she going insane? Were those hallucinations, an after-effect of the gas attack?

She didn’t have much time to deliberate on that, as her vision suddenly went white and she had to close her eyes… before having to reopen them a split second after: she inexplicably was much closer to the ground now compared to a few seconds ago. 

Spider-instincts kicked in: she shot a web, connecting to a high rise wall. She waited for the moment her arm would snap and she’d cry in pain. The moment didn’t come. 

Gwen swung away safely on top of the apartment and clumsily fell on her knees.

She slowed down her breathing; the adrenaline gradually left her body, and the searing pain on her right arm returned: the metal feather-lance had cut a small but deep gash on her right arm. Her white, pink and black suit was getting stained by a worryingly clear red. He caught an artery. Per-fucking-fect. I’m going to let Venom loose next time we fight. No holds barred. 

While she quietly swore revenge against Toomes, more and more questions popped up in rapid succession inside her mind. Why had she slowed down before suddenly getting dangerously close to crashing on the tarmac? She should’ve probably broken her functioning left arm on the rapid way down, why didn’t she feel any pain in it? What in the living hell were those… in-real-life glitches (she couldn’t find any other name for it) that she’d experienced? Why was her spider-sense going haywire up and down her back as if she was on a rollercoaster? 

She felt herself and Venom developing a growing sense of unease. She looked down on the city below. She half-recognised it: she was certain she’d fallen on Manhattan, yet it looked slightly different than the one she knew. Well, “slightly” different with one huge, imposing exception: the sleek skyscraper towering not so far from where she stood, distinguishable for its stylized, blue-coloured letter ‘A’ shining dimly on it that had appeared out of freaking nowhere. 

Gwen massaged her temples to soothe the rapidly-rising headache. The gas had left her weakened, her right arm was still bleeding and hurt like hell. One thing at a time, Gwen. She needed to tend to the wound, before trying to understand what mess she’d just thrown herself into.

Chapter Text

She would fall whenever she tried to put one foot in front of the other. May’s parents then encouraged her to try again, until she'd actually start walking.

Peter Parker sighed happily. He’d brought his trusty smart black and white outfit out of his dresser for the occasion. He wanted to complement the classic black outfit his wife dressed for the momentous day - the one that made his head spin no matter how many times he’d seen it on her… and removed it from her. Not that he needed a fancy, intoxicatingly seductive dress to become a starstruck 30-late-something boy whenever he took his time to simply admire Mary Jane Watson.

He’d even given himself a pat on the back for remembering their wedding anniversary without resorting to a post-it note or a phone alert. He had actually remembered it!

Yeah, Peter could safely say that he was living the life now. About time!

Looking back at his younger years, he honestly couldn’t figure out how he’d managed to juggle between studies, work, friendships, love life (or at least, semi-disastrous attempts at it) and keeping his secret identity as New York’s Friendly Neighbourhood Spider-Man.

Well, the actual reality was that he didn’t really manage that well, and when it came to it, he’d always had to decide whether to hurt Peter or Spider-Man with his choices. After that fateful night with the Goblin, he’d left MJ behind to focus solely on his vigilante activities. 

He had a curious case of Spider-burnout that took his powers away, and that had allowed him to get back on track with college life and, well, make some efforts trying to patch his relationship up with Mary Jane… or at least enter into her good graces again.

But trying to escape the responsibilities that came with his powers didn’t last long. When Doctor Octavius got loose, he couldn’t leave the suit to gather dust anymore. So he threw himself back into the superhero game. Spider-Man returned… and Peter lost Harry as a friend, but gained back Mary Jane’s love.

He seemed to have figured life out for a bit, but his head got too big. That whole symbiote mess almost completely ruined his and his loved ones’ lives.

Peter wouldn’t stop feeling guilty for Harry’s eventual death against Venom (even though Harry fought alongside him in the end); even thinking about it today, almost 15 years later, would leave a somber look on his face.

“Are you feeling OK, Pete?”

He looked back at his wife, who was wearing a small, comforting smile. He was practically an open book to Mary Jane at this point.

“Yeah, yeah… just… y’know, thinking.” He said, lowering his eyes.

“That frown of yours tells me you should stop thinking about whatever’s in your head right now.” She intertwined her fingers with his, shoulders touching; he immediately locked stares with her again. He could lose himself into those mesmerizing green orbs. He had half a mind to do just that, his spider-senses would drive him forward like an instinct anyway.

Peter shook the sadness out of his mind. This was their day of celebration, to remind themselves they’d actually made it - together.

Restarting his relationship with Mary Jane took some time, but he was patient and they’d both already learned a lot of painful lessons. 

He’d also decided to come clean with Aunt May about his red-and-blue spandex alter ego shortly after the symbiote debacle; he was worried he’d shock Aunt May with the news, but he was the one left stunned. 

With a sly smile and a raised eyebrow, Aunt May nonchalantly told him she’d already known for a long time. He’d never been able to keep an actual secret from her, after all.

He swore he would not screw up again with his life. 

He got a degree in Biochemistry and got a desk at ESU; he helped, spurred and cheered Mary Jane in her modeling and theater career every step of the way; he went to his knees and proposed to her (third best day of his life), got married (second one) and even managed to have a daughter (best day of his life, he somehow ended up crying more than MJ did); he kept fighting the good fight as Spider-Man, dealing with any threat to the city and his people. 

If only Aunt May had been alive to see him and his family now… she’d passed away serenely a year after the wedding, and Peter legitimately didn’t know how he would have carried on if he didn’t have MJ at his side, soothing the pain of his loss with her love.

Barely a year old, little May was the apple of her parents’ eyes… and she already spelled trouble for both of them. Her cheerful, curious and joyous nature could heal even a broken soul, although it made handling her difficult, to say the least.

Add into the mix Peter’s spider-genes and… well, May certainly earned her nickname ‘Mayday’. 

The baby already showed reflexes too fast for a 1 year old: Peter and MJ were both intrigued and concerned about their daughter’s developing powers; they’d need to find a way to contain them somewhat by the time she’d get into kindergarten, otherwise people would inevitably put two and two together if they saw a toddler sticking to the ceiling. 

He instinctively smiled at the thought of teaching Mayday how to climb her bedroom walls, how to control her naturally-produced webs, gifting her a Spider-Girl suit when she was old enough… Haven’t screwed things up so far, Parker, but better be careful. That Parker luck is always around the corner…  

“Now those are the thoughts I want you to have.” Mary Jane flicked his nose with a chuckle and a disarming smile, bringing Peter back into reality. He never really stopped being an easily distractible guy; for some reason he couldn’t discern, MJ found that peculiar trait of him adorable.  

“What? What was I thinking then?” He challenged her in jest.

MJ raised an eyebrow, her smile getting cheeky. “You only ever wear that lovely, goofy, smiley face for Mayday.”

Peter didn’t even bother trying to deny it. He really couldn’t keep a poker face if his life depended on it. Good thing I wear a mask when it counts, I guess.

Their special night out would take them to one of the more luxurious restaurants in the Big Apple. Money problems appeared a distant memory to both of them now; not that they were rich by any means, but they could treat themselves from time to time. Gone were the days of having to rely on J. Jonah Jameson’s standard freelancer fee (plus the occasional box of Christmas meat).

Peter was somewhat amused by the fact that Jolly Jonah started losing his marbles (or whatever remained of them) soon after Peter Parker could afford a decent life for himself and MJ with his teaching job; after that, getting hold of decent photos of Spider-Man became sharply more difficult. 

The Daily Bugle sort of slowly degenerated into a conspiracy-theory newspaper in the meantime, which prompted many long-standing employees, including Robbie Robertson and Betty Brant, to leave for saner pastures.

Liz Allen was taking care of May in the meantime. Peter’s social awkwardness and his duties behind the mask at first prevented him from developing a healthy social life outside of work and family. Thank God, at least, that MJ was a social animal: she had kept contact with her closest high school friends, and that allowed Peter to reconnect with them too. 

Liz worked as a secretary for the new, rising star in the tech business, Stark Industries. She and MJ kept supporting each other through the years, and basically became akin to sisters - to the point that she even became privy to Peter’s alter ego. She was shocked at first, but she adjusted quickly, and had never betrayed their secret so far.

Liz absolutely adored little Mayday, to the point that she was basically her unofficial aunt at this point. 

She’d frequently babysit her when her job allowed her to, allowing the parent couple to have a night just for themselves. 

“Don’t worry that pretty brilliant head of yours, Tiger. May’s going to be just fine without us for a couple of hours.” Mary Jane reassured him.

He couldn’t help but chuckle. “You sure you don’t have superpowers? You’ve been reading my thoughts ever since we went out.”

“Oh, I’ve been examining your brain far longer than that, Pete. Kinda had to, if I wanted to understand what went on inside there. Who knew Spider-Man could be so sulky at times?”

“Hey! I’m not that sulky anymore.”

“That’s because I’ve actually managed to understand what you think even when you can’t - or won’t - voice it, and can react accordingly. Plus, you’re not a good actor, Pete; you never could hide your emotions very well from me.” 

“You’d think your acting skills would rub off on me at this point, after seeing all of your performances.”

“Apparently not even a little, Dr. Parker.”

They kept flirting and playfully ribbing each other about this and that on their way to their destination. 

All was going well in Peter Parker’s life. Which of course meant Parker luck decided that was the best moment to strike again - in the oddest fashion the loving couple could ever expect.

“After you, Ms. Parker.” Peter romantically held the door open, never leaving his wife’s enthralling gaze.

She rolled her eyes affectionately and went inside, Peter following after her.

His spider-sense went haywire, so strongly coursing down his back that he cried out.

“Peter!” Mary Jane immediately turned back to see her husband momentarily dazzled, having to lean on the door. With a gasp, she went to help him regain his bearings. “Are you OK? What’s wrong?” She asked worriedly.

Peter’s mind went into ‘battle mode’, but he didn’t, couldn’t discern what was actually wrong. In fact, he couldn’t sense any danger coming from anywhere outside. “I don’t know, I just…” His spider-sense was still going crazy. He’d never felt so alert in his life, and he’d been in several life-or-death situations.

They looked back on the inside of the building, and their eyes almost popped out of their socket: it was… entirely empty! 

But then it was suddenly filled again, with people, tables, smells and sounds that anyone could expect in a restaurant.

And then again - some people outright flickered as if they were light coming out of a projector, appearing and disappearing, the sounds would get distorted, suddenly louder, before abrupt silence came over the place. And the temperature kept rising and rising… before falling again, sharply, and the process would start again. Every other person in the building seemed completely oblivious to all of it.

“W-what’s going on?! What’s happening?!” Mary Jane screamed. The only thing that could divert Peter’s attention from the madness engulfing them was Mary Jane’s fear, her rapidly increasing heartbeat: he protectively covered her with his frame, while she found solace hugging his side.

“I… I don’t know! Stay close to me!” Peter shifted them back to the door, trying to go back outside. He felt for the handle, but couldn’t find one. He looked back and saw his hand through the door as if it was a hologram. Stunned, he quickly retracted his arm. He noticed how the same unusual (to say the least) phenomena were affecting the objects and people outside as well.

He felt utterly stumped about what the hell was going on. Were all these illusions? Did Quentin Beck escape from prison and set a new trap for them? Last he knew, Mysterio didn’t know his secret identity; nor did he have tech advanced enough to do all of… this . 

The world around them grew more and more unstable. Now the very walls and ceiling around them would convulse, flicker and flash, appear and disappear. It seemed as if reality was tearing itself apart.

For the first time in a long time, Spider-Man felt helplessness. 

“Peter…”

Adrenaline pumping in his vein, Peter swiveled his head back to Mary Jane, terror etched in her features, and his heart sank.

He didn’t know how to stop the chaos unfolding, but he could at least try and protect her. 

“It’s OK, stay close to me, I’ll shield you!” was all he could answer, before going down onto the floor with her, covering Mary Jane’s entire body with his.

The world around them became flimsier and flimsier to their eyes, it progressively lost more and more sense. 

Peter and Mary Jane looked at each other, tears of bewilderment and despair forming in their eyes. He could not believe they would go down this way - he’d survived a thousand fights, only for the world itself apparently deciding it had enough of his continued survival. 

And then the floor suddenly disappeared, and a yawning black chasm opened. They fell together. Mary Jane let out a terrified cry, while Peter clutched her to his chest, never letting go. In what they feared would be their unexpected final moments, their thoughts converged on the same, identical figure: May Parker, their beloved daughter, the cherished fruit of their hard-fought love who they would not be able to see again, who would grow without her parents’ care and affection…

They hit the grassy ground slower and smoother than expected.

Peter, riding high on his spider-induced adrenaline, shot back up first and then helped MJ up again. 

“Are you alright?” He asked her, worriedly fussing over potential cuts and bruises she might have gotten during their fall. He’d never been so scared of losing her in his life. 

Once he made sure she wasn’t injured, he kissed her fiercely to reassure himself she wouldn’t flicker and fade out as reality had a few seconds ago. 

Mary Jane responded to his kiss with equal intensity. They were each other’s lifeline during that moment. 

His spider-sense went still, her panicked breath slowed down. They were OK, they had survived whatever catastrophe fell down onto them.

Their lips separated shortly after, and they started taking in their surroundings. For some inexplicable reason, they’d just gone from a fancy restaurant in Brooklyn to…

“W-what… why… how are we in Central Park?” Mary Jane vocalized the same question that was racing in her husband’s mind. 

Peter scanned the area, sharpening his super-senses, ready to fend off any threat against them… but no attack came. His sixth sense, refined after almost two decades of his Spider-Man career, was silent.

No, wait. It sent an unusual signal of… uncertainty and uneasiness. He felt as if he was a spider thrown violently out of its web into an unknown, never-seen before place. It made no sense to his rational human mind: this was Central Park. He should feel the comfort and safety of being nested at the heart of his city-wide ‘web’.

Peter looked back at Mary Jane and found the same confused look his face was wearing. He fished his phone out of his wrinkled jacket: he needed to make sure May was safe. The total lack of any kind of phone signal did nothing but increase his worries. Something had happened, likely very bad, and he and his wife were at the center of it.

With a heavy sigh, he took Mary Jane’s hand; he didn’t try to hide his concern from her, but still attempted to put on a brave face for his own peace of mind, if not for anything else. 

After all, she could read him like an open book, and she could certainly see in him the same apprehension she felt right now.

“Let’s go. We need to check that May and Liz are safe.” Peter finally said. 

Mary Jane nodded frantically. Hand in hand, they started walking into this puzzling, new adventure. 

Chapter Text

She had fallen from that accursed clocktower exactly five years ago to the day. 

Five years separated him from his greatest failure, his most tragic, painful loss.

The day that changed his life. He hated the… exactness of that day. He wished he could just forget the exact date and place it happened, that it remained just a nebulous, unplaceable event in his mind, out of time and space. But he’d never want to outright forget it - and most importantly, never even dreamed one second about forgetting her .

Peter had tried to heal, he really did. He knew Gwen would have wanted him to move on and live his life free from that burden weighing on his soul.

But he simply couldn’t.

The emotion he felt now was certainly different from the first few days, weeks, months without her. 

At first he felt as if a spear had cut through his chest and violently yanked his beating heart out. It was agonizing, unbearable to be in a world without her. 

He half-hoped he was in a nightmare, that he would wake up at some point and find Gwen at his side - or at the very least, safe and secure somewhere else.

Time was supposed to be a salve for that kind of pain, or at least he was told so. Well, time proved an ineffective cure for a Peter Parker who terribly missed his beloved Gwen Stacy. Typical Parker luck.

The hurt persisted by simply shifting into a sad, dull kind of ache that permeated every moment of his day and drained the world of its colour and beauty, leaving a dreary, cold, glum reality around him.

The only space where he felt a modicum of safety, warmth and peace was Aunt May’s home. His home in his heart, even after he moved out to a somewhat dingy Manhattan apartment.

Aunt May was the only person in his life he couldn’t (and wouldn’t) hide his feelings from. She was his only remaining anchor that prevented him from being completely, utterly alone.

Peter’s social life basically ended after her death. He focused as much as he could in completing his studies, pouring over books like a drone; he got a degree in Physics and somehow managed to land a researcher job at Alchemax, the new big player in town after Oscorp fell due to, well, the owner transforming into a crazed killer.

He attempted dating again some three years after the event, but he simply couldn’t stop thinking about her whenever the slightest chance of romance presented itself - and the women he dated didn’t deserve being in someone else’s shadow. They didn’t deserve having to carry that intolerable baggage of pain and constant danger that came from being in love with the city’s renowned vigilante. So… dating was a no-go.

For all intents and purposes, outside of work and Aunt May, Peter Parker had died that night alongside Gwen Stacy. 

But what about Spider-Man?

Peter Parker felt like he had no future, but Spider-Man certainly did. New York still needed, would always need Spider-Man. 

And so what remained of Peter Parker almost completely prioritized what his alter ego needed to do his best. 

Spider-Man has failed Gwen Stacy, was his reasoning, and Peter Parker had to pay the consequences for that. Now, Peter will make sure Spider-Man never fails anyone anymore.

At first, he attempted to resemble the Friendly Neighborhood webslinger persona he actually used to be in the past, but again - as with many other things he used to be and do before that day - he just couldn’t.

He’d become more cynical, his quips rarer, he seldom interacted with the citizenry, he didn’t particularly like posing for photos and greetings and endless thank-yous anymore.

New York seemed to have understood something bad had happened to him, and mourned the cheerier Spider-Man of the past. The fact strangely touched him deeply, but couldn’t shake him out of his gloom.

Still, he was entirely committed to his ‘job’, stopping criminals big and small.

And whenever someone actually dangerous showed their (usually ugly) face up, he wouldn’t pull his punches. Not anymore.

That particular change somewhat scared people and worried the authorities: New York was used to the ‘web ‘em up and leave ‘em as a present for the police’ Spider-Man, not the ‘beat ‘em up and bloody, smash their armor, clip their wings, break their legs and leave ‘em to the side of the street’ Spider-Man.

But so far, his newfound… brutality (he had to be honest at least to himself) towards the ‘super’ kind of criminals hadn’t left him with an arrest warrant on his head. 

New York was thankful of him… but still worried for and because of him. 

He sat silently on top of the Empire State Building now, a cloudy night sky his only companion as he quietly observed the lights of the City that Never Sleeps down below. He was decidedly trying to avoid looking in the direction of the clocktower.

His spider-sense had refined with age and experience. 

New York had become his web: everytime criminals tested their luck, hoping that they could take part in their nefarious activities without awakening the beast, they’d inevitably tug on a strand of the web; it would ripple and send vibrations back to the lone hunter, the spider watching from afar.

And soon the offending parties would become prey.

A particularly harsh tug caught his attention. Freefalling from the iconic New York skyscraper, the webslinger swung from building to building to check what disturbed his quiet moment of reflection.

His spider-sense brought him closer and closer to Rikers Island, which could only mean one thing.

Another breakout. Lovely… 

Peter sighed. The Raft had been built immediately after Electro’s attack; the supervillain threat couldn’t be left to vigilantes anymore, the government said. It was supposed to handle supervillains, containing their destructive capabilities, but it wasn’t perfect. To its credit, the facility had experienced only two breakouts before: once when it was still under construction, then another time thanks to outside help. 

Urgh, the Chameleon was a real pain in the back to flush out. 

Knocking out the fleeing inmates and dragging their sorry asses back behind bars had been challenging both of the times.

Well, time for round three, I suppose.

Blazing flames and dark, choking smoke welcomed Spider-Man as soon as he reached the facility. Some of the personnel were knocked unconscious by the fumes, others were coughing, the bravest and toughest of them were helping the others escape the building.

Peter was kind of astonished: the Raft had never been so badly damaged in the previous breakout attempts; the prisoners had likely taken control of weapons and explosives to cause such a destruction.

Spider-Man could hunt for the escapees later - right now, he had to help the people on the scene; as soon as he was told that five people from the lower levels had not been seen outside yet, he immediately swung inside, disappearing behind the flames.

He would have probably choked to unconsciousness by the time he managed to get to the deepest corners of the facility, the ones usually reserved for the worst of the worst; fortunately, in the 5 years since that day he hadn’t just improved his skills as Spider-Man, but had also scraped together enough money to start improving his suit as well. Smoke was a non-issue for the webslinger now - however, it left grim prospects for whoever was trapped inside.

He managed to miraculously save three of the unaccounted for men (they were more resourceful than common prison guards, surprisingly); the remaining two could only be found further down.

Forgoing the final (likely broken) elevator, Spider-Man nimbly swung down the shaft and broke into the lowest level of the facility, rolling gracefully on the floor. Fire and flames roared around him. There was a very low chance of anyone still being alive in there.

A sense of foreboding washed over him, his spider-sense tickled his spine. He was not alone.

He assumed a ready stance and carefully ventured inside, trying to discern shapes behind the smoke.

He found the two remaining guards. They had been killed : one had a puncture on his sternum, blood pooling down his chest onto the floor; the other had the left side of his body blackened and burned, likely because of an explosion.

Both their faces were transfixed with sheer terror: whatever… no, who ever was responsible had jumped on them unexpectedly.

Surprise attacks. Bombs. Sharp objects. Him. 

As if on cue, a pair of razor bats hissed on his right and left, leaving black puffs of smoke on their trail; Spider-Man deftly jumped away from them both, fired from his webshooters and smashed those insidious weapons to the ground, breaking them on impact.

“Impressive!” A maniacal chuckle reverberated behind the curtain of thick smoke ahead of him. Peter clenched his fists. “Show me more!”

A pumpkin bomb suddenly appeared, already ticking close to detonation; Spider-Man shot a web and yanked it down the elevator shaft.

A pair of them followed after, then a trio: some of them he simply evaded, others he tossed away from him, a few he even deactivated with a new kind of web formula.

“Oh oh oh! You’ve learned a lot of new moves and tricks since our last dance, haven’t you, old friend? ” The infernal voice spit the last words with venom-coated sarcasm.

Peter gritted his teeth. He was losing his patience and he wanted to deal with him as quickly and efficiently as possible. “Come out and fight, coward!”

A hunched human figure pierced the veil of smoke on top of a rumbling glider. Green armour dirtied by ash and smoke, metal helmet, elongated and pointed, a pair of infernal eyes shining a sickly yellow, reflecting the fire: the Green Goblin almost seemed to have been conjured out of the darkest pits of Hell.

Peter usually felt disdain, sometimes sorrow for his opponents; he fought against them because he had to, because the city needed him to.

It was a different matter altogether with the Goblin: it was personal . 

He hadn’t fought against him since that fateful night that changed his life; the other prisoners were probably too terrified of him to let him out in the previous breakout attempts. 

Peter had kept repeating the fight in his head over and over, examining each mistake, each missed opportunity, each single moment that brought him inevitably closer to the death of his beloved Gwen. He’d kept analyzing it, scene after scene as it played out in his mind, pondering the whats, the hows and the whys he could have saved her and stopped him. He came to know everything he’d ever need about the Goblin from their frantic fight at the clocktower.

He’d never been more prepared for a fight in his life. Something inside of him told him he would actually enjoy it, out of what he felt (and feared) would be a sheer sense of vengeance.

The Green Goblin, ever observant, quickly picked that up. A wide grin spread on the crooked features of his now long gone former friend, Harry Osborn.

“Oh my, you’ve really missed me, haven’t you?” The Goblin crept up with his glider, ever so slowly, never breaking contact with the dark lenses of his nemesis. 

“If I knew that, I would have picked a more appropriate ballroom…” He stopped and his smile grew feral. The Goblin struck exactly where he knew he’d hurt the most: Peter Parker’s heart.

“A shame there’s no damsel accompanying you this time. I would’ve loved dancing with her on top of a certain clocktower.”

Peter sprung from where he stood with such speed the Goblin couldn’t even formulate the idea of a counterattack. He threw the hardest right hook he’d ever thrown in his life, outright tossing the Goblin out of his glider; if his nemesis wasn’t as genetically enhanced as Spider-Man, he probably would have died right then and there.

Before the Goblin could impact the ground, he was caught by a pair of webs and violently smashed to the opposite wall, forming a small crater, then tumbling down. His sick mind somehow thought that was the appropriate moment to laugh, despite the pain. 

“Ah, it… wasn’t a simple teenage fling, then! You… really must’ve cared for her.” He managed to croak out between the laughing-and-coughing fits. 

Once Spider-Man was on the crosshair of his glider, he pressed a button on his suit: the glider bolted towards him.

