Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

He didn’t want things to end this way. 

Miles didn’t want to die.

The glow of purple by his left eye, the heavy chains tearing away at the suit and grafting into his skin and into bruises. The odd lines of shadows and eerily two-toned colours, the blood pouring out of claw marks and cuts, the chaotic buzzing ringing through every atom in his body.

The electricity building between his finger and the chains holding him, a tiny cyan glow amidst the deep blues and reds and purple.

The cold glare of his uncle, calculating and deadly, analyzing every twitch of his muscle, every flinch Miles’ made.

The mirror image of his own eyes, dark and quiet, ready for the order to kill him.

Miles let the electricity in his hands begin to build, as the powered gauntlet whirred to life next to his head, a sharp, high-pitched ring that ripped into his eardrum.

A moment of uneasy silence passed, the world holding its breath and awaiting someone to do something.

Miles had half a mind to let the venom shock go now, but there wasn't enough energy to do any real damage yet. He wasn't sure if he would have enough time between the sounds of the gauntlet powering up and his opposite letting the power go to build that electricity.

The whirring of the Prowler's gauntlet had turned to a quiet roar, buzzing loudly in Miles' ear.

Now, there's enough, we can release it now-

Uncle Aaron - or, Not-Uncle Aaron - held up a hand. Miles barely saw it out of the corner of his eye, electricity still building in his hand, still keeping his gaze level with the other Miles.

“Hold it,” he said coldly. “Miles. Back up a moment.”

The other Miles shot the man a sideways glance, raising an eyebrow at him that he recognized as one of his own curious expressions. Admittedly, he was making the same face - why was he telling the Prowler to back off?

The Prowler. Miles couldn’t think of those words without seeing his uncle’s face.

It didn’t help that there was someone walking up in front of him wearing it.

His own eyes shifted back to him, the curiosity fading out as Other-Miles focused back on him. Miles shifted his attention back to the electricity in his hand, taking much more energy than he had at this point.

"Now, Miles." There was a strange… urgency in Not-Aaron's voice. Like he knew something neither of the Miles' did.

Other-Miles took a few steps back, letting Not-Aaron take the lead. Miles pulled back a little bit, trying not to look at the sharp, dark shadows that rested under his uncle’s eyes, that highlighted every sharp angle. Keen eyes landed on his hand, the one getting ready to conduct an unholy amount of electricity.

Miles shrunk back, a lower shimmer of unease rippling through his thoughts. Surely his uncle - not his uncle, not his uncle - could see something there. His hand was stinging with the feeling of the venom shock flowing through it, and It was actually starting to hurt.

Exactly the way it hurt when he'd freed himself from the Spider Society's containment device.

Miles flinched as Not-Aaron took another step forward, trying to keep away the thoughts, the memories, everything, so that he could focus, so that his control didn't slip-

A hand harshly grabbed his wrist, and the panic that had been simmering under the surface for so long, panic Miles had just barely been containing for hours, violently snapped up to the forefront of his mind like a snake rearing its head to strike.

“NO!” he shrieked, trying to pull his hand away from his Not-Uncle’s, straining violently against the chains. They were shredding his suit to bits, ripping into his skin and making him bleed even more.

And in the sudden rush of panic, the concentration directed toward maintaining the electricity in his nerves shattered completely.

A sharp pinch, before pain tore through his arm and blinded his mind to anything and everything around him. Miles screamed, thrashing against the chains and against the punching bag he was bound to, trying desperately to get away from it even as pain kept tearing into him. He heard footsteps backing away, but whoever had grabbed his wrist didn't flinch.

And somehow, that wasn’t the worst of it.

He could have only wished that was the worst.

The sudden warping, twisting, utterly wrong feeling of a glitch shot through his body, and every tiny prick of pain that had been tearing him apart, every tiny hurt that had built up, tripled in that moment and sent him reeling.

Somewhere in front of him, there was shouting, and the pressure around his wrist vanished.

Miles couldn’t feel anything beyond the pain, couldn't see anything from how tightly his eyes were screwed shut, couldn’t hear much beyond his own screams.

And yet, he could feel how every atom in his body seemed to be pulling in every direction at once, displacing everything in and on Miles' body. He could feel when the pain of the shock shifted into places it wasn't supposed to be, when his skin tried and failed to pull itself to pieces, when his nerves jumbled with organs they definitely weren't supposed to be touching and when his bones grated against themselves trying to move into places they really were not supposed to go.

Something undid the chains, and he fell sideways, landing painfully on the floor, still screaming and trying to tear himself away from whatever might still be restraining him.

The glitch slowly faded out, settling back into a chaotic buzz of background noise in his body, and suddenly breathing was painful, his arm felt like it was being pressed into itself, his shoulder and the bleeding cuts all over Miles' face were mixing with tears he hadn’t even realized he was crying.

A clawed hand landed on his shoulder, and panic swelled within him again as the image of Miguel vividly flashed behind his eyes.

“NO!” he yelled again, forcing himself to pull away as the claws dug into his shoulder. “NO, NO NO NO, PLEASE, PLEASE, JUST LEAVE ME ALONE, LET ME HELP HIM, PLEASE!”

The clawed hand pulled back, and Miles scrambled away, his freshly burned hand flashing with pain as he backed into a desk. He couldn't breathe, the air being too thick and barely moving through his lungs, it hurt to breathe-

Tears were pouring down Miles' face in rivers as he scrambled out of the blue light and into a darker corner of the room, more sharp pinches ripping through his arm with every movement. Miles was crying, his thoughts a hurricane of hellsent memories. He couldn't stop whispering under his breath, unsure of who he was talking to but knowing it wasn't himself.

More talking echoed from somewhere else in the room, the voices of the others, in hushed whispers that Miles could barely hear through his own hiccupping sobs and whispering that grated through his throat.

A new presence appeared in the room, one that Miles hadn't noticed before. They were talking, but he couldn’t hear them over his own heartbeat pounding in his ears.

Because this presence was one that set off Miles’ Spider-sense.

There was another Spider. Here, in this strange and unfamiliar dimension, one who had probably seen Miles panicking and had probably seen his suit.

He could catch their Spider-sense calling back to his own, a new presence that he didn't recognize. Half of his panic-ridden mind was thankful - maybe this Spider didn't know who he was - while the other half only started to panic worse.

He couldn’t breathe, everything hurt, the world was starting to fade in and out of focus and his head felt like it was both too heavy and too light, he couldn’t fucking breathe-

Miles felt the warping feeling again, and tried to brace himself for another glitch, but something clamped around his wrist and jolted him out of the haze in his mind.

“DON’T TOUCH ME!” Miles screamed, but the warping feeling faded away this time instead of following up into a glitch. Nevertheless, he swatted whoever it was away with his burned hand, which only resulted in the pain flashing through him again and making the light-headed feeling so much worse.

“Hey, hey, kiddo,” a voice said, incredibly familiar but he knew it wasn’t him. “Quit struggling, you're gonna fuck up those injuries way worse than they already are.”

“Leave me alone,” Miles whimpered, his voice shaky and hoarse. He buried his head between his knees, trying to get enough air to make his limbs feel normal again. “You’re not him. You’re not him, he’s dead, he’s been dead for two years, please, just let me go… you can’t be real, you can’t be real, he’s dead-”

“Kid,” Not-Aaron said cautiously, and Miles flinched away from him, curling up on himself as much as possible, reaching for him carefully. “I don’t know what the hell happened-”

“LEAVE ME ALONE!” he shrieked, pulling as far away from Not-Aaron as he could. His back was to the wall, he was cornered, this was bad, bad bad ba d -

“Okay, Aaron, just back off and give him a second,” an unfamiliar voice hissed. “Moon-brain, go get the medical kits.”

“Don’t call me that. And really? You're sure we can fix… all of those injuries?”

“Just do it, you jackass. I’ve got an idea of what happened to him, but it’s… really not painting a pretty picture.”

The Not-Aaron backed away from him, and someone new took his place. Their colours stood out in sharp contrast to the rest of the harsh shadows and overly saturated colours, being sketchy and dimmer than the rest of the world.

A familiar mask met his eyes - white eyes, spiderweb patterns, shaded in deep purples and blacks. It was not just two eyes in the mask - there were four, and the mask was hooded like hers.

Miles’ breathing started to fall into that erratic, painful pattern, but the strange Spider pulled off the mask revealing a person with long black hair in a braid, with a white streak in it, and four eyes on their face. All of them were blinking at him in concern. 

He pulled away, still half-lost in the panic, trying to breathe, breathe, brea th e, damm i t-

“Hey, hey, look, look,” they said carefully, voice low and raising their left wrist for him to see. “I’m not with him. I promise, we're not gonna hurt you.”

Miles’ eyes flicked to it, expecting to see smooth silver and glowing orange, but what met his eyes instead was a vastly different design. It was incredibly chaotic looking, with bits and pieces looking as though they were pulled directly from another world. Golden flecks phased through bright green and mixed with dim blues, a makeshift screen locked somewhere in the middle of it all.

The chaotic movement of the colours reminded him of Hobie.

The reminder made his tears pour out faster.

“Oi, new guy, listen to me,” the Spider whispered, the volume of the voice a lot quieter than anything else nearby. “Save the tears of whatever emotion you’re feeling for later, you’re losing a shit ton of blood and you're gonna need whatever hydration you have til we can fix it.”

They scooted forward cautiously, and Miles flinched away from their hand.

He never did that.

But something in Miles' panic-addled brain told him to keep away.

“Okay, yep, understood, no touching,” they said, pulling their hand back in a sharp motion that made him flinch again. “I’m gonna have to if you want to stop bleeding, though. Um… okay, how about this? My name is Casey Parker. What’s your name?”

Miles froze, trying to get the words out of his brain and out of his mouth. Everything was sluggish and painful and it hurt to think. Talking almost was completely out of the damn question, but he had to try. 

“I’m… I’m Miles Morales,” he whispered, the words physically paining him to speak, grating out of his closed throat. “What… what’s going on?”

Part of him really wanted to know.

The rest of him really, really didn't. Two really's.

“My buddy Aaron found you,” Casey explained, jabbing a thumb behind him, “lurking in his apartment and talking crazy to your mother from another dimension. Him and yourself from this world decided you were gonna be a problem, so they ever so graciously knocked you out and tied you up so we could figure out what to do with you before you ran off and did something stupid. All the new Spiders do something dumb when they get here."

“What does that mean- augh, fuck!” Miles cut himself off as he curled in on himself, the pain beginning to take hold in all of his injuries. The adrenaline was wearing off and pain was beginning to set in in places he hadn’t even realized he was injured.

Casey cringed, his eyes turned up like he knew how that felt. “Yeah, and that’s why I sent your other self to go get the med-kit. Also why I’m probably gonna need to make physical contact with you at some point, so… yeah, sorry in advance about that.”

Miles shook his head, trying to keep his thoughts in order, which really didn’t help the light-headedness thing, and he brought a hand up to cover his face. Unfortunately, it was the hand that had been burned, and the contact with his burnt skin sent more pain through him, joining the symphony of everything else that hurt. Miles hissed and pulled it away, shaking as he did so.

God, Miles managed to think, maybe I should just pass out and get it over with.

“Hey, don’t pass out, stupid,” Casey snapped suddenly, snapping his fingers in front of Miles’ face like he’d read his mind. He flinched at the loud sound, but this time, Casey didn’t seem to care too much about the reaction.

Instead, the Spider twisted to look at Not-Aaron, who was watching the situation unfold with an expression so familiar that Miles had to look away. “Aaron, can you call the others? The ones who aren't on patrol right now. We’re probably gonna have to cart his ass out of here. I’d say sorry about the floor, but at this rate bloodstains are pretty routine.”

“Yeah, and you're cleaning it this time, Parker. You want me to call Rowan too?”

“Nah, they’re still pretty freaked out. Don’t wanna panic 'em- oi, I said stay awake, you moron.”

Miles blinked back awake, trying to keep his focus on Casey’s face. His brain felt like it was wrapped in wool and was maybe floating away, so could he sleep? 

That would be nicer than the pain.

It would be nicer than the memories leaking in and out of his head.

Casey and Not-Aaron went back to talking, and Miles drew further in on himself, trying to stave off the cold dripping through his limbs and creeping through his head like frostbite.

The memories were fresh. They carved through his thoughts like claws through flesh, each one gouging deep into Miles' heart as they replayed in his mind over and over.

“You’re a mistake!”

“YOU’RE THE ORIGINAL ANOMALY! YOU WERE NEVER MEANT TO EXIST!”

“I didn’t know… how to tell you.”

"I created you… and you created me."

Miles curled in on himself, only earning him more jolts of pain as tears ran down his face again, putting his hands up on his shoulders and digging them in. He could barely believe that so much had happened in so little time.

All of the people he’d trusted had hurt him. Betrayed him.

They hadn’t told him something as vital as why they wouldn’t visit him. Why he wasn’t allowed to join them in the Spider Society. Why everyone was so nervous and jittery around him, why everyone knew his name but he knew none of theirs.

How much had they kept from him?

How much had Gwen kept from him?

“Miles? Miles, dude, get your fingers out of the claw marks, you’ll infect them! Can I pull your hands away?”

Casey was talking to him. There was still a situation going on outside.

He forced himself out of his brain, even though it hurt to do so, and very carefully nodded.  

Careful hands, barely brushing against his suit, pulled his hands away and out of the claw marks on his body. He winced, still crying, as flashes of pain tore through his shoulder.

There was blood on his hands now. It was still warm.

“Miles,” Casey whispered. “Look, we’re gonna do our best to help you. I can’t promise everything’s gonna be okay, but we’ll get you fixed up. Can you try telling me what happened? Doesn’t have to be whole sentences, it can just be a few words.”

Miles blinked tearily at Casey, whose expression was nothing but pure concern and worry. There was something dark behind his eyes, but Miles was too lightheaded to process it.

“A… anomaly,” he tried, the word dragging out of his mouth like a trash bag on the sidewalk. “Spider Society… uh…”

His head was pounding, and a tiny feeling of pins and needles started up in his hands and feet, spreading quickly up his arms and legs. Casey’s face had only darkened at his words, and he could hear the other two muttering something in the background.

There was no way Miles was gonna be able to stay conscious long enough to say anything more - he’d been knocked out enough times to know when he was definitely gonna pass out.

Miles felt himself slumping, and distantly heard Casey shouting something back at the others while trying to keep him upright.

His last thoughts were of Gwen’s horrified face, Miguel’s angry screaming, his mother’s worried eyes, his dad’s tired smile, the darkened collider room.

They all swirled together into a melting pot of distorted faces, and he was out cold.

Chapter Text

At some point, Miles drifted back into consciousness.

It was at that same point that he immediately regretted it.

Miles felt too cold and shivery and too hot and immobile all at the same time. It felt incredibly hard to breathe, air hitching in his throat and feeling like it had been scraped raw.

Oh, you've gotta be kidding me.

He shifted around, testing out his limbs to make sure they all still worked. It would really suck if he'd broken somethimg important. Even with the advanced healing factor his spider bite had given him, a broken bone still took longer than he'd like to heal.

Nothing actually seemed to be broken, which was the good news. The bad news was that he was half-covered in bandages, his ribs felt pretty solidly bruised, and his shoulder hurt like hell.

For a moment, his brain was too foggy to remember why his shoulder hurt, or why he felt like he'd caught a really bad cold, or why he was currently drowning in heavy things laying on top of him.

Then that moment passed, and Miles' eyes shot open as memory came rushing back.

The chase. The train. Dropping into the wrong dimension. Getting tied up in a weird room with his other self and another Aaron and another Spider.

He blinked quickly, trying to shake off any lingering exhaustion. Although, really that was insanely hard to do when everything about his brain felt sluggish and weird.

The ceiling above him was dosed in bright shades of purple, lit by tiny glow-in-the-dark stars and violet LEDs. Miles had never seen anything that could glow in the dark in that particular shade of purple - it looked closer to reddish purple than anything. He knew there was a name for it, but his brain hurt too much to even bother trying to dredge up the memory. As his awareness kept returning, Miles realized he was laid on a couch, covered in blankets. He could barely comprehend how someone casually got those in their apartment, let alone all the way across the ceiling.

A soft shifting sound from his left made him freeze.

There was someone sitting next to him, on the couch he was laying on, under a bunch of heavy blankets. He still didn't know where he was, which was a pretty big problem.

He tilted his head over to see who was sitting next to him, although his head was pounding and he felt like shit.

He was met with a mirror image of his own face, staring at him in surprise.

If Miles hadn’t felt like he would have collapsed into dust if he moved, he would have absolutely tried to scramble away. And maybe throw something at himself. Perhaps even run out the room to try and get the hell out of here.

But unfortunately for Miles, he did in fact feel like he would collapse into dust if he moved too much, so none of those options were really… well, options.

The two blinked at each other in silence for a second, before Miles rolled his head back on the pillow with a tired groan. He shivered, trying to warm up despite the mass of blankets on top of him. He tried to move the rest of his body, but a dull throb of pain stopped him and he muttered a few curses under his breath.

The other him snorted as he did so, and Miles could feel his stare.

“Guess somebody’s not so prone to zapping people when he’s down with the sickness?”

“Fuck off,” Miles muttered, and immediately regretting that when the sound of his own voice sounded like someone had put his vocal cords through a paper shredder.

Other Miles snorted again. “I dunno what about your immune system got fucked on arrival, but you caught a cold after Case and Aura patched you up and went down pretty much instantly. Probably something about interdimensional diseases your body ain’t used to.”

Miles sighed, although currently breathing felt like inhaling cold water after eating something minty in freezing weather. “Can I go one fucking day without getting screwed over by something, universe?”

“Apparently not,” Other Miles replied, while Miles coughed violently at the ceiling. “According to Cyberbyte, you’re luckier than some other kids who have dropped through here. Sometimes colds knock ‘em out for longer than you, and sometimes they get something worse than just a cold.”

Miles turned his head over again, meeting the eyes of his near mirror image. His own eyes narrowed slightly, while the other’s were slightly crinkled up in a way that suggested he didn’t smile often.

“Hold up… didn’t you knock me out?”

Other Miles’ grin widened. “Guilty as charged.”

“Fuck you,” Miles muttered again, wincing as he did so. “My brain feels floaty, man.”

His other self rolled his eyes, clearly trying to hold back laughter. “Yeah, that’s what happens when you get sick. And dehydrated.”

Miles narrowed his eyes again, trying to get a read on him through the haze in his brain. “You’re being weirdly nice for someone who knocked me out and was probably gonna kill me earlier.”

“Had to make you believe I was gonna do it,” Other Miles explained. “Always need to check that you’re not in this dimension because of… well, because of something.”

“So you guys aren’t gonna actually kill me?” Miles asked. “Or tell me I’m crazy, or hurt me, or-”

A hand landed on his shoulder, cautiously, and the shock in the other kid's face made him wince and look away.

"Dude, what?" his other self whispered, low and nervous now. "What- no. That's not what we do around here. This city might be the world's biggest crime locale, but we're not total animals."

Miles flinched and pulled his shoulder away, which only made the dull pains worse. He groaned again, the sick feeling starting to slither through his whole body. He wasn’t sure why, but he felt tears beginning to fall from his face, and his thoughts vanished immediately in the bolt of panic.

Other Miles sharply inhaled, before sighing. “Sorry, man. Should’ve asked.”

Miles shuddered, his mind barely calming as the tears kept crawling down his face. “S’all good-”

“No, no. It’s not. Do you need anything?”

He took a shuddering, icy breath, trying to calm his breathing, before tiredly shaking his head. He didn’t want anything to do with these people right now. Everything hurt, and he didn’t want his other self to see him cry.

The fact he was being so… nice to him was only making it worse.

“You sure? Water, anything?”

He shook his head more insistently this time.

“Alright. I’ll be in the hallway if you change your mind."

And with that, the other Miles left the room, softly closing the door behind him. Whether it was in an attempt to not spook him more or that was just how he closed doors, Miles didn’t know. 

He couldn't really bring himself to care, either.

After a few moments, Miles couldn’t hold back his soft crying anymore. He sobbed under the blankets, shaking and shivering and curling up on himself. 

The memories, hazy and unregulated and whirling in anxiety. 

His mother telling him to bring her little boy home, before letting him chase after Gwen.

The Spot standing over him, chaotic black and white and colours swirling through the reactor room as he threatened - no, promised - to take away everything and everyone Miles loved.

Gwen softly telling him about how her story always ends, pulling away from him on the building they sat on.

Being driven into the train, metal clawing into his back as he is torn to shreds by someone he thought could be a friend as they scream that he is a mistake, that he is wrong, that he never should have become Spiderman.

That Miles is a mistake.

That he’s not supposed to be here.

Miles kept sobbing, shuddery breaths coming fast as he tried to keep his panic down and keep the slithery, sick feeling at bay.

Everything hurt, he didn’t want to do this anymore.

He wanted to go home.

His breathing was coming too fast, and Miles tried to force himself to calm down, but from how shaky he was and how his limbs were alive with skittering static, it wasn't going to work.

Miles tried to move under the blanket, to hug himself or get out from under the blanket's or something, but the dull pain that tore through every part of his body forced him to stop.

Why does it have to hurt, why am I stuck, I want to leave, I want to go home-

The blankets shifted on top of him, and with them some part of his body that hurt. Miles stopped trying to move, and just curled up under the blankets again, his shoulders shaking as tears fell from his eyes in rivers.

He was stuck here, he had to leave, he had to get home, he had to save his dad and stop the Spot-

The details jumbled up in his mind, a racing stampede of half-formed ideas and panicked thoughts. The only thing he could actually focus was the fact he needed to leave.

Even through his panic, Miles forced himself up, trying so hard not to cry out in pain, the dull stings sharpening. He pushed through it, an arguably terrible idea, and managed to shoved the blankets off of himself and pull himself upright.

Immediately, Miles saw stars, but he forced himself to keep going.

He had to get out of here. He needed to go home.

Miles braced his hands on the couch arm, pushing himself up to hopefully stand up.

That went about as well as anyone would have expected, and he sent himself tumbling onto the floor with a heavy thud. Miles' shoulder made contact with the ground first, and the quieter stings flared up into bright, shredding pain. He couldn't contain a pained yelp, trying to get up off the floor.

It wasn't much use. He was exhausted, his head was swimming with stars and panic, and pain was flaring through every part of his body.

Escape was out of the question. If Miles could barely move and was sick as hell, there was no way he'd be able to get out of here on his own. He'd need help to get back home.

His mind immediately flashed to his friends, to the people he'd spent two entire years trying to find a way back to. The thoughts quickly jumped to Gwen, but the only thing he could clearly remember was the guilt-stricken look on her face and the words that had pierced his heart on the train.

A realization sunk in, something that Miles hadn't truly thought about before now.

They probably weren't coming to save him. They had left him on his own, trying to protect him - if he was lost in another dimension, they probably had no reason to try and find him.

That somehow hurt worse than any of the injuries. The quiet understanding that they knew he was gone, and that nobody he trusted would be coming to save him.

Miles was alone.

At that moment, by some ironic twist of fate, he heard the door open again. The other Miles walked into the room again and paused, before Miles heard him let loose the most tired and mildly annoyed sigh he could possibly have managed.

"Should've known," Other Miles muttered quietly. "Can I help you up?"

Miles rolled his eyes, just barely enough for his other self to catch. "I don't really think I can say no to that question right now."

"Not unless you plan on sleeping on the floor tonight."

Miles snorted, which only resulted in him coughing so harshly he could have sworn he was hacking up a lung. The other Miles waited until he finished, before hauling him up off the floor and helping him back over to the couch.

Miles would have thanked him if he hadn't started coughing again. Being sick sucked.

“Done yet?” Prowler Miles asked, clearly unable to resist slipping a little sarcasm into his question.

Miles rolled his eyes, but just nodded, wiping the remaining tears from his eyes with his still-gloved hands.

This thing was probably due for a serious cleaning - he could smell leftover blood that had soaked into the suit fabric. Based on the look his alternate self was giving him, he'd probably noticed too.

"You want a change of clothes or something, man?" his alternate asked, perfectly lining up with what Miles had been thinking.

"That'd be nice, I guess?" he answered, a little hesitantly. "I dunno. Sorry, yeah, sure."

"I'll get one of the others to grab you one before they jet for the night." Miles immediately caught a multitude of things in that sentence that set off alarm bells in his head.

"Others?" he asked quietly.

The other Miles nodded, as if it were the most casual thing in the world. "Yeah, other Spiders. I'm pretty sure Sunsilk or Starweaver would be happy to try and find you something."

"You sound like you know them."

"I do. It's just a dick move to use a hero's real name in front of a stranger. I think you'd know about that."

That shut Miles up. He was right about that - he'd had a few close calls with Ganke while in costume, close calls that had actually almost gotten him caught in front of his dad one time. That had been an awkward night in the dorms.

"You're me, right?" Miles asked instead, trying to flip the conversation in a different direction. Also to try and distract himself from the hellish revelation simmering in the back of his mind.

