Chapter Text
When Peter told Steven to let the world forget him, he thought: why not, I’ve got nothing to lose, they’re better off without me. He didn’t think it would mean his documentation would go too, and he especially didn’t think the spell would keep erasing him.
Now, almost a year after the battle at the Statue of Liberty, he doesn’t think he can go on like this. He doesn’t think he can keep looking at people he knows, friends family and having them look through him. He doesn’t think he can stand seeing another person's gaze gloss over as they forget him not even ten minutes into knowing him. He doesn’t think he can go on.
At first it was novel, it would happen and Peter would scoff and roll his eyes and walk away, but now it’s like a piece of his soul goes every time someone asks him his name half way through a conversation when he knows, he knows he told them a minute ago.
So he threw himself into work, into Spider-Man. He patrolled more, he picked up extra shifts, he eagerly subbed in for his coworkers and when that wasn’t enough, he picked up hobbies. He started carrying his camera around all the time, learned to cook properly, heck he even learned to hack for goodness sake, but nothing was enough. Not even exhaustion could keep the nightmares at bay, and no amount of work could erase the growing hole of nothingness the loneliness was carving in his ribs.
He started fading, losing more and more of himself with each passing day until it felt as if the spell was turning inward, forcing himself to forget who Peter Benjamin Parker was. Those nights, his thoughts brought him to the only place that proved he was real: the cemetery. Where in the cold clay of Queen’s earth stood the stones that still bore witness to his existence: Richard and Mary Parker, beloved parents. Benjamin Parker, beloved uncle. May’s grave didn’t disclose her as an aunt, She had been buried after the spell.
Today was a sorrowful day, the kind accompanied by a dreadful cold and an ever present risk of rain. Peter stood in front of his parents' graves, both feet planted on the soft ground and eyes cast down as his hand tentatively brushed the surface of the headstone, movements slow and anxious as if he feared they, two, would forget him.
His spider sense hummed faintly as footsteps grew louder behind him, but Peter ignored them. He realized he probably shouldn’t have when a familiar voice spoke out to him.
“You’re a difficult person to track down Spider-Man.”
Said Steven Dr Strange. Peter simply hummed in acknowledgment.
“Listen, I don’t know what it is you did, but there is a multiversal anomaly linked to your existence and it is tearing at the very fibers of the world.”
Peter finally turned around to face the doctor (ex-doctor? Peter didn’t think he still had a license) and took in the creasing of his eyebrows. He could tell Dr Strange had bad news for him, Tony always had that same crease when he did. Peter just hummed again, he didn’t have an answer, not really.
“I…”
Strange hesitated, and Peter heard him mutter something under his breath, it sounded vaguely like:“Christ he’s just a kid”.
“I have to send you to a different universe, one where you never existed”
Peter realized he probably should have panicked, or cried, hell maybe even hit Strange out of anger, but all he felt was tired, because of course this is the kind of shit Parker Luck would give him.
“Can I pack?”
Strange gave him a curt nod before telling him to meet at the sanctum in two hours time.
Peter doesn’t remember getting home to his apartment but it must have happened since the next thing he knows he’s sitting on the floor of his closet holding his spider suit like it holds the secrets of the universe. For the first time in what might be months, Peter actually thinks he might feel something other than crushing loneliness or stubborn numbness, he actually feels the deep aching sadness of leaving his home. Not the shoebox apartment he’s living in now, but New York City. His city, spider-man’s city. He doesn’t know how long he spent there crying but when Karen gently urges him to the sanctum, it feels too soon. And so he drags his feet, walking as slowly as he can justify, trying to savoir whatever time he has left in this place, trying to memorize any and everything he sees, from the tall buildings to the speeding cars to the passing people, he notes the birds and the clouds, he notes the phone conversations and the haggling coming from the street level stores, he notes the faces of strangers and swears to remember them like they were family, and yet all too soon he is face to face with the doors of Dr Strange’s abode.
He gently pushes the door open, walking in to meet with a grim looking Strange and a woman he’s never met. She introduces herself as America, a hero with the ability to travel the multiverse. Peter doesn’t tell her his name.
She opens a portal for him, smiling tightly but not unkindly as she wishes him good luck, and Peter barely takes the time to say goodbye before he’s walking through, never to come back again.