Peter might have fallen for this little deception five years ago; now, his mind could play out the Goblin’s moves before they happened, his body had been tempered for this battle. 

He backflipped out of the glider’s trajectory and timed his web shots perfectly, catching the Goblin the exact moment he was in midair, trying to jump on top of his flying device… and then pulled; he knee-kicked him hard, impacting the abdomen, damaging the metal sheets of the Goblin armor, making him gasp as the air left his body.

The Green Goblin fell to the ground, his glider smashing against the wall and tearing itself apart. Spider-Man picked him by the neck, gripping not too hard he might suffocate, but hard enough to stop him from dripping poison out of his mouth. The Goblin gritted his teeth in anger and extracted a dagger from a hidden pocket in his suit: he lunged at his opponent with it, but Spider-Man stopped his attack, using his superhuman strength to crack the dagger in two. 

Relentless, the Goblin intended to kick him, but Peter’s spider-sense warned him of this desperate attempt at escaping his grasp, so he tossed him aside like a ragdoll. 

The Goblin hit the side of the room once again, this time letting out a painful howl. Before he could retaliate, he found himself webbed up to the wall, completely immobilized. 

Part of Harry’s deranged brain was shocked at how quickly he’d lost the fight. Anger marred his features as Spider-Man slowly walked toward him.

Then the Goblin took over again: he had been completely outmatched, yes - but he could still hurt him where he knew mattered most. Anger was replaced by malevolent glee.

“You should thank me for causing her death, Spider-Man!” He cackled madly. His tone then became low and scrutinizing. “Yes… I can see it in those eyes you hide behind the mask… you’ve finally understood the meaning of misery and suffering, the same lesson I had to learn thanks to your betrayal . And now… now you don’t hold back.” 

Peter clenched his fists. “I’ve just tasted your raw, unbridled power! You proved me right… Peter.”

Peter grabbed his neck again with his left arm, throwing the Goblin’s helmet aside, then raising his right fist.

“Do it.” the Goblin spurred him. “Do it! Hit me!”

Peter’s hold on him tightened. His breath quickened.

“Hit me with all your strength! Finish me, right here and now in this hellscape! Where nobody will know of your murder!”

Peter’s fist hovered in mid air. He shut his eyes closed and breathed hard. 

“I took away the one thing you valued most in life… just as you took my chance at living a normal life away from me. I’ve already won .”

Peter just wanted him to shut up, once and for all. He growled and cast the final blow, half-hoping it’d silence the Goblin on the spot. His punch connected with… nothing.

His spider-sense flared instantly and he stumbled back.

The Goblin laughed. 

“Ah ah! Ah ah ah! What is it?! You still listen to that useless conscience of yours?!”

But Peter had punched at him. Or at least, attempted to.

He didn’t have much time to contemplate the morality of what could have potentially been murder (he really was honest to himself), because the room had gone from blazing hot because of the fire to inexplicably, illogically chilly. The flames flickered in and out of existence, the thunderous sound of flames appeared muffled, twisted, crackling like a corrupted audio file.

His confusion must’ve poured out of his mask, because the Goblin stopped laughing maniacally and soon had the same perplexed look Spider-Man had on his face. 

“What have you done?” He threateningly asked the Goblin, but he did not receive an answer. 

“What have you done?!” he shouted once more, grabbing the neck again, but by the heavy frown, half-opened mouth and darting eyes on Harry’s face, Peter understood his former friend was just as much in the dark about what was happening as he was.

The very walls and ceiling of the deepest level of the Raft seemed to fizzle out, as if they weren’t made of metal sturdy enough to resist a supervillain attack; then, they were left in the literal dark as the light went out, an unnatural darkness taking hold of the room.

Peter experienced a steady crescendo of his spider-sense, he had no single flipping idea about what was happening, he was breathing hard again, head whirling up and down, left and right, as the world around went mad - until the ground itself vanished, giving way to a black, bottomless chasm that swallowed the two sworn enemies, ending their fight.

Peter’s strangled, bewildered cry lasted a few seconds, however, when an all-encompassing white surrounded him and he soon found himself land - or rather, splash - in cold water. 

He rapidly re-emerged and sucked in a lungful of air, panting hard; he swam back to the (luckily) near shore, his spider-sense rapidly fell to a manageable level (though it still kept humming faintly in the background, curiously).

Examining his surroundings, Peter was left dumbfounded again: he’d somehow outright teleported out of the Raft into the waters surrounding Rikers Island! It was morning too, apparently - had he spent the night knocked out of the fight, floating there? Had it all actually been just a secret ace in the Goblin’s sleeve?

Furiously, he tried to locate the supervillain, but couldn’t find him anywhere either near him or underwater. Had the Goblin swum away to freedom already? Or could he have drowned, no matter how unlikely that seemed? Peter sighed despondently, picking up his pace as he walked from the coast back towards the Raft. 

It doesn’t make any sense. The Goblin has some nasty tricks, but teleportation? Could Oscorp even develop such a revolutionary technology? Maybe he had an accomplice? Damn it, I should’ve checked-

His thoughts stopped as soon he noticed the state of the island: it… didn’t have a Raft at all. It had disappeared from sight. 

What. Is. Going. On.

The island sat quietly in the East River, no sign of damage or fight at all, the few people he could see simply going along in their day as if a supervillain breakout hadn’t just happened the night before.

What. The. Hell. Is. Going. On.  

He swung to the highest vantage point on the island. Some of the personnel took notice of him and started pointing and looking; a few of them even waved at him, before resuming their business-as-usual duties.

Peter could feel the coming headache. He pinched the bridge of his nose - an habit from Gwen that had rubbed off on him. 

“Alright…” He finally exhaled. “Let’s see what mess you’ve got yourself into this time, Peter Parker.”

Chapter Text

Peter pensively sat at the usual little ‘Nerd Club’ lunch table, waiting for his two best friends to come over. He stared at his food morosely as if it had personally offended him.

It felt incredibly odd to sit down for his last year of high school after taking part in a fight for the survival of the universe .

Compared to that, his scuffle with Quentin Beck during summer should’ve been a cakewalk… boy, he still felt somewhat embarrassed he’d almost got outplayed by what was, essentially, a very good special effects technician.

“An apple for your thoughts?”

Said fruit suddenly popped in front of his eyes, on a hand he’d very much enjoyed holding and intertwining fingers with those last weeks. He looked back up to his side, and instinctively cheered up at the view: MJ had been the highlight of his summer, no doubt.

He’d finally gotten over his anxiety (he was still baffled by the fact he fought criminals and aliens and monsters but still had trouble asking his crush out) and, despite the whole Mysterio mess they'd gotten into, his dream had become true: she had actually agreed to be his girlfriend!

Heck, she did more than just kiss him: she’d actually helped him figure out Mysterio! And she wasn’t worried by the fact he was Spider-Man too!

“Taking too long to answer, Peter.” MJ frowned at him, but she was also smiling playfully.

“Oh? Oh - thank you, you know.” He abruptly replied.

For once, he’d actually managed to surprise her. “Thank me for… what?”

“For your help with…” he looked around with a circumspect look. There weren’t many people in the room; closest to them was only a lone, blonde girl eating quietly two tables away from theirs. “... with Mysterio.” he said with a whisper in her ear, sending a small, pleasant shiver down her spine.

“And, well, with- you know…”  he scratched the back of his neck - a typical Parker sign of slight nervousness - “... b-being my girlfriend. And not freaking out about…” he mimicked shooting some webs. 

Their faces were really close now. He could feel his cheeks warming.

He knew he was in for some witty retort, judging by that signature Michelle Jones side-eye, raised eyebrow and half-smile she’d sported on her face. He loved that quirk of hers, no matter how flustered she could make him with it.

He wondered if he should surprise her again and go for it, kiss her!... But he didn’t know if she was OK with PDAs in a public setting with other students present and-

“Peter! MJ!” He was saved (or frustrated?) by Ned’s unexpected arrival. Their friend was panting, fingers tapping and swiping on his phone, evidently in a rush. “Did you see what’s trending on X?!” He practically shouted at them, making them (and the blonde girl on the nearby table) wince.

“Hello to you too, Ned.” Peter answered sarcastically. 

“Wait, did you just call it ‘X’ ?” MJ asked, narrowing her eyes. “Don’t tell me you’ve been one of those fanboys all the time without me knowing, or I might have to reconsider our friendship.”

“No, I just-” Ned exhaled and rolled his eyes. “Just look at what’s going on!”, he said, leaving his phone on the table while looking at their faces, expecting some form of reaction from them.

Peter raised his brow in surprise, mouth half-open. MJ took a peep and almost choked on her orange juice. “W-well, I… it’s a… very flattering piece of art, but I’m not sure I’m entirely comfortable with it…”

Ned frowned at them for a second before checking the screen again. “W-wait, no, not that!” He grabbed the phone back, red in his face. 

“That was just a Spider-Man fanart account - I don’t even follow it! Look! I must’ve accidentally clicked on one of the comments - it’s one of those 18+, commissioned art people, you know - they’ve got a real knack for superheroes drawings-”

“Getting more uncomfortable by the second, Ned…” 

“Right, right! Oh, here! This is what I wanted to show you! This was apparently captured on August 18th!”

The (now correct) pic appeared on Ned’s phone screen. There was a… elongated, thin shape on the screen. The image was so zoomed it looked like an indiscernible dark blob. 

Ned swiped right and a video replaced the previous static image: the shape, suspended in the air, seemed vaguely humanoid and it had appeared out of nowhere; it suddenly started to fall, before stopping mid-air for a few seconds, then finally flying away.

“So?” Ned looked at Peter expectantly. Peter simply looked right back at him.

“So what?”

“What do you mean, ‘so what’?”

“I don’t understand-”

“Oh come on, it’s obvious! It’s a new supervillain!”

“Really? Did you just figure that out from a grainy, way-too-zoomed-in Twitter video?” MJ interjected, skepticism evident in her voice.

“Look at the replies - ignore the 18+ fanart bots - some people have tried analyzing the video - AI is a godsend for this kind of stuff. They’re 100% positive it’s a guy !”

“A… guy? Popping out of nowhere and… flying away?” Peter said. Some bad memories of his fight against Adrian Toomes resurfaced in his mind.

“Yes!” Ned nodded enthusiastically. “Which means he can probably also teleport, I guess?”

Peter shook his head, sighing. “Ned… Spider-Man has already fought someone like this. And last we’ve heard, Liz’s dad-” he winced at the memory of being welcomed inside Liz’s home by the freaking Vulture at Homecoming. “the Vulture has not escaped from prison.”

Ned scoffed. “Liz’s dad-” Peter winced again, “couldn’t teleport . It must be a new supervillain! People online agree with me, look: #NewVillain is trending thanks to this video. You need to-”

“ Peter Parker doesn’t need to do anything , Ned.” MJ sternly intervened before Ned could dig his own grave, dragging down with him Peter’s secret identity.

Ned, appropriately cowed, nodded with an apologetic: “Sorry, right.”, then went silent.

Peter sighed again, then quietly answered: “Ned, it’s not the first time that photos like that have taken over the internet, and in the end they were-” He stopped talking as soon as he saw that quiet, blonde girl staring at him with a bewildered look. 

He dipped his face in her direction and asked her: “Have you been… I-I mean, is there a problem?”

Ned and MJ quickly turned their heads in the blonde’s direction. 

The girl (Peter had never seen her before that day, he realized) kept staring, the look of consternation(?) never leaving her face, her wide, emerald eyes turning almost comically huge. 

Peter started feeling uneasy; had she figured out his secret? Ned had always been (in)famously clumsy with his words, but he’d never actually messed up so badly it cost Peter his secret identity.

He could tell MJ was getting nervous too. “Uhhh… Hello…? Are you… OK?” She asked the girl worriedly.

Gwen Stacy doubted she’d ever have a more shocking experience than her boyfriend revealing himself as Spider-Man (she still had pleasant dreams about that web-sling kiss) and his Oscorp internship supervisor being exposed as the Lizard (she had decidedly less pleasant dreams about that).

She’d never been more mistaken in her life.

As soon as she found herself in an alley (instead of falling to her death, she kept reminding herself; silver linings, right?), supposedly 10 years in the future, she knew something was very wrong.

She immediately took a cab to the Parker Residence: she needed to check Peter was OK after the battle, and maybe he could explain what was going on.

Looking out of the car window at a New York she could not entirely recognize, she anticipated being at the receiving end of another frustrating surprise.

She wasn’t wrong. 

She was told the Parkers hadn’t been in there for almost six years ; pressing for a clearer answer, the house occupants shifted uneasily, rambling about ‘the Blip’ ( So that Daily Bugle rag wasn’t joking. Huh.), ghosts, secret lovers and threats of divorce.

Leaving aside those last… unimportant details, the Parkers having moved out years ago because of this ‘Blip’ stuff left her with the absolute certainty something must have gone extremely wrong.

But Gwen Stacy would not lie down and surrender, just like that. She was a fighter. Her Stacy genes and her unique (to say the least) relationship with Peter had made her one. Her weapon of choice? Her spectacular brains.

Gwen’s mind started racing, putting out hypotheses and testing them; analyzing her current (dire) situation as if it was a scientific conundrum helped her push underneath the sense of dread that threatened to rise up from her gut.

Time travel? Matter displacement? Alternate reality? That would prove the Multiverse theory correct. Likely string theory too. Turns out, it actually seems to be a scientific conundrum. I need more info. I need…

She needed to hit the books. And, of course, check the Internet. She took another cab (Gwen shuddered to think how she would’ve been able to survive if she’d lost her wallet in the previous fights) to Queens Public Library.

She loathed History class, but that day she marched towards the History section, collected several manuals touching the last 100 years (with special attention dedicated to the last 10 years) and started pouring over them (and various online sites) as if she were a woman on a mission. 

In a way, Gwen figured she was one, if she ever wanted to go back to her time. Dimension. Universe, whatever.

During those initial days of… acclimatizing , she learned much more than she had ever expected to.

She learned the history (and the monster) behind the Blip - even though she couldn’t picture a scientifically plausible weapon capable of halving intelligent life on Earth in the span of a few minutes. One thing at a time, Gwen.

She came to know of this alternate Earth’s heroes, the ones who’d reverted the Blip. Apparently, the first superhero of this reality hadn’t been her red-and-blue, webslinging boyfriend, but a ‘Captain America’, back during World War Two. 

He’d also survived in a sort of cryo-stasis for decades, found again, fought against a bunch of bad guys (she started to feel what must have been her tenth headache in a matter of days when she read the words ‘alien invasion’), then travelled back in time (that headache was getting stronger by the second) for private, undisclosed reasons; he apparently was still alive, and spry despite his very old age. 

His friends and colleagues in arms (each with their own encyclopedic entry) included esteemed figures (she’d never heard of) like a Tony Stark, alias ‘Iron Man’ (heroically dead reverting the Blip), Thor ( seriously? The Norse god of thunder? Must be a pretentious guy ), a Dr. Bruce Banner, alias ‘Hulk’ (he apparently could turn into a big, mean, green, though now friendly-ish monster? ) , and many, many others.

Gwen sighed. The headache was pounding on her temples now.

Did I really have to stumble into superhero-galore, multiple-alien-invasions reality?  

Still, she at least had an answer for (one of the many) questions swimming in her mind: this was an alternate reality, and for some reason Gwen was taken from hers and left stranded in it. She wondered if Peter had also been ‘transported’ here too.

After a deep and extensive search, she collected all useful information about her favourite subject. She learned that there was a Spider-Man in this reality too - although he seemed to have entered history around 2016, so he was definitely part of a younger generation of this world’s multiple, confusing superheroes.

Just like her Spider-Man, this world’s red-and-blue spandex superhero had also done a lot of very brave and selfless (likely also very stupid and reckless, if she knew her boy) things. 

His identity behind the mask was unknown to the world… except for Gwen herself, of course. At least in her universe.

She needed to get in contact with this world’s Peter, gain his trust and make sure he would not freak out and leave when she’d share the fact she came from another dimension. Lovely. Oh, and all of this was based on the assumption that this reality’s Peter Parker was also Spider-Man. 

That, she figured, was a gamble she was forced to take if she wanted to find her way back home. If there was even a way back… 

She sighed and looked outside the window: the sun had already set, and she’d probably be asked to leave the library soon. I’ve never studied so much and so hard for History class , she chuckled, trying to find some humour in the mess she was in.

After paying for a B&B during her first night (again, she thanked the fact she had brought a lot of money with her - she was supposed to exchange her cash dollars for pounds once she got to the UK, after all), she had to face the unpleasant, but realistic possibility of being left stranded in this dimension for a long time. Which meant she’d eventually run out of money. Therefore, she needed an income.

She managed to cajole her way into getting a cashier job at a family-run coffee shop in Hell’s Kitchen. Apparently, she was an incredibly good liar, since the owners took her teary-eyed “My family is abusive, I had to flee, I have nowhere to go now!” fib hook, line and sinker. Not that she had to fake her desperation too much.

Gwen was touched that they also put in a good word for her to a landlord they were friendly with, so she also managed to get a room in a nearby apartment; the room was small and somewhat dingy but she wasn’t in a position to complain.

She also asked several people around New York about her family, more out of curiosity than anything else - this was a different dimension, after all, she didn’t know what would happen if she contacted her ‘not-parents’. 

Interestingly enough, nobody knew of a ‘George’ or ‘Helen Stacy’ who lived at her address in Brooklyn; it seemed her family did not exist at all in this reality, or maybe it lived somewhere else.

Gwen didn’t know what to make of this, until she convinced herself it was a blessing in disguise: no risk of suddenly stumbling into her ‘not-parents’ or, even worse, her own alternate version of herself. 

That would not end well. Intriguing from a biological and psychological point of view - but still potentially dangerous. Probably weird, as well.

Soon after, she received her letter of acceptance from Midtown High - or rather, ‘Midtown School of Science & Technology’, as it was called in this reality; again, she was somewhat shocked (and disgusted) at herself for being able to lie so convincingly about her current conditions.

Still, for the first time since her ‘arrival’, Gwen felt somewhat satisfied , at least on the surface: things were finally starting to go her way now. 

Now, she needed to find Peter Parker (she’d already snooped around and found out he indeed was a Midtown School student, just like in her reality).

Her mind inevitably wandered to her own Peter. 

She missed her Bugboy terribly. 

She didn’t know what could be worse: whether he’d stayed back in their own, original dimension, inexplicably seeing his Gwen disappear… or if he had come into this reality too.

The unknown she was still trying to decipher after almost two months in this bizarre misadventure of hers made her restless. 

Did he see me just… vanish? Could he be trying to find me right now, or is he mourning me? What if he ‘fell’ into this mess too, but at a different location or in a different time? What if he’s hurt right now? What if he needs my help? What if…

The alarm buzzed loudly, cutting her half-asleep anxious thoughts short. 

Gwen gasped, then sat on the bed. She palmed her face and let out a sigh.

A few tears of longing, frustration and emotional exhaustion escaped her eyes, before she put on a brave mask and prepared herself for her second first day of school as a Midtown High senior. 

She got a few curious looks from the other students in her class ( understandable, since I’ve literally appeared out of nowhere and nobody knows me) , but her cover (transfer student with family issues) seemed to work; people didn’t ask questions and she was left blissfully alone. 

She couldn’t stay that way though: she had to contact alternate-reality Peter Parker.

Somehow his boyfriend managed to trouble Gwen even in this world. Guess some things carry well across dimensions.  

She had tried to glimpse that loveable, annoyingly charming, ever distracted, sometimes cheeky face of his from the rest of the students, but she couldn’t find him anywhere between classes. 

Gwen exhaled out of exasperation; she sat alone during lunch hours, despondently eating away at her vegetables. 

She really didn’t want to start asking around after Peter and potentially cause a scene, but at this point she seemed to have no other option left.

Well, he had certainly made a scene the first time we talked to each other.

She instinctively smiled as she remembered that brave, principled boy who came to the rescue of a bullied student, saving him from humiliation at the hands of Flash Thompson, taking his place instead.

She hadn’t thought it over that much before, but now she understood that he’d instantly picked her attention with his bravery and selflessness that very day (it seemed so long ago now). 

When she looked into Peter’s eyes, Gwen could see a fire in there, the same drive and determination (he’d call it stubbornness) her parents told her she had as well. 

His inexplicable charm, with a fascinating mix of both awkwardness and cheekiness, did the rest: butterflies were fluttering in her stomach because of Peter long before she knew he had an alter ego. 

God, she hadn’t seen him for almost two whole months . 

“Did you see what’s trending on X?!” 

The shout made her wince and brought her back to reality. The culprit was a Filipino-American student who had just hurriedly joined the whispering couple two tables away from hers. Apparently the short, lean Caucasian boy at the receiving end of that shout was called Peter; the Multiverse sure had a wicked sense of humour. 

She quietly focused back on emptying her plate, until she heard it.

“ Peter Parker doesn’t need to do anything , Ned.”

Her head snapped back up, eyes fixed on that boy.

“Sorry, Peter.” the over-excited guy mumbled.

Gwen’s eyes widened in shock, mouth opening of her own accord.

She wanted to bang her head against the table, hard , at that moment. 

For all her intelligence and planning, she had somehow completely ignored the possibility that the same person could have a distinct physical appearance in another dimension.

But this was Peter Parker? He looked utterly different from the Peter she knew and loved. She was extremely lucky he’d sat at a table relatively close to hers; she really didn’t want to attract the wrong kind of attention by asking other people.

“Uhhh… Hello…? Are you… OK?”

The brown haired woman on Peter’s right asked Gwen, concern written on her features.

Right, she’d been staring wide at him long enough.

Gwen shook her head and rebooted her brain.

OK, time to stop staring, and start socializing, Gwen.

Chapter Text

“Oh- uhm, hi!” Gwen finally spoke, a wide, unnatural smile plastered on her face. The concerned looks on Other-Peter (she needed to find a decent nickname to differentiate him from her Peter) and his two friends didn’t fade. 

Grrreat start. Argh!

Other-Peter was the first to recover, saving her from her temporary embarrassment. “Oh, h-hi! You… were staring at me, like, really intensely, I thought I had something on my face!” He chuckled, trying to defuse the situation. Interestingly, Gwen could sense worry rolling off his shoulders.

“Hey, you are the new girl, the transfer student, right? I saw you in Chemistry class this morning.” The girl on Peter’s right had an inquisitive look on her face.

“Y-yeah, yeah, it’s me. Sorry for the stare,” Gwen chuckled uneasily, then came up with a lie. 

“I just- Peter looks really like another person I know and-”

“Peter?” The girl interrupted her, “You know his name? Do you two know each other?” She asked, a sly smile on her face, eyes moving back and forth between her and Petey (there, she found one).

“No!” Gwen and Petey answered at the same time - Gwen shaking her head more vigorously than needed. “No, I just heard you and your friends talking, and I…” She shrugged; if she could pretend to be shy, at least at first, maybe her cover wouldn’t be blown.

“No, I don’t think we’ve met before.” Petey added, turning his head to look at her friend ( girlfriend? They’re awfully close to each other ) with a faux-annoyed look, before resuming, “I’m Peter, as you’ve picked up already. This is Ned,” the guy muttered ‘Hi’, gazing at her with a somewhat misty look, “and this is Michelle .” 

“Only my parents call me ‘Michelle’ at this point. Just call me MJ, it sounds cooler, anyway.” The girl sent a brief, nasty look at Peter at his choice of name (the boy chuckled at that), then redirected her attention to Gwen with a small smile on her face. Gwen figured MJ was probably trying to make her comfortable.

“I’m Gwen. Gwen Stacy. ‘Gwendolyne’ if you want to tease me or you’re related to my aunt.” She shot back. 

They all let out a chuckle to ease the awkwardness of the moment. 

Gwen’s smile became genuine. She felt warmed by the fact that this dimension’s Peter had found a few friends. Her own Peter hadn’t had such luck, unfortunately. 

Oh, well, they could always make new friends together. As soon as she got back, that is.

“Do you… want to join us?” Ned timidly enquired, a certain hopefulness in his eyes. “Be warned, though - you’ll be eternally branded as part of Midtown’s Nerd Club, and probably end up being picked on by Flash at least once on a weekly basis.”

“Flash?!” Surprises never end for Gwen Stacy, apparently. She hadn’t seen that infamous buzz cut anywhere, and Flash usually towered over other people and wanted to be gawked at. He had to look different in this dimension too.