His alternate shrugged. "Technically, yeah. I like to think I've got better gear, though."

"So… who gets the name?"

His other self looked at him curiously, before understanding flickered in his eyes and he sat down next to Miles. He set out his hands in front of him, one laying flat, the other balled up in a fist.

"Rock, paper, scissors," the other Miles said. "Best two out of three - whoever wins gets the honour of holding the name Miles Morales. Loser has to change his name."

For being the guy who'd pretty ruthlessly knocked him out with a metal gauntlet and had threatened to kill him, Miles was pretty sure that his alternate was just as silly under the threatening looks as he was. At least, that was the impression he was getting.

"Challenge accepted," Miles said, putting out his own shaky hands. "Be warned: I am the master of rock, paper, scissors."

"Oh, that's it, you're on."

The first round passed quickly, and his alternate took the win, beating him with scissors to paper. A rookie mistake on Miles' part.

The second round, Miles got him with rock to scissors. His trick was to go in the order of scissors, paper, rock, and usually people got messed up after the third one, so you could often times use rock again when they'd use scissors out of repetition.

The third round went to Miles again, after he got his alternate with the exact same trick as before.

"HOW!?" his alternate yelped, while Miles tried his best not to let a smug grin plaster itself across his face.

"I told you, I'm the master," Miles crowed, and okay, maybe he was being a little smug about it.

His alternate rolled his eyes. "You're an ass."

"Wow, I haven't even been here a day and my first impressions are failing miserably. There goes my good name- oh wait no, there goes yours."

His alternate's jaw dropped in surprise. "And here I thought you were chill! What the fuck, man?"

Miles held back a laugh, mainly because laughter made him cough when he had a cold, and just shrugged. "I think after today I've earned the right to be an asshole for like, ten minutes. But uh… on that note, what am I supposed to call you?"

His alternate laughed for him, a mildly terrifying experience considering that it sounded like Miles was laughing when he wasn't, but the voice was just ever so slightly off.

“Look, if you need to call me by some other name, you can just call me Milo,” he said. “And don’t worry about the first impressions - some of the other Spiders showed up way worse than you did. Although… I can’t exactly say I’ve seen any of them electrocute themself when we’ve interrogated them.”

“Oh, shut up.”

“Nah. By the way, some of the others will be here in a bit, if you wanna sleep a little more.”

The exhaustion that he'd been ignoring slammed into him like a freight train with those words, and Miles realized that his head hurt a lot more than before.

“Yeah… yeah, maybe I should. Is the water offer still available?” Miles asked, trying his best to keep up anything vaguely resembling friendly small talk. It helped a lot more than thinking about… everything else.

Milo nodded - a name that really did not fit his prior levels of intimidation, but Miles wasn’t about to say anything at risk of getting a powered gauntlet pointed at his face again - before walking out of the room, leaving the door open a crack.

Miles sighed, trying to keep his body and his mind from slipping back into sleep. His thoughts were becoming sluggish and slow, and he was barely able to process what was going on anymore.

Barely a day in this dimension and he’d already managed to screw up at least once or twice, maybe more. He was still barely processing the day’s events, and the feeling of his sickness was becoming apparent again.

Milo returned, snapping him out of his exhausted spiral of thought, quietly offering him a cup of water with a straw. Miles gratefully accepted it, the cold water soothing his throat almost immediately. Not entirely, though - the prickly feeling in the back of his throat hadn’t fully gone away.

He settled back down under the blankets, still shivering, and let himself slip into sleep again.

He didn’t hear Milo sit back down on the floor next to the couch to wait with him.

Chapter Text

Miles had definitely slept for way longer than he wanted to, feeling only mildly less awful than last time he'd woken up. He didn’t open his eyes immediately - sleep was still trying to drag him down, back into nightmares and half-dreams that were still lurking in the back of his mind.

He was vaguely hearing people talking nearby, although he was unsure. His brain still felt too fuzzy to make it out, or check if he was still dreaming, so he didn't really bother for a bit.

Miles eventually started slowly started processing things - the sick feeling that was still lurking in every part of his body, the exhaustion trying to drag him back down into sleep, the dry feeling in the back of his throat. None of it was pleasant, and it was enough to make him want to actually just go back to sleep and maybe try waking up again later. Maybe later none of those feelings would be there.

Everything still kind of hurt, from where he could only assume his injuries had been somewhat fixed and were healing. Probably thanks to the advanced healing factor some Spiders seemed to have. There was a kind of rough fabric texture on one of his hands - the one that had been burned, he realized - and it was on a multitude of other places too. His shoulder, arms, around his body, some on his legs. Bandages, he realized after a couple seconds.

Yikes.

None of those things really spelled good things for Miles' ability to defeat the Spot. If Miles was going to beat him, he had to be in better shape than lying half-dead on the couch.

The voices nearby were hushed - Miles had gotten this close to forgetting about them. There wasn’t anything that he couldn’t really make out distinctly, apart from a few words that vaguely had something to do with a cold. Mainly because he was still really tired.

Those words did actually catch some of his attention, but the exhaustion was seriously starting to get to him again. At best, Miles' attention was blurry, and at worse, his brain was 100% broken. No more thoughts today - it was too much effort.

He was about to slip back into unconsciousness when he felt a hand rest on his forehead. MASSIVE problem, considering that whoever it was probably wasn't someone he knew.

Miles' eyes flew open as he forced himself to sit up in a panic, his Spider-sense jumping into hyperawareness.

The scene he was met to was one of surprising, now only broken by the shocked looks on a vaguely familiar face.

Milo stood off to the side, having paused mid-way through the conversation, talking to the same guy as before - Casey, if his dead brain was working at all. The Spider in question had his hand half outstretched, clearly having pulled it back.

“Oh, good, you’re still sentient,” Casey commented, completely unfazed by Miles’ panicked reaction. “Welcome back to reality, new guy.”

“And here I thought you weren't a light sleeper,” Milo said. “You were out cold earlier. I’m surprised you didn't smack your face into his hand.”

“Most people are pretty light sleepers when they’re freshly diseased and traumatized,” Casey pointed out. Seemingly without a care, he sat down on the far end of the couch, any shock from before erased from his expression completely. which was surprising, considering Miles was on the complete opposite end of the calm spectrum still.

“Heya Miles,” he said, a relaxed grin on his face. “How're you feeling?”

Miles took a second, trying anything to get words past the block in his brain and the panic Thankfully, it was starting to ebb away into the background. “I feel like shit, I guess. And I’m still tired.”

“Sounds about right, considering you’ve been deliriously slipping in and out of consciousness,” Casey said with a raised eyebrow. “And especially considering you were in a pretty nasty state - I'm surprised that claw mark in your shoulder didn't cut into anything you need for your arm to work, with how bad it was.”

Casey’s hand vaguely gestured toward his bandaged hand, and Miles pulled back immediately, a small jolt of wariness setting off his Spider-sense again. Something in Casey’s expression flickered to worry, before slipping back into that easygoing grin.

“Mind explaining how you electrocuted yourself without having any nearby conductors of electrical sources?” he asked. "Haven't seen that one yet."

“Um… It’s just a power that I have?” Miles tried.

Milo snorted. “Right, and I’ve got eyes on the back of my head. I’m calling bullshit.”

“Would it be possible to see this in action, to prove it?"

Miles pulled back further, even more nervous than before. Exhaustion and unease still polluted his body, and he didn't really trust these two quite yet.

They're being nice right now… they might not stay that way for long.

“Uh… I can show you later,” he muttered, rubbing his eyes with his good hand. “I don’t think I’ve got the energy right now.”

Casey snorted, but backed off. ”If you’re sure."

"Are you sure he’s not still like, problematically diseased?” Milo asked, eyeing him cautiously. “He still looks like he's ready to collapse.”

“Eh, give him a couple minutes to wake up, and if he still passes out in less than five minutes, then he’s probably still pretty sick,” Casey said. "If his immune system is anything like yours, then it'll be all over the place until the rest of the cold clears."

“Right… yeah, that,” Miles agreed. “Uh… why are you in here?”

The mood of the room sombered in milliseconds. Casey's entire relaxed facade vanished, his face a mixture of bitterness and wariness, and Milo shuffled his feet in a way that spoke of jumbled nerves. Both of them were glancing between him and each other, and it sunk in that maybe Miles didn't actually want the answer to that particular question.

“I know you probably don’t want us to ask about this,” Casey said, which immediately set Miles even further on edge, “but we have to know. Were you sent here by the Spider Society?”

Miles froze at the name, a thousand jumbled memories and feelings running rampant through his mind, mostly consisting of his friends and twisting hallways and holograms of canon events. He couldn't have picked apart half of it if he tried, and there was no way in hell that Miles was going to do that.

He mutely shook his head. No part of him was ready to return to the hell that had been yesterday. Not in any way.

Casey’s gaze softened. “I had a feeling. Nobody comes from them with injuries like that. The claw marks are O’Hara’s work, aren’t they?”

Miles nodded quickly, the ghost of the claws in his shoulders and his arms sending shivers down his spine.

“Had a feeling.”

Casey rolled back the arm of his hoodie, showing him a vicious claw mark tearing across his forearm. Miles’ eyes ran over it as quiet horror and realization slipped into his thoughts. Compared to any scars he'd gotten, this one looked twisted and only maybe a year old. Some of Miles' own scars, mainly gotten from doing Spiderman stuff, looked a bit like that, but were much more faded than Casey's. Probably because they weren't giant scars like that one.

Miles' less injured hand absently drifted up to his shoulder, a quiet reminder that he probably had one just like it now.

Casey pulled his arm back, letting his hoodie sleeve drop back over it. "That one was pretty nasty. The other ones were pretty bad too, but none of them were as bad as that one."

"I distinctly remember you also being delirious on my mom's couch for entirely too long," Milo said boredly. "And something about your mom being a vil-"

A tiny thwip echoed through the room, and a muffled yelp echoed from Milo. Miles looked over to see that Casey had shot a web at his face, which had, unfortunately for him, landed directly over his mouth. The look on his face was hilariously outraged as he tried to get it off.

"Anywhizzle," the Spider said, barely looking over as Milo struggled to peel the webs off his face. "Like I said, you don't come out of the Spider Society with injuries like that if you didn't piss off the big man on the fancy floating forklift palette."

Miles snorted, trying to hold back laughter that definitely would have given him a coughing fit that probably could have sent him to hell. All his memories of Miguel were nothing short of terrifying, but Casey's blatant dissing pushed back that fear a lot further than he'd expected.

Milo finally managed to pry the webs off his mouth, eyeing Casey fairly curiously. "Aren't you supposed to be telling him about what you're doing here?"

“Yeah,” Casey hissed, shooting his variant a glare. “Point is, this is where they send us when we won’t listen to their canon event. That's why I figured the same thing happened to you - you were pretty freaked out when we met you."

Miles rolled his eyes. "Weren't you the ones who captured me?"

"Completely irrelevant," Casey announced, waving his hand a bit dismissively. "But yeah. We were told about the supposed 'canon' events, we tried to stop them-"

“But you couldn’t,” Miles whispered. “Because trying to stop it didn’t work, did it?”

“Not for us,” he answered. “O’Hara was pissed every time. We’re supposedly ‘anomalies.’ We don’t follow the routine path. We tried to find a balance, and when it failed, he hurt us and put us on Earth-42 protection duty.”

Earth-42.

42.

Oh no.

“Yeah, something happened where the guy who was supposed to get bit here never got bitten by his spider,” Milo piped up, and oh God, Miles could feel the world trying to crush him with oxygen. “Something happened that got kept under wraps, and because there’s no Spiderman here-”

“We have to do the job for whoever died early,” Casey finished morbidly.

“Yeah, and you've been practically adopted by my mom,” Milo said with an eye roll.

“What, you salty about it?”

“Not even close.”

“You're 200% lying.”

Milo flipped Casey off and made a face, which the other Spider returned. The dynamic was admittedly completely unfamiliar to Miles, but they seemed to mimic the behaviour of siblings he'd seen at his school.

Oddly, it made a pang of longing echo through him, quick flashes of memories of his friends in the quieter moments they'd had.

They hurt to remember. Miles pushed it away for now. He could talk it out with them later, once he fixed everything else.

“Salty fries in the room aside for a second,” Casey joked, and Milo rolled his eyes much more dramatically. “We still have a situation here.”

Miles rolled his eyes lightly as everyone turned to him. “Yeah, thanks for summing that up.”

“No problem, it’s my specialty,” Casey said. “So, what heinous crime did you commit to get Mr. I’ve-Got-The-World’s-Biggest-Ass-So-Obviously-I’m-In-Charge to put you through the shredder?”

Miles was caught so off guard that he laughed, which got him several grins from people in the room. Seriously, Casey seemed to have a weird talent for turning the terrifying into the hilarious, even with a situation so dire.

“Yeah, what did you do?” Milo asked. “I’ve never seen anybody so torn up after getting dropped here."

“Um…”

Oh God, I’m gonna have to explain to these people that I’m the reason they’re stuck here.

Casey seemed to notice his unease. “Don’t worry about judgement, we’re pretty chill.”

Miles winced, pulling his burned hand closer. “Chill enough to not immediately murder the reason why you got sent to watch over Earth-42 in the first place?”

Shocked jaws dropped to the floor, but Casey recomposed himself and gave him an encouraging nod.

It was probably the most encouragement he'd gotten in the past two days. Which, now that he thought about it, was incredibly depressing.

He tried not to dwell on it, blinking harshly to try and refocus himself.

“Uh… alright. I wasn’t supposed to be bitten at all…”

Miles spent the next half an hour explaining what had happened, from the first experience with the multiverse to accidentally unleashing an overpowered villain who could tear holes in reality who really wanted to kill him. He explained learning about the canon events, something everyone winced at, and even how the spider that had bitten him had gotten the wrong person and technically, he was the reason Earth-42 had no Spiderman.

By the end of it, Milo and Casey were staring at him with expressions so mixed that Miles genuinely couldn’t decipher any of them. It was also half because he was crying again - he didn’t enjoy reliving yesterday’s events word for word. It had been hard to talk about anything regarding the canon, or Gwen, or his dad-

Everything stopped.

Dad.

He was still in danger. 

And Miles was just lying here, being useless and not trying his hardest to help him.

“That was… a lot to take in,” Casey whispered unhelpfully, eyes trained darkly on the ground.

Miles, even though he still felt absolutely awful, started shifting around under the blankets, trying to get them off so he could get up. He needed to find his suit, he had to get out of here.

I have to save my dad.

“Oi, what do you think you’re doing?” Milo demanded, immediately up in front of him as he tried to force himself to his feet. Which was not going as well as he hoped it would.

“Miles, dude, sit down,” Casey snapped, not touching him but keeping a hand outstretched. He flinched away from it, instant panic lighting up in his mind, and they both visibly winced at the motion.

“Miles, what’s going on?” Casey asked, so incredibly calmly that Miles wanted to shout at him, wanted to punch him or shove him out of the way.

“My dad,” he managed to choke out between fresh tears and his panic. “My dad, I have to help him. He’s gonna die if I don’t get back and save him-”

“Look at me, Miles-”

“Please, I have to go back-”

“Look at me.”

Miles stopped trying to stand up, holding onto the arm of the couch, shaking violently and trying to keep himself upright. Casey’s look of concern had turned to one of sympathy and exhaustion, and he put up two hands to reassure Miles that nothing was happening.

“Look,” Casey said carefully, absently signalling off Milo with one hand. “I know you want to go back and help him. I know it sucks that you’re stuck here, and it sucks that you’re sick and scared and you can’t do anything to help. But for both of your safety, Miles, you have to stay here. Your dad will be fine, I promise.”

Had Casey even heard a word he'd said? Miles only had two days, maybe less, to get back home and save his universe, and here was Casey saying that his dad would be fine?

"You don't understand!" Miles snapped hoarsely, making both Milo and Casey jump. "I've already spent who knows how long here, and I've only got two days before my dad is supposed to die! I can't stay here, and if I do, then he won't be 'fine!'"

A cold look of horror broke through Casey's calm mask, before he slowly turned to Milo.

"You didn't tell him?" he demanded, voice low and chilled in a way that made Miles' anger evaporate into fear again.

Milo's face was distant and oddly broken, before he blinked back from wherever his mind went wandering. "He hasn't been this lucid in a while! How was I supposed to tell him without making sure that he actually remembered it?"

"He's right here," Miles snapped, the fear fading out faster than he'd thought. "What the hell are you two on about?"

Casey turned back to him, pity on his face. "Look, I know you don't want to stay here, but you still have to heal. I promise that you'll be able to save him, but you can't leave right now."

“I can’t stay here, I have to get home and help-”

“You’re not hearing me!” Casey snapped suddenly, and everyone in the room shrunk away from him in surprise. He took a second to breathe, before levelling his gaze with his again. 

"Miles, listen to me carefully," the Spider said, keeping his eyes levelled on him. "This is gonna sound insane, but he will be fine. You can't get home right now, and I promise that we'll try to help, but you have to stay here."

Anger bubbled up even further through him. "I only have two days-"

"And you've been here for two weeks!"

The room went cold.

Any fury that he could have possibly felt in that moment drained away with his panicked adrenaline, being slowly replaced by frozen, creeping dread, cold terror oozing out into the rest of the world. The air turned thick and heavy - not even a breath could leave him.

Two weeks.

Two.

Weeks.

The time seemed so distant, yet at the same time, the weight of it was horrifically heavy.

"Miles, look at me."

He looked up at Casey, eyes still blown wide from the shock.

“O’Hara explained this to us once, when he came to check in on our work,” Casey started softly. “When someone tries to prevent their canon event, or when they need to be away from their dimension for a long time, they’ve figured out a weird way to freeze time in those dimensions. It puts everything on a loop of the day the Spider left, so that they can come back and resume whatever they were doing without endangering the lives of citizens. When someone’s stopping their canon event and they actually get away, like you did, they freeze it until they can find you and toss you back into the dimension. Once you’re in, they lock access to it, barring everyone from going in, until the event is over.”

“And if you’re still alive at that point, they freeze it again and put you on 42 observation duty, because they can’t trust you won’t try something like that again,” Milo hissed, surprisingly bitter in his tone.

“The point we’re trying to make is that so long as you’re here, in a dimension most other Spiders wouldn’t visit if given the choice, is generally ignored by the bosses upstairs, and any other potential multiversal threat wouldn’t think to look, your dimension is locked and frozen in the day you left it in. Your dad is technically safe from the canon event, and you’re safe from the mobs out for your head.”

Miles blinked, the explanation turning to mush in his already exhausted and half grief-ridden brain. His dad wasn't gone, but somehow, knowing that he was stuck in time was worse. “So if I go back, they’ll imprison me in there anyway?”

Casey nodded, his second set of eyes closing in a weirdly mournful way. “Yeah. Right now, staying away from home is the safest thing you could possibly be doing. O’Hara’s not gonna think to look for you here, your buddies won’t, the multiversal supervillain won’t, and you can get the time you need to actually heal from what happened.”

He let his thoughts wander, a quiet realization coming to him.

They’re only safe when I’m not near them.

I’m only safe when I’m not near them. 

Every time I’m around them as Spiderman, they’re always in danger of something bad happening to them. It’s happened before with my dad, in that fight with Kingpin. Gwen’s in danger from just being around me at all, and she probably wouldn't talk to me anymore anyways. My friends and family could fall victim to any canon event at any second, just from me being Spiderman

All of them are in danger because of me. 

And if I go back to them to try and explain, someone’s going to die.

“..iles? Miles? Dude, are you in there?”

Milo’s voice, trying to bring him back.

Miles didn’t want to go back. He wanted to go home.

But going home might kill him even more than hiding.

His brain was incredibly fuzzy and light, all his thoughts slurring into one another and melting together as exhaustion dragged him down again.

He didn't want to go back to the world beyond his mind, worse and better than his own thoughts,

“Miles! Snap out of it, dude…”

He didn’t bother trying to snap out of it. His limbs were heavy, he was still cold, everything hurt. Adrenaline drained away, leaving behind the cold exhaustion of warped grief and the cold that still wracked his mind.

Maybe he should go back to sleep.

Maybe the nightmares would be better than this.

The moment the thought crossed his mind, Miles felt his body slip back into unconsciousness, unaware of the fact he’d collapsed onto the floor and leaving chaos behind.

Chapter Text

He distinctly remembered waking up and passing out at least two more times. Probably more than that.

Or maybe distinctly wasn’t exactly the right word, considering Miles’ memory was about as coherent as the time one of his teachers had shown up to class with a hangover and tried to explain how particle physics worked to the art students. Only the other physics students had understood what the hell he was talking about, but nobody really cared to think too hard about it, just like Miles didn't really care to understand what was happening when he was awake anymore.

His brain was entirely mush - it was always like that when he was sick. At this point, the universe was apparently just inconveniencing him with this cold for the hell of it. Or maybe some god up there thought it was hilarious to watch him suffer - he would not put that out of the question.

Miles only really remembered that he couldn't leave this dimension.

He remembered that he was stuck. That nobody was coming to find him here.

And even if they were looking for him, they wouldn't think to look for him in this place.

It hurt to know that he couldn’t help anyone. That he was stuck here, waiting to be helped, waiting to get back on his feet.

Miles wasn't one to use the word 'hate' lightly, but he hated everything about this so much.

Miles didn't want to stay here, but there was no choice for him. Either he stayed in this place he didn't know and in a safety that didn't sit right with him, or he tried to get out of here and potentially doom everyone.

Not exactly the greatest options. If you even could call them that.

The first time he'd actually woken up somewhat coherent, it had been to Milo sitting with him again. They hadn’t said anything to one another - somewhere in Miles’ explanation, the idea that Milo was supposed to be Spiderman instead of him had come up, and a quiet, somewhat deserved tension had grown between the two.

He was fine with it. A revelation like that would have an impact on anyone, but to see the exact reason for it sitting across from you probably only made that worse.

The second time, Miles had woken up to Casey again. He didn't really say much to him either, only occasionally asking questions to make sure he was still responsive whenever Miles drifted too far from the rest of the world. To "make sure he was still sentient," as Casey put it.

The other Spider seemed friendly enough, there was always this subtle, eerie feeling of being watched that set off his Spider sense without good reason. Miles knew it was just Casey keeping an eye on him, but there was always this odd presence to him that felt larger and more unknown than the person sitting there, politely asking him questions. It was never enough to fully set off the internal danger alarm, but just enough that Miles had felt constantly uneasy the entire time he'd been there.

And even with those two keeping some vague sense of company, there was no real comfort to their presence. Any people who could have offered him comfort were across the multiverse, and none of them even knew where he was.

Miles blinked awake to an increasingly familiar ceiling. He didn’t want to be awake again. He was tired of waking up and passing out, feeling like shit every single time. He hated being confined to this couch, just in case he got sicker or something stupid like that. He wanted to be up and moving around instead of stuck in place.

This time, Miles didn’t feel nearly as awful, but knowing his own immune system, that could change in the span of thirty seconds if he wasn’t paying attention. It liked to be finicky like that, for no good reason.

A shuffle from the room nearby caught his attention, but Miles didn’t look over. He didn’t want to know who was keeping watch over him this time. He was too done with being stuck here to really care.

A light call from his Spider sense to someone else's changed that, but only marginally.

“Are you awake?” the person asked. It wasn’t a voice that Miles recognized, which was… weird.

No, definitely weird, considering the fact that Milo and Casey had both mentioned 'others,' and he hadn't seen a trace of them yet. Maybe this was one of them.

“Who’s there?” he asked hoarsely, not bothering to move his head yet. “I don’t think I’ve met you yet.”

“You probably haven’t,” the voice replied. “I’ve been on Scorpion-chasing patrols all of last week. I swear, that guy never quits when he really should. That, and I've been doing medical supply runs and other mystery errands with Milo, so I guess I got lucky catching you awake."

Miles tried to list off the names he’d heard in his time here. Casey, Milo… there were definitely more. I just can't remember who they were.

Dammit, Miles, use your brain better. You'll probably need to remember these names later.

Not that he wanted to stick around long enough to need to do that, but the multiverse hadn't given him much of an option.

“What’s your name?” he asked. “I’d guess, but I think my brain’s still so dead I’d fuck it up.”

“Name’s Tarabi,” the voice said. “Nice to meet you, new guy.”

He looked over to see a completely new Spider standing off to the side of the room, wearing a half-mask with an eye in the middle of its forehead, only covering the top part of her face. They all blinked at him curiously, confirming pretty quickly that there actually were three eyes under the mask. Their hair was tied up into double ponytails, a feat considering how puffy her hair was. The suit was a dark blue, with bright blueish-white web patterns and small spots scattered randomly across deep navy and sky blue gradient. The fabric of the suit glimmered reflectively, almost mimicking a real night sky, but there were no visible constellations that Miles could have recognized.

If the suit was anything to go by, this might be the Starweaver that Milo had mentioned at some point. The visual motif was certainly a pointer in the right direction.

“Yeesh, you look like shit,” Tarabi noted. “I thought Casey was joking when he said you were down for it, but I’ve never seen somebody look so awful thanks to a cold.”

“Preaching it to the choir,” Miles muttered, forcing himself to sit up instead of staying under the blankets. It was a lot less chilly than the last time he'd been awake, so hopefully that meant the stupid cold was backing off. “What are the mysterious errands you were out running, if I can ask that?”

Tarabi’s eye lenses squinted at him, before walking over and sitting on the couch next to him. She was holding something, but he was too low on energy to bother trying to get a better look.

“I was out getting cold medicine for your disease-riddled body, so that you don’t have to keep laying on the couch and moping about everything,” she explained, opening what Miles realized was a box of Tylenol. Or… nevermind, it said Tilenol. "And just grabbing some other stuff we need."

“I’m not moping,” Miles protested immediately. “I’m contemplating some very heavy stuff.”

“So you’re moping.”

“Nuh uh.”

“Moping.”

“I would never do that.”

Tarabi made the most hilarious eye-roll gesture one could possibly make with their mask on, a grin on her face, before shoving a clear medicine cup filled with viscous liquid in his direction. The colour was a sharp pink, although maybe it was just the lighting. Whatever colour it was, it certainly looked radioactive.

Then again, so did most liquid Tylenol, so there wasn't really that much of a difference there.

“Drink that,” Tarabi instructed. “Should help you not feel like shit.”

“Thanks.” Miles drank it like a shot, mainly because he knew most cold medicines tasted like ass. He was just thankful this wasn’t Beckley's cough syrup - that stuff was genuinely horrible.

This didn’t taste much better - it tasted like someone left grapes out in the sun for too long and then tried to put them in the microwave - and he shuddered involuntarily as he finished it.

“Oh gross, that's nasty,” he hissed, offering the cup back to Tarabi. “I thought Tylenol was supposed to be the better tasting stuff.”

“Not in this dimension,” Tarabi said. “This is between the alright stuff and the hell that is Berkley’s.”

“Oh god, don’t talk about Beckley’s.”

They both laughed, and Tarabi relaxed enough to take off her mask. True to the mask's design, she had three eyes - instead of typical human eyes, though, these ones were bright blue and turquoise, littered with brighter points of light like her suit was. He wasn't even sure if there were actually pupils in her eyes or if it was purely that odd cosmic stare.

Miles couldn’t help staring at them in fascination. Those would be really cool to try on a graffiti piece, or even just to draw. 

Tarabi noticed him staring and smirked. “You’ve got the same face everyone has when I show them my eyes.”

He quickly averted his gaze, instead turning his attention to a particular LED light that, really, was actually pretty interesting if you stared at it long enough. “I mean, they look pretty cool. That would be sick to put in a street art piece or something like that."

She laughed, before standing up and walking over to the door. “Well, Tree Spider’s got plenty of references for you if you ever wanna try. They draw them all the time when they think I’m not looking.”

Miles raised an eyebrow curiously, but didn’t pry further. He didn't know who Tree Spider was, but based on how Tarabi spoke casually of them, they were probably yet another Spider among the already widening roster.

Seriously, how many Spiders were crammed onto Earth-42? There were already at least three or four of them here, which did not spell good news for Miles' safety, honestly.

A quieter question rose to the front of his mind, one that sent chills down his already cold spine.

Casey mentioned that Earth-42 is where the Spider Society tosses any Spiders who don't fit or try to break their canon. This is the place where they shove all the anomalies.

Are all of the Spiders here anomalies?

Miles blinked harshly, regaining his awareness of the room as the door clicked open. If that was the case, then Miles fit right in with everyone else here.

Anomalies. Spiders who didn't fit.

Mistakes.

He shoved the thought away quickly. Thinking like that would only lead to him having another panic attack, and being two for four on being conscious while having panic attacks in this dimension really wasn't the greatest look.

“Well, I gotta get going again,” Tarabi said, something in her voice sharpening. “I’m on patrol with Sunsilk tonight. Milo might help us out if he’s not too busy with-”

She cut herself off, and okay, now Miles was really curious.

“Not too busy with what?” he probed.

She shot him a look, or as close to a look as he understand with her eyes. “Uh… not too busy with… his… job?” Tarabi tried, and it became clear in that moment what Peter B had once mentioned about most Spiders being terrible at cover stories. Miles himself sucked at coming up with a lie that was able to fool people.

“It is not his job, there’s something else going on,” Miles pointed out, and felt a small spark of triumph upon seeing Tarabi’s expression go from nervous to ‘oh shit.’

“Is it a crime syndicate?” Miles asked as Tarabi turned to leave. “Is he involved with a villain organization?”

“I’m not talking to you anymore!” Tarabi called back. “If Milo wants to tell you, he’ll tell you!”

“He's talking to aliens!” Miles yelled as Tarabi shut the door. That last one had mostly been a joke, but considering what little he had seen of Earth-42, he actually wouldn’t doubt it too much.

Scratch that, considering how little of the multiverse he had seen, that was probably a real thing somewhere.

He sighed and leaned back into the couch, staring without intent at the opposing wall. The medicine was slowly starting to kick in - he felt significantly less shitty than a few minutes ago. It might kick in a bit harder later, if he bothered to actually stay awake that long.

Probably not. There wasn't really much reason for him to do much of anything right now.

She never actually told me what those other errands were, Miles noted quietly. A shimmer of distrust sparked in the back of his mind, although it was fairly unwarranted. The other Spiders probably had their own things going on - they didn't need him prying into stuff.

Still, after everything else, the lack of clarification made him uneasy.

Absently, Miles found himself staring around the room a little more, noticing new details in the environment that he’d been too out of it to see before.

The room was small, with a bunk bed on the opposite side of the room. It had a desk underneath instead of another bed, which was littered in sharp things, weird mechanical objects, and a powered off laptop. A lava lamp was on the desk, in shades of green and purple that reminded him of the Prowler suit, the liquid inside bobbing up and down in a hypnotizing fashion. From what he could see, the bed was a bit messy, blankets hanging low off the ladder. A closet sat near the door, slightly ajar, and Miles could see the hint of dark metal and dim purple gleam of the actual Prowler suit through the cracks in the door.

It almost looked like Miles’ room, plus or minus some major differences. He had to close his eyes as a wave of homesickness hit him.

How long had he really been away from home?

Did his parents miss him? Would they even be that worried, if the day was looped over and over again?

Miles shifted uncomfortably where he was sitting, trying to push away the dark sadness that threatened to mercilessly swallow his thoughts.

Maybe believing that they missed him and were worried about him was better than knowing if they actually did.

He shifted again on the couch, trying to contain the tears threatening to spill out of his eyes. He didn’t want to cry just after starting to feel better. Which he did feel, by a lot, actually - whatever was in that Tilenol was working wonders - but it probably wouldn't help if he gave himself a headache by crying.

Tentatively, Miles tried to stand up. Most of his injuries felt better, so maybe it wasn't too terrible of an idea-

He hissed as he tried, and sat back down immediately as dull pinch ripped through his almost-healed hand and his vision started to swim. Nope, definitely not a good idea. Sitting was probably better for him if he didn't want to fuck up his already damaged hand, or pass out from whatever was wrong with his head now.

Miles paused for a moment, keeping his eyes on the ladder to the bed, before shaking his head. He wasn’t just going to sit here and keep staying stuck. He wanted to get up and move around, wanted to run and swing and fight-

Masked eyes following his every move, a hundred blows to his body, pain of a thousand calibers echoing through his nerves as he ran, ran r an-

Miles shrank back, slamming his eyes shut to see if blocking the memory with the sheer force of his eyelids was possible.

Okay, so definitely not fighting. Not right now, anyway.

Still, he wanted to stand up and move around. If he had to stay stuck on this stupid couch any longer, he was going to lose his mind. No offense to Milo's couch, but Miles was pretty sick of it.

Despite the pain, Miles forced himself to his feet, gritting his teeth as he did so. There was more than just his hand hurting now, faint pain in his shoulder and his side flaring up. It wasn't that bad, all things considered, but it was irritating, and only made him want to get up and move around more. Miles forced his hand to hold the couch and push him up, even though it was his bad hand now.

Another dull pinch ripped across his hand, and Miles swore and stumbled, trying his hardest not to fall over as dizziness made his head float away and his body move in ways where he didn't want it to go.

Don’t pass out, don’t pass out, he kept thinking to himself, trying his best to do exactly that. Trying to stand up sent stars blurring through his vision and his head spinning, a surefire sign that he should not be doing what he was doing. And also probably that he hadn't had enough water for a while. Water was important, but Miles' brain was too focused on following through with his now frankly stupid plan to care.

It didn’t work, and the result only made the faint in his hand worse. Miles cried out as stars filled his vision again, stumbling forward, expecting to hit the floor-

But he didn’t. 

Strong arms caught him, enveloping him in a careful hold and keeping him upright. He grimaced at the sudden contact, but instead of flinching away, clutched the arms tighter and tried to keep himself upright without the help. The dizziness worsened, but he managed to keep it from blinding him to the world. His main goal was to not pass out, because at this point it was getting ridiculous how often that was happening.

Not the best device for advancing the plotline, he thought to nobody in particular, although why that crossed his mind, Miles neither knew nor cared.

“Mijo, you’re not supposed to be off the couch right now,” a familiar-but-not-familiar voice said, and Miles stilled as he heard it. Now not only was he trying not to pass out, he was also trying not to cry.

Of course this was the person who caught him. Not that he wasn't grateful, but the universe really couldn't give him a fucking break, could it?

Miss Rio, as she’d introduced herself at some point, was the one supporting him, the door left open from where she'd rushed over to help him stay upright. Miles accepted her support gratefully, the calm of being around someone even remotely resembling his mother easing the war of thoughts in the back of his mind.

Even if he knew it wasn't her, knew somewhere deep in his heart that this wasn't where he belonged.

“And what exactly did you think you were doing, young man?” Miss Rio asked, careful to keep her hands away from any of his injuries.

“I wanted to stand up and stretch,” he admitted. “Being stuck on a couch is really, really boring. And I wanted to look around.”

“I know you’re bored, but until you're fully fixed up, you’re not going anywhere,” she answered sternly, carefully helping him sit back down on the couch again and plopping down next to him. “After that you’re free to join the other kids doing whatever it is the others are doing as Spiders.”

“You know about that?”

She smiled, although her eyes were distant. “Kinda becomes hard to ignore when your brother-in-law and your son keep dragging random kids off the streets wearing similar kinds of masks and they’re always coming home with a couple bruises at best.”

Miles grinned half-heartedly, before his eyes dropped to the side. Worry bubbled up in his mind, just one among many that had been spiralling about in his head like a cursed Ferris wheel.

“And… are you okay with them all being here?” he asked cautiously. “Like, you don’t mind them living near your house and stuff?”

“Not at all,” she answered. “Eventually they become family. Some of them have been here a long time, others only a couple months. Even Aaron’s grown fond of them, despite their all meddling in the crime businesses.”

Miles blinked in astonishment. This version of his mom seemed a lot more relaxed with how she treated the idea of family. Basically adopting other Spiders who were tossed in here and forgotten, that Milo and his uncle had practically dragged into her house and her life without so much as a disapproving glare sent their way.

“That also means,” she added, “that I don’t mind having

here either. A lot of the kids who come here can’t go home. I’ll let them stay for as long as they need to, and that includes you, mijo.”

He finally looked up at her, seeing blue-green eyes instead of the familiar brown that he so often associated with his mother’s face. It looked like her, but there were even just tiny details that made her so different. She had freckles, a small scar on her forehead, a much stronger build - all of it setting her apart from the mother he was so familiar with.

He tore his gaze away. Miles didn’t think he could afford to be any more homesick than he already was, and this… wasn’t exactly helping.

Miss Rio seemed to understand, and stood up. “Well, I have a shift at the hospital in about an hour,” she announced. “If you need anything, just ask one of the others. They’re always willing to help. And if you need anything from me, I’ll do what I can.”

She started to walk away, and Miles instinctively made a quick choice. Maybe a stupid one, but a choice nonetheless.

“Um…” he whispered, barely loud enough to be heard, but enough to stop her in her tracks. “This is gonna sound stupid… could I have a hug, maybe?”

Miss Rio didn’t say anything, but just turned around and sat next to him on the couch again. He held his own arms tight to his chest, but the hug she enveloped him in was warm and gentle. Miles didn’t even flinch at the contact.

He sank into it, not having the words to properly express things anymore. It was safe, safer than anything else he'd encountered in his past two weeks of being here.

Two weeks.

It still doesn't feel real.

Miles just needed something that reminded him of home. This was probably the best he was going to get.

They sat like that for a few more moments, the calm and the peace a welcome change, before she pulled away. 

“You’re feeling warmer again,” she noted politely. “Make sure you take more of the medicine if you need to, okay?”

“Will do,” Miles answered, his voice breaking softly as he spoke. She offered him a pat on the back, before putting a blanket over his shoulders and leaving the room. The door closed with a soft click, the sound somehow louder than anything else in the room yet entirely too silent at the same time.

He wrapped himself into a cocoon with the blanket, not even bothering to slip back under the rest of them. He just bunched himself up and cried into his knees for a little while.

Chapter Text

He was awake a lot longer - and feeling mostly okay - when Casey and Milo returned to his room, alongside a gang of unfamiliar Spiders, all crowding into it and sitting on whatever surface they could find. There were at least six other Spiders, and immediately, his Spider sense was bombarded by the calls of the others, almost an audible sound with how loud it seemed to be.

“What’s going on?” he asked warily. His eyes darted from Spider to Spider, trying to figure out if any of them might be a threat. The only one of the entire group that he actually recognized was Tarabi - everyone else was a complete stranger.

God, okay, this is probably going to go horribly, Miles muttered internally, his entire body tensing up as two of them casually plopped down onto the ceiling. All eyes were on him for some reason, and every single gut instinct and memory was practically screaming for him to run away.

Casey plopped down next to him on the couch with his mask off, much less carefully than anyone else dared to, and grinned. His facial features were a lot clearer now that Miles was mostly coherent. His skin was tan, with freckles scattered across the bridge of his nose. Two notable scars were present - one on his right eye, the other on his left jaw. A thick braid of hair hung down casually from his head, with a white streak coursing all the way through it - Miles could only imagine how long it was undone.

“Well, since you’re no longer completely dying to death of the common cold,” Casey announced, poking him in the face without a care, “we figured it was about time that we all properly introduced ourselves. Mainly because you probably only really know our names. Or just a few of us.”

“Also, always good to get to know the new Spiders before they go running off into New York to beat up criminals,” a Spider with a black and neon green suit noted, tiling his head as he sat down on the ceiling alongside one wearing a white, leaf-green and redwood brown suit.

Miles shrugged slightly, his shoulders still tense as he tried to avoid the masked eyes of the other Spiders. The familiar shape of the eyes, no matter the colour of the mask, sent a chill through his entire body.

“Plus, you’ve been sleeping on my couch for like, three weeks,” Milo added. “Better to know who you’re living with before you move to the other apartment.”

Miles blinked at him incredulously, confusion immediately dominating all of his thoughts. “Wait, there’s another apartment?”

“Dude, my house is way too small for eleven people,” Milo pointed out. “If you live in anything remotely close to my house in your dimension, you’d definitely know that. Uncle Aaron managed to 'rent' out an entire apartment building for these idiots.”

A couple mock offended gasps echoed through the room, and Tarabi elbowed him rather harshly. To his credit, Milo's only reaction was to shoot her a glare, a rather poisonous one at that.

“Which means you’re probably gonna come stay in said other apartment building,” Casey finished explaining as the two began to squabble in the background, idly flipping his braid side to side and drawing Miles' attention away from the rest of the Spiders. All of whom were still staring at him, by the way. “Milo may be an amusing ally, but I do not think I could stand to spend more than three entire days with him and his kooky brain.”

“Your brain is kooky!” Milo objected, although if it was meant to be intimidating, it didn't really come across that way. Milo had begrudgingly given up trying to mess with Tarabi, who was grinning triumphantly and high-fiving a Spider with a bright yellow suit leaning against the wall.

“Anywhizzle,” Casey said, completely ignoring the puzzled expression that crossed his face at the unfamiliar word. “Point is, we should really formally introduce ourselves, because we've probably been talking around everything without explaining how anything actually works around here. And again, if you're anything like Milo, then I can only guess that'll piss you off at some point."

Miles nodded, a tiny spark of annoyance flaring to life in his mind. "Yeah, some explanation would be greatly appreciated."

Casey's grin only widened, and he stood up of the couch and dropped into a mock bow. "My name is Casey Parker, he/him, aka Violet Weaver and the only local Spider who knows his way around obscure and weird things. Got bitten by a mutant spider full of toxins, kicked some ass, then got tossed into this dimension. I’ve been here for about two years and a week.”

“I'm guessing I don't want to know what those obscure and weird things are?” Miles asked, trying to contain some laughter as Casey dropped back onto the couch.

“That’s the question you’re asking?” one of the Spiders at the other end of the couch demanded as Casey offered a wordless thumbs up. “Oh, wait, uhm… my name’s Aura Jackson, she/they/it. I’m also called the Lightweaver, and I’m the Spider who knows the most about how to patch someone up in an emergency. I was bitten by a radioactive spider, became Lightweaver, and I’ve been stuck in this dimension for about half a year now.”

“Luka J. Jamesson, he/him. I’m known as Cyberbyte. A suit I was working on got hacked by a virus on the same day I was bitten by a radioactive spider, so it makes for some pretty weird powers sometimes. I’ve been here almost the same amount of time as Case.”

“Sidney Jones, she/her, and I’m also known as Sunsilk! I got bitten by an infected spider a few years back working in the sunflower fields, started crime fighting, and I’ve been here for… I dunno, I don’t feel like counting it.”

“Tarabi Morrison, they/she/star. I was bitten by a radioactive space spider - yeah, I know, it sounds pretty weird - and became the Starcrawler as a result. I’ve been here just a little longer than Sidney, but less than Luka and Casey.”

"Eri Jane, it/its. I wasn't really bitten by any radioactive spiders, but I did have a symbiote assimilate with me, so now we're Ink-Spider. Ire - the symbiote, for clarification - also goes by it/its, and we've been here for a while - I don't really care to remember how long it's been."

Miles blinked, trying to keep all the stories in his head straight. Space spiders, technologically advanced suits, whatever the hell a symbiote was… it was a lot, to put that as mildly as possible.

There's still one more, right? he noted, looking around the room and trying to figure out which of the six hadn't spoken yet.

“That over there is Rowan Rodriguez,” Aura said calmly, directing his gaze to the unfamiliar Spider who was sitting on the ceiling. “Going by they/them. Rowan got bitten by a radioactive tree spider, and has been the Redwood Weaver since then. They’ve been here as long as I have. Rowan’s currently healing from a pretty nasty injury to the throat, which is why they’re not speaking. They can speak ASL, though.”

Miles just nodded, offering Rowan what he hoped was a sympathetic smile. The corners of their mask eyes drifted up, so maybe it had helped a little.

There were still entirely too many people here for his liking, but Casey was actually right - better to get to know the people he was stuck here with than to run off into the city without knowing anyone or anywhere to go.

“And I’m Milo Morales,” his alternate self introduced. “Although most of you guys know who I am, your ever-so-gracious host. And I think I’m supposed to be another version of Miles, which is… weird. I don't understand how that one worked out.”

“You two look similar,” Sidney offered, pulling off her mask to reveal a mess of coppery hair in a ponytail and a nasty burn scar across the right side of her face. “Well, plus or minus a few things. Miles doesn’t have a resting bitch face. And the hair. Other than that, I would have totally believed you if you’d said he was an estranged twin brother.”

“We are not twins,” they both said immediately, causing a few of the Spiders to start giggling. 

“You’re even making the same face!” Sidney crowed, triumph in her eyes and a mischievous grin on her face. Miles quickly attempted to screw up his own face to make a different expression, but apparently Milo had had the same thought, because Sidney just laughed harder.

“Now you,” Casey pointed out, poking him in the face again.

“Okay.” He took a quick breath, trying to make sure that he wouldn’t run out of oxygen mid-introduction. “My name is Miles Morales, he/him. I was bitten by a radioactive spider a few years ago, and since then I’ve just been Spiderman. I… have no idea how long ago I got here.”

“About three weeks,” Aura said, almost completely nonchalantly. “Although this is probably the longest you’ve been coherent in that entire time frame. Or so we've been told.”

He made another face, which Sidney laughed at again. It was a little reassuring, even despite the alien situation.

Luka was just looking at him incredulously, the green mask eyes narrowing to curious slits. “Really? No other name? Just Spiderman?”

“It's not like I knew I had an option!” Miles protested quickly, wrapping his arms around himself. “And everyone in my dimension is just too used to it to bother changing it at this point anyway.”

“Fair enough.”

Rowan scooted forward from their place on the ceiling, revealing a multitude of arms, and everyone paused to look at them. They tilted their head curiously, before striding over - still on the ceiling, mind you - to look at him. The two made eye contact for a few seconds, before Rowan started making signs with their hands.

“Aura was right,” they signed. “You do resemble a small deer.”

“Rowan!” Aura protested, while Miles just laughed. Everyone else looked a little confused, but all Aura could really do was make a fake swipe for the Spider on the ceiling.

“Nice to meet you,” he signed in return, and Rowan’s hand immediately started flapping in delight as the corner of their mask eyes fully lifted. 

Milo sighed dramatically. “Wonderful, another one who can join the ‘Secret Sign Language Club.’ We are so screwed.”

Sidney snorted, and Tarabi elbowed him again. “What, you mad that you can’t learn the secrets?”

“Maybe a little,” Milo snapped. 

“Well, at least it's easier to see who you'll probably get along with,” Casey said. “Now, Sidney wanted to ask about your powers? We all have some questions, but your whole electrocution thing is probably the most interesting thing any of us have seen in ages.”

Miles perked up a bit, now slightly curious about the others. “Well, I can use my nerves to conduct electricity,” he offered, making several of their eyes go wide. “And I can turn invisible.”

“Bullshit to that last one,” Milo announced. “I refuse to believe it until I see it.”

“If he’s invisible, I don’t think you will see anything, genius,” Casey pointed out dryly.

Sidney jumped up immediately, scooting over with wide eyes and red hair hanging from the ceiling in a curtain. “Holy shit, really? I’ve never seen cell manipulation on that level before! Can you show us, please?”

“Sure. I mean, I can try.” Miles pulled the blanket off, although it was colder than he liked without it, and let himself seek out the quiet flicker that always accompanied the invisibility. It was much easier to find, considering that everything about this situation already had him on edge and ready to run.

There was no real reason for him to be so uneasy - he was safe here. Miles closed his eyes, the creeping watching feeling prickling under his skin.

Thousands of masked eyes, chasing him, locked on his every move, watching as his world fell apart around him with a blank malice that he'd never seen before.

Thousands of eyes, each gaze slipping under his skin and digging in like fish hooks. All of them knowing, all of them ready to stop any move he made, familiarity draining away into dangerous with every passing moment.

Thousands of eyes that he'd so foolishly thought were safe.

His mind drifted into the lingering fear, quiet and lurking just beyond the edge of his thoughts, and after a couple seconds, he felt the change ripple through him with a mental pop.

Multiple surprised yelps echoed from the other Spiders, and he opened his eyes to see them all staring at the spot he was sitting in complete awe. A couple of them were looking around the room, as if expecting him to pop up somewhere else entirely.

He shimmered back into view, forcing away the memory and the fear, and noted the look of shock on Milo’s face in particular with a somewhat smug grin.

“Holy moons on a kebab stick, you could be so stealthy with that!” Tarabi exclaimed. “Nobody ever sees you, do they?”

“Well, it works well enough until I’m in the middle of a fight and the adrenaline completely throws off my game,” he admitted. “And if I get spooked by something, it doesn’t really help anyone to have me spontaneously disappear.”

“Oh, just imagine the Hallows Eve ghost costume,” Sidney joked. “Actual floating sheet ghost comes up to your door? I’d run for Hell!”

A round of laughter echoed through the small room, and for the first time, since arriving, Miles genuinely felt a little safer. He settled back under the blanket, keeping his arms tucked in close.

Why are we relaxing? They’re still out there - they aren’t safe.

Miles stiffened as the thought crossed his mind, a fresh wave of guilt and worry rolling through him while the others continued their conversation somewhere beyond him.

My parents. My dad. Even with the knowledge that maybe his dimension was safe for now, knowing what would happen made his skin crawl. 

The other Spiders. They might still be looking for him, all just to toss him in with every other thing that they labeled an anomaly and force him to do nothing.

How am I supposed to feel safe while they might still be in danger?

I shouldn't. I shouldn't let myself feel safe. This isn't what I'm meant to be doing. I have to get out of here.

Even though there wasn't anyone who knew where he was. Even though anyone who would have come looking to help him had probably stopped searching long before he'd woken up here.