Petey fortunately mistook the amazement in her voice for simple confusion. “Oh, don’t worry, that’s just a nickname he gave himself - his real name is actually Eugene Thompson, a fact he tries his best to hide.” He clarified. 

He was wearing the same cheeky smile she fell in love with, but on a completely different face, and that simple mismatch was making her uncomfortable.

“Oh? Eugene?” She faked amusement; she’d always used Flash’s actual name when she wanted to take his ego down a notch. “I’ll try to remember it if he starts bothering me!” Gwen laughed, diverting her gaze onto MJ and Ned, trying to escape Petey’s uncanny smile for a moment.

“So… I’m happy to join your club, then! Is there a rite I have to undergo? Do I have to make a pledge?” She asked facetiously.

“Nope!” Ned shot back, “Only one question: who’s your favourite Avenger?”

Gwen had spent weeks reading about the Avengers superhero clique during summer - they even had their own skyscraper in Manhattan at one point! - but she was left momentarily stumped by the (obviously humorous) question.

Her brain inevitably defaulted to the one superhero she loved and knew best, better than anyone else. “Err… Spider-Man.”

Their reaction was immediate: Ned went “Ah.”, Peter choked on (apparently) empty air, while MJ narrowed her eyes at her.

She couldn’t have asked for clearer proof that this Peter was Spider-Man, he was bad at hiding it (at least to someone who already knew, like her) and his two friends likely knew too.

A wry smile adorned her face, as if she’d just solved a complicated equation or gave the correct answer to a Biology question. 

Her Peter had once said she was intensely attractive when she smiled like that, but MJ’s piercing gaze became even more penetrating at that smirk of hers.

“What?” She asked defensively when nobody of the three said a word. “Oh no. Have I just entered into a Spider-Man haters’ club? Do I still have time to walk away?”

“No, no!” Ned recovered, “No, we do like Spider-Man, it’s just…” he took his time to formulate a good-enough excuse; Gwen could see MJ eye him worriedly. “... Spider-Man’s not really part of the Avengers, we were more talking about-”

“Wait, what do you mean? Spider-Man is an Avenger.” Petey interjected, baffled. Gwen was amused at the exchange; MJ threw a pleading look at her two male friends, but Petey and Ned were completely absorbed in their brewing argument.

“Ehhh… is he though ? I mean, there was no official ceremony as far as-”

“Why is a ceremony necessary to become an Avenger? Mr. Sta- Iron Man made Spider-Man an Avenger back in 2017, when Thanos attacked.”

“Look, I get it Peter, and no offense- not that you- I mean, Spider-Man’s great! He’s fantastic! He’s Avenger material, absolutely! But I’m talking about the technicalities of-”

“Why are we talking about technicalities in the first place though? Like, are they really that important?”

MJ sighed and facepalmed. Gwen joined her side and offered a consoling pat on her shoulder, while she softly giggled at the impassioned back-and-forth between Petey and Ned.

“Alright, alright, boys!” She laughingly interrupted the argument after a while, “I was mistaken: you’re not a Spider-Man haters’ club, but a fanboy club! I think I’ll fit in just fine, then!”

Peter and Ned chuckled at their own antics and nodded at their new friend. Ned then coughed to clear his voice.

“S-so… since you’re a fan of Spider-Man…” He gathered his courage, bravely meeting Gwen’s green eyes. He finally voiced the arduous question: “... can I show you our new Lego Spider-Man collection?”

Peter was pleasantly surprised by the fourth chair that had joined their exclusive, nerd-only lunch table. 

The circumstances of their first meeting had been… unusual, yes, but he and the others were elated to have made a new friend.

They’d shared several classes, and he fought neck and neck with her for the first spot in Chemistry class; he had to concede she was unbeatable in Biology, though. She said she hated History, yet she seemed to listen very attentively whenever Professor Smithson’s lessons touched upon superhero-related historical events.

Ned had somewhat of an innocent crush on her (he tried to hide it, but if even Peter could notice it, there was no chance Gwen hadn’t already). The fact that she’d complimented him for his Lego collections did wonders for his ego.

MJ liked her, and Peter was really glad she had found someone she could talk about the more… girly topics her two male friends couldn’t understand. 

In secret, though, she confided to him that Gwen seemed to act somewhat paranoid towards anyone outside their little group; she’d shared only very vague information about her personal life; and finally, she seemed to tense up a bit every time the subject of their discussions was Spider-Man.

Peter had looked at her in astonishment, asking her how the hell had she picked all of that up. MJ rolled her eyes and sighed, telling him she was simply observant and muttering something about ‘distractible boys’.

Still, despite MJ’s skeptical nature (which had saved his butt several times, he had to admit) Gwen had shown herself to be a sweet, smart, dependable and witty friend.

It had been several weeks since their first meeting, and they hadn’t shared his big secret with her yet. Peter probably would have liked to keep it only between him, Ned and MJ - the more people knew about it, the greater the danger for everyone involved. 

However, he feared someone as perspicacious as Gwen would eventually become suspicious of him.

In fact, he could picture her asking herself (and MJ) some questions right in that moment, when she’d seen him suddenly bolt out of school, forgoing the last class of the day, on a hunch from his Peter-tingle.

Swapping his clothes for the nanotech Iron Spider armor, New York’s beloved Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man started swinging away, following his spider instincts.

When he reached his destination, somewhere high up in downtown Brooklyn, he could scarcely believe his eyes: the Vulture was perched on an apartment roof, scouting the area with a curious look on his face.

“Mr… Mr Toomes?!” Peter practically shouted, alerting the Vulture of his presence. “W-what… why are you… how did you escape?! How did you… your wings were…” He couldn’t formulate a coherent thought in his brain, never mind trying to utter a coherent sentence. 

Adrian Toomes had somehow escaped from prison without anyone knowing, apparently. How the hell had he slipped through Mr. Fury and SHIELD’s eyes?

The Vulture’s next words did nothing to assuage his confusion - in fact they increased it.

“Spider-Woman! Finally you deign to show your face again!”

Wait, what? Had he just called him Spider- Woman ? Was it supposed to be an insult, or something?

“I understand,” The villain continued in a mocking tone, “I did so thoroughly thrash you last time, you had to flee, lick your wounds and change suit, apparently!”

“Uh… that’s not what I remember, Mr. Toomes.” Peter’s brain had started to function again,  “I did beat you, and made sure you went to prison. And I heavily doubt your time is up yet.”

“ Please , spare me your delusions and silly excuses!” 

Apparently Mr. Toomes had developed a flair for the dramatic behind bars.

“Now that you’re here, though, I guess you’ve recuperated from your embarrassing defeat, and intend to stop me?”

“Y-yeah, I guess? The last part, not the ‘you defeating me’ one.”

“Well, then! I will thoroughly enjoy beating you a second, final time! You won’t escape your fate now, Spider-Woman! ”

“Why do you keep calling me that?!” Peter was genuinely perplexed, but he didn’t receive an answer, considering that the Vulture suddenly flew at him, trying to knock him over. Alright, time to dance once again, Mr. Toomes.

His Peter-tingle allowed him to evade the blow, the Vulture flying past him.

He quickly aimed one web at a high rise wall, one other at him, connecting to his right wing; using the building momentum, he then sprung in the air, landing on the Vulture’s back with a powerful punch that left the flying villain breathless.

“Uh. Your exo-suit looks very different, Mr. Toomes. Did you have a spare somewhere?” The suit definitely had more of a… bird-like appearance, with proper metal wings, talons and all. The Iron-Spider’s on-board AI Karen analyzed it and couldn’t find any sign of Chitauri technology in it. 

“Wait, did you make this yourself?!”

Again, the Vulture didn’t deign him of an answer, and Peter was simply left with a nasty electric shock that coursed through his body, making him lose his grip on him and start falling.

The Vulture did laugh at that. “Ah ah! I can’t believe you fell for that again!”

Peter quickly recovered and started swinging from building to building in pursuit. “What do you mean ‘again’? Your old wings couldn’t zap me before!”

“Peter, I have reconfigured the suit’s nanites: they will now resist electrical attacks at the specific voltage used by Adrian Toomes.”

“Thank you, Karen!”

“You know, I owe the internet an apology!” Spider-Man quipped, following his target from below, trying to find the best time for his counter-attack. “I didn’t think that flying blob on Twitter would be a supervillain, but I was wrong, it seems!”

“What are you even blabbering about, stupid girl? Did that electrical discharge loosen some cogs in your brain?”

“Ouch. Mr. Toomes, you keep insulting me by calling me a girl. I’m disappointed in you; I thought having a daughter you loved so much wouldn’t make you sexist, but…”

“A… daughter? I don’t have a-” The Vulture appeared confused for some reason: that was the perfect moment to strike.

Peter shot a web that stuck to one of Mr. Toomes’ legs, then jumped to his level, punching him in the gut. Peter climbed back to the Vulture’s back: he was relieved to find out he couldn’t be zapped anymore. Thank you once again for the suit, Mr. Stark. 

“What?! How did you…?!” The Vulture’s face was a mix of anger and bewilderment. 

“Alright!” the webslinger said, rubbing his hands together. “Let’s find a way to clip these wings of yours, shall we?”

Peter started to tear apart the exo-suit’s mechanical wings; the attempt took more effort than he’d honestly expected. Those wings were really tough.

The Vulture, alarmed, started spinning wildly to make the webslinger fall again. “What’s the matter, Spider-Woman? Have you lost your strength? Where’s that black sludge of yours you keep on your body? Have you forgotten it in the other suit?”

Black sludge? Which other suit is he even talking about? “You know, you’re really starting to tick me off with this ‘Spider-Woman’ stuff!” Peter shouted, barely clinging to the Vulture as they kept spinning. He shot a web at the Vulture’s belly, then pulled hard in the opposite sense to stop the man from spinning.

The Vulture quickly counteracted: his metal talons cut the web, and Peter lost his balance. Soon, the Vulture swooped down and caught Spider-Man, clutching the hero's arms painfully between his talons.

He started gaining altitude, and Peter had half an idea of what the Vulture was planning to do.

“Karen, time to bring out the big guns!” 

“Activating Enhanced Combat Mode.” The AI serenely replied.

Four spider limbs extended from the back of the webslinger’s suit: in pairs, they wrapped around the talons and proceeded to crush them, freeing Spider-Man.

“What?! What are those things?!” Vulture craned his neck to the side to stare at him; Peter could imagine his eyes popping open in shock behind his helmet.

“Courtesy of Mr. Stark! Here, get acquainted with them while I tend those wings!” Spider-Man used the metal limbs to travel along the Vulture’s body; while the spider limbs held tight onto Mr. Toomes’ suit, he resumed his difficult task of ripping one of the wings apart with his bare hands.

His Peter-tingle erupted into alarm and he managed to move out of the way of one of the metal ‘feathers’ that had abruptly sprung out from its position.

“Woah, there! Easy, Mr. Toomes! You almost nailed my arm!”

Another feather soon suddenly stretched out again, aimed directly at his neck, but this time Peter not only managed to evade the blow, but caught the feather-shaped metal sheet in his hand, destroying it with relative ease.

“Oooh, I’ve figured it out!” The lightbulb in his brain set off. “The static feathers are heavier and more durable, but the mobile ones have to be lighter and thinner to be able to cut me!”

Peter attuned with his spider tingle, relying on it to perceive the blows before they happened.

He managed to crush more and more of the mobile, razor-sharp but lighter feathers of the Vulture’s right wing. The Vulture was growing more and more infuriated with each feather that got destroyed in the process. 

After the wing had run out of them, he could focus entirely on breaking it apart.

“Would you look at that! So you are capable of learning from past mistakes, Spider-Woman! Well played, well played!” The supervillain admitted with gusto, though there was undisguised wrath and hatred in his voice.

“Say ‘Spider-Woman’ one more time and I’ll web your mouth shut!” Peter barked in annoyance. The wing was getting crumpled under his superhuman strength, and the Vulture had already started to lose altitude.

“It seems our final confrontation will have to be postponed, little girl !”

“Oh, COME ON!”

“We’ll meet again, and next time I’ll make sure you drop dead from way higher up!” The Vulture exclaimed with a certain finality.

“Where do you think you’re going with a broken wing?” Spider-Man shot back, but then he heard a hiss and realized the Vulture had a secret ace up his sleeve.

“I detect unknown, noxious contaminants, Peter. I suggest disengaging until I can analyze the chemical composition and provide a counter to it. Do you want to activate the vacuum seal function?” Karen said, her synthesized voice betraying a certain alarm.

He was being gassed!

“Y-yes, Karen…!” Peter managed to answer between coughs, and his grip on the Vulture loosened.

“W-wait…! Y-You won’t leave…!” But Peter fell, barely managing to fling a web to an apartment, swinging around and crashing clumsily on the roof: he fell on his knees wheezing violently, removing the nanite mask from his face as his stinging eyes burned and wept tears, feeling both dizzy in the head and weak in his limbs.

“D-damn it! I almost had him! What the hell was that gas?!” He asked himself in rage and frustration once the gas effects weakened.

“Peter, I have analyzed the chemical composition of the aerosol employed by Adrian Toomes and successfully identified a working antidote. You’ll be able to synthesize it using a Stark Industries Fabricator.”

Peter sat on the roof and sighed despondently. “Thank you, Karen.”

“I’m confident you will get him next time, Peter.” The AI attempted to console him, before switching to humour: “Maybe you’ll also get him to stop calling you ‘Spider-Woman’ as well.”

Peter chuckled, “I doubt it, he seemed pretty obsessed with that.” Though I have no idea why. 

After a few minutes of contemplation, Peter dusted himself off the roof, and started swinging back home. Aunt May, MJ and Ned no doubt would want to know everything about his little detour from school, and he also had to come up with a valid excuse to give Gwen.

Chapter Text

The symbiote had been in a constant freaked-out state the first few days after the… accident , which freaked Gwen out too by extension.

Ironically, it was also able to adjust to this new reality quicker than she did.

And by now she had understood it was an actual , different reality, because the alternative was that she was simply going mad. 

Not that she didn’t know she probably had some unscrewed cogs in her brain - you have to be a little bit crazy to start beating bad people in spandex.

Soon after her ‘arrival’, she had swung onto a run down, sequestered apartment roof, doing her best to bandage the wound with webs and Venom-tendrils before passing out.

The day after, she had already healed (courtesy of her spider-genes and the symbiote bond), so she went to scope out that huge skyscraper with the letter ‘A’ on it that had appeared out of nowhere. 

Haven’t swung to Manhattan for a week or so, I doubt they could erect a whole ass skyscraper in that timeframe. Something’s not adding up…

While she couldn’t decipher the meaning behind that letter, she noticed a little, yet crucial detail: the neon-bright circle surrounding the stylized, blue ‘A’ had a small, sleek ‘Stark Industries’ etched along its circumference. This discovery, however, did nothing but add to her puzzlement.

Last she knew, Anthony Edward ‘Tony’ Stark, self-styled ‘genius, billionaire, playboy and philanthropist’, better known to the world as ‘merchant of death, deliverer of destruction, owner of private mercenary armies, and all-around typically awful one percenter’ had his own skyscraper in the Big Apple, of course, but it looked nothing like this. 

Determined to get to the bottom of what was going on, the superheroine started swinging from skyscraper to skyscraper, always maintaining a safe distance from the ground: she was still worried the Vulture might be on her tracks, and she wanted to get the jump on him for once; plus, she didn’t feel like dealing with people on the streets, what with her secret identity being known and the general mistrust towards her.

She surveyed the Manhattan skyline and noticed another worrying detail: she couldn’t find Oscorp Tower. It didn’t make any sense - she’d been in there several times because of Harry and his father Norman, and now it just wasn’t there.  

Did the Vulture’s gas mess with my memory or something?

The symbiote quivered on her skin, sending an unpleasant sensation to Gwen: it didn’t like being in the position it found itself into, utterly in the dark about what was going on, just as much as its host didn’t.

Gwen exhaled, knowing she was now forced to interact with the citizenry, hoping they’d be kind enough to help an apparently very confused Spider-Woman.

She didn’t count on the fact that surprises never end for Gwen Stacy, apparently.

The kind, old lady she met once she descended on a secluded alley and morphed her suit into civilian clothes didn’t seem to recognise and point accusing fingers at her: in fact, her brow creased with worry at the ‘Where am I?’, ‘What day is it?’, ‘Have you seen a flying guy in a suit?’ and ‘Do you know where Oscorp is?’

The poor woman must’ve probably thought she’d just gone through a traumatic experience and wasn’t thinking straight, judging by the pitiful look on her face. 

Which wasn’t that far from the truth, really.

The more she just wandered around New York, the higher her anxiety spiked: people weren’t deliberately ignoring her, they simply didn’t recognise her.

Soon after, however, she found out something much more concerning to deal with than everyone else forgetting who Spider-Woman was.

Wait, it’s… August 18th 2024? W-what…? People simply kept confirming that, yes, she had just been catapulted some 5 years and a half into the future.

She also came to know there were many ( too many for her liking) superheroes supposedly existing and being fangirled on, and they didn’t all pop up in this time gap either.

The first of those superheroes? Captain America. She knew her - but it was actually a him in this ‘future’. 

The second one? Tony fucking Stark , apparently. Which died a year prior, saving the world from something people kept being frustratingly vague about called ‘the Blip’. Did that overhyped, self-absorbed manlet grow a heart all of a sudden?

Most disturbingly, though, there wasn’t a single mention of Spider-Woman or Gwen Stacy in this future; kids, however, went crazy for a Spider- Man (did this reality have something against women superheroes or something?) , who preferred a tawdry red and blue suit over her classic black, white, blue and pink.

OK, now I actually am undergoing a traumatic experience. What the fuck is going on?

Then it suddenly clicked. This wasn’t just her ‘future’, but a different, alternate one altogether.

She felt as if she was the protagonist of one of those mid sci-fi flicks Betty loved and used to play on her TV when the Mary Janes would crash at her place after a long practice session. 

Either that, or she had finally, officially gone completely nuts. She didn’t know which was worse (probably the ‘alternate dimension’ option).

The weeks after that seemed to blur in a single, incoherent, altogether unpleasant memory. She just knew she had to resort to Extranet - sorry, Internet, apparently - searches to try and understand the general context of the world she’d been thrown into. 

She’d found a run-down place to use as a shelter, at least temporarily; her newfound secret identity allowed her to find a job at a fast-food place that didn’t ask too many questions (she’d always been a bad liar) and paid her enough to survive.

She ended her nightly patrols, too - she didn’t want to raise suspicions (although she kept stopping crimes in her civvies if she happened to stumble onto them); this world apparently already had a Spider-Man anyway (and many, too many other superheroes). Plus, crime rates seemed generally lower in this reality (lucky them).

She tried and failed to find both a Stacy family in Brooklyn and a Watson family in Queens; she did find a Grant family, but the fact that she was in a different dimension was now so ingrained in her mind it probably would’ve been useless either way.

The one silver lining in this mess was that she did find mention of a Parker family in Queens. While Ben Parker had apparently passed away, and she was saddened by it… Peter still lived. There was no mention of a Lizard rampaging through Midtown High, either. 

She didn’t know this dimension’s Peter, nor she wanted to, out of safety for her identity… and probably also because she couldn’t guarantee she wouldn’t suddenly start bawling her eyes out if she saw him. 

But he was still alive and breathing and living a normal life , she hoped, without feeling the need to be ‘special’ (she’d absolutely grown to hate the word since that accursed day) like her.

When she discovered this little piece of news, her mood in subsequent days brightened slightly. 

All in all, as of late September, a month and a week or so into this predicament of hers, Gwen Stacy had somewhat adjusted to her new, unusual circumstances.

Of course, the huge elephant in the room she had purposefully ignored at first still persisted: how the hell was she supposed to go back to her own reality? She didn’t even know how or why she’d gotten into this one in the first place!

Venom decided that was the moment to make its presence felt; after the first few days of distress, the symbiote had been relatively quiet, as if the dimensional travel had numbed its senses and wants.

Now, Gwen could feel both her passenger squirm (so to speak) and her spider-sense itch the base of her neck like she’d never felt since the day she fell (literally) into this reality. Whatever was happening was near her location; it sounded bad enough to her instincts that she couldn’t just ignore it and let a superhero from this world handle it.

Gwen was honestly somewhat relieved of going back into action: she hadn’t donned her suit in more than a month! 

Well, technically I don’t wear the suit anymore, I let a symbiote morph itself into one over my undies. God, I’m so weird.

Gwen came into an alley in her casual sweatshirt and torn jeans and came back out in her classic black and white suit. She immediately started swinging away towards her destination, trusting her spider-instincts and her symbiote to guide her one step closer back home.

“God, t-thank you, Spider-Man! If it weren’t for you, I’d, I’d…” The woman let out a few more sobs, sighing out of relief that her mugger had been promptly stopped by her favourite Friendly Neighborhood vigilante.

“No problem, just go back home - or even better, to a friend’s house - and take the next day off if you can, okay? It’s getting dark, and you shouldn’t be out alone at night.”

“Yes, yes, you’re right… thank you, thank you again!” She said, nodding profusely. Spider-Man watched from afar until she reached a safe place, then continued on his routine patrol. 

The poor woman had been frightened out of her mind, and Peter inwardly cursed for not having been on the scene quicker: he’d spent the last few nights synthesizing the Vulture gas antidote and upgrading his suit with it. 

He had tried to assuage Aunt May’s worries after he’d come home weakened, coughing and with bloodshot eyes, but he knew she didn’t fall for his “It looks worse than it actually is”. 

She’d repeated to him to be more careful and hugged him tight. Peter eagerly reciprocated the hug.

He went more into detail with MJ and Ned. The latter gloated at having been proven right (he felt way too smug at hearing MJ’s contrived ‘Well, I guess you weren’t wrong for once, Ned’), while the former asked the group the same questions Peter had asked himself already: how had Adrian Toomes escaped from prison? Why wasn’t he told? Did anyone actually know about it? When and how did he manage to build an entirely new suit? 

Why the hell did he keep calling me Spider-Woman?! (At that, both Ned and MJ were in agreement it was likely a little insult of the sexist variety to belittle him).

None of the three had any answers about all the other questions though.

“So… what? We just wait for Liz’s dad-”

“Stop calling him that, Ned!” Peter winced once more.

“- the Vulture to repair his wings and come back?”

Peter couldn’t do anything but shrug. “Seems we have no other choice.”

“Be more careful next time, Peter. I don’t want to lose you to a stupid gas attack after you fought aliens and… gods and whatever.” MJ added to the conversation, her voice and eyes betraying a certain worry. She’d become more… attentive (even more than before, that is) of his conditions ever since becoming his girlfriend, and it warmed Peter’s heart.

Peter chuckled, taking a shot at humour to reassure her: “You don’t need to worry, MJ, you remind me of May and-”

“Did you just compare your girlfriend to your aunt?” MJ retorted, her usual snark coming out again.

Realizing his faux pas, Peter started spluttering and gesticulating wildly, until MJ rolled her eyes and silenced him, thoroughly catching him off guard with a quick kiss (‘for good luck’ the next time he’d meet the Vulture), before running home as it was late.

Gwen had been… surprisingly fast at letting him off the hook after he’d bailed on them the previous afternoon. Peter thought he’d grown better at lying; MJ said he definitely still hadn’t , and was in fact somehow perplexed at how easily Gwen had accepted his flimsy excuses.

The wandering of his mind ended abruptly when his neck prickled with that familiar sixth sense the spider-bite had gifted him. It tingled quite strongly, and Peter soon grew worried it might be the Vulture again.

His mind went into overdrive, mentally hyping itself for the rematch, he started swinging faster, over the next apartment, just around the corner of a tall building and-

“Ooof!”

“Argh! What the…?” 

He smashed into someone coming from the corner! The speed at which they were both going around was high enough that the impact pushed the air out of his lungs and made him lose the grip on his web.

Peter quickly recovered and swung to safety on top of a nearby roof, adrenaline now swimming in his body, ready for a fight.

“Were you just… flying through here?! Who are you?! Show yourself!” Peter demanded, trying to make his voice sound imposing.

Spider-Man could see the other guy on another nearby roof: it seemed they had managed to recover from the accidental mid-air collision; it was too dark to make out anything more than a silhouette, but thanks to his suit’s infrared, he could discern a figure that was slim, thin, around his height, with what appeared to be a hood raised to cover their head. 