The understanding made his blood run cold.

The understanding made his mind shift into something quiet. Some place sharp and unfriendly.

Fine then.

If nobody's coming for me who'll help me, then I'll do it myself. I'll get back home, I'll stop the Spot, and I'll save my dad.

I don't need their help. It's too late for them to help.

I'll show them. I can do both. I will do both. I don't care what that stupid algorithm says, I know I can do it.

But first, I have to get out of this dimension.

Miles forced the shockingly poisonous thoughts away, that quiet kernel of anger and hatred being stuffed back into the darker part of his mind as quickly as it had emerged.

He was safe here, and so long as he was here, everyone else would stay safe. 

Safe from him.

If Miles left, they wouldn't be okay. If he stayed, they still wouldn't be okay, because living a timeloop over and over for the forseeable future really didn't qualify as 'okay' in any situation.

A sigh escaped him as he forced himself to tune back into the conversations around him, pushing away pretty much all of his thoughts. Just to make sure that he could still think. And also to make sure that nothing had changed too much in the brief few minutes he'd been stuck in his own thoughts.

He might as well get used to the new roommates.

Maybe they would be… not quite friends. He wasn't ready to call any more Spiders 'friends' just yet.

Casey, who had apparently noticed him unfreeze, decided that that was the perfect moment to completely snap him out of it and tossed a couch pillow at him. His Spider-sense kicked in, and he caught it with one hand, before throwing it back at the other Spider. Casey yelped and tossed it over his shoulder, subsequently smacking an unsuspecting Aura in the face with it.

From there, it escalated into a flat-out pillow fight, making a mess of the couch against Milo’s protests. Milo then proceeded to get hit with three pillows to the face at once, earning more laughter through the small room.

Miles stayed on the couch, slightly cursing his injuries and hoping that they’d heal faster. Even with the small super-healing factor, it still took a bit of time for injuries to heal normally.

As the other Spiders devolved into messy banter and laughter, Miles let his guard drop, even just a little.

Even if it wasn't fully right, he could maybe be safe here for a little while.

Maybe he could let himself be calm, even if just for a short while.

Miles let himself settle back on the couch, quietly watching as chaos unfolded.

Chapter Text

The glitching, violent shimmer of the portal vanished from the edges of her vision as Gwen pushed herself to her knees, annoyed grumbles and groans from everyone else around her fading into background noise.

Gwen was no stranger to interdimensional travel. She was no stranger to interdimensional emergencies, being dispatched to go deal with anomalies in dimensions where they had no business being or helping out Spiders who might need the Spider Society's aid in taking something down.

But out of all those trips, none of them held even half the stakes of this one.

Miles was in serious danger. He’d accidentally sent himself to another dimension through the Go-Home Machine, and was alone somewhere in the multiverse without an interdimensional stabilizer to keep his atoms in check and safe from glitching. Gwen had only spent three days on Earth-1610 during the super-collider incident, and the glitches that had torn her and everyone else apart were beyond painful. They were beyond any kind of pain she'd felt in her entire life.

Gwen didn’t want to imagine how much worse that pain might be for him right now, two entire weeks out from sending himself away from HQ. 

Two weeks out from trying to defy canon, from escaping everything, from trying to do things his own way.

Two weeks out from her betrayal, the last thing she remembered seeing of him being the absolutely destroyed expression on his face, before vanishing in a mess of colours and invisibility.

During her time with the Society, Gwen had seen what happened to Spiders who became anomalies. She didn’t know their names, but she’d seen them get held in the jail cells with other anomalies, like they were unruly villains who needed to be sent home. 

She’d seen other Spiders, loyal to Miguel, chase them down like a wave of eyes nand limbs and violent webs, dragging them away from wherever it was they’d been trying to go.

If they caught Miles first, it was game over for him and everyone in his dimension that he was trying to save. If she and her friends found him first… well, Gwen was a little iffy on what would happen after they found him right now.

She blinked, forcing away exhaustion and worry, before finally looking up from the cold concrete she'd landed on. They could cross that bridge when they got there.

This world was dark, sharp and dim in a way she hadn’t seen any other New York look like throughout her travels. The alleyway where they had all been dumped was somehow darker than the street beyond it, saturated lights barely penetrating through the creeping dim. Even the headlamps of cars seemed quieter, the familiar sounds of honking horns and crowds chattering nearly silenced by the overwhelming presence of something unfamiliar and strange and distinctly absent.

Unlike every other city she'd visited, this one was eerie and almost lost, in a way. Like the world itself was wandering, trying to find a missing piece of itself while stumbling through a dark room without any kind of guiding light. 

A missing piece that was somewhere else entirely, locked away where it couldn't be found.

Gwen got to her feet, the lenses of her mask narrowing as she kept an eye on the alleyway’s entrance. Something about this place was just inherently wrong, radiating an unease that made her Spider-sense prickle lightly. Nothing too problematic - just another worry to toss into the hurricane that her mind had become over the past few weeks.

“Where did we get dumped this time?” Peter B asked, sounding more than a little annoyed with how the day seemed to be going. Which was fair, considering that they'd jumped here on a whim without checking anything beforehand.

“Dunno, someone check,” Pavitr said, bouncing up quickly enough to make her flinch. He was surprisingly energetic considering the whole situation, a level of optimistic energy that Gwen just didn’t have it in her to match right now. Or at all. Not for the foreseeable future, anyway.

Gwen’s Spider-sense started to spark to life, her attention being drawn away from whoever might be talking right now. A lot of her friends were talking, but the mental twinge that had been guiding her towards Miles suddenly rang loud and clear.

He’s here.

He’s in this dimension. I know he is, he has to be.

A hand landed on her shoulder, jolting her out of her thoughts. Gwen whipped around, pushing it off in a panic, to see Noir looking at her cautiously. Maybe. It was a little hard to tell.

“You froze,” he said bluntly. “Our friend is here, isn’t he?”

She took a deep breath, nodding as she did so. “The weird spider link is way clearer than before. He’s somewhere in the city.”

“Oh thank God,” Peter B muttered, and even as lighthearted as his tone was, relief simmered somewhere below the surface. “That means no more jumping across the multiverse for a little while, right?”

“I think so,” Ham answered. “As hilarious as some of those other dimensions are, I am conked out.”

Gwen tried her best to stay focused, but her head was still half-spinning from… maybe the interdimensional jump? Dimensional jumps always messed with her head, but this one was probably worse because she’d been doing so much of it lately.

Then again, it hadn't been this bad the last time she'd jumped, and that was just after doing it three times in a row.

“Where are we?” she asked, although Gwen really could have just figured it out by looking at her own scrapped together dimensional watch. It still had a functional screen, after all.

Margo stood, completely unbothered by the dimensional jump thanks to her avatar, the shimmering blue and purple sparkling brightly against the darkness of the dimension around them. She warped over to Gwen, holding out a holographic screen and reading off of some file she'd pulled up from somewhere that looked like an Encyclopedia article.

“We’re on Earth-42,” Margo announced, and Gwen couldn’t stop herself from freezing while dread crept up her spine.

Earth-42. The dimension that got robbed of a Spiderman because of the supercollider.

Everyone else seemed to be thinking it, too. Noir put a hand back on her shoulder, probably to say something vaguely comforting or offer some advice-

Her Spider-sense went off, but it wasn’t like the usual imminent danger shriek that always went off when she was in trouble. This was slow and creeping, a terror slowly inching closer as the group got to their feet and raised their hands.

“Everyone else feeling that?” Peter B asked, to which everyone carefully grouped up into a circle. The feeling only crept closer, Gwen's Spider-sense buzzing as it twisted between her nerves and crawled under her skin.

This is wrong. This is wrong.

What the hell is out there?

“That ain’t normal,” Hobie said, even the punk Spider’s typical laid-back tone being tight and uneasy. If it was freaking him out, then something was definitely wrong.

Gwen furrowed her eyes, lenses narrowing to a dangerous squint, as the eerie danger increased, a dread that began to settle deep into her bones as they waited for whatever it was to pounce.

There was nothing that they could see in the alleyway that was immediately proving a threat. Gwen’s eyes swept over the entrance to the alley, but there was nothing there that caught her attention. No shadowy figures, no movements of light, no out of place silhouettes on distant rooftops or behind cars.

No danger at ground level.

Ground level…

Gwen looked up alongside everyone else, just as her Spider-sense screamed the danger to her, but the creeping dread had messed her up too much, and Gwen didn't fully register that she needed to move until a tiny flash of silver caught her eye, falling into the alley-

A bright flash of purple and an explosion of pain racketed through her head, and Gwen reeled as she was knocked to the ground by some unseen force. Confused yelling echoed rang through the alley, voices echoing between walls and spilling out into the streets beyond, but there was no time to pay attention to that. A strange, greenish-purple gas flooded the alleyway, flooding it in rolling clouds, and before long, Gwen was choking on it, the gas flooding her lungs and making her head spin even worse than before.

She tried to get up, she had to get up, but rough hands grabbed her arms and held her down. No voice announced the hands, only the world popping in and out of existence while the yelling of her friends was muted one by one. Gwen struggled against the hands, trying to get free, trying to get back up, trying to do anything to get them off of her and get out of here.

I can’t stay down, I have to find Miles, he’s in danger, you can’t trap me like this, you can't-!

Whatever the gas may have been, it was settling into her lungs, poisonous and making her vision flood with static and dark spots. Her thoughts were looping and blurry, stars swimming in her vision, and no matter what she was trying, the hands wouldn't let up, they wouldn't let her go. Whoever was holding her down knew what she was trying to do, predicting every thrash and every flailing punch.

No, no, come on, come on, fight back, let me go, le t m e go-

Gwen coughed harshly, the taste of the gas through her mask acrid and sour, and it didn’t take much longer for the confusion to slip from her mind entirely as Gwen dropped into the dark as the last yell from her friends was cut off.

-=-

Gwen blinked her eyes open slowly, the heavy drag of sleep pulling her away from the rest of the world.

The only thing that she saw was a dark floor and the hint of a window out fo the coner of her eye, before she closed her eyes again as a rush of fear and annoyance rippled through her mind.

Great. Gwen had no idea where she was.

All she knew was that she was definitely not where she’d blacked out.

She opened her eyes briefly, trying to regain her bearings. The sounds of annoyed groans and pained shuffling told her that the others were thankfully nearby, and Gwen tried to shift as well-

She was tied to something.

Her eyes blew open wide, panic overtaking her immediately as she realized her hands and feet were tied to whatever it was she was stuck to.

The room they were all in was dark, the only light pouring in from a window that bathed everything in cold, ominous red. It was harsh and aggressive, unwelcoming and abruptly tearing into the darkness and illuminating the other Spiders with violent claws that both seemed willing to shred them and hesitant to creep any futher.

She strained against the binds, but there was nothing that she could do - solid chains had her stuck to whatever it was she was stuck to, a step up from most villains who managed to catch her off guard.

Chains. That's never a good sign.

We might be in a lot more trouble than I thought we were.

“Everyone here?” Gwen called, even though the sound ricocheted through her head and grated painfully through her throat. Definitely a sign that she needed to drink water or something, but probably not something she'd recieve any time soon. And probably not from whoever had tied her up.

A chorus of ‘yep’ and ‘yeah’ echoed from the others to varying degrees, but it didn’t take very long for Gwen to realize that two voices were missing. Margo and Hobie hadn’t responded to her at all.

“Where’s Hobie?” Pavitr asked, mirroring her thoughts

“And Margo?” Peni asked. “She’s not here either!”

Panic sparked to life in everyone, a quiet clamour of calling their names echoing through the room, but from the sounds of it and the faint illumination from the red light outside, nobody else could move to check, either.

They were all trapped.

Now everyone was in serious danger, and this was already a setback in their mission to find Miles. They needed to get the hell out of here, they had to get out of these stupid bindings, she had to-

“Enough. All of you.”

A low, somewhat digital sounding voice cut through their attempts to escape and their panicked chatter, dangerous and sharp and calculated. Gwen threw herself around, trying to catch a glimpse of whoever had spoken. Whatever she was tied to, it swung easily around, letting her move to see the sheer darkness of the room beyond the red-lit window.

“Who’s there?” she shouted, fury building in her gut as her mask lenses narrowed to slits trying to see into the dark. “Show yourself, jackass!”

“Hey, maybe let's not antagonize the villain who has all of us tied up right now?” Peter hissed quickly, very clearly trying to get Gwen to maybe shut up and listen to whatever self-preservation inctincts she might have.

“Show yourself!” Gwen shouted again, not really caring and continuing to try piss off whoever was in the dark regardless. Irritability sparked to life in her head as she glared into it, trying to find whoever had spoken to them even though it was almost stupidly hard to see through the pitch black. The punching bag, Gwen quickly figured out, that she was tied to swung around again, bringing her back to the darkness of the room beyond. She genuinely couldn’t see anything - there was nothing there, or at least, it appeared so.

Wait-

Her Spider-sense went off, and rightfully so.

A familiar purple glow flashed to life in the dark, bright pink slits for eyes watching them closely. Everyone stilled as a horribly familiar purple symbol sparked to life over the eyes, metal shimmering with a dangerous violet glow and something powering up with a threatening whirring that shredded the air around them.

Gwen knew that symbol. She'd seen it on captured anomalies in the Spider Society HQ, she'd seen it on a villain from her home dimension.

She'd seen it on the villain that had hesitated before dropping Miles off a roof, on the villain who had terrified him so in the days before the supercollider had been fixed.

The Prowler.

The masked figure stayed in the darkness instead of stepping forward, narrowed pinkish white eyes glaring her down as she spun in violent circles. Gwen’s punching bag turned enough that she lost sight of the Prowler, only spiking her worry more as she saw the wide eyes of the other Spiders, reflecting the pruple glow back as some of them scooted backward.

“Who are you?” Gwen demanded, her voice unstable and nervous even as she tried her best to make it sound strong. “What do you want with us? Where are the other two Spiders?”

The punching bag turned abruptly, whirling her back to face the Prowler and being stopped by a clawed fist directly next to her face. The bright eyes watching her were nothing but cold.

Unfamiliar.

Dangerous.

Almost… knowing.

Almost like they knew what she and her friends were here for, and the one behind the mask wanted them nothing less than gone.

“You don’t get to ask questions,” the Prowler snarled, the voice filter on his mask only making the words drag through her ears in a painful manner that forced her to freeze. The gauntlet he wore whirred threateningly, whatever mechanisms that might inside stirring to life, and fear began to drip down her spine for probably the twelfth time that week alone.

“I think we do get to ask, actually,” Peter said, immediately going against his own advice about not pissing this guy off and snarking at the Prowler. “It’s not very nice to knock a bunch of tourists out the second they get to your city-”

“Quiet,” the Prowler snapped without averting his gaze, and to his credit, Peter did actually shut up before finishing his sentence.

The world went dead silent as the whirring of the Prowler’s gauntlet hummed loudly next to her ear, the silence building steadily. The air itself no longer moved, like it was afraid of him too.

“Who are you all?” he demanded, a calculated tone clipping his voice.

For a moment, nobody spoke. Gwen wasn’t about to reveal herself to this random Prowler variant, no matter how close to her face the gauntlet was.

It'll be fine.

I can take a hit or two from one of those.

It'll be fine.

Gwen tried to force away how much those words sounded like a lie, even to her own mind.

He seemed to notice their lack of willingness to divulge the information, and her Spider-sense shrieked as the gauntlet secured itself around her throat without warning. Panicked yelps echoed from everyone as they shouted at the Prowler to let her go, but Gwen could still breathe.

The Prowler wasn’t actually strangling her. Even if barely, the threat was for show.

That didn’t mean the cold metal was any less terrifying.

Especially having seen what some Prowler variants' gauntlets could do if you were on the wrong end of one. Being on the other side of a built-in gun or some kind of toxic gas really was not where anyone wanted to spend their day.

“You have one more chance. Either you tell me who you are, or there's gonna be one less of you going home tonight,” the Prowler snapped. “It’s not that hard. So make your choice.”

Another long beat of deadly quiet, and the metal fingers started to tighten around her throat.

“I’m Spider-Woman,” Gwen offered, her voice choked even though she wasn’t actually being choked. A couple seconds later, a chorus of timid introductions echoed from the rest of the Spiders, worried tension woven thick into the air around them.

Nobody offered any real hint of identity, of course - that was a death sentence no matter the dimension you might be in. If a villain could link someone's identity to the resident Spider, it would cause a lot of problems for everyone involved.

Earth-42 didn't have a Spider. It technically wouldn't have hurt to say her real name.

There was supposed to be a Spider-Man here.

Gwen shoved the thought away. It was a traitorous thought, one that wouldn't help them in their mission to save Miles.

She needed to focus.

The Prowler’s gauntlet relaxed, ever so slightly, although it wasn’t enough for Gwen to have freed herself from his grasp even if she could move her hands. It wasn't enough to have gotten away in time if he did decide to unleash whatever might have been powering up in the gauntlet, a sound that was beginning to fade away into the soft background noise of the building's electricity running.

“That wasn’t so difficult, was it?” he said, narrowed eyes scanning over the Spiders while he walked Gwen around so that she could see the blood-red lit masks of her friends. All of them terrified, all of them watching every move the Prowler made. “Next question. What are you doing here?”

“We’re looking for our friend,” Peni told him bluntly. “He’s somewhere in this dimension, but we don’t know where.”

“He doesn’t have a stabilizer,” Pav said. “Like, the watches we have. If he doesn’t get one, he’s going to glitch.”

The eyes of the Prowler’s mask widened, just barely. Dammit, they probably sounded absolutely insane to this guy.

“He’ll die if we can’t find him,” Gwen added, trying to hold back the quiet tears that were building behind her eyes. Crying in the mask never worked out well for her, and she wasn’t about to let this random Prowler variant see her cry.

She'd done enough crying for now.

“Is he another one of you spider-themed freaks?” the Prowler demanded.

Peter B let out a small, offended scoff, alongside a few others, but nobody spoke up about the comment.

Wait… another?

“Have you seen him?” Gwen asked, a hint of hope flickering to life in her voice against her will. “His suit is black, and it’s got red highlights running down the side. There might be a tear in the shoulder right now, from-”

Gwen stopped herself. It may have been two weeks ago, but the memories hurt.

The Prowler froze. Just barely, but it was enough for everyone in the room to catch it.

“A lot of Spiders roll through here,” the Prowler said, the voice changer jumping for a moment, ignoring the way that everyone's eyes widened. “And a lot of you aren’t friendly. And you're not in the place to be asking anything of me. So why would I tell a bunch of you who seem to be chasing him down?”

“Wait, what-”

The Prowler stepped back from her, eyes scanning each of them with a level of disgust that was almost personal, a surprise considering the mask. “And even if I did tell you, there's no guarantee that you wouldn’t use that information to track down some hapless Spider who got stuck here and get rid of him. Forgive my sketpticism if it hurts your feelings that I don’t find any of you particularly trustworthy.”

There wouldn’t be a guarantee that you wouldn’t use that information to track him down and get rid of him.

A lot of you aren't friendly.

“We don’t want to hurt him!” Pavitr yelped quickly. “He’s our friend! And he needs help stopping a bad guy!”

The Prowler leaned back slightly, moving away from Gwen and her punching bag and back into the dark. The villain allowed the gauntlets to detach from his hands, thudding to the floor with an ominous clang. “I thought you just said that you needed to find him and give him one of those watch things.”

“We need to do that too,” Noir said quickly, trying to save face because they were all genuinely terrible at keeping their story straight today. “He was valiantly trying to fight the enemy, but was sent to another dimension without one of these gizmos to keep him safe. You see, the gizmos-”

“I already know what those do,” the Prowler said sharply, cutting Noir off and sending horrified chills down everyone’s spines. “You don’t interact with as many of you Spiders as I do without being taught how to hijack one.”

Gwen’s breath froze in her lungs as the universe stopped time for them all to process what he'd just said.

“Someone taught you?” she whispered, her question barely rising over the deafening quiet.

“Of course someone taught him,” an unknown voice said, ringing out from the dark almost carelessly. “You can’t really expect someone to be able to jailbreak a multiversal stabilizer watch without someone to teach you how to do that.”

Everyone paused, looking around and trying to find whoever it was that had just spoken. It was a new voice, completely unknown to anyone, yet the way they spoke made it sound like whoever it was knew exactly what they were talking about.

Like they knew how the Spider Society's mechanisms operated.

Like they knew more than a normal villain should about the Spider Society.

The idea sent chills down her already frozen spine. If her blood ran any colder, she was almost certain she'd turn to ice.

The Prowler paused, blinking slowly, before turning around to look up at a beam illuminated by a red skylight. Gwen followed his gaze and froze when she saw a figure leaning casually against one of the beams at the roof.

The shadow’s head turned, and two masked eyes opened to watch them. Then another pair, just below the first. All of them narrowed, all of them suspicious.

The eyes were familiar.

A Spider’s eyes.

The unknown Spider stood up and let themself fall from the beam, a slight shff echoing from somewhere in the dark as the Spider stood upside down on the beam. Their eyes were the only thing that she could make out, and the Spider flipped down to stand on the ground.

“Besides,” the unknown Spider said, watching them all curiously, languidly walking closer. “It helps to have some friends to teach you how to disarm the Society’s safety measures when you need to. Those trackers are so annoying, aren’t they?”

As Gwen watched, another Spider’s eyes opened behind the first.

Then a third pair, glowing a cyan green.

Then another, and another, until there were seven distinct Spiders. 

All watching them with narrowed eyes.

The resonant calls of Spider-sense echoed between the groups, a near-deafening call that made her head swim in pain, mask eyes twitching on both sides. Somehow, all seven of them had masked their Spider-senses from them. The calls went back and forth like that for a while, until the one who'd spoken stepped forward again.

“You’re working with the Prowler?” Peni spat, her hostility violently clear as they stood next to the villain.

“You’re working for Miguel?” one of the other Spiders shot back, so much venom in their voice that they could have been spraying them with cyanide.

“No no, not anymore,” Gwen said, a tiny hint of desperation flaring through her voice as panic sparked to life again. They had to listen, they were fellow Spiders. They would know how to help. “He hurt our friend really badly - he’s the reason that we left.”

“Did he now?” another voice asked - there were too many to keep track of, and Gwen’s head was spinning trying to figure out who was talking. “How do we know you’re not lying?”

“Because she was wearing one of 138’s hijacked watches, wire-brain,” another said, less snappy, but still hostile. “It’s the other ones we have to worry about.”

The Prowler sighed, facepalming his mask as the first Spider approached. “And to think this interrogation was going so well before you all decided to show up.”

“And who are all of you guys?” Peter B demanded, exasperation thick.

The first Spider’s eyes narrowed, scanning each of them coldly until they landed on Gwen. They stepped into the light to reveal a mostly purple and black suit, four eyes blinking coldly at her. A hood sat on their shoulders, their suit a gradient from black into purple into greyish-white at the extremities. With the hood flipped down, Gwen saw a long, black braid, with a huge chunk of it stained an unusually bright white, waving behind them.

“We’re the Spiders that got thrown away,” they said coldly. “The ones who tried to change how the canon would go, and got punished for it as a result. We're the ones who always get left behind, always get pushed aside like we're nothing. We're anomalies.”

Anomalies.

The ones who tried to change how their canon went.

Just like Miles.

“We got thrown away by the Society you all came from,” the Spider said, voice bitter and angry, hatred clawing through the air. “And now we’re hearing that you’re all chasing down an anomaly who's done the exact same thing we did. An anomaly, by the sound of it, who got tossed out without a stabilizer to die.”

The first Spider glared at her, mask eyes narrowed to slits as he took a step closer. “So why should we believe you when you say you’re trying to help him?”

Silence settled over the room. All eyes turned to Gwen and the unknown Spider, waiting.

“Because he’s out there without a watch,” Gwen answered tiredly. “And if we were with the Society, we probably wouldn’t have bothered to check this dimension anyway.”

Nobody at HQ ever acknowledged Earth-42, because there was no Spider to protect it. Because it was a lost cause, according to Miguel.

But she didn’t know what to believe anymore.

“Please, you have to help us,” Gwen whispered. “If we can’t find him, he’s going to die. We can't let him die.”

The words settled into her heart, a heavy weight that she couldn’t even find it in herself to start crying about. There were no tears left in reserve for this anymore.

The Spider’s eyes widened, ever so slightly, Gwen’s discomfort only rising with the motion. Most Spiders were very expressive with their body language when the masks were on - throwing around their hands, making quick motions with their arms - but the total lack of any movement just felt off to her. It wasn't how a Spider moved.

It was only made worse by the constant, quiet pinging of be wary that the violet-suited Spider was giving off. Not a full blown danger alert, but just a whisper of a threat, barely there yet still obvious enough that her Spider sense kept reminding her it was there.

None of this was right. Not how he talked, not how he moved, now how he watched them with such precision. It wasn't the movement of a Spider - it was more like those of a villain.

“Violet,” one of the other Spiders hissed, actually sounding closer to a hiss than a name. A few anxious shuffles from behind her, from the others who were watching this one-sided stand off go down without being able to do anything to help if something went wrong.

Another moment of silent observation passed, before the Spider broke eye contact with her and glared back at the rest of them.

“Undo the chains,” they said, distrust evident in their voice even as he stepped back into the dark. “So long as they don’t try to escape, they can wander around the room a bit. Which means don’t run off, because we still need to talk to you all again later.”

That last part felt like unnecessary instructions, but Gwen did herself a favour and kept her mouth shut this time. These Spiders were already unlike anyone else she’d met, and being on Earth-42, she didn’t really want to take any chances and accidentally piss them off.

Not like you weren't already doing that earlier.

If they can help us find Miles, then it’s worth it to stay and talk to them, her more rational brain offered. It was irritating, but that rational part was right. If they were anomalies, then they probably had the best shot at helping them find Miles on 42. He had to have run into at least one of them, if there were seven running around the city.

Gwen nearly fell to the floor as the chains binding her to the punching bag came loose without warning, regaining her balance enough not to stumble head-first into the Prowler. The eyes of his mask narrowed minutely, but he didn’t do anything about it. He only stepped back into the dark alongside the anomalies, melting into them without care if any of them fell.

“What do we call you guys?” Peni asked, her voice a surprise in the silent room. “You know who we are - what about you?”

The Spider who had done most of the talking looked back at them, Gwen shaking out her wrists and standing as straight as she could manage. A click sounded through the dark, almost an animalistic noise, but nobody dared to point it out.

“You can call me Violet Weaver,” the Spider said, voice clipped as they audibly messed with their braid. It was a small amount of movement, but it took off the unusual edge that their presence seemed to carry, even in the silence.

“What, not Violet?” Peter joked, and a few harsh glares were thrown his way as a result.

Violet Weaver actually snorted, though, so it wasn’t a total blunder. “My friends can call me Violet. You all are acquaintances at best.”

"And at worst?" Gwen pressed, although she had an idea of what he might say.

Another beat.

"My enemies call me Weaver," he spat coldly. "You don't want to end up on that side of the spectrum, Spider-Man."

The way he'd said it sent pings of alarmed recognition flickering through her mind, but at this point, Gwen was too frazzled to place why.

They turned back to the other Spiders, elbowing the Prowler as they walked away. “A word, guys. And the rest of you, don’t go anywhere.”

The other Spiders vanished from the dark, eyes closing or turning away as they walked to a different part of the room. After a couple moments, Gwen heard a door creaking open, and light poured in from another room, before abruptly slamming shut and leaving them alone.

Silence permeated the air for a couple moments, before Gwen took a deep breath. She hadn’t noticed when she’d started holding her breath, but it was long enough that she needed a few deep ones to get her breathing back on track.

“Well, they were certainly delightful,” Noir offered. She couldn’t tell if he was being sarcastic or not.

“They’re weird,” Ham said, standing up and marching to the center of the room. “We’re Spider-people like them! There’s no reason to tie us up and interrogate us like prisoners! That purple one kept talking like he was evil!”

“Yeah, I don’t think I’ve seen any Spiders do that,” Pavitr said, jumping to his feet with an energy that was insanely high considering the whole situation they were in. “Except Miguel, of course. He does that all the time. But that's normal for him, I guess.”

The mention of Miguel made everyone freeze, but Pavitr either didn’t notice or didn’t care.

“And they’re working with a Prowler variant!” Peni added. “No Spider I’ve ever met would do that on purpose! That's crazy-people talk!”

“That all does sound quite strange,” Noir agreed, “unless you take into consideration that Violet Weaver mentioned that they are all anomalies. Anomalies who, if the distinct sounds of it are anything to go by, were mistreated very harshly by the Society that we all aligned ourselves with, who we know did the same thing to our friend. They most likely saw the designs of our gizmos and thought we were with them. They also probably are working with the Prowler out of necessity, considering how the environment of this dimension seems to have shaped up without a Spider-Man. I do not believe that the arrangement of any of this is willing on their part.”

“Then how is the city still in bad shape if there’s at least seven of them here?” Gwen demanded. “One or two Spiders is usually enough for one dimension to hold it together indefinitely, but having seven Spiders at work in one place should mean there’s no crime at all. That can't be a good sign, right?”

That shut everyone up pretty quickly. According to Miguel’s statistics, Gwen was right.

Then again, Miguel turned out to not exactly be the most reliable person to look to for statistics, considering…

Well. Everything.

The group went mostly quiet, and Gwen absently wandered over to the window as everyone else started to talk amongst themselves. Red light still poured in from the outside, drowning the room in eerie crimsons and blacks like fresh bloodstains splattered across everything. Like her own gloves, their usual pristine white dirtied from weeks of searching, were stained in the darkness and in the deep crimson of the light.

Like his suit.

Gwen leaned tiredly against the wall and slammed her eyes shut. Whatever headache had been present before, it was only made worse by the spinning thoughts in her head.

Barely a day in this dimension, and they’d all already been knocked out, captured, and interrogated by other Spiders and the Prowler all in one go. Their first impressions were shaky at best, and Gwen was pretty sure that the conversation that the anomalies were having in another room was going to be the coin flip that determined whether they helped them or sent them away to look for Miles by themselves. Or worse, send them out of the dimension entirely to resume their search elsewhere, even though her gut told her that he was here.

And at every turn, at every faint colour combination or time that Gwen could let herself vaguely relax, she couldn’t get the thought of him out of her mind.

“You all knew!?”

“I didn’t know… how to tell you.”

The saddened, betrayed look on his face wouldn’t leave her mind. Any memory she had of him smiling was locked behind a wall of guilt and disgust and those ten words that played like a cursed record in her head, over and over and over again.

Even rethinking those words made Gwen grip her arms tighter, the suit under her gloves almost feeling wrong to wear.

Spider-Woman shouldn't be capable of hurting someone like that.

But Gwen Stacy was. She always was, in every single story, and it ended the same way every time.

“We’re supposed to be the good guys.”

She’d spat that at Miguel, the fury from before having faded into simmering, cold rage, deep in her mind and her gut. Rage that flickered to life at her beck and call, that made her heart twist and her muscles tense with stiffening, stranglehold grips.

Rage at who, Gwen wasn’t quite sure.

She couldn't be sure of anything anymore, and it was starting to drive her mad.

Mad that she didn't know what to believe, mad that she had bought into the very same thing that was fucking up so much of so many people's lives right now.

There wasn't even any telling if the vague sense of belief she had now, the one that had been driving her for the better part of three weeks now, was true enough to keep holding onto.

Was it three weeks?

I don't know. I have to hope.

That hope is going to get you killed.

And yet, she just couldn't bring herself to let that tiny piece of hope go. It was the dying candle to her vast, open dark room - not providing much light, barely anything she could see with, but it was a light nonetheless.

She shifted in place, her feet and hands absently tapping a rhythm from one of the songs that the Mary Janes had been working on… only a few months ago?

It certainly didn't feel like months. It felt like she'd been stuck in this nightmare for years now, just waiting for something to finally break the pattern and let her leave.

Her eyes wandered aimlessly around the room, quietly noting the others moving around and the discarded chains that now lay across the floor.

Not exactly the most welcome patternbreaker, but it's something.

A distant thump through the building made her freeze in place. Nothing dangerous that she knew of, but considering their current company, there wasn't any telling who might be around. Or what might be around.

Focus, Gwen, she snapped at herself the second her mind started to wander, to try and imagine what could be lurking in the dark rooms. There's no time for imaginary monsters right now. You have to find Miles and you have to help him.

You have to fix this. It's your fault, isn't it?

She pushed away the poisonous thoughts, but the message behind them seeped into her movements and her mind all the same. A scraping, repetitive poison that she couldn't get rid of.

All she could really do right now was wait. Wait for those anomalies to make up their minds and hope that they would help them. All they needed was to explain the situation, just enough to make them understand, and hopefully they would help.

Waiting was agony. Every passing second was another second that Miles was in danger. another second that he might be glitching out worse and worse, another second closer to falling apart in a dimension where he didn't belong.

Gwen was so caught up in her worried thoughts, spiraling through her mind without a care, that she didn't notice Peter come up to her until he was right in front of her face. His mask's eyes were narrowed in the same way that always meant he was making a worried expression under the mask. It was torn up from weeks of searching, weeks spent tearing through New York variant after New York Variant.

Her own suit was in no better condition, but seeing the tiredness even from behind a mask hurt.

"Hey, are you doing okay?" he asked, voice low and cautious. Like he was trying to talk to a scared little kid. "You're quiet. And you're fidgeting with your hands."

"I'm fine," Gwen said immediately, the lenses of her mask narrowing quickly. "It's just the anomalies… I don't know if they'll help us or not. I'm worried that they'll just try to kick us out of the dimension before we have a chance to look."

"Well, we all know that a trip to Earth-42 is usually one way," Peter offered. "If your Spidey-sense is saying that he's here, then there isn't going to be much of a way out of here."

He was right. Earth-42's dimensional gateway was always set up to be a one way, for some reason that nobody had ever really bothered to explain. It was always a one way. There was no way to leave once you'd arrived.

"If we can convince them to help us look-"

The door swung open abruptly, a loud BANG echoing through the room and making everyone jump to their feet. Gwen didn't get a good look at the rest of the room before the lights in the other room switched off with an ominous click.

Eight sets of eyes turned to them from the dark, the Prowler and the one with four eyes - Violet Weaver - stepped forward, while the others watched from somewhere in the dark. Still not doing anything but watching, to be fair, but it didn't feel right.

That same prickling feeling of dread that kept building up rang through the air again, the calls of the other Spiders dimmed by the low-simmering buzz of some harsh unease that scraped the air clear of any other dangers. The watching was too much, but there was no way for her to tell which one was giving off that sheer feeling of you're being watched anymore. It was almost all of them, but there was still something local, still someone who was specifically giving it off.

"Well?" Noir asked, recovering a lot quicker from the sudden intrusion than anyone else. "Have you reached a consensus?"

"We have," Violet Weaver said, equally as coldly as the first time he'd spoken. He stepped into the light of their part of the room, the purple and black and white suit dappled in so much red and shadow that for a moment, it almost looked bloodstained.

Just like your suit does in this light. Just like how it might as well be.

She tried not to think about that too hard.

Gwen held her breath, praying to whatever god might be out there that their decision was at least somewhat in their favour.

"We aren't going to kick you out," Violet Weaver stated cleanly, the authority in his voice clear even through the eerieness. "We quite literally can't. I'm not going to lie and say that we know, because we don't know where to get the access to jailbreak through the one-way lock on this dimension, and we don't have the ability to do anything that could get us those codes. Yet, anyway."

Relief swamped her, and Gwen's shoulders dropped from where she'd stiffly been holding them up.

They could stay. They could stay and keep looking for him.

Violet Weaver seemed to notice them all relaxing, even marginally, and his eyes narrowed. "But just because we're letting you all stay to do your search-and-rescue mission doesn't meant we're going to help you with it. If the others want to help out with finding your friend, that's not up to me. But until we get the full story from whoever has it, you are nothing more to us than strangers in a place where you don't belong. We are not helping you."

"Except finding them a place to stay, right?" A Spider from the back, a blue-tinted and glimmering suit stepping forward. "If they're going to be here a while, they at least shouldn't be breaking into their alternate selves houses to find a place to sleep."

"Yes, right, thank you," Violet Weaver said. "We're not total villains. Not to any of you guys, anyways."

"That kinda gives the implications that you're villains, though," Pav pointed out appearing out of absolutely nowhere next to Gwen and making her jump. "Like come on, bro, if you're gonna be a little evil, at least admit it."

Violet Weaver's eyes narrowed, and Gwen smacked Pav on the shoulder with the back of her hand as nicely as she could manage. Pissing off the already slightly annoyed Spiders was definitely a bad idea.

"Don't make us be villains," Violet Weaver said, his voice dropping from cold to something much worse in less than a second. "Nobody wants that."

"Thank you," Gwen said, the relief in her voice nearly breaking it as the other Spiders turned away and filed out of the room. "For letting us stay to look. It meants a lot."

His eyes narrowed minutely, but he didn't do anything else that indicated he was annoyed. Once again, the total lack of body language was throwing her off - Gwen wouldn't be surprised if Violet Weaver was doing that on purpose.

The eerie feeling spiked when she looked this Spider's way - it was him giving off that quiet be wary ping, that feeling of being in the same room as something much worse than what she might be looking at.

"You owe us an explanation still," he snapped, beckoning to them in a 'follow me' gesture. "But yeah. Not a problem… who are you again?"

"Spider-Woman," Gwen said. "From Earth-65."

If this guy wasn't going to offer his secret identity, then Gwen wouldn't either. Common courtesy, and all that.

It really didn't help that Violet Weaver was still dripping that take caution, be wary, be alert aura that kept her Spider-sense pinging constantly. It could be covering up real danger that might be somewhere else around them.

Violet Weaver visibly stiffened when she said the number of her home dimension, but if there was anything he wanted to say, he kept it to himself.

"You guys will come with me," Violet Weaver said, leading the group into the darker part of the room and toward the door. "I've got a location where you guys can set up until you find your missing friend. Other than that, if you see one of us around the city after telling us what happened, feel free to say hi. And other than that, don't get too involved with fighting crime - we've got that handled, and we don't need your help."

A few doubtful snorts, but aside from that, nobody commented on the state of the city they'd seen outside.

Moments passed by as Violet Weaver went to the door in the dark, vanishing almost completely from view when he turned away from them. Peter tapped her on the shoulder, and Gwen stopped walking for a second.

"Hey, doesn't this feel weird to you?" Peter asked. "There's no way that they just found a place for us to stay that quickly. "

"I think that we're gonna have to trust them," Gwen whispered, even as Peni and Pav and Noirwalked up next to them. "I don't want to… but they're probably our best shot at finding Miles."

"And also figuring out where Margo and Hobie went," Peni added. "We still don't know where either of them went after we got knocked out."

Right. Gwen had almost completely forgotten about that part of the whole kidnapping situation. Honestly, it made her feel like an even worse friend for forgetting at all.

"We'll find them all, okay?" Peter reassured in a hushed tone. "But I think we gotta get past whatever it is that these anomalies are doing here first."

"We don't have that kind of time-"

The door swung open before anyone could continue the conversation, and Violet Weaver turned to give them a very unimpressed look. "Are you guys just gonna stand there yapping for the rest of the day, or do you want to get a move on? From what I understand, you're all on the clock."

That made up her mind. Violet Weaver was right - they were on a clock, and it was ticking down fast. It wouldn't be long before something really, really bad happened, Gwen was sure of it.

The group followed the anomaly through the dark doorway, a trail of unease lingering in their path as they walked into the lost dimension.

Chapter Text

Gwen had heard many rumours floating around about Earth-42.

Some Spiders said that Earth-42 didn’t really exist anymore - just a blank, empty space between universes. Others said that the city was so overrun with crime that it was in ruins. Some even said that New York here just didn’t exist anymore, only a wretched, decimated wasteland filled with gangs and dangerous criminals.

The city Gwen was swinging through now immediately proved that it definitely still existed. It pretty effectively proved that it wasn't in ruins, either.

But that didn’t mean that it was any less unnerving here.

Mainly because it looked so incredibly normal that it was totally throwing Gwen off-guard. Of everything she was expecting from Earth-42, it wasn't normalcy.

For a dimension that was supposedly doomed to self-destruction, it looked a lot more like a regular Tuesday evening than one would first think upon hearing the word ‘doomed.’ In fact, this place hardly looked ‘doomed’ in any sense of the word - minus typical rush hour traffic that doomed you to getting wherever it was you wanted to go an hour or three late.

All around them as they rushed through the city, web after web thrown in a direction that Gwen was no longer fully keeping track of, skyscrapers and buildings flew past in quick, flashing succession. Fragments of light and of sounds of cars reached her for a few seconds before the momentum of her web carried her back up and away from the streets, only to be dipped back into the lifeblood of New York. Taxi horns screamed momentarily, the conversations of people echoed in brief snippets, all of it snatches of life and moments in time that Gwen could only hear muffled words and out of context pieces of.

It sounded exactly like her own New York, the living people and the cars and the roads, the crossing sign beeps and the distant wailing of police sirens. It almost reminded her of home. 

But this wasn't home. It wasn't suppoesd to be anything like home, and yet the similarities were almost painful.

The New York of Earth-42 was almost… peaceful, in a way. There wasn’t really any other word that Gwen’s worry-packed brain could put to it. Almost familiar, but just a little too far off to be so. 

The peace she found here was not a calming kind of peace.

This was an eerie kind of peaceful, shadows just a little too sharp and too close as their group swung through the city, car horns and the sounds of the world just a bit too faded into the background for her comfort, streetlights and headlamps just too dim to give any sense of safety. The sidewalks were too cracked for areas of the city she knew to be better maintained, and there were too many curious eyes who followed their movements from the streets below.

There were too many eyes, even as high up as they were. Too many people watching them, too much of the apartment lights flying by blinking like eyes in their direction. Like the world was waiting for some other shoe to drop, as though this universe itself knew something that none of them did, and it was silently waiting for them to see whatever it was and realize what was wrong with this world.

The further they went into the city, Gwen got that feeling of something missing from Earth-42 again; something fundamental and foundational that well and truly had dropped this city into some kind of liminal space. The city seemed to sit somewhere between losing that piece and finding it again, that expectant feeling when you were looking for something in the last place you’d left it and not quite knowing if it would actually be there or not. 

That kind of uncertainty, that puzzle in the back of her mind, kept Gwen from fully relaxing into her swings the way most Spiders normally did. Alongside a wide variety of other anxieties, but that was one of the ones at the forefront of her thoughts right now.

A flash of purple from up ahead, through the colours of the other Spiders.

She still didn’t know where Violet Weaver, the anomaly who’d honestly done most of the talking so far, was trying to lead them. Apparently he knew of a place for them to stay, which was a lot better than trying to find safe havens out on the streets. Peaceful as it seemed, Gwen had seen reports of 42’s crime rates. Nobody was staying out on the streets to sleep, not on her watch.

Even as kind as the gesture seemed, it was quite clear from Violet Weaver and the other anomalies' behaviour that Gwen and her friends were not welcome here.

Nobody from the Society was welcome here. A prickling hostility skittered up her spine as they passed over Times Square, zipping toward somewhere Upper Eastside, one that sent Gwen's Spider-sense running haywire.

And even worse than that, nobody had told them where Hobie and Margo had gone. Margo reasonably could have just teleported back to HQ - there were advantages to your secret identity being a digital avatar that you could use to pop up anywhere in the multiverse, so long as there was Wi-Fi.

Hobie was decidedly not a digital avatar of any kind. He was superhuman as the rest of them (hopefully - maybe superhuman wasn’t the right label for a Spider… or Hobie in general) and probably still would have gotten affected by whatever was in that gas that the Prowler had used to knock them out. 

But they had seen no trace of him since, and it was only another worry that now circulated through her head, among the maelstrom of other worries.

It really didn’t help that none of the anomalies here seemed prone to answering questions. The most she’d gotten from them so far were hostile glares and the occasional snap in her direction.

So, to recap, Gwen’s brain said as she followed along behind Pavitr, so lost in thought that the swinging motions had become nearly automatic as the world turned to a blur around her. There's a lot of problems ongoing.

The Spider Society is probably hunting for us and for Miles. We’re stuck in a dimension with a one-way travel lock, meaning we can’t leave if we wanted to. There’s a bunch of strange Spiders here claiming to be anomalies who were dropped into this dimension because they were exactly that - anomalies.

Hobie is missing, and they won’t tell us what happened to him. Margo might have left without telling anyone, and now there’s a chance that we can't get out of this dimension with her help because she doesn’t know where we are here.

And Miles is somewhere in this dimension, meaning he’s trapped here too, and he doesn’t have an interdimensional stabilizer to keep him safe. He’s most definitely glitching all over the place and there isn’t much time before those glitches get really severe.

Excellent recap. This whole situation is fucked.

Gwen pushed aside the darker possibility, the one that always lurked behind the thought of Miles being alone in the multiverse without a stabilizer. She didn’t want to think about that.

He’s way too stubborn for that. 

If Miles is really stuck here somewhere, then he would have figured out a way to stop himself from glitching.

Gwen’s absent gaze focused on the road below, her arms barely moving beyond what was necessary to swing properly. Would he have been found by these anomalies too?

The idea was immediately struck down. If his reaction back at HQ said anything, it was that Miles was not going to put up with any other Spiders for the foreseeable future. Not with anyone from the Society, and not with any random anomalies who were dumped into 42, not with Gwen and her friends He wouldn’t have gone to them willingly, and definitely not just to ask for some kind of stabilizer.

Plus, if that were the case, then anomalies or even the Prowler would have one hundred percent mentioned some lone anomaly lost on Earth-42. Maybe not directly, but even just in passing would have been enough. But they’d just seemed confused and hostile and protective of the anomalies already here, and much less concerned with the idea of another Spider dropping in among them.

How do we know you wouldn't go after this anomaly?

Double plus, most Spiders that she knew were painfully atrocious liars when shoved into the spotlight without warning. Most of the time, the only reason they got away with anything vaguely related to a situation at hand was combination of almost comically convenient situational timing, not being able to talk to people, or straight up just not being aware of what was going on. 

It was usually all three, and even planning around that was still incredibly difficult for anyone who knew how to lie as a Spider or to a Spider. Gwen had met only one Spider who could lie tactfully, and he was currently on the group’s list of missing people.

Hobie would have been able to tell if something was up.

No, there was no way the anomalies could have lied their way out of those questions. Not when they were being pressed that hard about it, and especially not with any Spider's track record of secret-keeping. These anomalies had to be telling some of the truth, if not all of it.

All of those thoughts to say, Miles was probably alone in this dimension. He wouldn’t be around people, but maybe-

“You still there, bro?”

Gwen let out a sharp yelp, Pavitr’s voice nearly making her miss her next swing. He was now swinging next to her, with much more flair and dramatics than she was right now.

“What? Uh, yeah, it’s nothing, I'm fine!” she yelled back, focusing back on the path. It took exactly less than three seconds for that focus to be derailed again, as both her brain and and Pav distracted her immediately.

“You said ‘it,’ therefore I think something is wrong,” Pav called to her, entirely too accurate for her liking. “Plus, you’re all stiff with your swings. You only swing stiff when you’re stressed.”

“I’m not that stressed!”

“Actually, you’ve been swinging stiff for weeks now. Stiffer than normal, then.”

“Dude, I don’t swing stiff!”

“You are, though! You’ve been swinging like you’ve got bricks of cement attached to your arms the whole time!”

Gwen rolled her eyes sharply, a motion only made visible by the faint rise and fall of her mask lenses. Although with how fast they were moving, she doubted Pavitr caught that. “What does stiff swinging have to do with what’s bothering me?”

“So something is bothering you!”

Example number one of Spiders being really bad at lying, or sticking to a lie: the entire previous exchange.

Gwen’s shoulders somehow only became more rigid in their movement, which was also proving Pavitr right in the fact that she was, indeed, being very stiff with her movement that was a bit annoying, but she couldn't really disprove it now that she was aware of it.

In all honesty, if she didn’t let some of the tension go, she’d probably wake up sore tomorrow - a feat, considering that she went out swinging all the time and wasn’t stiff, thank you very much.

“Aren’t we supposed to be following Violet Weaver?” she called, trying to divert Pav's attention away from her for more than five seconds.

“Technically, we were supposed to stop a few streets back, bro,” Pav answered, swinging up next to her carelessly. “They stopped on a rooftop a while back and you kinda just kept going without checking.”

“Wha- why didn’t you say that first!?” Gwen swung sideways to land on a skyscraper, sticking to it so that she wouldn’t fall off the smooth glass surface. Pav landed next to her, a shockingly cheery look on his mask even face with Gwen's irritation. “You could have mentioned it earlier!”

“Yeah, I could have,” Pav admitted with a shrug. “But out of everyone I know, you’re the one who swings stiff when stressed and doesn’t pay attention to anything until it’s like, right in front of you.”

Gwen winced under the mask, the observation striking much closer to home than Pav probably realized. Or he did realize and was just playing it off.

Am I really that obvious? 

That question was answered when Pav politely nudged her shoulder, jolting her out of her thoughts again. “Like right now. Completely spaced out and staring at the road like it’s offended you personally.”

“It’s nothing, Pav. I promise.”

Liar.

Liar.

That’s all you are.

A liar.

“Are you sure? You’ve been-”

Gwen stood up abruptly, interrupting Pavitr’s oncoming flood of prying questions. Questions that she wouldn’t be able to answer without something in her mind snapping. “It’s fine. Where are the others?”

Pavitr didn’t answer for a couple moments, just watching with clear concern that made Gwen think that he was going to ask again.

But to her shock, Pav just let out a small, almost sorrowful sigh, before standing up next to her. “They stopped a couple streets back, near this road out of the city. It’s a really weird spot - looks like it hasn’t been maintained in years, even though it’s so close to the better parts of the city.”