It definitely wasn’t Mr. Toomes, but it could still be trouble.

The figure suddenly leaped from their roof to his, and Peter backflipped away to get some distance in between them. Whoever this guy was, they were an ‘enhanced’ individual. Troubling.

“Easy now.” began the hooded figure - a woman, judging by the feminine voice; she slowly, diplomatically extended open palms in front of her. “I didn’t come here to fight you… Spider-Man .” She pronounced the last word with a curious… uneasiness?

Peter eased up on the ‘looking menacing’ bit, but still maintained a suspicious tone of voice: “What did you come here for then?”

The hooded woman, still in the shadows of the taller building nearby, took a bit too long of a time to answer. “I… I think I was looking for someone.”

“What? What do you mean, you think ?”

The woman sighed, then replied: “It’d probably be easier to explain if we had a talk face to face, instead of shouting on top of a roof. Are you OK with that? Can I come near you?”

Peter slightly tilted his neck, wondering whether to trust her or not. In the end, he nodded and ended their standoff with a resounding: “Yes, you can. I’m choosing to trust you for now.”

“Good boy.” The figure cheekily answered, coming out of the shadows. 

Peter could now take her in fully, and his eyes slowly went comically wide at the sight: she wore a spandex black suit separated by a V-shaped line that crossed her chest; above it, her suit went white, but the inside of her hood was pink and crisscrossed by white webs - just like the underside of her white arms; at foot level, the suit had a curious blue pattern that resembled ballet shoes.

The girl stood at a close, but safe distance from him, hands on her hips, head slightly tilted, her weight on her right leg. She was obviously waiting for him to say something, but Peter was honestly impressed by who appeared to be a… well, he didn’t want to sound like an arrogant ass, but he couldn’t help but think she was a slightly different copy of himself.

“Are you… is that a custom suit you’ve made?” was the first thing that came out of his mouth. “I…” he coughed, “I like the style, the colours.” He berated himself internally - he sounded like a boy trying to flirt with a girl. How did MJ fall for me, it’s a mystery.

Gwen examined herself, nodded and simply said: “Thanks. It looks cool, I think.”

Peter kept nodding and staring at her. Once he realized he was being weird, he shook his head and forcibly restarted his brain. “So… did you say you were looking for someone?”

“Yes, I did. And…” Her suit’s eyes narrowed, even though they didn’t appear to be mechanical like Peter’s. “I think I’ve just found him.”

“You’ve just- Wait, so you were looking for me ?”

She shrugged apologetically. “Not intentionally looking for you, I was just following our… common instinct, you know?”

“Our common what?”

“Our spider-sense! You… have it right? Did you feel it too?”

“ Our … spider-sense?” Spider-Man’s mind was still processing those words. Our. As in… she has… the same…?

“Yes, we do share powers, Spider-Man.” She basically read his mind. 

His head snapped back up to meet her eyes as she continued: “If your story is the same as mine, you too were bitten by a radioactive spider and started wearing that suit to protect people, save lives… and punch a few bad guys from time to time.”

Peter was feeling dizzy at this point. She’d basically spelled out how his life had played out: she knew about the spider, the tingle, he had seen her make a jump a non-enhanced human couldn’t have done… 

She wasn’t a copycat. She was the real deal.

“But… how? When? ” was all he could say in his bewildered state.

“How and when did I become Spider-Woman? Well, I don’t know if we have the time to…”

Spider-Woman . Maybe she fought Mr. Toomes, and he mistook me for her? But… he should’ve still recognised me… Her superhero name wasn’t exactly original, but appropriate. He could scarcely believe it: he’d found another spider-bitten person, just like him, on a completely random hunch from his Peter-tingle, during a completely ordinary night patrol. 

The worse, smaller half of him (that he was embarrassed by) felt jealous in a petty way, as if this Spider-Woman had just ‘stolen’ his… uniqueness. 

The better, greater part of him started feeling excited : he couldn’t wait to team up with her, fight some baddies together, see their faces when they’d see two Spider-People coming at them! And after that, they could trade strategies, secrets, stories, opinions, feelings and… well, become colleagues. Comrades in arms. Even friends.

If she wants to be friends with me, I hope.

“… it’s a long, crazy story, and if I told you about it now, you’d probably freak out and- Are you even listening to what I am saying?”

“Huh?” Peter blinked. “Oh, yes, yes, of course - listen, would you like to…”

He was stopped mid-sentence by a strong tug from his spider-sense: there was something brewing west from their location. Something bad . Maybe it was what his tingle was warning him about before this extraordinary meeting.

“Would I like to… what?” She was waiting for an answer - but then she felt it too, a few seconds later, and looked in the same direction Spider-Man was staring at. “I think it’s coming from that abandoned warehouse on the East River. I passed from there on my way here. Some… interesting characters were lurking nearby.”

Spider-Man nodded contemplatively, then blurted out the fateful question: “So… you coming with?”

“You kidding? ‘Course I am! I haven’t socked a vill in… almost six years, apparently!” 

Before he could ask her to explain what she meant, she ran towards the ledge of the roof, leapt down, disappearing momentarily under it, before re-emerging, swinging away with her webs as only Spider-Man ever could.

Peter chuckled and shook his head. “Vills?” 

Inwardly, he was buzzing in excitement. 

His webs rapidly jutted from his shooters with a familiar twhip , and he soon followed her, admiring her form as she skipped from building to building with ballerina-like grace.

Peter smiled behind his mask. “This is going to be a great night!”

Chapter Text

Gwen let out a sigh of relief as soon as she jumped from the roof and started webbing her way towards their destination.

She knew that she’d eventually meet this reality’s alter ego of herself, and yet it still felt bizarre - painful too, considering they literally crashed into each other mid-air.

Still, during their little heart-to-heart on the roof she managed to allay his fears. In fact, she could feel he was left dismayed by the fact he wasn’t the only spider-themed superhero in town anymore.

Yeah, well, imagine how I felt when I found out I fell into a freaking alternate dimension.

She feared he would keep her at a distance at first, but fortunately he didn’t: after the initial shock wore down, he started squirming and writhing as an over-excited puppy. Spider-Man so obviously wanted to team up with her that it made her chuckle under her breath. 

Which was a good thing too for her mental state, really: after more than a month of social isolation in this new dimension, she desperately needed someone to talk to, and Spider-Man was probably the best guy that could understand her.

Plus, she needed to blow off some steam with a proper, Spidey-themed battle.

Gwen didn’t tell him everything on their first meeting of course, but she hoped that, eventually, he would trust her enough that she could share details about her unique circumstances.

He had joined her side as they perched on a roof corner that had a clear line of sight to the shady warehouse their spider-senses told them to investigate. Only a few guards patrolled the perimeter, yet they appeared to be heavily armed, too well armed for common crooks. 

They're mercs, aren’t they? And when there’s mercs hanging around, failing to look inconspicuous, there’s always a vill that has something big to hide.

Gwen would’ve liked to get nearer, but Spider-Man held her shoulder with a “Wait a sec.”

He started muttering under his breath as if he was talking with someone, going ‘huh huh’ and ‘ah ah’ every few seconds. 

“I can’t believe this!” he finally exclaimed, surprise and frustration evident in his tone. “They’re still hanging around after their leader died?”

He sighed and looked in her direction: realizing Gwen had been waiting for an explanation for a few minutes at that point, he went apologetic. 

“O-oh, sorry, I forgot. Team up, right. Eh eh.” He cleared his voice. “I’ve been talking to my suit’s AI-”

“Your suit has an AI?!” Not as cool as wearing a symbiote, but still! 

“Oh, yeah! She - it’s a she, by the way, her name’s Karen - well, she analyzed the biometrics of those guards and found out they’re mercenaries-” Knew it. “-likely employed by the remaining followers of a guy named Mysterio - he was this dude that-”

“I know who he is, I’m familiar with the guy.” In my reality, that is.

“Right, right - he’s… dead now.” He admitted uneasily.

“Wow. Good job murdering a visual effects guy. Practical effects for the win.”

“Hey!” Spider-Man strongly protested, “I didn’t kill him - he killed himself with one of his stupid drones!”

“ Relax , I’m just playing ya. In our line of work sometimes people die, as sad as it is.” No matter how much you want to save them.

With that somber last sentence, Spider-Man nodded and they went back to talk about how’d they tackle the situation: his Karen AI had also apparently scanned the interior of the building ( Is there anything that fancy suit of his can’t do? ), finding a larger group of mercs inside, plus what appeared to be a secret hatch that needed to be examined on site.

“I doubt they’d be happy if we just waltzed in through the door.” Spider-Man commented.

“Right, which is why you should go web up the guys at the entrance, while I go find us a more… discreet one.” She added.

“Hey, who put you in charge?” He shot back.

“Well, I… nobody really, it was just a sugg-”

“Relax, I’m just playing ya.” He threw her words back at her. His hi-tech suit’s eye lenses actually winked at her , before he swung away to deal with the mercs outside.

Gwen chuckled with a quiet: “Little brat.”

A small, yet wide enough window panel could be seen on the side of the building: it was closed, but her symbiote could easily slip in through the cracks and open it quietly from the inside.

She hadn’t shared the symbiote’s existence with her colleague, and she wanted to keep it that way for at least the first few days before she’d eventually let it slip that ‘Yes, I have an alien on board, and it’s actually the suit itself. Y’know, just a casual shape-shifting symbiote living on my body, no biggie.’

While Spider-Man tended to the guards, she set to the task of opening the window away from his sight.

He came back - quicker than she’d expected, a few seconds faster and he would’ve caught her symbiote with its metaphorical pants down - and he thanked her for finding an entrance.

They crawled inside the warehouse with unnatural silence - the one that could only belong to Spider-People - and they strained their ears, trying to grasp some information out of what the mercs were saying: they couldn’t get much besides one of them having a key that opened an inconspicuous hatch where their activities likely took place.

Looking into each other’s eyes and with a simple nod, the spiders let the real show begin: the dozen or so mercs didn’t stand a chance for just one of them, let alone a spider-collaboration extraordinaire.

In the matter of a few minutes, they were all either knocked out, webbed to the walls, or cocooned in a web sack dropping from the ceiling.

“Whoo!” Spider-Man exhaled, pleased at their handiwork. “I really love your style!” He complimented her.

“Thanks. You’re not so bad yourself, Spidey.”

She’d discreetly examined his form during combat and, despite sharing basics, they definitely fought in different, yet complementary ways. 

Spider-Woman practically danced on the battleground, dazing her opponents with her moves before closing in and dealing precise, crippling physical blows; she obviously hid the more… brutish, Venom-enhanced combat style until after she’d revealed the symbiote’s existence to him.

Spider-Man generally kept at a safer distance from his foes, relying much more on his webs (he had several different ‘web modes’, she discovered) and his apparently more refined (to Gwen’s chagrin) spider-sense.

Gwen presented the hatch key she’d found on one of the guards to her companion.

“Thanks!” He went, “I would’ve probably made a lot of noise if I had to rely on the suit’s nanites to open the hatch.”

“... Nanites? As in nanotechnology ?” OK, now it’s sounding almost as cool as wearing a symbiote.

“Yep!” He popped the ‘p’ casually, as if his suit wasn’t the most technologically advanced thing Gwen had ever seen. “I didn’t make it of course. It was a gift from… Mr. Tony Stark.” His tone went melancholic at the name. 

Spider-Man obviously harbored some respect for the man and was saddened by Stark’s death.

Gwen knew by now that this dimension’s Tony Stark hadn’t been a complete prick (like hers was), but an actual superhero - hell, he’d sacrificed himself to save the world. 

Still, she still had some difficulties adjusting to this state of facts, so she simply answered: “Right.”

Fortunately, Spider-Man didn’t pick up on her disquiet, busy as he was talking with his AI after opening the hatch.

“Right. Spider-Woman, Karen tells me we should expect less guards down there, but we need to be careful of civilians… even though they’re the same Mysterio crew who tried to kill me when he was still alive.”

“OK, then. Let’s put ‘em to sleep. Gently , of course.”

Descending down the hatch ladder and sticking to the shadowed ceiling, they were left stunned: the room that stretched before them was certainly larger than they’d expected.

While the mercs flashed their rifles - As if a shootout wouldn’t endanger civvies and their equipment. Idiots. - the Mysterio loyalists (Spider-Man could even recognise some of them) were either frantically typing at their keyboards or moving quickly from workstation to workstation, bulky pieces of hardware haphazardly scattered around them.

‘Gotta time this right’, ‘Nail the bastard’, ‘He deserves it’ was all they could pick up from the loyalists' angry mutterings; whatever they were planning, it didn’t sound good anyway.

Spider-Woman heard her male alter ego exhale. “Argh, ‘kay… as much as I hate these guys, and they almost ruined my life, I can’t just let them die.”

“Right, and if we swoop in superhero-style those crap-for-brains mercs are going to shoot everything and everyone in sight.”

“Yep. Plus, we don’t know if they have a contingency plan in case of an attack. They could fry their hardware as soon as we show up, and I’d rather discover their plans.”

A minute of musing over how best to approach the situation passed, when Gwen started sensing her symbiote being restless.

Sorry, Nom-Nom, but I can’t let you out tonight. Not in front of Spidey here.

However, the symbiote kept getting more and more on edge; she could practically feel the hot tension coiling in her gut, as if Venom was trying to warn her something bad was about to happen, and she would need him to fight it.

“Uh?” She quietly voiced out, making Spider-Man turn his head at her. 

That didn’t make any sense: her spider-sense had always been quicker than whatever warning Venom gave her. 

And yet, she felt a unique sense of disjointedness as the symbiote was hyping itself up to fight a threat Gwen didn’t, couldn’t see anywhere.

“You said something, Spider-Woman?”

Gwen met his stare: she was starting to breathe hard, her heart pumping hot blood throughout her body quicker and quicker, she feared she would inadvertently unleash the symbiote out - and yet she couldn’t understand why .

“Hey, are you feeling alright?” His tone was now concerned - he could probably hear her rapid heartbeat, she figured.

“Do you feel it too?” She asked with labored breath. His spider-sense seems more developed than mine, maybe he knows what’s happening.

His lenses widened in confusion however. “I… do not feel anything. Do you?”

She was starting to freak out. “Something’s coming. Something bad, I can sense it.”

“Something b- you sense it? I can’t feel the tingle.” He paused, but his demeanor shifted an instant after. “Wait, now I do feel it.”

Another few seconds, and Gwen felt her own spider-sense tingle.

A ventilation shaft door on the other side of the room was yanked open.

A terrifying voice inside her head she’d never heard before made itself known, and she gasped. 

“IT IS HERE.”

A massive black humanoid shape - way too large for it to be just human - came out of the shaft, plopping on top of the merc underneath, smashing him on the ground, picking another one up and slamming him on the wall. The poor guy broke his neck on impact.

The guards started shooting, while Mysterio’s crew panicked, screamed, fell, ran or tried to cower under their desks.

“You make sure the civilians are safe! I'll deal with that thing!” Spider-Man shouted, then promptly jumped into action.

Gwen was panicking, but she only delayed for a few seconds before disarming, webbing and throwing Mysterio’s loyalists and guards away from the battleground.

“HE WON’T STOP IT. HE CAN’T.”

She tried, desperately tried to push that spine-chilling rumbling voice on the back of her mind as she saved more and more people, to ignore the whisper in her ears, the uncomfortable truth threatening to spill out. 

She rescued one of the civilians that had found refuge behind a large piece of hardware: the woman was in the middle of a panic attack. She couldn’t stop and assist her, so she simply brought her up near the hatch ladder, safely (she hoped) away from the pandemonium raging around them.

“HE NEEDS US.”

She evaded the fire spray of a merc frightened out of his mind, then quickly disarmed and webbed him up to the ceiling.

She couldn’t ignore the truth. Venom was talking to her. 

For the first time since they’d met, it was actually talking to her instead of simply passing its emotions and wants along her body.

But that wasn’t the most horrifying revelation of the night.

“WE CAN STOP IT.”

She finally chanced a look back at the fight she was purposefully ignoring before, but by now she’d saved almost everyone that wasn’t already dead.

While she was wasting time fighting a battle in her mind, Spider-Man was bravely holding his own, and she applauded his resourcefulness - but he was clearly on the defensive. Soon, he’d make a mistake, and he would start to feel real pain.

“WE CAN SAVE HIM.”

She knew it instinctively. Venom was basically sending signals confirming it. Her spider-sense hummed in dismal agreement. Only her rational mind was attempting to deny it.

Spider-Man needed her - them , the symbiote corrected her, and she cursed inwardly, because Venom was right.

Spider-Man needed them…  because Spider-Woman knew better than him, and anybody else, how to deal with a symbiote who had overtaken its host.

This had turned out to be not so much of a great night.

Peter wouldn’t openly admit it, but he was scared the hell out. 

A huge, black, gooey monster, with a menacing white spider (of all things!) on its chest, razor-sharp, long, bloodied teeth and a pointy, drippy, disgusting tongue had appeared out of nowhere and started punching, smashing, webbing (this part disturbed him more than anything else) people, roaring and smashing everything and everyone in its line of sight.

Of course he was terrified out of his mind!

The good news was that, as soon as he made his entrance with a: “Hey, why don’t you take on someone your own size?”, he immediately stopped throwing mercs and civvies around like ragdolls and focused entirely on him.

The bad news was: the monster had smiled a Cheshire-like grin, licked off his horrible teeth (he would probably have nightmares about this for a long time) and soon started throwing Spider-Man himself around like a ragdoll.

“WE KNEW YOU’D BE HERE! WE COULD JUST FEEL IT IN OUR BONES!” were the first words the monster spoke to him.

“Y-yeah? Well, then, you could’ve given me a warning! I almost had a heart attack!”

He swapped between web modes, trying to hit it with electrically-charged ones as well as a few prototype acid webs: the first were utterly useless, the second burned through its armor (skin?) before it managed to self-repair.

The beast laughed. “DON’T YOU WORRY, IT WASN’T OUR INTENTION TO LET YOU DIE SO QUICKLY AND PAINLESSLY, SPIDER-MAN !” It practically spat his name.

“Karen, what’s the reading on this guy? I don’t have nearly enough acid to burn through whatever that muck is!”

“I’m currently analyzing combat and biological data, Peter. I suggest you employ diversionary tactics until I can give a proper assessment.” The AI answered.

Great. Time to chit chat with the big, scary spider-monster. 

“That so? I’m curious to hear what my sleep paralysis demon has in store for me!” Spider-Man shot back. 

He was basically skipping from wall to wall, hopping here and there, mostly trying to evade the monster’s blows while Karen did her work in the background.

“WE HAVE COME HERE TO SEIZE CONTROL OF THE EVIDENCE , TAKE AWAY YOUR SECRECY, AND EXPOSE YOU TO THE WORLD!” 

“The… evidence? My secrecy? E-expose me?” Peter couldn’t understand much of what the monster was rambling about, but those three sentences alarmed him. 

“AH! YOU’VE GROWN STUPID SINCE THE LAST TIME WE FOUGHT!”

Ignoring the insult, Peter was sure he’d remember it if he fought this monstrosity.

“WE WERE TRANSPORTED HERE NOT OUT OF OUR WILL, BUT WE’VE EVOLVED TO MAKE THE MOST OUT OF WHATEVER SITUATION WE FIND OURSELVES IN.”

Peter was completely lost now. Why are supervillains so confusing all of a sudden? He pondered - but then made a mistake, took a second too long to start swinging away from its attack and was promptly caught by the beast’s foul, gooey tendril. 

“WE’VE KEPT OUR EAR CLOSE TO THE GROUND, WAITING, GATHERING INFORMATION, PLOTTING OUR REVENGE. AND NOW, WE’RE READY TO STRIKE.” It said, as it slowly retracted its tendril, Spider-Man squirming in its clutch.

Peter chanced a look behind the monster: Spider-Woman had still several people to tend to Mysterio’s crew before she could help him. 

He needed to keep stalling a bit longer.

“You’ve been c-calling yourself ‘we’ and ‘us’, and keep talking as if I k-know you! Why do you care about me?! What have I d-done to you?!” Spider-Man managed to blurt out as the monster was holding him by the neck.

“YOU KNOW WHO WE ARE. WHAT YOU’VE DONE TO US !”

Its savage voice took a strangely more human tinge at the last word, but then it continued in a chilling whisper, holding Spider-Man weirdly close to its nightmarish face. 

“THESE PATHETIC HUMANS HAVE FOUND PROOF OF WHO YOU ARE, SPIDER-MAN. THEY INTEND TO SHOW YOUR FACE TO THE WORLD, AS IF THEY ARE WORTHY OF THE HONOUR OF EXPOSING YOU! AH!”

“W-what?!” Mysterio’s crew has found proof of my secret identity?! “N-no.” He managed to shake his head firmly, despite being in the beast’s clutch. “I don’t believe you. You’re… you’re bluffing!”

The jagged, eerie, organic eyelenses of the monster narrowed, and its smile grew wide: it had likely sensed the fear in Spider-Man’s voice.

“NOW, WHY WOULD WE LIE?” He countered in a disturbingly intimate whisper. “WE COULD HAVE EXPOSED YOU ALREADY, IF WE WANTED TO. WE ALREADY KNOW WHO HIDES BEHIND THE MASK . ”

Peter’s brain exploded in shock and terror. 

This… this thing knew his secret identity, and Peter could feel it was not just bluffing. It could’ve revealed his secret to the world already - it hadn’t done so only because it wanted to do it in style.

Peter cried in pain as he was viciously hurled to the wall, leaving a small crater on it. Icky, dark tendrils erupted from the monster, leaving the superhero stuck there. 

So that’s how it feels to be webbed up. I could have done without knowing it.  

This was definitely not a great night. 

Spider-Woman, this is a good time to intervene…

“NOW, LET’S SEE WHAT THESE SAD EXCUSES OF HUMAN BEINGS HAVE FOUND OUT ABOUT YOU.”

Still dizzy from the revelations of the night (and the fact he’d just smashed against the wall), Spider-Man could make out Venom’s black goo tendrils shrink, showing human hands that quickly started tapping on a keyboard.

If that sludge covered human hands, it was a logical assumption to make that there was likely an entire human body connected to those hands. 

Hmm… black sludge… where have I heard this before…?

Soon after, the goo covered said hands back, leaving mighty, oozy, clawed hands in their stead. 

The main display in the room turned on: it was large enough to bathe them all in light, making the monster’s gelatinous skin ( goo, armour - seriously, what the hell is it? ) look even more disgusting.

After a few seconds of static, a familiar face appeared: a bloodied, panting Quentin Beck, alias Mysterio, talking to a camera on what appeared to be London Bridge. The day we fought… and he died. But what is this footage?…

“I managed to send the elementals back to their dimensions, but I-I don’t think I’m gonna make it out alive! Spider-Man attacked me for some reason - he has an army of weaponized drones, Stark technology !” 

What?!

“H-he says he’s the only one who’s gonna be the new Iron Man, no one else!” Mysterio appeared frightened in the video, but Peter didn’t know if he was faking it or he was actually scared of Spider-Man at that point. 

The feed cut to a panting Mysterio, supine on the ground, with Spider-Man apparently towering above him.

“Are you sure you want to commence the drone attack? There will be significant casualties.” A disembodied, synthesized voice asked - EDITH’s.

“Do it! Execute them all!” Spider-Man answered her query, the display going black.

This… this was straight up forgery!

The monster chuckled - but it came out more like a growl. “WELL, WHOEVER THIS GUY IS, HE’S SLIGHTLY LESS PATHETIC THAN I THOUGHT HE’D BE, IF HE MANAGED TO FRAME YOU.” He commented, looking back at Spider-Man. Where the hell is Spider-Woman?!

But that wasn’t the end of the video, of course - here came the grand, horrifying finale. 

Mysterio was very close to the camera now, panting and huffing, looking more worse for wear than ever. 

“Spider-Man’s real-” He stopped to look behind his back for a second, before resuming: “Spider-Man’s real name is-” 

The feed went black. Darkness and silence took over the room, and you could hear a pin drop.

The beast’s smile disappeared. The video had been… paused? But who-

The monstrous villain was suddenly thrown to the ground by a flying double foot kick, crashing onto a storage locker on the side of the room, warping and crumpling the metal object as if it was made of plastic instead. Then, it was entrapped by a quick series of web shots that stuck it into place.

“Sorry I’m late! Those Mysterio guys were trying to shoot at me while I was saving their sorry asses.”