Pavitr continued to ramble on about it, all while Gwen let herself tune out of everything except her own thoughts again.

He'd actually dropped it. Out of respect for her privacy or some other reason, but he'd actually dropped it.

Why did he believe me?

Why didn’t he press more? He always presses more.

Liar.

Another nudge to her shoulder shook Gwen out of her thoughts - again. Pav offered her a smile from under the mask, the corners of the lenses crinkling upward with ease.

“Don’t worry so much!” he said confidently, walking backward down the side of the skyscraper. “We’ll find him before long! Now come on, we probably should go before they think we got caught up in a fight or something else crazy!”

Gwen just nodded, forcing herself to clear her thoughts enough to get moving. Pavitr leaped from the side of the building with a loud, excited yell, and all the while she just followed along silently. Anyone would think she was a ghost with how quiet she was being.

The two swung back the way they came, nearly missing the turn again because she zoned out too hard for the fourth time.

-=-

“And why are we sneaking around through back alleys, exactly?”

Peter’s question sounded a little louder than the sounds of the streets outside, making the whole group jump. The loud hubbub of noise from cars and people nearly drowned most noise the group was making, but it was still loud. For some reason, Violet Weaver had strictly kept them to ground level and to side streets hidden behind the bright lights and life of New York.

It made her nervous. Spiders were supposed to swing around the city they lived in, if they had the ability - being confined to the ground below, to the cold concrete and shadows and constant feeling of something peering around alleyway corners, was not anywhere in most people’s comfort zone.

Hiding in the shadows wasn’t making them inconspicuous to passersby. It was just drawing that attention away from them for a little while, as much as could be drawn away from them.

The attention was there. It was just… background noise. A layer below what Gwen’s Spider-sense was actively picking up, but a layer above the things she could ignore. That midpoint between active understanding and blending into everything else.

“Because it’s just easier to get there on foot, alright?” Violet Weaver hissed back at them, his voice still sharp and cold. “And stay quiet - you don’t want to draw attention to yourselves around here.”

“Obviously it is not optimal to do so,” Noir said, “but completely keeping us grounded is certain to raise suspicion among anyone who sees a group as odd as ours.”

"Odd is certainly one way to put that, buddy," Ham muttered, and she could almost see the sarcastic, skeptical look on his face.

“Yeah, and the giant robot is really not helping our case,” Violet Weaver snapped. SP//DER paused next to Gwen for a second, but it kept moving anyway. He did make a fair point - walking with a giant futuristic robot was bound to make anyone look your way at least six times. “And besides, there’s already a lot of Spiders here and a lot more villains who’d love to figure out where we’re set up - swinging there just makes it an easy target.”

He turned around and shot Peter a glare through the mask, potent with a kind of venom that Gwen couldn’t place. Was it anger? Annoyance? Discomfort?

None of that quite fit. Maybe ‘mildly irritated’ worked.

“You’d all do well to keep your heads down while you’re looking around the city,” he said, almost spiteful now as he turned again. “Nobody wants to deal with a villain attacking you guys because you weren’t careful enough.”

“You don’t have to be such a-”

“Do you wanna get there without getting jumped or not?”

Gwen closed her mouth, annoyance and hurt burning through her thoughts. Seriously, what was this guy’s problem?

She looked at the others for help, but they just shrugged. Violet Weaver was… hard to read.

To put that lightly.

The hostility wasn’t unwarranted. It just felt like… a lot more than actually necessary. The only other Spider she'd ever seen get this snappy with someone was Miguel, but that just felt like an unfair comparison. Miguel was Miguel, and she knew nothing about Violet Weaver.

They continued walking the hidden streets of Earth-42, all of them now mostly silent except for the soft hiss-clicks of SP//DER’s mechanisms moving next to her. The noise of the city leaked in through openings to main roads, pulling her thoughts away from whatever Violet Weaver's issue was and back into the eerie city around them.

Now that Gwen was looking, there were a lot less people out at this hour. It was fair, considering it was later at night and they weren’t near the busier parts of the city, but there were still way less people out and about that in most New Yorks. Its streets were much emptier than usual, people walking stiffly and at attention, ducking into shops quickly and keeping a sharp eye on their surroundings. 

Watching for something. Waiting.

Even through other back alleys and side streets, there were people who still kept themselves wary and alert, even as Gwen watched shady business deals going down and people getting into verbal and physical fights, words and shouts ringing out across roads and through intersections. She watched as passersby hurried each other along at the sounds of fights, groups of people wearing attire that matched and sour expressions started harassing and catcallin without reason.

Visibly worn concrete, occasionally broken street lights, hostile stares and suspicious movements - none of these were the marks of a thriving city.

This was a dangerous, unforgiving place. No wonder most Spiders wouldn’t come here if given the chance. She certainly wouldn't have, before everything.

It was not a safe New York. No, the longer Gwen looked, the easier it was to see that. Spray-painted villain symbols on brickwork walls and plastered as logos onto discarded trash, scattered pieces of metal and shoddy concrete fixes in baack streets, bags stuffed into corners that could be holding anything within.

This wasn’t a safe city to be in at all.

This was a criminal’s playground, a haven for the illegal and a rats nest for the dangerous. A place where villains seemingly went unopposed, in control of every little thing that happened. Everywhere she looked, there was horribly familiar ingisna ingrained into the sides of buildings and sprayed onto run-down shop windows, an oppressive presence even whilst out of sight.

A sharp distaste grew in Gwen’s stomach as the group walked, every new thing she saw only adding to it.

Was this really what happened to dimensions without a Spider-Man?

Did they fall to ruin so quickly, all because there was nobody there to stop the villains from doing whatever they wanted? It had only been two years since the supercollider - surely this couldn’t have happened so quickly.

And yet the quiet, oppressive devastation spoke volumes otherwise.

A shockingly bitter flare of anger spiked through Gwen’s mind, and she absently kicked at a discarded rock, the scattering sound of it rolling across concrete and hitting a wall temporarily drowning out the noise of the city. Someone next to her probably shot her a look, but she did not care anymore.

This dimension never got its Spider-Man. But instead of trying to do anything about it, we just left it rot?

Instead of trying to help, we just locked it away and never told anyone what happened here. Everyone looked the other way and pretended it didn't exist.

All because of that stupid supercollider. 

All because that stupid radioactive spider that got dropped into another dimension and bit someone else.

And Miguel didn’t do anything to fix this.

He was supposed to fix these kinds of things. But he didn’t.

The bitter thoughts turned angry, and that anger was pierced with fear for a moment before she shoved it aside. It was too late to do anything about it now, and there was no point in getting pissed off over a stupid anomaly that had completely screwed up everything.

A stupid anomaly that screwed up everything.

Is that all he is here?

Guilt immediately crashed through her head for even having a thought like that cross her mind. Gwen pulled her arms close to her chest, eyes widening and darting around as though expecting someone to hear her traitorours mind. But nobody heard it, and nobody heard her slipping back into an ever-familiar spiral or thoughts.

What the hell is wrong with you?

Why would you ever think that?

I don’t know.

There’s something wrong with you

I didn’t think-

Clearly.

I’m sorry-

Say it to him.

We haven’t found him-

You’re not trying hard enough.

Keep looking.

You’re failing him. 

Again.

Failure.

Failure.

Liar.

Liar-

“Shut up,” Gwen whispered aloud, pressing her hands to her mask as she walked, earning her some confused looks from the others.

“What’d you say?” Peni asked, her voice roboticized through SP//DER and stopping Gwen in her tracks for a second.

Don’t let them see you fail again.

“Hm? What- oh, uh… it’s nothing. Are we almost there yet?”

The judgemental glare shot her way from Violet Weaver nearly made her shrink back, but she forced herself to stand taller.

Okay, yeah, he was pissed.

“Next building,” the anomaly spat, way harsher than before, and he pointed sharply toward an apartment building sitting on the edge of the block. Like he’d only been getting more annoyed with them the longer he was there. “Twelfth floor suite. The windows should be unlocked. After that, you’re on your own. Just don't fuck anything else up for us.”

Her hissing thoughts were pushed to the side as annoyance sparked to life in her mind again, a spark that turhed rashly to flame. “Okay, seriously, what is your issue, dude?”

Violet Weaver stopped, and the Spiders following behind them stopped as well. Gwen kept walking, though, until she was standing right behind the anomaly. Her Spider-sense was practically screaming for her to move, the sense of danger pouring off of him in waves, but with significant effort, Gwen managed to push it aside to stand her ground. It was a lot harder than she thought it would be, trying to turn it off for a second.

With a sudden sharp movement, Violet Weaver grabbed her by the wrist, masked eyes narrowed as his grip. Her senses went haywire, screaming for her to make him let go, to run or fight or anything useful.

“Hey!” she snapped, yanking her arm back, but Violet Weaver kept his grip firm as he glared at all of them. At least, Gwen thought he was glaring - the mask’s expression had slipped into something almost chillingly neutral.

“You wanna know what my issue is, Spider-Woman?” he said coldly, his voice now eerily monotone and quiet, bitterness and fury just barely hidden under the surface. “You all are my issue right now. Your stupid missing ‘friend’ is my issue now, because you’re all here and invading our city to look for him because somehow he’s here and somehow he's alive, and somehow you know all of that. All of this is my issue now, even though nobody here wants anything to do with your Society bullshit or some idiot Spider who got dropped here without warning.”

“Don’t call him that, jackass,” Gwen spat, her mild annoyance turning to straight-up anger. Insulting someone he'd never even met was just uncalled for.

“He got himself stuck here, didn’t he?” Violet Weaver said, the bitter tone almost taunting now. He was actually just being that much of a jerk about this. “And apparently without a watch. Sounds pretty damn stupid to me. Jumping in here after him? I'd say that's even more so.”

Gwen clenched her jaw as fury built up in her mind, her hands curling into fists in seconds. Who the hell did this guy think he was?

“Dude, who’s side are you on?” Peter demanded, his own anger clear in his tone. “We’re trying to help him! You don’t need to get pissed off at us!”

“And it wasn’t stupid!” Peni snapped, SP//DER audibly whirring louder behind her. "We have to get him a watch!"

"How dare you!" Ham said, but not walking up to meet Violet Weaver.

“How about we all calm ourselves?” Noir said, cutting through the conversation dead through the protests. “Unnecessary arguments will not help us locate our friend.”

Everyone paused for a second, Gwen still glaring at Violet Weaver with more vitriol than she’d ever sent somebody’s way.

He deserves it.

“Fine,” Violet Weaver said, still coldly. He let Gwen’s wrist go, which she yanked back swiftly. “Just keep your annoying bullshit out of our way, and we’ll leave you all to finding your idiotic fri-”

Violet Weaver didn’t get the chance to finish his sentence, the insult cut off with a violent CRACK as Gwen’s fist struck out at his face. The fury that she’d been holding back snapped free in that instant, the sounds ringing loudly in her ears and echoing back against brick walls.

Louder than the city. Louder than her own heartbeat, now pumping blood through her ears.

“I told you not to call him that!” Gwen shouted, blinding fury propelling her for a moment before she raelized exactly what had just happened.

It was a moment long enough. Long enough for her to fuck up.

“Dude! Calm down!” Pavitr yelled, grabbing her and pulling her away from Violet Weaver with more force than he’d ever used with her. For half a second, Gwen struggled, but there was no point in doing so. Pavitr was not letting her go, if the absolute vice-grip on her arm said anything.

“Both of you, restrain yourselves!” Noir snapped, the shout cutting everyone’s sudden panic dead.

Nobody had ever heard him yell before.

Gwen’s shaking fists uncurled, the sheer rush of adrenaline and the Noir’s shout making her freeze.

What did you just do?

What is wrong with you?

You hurt him.

You hurt him on purpose.

There’s something wrong with you.

A hero wouldn’t hurt someone like that.

Violet Weaver looked back up at her, dark red now staining through the pale purple on his mask, spreading slowly from what was probably a broken nose. Oddly, though, his mask eyes were curled up, like he was smiling. She'd just punched him in the face, and he was smiling?

“We have better things to do than argue,” Noir snapped, the anger in his voice barely noticeable, yet so sharp it stung like knives slitting through skin. “Thank you for leading us to the apartment, friend, but I believe that a separation is in order.”

Violet Weaver nodded, taking in a breath before looking at Gwen blankly. She couldn't read him at all. “You’re right about that. Besides, I didn’t think she had it in her.”

Gwen tried to take a step forward again, but Pav’s grip on her shoulder was ironclad - she wasn’t going anywhere even if she tried. 

“Okay, enough,” Peter said quickly. He stepped between them both with a harsh, dismissive motion of his hand. “Yes, thank you, Violet Weaver, for taking us here. We appreciate it.”

“Whatever it takes to get you all out of here as soon as possible.”

And without another word, Violet Weaver suddenly fired off a web behind them, swinging back into the side streets and alleyways, seemingly no longer caring about what could happen if someone saw him.

Silence settled over them, and Pav squeezed her shoulder in a way that was probably meant to be reassuring. 

It was anything but.

I don’t deserve that.

I don't deserve reassurance from him.

Not after that.

“Let's just get inside,” Peter said, disappointment clear and cutting. Gwen pulled her hands close to her chest, shoulders hunching up as they started to climb the side of the building, the others barely glancing her way or shooting her worried looks.

The image of red seeping through Violet Weaver’s mask stuck, the insidious, creeping stain spreading through the pale colour over and over and over again.

Almost instinctively, Gwen checked her hands. 

Looking for any stains on her own gloves.

Looking for blood.

Looking for proof that she’d done something wrong. That she’d hurt someone like that.

There were no bloodstains.

Absolutely none.

Not a single droplet of red on her own gloves - only the near-sterile white, so familiar to her, that stood out against the saturated light and hard shadows of this world.

She hated the twisted relief that crept through her when she saw no blood there.

There should have been something. 

Damage, blood, a tear in her gloves, anything to prove it.

There was nothing there.

That wasn’t right.

Gwen should have bled, too.

She didn’t even know Violet Weaver beyond the colour of his suit and his hero name. And yet she’d hit him anyway.

Heroes don’t do that.

Nobody just does something like that.

Good people don’t just do that.

So what does that make you?

…

I don’t know anymore.

I don't know.

Gwen had to practically drag herself out of her own brain so that she didn’t walk into anything like a fire escape or into one of the other Spiders. She didn’t want anyone to see what was going on behind the mask, behind her face, behind her eyes.

They couldn’t know. She had to stay strong, so that they could find Miles.

They had to find him.

He wouldn't even look at you.

A distant muttering from ahead by Peter, backed up by Peni repeating something back to him faded into her hearing as she forced the thoughts into the back of her mind. A couple more seconds passed, before Peter stopped at a window.

“Apparently this is the place,” he said, looking back down at everyone else while opening the window. He climbed inside, and Gwen stayed put for a moment, not entirely sure that the windows weren’t trapped or something. “Really could use some work-”

The sudden pause made everyone freeze. Then-

“HOBIE!?”

Chapter Text

The band of Spiders immediately piled into the room within seconds upon hearing that name get shouted.

However, it rather unfortunately led to said band of Spiders crawling over each other and landing in a massive dog-pile under the windowsill inside the room, and immediate protests shouted out from everyone. Mainly, because dog-piles were often not on purpose, nor did they involve a three ton robot smack dab in the middle of it.

“Wha- ow, Ham, get off!”

“Pav, get off, you’re squishing my arm!”

“You’re one to talk, bro! At least you don’t have a robot laying on your hands!”

“All I'm saying is, last one in the window means you don’t get squashed!” Ham crowed triumphantly, presumably from the top of the pile. Gwen could only guess at that, because she was currently trapped under at least four people and a mech right now, and being trapped at the bottom of a dog-pile didn’t usually offer the best place to see anything going on overhead.

Also breathing. Being at the bottom of a dog-pile didn’t offer much room to do the very vital human function of breathing, either. There wasn't much room to do anything, but breathing especially.

“Y’know, for having all of you clamber in the window in one go, I thought you’d at least be taking turns before squashing each other like bugs.”

Oh my God.

“You’re actually here!?” Gwen managed to gasp out, which was rather unfortunately the last of her limited oxygen supply for the moment. Seriously, how much time did it take for people to get out of a dog-pile so that she could breathe? Breathing was imporant!

Gwen tried - and failed, mind you - to crawl out from underneath the dog-pile. There was no moving until Peter was off at least, and definitely not until SP//DER got off of whoever it was that was trapped on top of Pav. And yet, it seemed like there was really no indication of anyone wanting to move at any point soon, so Gwen was just going to lay here and suffocate for a couple minutes, thanks.

“How are you here!?” Peter demanded, and after a few seconds of audible struggle, some of the weight finally lifted and Gwen could kind of breathe again. “We thought those anomalies or the Prowler did something to you! Have you just… been here the whole time?"

“And where’s Margo? Do you know where she is?” Peni asked, her voice electronically filtered through SP//DER in a way that sounded almost accusatory. Like she was accusing him of being in the league with whoever had taken Margo away. “We haven’t seen any signs of her around either, those anomalies won’t tell us where she is!”

“Did they do something to you?” Pav asked, also struggling to move out from under the pile of slowly disassembling Spiders. Gwen yelped as Pav's elbow jabbed her in the rib while he moved. “They wouldn’t hurt you, right? Spiders don’t hurt each other-”

“Before I answer any of that,” Hobie’s voice said from somewhere off to her left, “I don’t think Gwendy can breathe, mates. Get offa the bird."

That was still true. Gwen was still suffering under the pile of people, and there was no way for her to really get out, actually. She tried to say something, but as one would have trouble with when trapped underneath a bunch of people, she was unable to say anything except for a slightly painful wheeze.

Multiple apologies sounded out through the apartment as people moved swiftly, and after a couple seconds, Gwen was freed from her prison of limbs and people. Never before had the intake of air felt so wonderful to her, a coolness in her lungs soothing her frayed nerves. Nevertheless, she just stayed there on the floor for a few seconds, trying to let her lungs recover enough to maybe move her arms and push herself off the floor.

A shuffling of footsteps in front of her made Gwen look up, to see Pav crouching down and holding out a hand for her to take. She accepted it gratefully, but a small flicker of confusion settled into the back of her mind.

He's being nice to me… even after that?

Why? Why is he being so nice?

“And up we go,” he muttered as he yanked her back to her feet. Gwen stumbled for a couple seconds before snapping her head up quickly to look around. The apartment was mostly dark, but there were a few lights on in the small living room off to their left, a kitchenette that she barely noted for a few seconds, a hallway leading further back into the apartment where she couldn't see any further in. Looking for something, looking for any hint of their missing friend. Her gaze caught the sights of the other Spiders, reds and blues and blacks and occasional gold from their suits rushing by in a blur until someone took a brief hold of her wrist.

Gwen snapped out of it, enough to register who had actually caught her wrist.

Pav shot her an incredibly concerned look, pulling his mask down quickly to look at her without it on. “You alright, bro?"

It was not only concern in Pav's eyes as he waited for a reply. It was an anxious pity; he was stiff and at attention, waiting for something to happen, waiting for anything to happen that could truly tell him if there was something wrong with her, something he could help with.

You don't deserve that pity.

Traitor.

Liar.

“I’m fine,” Gwen answered sharply, barely returning the glance even as she noticed his shoulders dropping. Her eyes scanned the room wildly again, until they inevitably landed on the person she’d been looking for.

Well, one of them, anyway.

There, leaning up against the kitchenette counter, sipping on a cup of something steaming like absolutely nobody’s business and like he was completely unbothered by the party of Spiders that had just landed on the floor in front of him, was Hobie Brown. He watched them all with a mildly amused expression, raising the cup in a small mock salute from the kitchenette.

Just standing there, completely fine - not a scratch visible anywhere on him.

Relief swept away any more of Gwen’s thoughts at the sight. He was actually okay.

Classic Hobie.

“You’re-”

“Completely fine, lads,” he answered casually, putting the cup down on the counter behind him like this happened every single Tuesday without fail. “You lot look rather gobsmacked. What’d you do, deck a bloke on the way over?"

Gwen hunched her shoulders at the mention, wishing that she could maybe shrink out of sight or vanish entirely as a few of her friends sent sharp side-eyes her way. Instead, she busied herself with studying the corners of the room like they were actually the most interesting things in the entire room. Very well-angled, the walls were. Adequate corners, overall, in Gwen's non-professional opinion.

The thoughts that had been playing on a record for the past five minutes still wouldn't leave her be.

You hit him.

Hobie noticed the sudden shift in the air, and to just about everyone’s surprise, let out a loud cackle in reply to it. Everyone's jaws dropped, if the widening of masks was anything to go by, as Hobie doubled over for a minute before regaining his composure.

Yep. Classic Hobie moment right there.

“You did! Who was it?” he cried, an absurdly wide grin on his face.

If it was possible for Gwen’s shoulders to hunch any further, they would have. Unfortunaltely for her in that moment, her body did have it's limits on scrunching in on itself, so having them up to ears would have to do for now.

“Gwen punched that Violet Weaver guy in the face after he started insulting us,” Peter explained casually, althought there was still a note of something lower in his voice that said he wasn't entirely sure how to respond anymore. Or proud of that particular left hook she'd thrown. “It was only after he really started ragging on Miles, though, you should’ve seen it.”

In that moment, she was never more glad her mask could hide her face as embarrassment flushed through her face. Gwen could practically feel the mischievous grins and stares being shot her way. Out of everything, did Peter really have to mention that part?

He really was asking for it. He didn't have to say any of what he said.

She turned her gaze back to Hobie in time to catch a flit of some expression vanish from his face. Almost like… what was it? Concern? Anger? Pride? Something else?

Whatever. It was already gone, and Gwen didn’t really have the energy to try and place what it could have been. Instead, Hobie’s grin only seemed to grow wider as he walked out of the small kitchenette to clap her on the shoulder. It shook her out of the confusion in her brain, enough to get her back into reality enough to lamely dodge him messing up her hair the way a sibling would do.

“Knew someone would clock him eventually!” he laughed, patting her on the back in an almost congratulatory way. “Yeah, Violet’s a real sod when he wants to be, can’t be arsed to avoid the chance to slag off. Lad probably earned it, too.”

Gwen managed a weak laugh, Hobie’s blatant not-giving-a-fuck attitude toward the fact she’d just punched somebody out of nowhere making her feel marginally better. “I guess he kinda did, yeah.”

He didn’t.

There’s something wrong with you.

“Whoa, whoa, pause!” Ham shouted suddenly. “You said that like you knew the guy! And he said only his friends can call him Violet!”

Gwen froze at the words. Ham was right.

“Only my friends can call me Violet.”

“Hobie, is there something you’re not telling us?” Noir asked, in a tone that sounded so thoroughly done with being awake and present that Gwen was almost convinced he was going to walk over to the couch and pass out immediately after he said that.

Hobie strode leisurely over to the kitchenette again. “Yeah, I know ‘em. What of it?”

The apartment dropped into dead silence for a few minutes, before Pav practically jumped over to the small island counter to Hobie.

“Wait wait wait, really!?” Pav yelped, excitement in his voice and movements nearly drowning the shock that was otherwise flooding the room. “When did you meet them? Is that why you weren’t there when they interrogated us? Did they drag you somewhere else? Wait, how did you meet them if they’re stuck here all the time?”

“Slow down, Pav,” Hobie said calmly, tossing an arm around the shorter Spider’s shoulders incredibly casually. “Too many questions for five minutes.”

“Sorry!” Pav chirped, but his excitement didn’t die down. “You’ll tell us though, right?”

A quick nod was all her friend needed before he darted off over toward the couches, almost falling sideways onto one by tripping. 

Everyone else, on the other hand, seemed a lot less inclined to take it that lightly. 

Gwen certainly wasn’t.

She’d never even heard of there being any other Spider anomalies until tonight, let alone there being seven in the same dimension. Before today, she’d thought there was only one, and he was already stuck here with the rest of them.

He's not an anomaly.

Don't call him that.

Traitor.

And apparently, Hobie had just known about this the entire time. 

Another hand landed on Gwen’s arm, startling her out of the thoughts she was beginning to fall into again. It was Peni, now out of the SP//DER suit and looking at her worriedly. The younger girl’s face was twisted in a kind of concern that looked to be beyond her years, tired and almost gentle all at the same time. The arachnid within her mech now sat calmly on her shoulder, all eight of its eyes watching her with what Gwen could guess was as close to pity as a spider could get.

“Come on, we should hear him out,” Peni said quietly. “Unless you need a break?”

Oh. She thought that Gwen didn’t want to hear anything else about the Anomalies. A somewhat fair assumption, considering what she'd done to Violet Weaver earlier.

The loud crack in the alleyway.

Pain blooming in her knuckles through the blinding rage.

The sound still made her blood run cold. It didn’t matter that it had happened maybe ten minutes ago; it rang clearer than the faint beeping of a machine somewhere in the kitchen.