“Spider-Woman!” Peter shouted in joy behind the tendrils he was trapped by. “Can you help me with these? That thing might get back on its feet soon!”

Finally, as soon as he was freed, they might have a chance of winning this battle together, as a team!

Chapter Text

“Spider-Woman!” He sounded so happy to see her come to his rescue. “Can you help me with these webs? That thing might get back on its feet soon!”

Gwen felt like absolute scum for what she was about to do. 

She just hoped he could understand the reason behind her decision, or at least give her a chance to explain once it was over - if she survived the battle, that is.

Because when two symbiotes have a conflict of interest, it’s a battle to the death. No holds barred. No regard for whoever or whatever is around. 

Only one would come out victorious, leaving ashes behind.

Therefore, Gwen couldn’t hide her secret passenger from her new red-and-blue spider-colleague anymore. She needed to protect him from the chaos that would inevitably unfold.

Spider-Man thanked her and was ready to get back into action when she released him from the evil symbiote’s tendrils.

His determination was soon replaced by dismay and confusion when she’d let her own symbiote gently, safely cocoon him onto the farthest corner of the room. 

“Wait, wh-what?! What is…?! Spider-Woman! What are you doing?!”

She made sure to reinforce the tendrils, so that he wouldn’t be harmed by stray hits… and would have a very difficult time trying to free himself; she also made sure to leave a small slit, so that air would pass… and he could see for himself how destructive a symbiote duel would be.

“I’m s-sorry, Spider-Man.” She tried to sound steadfast, but her attempt miserably failed at her stutter. “I… can’t allow you to get hurt.”

“ What?! ” He was understandably pissed off. She would let him scold her afterwards, when they’d be safe; she thought she deserved to be yelled at for this ‘little’ move she’d pulled. “Are you insane ?! We can beat it together! We should beat it together!”

God, I'm the worst. She was suddenly reminded of why she’d never been a team player as a superhero, even before Venom came into play. 

Her sense of self-sacrifice was so strong, and she was so stubborn that she couldn’t, wouldn’t allow other people to die in her stead.

Well, not anymore, that is, she bitterly corrected herself.

“Spider-Woman…?”

She couldn’t even muster the strength to look into his eyes. “I’m sorry. It’s for your own safety. You will see.” was all she said, as she marched towards the evil symbiote, trying to shift her focus away from Spider-Man’s desperate calls to let him help her. 

She had a job to do, and Venom was looking forward to it.

The evil symbiote was back on his feet, and it seemed both perplexed by what had just happened and amused at what it thought was only foolish bravado on Gwen’s part.

“INTERESTING…” it finally said. “ANOTHER SPIDER…? NOW THIS IS AN UNEXPECTED SURPRISE. BUT DO YOU REALLY THINK YOURSELF STRONG ENOUGH TO TAKE US ALONE?”

“I’m not alone.”

Confusion spread on the evil symbiote’s features - only for a second, though: Gwen let Venom’s tendrils spring out of her body, grappling the much larger foe and slamming it onto the ceiling, then back on the floor, before finally hurling it across the room.

Gwen could feel Venom’s desire to simply end the other symbiote, leaving no chance at an eventual surrender. It was an unfamiliar sensation that could only be explained by its alien biology. Yet she still tried to keep her passenger in check.

“GGRAAAH!” An earsplitting roar came out of their foe. Its face was contorted in animalistic fury, jaw tightened and breathing rapidly out of sheer wrath. 

Well, he’s figured it out. I’m in the shit, now.

“YOU…!” It bellowed. It sprinted towards her and jumped - but Spider-Woman met it with a powerful jump of her own.

They grappled each other for a second mid-air before bouncing off one another - though this time the evil symbiote quickly picked a large desk with his bare hands and tossed it at her. 

Gwen had nary a second to evade the flying piece of furniture, but in doing so she was caught in a set of its protruded tendrils. 

The evil symbiote brought her level with its repugnant face, up close enough she could smell its fetid breath.

“ I WON’T ALLOW A RIVAL TO EXIST.” It simply said, before opening its jaw wide and attempting to outright bite Gwen’s head off.

Venom hastily intervened, shooting its own tendrils to keep the monster’s mandibles open - but the situation appeared increasingly desperate.

Gwen had no other recourse but to accede to her symbiote’s request to loosen her hold onto it, allowing it to help her better.

“ WE … won’t allow… you … to survive!” She found herself saying, her voice sounding ominous and alien to her own ears.

She let Venom loose, and the effects were immediate: the other symbiote’s jaws opened wider, cracking with a sickening crunch; it cried in pain and rage, and it was forced to abandon its hold onto Spider-Woman.

Now that she’d let Venom out a bit more, Gwen couldn’t help but feel part of its animosity towards their rival. Breaking its mandibles felt good .

The evil symbiote was still reeling in pain, backing away when it felt Spider-Woman’s web connect to its shoulders, stopping it in its tracks.

“Where do you think you’re going?” She said, before she pulled hard and threw a savage punch right at its already damaged mouth. 

Inert symbiote goo stained the ground, and she sensed Venom rejoice at that.

Most perturbingly, she felt the same sensation too.

Spider-Woman hadn’t much time to contemplate on that, though, because the evil symbiote was now running on pure adrenaline (or whichever alien equivalent), and it seemed to stop feeling pain whenever she’d land a blow on him.

In fact, it was Spider-Woman who started experiencing a lot of hurt, as she was both trying to fight the symbiote outside while simultaneously trying to reach a balance with the symbiote inside her: Venom wanted more leeway - it had freed them from the rival’s grasp a minute ago and inflicted it a crippling blow, didn’t it?

They traded punch with punch, kick with kick, web with tendril, but the evil symbiote was deliberately trying to hurt her, make her feel pain just for being the host of another, rivalling symbiote. She was punched, kicked, thrown around, yanked back, and she could barely have time to register it. 

Eventually, she was grabbed mid air by the leg as she tried (and failed) to land a kick on it. 

Spider-Woman was smashed to the ground savagely, left and right, multiple times, her sides exploding with agony as they were taking the brunt of the blows.

She growled through the pain, and at some point she found the wherewithal to shoot tendrils of her own: those connected to the other symbiote's legs, and with a strong yank it fell on the ground, Gwen ending up on top of it, punching him repeatedly in the broken mandible.

Gwen felt mad beyond belief at this point - no doubt also because Venom was internally chiding her: it was frustrated she wasn’t letting it properly respond to the rival symbiote, and her body had just paid the consequences for it.

The other symbiote found the strength to block another incoming punch and started crushing her smaller hands within his much larger ones.

His jagged eye lenses looked right into her, as if he was staring directly at her symbiote. Venom perked up at the implicit challenge.

Their foe finally pronounced the fatidic words, and the world came crashing down around both Gwen and her symbiote: “YOUR HOST WILL BE BEATEN, BROKEN, RENT APART! AND I WILL MAKE SURE YOU FEEL EVERY OUNCE OF PAIN SHE FEELS. VENOM WILL END YOU BOTH!”

“YOU DARE STEAL OUR NAME?! YOU’RE NOTHING BUT A PRETENDER!” Gwen’s Venom bellowed with fury, morphing her voice into something monstrous. She had never felt such hatred, such resentment coming from it.

Her Venom wanted the other symbiote to writhe in pain, right under them, for insulting them by taking its own name. It was a pretender, Venom told Gwen, and it needed to be made an example of.

Gwen was tired, hurt, bruised, and regretful of her earlier handling of Spider-Man.

She finally relented to the symbiote, and embraced its rage.

Gwen let that rage fester and mix with her pain and Venom’s hatred… and then viciously let it all out in a single, frightening surge of power.

Black tendrils erupted from all around her body, freeing Gwen from her foe’s grasp, destroying the hardware nearby, creating small depressions where they smashed against the walls and ceiling; Pretender-Venom - as her own symbiote had appointed him - got crushed under several of them, and it howled in pain.

Gwen grabbed it by the neck with a clawed hand, and for once she was the one intimidating it . “YOU WILL BEG US TO LET YOU GO.” She stated, her voice already distorted by the symbiote power rushing through her. 

“BUT WE WON’T.”

Gelatinous, black ooze pooled at her feet, rapidly swallowing her dainty blue feet, crawling through legs, abdomen, chest, arms… before engulfing her head entirely. 

Sleek, elegantly curved eyelenses met jagged, uneven ones. The deathly symbiotic duel was on.

When Spider-Woman shot suspicious black tendrils from her suit, Peter raised an eyebrow.

When she cocooned him in the corner with said tendrils, the sense of betrayal left his eyes stinging.

Most of all, he was puzzled by her words: she couldn’t allow him to get hurt, she’d said.

Peter was baffled by the reasoning: that hulking beast would make mincemeat of Spider-Woman and take care of Spider-Man right after. It didn’t make any sense! Hell, she seemed to feel bad about what she’d done too!

He’d called after her, but she was ignoring him: Peter was left on his own.

“I have completed my analysis, Peter.” Karen abruptly stated. “The results are quite interesting.”

“Yeah, a bit late for that, Karen. I need to find a way to free myself - now!” 

The fight’s already started! God I hope you don’t do something stupid, Spider-Woman… again.

“The results could actually help in your predicament, Peter.”

“Alright.” He sighed, stopping his squirming and wriggling for the moment. “Update me.”

“Judging from what I’ve compiled, it seems that you’re dealing with a symbiotic life form which has taken over its human host - effectively turning into a parasite.” 

“I knew there was a human under that goo!”

“However, there are no known current species on Earth matching the specific characteristics of the opponent you’ve just fought. Peter, I believe you might be dealing either with an as-of-yet undiscovered species… or an alien one.”

Peter exhaled, eyes closing in frustration. 

“Because of course it is. Why can’t we get a nice, friendly, fluffy alien once in a while?!”

He peeped from the small aperture Spider-Woman had curiously left open, and could see her swinging around, holding her own for the moment.

“There’s another key piece of information: there is virtually no difference in the biochemical composition between the alien hostile species… and the tendrils employed by Spider-Woman to shield you from the fight.”

Peter was left stumped by that bit of news. “W-wait, what are you implying, Karen?” He feared the AI would agree with the deduction taking shape in his head.

“My speculation is that Spider-Woman hosts the same alien species on her body as well - only, she has a better degree of control over it and keeps a symbiotic bond with it, rather than falling to a parasitic one.”

Right. Spider-Woman had alien black goo on her body. 

He was currently surrounded and kept at bay by said goo that had come out of her arms.

He needed to get out of the cocoon before he started feeling sick.

“Your heart rate spiked, Peter. Are you OK?”

“Am I…?!” He rolled his eyes at the AI’s attempt at humour - courtesy of Mr. Stark’s programming. “Karen, I need to go help her! Can I activate the Iron Spider limbs?”

“The tendrils employed by Spider-Woman have been heavily reinforced: prying them open or trying to cut your way out of it would require too much time - even with the aid of Iron Spider limbs.”

“So, we need a different solution.” Spider-Man racked his brains, trying to devise a counter. He winced when he saw Spider-Woman getting thrown to the other end of the room like a rag doll. 

“The alien goo burned away when I used the acid webs.”

“The suit doesn’t have the necessary amount of acid to burn through the tendrils.” Karen promptly answered. “Sorry, Peter.”

“Understandable… They are prototypes after all. What about fire? The explosive webs can- ah, no, wait: I’d probably get burned and wounded by shrapnel too. Stupid plan, forget it . ”

“Peter, I’m getting telemetry from Spider-Woman’s battle against the alien symbiote right now. We might learn how to help you escape from their fight.”

“So… what? You’re telling me to just sit and wait?”

“That appears to be the safest option at the moment, Peter.”

“ Just great. ”

He started instinctively squirming again - not that it helped, really. But he was getting anxious: Spider-Woman was clearly wounded and was getting more sluggish in her movements; yet she showed astounding resilience as she kept fighting, ignoring the pain. 

Her voice had gone weirdly deep and growly as time passed, and he was worried her throat or vocal chords had been damaged. 

She’d just managed to trip the alien up, and was currently pummeling it.

He strained his ear to hear what they were saying to each other, then a loud, otherworldly “PRETENDER!” shook the room. 

Spider-Woman exploded with a guttural cry, and black tendrils shot up all around her, destroying everything in her path.

She was mad, he figured - and Peter was also mad at her (and kinda scared too right now, if he was honest to himself): he could have helped her, and she wouldn’t be that badly hurt now!

His righteous anger fizzled out soon after however, because something even scarier happened.

Spider-Woman’s entire body was swallowed up by the alien ooze, her suit turning that sickly, gelatinous black identical to the one that covered the supervillain she was fighting against.

She emerged as a slimmer, leaner, yet just as terrifying version of the alien symbiote.

Alien species weren’t exactly his specialty, but Peter instinctively knew what had happened: Spider-Woman had let her own symbiote loose… to fight the other loose symbiote in the room.

This isn’t going to end well.

“K-Karen? How’s that telemetry analysis going?”

“We might be getting the most significant data soon, Peter.”

Both Karen and him weren’t wrong: if the previous phase of the fight had been brutal, this one was vicious beyond belief.

He’d cried out Spider-Woman’s name in shock when he saw the evil symbiote outright impale her leg with a metal bar, but she - her symbiote? Both? It was confusing - simply hissed in irritation and bit off the evil symbiote’s hand and - Oh my god, she has those same horrible teeth and that same disgusting tongue too, I’m going to pass out.

But he didn’t pass out, because the duel unfolding before him was like a horror spectacle you couldn’t keep your eyes away from, no matter how terrified you were.

Spider-Woman ( Symbiote-Woman? ), simply extracted the metal bar, only a small amount of goo pooling at her feet, while the evil symbiote regenerated its hand in a matter of seconds. Then they resumed their fight as if nothing had ever happened.

Spider-Man could see oozy tendrils flying everywhere, dark, slimy bodies battered, beaten, pierced and broken, razor-sharp teeth cutting and munching through gelatinous flesh, nightmarish tongues dripping with saliva, bloodcurdling roars and savage growls, clawed hands scratching, slashing, punching and crushing.

The hardware room soon started to feel the brunt of it all, as both symbiotes used anything and everything in sight to hurt their opponent, from bulky pieces of storage units, to displays and monitors; from metal cables and bars to the leftover weapons of the mercenary group hired by Mysterio’s crew - though bullets didn’t really seem to seriously harm the symbiotes, mostly just annoy them.

Peter was still peeved at Spider-Woman for webbing him up away from the battle… but now he could somewhat understand what her thought process was, considering the mess they were making of the place and themselves.

Then, Peter’s long awaited breakthrough finally presented itself.

Symbiote-Woman was towering over her enemy, and this time she was the one attempting to do the impaling with a metal bar - through the ground, too, so that the evil symbiote wouldn’t be able to escape. 

Whatever she - or her symbiote, or both - were thinking, it didn’t seem to contemplate the supervillain’s survival.

But then the evil symbiote managed to yank the metal bar away from her hands and threw it away: it accidentally impacted an empty metal locker at such an angle it produced a loud sound.

When the reverb reached them, both symbiotes started reeling and howling in pain, their viscous skin quivering and vibrating wildly. Peter could even feel the tendrils holding him loosen.

“Sonic vibrations!” Spider-Man exclaimed gleefully. “This is their weakness!”

“Telemetry data I’ve gathered since the start of the battle seems to confirm so, Peter.”

Then, maybe…

“Karen, activate the Enhanced Interrogation Mode, baritone mode, max out volume and reverb! It may just be enough to loosen these tendrils - just enough to let me force my way out of them!”

It sounded like an idiotic plan to Peter himself at first, but he was desperate at this point. 

He was exhilarated, however, when he started screaming his lungs out, the sound greatly enhanced and amplified by the suit, and the tendrils around him shuddered as if they were alive. 

After a full minute of it, his throat coarse and burning, he tested the tendrils’ elasticity… they were definitely less tight than before!

He finally pushed and pushed with all his strength and… he managed to pop out of the cocoon!

“YES! I did it!” He was riding the high of his success, but he was brusquely brought back down to reality when the symbiotes took notice of him.

“SPIDER-MAN!” cried Spider-Woman in alarm - and her opponent took advantage of that moment of distraction to punch her into the ground. 

“SPIDER-MAN.” shrieked the evil symbiote, “DON’T THINK WE’VE FORGOTTEN ABOUT YOU. ONCE I’M THROUGH WITH THEM , WE’LL GET EVEN BETTER ACQUAINTED SOON AFTER!”

But Peter was prepared this time, and he wasn’t scared anymore.

“You’re really obsessed with me, aren’t you?”

He webbed and grabbed two metal bars, “If it’s true you know me so well…”, he somersaulted next to a bulky, undamaged metal container, “… well, then you must know what I’m just about to do with those things!” He banged against the container with the bars, following a rhythm just to piss the symbiote off. 

Both symbiotes shrieked in pain, clutching at the spot their ears should’ve been.

Peter felt guilty for Spider-Woman, but he had no other recourse at this point.

The evil symbiote lashed out and shot a tendril at Spider-Man to make him stop, but his spider-sense warned him with plenty of time: he simply vaulted out of the way onto the other side of the container and banged it again, vibrations echoing in the ruined room.

Once more, the symbiotes writhed and wriggled on the ground.

“Y-yes…” He could hear Spider-Woman breathe out with difficulty, “K-keep going…! D-don’t worry… about…” 

Spider-Man beat the bars against hard, cold metal again and again. 

The symbiotes were a sorry sight at this stage: both on their knees, smashing pitiful punches on the ground, their ferocious roars turned into anguished whines.

Peter felt slightly uneasy as he realized he was basically torturing them, and he was hoping the evil symbiote would be the one to break first.

His confidence in Spider-Woman’s resilience was well-placed. 

It was the evil symbiote that surrendered first, yelling: “ENOUGH! THIS WON’T BE THE END OF IT, WE SWEAR! ”, before escaping through the ventilation shaft from which he’d come out of.

Peter considered chasing after it, but a distressed sound from Spider-Woman made him turn his head toward her: her symbiote was slowly receding from her body in a subdued, sluggish fashion - it was obviously in pain, too - morphing back into the black and white, pink and blue suit that Spider-Man knew.

Spider-Woman was breathing with some difficulty and seemed to barely cling to consciousness.

He thought about following the escaping evil symbiote for only a split second, before rushing to take care of her. 

Chapter Text

She didn’t deserve it, she didn’t deserve it at all , and yet she was stuck here too, in this world like and yet unlike their own. 

Peter was pretty confident he too hadn't done anything bad to deserve it, but at least he was Spider-Man. He could survive here, dive completely into his alter ego to take his mind off of Peter Parker - no matter how it’d hurt to miss his family. At least, little Mayday would have her mother, her auntie Liz… and maybe daddy would find a way to come back, one day.

But Mary Jane being trapped here too? Mayday losing both her parents out of the blue?!

That was unacceptable, and that was why he felt desperate at that moment.

For the first time in a long time, Peter felt out of his depth, unable to do anything but uselessly clench his fists. Spider-Man couldn't swing with his webs out of a reality and into another one, after all.

They’d understood they were in a bad (to say the least) situation pretty quick - in fact, right on their way to their supposed address home, the very first night: New York looked, smelled and sounded half -wrong, as if it had turned into an uncanny copy of itself. Peter’s fine-tuned spider-sense hummed in agreement.

When they started noticing things that simply shouldn’t exist - like a huge Manhattan skyscraper that shouldn’t exist , previously belonging to a superhero group that shouldn’t exist , sold to some unknown buyer almost three years into their future - Peter was left in a daze, while Mary Jane was starting to panic a bit. 

The sight of Mary Jane in distress had fortunately always been enough for Peter to stop anything and immediately rush over to her.

Because of that innate MJ-sense, he was there to hold her close while she calmed down, kiss her frazzled (yet still gorgeous) hair and whisper to her, softly, telling her to hang on, just until they reached home.

The situation lapsed into total, unimaginable disaster when they couldn’t find home - or rather, it was inhabited by strangers.

MJ demanded to enter, and somehow she managed to cajole and threaten her way into the house.

She wanted to hold her baby close, right now, apologize to Liz for freaking her out, and go to sleep with Mayday sandwiched between them on the bed.

Peter would’ve absolutely loved that… except the homeowner told them the Parkers had moved out almost six years ago (he kept complaining about another stranger trying to barge into their home too a few months ago, weirdly enough).

Now MJ was definitely having a panic attack, and to be honest, Peter was starting to feel sick too.

He had to repeat to himself the same words he’d told MJ before: just hang on, a little bit more, just until we swing somewhere safe, rent a room for a night, and then we can start screaming and crying afterwards.

And that’s exactly what they did in the quiet, solitary safety of the hotel room that night, while trying to cling to each other desperately, taking turns in comforting each other.

They’d been violently separated from their daughter, their friends, their life , as if they’d never existed at all. It should’ve been a night of celebration, a commemoration of their bond of love… and it had turned into a waking nightmare.

They barely managed to get an hour or two of sleep that night, and only out of sheer exhaustion. Mayday has just lost their parents, who have been whisked away to bizarro-New York, who cares about sleep?

They dragged themselves throughout the next day, and the next one after that, surviving on the foolish hope that things would magically fix themselves.

They didn’t, of course.

The couple’s desperation morphed throughout those incredibly hard first days into frustration, anger and finally stubborn resolve. 

They needed to figure it out. 

They’d always figured it out, from the day he got bit when they were still in high school and Mary Jane was still the girl next door, so close and yet so far, and not yet the passionate woman he’d made his wife and the doting, loving mother of his child.

Even when it was painful, when it required sacrifices of them, they’d figured it out.

They would figure it out now, for Mayday, for their friends, for their life they’d built back home.

They finally had their long-needed talk.

They both agreed this was not their New York, their world. 

Physics wasn’t Peter’s field, but he still loved and studied it, and his spider-sense understood the ‘signs’, so to speak, by now: this was an alternate reality. 

Mary Jane nodded at that: she’d already spent days crying in hopelessness, she didn’t have more tears to shed at this; now, it was simply time to fight back. 

On top of that, she’d long been used to Peter’s life - therefore, her life as well - being full of unusual accidents. This was certainly the most unusual, most emotionally-taxing accident of them all, but she would adapt to it and help her husband during the process, too. 

He could see the willpower blazing behind her captivating emerald pools, and he was heartened and strengthened by it. 

They went on to plan their next move: while the Parkers had moved out from Aunt May’s old home in this reality, they were still in New York, they’d gathered.

Peter’s rational mind harshly contested the choice of meeting his alter ego in this place: too many unknowns, too many dangers, for him and especially Mary Jane.

His spider-instinct, however, told him otherwise: after all, there was a Spider-Man in this dimension, they’d discovered, and if they could trust a person, it would be Spider-Man. 

Plus, if Peter Parker knew himself - and now that he was almost in his late thirties, he believed he was entitled to think so - he would help another person in need.

And Peter definitely needed help now, more than ever in his life.

“Peter… how do we know the… ‘you’ in this reality is also Spider-Man?” MJ voiced the uncomfortable question.

He couldn’t help but sigh. “That is a bet we’re forced to take, MJ…”,  he answered despondently. 

He tried to comfort her with a bit of humour: “Don’t worry, my instincts will guide me: if they smell anything funny, we’ll get as far away from… myself , Miss Watson.”

She smiled crookedly at that, glancing at him with teasing eyes. Peter’s mind went into inappropriately-timed places as she sultrily answered: “I don’t know if I’ll be able to take my eyes, or my hands, off of you, Dr. Parker… even an alternate version of you.”

“Hmm, maybe I made a mistake sharing my plans with you…”

“As if you could manage to keep them from me. Nothing ever gets by me, love. You should know that by now.”

“Fair point.” He had to concede, and they both met in a rejuvenating kiss. 

Even if just for a single, indescribably good moment, their tension left their muscles, their anxiousness washed away. After they’d separated (MJ was still smirking; he was still thinking inappropriately-timed thoughts), they immediately set to work. 

I’ll follow up on these inappropriately-timed thoughts once we get home. And we will.

But the surprises didn’t end: they were in for a ride, in fact.

Indeed, they’d discovered that this reality’s Peter Parker was still a kid, a senior at Midtown School of Science & Technology.

MJ’s previous teasing comments about his alternate self made her feel a bit queasy about herself, but it was not as if they’d known this ‘little’ dimensional divergence before.

Peter spent a few minutes pondering what advice he could give to his younger self (and God, he’d have needed so much of it), when something hit him.