“I don’t need a break,” Gwen forced herself to whisper. “I can’t take a break yet.”

Pained understanding flashed across Peni’s face, but she thankfully didn’t pry any deeper. Instead, she just tugged on Gwen’s arm in the direction where everyone else was going, the small living area where her friends were gathering.

Gwen almost didn’t notice when she sat down, or when Peni dropped down next to her and casually leaned against her. 

Her brain was too much of a mess, too scattered between thoughts and worries and problems to wholly pay attention to what was going on around her. The fabric of her mask brushed against her face, a familiar feeling that was both suddenly too much and not enough.

The fabric felt wrong and right at the same time, her breathing picking up as she noticed it, but Gwen pushed away the prickling feeling in favour of messing with her hands.

Her knuckles stung with still-fresh pain from the earlier confrontation.

You deserve it.

The hissing, malicious thought absently crept through her mind, into the haze where her brain was trying to organize itself.

Gwen didn’t push it away.

You made him bleed.

Over something as petty as an insult.

No wonder they’re all disappointed in you.

Her grip on her own hand tightened, just as Hobie’s voice faintly registered from beyond the wandering, mirror-filled fog of her own head. He was saying something about meeting in the Society, before someone got thrown out, but there was nothing in her head that effectively could piece together connections right now.

Maybe she did need a break of some kind.

You don’t deserve a break.

You have to find him.

Listen.

Listen to them.

It could be important.

You can rest later.

Peni’s head shifted on her shoulder, and Gwen used that as an anchor to drag herself out of the oncoming spiral. Even if it was just for a second.

She could rest later.

Miles needed their help. And maybe Hobie’s history with the Anomalies could help them.

Which meant she actually had to listen instead of letting her brain wander all over the place and pick up random pieces of thoughts and run with them.

“...and since then, I haven’t seen a trace of ‘em around the Society. Whatever the old man in charge did, it was enough to keep ‘em stuck in one place,” Hobie said. “Could never figure out what it was he did to block off travel here.”

“So you’re saying that not only is this dimension locked from getting out,” Peter clarified, leaning forward in a signature way that dads did when they were seriously contemplating something, “but it’s also supposed to be locked to stop people from getting in?”

“Right on the money.”

Gwen’s thought train stopped when she heard that.

So it wasn’t set up to be a one-way trip. It was supposed to be completely shut off from the rest of the multiverse.

And yet Violet Weaver had also mentioned the one-way.

Maybe they just didn’t know it was locked from the outside once they were dropped in, her rational thoughts offered, but that gave her no comfort. Locking Spiders away in a dimension that nobody bothered to visit already sounded bad to anyone who really paid close attention, but making it completely inaccessible once they were there?

That sounded like a permanent prison.

She pushed the uncomfortable idea aside, instead focusing on the run down coffee table in front of her while listening. It was a pretty decent coffee table, minus some old ring stains and chips in the wood. All around, passed the coffee table inspection quite well, if you asked her.

“Then how on Earth were we able to get in?” Ham pointed out. “If this place is supposed to be locked up like a vault this merry little band shouldn’t have even been able to get in here!”

That was… a nerve-wrackingly good point. If this dimension was supposed to be completely sealed, then how had they been able to get in here at all?

A few moments passed, before Peni snapped her fingers suddenly. All eyes turned to her as she sat up, a thousand gears turning in her head a minute. “You said this place wasn’t accessible unless it got opened from HQ right?”

Hobie confirmed with a quick nod, and Peni jumped up off the couch with an energy that at this point, Gwen couldn’t hope to match for the rest of her life. “Okay! And when was the last time the portal here from HQ got opened?”

Nobody answered for a couple seconds, and Peni dramatically rolled her eyes and threw up her arms. “When Miles came through here, guys! If he’s been here since he got zapped away, then that’s how long the two-way lock’s been broken. That’s how we were able to get in the way we did. If this place had been locked, we shouldn’t have been able to even pinpoint Earth-42 as a travel point for exploration on our list!”

“Which means that they never fixed the entry travel lock,” Noir added, following along much clearer than Gwen was even as pieces started clicking into place as they rambled. “And if they did not bother fixing the entry, then there is a fair chance that we could remotely break the exit lock as well.”

“Tried it, mate,” Hobie warned, waving his hands aimlessly at the air. “Anomalies said it was the first thing they tried when they figured out the lock broke. Damn thing didn’t budge.”

A grimmer tone settled over the group, and something clicked in Gwen’s head.

“Wait, so why did Miguel leave it unlocked, then?” Gwen asked. Everyone in the room stiffened as a chill settled over the entire room. “That’s not how Miguel operates. If he couldn’t find Miles immediately, he wouldn’t have just unlocked everything and hope that it would work to find him. And he knows Miles doesn’t have an interdimensional stabilizer - he couldn’t have jumped back if he tried, and nobody taught him how to use the watches, either.”

“Maybe it’s a plot hole,” Hobie suggested, earning him a few confused stares. “Or the old man did that on purpose, to throw us off.”

“And it still doesn’t explain why Margo’s nowhere to be seen, either,” Peter muttered, glaring at the table in the middle of the small living room like it had personally offended him. She'd never seen such a grave expression on his mask, the mere sight sending a chill running down her spine.

That too - she'd nearly forgotten about it. Margo’s disappearance really didn’t spell good things, and it was yet another thing they’d probably have to ask the Anomalies about.

If they’re still willing to help at all, after you punched Violet Weaver in the face.

Not the time.

Hobie had gotten away from the Anomalies because he knew them. Margo, she wasn’t sure about. The Anomalies weren’t likely to let her just go back to the Society unless-

“Margo can’t join a world if it’s locked, right?” Gwen asked aloud. “Like, if there’s a lock of any kind, her avatar can’t usually stay there for long. It wouldn't make sense.”

“She told me about that!” Pav said, snapping his fingers quickly as more puzzle pieces slotted together through their collective brainstorming. “If there's a one-way lock on any given dimension, she had maybe four or five minutes of time to check something out before the Society's systems will pull her back to HQ. If it's fully locked or doesn't let you in to start with, she wouldn't be able to get in at all.”

“We hadn’t been here more than three minutes,” Hobie pointed out, eyes widening slightly. “Only way she could have vanished alongside the rest of you lot was if-”

“If the two-way got put back into place while we were here!” Peter exclaimed suddenly, sitting up and burying his face in his hands. “God damnit, they must have been tracking us through the watches that weren’t fully hacked!”

Gwen shuddered, pulling her arms closer at the idea that Miguel might have been using them as a way to track Miles down. So he could do... what? Throw him into another containment field? Toss him back to his own dimension?

Finish the job himself?

She pushed the thought away the second it arose. She didn’t need to think about that any more than she already had, even despite the chill in every one of her bones turning glacial at the idea.

“He probably saw where we landed and realized that 42 got opened at some point,” Ham added. “Closing it on us there would mean we couldn’t have kept looking if we wanted to!”

“Easy way to deal with us,” Gwen muttered darkly. “Trap us all in a dimension where nobody gets in or out, and put our universes on pause until he finds Miles and throws him back into his own dimension, or until he needs us for something.”

Peter stood up suddenly, taking one of the couch pillows with him, and yelled into it with a level of frustration she’d only seen a few times at this point. The muffled sound was almost ominous, but it helped a little to see who was right in front of her doing it.

It wasn't by much.

“Not only that, but now our only lead on our missing friend is Gwen’s cross-dimensional warning bells,” Noir said, nudging her sharply. “You said it rang when we got here, correct?”

All eyes focused on her; some unmasked, others lensed, and all of them expectant.

Don’t let them down. 

You have to find him.

“It did,” she admitted. “It wasn’t for very long, though. Just a couple seconds. I don’t know if it was because he’s farther away or if something’s wrong, but he’s definitely here.”

The only glimmer of hope that Gwen could still reach for. The fact that Miles was here, and that her Spider-sense would never lie to her.

He had to be here somewhere.

You have to help him.

You have to fix this.

Liar.

“Has it gone off since?” Peni asked. The hope in her voice was painfully clear. “Anything about where he might be or a general direction to follow?”

At that, Gwen dropped her head and shook it slowly, guilt pulsing through her veins in sharp, weighted rhythms. She should have been able to find him, even just based on that one call from earlier today, but there had been pretty much nothing since.

Familiar fear crept up through her gut, snaking and twisting it until Gwen almost felt nauseous with frayed nerves. Nothing since could mean-

Stop.

He wouldn’t go down that easily.

You have to find him.

“Well, then we better start combing around, yeah?” Hobie announced. “He can’t be too far off where we started, so let’s start sniffing around for him.”

“You couldn’t have said that any other way?” Peni asked, a slight eye roll earning her a light-hearted nudge from Hobie’s boot. "Like, no rephrasing?"

“Nah. I don't do reprhasing.”

The Spiders all leaned in closer around the living room table as Hobie started laying out where they should start their search, in surprisingly meticulous detail. 

Gwen pushed away every single thought in her head that wasn’t directed toward her goal.

You have to find him.

No matter what it might take.

-=+=-

The plan was set.

Everyone was ready.

And Gwen was already exhausted.

They’d settled on doing patrols of the entire city, starting from the outside and working their way in, combing their way through different boroughs and section one at a time. For now they’d start with the north-westernmost point of New York City, and slowly work their way southeast from there.

Immediately, they had all been advised to avoid any major confrontations with villains - these ones were much more dangerous, according to the Anomalies through Hobie. Sure, if any petty crime went down and nobody was around, then you could deal with it if you really wanted to, but if it was actually someone like Doc Ock or the Green Goblin? Apparently, the best course of action was to leave it for the Anomalies to deal with. 

That was already kind of weird to her, but Gwen could see the reasoning in it. They didn’t know how a city run by villains and their corporations worked - the Anomalies, unfortunately, had been around long enough to learn how to deal with that.

As terrible of an idea as it sounded, they would also cover more ground if they searched individually. That said, they had to be in contact in case of an actual emergency. Hobie apparently knew someone who could get them a communications upgrade in their masks (somehow) so they could talk if there was something going horribly wrong beyond belief. He would also let the Anomalies know the plan, so that they could all be in the loop with what was going on. After all, it was their city.

Other than that, the plan was settled, and this particular plan meant that Gwen could search by herself and be alone with her thoughts as much as she needed to.

Was that a good thing? Maybe, maybe not.

She was too exhausted to give a shit right now.

Everyone else had already moved off into the apartment, with Noir, Ham, and her volunteering to take the first search, just to ease into it and get things running. Gwen wasn’t going to put off searching any longer, because every passing hour could mean that something had gone horribly wrong and they were too late.

The idea of them being too late still felt like a preemptive gunshot to the heart, a piercing feeling that twisted through her chest until it forced the breath from her lungs entirely.

They would not be too late. They had to do this.

We aren’t too late.

We can still find him-

“Gwendy?”

Hobie’s quiet call drew her out of her thoughts, and she looked over to see her friend standing next to her with clear concern. He didn’t really show concern in his facial expressions often - you could more tell by the way he stood and how his shoulders moved how he was feeling. Right now, they were squared, with one inclined toward her.

“You doing alright?” he asked, keeping his voice low. “Your brain’s been off elsewhere.”

It’ll be fine.

You have to find him.

“I’m fine, Hobie.”

Liar.

Her voice was too low for the words she spoke.

Instead of pressing her, Hobie casually dropped an arm around her shoulders and pulled Gwen into something of a side hug. She didn’t have the energy to protest it, instead just letting it happen.

“If you need a break, you gotta tell us,” he said, watching the other Spiders who were preparing to leave. “Running yourself ragged won’t do shit for him, alright?”

Gwen nodded without saying anything.

She had to stay strong.

She could handle another search.

That’s what you’ve been saying for two weeks.

You’re not trying hard enough.

“Oi.” Hobie poked her in the face with the hand he had around her shoulders, a playful gesture that finally got her to look up. “Can’t have a band without a drummer, yeah?”

That actually got a small giggle out of her. “Yeah, I know.”

“Right. And we can't have a band without a singer either, can we?”

“It’d be tricky to have one without.”

Hobie grinned again, before pulling her hood down over her face out of the blue. A surprised yelp escaped her, and she batted away at hands that weren’t there anymore.

“Then off you go, mate!” he said, nudging her toward Noir and Ham. They were waiting at the window, with a look like they were trying to hold back some laughter on their masks. She shot them a look, but there was no real venom behind it.

“Alright, alright, we’re going!” she yelled, scooting over to the open windows with her friends.

“We shall return within the hour,” Noir declared, making a show of looking at his watch - not the interdimensional one, an actual watch that told time. “And hopefully, we shall return triumphant.”

Only an hour?

Gwen didn’t have time to feel disappointed about it. It made sense, considering they didn't know this city as well.

They had to get going.

Just as they were climbing out the windows again and onto the side of the building, a truly precarious position if you didn’t have the ability to stick to walls, they were all stopped by Hobie shouting something out the window.

“Oi! Gwendy!”

“Yeah?”

Hobie leaned out the opening, looking up at the sky while wearing the smuggest possible grin she’d ever seen in her entire life. “If you do find him, you’ve gotta actually bring him back. Don’t spend the whole time snogging!”

“HOBIE!”

A few laughs echoed from the apartment above and from her search companions, and Gwen well and truly wished that she could maybe melt down the side of the building and be an embarrassed puddle for the rest of her life.

“Let’s just get going,” Gwen muttered, turning andyanking her hood over her head as far as it would go while one was standing in a way that defied gravity. the only reason it stayed on was because she was facing the alleyway floor now.

Anyways.

The three set off into the city after the laughter died down, their determination redoubled now to find Miles. They had a plan. They could do this.

You have to find him.

It’s your fault this is all happening.

Those were the only thoughts that occupied her mind as Gwen threw her first web, vanishing off into the Upper Eastside to start looking.

They were going to find him.

The clock was ticking.

She had to find him.

Chapter Text

More time passed. Some days were better, some were worse.

Miles was no longer sick, so that was a huge win in everyone's books. Especially his, because that meant he wasn't quarantined anymore, and also meant he didn't have to deal with a constantly blocked and runny nose. That was honestly the worst part of being sick.

It also meant he was finally moving out of Milo’s room, which the both of them had been pretty thankful for. As weirdly interesting as it was to have an interdimensional twin, it was a miracle that neither of them had started a fight over something stupid. Miles was perfectly happy to apparently be getting his own place somewhere else, and the feeling seemed pretty mutual.

Which meant today was moving day, and Miles… wasn't entirely sure how to feel about that.

He didn’t actually have much stuff, except for some clothes - acquired from questionable sources if Tarabi was to be believed - and an interdimensional watch thingy from Luka that shimmered in shades of dark silver and green screens. Miles' suit was floating around somewhere, which he still had not seen since he’d woken up in his alternate family’s house. Which was a bit concerning, because he did would very much like that back, but there hadn't been a trace of it.

Aside from that, Miles basically had nothing here.

That shouldn't have bothered him as much as it did, but it felt so strange look look around Milo's room and know none of it really belonged to him. It was weird to look at a room, his room, and know it wasn't where he belonged.

It was a really unnerving feeling.

You don't belong here.

He turned toward the staircase of the apartment hallway, not quite paying attention to where he was going-

And immediately came face-to-face with Casey, who was standing in the doorframe, completely absorbed in something on his phone and also not quite paying attention.

"Jeez!" Miles shouted, stumbling a few feet back and startling the other boy out of his concentration, nearly making him drop his phone. "Dude, where did you come from!? Did you just teleport or something?"

"God, I wish, but sadly no. I swung here, then I took the staircase like a normal person," Casey answered, like swinging across the city was something a normal person did on the regular. Miles rolled his eyes, before something caught his attention.

Where Casey's face was normally covered in small bandages - evidence of the villains that lurked somewhere in the city - there was now a large nose splint, covering the whole bridge of Casey's nose. It hid most of the damage, but there were still hints of yellowish-green bruising that crept out from underneath it. Apart from that, the only thing of note about it was the hilariously misaligned bright purple band-aid that he'd clearly slapped on himself.

He seemed to notice the direction of Miles' gaze, and just offered a nonchalant shrug. "It doesn't hurt that much, don't worry. Aura's already been fussing over it for days, it'll be fine sooner or later."

He leaned casually against the doorframe, apparently completely unbothered by the injury. Miles winced for him, because he'd had a broken nose once and it had hurt like hell. That wasn't the kind of pain that faded quickly.

"You sure it doesn't hurt anymore?" Miles asked. "It still looks kinda nasty, dude."

"Eh, nah, it's fine," Casey said, stuffing his phone into his hoodie pocket. He grandly gestured to his face with a playful smirk. "You could call this the effects of my hubris coming back to bite me. I was trying to piss 'em off, and now my beloved nose has been tragically obliterated."

"That's putting it lightly, man," Miles offered, stuffing his own hands into the pockets of a borrowed jacket. "Whoever hit you had one hell of a force backing it up, if it broke like that."

"Yeah, she did have a pretty nasty right hook, not gonna lie," Casey admitted, messing with the end of his braid. The streak of white hair stood out brightly against the rest of the world, and it really made him wonder how dedicated to this hairstyle choice he was to keep dying it from the roots like that. "You ready to go?"

Miles just nodded, and Casey stepped out into the stairwell without any indication that he really cared how loudly the door slammed against the opposite wall. Accidental door slamming was something that seemed to just happened a lot here.

It kind of astounded Miles that Casey didn't care that much about how broken his nose was. He didn't even seem bothered by it.

"How does it not hurt?" Miles asked as the door closed behind him. A small carving was dug into the opposite wall - a Prowler insignia - but it wasn't much to look at. The stairwell here looked remarkably similar to his own dimension's stairwell, enough that Miles got the feeling that if he turned around fast enough, he could open the door again and be home.

"Super-healing factor, remember?" Casey answered, already a full flight of stairs above him. "You get used to it once you've broken enough bones."

There's no way anyone just gets used to having broken bones, Miles thought. Although, yes, that was a pretty normal part of Spider-Man life - maybe after a few years, you got used to it. And being stuck on Earth-42, there probably wasn't any avoiding breaking bones, if the vague impressions he got from the city outside were anything to go by.

Maybe that just made Casey the better Spider-Man.

"You were never supposed to be Spider-Man!"

Miles pushed back the sickening wave of anxiety that accompanied the memory.

Was it true?

Knowing what was supposed to happen before the supercollider… Miguel's words, harsh and violent as they were, seemed to settle somewhere, a seed planted in the back of his mind that took root and rotted away everything else.

He wasn't supposed to be Spider-Man. He was never meant to be Spider-Man.

But Miles had to keep trying. He had to be Spider-Man, because what else could he be now?

His grip on the staircase railing tightened.

What can you be if you're not Spider-Man?

The thought nagged at him, slipping out of a storm of worry that surrounded the darker corners of his mind.

Miles' jaw clenched.

What can you do with yourself, if this really is your fault?

All the others are Spiders. They were supposed to be Spiders.

You weren't.

So what does that make you?

His breath caught in his throat, cold unfamiliarity making the world stop.

Miles slammed his eyes shut, just trying to keep his thoughts all in one place.

I don't know anymore.

"Hey!"

He was snapped out of the spinning, spiralling thoughts by Casey's voice calling through the stairwell.

Miles looked up through the center of the stairwell, to see Casey looking down at him from the top landing with an incredibly curious face. "You good down there? Are you stuck or something?"

It took a second for Miles to fully process what he'd said. "Uh, yeah, it's all good!"

"If you say so!" Casey yelled, apparently completely unaware of who else might be in the building with them. "If your hand does get stuck to the metal or something, let me know."

Confusion flickered to life through Miles, and his brow furrowed as he started walking up the stairs again. His shoulder pinged with pain as he reached for the railing again - even despite the healing time it had received, it still was quite sore.

The phantom sensation of claws digging into his skin didn't fade quickly. He shuddered at the ghostly, cold sensation, and his free hand unwillingly moved to pull his jacket closer around himself.

"What did you mean by 'if my hand gets suck to the metal?'" Miles called, trying to distract himself from everything in his head. "Is there a villain made of metal where you're from?"

"Huh? Oh, no, nothing like that." Casey draped himself dramatically over the railing, the absurdly long braid falling down the stairwell without a care. "My 10-year-old self just thought it would be a brilliant idea to lick a freezing telephone pole in -32 Celsius. Wait, shit, what's that in Fahrenheit…?"

Miles had to stop to look up at the other boy in utter 'what the actual fuck?' because that was not the answer he'd been expecting. "You licked a telephone pole in -25 Fahrenheit? How? It doesn't even get that cold in New York most of the time!"

"In Canada," Casey answered, completely unbothered by Miles' new bout of surprise. "It's so cold up there in the winter, man. I never wanted to leave the house."

"You're Canadian?"

"Say a word about hockey, polar bears, or maple syrup, and I'm webbing you to the side of a skyscraper for the rest of your life."

Miles blinked at him in surprise, just trying to process how he possibly could have gotten from Canada to New York in time to be bitten by a radioactive spider. "I dunno, dude. You don't seem nice enough to be Canadian to me."

Casey barked another laugh as Miles cleared the last landing, much louder than he though was really necessary for being in an apartment building stairwell. He flipped his hair back over the railing, pulling up the hood of his jacket with a hand wave. "You, my friend, have clearly never met any Canadian when they're on the road. Or when they know someone who's a Leafs fan. Or anyone who actually follows Canadian politics. On an unrelated note, I'm the only Anomaly who's banned from being behind the wheel because this one prick wouldn't use his turn signal like a sane human being."

Miles managed a grin, although whether that was supposed to be reassuring or not, he couldn't quite tell. The other Spider didn't seem like he was kidding about it.

"Well, great, now that you're finally up here," Casey said, leaning casually against the doorframe again, "let's try to get you over to the apartment without anyone taking any fall damage, m'kay?"

The absurd phrasing actually managed to get a laugh out of him, much to his surprise and to Casey's apparent delight. The other Spider leaned further into the door, a smug grin on his face-

Leading to that signature kachunk sound that push doors with handles made, and subsequently to Casey toppling out the opening door with a yelp and a variety of curses creative enough that Miles would have been grounded for life if he ever dared to repeat those around his parents. He hit the ground with a small thud, and Miles scooted around him outside the door to make sure that his only guide hadn't actually hurt himself.

"Uh… you alright?" Miles crouched down and offered Casey a hand. The gentle chill of the night air immediately enveloped them both, familiar night sounds of New York almost soothing Miles' nerves out on the open roof.

Key word, almost.

The open roof was exactly that - open. Too open for his comfort. It was stupid to think that someone might spot him up here, if nobody knew where he was, but it was enough to make him uneasy.

Casey abruptly pushed himself up off the ground, the hair that was free of his braid now a mess that covered most of his face. "I'm fine!" he announced quickly, but he took Miles' hand regardless to get back up.

"I forgot that fucking door hates me," he muttered ominously, shooting the offending door a glare that spoke of entirely too much resentment for what it was being directed toward. "Every damn time with that thing."

Personally, Miles was baffled by the whole thing. Sure, there were pieces of furniture that could occasionally be irritating to work with, but a door was beyond him.

Didn't you cuss out your window for it getting stuck on your suit?

Okay, so maybe it wasn't as beyond him as he'd like to imagine it being.

"Jackass doors aside!" Casey announced, shaking out his hands and hopping a couple steps further out onto the rooftop. Despite the lights of the city around them, it was still kind of hard to make out the finer details of everything else going on. "The apartment's not that far from here. You ready to get going?"

"Yeah- wait, I don't have my web-shooters," Miles realized, almost hilariously too late. "How are we gonna get there if I can't swing?"

Maybe Casey had some extra web-shooters that he could borrow, or they'd walk the whole way there. Either one was probably a better option than just staying stuck in one place because Miles hadn't had enough of his brain together to ask for his web-shooters back.

"Who said we were swinging there?"

That floored him completely. They weren't swinging. As Spider-Man.

Maybe Casey had a screw loose or something.

His confusion must have been pretty clear, because Casey waved him over to the other side of the rooftop with a grin. The sounds of car horns screaming somewhere else in the city settled into background noise, alongside the sounds of the few people wandering Brooklyn's streets at this hour. If it was actually late - Miles was not really sure if there was a sun here or not, because he hadn't seen one yet.

"Just watch," Casey said, holding out one hand to stop him near the roof's edge. Miles grimaced  as Casey took a few steps backward, staring past him at the building next door.

A couple seconds passed as the Spider bounced on the balls of his feet for a second, shaking out his hands. Miles was about to ask what he was doing when Casey suddenly shot past him, wind rushing past as he realized a moment too late what Casey was about to do.

He took a running leap across the gap between the buildings, and landed just short of the other roof, hands gripping the edge of the concrete overhang. Miles' jaw dropped as he clambered the rest of the way up across the roof, before turning around with his hands in the air.

"Your turn!" Casey yelled, sounding out of breath but otherwise okay.

"We're jumping across roof!?" Miles yelped, the shock making his hands spark with a short burst of venom for a second before it dissipated back into his nerves. "Are you out of your mind?"