Wait. If this world’s Peter Parker is still a teen, then…

“Aunt May and Uncle Ben might still be alive.” 

The realization set in slowly. 

MJ looked at him wide eyed at first, but then her gaze softened, and she took his hands into one of hers, the other cupping his cheek.

“Peter…” She merely said in a whisper. She didn’t need any other words: her tender eyes radiated all the warmth, fondness and devotion he’d ever need.

“I’ll be there with you… alright? You’ll always have me by your side, promise.”

He leaned into her touch for a few seconds, closing his eyes and smiling a melancholic smile.

“Thank you, MJ.”

“Anytime, Tiger…”

He shook himself off, and then they resumed devising their strategy.

They soon discovered Aunt May worked at a non-profit, Queens-based charitable organization, F.E.A.S.T. Peter reflexively grinned at that.

Because of course she would. No matter what universe, Aunt May is a beacon of goodness and kindheartedness.

She was their ticket in: if they made contact, no matter how difficult it would be to talk to her, years after her passing, they’d find a way to meet teenager Peter Parker - and therefore, enlist Spider-Man’s help.

Peter was anxious beyond belief as they were right at F.E.A.S.T.'s simple, worn wooden gates.

“Peter, squeeze my hand any tighter and you’ll crush it. We’ll be fine, don’t worry.”

He cackled at the sudden role-reversal. He’d been the one who took care of her at first, when they were transported to another dimension; now, she was the one who had to deal with his trepidation, his infamous mood swings.

“Right… we only need to talk to Aunt May… tell her of our difficult situation, hoping to find shelter and provide help in the meantime… and just wait for Peter Parker to show up at her Aunt’s workplace eventually.”

“Tiger, I’m a stage actress, remember? I’ll cover for you, don’t worry.”

“I’m finding myself really wishing I’d picked up drama class in high school now.”

“Just to prepare for this occasion?”

“Nope. Just to be there with you.”

As far as his plans went, this one was not as half-baked as others had been. Hell, they didn’t even need to fake their desperation - they needed help, and F.E.A.S.T. could actually provide some of it.

Thinking about little Mayday, waiting for her parents to come back home, instantly eliminated all traces of anxiousness from his face. He determinedly walked in, even taking MJ by surprise with his resoluteness.

The building was not as filled as Peter thought it would be ( Maybe this universe's NYC administration is taking care of the homelessness problem better than mine , he mused) but there were enough people that they didn’t attract too much attention as they ventured inside.

Or so they thought at first.

“Can I help you?”

A woman - likely a worker there, judging by her uniform - with long, flowing auburn hair, maybe a decade older than them, asked the couple; her smile was genuine and welcoming, but a certain sparkle popped up in her eyes when she took notice of their conjoined hands.

Peter cleared his throat. Tally Ho… “Oh! Yes, thank you - good morning. We were hoping to talk with the shelter administrator? I think her name was… May Parker?” He tried his hardest, pretending not to know his own aunt’s name.

The woman’s smile widened. “You’re looking at her. How may I assist you?”

… 

…

What?

“Is there a…?” 

Mary Jane kicked in: “Oh! Oh, I’m sorry for Peter, he’s just - we were told May Parker would be a lovely elderly woman, we didn’t expect someone so young!”

Thank the heavens for Mary Jane: her fake laugh sounded so genuine that it quickly drained the awkwardness out of the air.

This is my… no. She doesn’t even look like her…! Should she, though…? It’s a different universe, New York looks different, why shouldn’t its people look different, too?

May Parker let out a giggle at whatever Mary Jane was still talking about, having completely captured the attention of the other woman - my aunt - while Peter slowly rebooted his basic thought processes.

He wanted to kiss her for saving his goofy self right now: his au- May Parker seemed to have forgotten the little incident already, engrossed as she was by whatever story MJ had made up for the occasion.

“Well, you’ll have to present this ‘Miss Allen’ to me, if she told you I’m an elderly woman!” May Parker laughed. “I mean, I know I’m 60, but my nephew tells me people still find me good-looking for my age.”

Mary Jane looked shocked at that - and genuinely, this time: “You’re… sixty years old?! My god, Miss Parker! You look 10 years younger at the very least !”

“Oh, stop with the flattery, Miss Thompson…” 

Miss Thompson? When did she come up with a cover identity? Peter made the wise choice to simply let his wife do the talking, nodding and laughing along to the side. 

Who better than her? She did this for a living, after all - and better than anyone else, in Peter’s opinion.  

“I’m serious. You’ll have to tell me all of your secrets, May. I need to know how you look so good.” She said with a straight face. 

Mary Jane didn’t seem bothered at all by the fact that they were currently talking to Aunt May .

Though, the fact that she was from an alternate dimension and looked wildly different from their dear Aunt May probably helped, Peter was willing to bet.

“Alright, alright, Mary Jane… I promise.” May Parker eventually relented between bouts of laughs. When the hell have they switched to their first names?!

“Now, follow me into the office, I’m sure I’ll be able to help you.”

May Parker beckoned them to follow.

Peter stared at his wife, admiration clearly written on his features.

Mary Jane merely winked at him. 

He could not resist anymore: he sneaked in a quick kiss (she rolled her eyes at that, but also wore a pleased grin) before they entered May Parker’s office.

“Why is nothing ever simple?” Peter voiced to the heavens, not expecting an answer. He got none. Well, excluding a sparrow’s chirrup.

“Why is it that when I think I’ve figured it out, everything just falls apart?” He jumped from the top of the Empire State Building - the only element of the New York skyline still familiar to his eyes. He comfortably swung around a Manhattan he certainly didn’t recognize in its entirety.

“Supervillains are not enough, apparently. I’m supposed to work out how to get out of an alternate dimension and back into mine! Child’s play!” 

His right brow involuntarily twitched at the sight of the imposing skyscraper with a stylized ‘A’ on its side - as if the building was mocking him, making fun of him just by its sheer existence. It shouldn’t have existed at all.

“Having to deal with Spider-Man-level threats wasn’t good enough, now my Physics degree is put to test, too?” He felt himself as the unwitting punchline to some multiversal joke.

Peter, who had initially freaked out after waking up on the coast of an unblemished Rikers Island, had identified the problem in a matter of hours.

The geeky, day-dreaming, science-loving, goofy-smiling, Gwen-loving part of his mind, called ‘Peter Parker’, was absolutely amazed at the event: to his notion, he was the first human being who ever went into an alternate reality!

It proves the multiverse theory correct, likely string theory too! But what's the science behind matter displacement though? And how can I replicate the results to go back to my own dimension? Could I even build a dimensional portal if I figure it out?!

The pragmatic, practical, colder, calculating, Gwen-mourning part of him, called ‘Spider-Man’, was more concerned with the downsides of the situation: he was utterly alone, in a completely different New York, while in his city the Sinister Six had broken out and were probably terrorizing the population after the news spread out of Spider-Man never making it outside the collapsing, burning Raft.

Spider-Man hoped, with all his heart, that Harry Osborn had been transported in here too: the Green Goblin knew his identity, and would undoubtedly hunt the (admittedly few) people nearest and dearest to him back home, starting with Aunt May. 

Peter would actually kill him with not a single regret at that point.

Spider-Man shook his head and tried to clear his head of these dark, worrying hypotheses: they were still just that, hypotheses; fretting over them now would do no one any good: he needed to concentrate on getting out of this dimension, no matter how much ‘Peter Parker’ would’ve liked to stay here and start gathering knowledge, people and material for a dimensional portal.

He decided he had grumbled long enough while swinging aimlessly around the city, so he set to work right away, meticulously cataloguing his discoveries into a mental index of sorts. 

Gwen would’ve been proud of him for his newfound organizational skills, he hoped.

One: he’d been catapulted into October 1st, 2024 - more than 5 years into the future. Neat. This New York does seem slightly more technologically advanced too. Wonder if it’s been like that for a long while already or if I should expect a lot of changes in five years when I get back to my reality.  

Two: Spider-Man existed in this reality, too. But there’s no guarantee it’s gonna be an alternate-me behind the mask. It could be anyone… and he could react badly to another Spider-Man popping out of nowhere. I’ll need to limit my Spidey-activities to a minimum. 

Three: Spider-Man wasn’t alone. There were a ton of ‘enhanced’ people, both of the superhero and the supervillain kinds. Now I feel jealous. I might’ve used a hand in this Spider-Man business; New York City is big enough we might’ve split boroughs up between us. Eugh, now I sound like a crime boss.

Maybe I can convince some of them to come over to my reality… I could use the company, too. Gets lonely, being the only superhero in town.

Four: the clocktower didn’t exist in this reality. Or maybe it was torn down. Either way, he wanted to jump in joy at the realization. Maybe, once I come back, I can convince the administration to destroy that clocktower too, build something nicer in its stead. 

Something she’d have liked… a full-scale chocolate house may be unfeasible, but a sweetshop? Yeah… she’d have been happy with a sweetshop. Nice and simple, not too attention-grabbing, but flashy just enough to make children point and smile at it…

“Help!” The simple word tore his mind away from his reveries.

“You better shut it, unless you want us to light those liquor cabinets on fire!” Four o’ clock. He swung in the direction of the crime in progress.

“Robbery! Please, someone-”

“I said SHUT IT! If you gave us our money back, nothing would’ve happened, and you know it. But if you can’t pay us with cash, well then… we’ll accept goods.”

Six mobsters, circle formation. Three others inside. Submachine guns and handguns. No armour underneath. Civilian in the front, three targets staring away from my position, two eyeing the sides, only one checking in my direction. Piece of cake.

Spider-Man swung from his vantage point, shooting his webs toward the mobsters on the sides, yanking them from the ground and webbing them up on a nearby high-rise wall. 

“Spider-Man!”

“Oh for Christ’s sake!”

The criminals clumsily pulled their guns out and started shooting wildly at the flying red-and-blue shape swinging around too fast and too unpredictably for their aim to be precise.

Peter always kept the high ground: he didn’t want to risk bullets flying at civilians at street level. He did his Spidey-job cleanly and efficiently: one of the mobsters would spray bullets vaguely in his direction, inevitably have to reload, hands clammy and shaky, and he’d find himself suddenly webbed up, gift-wrapped for jail.

The last three criminals developed the semblance of a brain, and decided to take cover in the liquor store while they shot at him from the door. 

Unfortunately for them, though, they didn’t plan on Spider-Man swinging directly into the building, twhipping their Berettas away from their twitchy hands mid-swing and K.O.ing them afterwards in three moves.

He swept invisible dust off his shoulders and went to assist the shop-owner. No matter which dimension, New York always needs a Spider-Man, it seems.

The rotund, balding, 50-something, mustachioed guy was crying tears of joy when he went to hug the superhero who had saved his life. 

Spider-Man rolled his eyes and scrunched his nose at the smell of fear-induced sweat assaulting his nose, but patted the man’s back consolingly regardless.

“H-how? How will I ever repay you, Spider-Man?” He asked teary eyed.

“Next time, don’t try and gamble your life - and your family’s life, if you have one - asking for money from loan sharks. It always ends in something like this, trust me.” Spider-Man reprimanded him. 

The guy lowered his head, appropriately humbled, but nodded fiercely nonetheless. “I d-didn’t have much of a choice at the time, but you’re right, still. I would never forgive myself if-” He shook his head and looked back at his saviour. “Any favour you ask of me, it’ll be done.”

“I’ll remember that whenever I feel in the mood for some Jägermeister.” Spider-Man was starting to swing away, but then he realized the opportunity that the situation presented him. I do need help, after all. He went back to the shop-owner, who perked up at seeing the hero walking back to him.

“Listen…” Spider-Man began. He needed to be as vague, but also as precise as possible, without arousing suspicion now. Not particularly easy.

“I’ve… got a friend. He’s in a… tight spot financially speaking.”, he went on, his listener nodding along, “He’s out of a job, lost his home, his girl… he’s… it’s tough.”

“Yeah, yeah, I get it.” The shop-owner interrupted him, understanding where the discussion would eventually end up. 

“I can put in a good word for him, I know some people who can put a roof on his head - not shady people, I promise.” He preemptively clarified.

“Hell, I can even give him a job here, if he wants. Lord knows I need help over the counter.” He said, pointing back at his store. “So, what’s the name of this friend of yours?”

“He’s…” come up with a name, come up with a name, fast, fast, “Benjamin… Benjamin Reilly. Thank you for helping m-my friends, I really appreciate it, truly. Don’t worry about the mob, I’ll go chase those rats, make ‘em scurry out of their holes.” 

He actually was appreciative. In his ‘career’ as the webslinging New York’s superhero, ‘thank yous’ and ‘you can ask me anything’ were mostly performative - not that he’d particularly mind. He wasn’t into the superhero business for money and favours.

But to experience the fact that he was in dire straits, and that New York - a different one, but still - was genuinely offering him help… it made all the pain, all the trouble he went patrolling the city worth it . 

“By the way…”, the shop-owner was rubbing his head nervously. “Since you’re here anyway… can I ask for a photo with you?”

Spider-Man chuckled, rolling his eyes and nodding. Some things never change, even across dimensions it seems.  

He actually smiled behind the mask when posing for the photo. One of the few genuine smiles he’d had after her death. 

He hoped this alternate dimension would bring more of those smiles out of him.

Chapter Text

Gwen thought back at the excitement coursing through her body a few hours before, when she’d donned the suit and felt ready to go and kick some vill’s ass. She chuckled, and the simple action made her sides flare up in pain.

Well… I got the action I wanted. The monkey’s paw has curled, I guess.

This had definitely been one of the most physically intense fights Gwen had ever been in.

Sure, she’d faced smarter enemies, or faster, trickier, craftier ones - but none had left her body so thoroughly aching and sore.

Venom had gone completely silent, as if it had gone to sleep and recuperate.

She took what meager consolation she could: she - they had given as much as they ’d got, and just as she thought, a no-holds-barred symbiote duel had been devastating for them both… and for the environment around them.

She had been startled by Spider-Man’s sudden reappearance, but her worry switched to surprise when he figured out the one, true symbiotic weakness.

As much as her Nom-Nom was begging her to intervene and stop him, she didn’t let it happen, as that was their ticket to victory, no matter how painful it got.

She’d trusted Spider-Man - an ally in battle, a comrade in arms - to save her , for once. And he did win the fight for the two of them.

Great… now I feel even worse for webbing him up before… oh, here he comes, I can feel him frown from under the mask. Well, I do deserve to get yelled at.

But he didn’t yell at her, in fact he simply threw at her a barrage of ‘I’m sorry, I’m so sorry’ ( For what? I should be the one saying that ) and ‘Are you OK? How are you feeling?’ ( Not great, but not dead either thanks to you, so that’s a win ).

For some inexplicable reason her mind was catapulted back to those days when her Peter was still alive and went into panic mode whenever he’d see her sporting new cuts and bruises after a rough night patrol.

Spider-Man started to calm down only when his suit’s AI reassured him that yes, she was very much battered and bruised, but would get back up into shape after a day or two of rest. 

Two full days of R&R? I’ll take ‘em, but it must mean I must really be a sorry sight even for an AI’s eyes.

Spider-Man helped her up and let her lean on his shoulders. God, she could feel even her toes hurting as she flexed them to start walking.

She wanted to make her apologies now, something like ‘I’m sorry for being a complete jerk before, but surely you must see what my line of reasoning was at the time, and now that you’ve saved me I’ll trust you, I swear.’

But her voice failed her - no surprise, since her throat had turned an interesting shade of purple already (the other symbiote really liked to try and strangle her).

Spider-Man looked her in the eyes (well, the eyelenses) and gently told her to shush, that they could have a nice, long talk later, once she’d be OK. 

Gwen felt warmed by his empathy. This dimension’s Spider-themed superhero seemed to be a kind, understanding person… She felt like she should take some pointers from him, but the story of her life had made her more bitter and cynical. 

Gwen hoped this Spider-Man wouldn’t end up like her, that he could maintain that innocence, that he-

She tripped on a wire, fortunately Spider-Man was there to hold her.

In the action, though, her hand had automatically shot forward to lean against something and interrupt the fall, and found it in a keyboard.

She accidentally pressed the large Space key.

By some miracle, the desk station was still operating despite the chaotic mess in which Mysterio’s crew’s secret room now versed in.

The large monitor, which had been damaged and cracked during the symbiote duel, apparently still worked, and its light flooded the room again.

Mysterio reappeared, and the tape resumed.

“Spider-Man’s real name is Peter Parker! ”

… 

…

What? 

No. It… had to be some sick joke, another attempt by this universe she’d fallen into to laugh at her expense, because she’d asked around about this dimension’s Parker family and she was told he and Aunt May were living the happy, quiet, content, normal life they deserved more than anyone else, so there was no way he-

The feed cut to another, final, scene, from Mysterio’s own perspective as it was looking at a holo projection on a table. 

“And this… is Mr. Beck.” A gruff voice said, and Mysterio spun around to meet- to meet-

It was him. Peter. He wasn’t wearing the same suit - no fancy nanotech, but trusty old spandex.

But he was wearing the same face. 

A few details were different - cheeks puffier than the slightly gaunt ones she remembered, jaw more squared than round, neck rather thicker than she remembered, slightly taller, an athletic and lean body filling the spandex, eyes seemingly larger, probably because he didn’t need to wear glasses for his nearsightedness.

Because he is Spider-Man . 

He was carrying himself with such determination, such pep in his step, such happiness she’d rarely ever seen in him, that Gwen felt emotional whiplash hit her; she was feeling dizzy now, and not due to the fight she’d just fought. 

He was her Peter in one frame, when he’d smile that rare, but precious, stupid, goofy smile of his… and then he was not in the next, when he nodded firmly, a fire and passion behind his eyes that she’d never seen before. 

This was not the face of a sad, embittered boy who wanted to be ‘special’ , that she’d failed and hugged and cried upon as he lay dead in her arms, whose death spurred her to sling her webs and use her powers to save lives.

This was the face of a man who’d won , who’d survived, who had seen death and cried because of it, just as she did - who had been beaten and broken, just as she’d been - who got right back up and into the action, because it was his duty - just as hers was.

Gwen Stacy stared at that man and saw herself staring back at her.

The tape had ended, stopped on that final frame of Peter smiling, teeth and all - her own hated baring his teeth, said it made his smile look fake - as he had already half-turned to leave. To sling his webs and save lives , because he was… He was…

She needed to remove his mask. A final confirmation from the hero that had just saved her life. Her body was in such a wracked state, and her thoughts were swirling in so many directions that she needed to know, now , or else she’d probably pass out from exhaustion.

Her head timidly, weakly turned back toward him. Eyelenses met eyelenses and he sighed.

“Well… crap.” He finally stated. That was not good enough. She needed to know, she needed to see his face!

“P-Peter…? Is that… A-are you… r-really…?” Her voice appeared broken and tremulous even to her ears.

His mechanical eyelenses widened, and if she had the strength she’d tear them apart, to reveal those hazel eyes that had gone just as cold and lifeless as his body did when he’d died in her arms. 

She wanted to see those eyes warm and lively again, just one more time, no matter how much it’d hurt - because of course, in the back of her mind, she knew this technically wasn’t her Peter.

So she swore to herself she wouldn’t break down and cry on his shoulder and make it weird for him, no matter what.

“Well… cat’s out of the bag, anyway.” 

He finally acquiesced to her implicit request, and his nanites slowly retracted, uncovering a mop of brown hair, a pair of - dark brown! - eyes, and a despondent, crooked smile. 

It was him. With a few differences, but unmistakably him. 

She broke down. 

She found the wherewithal to hug him and cried on his shoulder. 

She’d made it weird for him, but she couldn’t muster the strength to care at this point.

His hands confusedly went to pat her back, then he saw how serious the situation was, and hugged her tight, and kept asking her if she was OK again, and she wasn’t, but Oh, god, it’s so ‘Peter’ to do that , and she cried and hugged him harder, even if it hurt.

After a few minutes, her sobs calmed down. 

It was Gwen’s most physically and emotionally taxing night of her life. 

Now she almost wanted to pass out - he’d be there to carry her, anyway. And if he couldn’t, screw it - they could sleep among the rubble and wake up the next morning, and she’d tell him everything .

But Peter ended her hug and held her by the shoulders with an inquisitive look in his eyes. 

Once he’d asked her for the umpteenth time if she was OK, he gave voice to his obvious question: “Alright… seeing what just happened, it’s clear you know me. But… I don’t think I can recognise you. Who are you?”

She nodded. Of course, it was a natural question. She’d already made up her mind to tell him everything the next day - but she could do him this one favour now.

Spider-Woman’s symbiote mask slowly retracted in small tendrils, showing her blonde, pink-tipped hair already.

Spider-Man’s - Peter’s - eyes went wide for a bit, before he promptly shut them closed and yelled: “Wait!”

She gasped, and then he apologetically added: “Wait, sorry. It’s wrong of me to expect you to reveal your secret identity just because you know mine, now. Just… promise you won’t share it around and-”

“Peter.” She interrupted him softly but firmly.

God, how could I have missed how ‘Peter’ he acted just because he had the mask on?

“Don’t get your nanotech knickers in a twist.” She found the cheek to answer him. 

“I want… and need to show and tell you everything, because I need your help.”

She let the symbiote retract fully from her head. 

The emotional toll was weighing on Gwen and she was feeling dizzy, so she wanted to give him a quick explanation before she’d pass out - she could get into the finer details tomorrow.

“I know that in your… reality, there is no Gw-”

“GWEN?!” He practically shouted at her face, eyes and mouth comically wide and open.

Wait. What? But I don’t… I’ve checked- there’s no Stacy family in his- What’s going on?!

She passed out.

Gwen Stacy was currently in the middle of what could only be described as a deja-vu experience… but through someone else’s eyes. It was confusing.

Regardless, she and Ned were currently at MJ’s place (her first time there, too), where she would spend the night with her, Ned and Petey. 

They did homework together - not difficult at all for Gwen, really, considering she’d technically already graduated in her own reality - and were waiting for Petey to come over too after he’d discreetly left the building without even bothering to formulate an excuse, promising only he’d be late by 8pm ‘or something’. 

How the hell hasn’t anyone figured out what he’s really doing?  

MJ’s parents had been very welcoming of Gwen - in fact, they went out of their way to accommodate her and even teased their daughter for finding an actual female friend only after she’d gotten a boyfriend; MJ uncharacteristically huffed and blushed at that. It seemed only her parents were a match for her when it came to teasing people.

Michelle’s boyfriend, however, seemed to be late. 

During the first half hour, MJ and Ned simply rolled their eyes and sighed at Petey’s usual tardiness. 

An hour in, they excused themselves out of MJ’s room to tell her parents Petey likely wouldn’t come… and no doubt to call him far from Gwen’s ears and ask him if he was in trouble.

Two hours (and several missed calls) in, and Ned was tapping his right foot anxiously on the soft carpet, while MJ was pacing her room, sighing and checking her phone every dozen seconds or so.

Gwen had done this song and dance countless times before with her own Bugboy. 

She’d wait impatiently for him in the long hours of the night, biting her nails and ruining the polish, checking the fire escape over and over, hoping to hear his gentle tapping and praying he hadn’t been seriously injured. 

She’d fix him with a stern look for his cuts and bruises, tell him to be more careful (not that he’d actually follow the advice) and kiss him for good measure, hoping it’d bring him luck, if nothing else, since he was lacking in sense.

She hoped he was alright without her… but her heart wrenched at the likely truth that he probably wasn’t. She missed him more and more with each passing day…

… And that’s why she was used to this unbearable sensation of dread and anxiety MJ was in now, and couldn’t help but smile in friendly commiseration at her. 

She wanted to comfort Petey’s friends and tell them he would be OK, but she didn’t want MJ to become even more suspicious than she already was of her. 

It was late September, almost three months since she was cast into this dimension, nearly one month since he’d made friends with Petey’s little ‘club’ - and they still hadn’t told her what she already knew by now: that their dimension’s Peter Parker was Spider-Man.

The fact that he’d bail on them from time to time using the most laughable excuses (he somehow was even worse than her own Bugboy!) and would sometimes show up with mysterious bruises on his body (how many times had he fallen down from the stairs this month?) was corroborating proof.

Still, Gwen let him off the hook easily - but not too easily it’d appear suspect.

The boys, Petey and Ned, oblivious as they were, were easy to fool (she felt bad about that, but she needed to gain their full trust before she’d let the truth out, with heartfelt apologies).

MJ was onto her, though. When she pierced Gwen with her narrowed eyes, as if trying to wordlessly extract the truth from her brain, the blonde couldn’t help but squirm a bit.

Despite this, Gwen genuinely enjoyed being friends with someone as equally (if not more) witty and perceptive as she was, and she could tell MJ liked her back, too.

She had friends back home, but she would have loved to meet her own reality’s Michelle Jones before. 

Someone needs to make a trans-dimensional phone, so at least we can talk to each other across realities , she chuckled at the thought. 

Bad, huge mistake. MJ, already exasperated by the long wait, finally snapped at her: “Alright, then. How do you do it?” 

Ned looked at her with wide, confused eyes. Gwen was in the same conditions as him, for once, as she simply answered: “W-what?”

“How do you stay calm?”

Gwen’s brain had temporarily shut down. “What… How do I stay calm?”

“It’s 11:30 pm, Pete should’ve been here more than two hours ago, Ned and I are worried out of our mind something bad’s happened, but you are perfectly still, calm as ever, and you’ve just chuckled at nothing. What’s going on?” 

Ned was fixing MJ with an astonished look now, trying to convey a ‘What the hell are you doing?’ with his eyes, but the chestnut-haired girl was entirely focused on Gwen.

Oh. Well… crap. “Well, I… oh, I’m sorry, MJ. T-that’s just how I deal with stress really. Silly humour, and stuff. Have to keep my mind off of it.” She shrugged apologetically. 

It was a bare-faced lie. She didn’t deal with stress like that - she didn’t ‘keep her mind off of it’, but agonized over every problem, trying to untie as many unresolved knots before calling it a day. 

MJ had come to know that aspect of hers already in the month they passed together.

MJ knew Gwen had just lied, and Gwen knew that MJ knew. 

Apparently she wasn’t as good of a liar as she thought she was. Or maybe MJ should consider a career as an interrogator. She’d make a hell of a ‘bad cop’.

Gwen was saved from further prying by MJ’s phone ringing. “It’s him!” She exhaled in relief, their little argument immediately forgotten. 

She immediately picked it up, and she greeted him with an hissed: “Peter, where have you been?! What’s going on?!”

MJ’s phone didn’t have loudspeakers on (probably because Gwen was supposed to be unaware of Petey’s red-and-blue alter ego) and Gwen couldn’t get much of what Petey was saying; judging from the frantic noises coming out of the device, though, he seemed to be in a hurry.

She had to rely on what MJ was muttering to understand what was going on… but the distressed girl appeared to have a breakdown.

“Uh uh… OK? An al- what?! ”

“What? What’s going on?” tried to interject Ned, bouncing out of bed to get near her. MJ shushed him, and began to whisper at her phone.

“No, I’ve already told my parents you wouldn’t come. You need to… you know. Yes, he’s here. We’re not alone, though. What? What do you mean, you carry a girl, who’s this… wait- WHAT?! ” MJ suddenly shouted. She stared straight into Gwen’s eyes with her own bewildered ones, then frowned and shook her head.

“A-are you joking with me right now, Peter Parker ? Because it’s not the appropriate time at all .”

Michelle had that little habit when talking to Petey that Gwen had too with her Bugboy: they’d both use his full name whenever he’d done something incredibly stupid or stupidly selfless (many times it was both). 

The fact that Peters from across dimensions seemed to share that character trait made her eyes roll.

“We have been worried sick because of you. And Gwen’s here , not… there .” The blonde perked up at the mention of her name, rising from the bed too. Wait, why would I be there?

Something bad had happened. It reminded her of those nights when Peter crashed through the fire escape, a bloodied, bruised mess, and she’d have to mend him through salty tears and slick blood.

“No, there’s no way she’s her, she’s been here the entire time ; she might have messed with you. What? No. Absolutely not! ” MJ shook her head firmly, even though Petey obviously couldn’t see her. 

“No, you need to find another place. F.E.A.S.T., maybe - call May. Who the hell cares about her secret id- you can’t just- how will I explain it to my parents? Peter? Peter !” MJ stage-whispered, but her boyfriend had ended the call already.

She released a mix between a sigh and a growl and leaned her head against the wall, banging against it softly.

Ned was worried out of his mind right now, jumping on the spot, practically piercing Michelle’s back with his frown. “MJ. What. Just. Happened?”

MJ took a few calming breaths while staring at the wall; she opened the window, letting the cool air in, then faced her friends again. 

“Alright. We’ll have a surprise guest- ” she spat with annoyed sarcasm, “-coming in a few minutes. She’s apparently blacked out, and we can’t tell a word of it to my parents. Got it? ”

Her tone brooked no argument. Gwen and Ned nodded vigorously.

“Gwen?” MJ continued, “There’s something we need to tell you about.”

The blonde’s eyes widened: she immediately understood what secret they were about to reveal - and MJ noticed it. 

“Something I can tell you’ve figured out on your own already.”

Ned frowned, head turning wildly between the two for a few seconds before he got it. “Wait, what?! You can’t do that! Peter won’t-”

“I’m here!”

Petey suddenly jumped from the open window, suit and all, into the middle of the room, making them all jump with a gasp.

Gwen stood at his back, so she couldn’t see the front of his suit, but she did finally see him for who he was: the Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man of this reality’s New York City. She was right! 

His costume looked certainly different from the one her boyfriend back home wore, though: it seemed more technologically advanced, and made of a different, sturdier material than spandex.

Doesn’t matter. I’ll always prefer my Bugboy’s suit. Any suit of his, really.

“I need some space - the bed! She’s passed out!” Petey carried an unconscious person with him - a girl, Gwen figured. But… she was wearing a suit: black and white, with some pink on her arms, blue on her feet.

Wait. I haven’t read of or heard about any Spider…Woman existing in this reality.

Peter tucked her into the right side of MJ’s double bed.

“Oh my god, you can’t just bring her here, Peter! She needs a hospital!”

“Wait, is she a super-hero? ”

“Yes, Ned she is - MJ, she just needs rest: spider-healing means we need only a couple of days and-”

“A couple of days?! You want me to keep her here for a couple of days?! ”

“Wait, who’s she supposed to be?”

“She calls herself Spider-Woman, Ned-”

“ Spider-Woman?! Does she have the same abil-”

“ Later , Ned - MJ, your parents won’t be a problem, we’ll just tell them Gwen came down with an influenza overnight or something - hell, maybe she’ll actually be OK by tomorrow morning!”

Wait, did he just call the girl… Gwen?

“Peter? What’s going on?” Gwen finally entered the animated, yet whispering, discussion.

Peter glanced at her for the first time since he’d come from the window.

Everyone went silent as he fixed her with a frown, eyes wide, mouth half-open.

His mouth started moving, yet no sound came from it. 

He stared at the girl he’d just brought in, then back at Gwen.

“What’s happening? What?” 

Back to the girl, then back at her. Gwen was starting to panic.

MJ and Ned were as confused as she was, so they took a closer look at the bruised girl resting in the bed: their faces soon resembled the same one Petey was wearing.

“What’s going on, guys?!” 

All three looked back to the girl, then back at her. Gwen could feel the panic rising.

She finally neared the bed too, three pairs of eyes following her every step.

She took a good look at the girl’s sleeping face.

It looked identical to Gwen’s. It was battered, bruised, bloodied, cut and purple in some spots (she’d obviously taken a heavy beating) and a pair of piercings highlighted her right eyebrow - yet besides that, they looked literally the same . 

The girl didn’t have long, flowing bangs as Gwen did, but an angled bob, right side shaved and pink tips - yet they shared the exact same shade of blonde.

Petey, Ned and MJ’s shocked frown spread over her face, too.

“Who… who’s…?” She couldn’t form a coherent sentence - not that the others could, really.

The sleeping girl looked like a, a clone of hers, with superpowers to boot, apparently. Now she was definitely panicking. 

She was breathing hard, a ball of tension coiling around in her gut like the day she’d fell from her universe into- 

Wait. 

Not a clone.

Realization dawned upon her, and she gasped, panic swept away to be replaced by amazement. The eyes of the room were on her now.

This girl, this… other Gwen Stacy was likely stranded into this universe… just as she was. 

Chapter Text

It took coaxing, swearing, apologizing, but Gwen managed to get Petey, MJ and Ned to have a full, detailed discussion the next morning, once Spider-Gwen would wake up and could share her story too.

“I think we’ll see many similarities in how we’ve ended up here.” She cryptically stated. At least she hoped so.

The other three were looking at her almost as if she was a stranger, eyeing her warily, and it hurt her - but Gwen supposed it was understandable: she’d have the next morning to explain everything and apologize if needed.

Everyone soon went to sleep separately, emotionally (and physically, for the two spider-heroes) drained but bubbling with mixed excitement and anxiousness. Nobody slept well that night.

MJ’s parents weren’t an issue, fortunately - they hadn’t even tried to enter their daughter’s room to check on her and her friends, but simply left a note in the kitchen telling them they would be back around midday.

Gwen woke up at around 8am, and was surprised to see Ned, of all people, already up and making breakfast for them all. 

“Woke up an hour ago, couldn’t sleep.” He explained. He seemed to have regained some trust toward her during the night.

She chuckled internally - he’d probably bombard the superpowered alternate version of herself with questions, ask her for a selfie and share his (honestly impressive) Lego collection with her too, if they hit it off well.

Some minutes later, Petey and MJ came out of the room, and they definitely still were suspicious of Gwen. Michelle brought food and water to the bedridden girl, then got back to share a tense, silent breakfast with the rest of Midtown School’s ‘Nerd Club’.  

Now, they didn’t want to shock the heavily weakened Spider-Gwen and make her faint again if she saw… ‘Normal’-Gwen coming in.

Therefore, Petey got in first: she’d already seen him, was his reasoning, and he could ease her into the unique day that awaited them.

He closed the door behind him, while MJ, Ned and Gwen (she would enter last) stood by it, deliberately avoiding to look at each other.

After a few minutes, they could hear Spider-Gwen gasp and sob, but Petey mumbled something that must’ve reassured her, because he soon after let MJ and Ned in. 

After another few minutes of subdued greetings and uneasy chuckles (a little laugh, too), Peter dropped the bombshell.

“Alright. There’s one more person I’m going to let in, Gwen.” 

It sure feels weird hearing him use my name to refer to someone else. Even if it is technically an alternate version of me.

“What’s all the suspense, Spider-Man? I’m not going to find the police waiting at the door for me, right? I’d hate to crash through your girlfriend’s room’s window to escape.” The girl joked. Even her voice was identical to Gwen’s.

“No, not the police, but… please , don’t freak out. You said you needed to tell me everything because you wanted my help?” Peter continued.

“Yes… yes, I did. I’m ready now… and, please don’t freak out yourselves, because what I’ll say is the truth, no matter how batshit crazy it’ll sound.” 

“I do believe you, Spider-Woman… because something freaky is certainly happening right now and we don’t know what.”

“Oh, I doubt it’ll sound as crazy as what I have to share.”

“I don’t know about that. Come in… Gwen.”

Gwen could hear her spider-alternate self go “Huh?” as she timidly opened the door, went through it and closed it again, advancing next to the bedridden girl.

Her stare rose from the ground up to meet, well, herself staring right back at her. 

She looked much better already, the bruises having gone from dark purple to sickly yellow; however she definitely still didn’t look like she was in fighting shape.

An actual, full minute passed of everyone just standing in complete stillness as the two Stacy girls simply deadpanned at each other.

Gwen noticed only one difference in her otherwise indistinguishable face that had slipped her during the previous, frantic night: Spider-Gwen had a tiny, faint mole just to the right of her lips.

Spider-Gwen eventually broke the silence with an eloquent: “Huh. You were right, Peter. This is definitely freaky.”

Gwen couldn't help but sigh and agree with… herself.

Spiders, lizards, goblins, alternate-Gwens… What had her life turned to at this point?

“I think…” Peter started, getting everyone’s attention, “… both of you owe us… and one other… an explanation.” stated Peter with a stern look that was definitely hindered by his puppy dog eyes.

The two Stacys went back to looking at each other - but this time Spider-Gwen narrowed her eyes and smirked slyly.

“Alright, then.” She exhaled and sat at the corner of the bed, arms folded and legs crossed. Gwen noticed with a slight tinge of jealousy that her athletic physique was gorgeous. Maybe she’d have to consider starting to work out. 

Or getting bit by a genetically-modified spider. Does it even make sense to be jealous of myself - an alternate me? Or is it narcissistic behaviour?

“Full name.” Spider-Gwen simply stated in an even tone, ending Gwen’s musings.

“What?”

“Your full name. If you’re really me, you should know it.”

Gwen raised a single eyebrow. “You do know that an alternate version of yourself doesn’t necessarily share all-”

“Wrong answer. Full name, now.” 

Really? Gwen’s relaxed eyebrow joined the other, raised one. “Do you seriously want to do this?”

“Full. Name. I’m waiting. ” She sing-songed the last sentence.

Gwen scoffed and looked at the other three people in the room, but they all wore an amused look, and seemed to expect her to rise to the challenge.

Well, alright then. She accepted the challenge. 

I’m gonna beat you at your own game. Me. My game. OK, too confusing.

“Gwendoline Maxine Stacy.” MJ gasped at that. Gwen was quick to explain: “I never tell people my middle name - it’s… I don’t like it. You concur, don’t you? ” 

Spider-Gwen’s little smile grew just a little more crooked, her eyes even narrower. “I do. Mom must’ve lost a bet to give us that middle name. Most embarrassing school moment?”

“What? I… can’t even…”

“If you’re me, you should know.” 

Gwen felt the urge to slap that silly little smile off her face.

She’d know, she’d wear that smile like a weapon too when she was messing with someone.

This is not how I thought this morning would go. Gwen sighed. 

“Second grade, Halloween, when Professor Stevens pulled his awful prank on the entire class, and I- we wet our selves. We spent the rest of the morning in perpetual embarrassment and then we ran back home as fast as we could.”

Spider-Gwen nodded and chuckled. “Alright, alright, you’re winning me over… Silly childhood dream before the bug bite?”

“Building a chocolate house. Which, I suppose, is still my silly childhood dream in absence of a genetically-modified spider who bit me.”

“Genetically-modified?” Spider-Gwen tilted her head at that. “It was radioactive .”

Gwen shook her head, deliberately adopting a lecturing tone she knew Spider-Gwen would hate - because she hated it too. 

“That’s why I told you things can be different between alternate dimensions, but you didn’t listen to me. My Peter was bitten by a genetically-modified Oscorp spider.”

“Alternate dimensions?!” interrupted Petey and Ned in unison.

“Your Peter?!” MJ and Spider-Gwen followed suit.

OK. Now’s the time. 

“I’m gonna tell you everything, but I’m setting some ground rules for the sake of my sanity here.” Gwen declared.

She pointed at herself: “ I’m Gwen.”, then at the spider-bitten version of herself: “ She’s Stacy. Or Spider-Gwen. Spider-Woman, whatever.”

“Hey! Why do you get the first name?” Stacy protested.

“Because I’m the responsible girl who actually does her homework and chores, while I bet you are the one that dusts off her bedroom once every six months and gets weekly calls to the principal’s office.”

Stacy laughed heartily at that. “OK, OK! You may have not been bitten by a spider, but you certainly bite like one! You’re alright, more than alright… Gwen. I mean, you are me, after all.”

Gwen smiled a smile that split her face: “Thanks. You too… Stacy.”

OK, she’s the ‘little shit’ version of myself, but she’s good at heart. That’s what counts.

That silly interdimensional Stacy quiz had fortunately eased everyone’s tension, and both girls found themselves more than happy to share the details of their misadventure.

They’d both literally fallen from the sky from separate worlds into this one, yet almost a month apart, Gwen being the first, Stacy the second.

As for Petey and the rest, it didn’t take as much convincing as both Gwens feared it would, surprisingly - maybe because this dimension was already used to alien invasions, purple genociders, gods and the like.

Dimensional travel must be practically Tuesday for them.

Gwen got into an impassioned, productive conversation with Petey about the multiverse and string theory, until Stacy told them to cut it short and that they could ‘nerdbate’ each other later about the science of it all.

They shared details of their situation right before ‘The Arrival’, as Ned had named it. He had a flair for the dramatic when superheroes were involved. He had to, what with him being Spider-Man’s unofficial social media manager and all.

Gwen told them she was falling to her death from the attack of the Green Goblin, Harry Osborn: Stacy went gloomy at that, stating that she also had a difficult relationship with Harry and confronting him hadn’t been a pleasant experience at all.

Stacy shook herself off and continued her side of the story: she was fighting - and losing, unfortunately - against the Vulture before turning up in this new reality.

While Gwen wasn’t familiar with the guy, Petey, MJ and Ned clearly were, considering their eyes popped open at the name. 

When Spider-Gwen went into more details about the battle and her version of Vulture, the trio gasped.

Metal (and not Chitauri) wings? Electrical and gas attacks? 

“This was the Vulture I’ve fought against recently!” Petey exclaimed. “I knew something was off about the whole thing! He couldn’t have escaped from prison without anyone knowing! And he kept calling me Spider-Woman too! I thought he was just trying to tick me off!”

Everyone laughed at that particular last bit, Peter only half-heartedly pretending to be offended.

But then Gwen gasped, grasping the reality of the situation. 

“But… if one of Spider-Woman’s villains is here… does it mean my reality’s villains could be here too?”

Petey and Stacy glanced at each other. “My partner and I may just have fought one of your villains last night.” The latter said.

The spider-duo narrated the gruesome tale, from crashing into each other, to foiling Mysterio’s backup plan after death and finally fighting a destructive battle against a terrifying, evil symbiote. 

Now everyone knew why Petey was late, and Stacy was broken and bruised. 

Stacy even gave a small demonstration of her symbiotic powers by morphing her suit into casual clothes.

Gwen and MJ’s faces were a peculiar mix of worried, amazed and disgusted at, well, an alien symbiote living on her body .

Ned was torn between feeling frustrated for having missed the fight with an alien gooey monster … or lucky he did miss it, because at least he wouldn’t have nightmares about it.

Gwen was horrified by the tale, but she didn’t know of any symbiote obsessed with her Bugboy in her reality.

Maybe… No.

She didn't even want to think about the possibility of a third reality having spilled over this one too.

When she’d woken up with a banging headache and a sluggish body still, Stacy definitely didn’t think things could get any weirder than last night, but girl, was she wrong.

Peter was the first thing she saw when she opened her eyes, and she let out a reflexive gasp at that.

She tried to brush his cheek with her palm, until her brain kicked in and she remembered it wasn’t her Peter.

Peter took her outstretched hand, smiling compassionately at her, asking if she was feeling better.

His tenderness caused her to sob, but then she nodded at him, finding some humour in the absurd situation she was in.

I’ve just woken up in the care of my not-dead not-best-friend, in an alternate dimension, after fighting a symbiote together. Other than that, yeah, I’m great.

“Good. Good… uhm…” He seemed extremely nervous for some reason.

Stacy would have loved to tease him (God, she missed teasing Peter), but her brain was still foggy after the restless sleep she’d had.

“Listen, we’re technically in my girlfriend’s room - she already knows who I am and what I do, and, well, she’s also seen you, but I promise she’s-”

OK, she had to tease him now.

“Woah, woah, slow down, Spidey… are you telling me that I - a girl - is currently sleeping in your GF’s bed?”

“ She’s slept in the room with you, I didn’t -”

“Oooh, did you think it’d be fine if she slept in this room with me? Not you? Better hold her tight then - I can make a girl fall for me just as well as a boy. I swing both ways, so…” 

Peter glared at her with a consternated look and a faint blush. 

He dropped his head with a sigh when Stacy giggled with her signature: “Relax, I’m just playing ya.”

“You’re terrible. I’m going to let them in now. MJ! Ned!”

Wait, wait, wait. MJ and Ned? Did Peter land Em freaking Jay?! And he’s friends with his high-school bully too?

Stacy was expecting her redheaded best friend (or, rather, the alternate version of her) waltz in like she owned the room (and, well, it was her room), alongside a bulking, blonde boy with an annoying smirk that made her want to punch him when he’d harass her Peter.

Instead, a silent, inquisitive-looking, African-American girl with chestnut hair and a Filipino-American boy with a kind smile and a little “H-hi.” entered the bedroom.

She was confused for a moment before her brain functions kicked in again.

Of course. Alternate dimensions and all.

They were staring at her as if they were seeing a ghost.

“So… you’ve actually done it, Pete.” She tried to break the clear tension. “You’ve actually landed Mary Jane Watson, even though she looks different from the one I know. I’m legitimately impressed.”

“Who’s Mary Jane Watson?” All three shot back in unison. 

MJ then fixed her boyfriend with a piercing glare. 

“Is there some other girl your girlfriend should know about, Peter?”

“What?! No! Of course not! I would nev- Why would you-” He paused when he saw Stacy and MJ barely maintaining a straight face. 

“I can’t believe you both…! You know what, screw you. You’re both terrible.”

“And you’re so easy to tease, Peter.” MJ retorted with a smile, then focused on Stacy: “It’s actually Michelle Jones - I don’t go by Watson. But my friends call me MJ.”

“Well, nice to meet you… MJ.”

“Who said you’re my friend yet?”

“Well, you’re certainly as sharp as my MJ.”

“Who’s your MJ? And how did you know I’m Watson, too?”

Stacy wore a devilish little smirk. She missed her playful banter with her own dimension’s Mary Jane, and despite the different looks and name, this reality’s MJ seemed to be as witty as her band’s lead singer. 

“It’s a long story. I think your boyfriend Spider-Man and I need to talk about it before sharing it with you. Alone .” Peter made a gurgling sound at that.

MJ’s eyes somehow narrowed even more than Stacy thought possible.

“You never know when you might need to crash at my house again - or Peter’s. Or Ned’s. While you play sleeping beauty, I might accidentally slip in some arachnicide in your next breakfast - potent enough to kill an oversized pest like you. You don’t want to get on my bad side.” 

Now, that’s the MJ I know. Stacy was loving every second of it.

The boys in the room were looking at them wide-eyed, fearing they might come to blows at any moment. 

Stacy and MJ stared at each other for a few more seconds, silently… then shared a little laugh.

“W-what just happened…?” Stacy heard Ned whisper.

“We’ve just bonded, guys, don’t worry your silly little minds.”

“Hey!” The guys protested. 

Peter shook his head (but he was secretly pleased they’d managed to break the tension that was hanging in the room), and his tone went serious again.  

“Alright. There’s one more person I’m going to let in, Gwen.”

Stacy didn’t actually comprehend the fact she had an alternate version of herself in front of her initially.

She thought her eyesight was failing her, or maybe she’d knocked her head too hard in the symbiote duel.

Then she actually looked at her, and, yeah, she could’ve been a clone of hers.

Minus the mole near the lips (Gwen’s skin was perfectly unblemished) and… the spider-bite, apparently (Gwen looked fine as hell , but she was obviously a bookish sort, not an ounce of muscle on her).

She kept waiting for her spider-sense to prickle her nape, for Venom to wake up and tell her (literally, since it could talk, she knew now) she was a supervill in disguise.

Nothing of the sort happened.

Then, it clicked in her mind: Gwen too was… out of place. Thrown into another dimension and left stranded here.

To put her remaining suspicions to rest, Stacy subjected Gwen to an impromptu little interrogation. She wasn’t really interested in her answers, though: things could be different in another dimension; plus, impersonators who did their homework could know everything about a person.

No, Stacy was mostly interested in Gwen’s actions and gestures: the way she’d raise her eyebrow when challenged, that blushing frown when embarrassed, the confident smirk when she knew she was right, the barely hinted sway of her hips when she was messing with someone… 

Yep, Gwen was definitely Stacy.

They soon revealed the truth of what happened to them to not-her-Peter, not-her-MJ and not-her-Ned.

Stacy - as her alternate self had nicknamed her - listened intently at her alternate version of herself as she explained how’d she got into this mess, finding many similarities with her own story, but also several differences.

Gwen had been around a month longer than she had, and she’d adjusted even better. The girl was resourceful . Probably a better liar than her, too.

Stacy even felt a giggle rise in her chest when Gwen went full science wiz mode alongside Peter.

Her mood soured again when she heard that Gwen had been attacked by her… friend (could he still be called so?) Harry Osborn, aka the Green Goblin. Gwen didn’t seem to harbour the same conflicted feelings about him, though - she definitely wasn’t his friend in her reality.

She was shocked to hear the Vulture from her dimension had followed her into this one too! Fortunately, Spider-Man had a better time dealing with him, though he fell for that gas trick in the end (understandable, she fell for it too the first time).

The actual identity of the evil symbiote they’d fought the night before (Stacy’s own Venom flared in annoyance at the mention of the ‘Pretender’) remained a mystery though. 

The discussion inevitably shifted towards more casual topics, with Peter, MJ and Ned hopping from question to question, trying to find similarities and differences. To be fair, Stacy was curious too.

They’d both done ballet as kids, and they had fond memories of it, although eventually Stacy had drifted toward music, Gwen toward science (God, Gwen was such a brainiac; Stacy didn’t think she had that kind of potential in her).

Stacy breathed music and was the drummer in a rock band, the Mary Janes. Gwen wasn’t really that much into music, but if she had to pick a genre, it’d probably be her mom’s old funk songs. 

They’d both had painful losses in their family. Stacy still had her dad, but her mom had died when she was a child; the others offered their condolences, but she shrugged at them: it was an old, well-healed wound by now.

She soon felt her heart wrenching for Gwen, though: Helen Stacy, their mother, was alive in her reality - and even had three (!) sons after Gwen was born: Philip, Howard and Simon; however, George Stacy, the police captain, had died on duty barely a year ago. 

When she saw Gwen get misty-eyed at the terrible memory, Stacy offered Gwen more than just condolences: she opened her arms, and Gwen heartily met her embrace. 

Gwen didn’t cry - she’d already spent all her tears many months before, Stacy figured - she simply wanted a bit of comfort… and to find the strength to move forward with her life. 

Gwen might not have spider-genes, but she was just as much of a warrior as Spider-Woman was, in her own sciencey way.

Gwen had been a valedictorian (Stacy’s dad would’ve kissed and spinned her in the air if she herself had achieved that) and was supposed to be at Oxford (oh, he would’ve gushed over her!).

Stacy was… well, she was Spider-Woman, she revealed her own identity to the world (Peter almost choked at that) and she’d spent a year in prison (they were all shocked at that, unsurprisingly). 

She was in the middle of building her life back step-by-step, focusing first on her dad and friends in the Mary Janes; then, maybe, she’d consider chasing that Sociology Major she’d planned for before the spider bite made all her plans go belly up. 

It was Ned (who was an adorable nerdy goofball in this reality, rather than a callous bully) who had the courage to voice the question hanging in the air: why had she revealed her own identity? What crime did she commit to go to prison?

Predictably, then, the discussion shifted toward the unspoken elephant(s) in the room: the lives of Gwen’s and Stacy’s Peter Parker(s).

Chapter Text

Gwen’s conversation with Stacy had been both productive and engaging.

While they shared identical looks, their lives weren’t the same at all - yet still, somehow, they followed some similar patterns.

Gwen was however still processing the fact that her alternate, superhero self had gone to prison, when another bombshell dropped.

“I didn’t commit any crime, but the world didn’t care: the media and the people had already found the perfect culprit for the murder of Peter Parker.” Stacy revealed, trying to keep an even tone of voice.

“What?!” The room erupted. 

Gwen couldn’t imagine a world where her Bugboy was dead, with her accused of having killed him!

Petey was the first to recover: “I-I died? The m-me in your reality, it is.” 

Gwen noticed MJ instinctively scooting closer to him.

Stacy nodded dejectedly. “Yes. You… My reality’s Peter did not have an easy life. He was bullied relentlessly . I was his best friend and I tried to help him any way I could but…” 

Stacy exhaled something between a sigh and a sob, shaking her head.

Gwen understood her perfectly: it did no one any good whenever she’d start sulking about bad memories, so she’d force herself to wade through the sea of emotions, vocalize them, let them all out so they couldn't fester.

“Eventually he developed a serum that… turned him into a monster, a huge lizard, and-”

“A… a lizard?!” Gwen was flabbergasted. Stacy’s Peter had been that monster that… that had killed her father?!

Stacy raised an eyebrow at that. “Yeah. You’re… familiar with that too, huh?”

“Except in my case, the Lizard was Dr. Curt Connors, my internship supervisor at Oscorp. He was obsessed about regrowing his lost arm, went crazy because of it. My Peter stopped him…”

“I sense a ‘but’ coming.”

Gwen exhaled. “ But… my dad sacrificed himself to save the day.”

“Well… shit. Gwen Stacy just can’t win, uh?” Stacy gloomily commented.  

“Seems so.” Gwen bitterly chuckled. “The multiverse has something against us, it’s obvious now.” 

The room went quiet for a bit again, everyone going into silent contemplation.

That had been the rhythm of that discussion, Gwen noticed: they’d talk animatedly about their current situation, then they’d switch to something more casual and cheery for a bit, before finally ending on a sad note when they’d walk into touchy subjects.

The cycle would’ve started again, but Stacy decided to break it. 

“You know what?” She began, directed at Gwen. 

Stacy’s sadness had already vanished from her face, replaced by a determined frown and a crooked smile.

“You’re right, the multiverse seems to want to screw Gwen Stacy over and have a laugh at our expense. Y’know what I say to that? Let’s screw it back over!”

She reached out with her hand, expecting Gwen to meet it with her own.

Gwen rolled her eyes with an amused smile at that - but humoured Stacy nonetheless.

Plus, she really wanted to give the finger to the multiverse too.

She met Stacy’s eyes and shook her hand fiercely. 

“Gwen Stacys stick together.” Gwen declared with one, resolute nod.

Stacy’s smile became wider. “Gwen Stacys stick together.” she repeated.

“We’ll get back home, and if you’re half the nerd I think you are, Gwen , you’re gonna find some way to let us stay in touch.”

“And if there’s no way, I’m going to just make one myself. Don’t worry, Stacy , you won’t miss me because I'll keep in contact somehow.”

“And who am I, chopped liver?” MJ interjected in faux-annoyance. “I might help too, you know. Don’t get all narcissistic, Gwen Stacy.” 

She smiled at both Gwen and Stacy.

Gwen felt warmth at the fact she’d regained her trust after last night’s mess.

“I’ll admit, I’m not half as good at Biology as Gwen is, but Physics? Pssh, I’ve got her beat.”

“Really? You, better than me at Physics? Wanna bet on that, Michelle Watson? ”

“Sucker’s bet, Maxine Stacy .”

The girls laughed merrily now.

Petey nodded happily, an idea brewing in his head.

“They’ve just bonded again, I think.” was Ned’s final comment.

For the first time, Gwen felt like they actually stood a chance.

Dealing with two Gwen Stacy had almost been as big of a headache as fighting against a black, gooey alien for Peter Parker.

Spider-Woman (nicknamed ‘Stacy’ by the other ‘Gwen’) had very quick spider-healing; her own symbiote (‘Venom’, she’d called it, why would she choose such an evil-sounding name? ‘Nom-Nom’ also sounded way too disturbingly cute for an alien monster) had likely helped too, he would bet.

Fortunately, she did neither pass nor freak out at seeing the other Gwen Stacy - the one that had entered their little ‘Nerd Club’ a month ago.

In fact, they… kinda seemed to hit it off very well together, joking and all.

Peter wondered if there was some lesson to be learned there, about being your own best friend or something.

After that, they laid it all out, just as they’d promised.

And boy , was it a lot . He soon felt bad for giving Gwen the cold shoulder that morning. 

Multiverse, matter displacement and string theory (he knew they were true!), heroes and villains ‘falling’ in his dimension (he knew the Vulture was off!), and Gwen’s middle name being ‘Maxine’ (OK, he didn’t know that).

Yeah, it was an absurd lot to take in, so they’d switch subjects from time to time to talk about cheerier stuff. 

But ‘cheery’ and ‘Spider-Man’ don’t go together very often, he knew from personal experience; he couldn’t help but offer his sympathies when he’d learned of the double loss of Gwen and Stacy: the first her father, the second her Peter.

Peter felt uncomfortable at the second, especially. 

He would never look at lizards again without remembering that another version of him had tried to turn into one.

Still, despite the heavy moments, he couldn’t help but feel like the day had gone very well when he saw the three girls banter and laugh with each other, promising they would concoct something that would allow them to make calls through dimensions.

He’d probably pitch in at some point, to be honest - such a project intrigued him and he had the brains for it too!

Hmm… I wonder if I can ask a favour of Mrs. Potts… if we had access to Mr. Stark’s projects, then maybe-  

“So, Gwen…” MJ started, her voice curious and teasing. “... We haven’t heard about your Peter.”

“Oh, God…” the girl sighed, but it was true - and now even Peter wanted to know about his other alternate self.

“Don’t ‘oh, God’ me now! You basically start daydreaming about him whenever the words ‘Peter’ and ‘Parker’ are uttered.”

“I certainly do not- ” Gwen tried to protest, but was interrupted by Stacy’s barely contained giggles.

“You certainly do .” MJ resumed. “At first I thought you were going to try something with my boyfriend here, and I’d have to gently put you down.” 

Peter felt a certain blush rising at hearing MJ being possessive of him.

“But now I see: you’ve got the hots for your Peter.”

MJ probably expected to fluster Gwen, Peter thought, but for once in her life, she was sorely wrong.

“Ah! First,” Gwen started with a cackle and a little smirk, “you shouldn’t have worried about me snatching Petey here away from you. I like my version better, thanks.” 

Peter didn’t know whether to feel relieved or insulted at the admission, really.

“Second, we’re way past the ‘having the hots’ stage and practically bolted into third base. And when I come back, I’m going to make sure we reach the fourth too. I might even give you some pointers about that whenever we figure out the inter-dimensional phone thing.”

Stacy was practically belly-laughing now, pointing at MJ’s mock-enraged frown.

Michelle was forced to concede: “Hmm… maybe you’re right. You’re too much into the ‘daddy’s little angel’ bit to sully your reputation in any shape. Snatching boyfriends sounds more like a thing Stacy would be into, anyway.”

Stacy fake-gasped. 

“That’s rich , coming from the alternate version of Em Jay! You know how many hearts she’s broken? You can rest easy, I’m not a boyfriend-snatcher… though I might just make an exception because of the insult, Michelle Watson .” 

Stacy had the gall to wink, once at Peter, the other at Ned, for good measure. Both went red, looking away.

“You’re on thin ice, Maxine 2. I’ve got the arachnicide ready.” MJ mimicked having a spray bottle on her hands, barely able to control the smile spreading on her face. Soon after, she and the other girls were laughing again.

This day was going fantastically better than Peter expected.

Which is why, of course, Fate decided to play one little trick to bring them all back to reality: the door to the bedroom suddenly opened, nary a second of warning from his spider-sense, and the girls went immediately silent.

“-back! We have brought some food from-”

“-can hear you’re having fun judging by the laugh-”

MJ’s parents had come back, her mother had entered the room. Peter was baffled at their earliness initially, until he checked the time, and noticed it was midday already! Time had really flown by.

“Hello, dear. You’ve… brought a new friend…?” 

Oh no. MJ’s parents were looking at the two identical Gwens, eyes bouncing back and forth between the two, a frown taking shape on her face.

They needed to salvage the situation fast, maybe they could share a little about-

“We’re twins!” Gwen and Stacy answered at the same time.

“Oh. Oh! I see! I didn’t know - sorry, I was confused for a moment!” Mrs. Jones laughed.

“She’s Maxine .” Stacy’s eyebrow shot up at that. 

“She was supposed to come over yesterday, but she’s a forgetful one, this twin of mine.” Gwen made up, perfectly stepping into the role of the exasperated sister. She earned a glare from Stacy, which made the overall performance even more genuine. 

MJ couldn’t help but chuckle.

“No, no, don’t worry, dears. It was just unexpected.” Mrs. Jones assured.

“Sorry for interrupting your discussion - I rarely hear Michelle laughing like that those days, so I’ll let you get back to it. Just be ready for lunch in 30 minutes, OK?”

“Fine, mum.”

“Yes, Mrs. Jones.”

The door closed again, and everyone sighed in relief at the close call.

“Alright.” Peter took the floor, his tone quieter now that her girlfriend’s parents were home. 

“We need to wrap this up, so let’s skip to the final question, shall we?”

Everyone nodded.

“You said you didn’t know how you were transported here… I’m guessing you don’t have any idea how to go back, then?”

Gwen shook her head dejectedly, while Stacy shrugged.

“Sorry, Peter. We’ll probably have to ask for help from some of the other superheroes of this world, won't we?” deduced Gwen.

“Likely.” Peter sighed. Hmm… Who could help fix this mess?

“Yep… unless you can conjure up a portal home, I guess we’ll need to meet the other supes.” Stacy remarked.

“Right… wait.” Peter’s internal lightbulb turned on. 

“Portals! Yes! You’re a genius , Gwen! Er-Stacy! Spider-Woman!”

Stacy frowned, confused. 

“O-okaaay? Thanks? Wait, you can conjure up portals?”

“Not me, no.” Peter shook his head. “But Dr. Strange can.”

“Dr. Who? ” Both Gwens chorused in unison.

“We’ll go in the afternoon, I’ll tell you on the way.” Peter reassured them. 

“Now, I don’t know about you, but I’m absolutely starving , and my spider-sense of smell is torturing me with what MJ’s mom is cooking.”

The cloudy, dreary greyness of the morning had given way to a pleasantly warm and sunny afternoon.

Gwen smiled: it was as if the weather itself had cheered up after Stacy had been forcibly inducted into Midtown School’s ‘Nerd Club’, even though she hadn’t even been in there.

Stacy even accepted Ned’s offer to go over his house one day and look at his Lego Spider-Man collection - after she was taught what Legos were in the first place (many objects had a different name in her reality, apparently).

A few hours after a refreshing lunch, Petey was leading the five of them on a little New York trip on the way to New York’s Sanctum Sanctorum under the tutelage of Doctor Stephen Strange.

“Judging by the grandiose name of the place, I take it the guy’s kinda full of himself?” Stacy posited.

Petey chuckled at the question, but answered: “He’s a great guy, seriously. He fought in the battle against Thanos, too!”

“And that made his head even bigger, probably.” MJ retorted.

Ned began giving them all a run-down of Dr. Strange’s credentials and capabilities (he had to have an incredible memory to know all these superhero facts) but Gwen couldn’t really get over one word he kept using.

“OK, slow down, Ned: what do you mean by ‘magic’ , exactly? Is he, like, a magician? An illusionist?” Gwen had to ask.

“No, he’s… a sorcerer.” He shrugged.

“A… sorcerer. We’re talking about actual magic?”

Ned looked at MJ who looked at Peter who looked at them both. 

Then the trio looked back at the two Gwens and merely answered: “Yes.”

Yeah, no. I’m going with Arthur C. Clarke on this one.

Eventually, they reached 177A Bleecker Street: the building before them seemed to be a run of the mill, turn-of-the-century structure; elegant and with an interesting history, to be sure, but hardly… magicky .

The only extravagant detail on its facade was a round window with four, swooping lines on it.

Petey went for the doorbell, but the blue door opened on its own. Now, that’s more like it.

A sudden, strong gust of chilly wind came out of the open entrance, making Gwen and MJ gasp.

They ventured inside, the biting cold greeting them, puffs of hot air escaping their mouths and… the entire room was covered in snow - not artificial, but honest-to-god frozen H2O! - from the floor to the stairs, even the candelabra hanging from the ceiling!  

Now that’s definitely like it… Gwen had to concede.

“Talk about a chilly welcome.” Stacy quipped, but even she was impressed.

Boots crunching through the thick layer of snow, Peter advanced into the vast entrance hall.

Gwen couldn’t help but notice how larger the building seemed to be on the inside than what it looked from the outside. 

She tried to wrack her brains about a plausible, scientific explanation about that until her eyes fell on a pair of… housekeepers(?), a taller man and a shorter woman, bundled up in overcoats, silently shoveling snow off the floor and into large buckets.

Their movements were perfectly synchronized.

“U-uhm, hi!” Petey made their presence known.

The pair looked up at him, in perfect synchronization, wearing the same identical look. They didn’t utter a word.

Okay, we’ve crossed the threshold from ‘magicky’ into ‘creepy’ now.

“I-I’d, uh…” MJ gave him a little shove. 

“Right- I’m Peter Parker, and uh… we’re looking for Dr. Strange.” Petey attempted to hide his puzzlement at… well, everything in front of them. 

A man-sized, swirling portal of some unspecified yellow energy suddenly appeared right before the stairs, making everyone - except Petey and the housekeepers - gasp.

“What the hell…?” Stacy eloquently vocalized the words Gwen was thinking at that moment.

“Hey! Argh, the youths these days, no respect for the sanctity of such a place…” A disembodied voice came from the portal. Soon after, a man in a fur coat stepped out of it, carrying two briefcases, which he promptly left on the ground near the stairs.

“Wait there for just a second: you don’t want to slip and we don’t have liability insurance.” He seemed in a great hurry for some reason. 

“I just need to take care of this mess and then I’ll tend to you, OK? Hey, you two!” He pointed at the two housekeepers, who simply gazed back at him with an emotionless look. “No one said to stop shoveling! Come on, chop chop!” 

The pair went back to their duty, still in perfect sync.

“Is this all for a holiday party?” Peter enquired, his eyes scanning the hall from top to bottom, while the… sorcerer still kept carrying briefcases and gadgets from the portal to the room they currently were standing in.

“No - one of the rotunda gateways connects to Siberia. The blizzard blasted through. Those monthly maintenance spells must’ve failed…” He explained with a sigh. Gateways to Siberia…?  

Gwen forced herself to stop thinking about magic and its plausibility.

If she needed to be conjured out of a magician’s hat to reunite with her Bugboy, she’d do it without a second thought.

The portal closed behind the wizard, who lowered his fur cap. 

“I’m Wong, Sorcerer Supreme. Now, what are you kids doing here?”

“Right… I’m Spider-Man, sir. We’ve-”

“Wait, who?”

“Uh… Spider-Man? We… fought in the battle against Thanos, remember?” Peter mimicked shooting his webs.

Wong narrowed his eyes at him for a few seconds, while he scoured his own mind. “Hmm. Hmm! Ah, yes, yes!” It finally dawned upon him. “The kid with that silly red and blue costume, yes.” 

“I mean it’s colorful, but I wouldn’t call it-”

“It is kind of tacky.”

“What, you think you're cooler and edgier in the black and white, Stacy?”

“Sorry for my memory failing me for a few seconds.” Wong interrupted the playful banter between the two Spider-heroes. “It's been quite difficult juggling between my duties as Sorcerer Supreme and taking care of this Sanctum while Dr. Strange is absent.”

“Dr. Strange isn’t here?” 

“No, he’s tending to an important duty - which is why I have to step in for him with the New York Sanctum. He’s been out for a week now.”

Great. Would’ve been too easy to get back home now, wouldn’t it?

“He hasn’t warned me of his return yet. Not that I could expect anything else, of course. Dealing with multiverse-spanning problems is a headache, and you get bogged down with no outside communication quite easily.”

Wait. “Did you just say… ‘ multiverse -spanning problems’?” Gwen asked. The entire group had perked up at that bit.

“… Yes, I did. If you don’t know or you’re interest in the subject, I can point you to the library, I really need to-”

“Thank you, sir, but no, we know the subject, it’s just… we’ve got a multiverse-spanning problem of our own too.” 

The Sorcerer Supreme raised a single eyebrow, as if silently commanding Petey to explain.

Petey struggled for words, but Stacy came to his help: grabbing Gwen’s shoulder, she brought the both of them right under Wong’s nose. 

“We two are a multiverse-spanning problem.”

“And not just us two.” Gwen added. We’ve brought villains here too, after all.

The Sorcerer supreme raised the other eyebrow, and now looked wide-eyed at them, taking notice of Gwen and Stacy’s identical faces.

“And no, we’re not twins.” Stacy made clear. “We’re actually from different realities.”

Wong was difficult to convince, however: he thought the ‘kids’ were pulling a prank on him - hell, he even threatened to magic-portal them out of the door!

The Sorcerer Supreme explained that a Multiverse Junction, as he’d called it, would’ve been easily detected by any of the three Sanctums on Earth, and none of his instruments had picked up any disturbance of that kind in centuries .

Plus, if they’d really come from alternate realities, their very being should’ve dissolved in a matter of weeks (atoms didn’t like being in other dimensions, he’d basically explained using magicky terms), and yet they’d been here for months.

“Your equipment is faulty then!” Gwen snapped at him. 

“Or your theory about us dissolving is wrong! Why the hell would we come here to waste your time?”

From the corner of her eye she could see Peter silently begging her to stop, but she was on a roll.

“Y’know, I don't know about you sorcerers, but I was taught to test a hypothesis before dismissing it.”

Her friends (even Stacy!) gasped at that, looking worriedly back at Wong.

She knew she was being disrespectful right now, and that their claims probably sounded outrageous to him, but still: she was irked at the fact that their truthful accounts were being ignored like that.

The Sorcerer Supreme silently walked over to her, straight back and stern gaze. Gwen swallowed. Did I fuck this up for us?

After a few, tense seconds where Gwen was starting to fear she’d be turned into a newt, Wong shook his head with a chuckle. 

“Kids… Alright then. Let’s go test this hypothesis .”

She didn’t fuck it up for them.

Wong brought them into another, smaller, dustier room and started casting spells, speaking in ancient tongues and analyzing the Stacy girls with some shiny magicky baubles.

Gwen would’ve liked to act smug, to say that she, a science-minded girl, had been right and he, the Sorcerer Supreme, had been wrong.

But the bewildered look on Wong’s face, his head shaking in denial, his going back and forth, his multiple: “No, no, how’s it even… how can it be?” quickly made her forget the silly confrontation they’d had before.

In fact, she - and the others - were extremely worried.

Peter couldn’t stand silent anymore: “Sir, what's going on? What happened? What’s wrong?!”

“It’s unprecedented, as far as I know. I need to check the main archives, maybe…”

“Sir?!” Peter pleaded again.

“You two,” he was referring to Gwen and Stacy, “are definitely from another dimension. Here, for simplicity I’ll use the designation created by our… colleagues ,” Wong rolled his eyes for some reason, “at the… Spider-Society .” A cryptic sigh came from his mouth.

“Spider- what ?” Asked both Peter and Stacy in unison.

“Never mind that. You,” he pointed at Gwen, “are from Earth-120703.” 

Gwen thought she shouldn’t have been amazed at the fact there were hundreds of thousands of alternate-Earths in an infinite multiverse, but she felt that way regardless.

“While you,” he aimed his finger at Stacy, “are from Earth-4422.”

“Cool number, I guess.” Stacy shrugged, trying to mask her anxiousness.

“ This is Earth-199999. Both of you should’ve de-materialized into non-existence already. But you didn’t , and… we don’t know how or why. There are no records of similar events that come to my mind. I’ll need to consult the Master Library of the Mystic Arts.” 

Gwen didn’t know what to even feel at that revelation - and neither did the others, judging by their looks.

Should she feel relieved that she and Stacy had survived this long and hadn't fizzled out of existence? Or should she be worried that, eventually, if they didn’t return to their home-dimensions, some even greater, never-seen-before calamity would befall them?

“I mean, does it even matter?” Stacy posited the question, ending Gwen’s reveries. “If you can bring us back home, that is.”

Wong’s grave expression wasn’t too comforting. “It might. Even still, while there is a way to bring you back to your respective reality…”, everyone’s eyes brightened at that, “… it requires an object I do not have in my possession.”

Everyone deflated at that. “The Macchina di Kadavus is stored in a pocket dimension whose access is known only to Dr. Strange himself. We’ll have to wait for his return before casting the necessary spells.”

“And we don’t know when the esteemed Doctor will come back from his little trip. Fan-tastic. ” Stacy sighed.

Wong nodded apologetically.

“They are… not the only ones that have come here from their dimension, sir.” Peter meekly added.

“There are more?!”

“Yes, sir. And they’re not… cooperating individuals.”

“ Fan-tastic .” Wong’s hands went to his head to try and stop the rapidly rising headache.

Gwen exhaled, her nerves were failing her. 

I should have stayed back, stuck to that car by my webbed hand that night, shouldn’t I? But if I did, then Electro would’ve fried my boyfriend. 

So… no, I shouldn’t. And I didn’t. I would have never forgiven myself if I’d lost him without even attempting to help. 

This huge mess I’ve gotten myself into now is still miles better than the alternative.

They’d still had a chance, Gwen reminded herself. They’d just need to wait for Dr. Strange to come back.