"I get that a lot!" He seemed completely unbothered by everything that could possibly go wrong with jumping between building roofs, instead walking up on the overhang again and perching off to the side. Giving Miles a clear view of the roof across from him, and a clear view of the distance he could possibly fall. "Come on, you're a Spider-Man, right? If you don't stick the landing, you can always just climb up the wall again!"

"Please don't tell me you regularly jump across rooftops to get around."

"Only because it's fun to freak random people out if they see me clambering up the side of their building like a weird monster thing! And also, super satisfying to crawl around like that anyway."

Miles reluctantly backed up from the roof's edge. Casey made a couple of good points, but for some reason, the idea of carelessly flinging himself off of roof's without any webs to catch him if he fell was seriously scaring him.

He always had webs to catch him if he needed to.

What kind of Spider is afraid to just do a simple jump?

Coward.

"If you really don't wanna, we can walk," Casey shouted from across the gap. "It'll take a lot longer, though. Come on, Miles, it's just a leap of faith."

It's just a leap of faith.

A leap of faith.

Peter's voice rang through his head, the memory making his stomach curl for a reason he couldn't quite grasp.

It's just a leap of faith, Miles.

You've got this.

Casey made a move on the other roof like he was going to jump back over, but there was no need for that.

Miles started running, his feet reaching the edge before he could overthink it, before he could stop himself and ask what the hell he was doing. And without giving himself a chance to think, Miles leaped across the gap.

For the moment he was airborne, everything seemed to fade away into an adrenaline fuelled oblivion, that moment when one was airborne where neither ground nor sky nor body mattered. That second where the air under one's arms was enough, where one was completely unbound from gravity, alone in the air like nothing else mattered.

It was an exhilarating, familiar feeling, one that ignited Miles' excitement and set his worries at ease for that moment.

Even if it was just for a moment, a moment was all he really needed.

Then he was across the gap, landing on the edge of the rooftop overhang without any form of grace. Miles yelped as he tumbled sideways onto the concrete, rolling over and staring at the sky to try and catch his breath.

"I knew you had it in you!" Casey crowed from somewhere nearby, and he appeared in Miles' field of vision only seconds later. He offered Miles a hand, the look on his face telling of only sheer joy and contagious energy that had him constantly moving.

Miles took Casey's hand, and was hauled to his feet swiftly.

"Come on, race you there!" Casey elbowed him playfully, before running toward the other side of the roof.

"Hey! Not fair, man, you got a head start!"

-=+=-

Miles won the race.

Mainly because he'd gotten to the rooftop first, but also because Casey had somehow completely run out of breath. As a matter of fact, it kinda sounded like he was a dying fish out of water, only amplified by the fact that Casey was leaning up against a wall right now like it was his only support.

Not to say that Miles wasn't sufficiently winded either - he was having trouble catching his own breath, and he had to lean over and let himself just kinda stay in one spot for a little bit.

Maybe roof racing for thirty minutes was excessive, but even through his windblown state, Miles hadn't felt so energized in weeks.

Open and exposed as running through the city was, as weirdly dangerous as it felt… relief was the only thing that Miles could truly feel after a run like that. Relief to just be moving again, doing something that wasn't sitting in a room and being sick, with only his own thoughts for company.

"You good?" he called over to Casey, who still sounded like he was breathing with only one lung right now. A quick glance over at him revealed that he'd managed push himself upright at least, but it wasn't much of an improvement from before.

The other Spider wordlessly offered him a shaky thumbs-up. Well, that was better than nothing.

Miles took a second to look around the rooftop they were on, just trying to get his bearings. It looked like any other apartment rooftop in Brooklyn, empty except for the entry door off to one side. But the concrete itself was covered in paint splatters, stains, and scrawls of things that he couldn't make out thanks to wear and rain exposure. The door leading down into the building was spray painted mostly black, with a large variety of other graffiti all across the brick. In one corner though, there was very clearly evidence of Spiders - Casey's suit symbol, painted minutely onto the side of the building, with a bright yellow and white tear directly down the middle of it.

He finally stood up straight, to the dismay of every muscle in his body, and stretched his arms out over his head. At the same time, Casey walked over, a vaguely curious look on his face as he started flipping the end of his braid around again.

"You wanna go inside yet? Cause I dunno about you, but if I tried to do stairs right now I think I'll keel over dead," Casey asked. The statement sounded pretty believable, considering the fact that he immediately needed to inhale like it was his first time experiencing oxygen.

What's the harm in staying up here for a bit?

So many things, his brain immediately shouted. What if someone sees? What if they find us?

Miles immediately shut that train of thought down, his brows furrowing quickly.

They're not coming.

They wouldn't bother to look anyways.

You're a problem that's already taken care of.

There's nothing to worry about.

"Can we wait for a bit?" Miles asked, and his shoulders sagged in relief as Casey nodded. If he'd noticed sudden change of expression on Miles' face, then it didn't seem like he was going to mention it.

A few moments slipped past the two, in what counted as silence for New York. The sound blanket settled over the rooftop, mixing with the cool night air as the buzzing warmth from all the running started to wear off. It wasn't entirely cold, but he stuck his hands in the jacket pockets anyway.

Out of the corner of his eye, Miles noticed Casey looking between him and the ground, messing with his hands and making a wide variety of faces that belonged to someone who was trying very hard to answer a question without actually asking it out loud. It hit a peak when he started making vague hand gestures at thin air, almost like he was in the middle of a very serious debate. From the outside, it looked hilarious.

"Uh… you need something, man?" Miles vaguely gestured his hand in the Spider's direction, who immediately froze in place like a deer in headlights. "Is the air disagreeing with you over something?"

"Other than my right to breathe, no," he answered quickly. "I'm just trying to figure out if I can ask these questions without getting punched in the face two times in one week."

"Oh come on, they can't be that bad." Probably not something he should have said if he was trying to ensure they weren't questions that would want to make him punch Casey, but he'd really done nothing so far to actually earn getting punched in the face. "Ask away, if you really wanna know something."

A sudden, worrying gut feeling twisted through his stomach as Casey's whole face lit up, in a somewhat mischievous expression.

Oh shit, I'm gonna regret that.

“So, what’s the deal with the whole…” Casey vaguely gestured to his face, clearly trying to figure out a way to phrase whatever it was he wanted to say without it coming off as rude. “I dunno, you mentioned a Spider that you might have… oh, I don't know, fallen for at some point?”

Miles immediately nearly tripped over his own feet at the mention - a truly impressive feat, considering he was pretty much standing still - and he immediately pulled his hood as far over his head as it would go. Which was not enough, and out of everything Casey could have asked, why did it have to be that? “Oh, fuck, uh… when did I say that?”

“In your hilariously delirious ramblings on Milo's couch,” Casey answered, smiling slyly. He definitely knew he'd struck gold. “Something about some Spider girl at the Society?”

“OH,” Miles muttered. “Uh. Forget I said anything about that?”

“You also mentioned her name a lot during your story about pissing off the boss man,” Casey added, clearly with no intention to forget he said anything about it. “I still don't really remember her name, though. Something Stacy, right?”

“You’re not gonna let this go, are you?”

“Nope.”

Miles could have sworn his entire face was on fire, and he covered his eyes with the hoodie just to hide his embarrassment for a little while longer. Out of everything that Casey could have possibly asked him about, why did it have to be that?

"Do you remember nothing else of what I said?" he asked, turning away to try and maintain some of his rapidly dwindling dignity.

"Hmm… Well, yeah, but none of it is nearly as fun to bother you about. Unless there's something about the sketchbook-"

"SHUT," he protested quickly. Had Miles been literally anywhere else, he would have preferred to become a pile of nondescript goop on the floor and never speak to anyone ever again for the rest of his life.

I'm probably never going to see her again anyways.

The idea hit a lot harder than he thought it would.

She probably doesn't want to see me anymore. After all of that?

I'm not sure I want to see her anymore.

"I should have never come to see you."

"Come on, you bird-brain," Casey said, walking up next to him and elbowing him in the ribs, snapping him away from the memories and painful thoughts. "I was kidding about not remembering the name, I think you burnt it into my brain that week. Gwen Stacy?"

He stiffened, which only confirmed that for Casey, and he laughed. "Called it!"

"Shut up, man," Miles mumbled, pulling the hood - and at this point, half the jacket - over his head.

"What does her suit look like?" Casey's sudden question made him pause and actually look over. He raised his hands and shrugged. "I'm just wondering if I might have seen her around the Society before! I don't know!"

For a couple seconds, Miles seriously debated whether or not this was a good idea. Casey's question seemed friendly enough, but he still didn't really know these people.

Then again… he was going to be stuck here for a while until he could figure out a way to get out of here. And he didn't know how long that would take.

Not only that, but Miles had no idea where to start with getting out of this dimension. Which probably meant he was going to end up getting to know these people more than he'd originally thought he would. He'd already tried to figure out a way to get out of here last week, and he'd pretty quickly figured out that it would take a while.

Plus, Casey seemed pretty alright with being stuck here. There was a lot less will to escape in the way he spoke and acted, even in the way he just mentioned outside dimensions. It was offhanded and uncaring, a slate that was poorly wiped clear of the memories associated with it.

Eventually, Miles settled on one of his options.

“Her suit is black and white," Miles offered. "Mostly black on the whole body except for the top. She's got a hood, and her gloves are magenta with blue spiderweb patterns on it.”

Casey stopped in his tracks, complete astonishment being the only expression on his face. For a moment, Miles wasn’t sure if Casey had genuinely stopped registering anything, or if the world had frozen like a video game being paused.

“You’re kidding!” Casey yelped.

Miles shrugged sheepishly. “I mean… not really?”

Casey grinned, although he still seemed rather surprised. “Okay, so I have seen her at the Society, but it was like… one time. At a distance, before I got the boot here. Seriously, I can't believe that-"

Now it was Miles’ turn to freeze, cold panic spreading over him.

He knew.

Which probably means he knew about my situation, too.

Even the thought of that sent ripples of fear down his spine, sudden unease setting his teeth on edge. Miles' hands curled in his jacket pockets, trying to push aside the terror.

I told them all, yeah… but they all probably still knew.

Casey didn’t seem to notice his sudden freeze, pacing in circles and talking to himself as he went. Miles just shook himself out, trying to clear any hint of unease from his demeanor. He didn’t want anyone to see he was still freaked out by the mention of anything related to the life he’d had to leave behind.

I can't go back to it anyways.

Not like they would try to go back to that life either.

I still don't know if I'd want them to, either.

Miles took a quick, deep breath, to try and push the panic back.

Instead, he chose to focus on Casey's continued rambling. He was starting to wish that he'd just made the choice to go down the stairs.

"…and yeah, sure, those Spiders always had to keep it on the down-low, but it never really did anything insane. I don't know her as well as you do, but-"

Casey suddenly stopped himself, and a weirdly sharp glance made Miles freeze in place again. It looked like he'd just found a piece of puzzle, and had formed enough of it to know he wasn't going to like the end product.

A shiver passed down Miles' spine. Why was Casey looking at him like that? There was no reason for it, right?

“You know what, I don't have the room to say much," Casey said quickly, gesturing over to the door. The sudden shift only made Miles more uneasy - he didn't seem like the type to drop something so easily. “This building here is ours, just so that you know what to look for if you're out and about by yourself. The roof door should still be open, I told Luka to leave it unlocked for us.”

“And if it’s not open?” Miles questioned. The two walked back over to the door, and while Casey walked directly up to it, he hung back for a bit.

“Well, then we obviously use Luka’s window to remind him to unlock the door next time, because I don’t have my damn keys,” Casey said, so casually that Miles couldn’t tell if he was kidding or not. He reached for the doorknob, and Miles took a few more steps back, just so that he would have some space to think.

Why had Casey suddenly paused like that? As far as Miles knew, Casey only knew as much as Miles had told him, and as much as the Society had told him before he'd gotten kicked out. The weird look really wasn't helping his case, because that hadn't really been a look of someone understanding something interesting - it was a look of understanding a problem that was spiralling out of control right in front of his eyes, and it was only a matter of time until the pieces to the next puzzle came together to form the end result.

An end result that, from how Casey's mood had shifted so suddenly, wasn't one that Miles wanted to see, either.

And what about Gwen? Had Casey been kidding about her, too? The look on his face suggested he hadn’t been, but then again, a lot of the Spiders got dodgy when talking about relationships or friends. Hell, he'd cut himself off somewhere in the middle of talking about exactly that.

Besides, it wasn't like any of the other Spiders had mentioned it, either.

He'd just… been so weirdly concerned. So oddly uneasy about it.

Not like you aren't around them, either.

He probably just doesn't want to talk about it.

He forced himself to push away the thoughts of his old friends. Of her, even as much as it hurt to do so.

It shouldn't hurt.

She's probably already forgotten, anyway.

It felt foolish to hope otherwise, but it was true. It had been three weeks since the nightmare at HQ, and if his friends still were with the Society, they would have long since moved on.

You're not one of them.

What does that make you?

I already said that I don't know.

“Miles! The door was actually open!”

He was jolted out of his thoughts, back to reality, to see the Spider excitedly waving at an open door. “I thought Luka would have locked it, but he actually listened this time! Man, I haven’t gone in this door in forever, because the others are always locking it on me!”

Miles wasn’t really thinking properly anymore, his mind absently running thoughts through his head and trying to figure out half of the behavioural shifts he'd seen in the past fifteen minutes. And also trying to make sure his thoughts would shut up enough for him to think about it, so that his anxious thoughts wouldn't try to rear their ugly heads.

He didn’t notice Casey walk up to him cautiously, reaching out a hand to touch his shoulder.

Miles jolted, eyes widening as he stumbled back. Away from Casey, away from the potential danger, but there was no danger.

There was nobody here who would willingly hurt him. There was nobody who could hurt him.

He flinched anyway.

“Fuck, sorry,” Casey yelped, pulling his hand back faster than Miles had darted away. "I shouldn't have done that."

“It’s… It’s fine, I promise,” Miles whispered, trying to keep the shakiness out of his voice. “I’m good, I’m sorry."

Dangerous.

They don't care.

He didn't succeed in fully keeping his voice free of the shaking fear.

All four of Casey's eyes narrowed slightly, but he didn’t say whatever it was he wanted to say.  Which was… actually pretty surprising. And weird. Again with the weirdness, but at this point, Miles wasn't going to complain.

“If you say so…” Casey said carefully. "Come on, let's go inside."

He pulled open the door and dramatically gestured Miles inside, be it in an attempt to make him feel better or just a thing he did. Without much of a choice, he walked into the building, Casey quickly slipping inside after him and shutting the door.

A mechanical sound, followed by a quick click, and the door was locked behind him.

The staircase in this building was very different compared to the one he'd left earlier - instead of cleanly papered walls with no pattern, the walls were splattered in bright mixes of colour and shades that had very little pattern. Grungy yellows, dark blues, purples and greens, all against backgrounds of black - it looked almost like a UV-lit golf course, minus the UV lights. Hanging down the middle of the stairwell was a thin line of web, wrapped in a variety of textures and colours, almost like a rope.

Casey was already past him, leaning out over the railing and shooting a web directly at the part of the roof where the rest of the webs hung. Miles was proven right in his theory of it being a rope as soon as Casey started to let himself fall down the middle of the staircase. Unfortunately, due to his own lack of web-shooters, Miles's only options of following were the stairs or climbing down the main rope himself.

He chose the stairs, walking down them at what a leisurely pace, just to keep himself occupied. Making sure that he counted every step, to give his brain something to do.

“You’re slow,” Casey noted, already somewhere further below.

“I still have a literal claw wound on my shoulder, give me a break,” Miles said, rolling his eyes as Casey passed another flight of stairs.

“Your break was literally two weeks long, dumbass,” Casey said. “I’m surprised your immune system sucks that much, and I'm severely immunocompromised.”

“It’s not like I go around getting interdimensional diseases on purpose,” Miles objected, to no avail as Casey was already down on another landing. He started double-stepping down the stairs - a truly dangerous game -  to try and catch up.

Eventually, after walking down five or so flights of stairs, Miles reached the landing that Casey was actually standing on. The Spider was wrapping the web he'd dropped on around the rope in the middle of the stairwell, not a word exchanged for a moment before they both turned to the door. Spray painted across it was a large spider symbol, encircled in a bright red. The spider itself was a dark blue, and directly through the center of the symbol, a colourful, glitch-like tear was ripped through it. It almost looked like an actual glitch, enough that for a moment, Miles debated reaching his hand toward it to check.

Which was a very stupid idea, mind you. Actively touching a glitched piece of reality was not a good idea in any way, shape, or form, and it would probably hurt way more than it looked like it would.

“I’m guessing this is our stop?” Miles tried to joke, still trying to catch his breath. His eyes absently traced the patterns on the door, still trying to keep his mind occupied enough to not completely lose it.

“Bingo!” Casey confirmed. He went to open the door, but a dull shkunk from the doorknob immediately announced that this door was, in fact, locked. He narrowed his eyes at it, before sighing and pulling a phone out of the pocket of his hoodie and opening it with a quick tapping of a code.

Miles managed to keep himself mostly calm while Casey opened his phone, scrolling down through his contacts and calling someone faster than he could register. The phone rang a couple times, before going to voicemail.

At that, Casey’s eyes narrowed further, before he scrolled again and called another number.

It picked up after two rings, and the other person didn’t even get a chance to say hello before Casey started talking. “Luka locked the bedroom floor door again, can you come unlock it?”

“You're joking, right?"

"Unfortunately, no, I'm not."

"Don't you have your keys?"

“Left them in my room.”

“Remember to actually carry them with you the next time you go out, asshole. I might not be home next time.”

“Does that mean you’re gonna come unlock the door for us?”

“Yeah, yeah, let me get somewhere safe in my game so that I don't get killed.”

“Thanks Sid, you’re my favourite today!” Casey announced, before hanging up abruptly without waiting for any more reply. He turned back to Miles with a grin. “Good news, we’re being rescued.”

“We get to be rescued for once?” Miles asked with a smile, and Casey barked a laugh at that. Miles settled against the railing, letting himself relax a little bit. Not by a lot, but a little. The stairwell actually felt remarkably safe, for a stairwell. And considering how many times he’d been chased up stairwells, it was even more surprising.

Miles’ thoughts drifted away, back toward his home dimension. He still didn't know if his parents were okay, if his home dimension was okay, if it was still all in one piece or not. If the Spot got there before he did-

Miles turned the thoughts away before he reached the end. He didn’t need to think about that while stuck in another dimension.

He didn't want to think about what might happen. If Miles thought about it too hard, it would be one step closer to reality, and that wasn't a reality that he wanted to live through.

He was jolted out of his thoughts by what sounded like an explosion coming from further downstairs. Casey didn’t seem too concerned, and upon seeing the worry on Miles’ face, just snorted again.

“Don’t worry about that,” Casey reassured him. “That’s probably just Luka messing with some kind of new tech again.”

“What now?”

“Luka likes to use the basement level as a testing ground for his experiments. Most of us do, actually. There's a whole bunch of weird and freaky experiments down there - we're all scientists, one way or the other." Casey's brow furrowed as something clearly crossed his mind. "Although if Luka tech messed with my DNA mutation cultures down there, I'm going to-"

Miles didn't get the chance to ask even one question about why one might need to have cultures like that before the door unlocked and opened, revealing a very disgruntled and annoyed looking Sidney, who was glaring daggers at the other Spider. She tossed something at Casey's face, and the distinct jangle of keys sounded in the stairwell for a moment before Casey caught them.

“Bring your fucking keys next time,” Sidney snapped. Her hair was a mop of messy, unbrushed coppery red, and she was wearing an oversized t-shirt with a band logo that he didn't recognize. "If I die this round it's your fault."

Casey rolled his eyes at the statement. "I mean, I'd just call that a skill issue."

"Fuck you."

"Thank you, Sid."

She rolled her eyes and flipped him off, taking a couple steps back into the apartment. Then Sidney spotted him, and waved quickly. “Oh, hey Miles. I guess Case is showing you your room. If you hear any yelling, don't worry about it too much."

“What-”

“Like she said, don’t worry about it too much,” Casey answered as Sidney took off running down the hallway, presumably back to wherever the game she was playing was, motioning him inside after her. "It's probably game night, so Sid's probably trying not to die to something in whatever game they're playing right now. Depending on what we hear in the next thirty seconds, I think that's how we know what kind of game they're playing."

Miles just made what he hoped was a confused face and went inside. Casey went in and shut the door - without locking it, mind you - and started walking ahead of him down the hallway. Miles couldn't help his jaw dropping at the sight of the place.

The hallway in here was painted in many varying colours and styles, enough that one might think six artists were all fighting over the same canvas. There was a room near the end of the hallway, but this corridor was solely painted in symbols, colours, and textures. There was a room with oranges and yellows with an almost grunge texture, one that was black and green with cybernetic wires sprouting from the doorframe, one with textures like bark and painted leaves all around it. Another door was dusted in what looked like actual stardust, another painted like the door had been sketched on; yet another surrounded in aurora imagery.

The doors nearest to the main room were one painted in black and green, with the Prowler’s symbol on the door. Miles's hands jerked at the sight of the insignia, a gut reaction to it even though really, it was nothing more than just a symbol.

Doesn't help that I've spent the last three or so weeks looking at two mirror copies of people I know who wore it last.

Miles shook off the creeping thoughts. It was getting harder to push the anxious whispers away now - he needed some time by himself.

The only other door in this part of the hallway was completely blank, although there was a small name tag on the door. Miles walked up to it curiously, and he saw that the name on the door had his name scrawled on in thick Sharpie.

“This is my room?” he asked quietly.

“Yep,” Casey said, a grin on his face. “You can always customize your door later, when we can get the paints you want for it, but for now we’ll just use the name tag. You’ll get used to it, I promise.”

Miles blinked at the door for a couple more seconds, trying to process the fact that these people had cared enough to set up a room for him ahead of time, and Casey snorted. 

“You can go in, y’know,” he said. “Door’s not gonna bite you.”

Miles shook himself out, and smiled despite his unease. “Yeah, uh… thanks. For setting it up for me.”

“Notre maison est aussi la votre. C'est juste de t'aider,” Casey answered, only stirring confusion from Miles, who did not know French. “I know you don’t have too much stuff with you, but just let someone know what we can grab for you when you’re done exploring to make it more comfortable. This Spider hotel is dedicated to giving the best possible service to any and all Spiders who come through our doors or windows.”

That one actually managed to make him laugh, and he went to open the door. 

Not safe, not my room.

Not my home.

Miles shoved the anxious thought aside. He could freak out in a bit. Casey didn't need to see him freak out anymore. He bit the inside of his cheek, just to keep said freak out at bay for a few minutes longer as his throat tightened.

He clicked open the door and let it swing in.

The room was mostly bare, with dark blankets laid on a bed in one corner and a desk in the other. A window seat reached out and hung out over the open city below, letting the lights stream in and illuminate the room softly. A drawer and a bookshelf sat in the far left corner, almost completely untouched, but clearly not unused as there were a few spare books and trinkets left on the shelves.

Miles let a tiny drop of homesickness leak into his thoughts.

It looked almost exactly like his room at home, down to nearly the smallest detail, except everything that would have made the room his was stripped away to make something empty and dead. It was clean, and there wasn’t anything on the floor or out of place, but aside from that, it was nearly a drop-dead replica.

He walked in slowly, looking around the room and at the bed, eyes watering as the space itself quietly accepted him in. 

Miles felt like a ghost, walking into this room, an exhausted chill sweeping through him. Like he wasn’t supposed to have found it in this dimension, yet it was here anyway. Like he wasn’t supposed to be in here, but was welcomed regardless.

From the doorway, Casey said something about letting him have a few minutes to settle in, before it shut behind him with a sharp click.

Miles walked around, somewhat lost in the quiet storm of his own thoughts, poking and prodding at everything. He wasn’t sure why he was investigating everything like it might have a trap attached to it, but he continued to do so regardless.

Nothing about this was wrong.

Everything about this is wrong

Eventually, Miles managed to get himself to sit down without feeling like he would explode if he did. The bed sank under his weight easily, trying to be something familiar, but it fell just a bit too short.

Miles took a shaky gulp of air, and a few tears finally managed to slip free from his eyes as the overwhelming, tight feeling of stress started to push free of where he'd been shoving it away.

These Spiders were a lot nicer than he thought they would have been, for apparently teaming up with villains and being incredibly upset toward anything related to the Spider Society. Miles would have thought they’d spend a lot more time scheming and planning revenge than they actually ever seemed to. Sure, a couple dark jokes and snide comments slipped out on occasion, but there was genuinely nothing that told him that these people seemed inclined to do anything particularly harmful.

And all of the Spiders here had almost immediately accepted Miles as one of them. As a part of their strange little group, something that he hadn’t even thought they would do after hearing about his role in the supercollider incident. Sure, some of them were nosier than the others, and some of them he’d barely spoken to, but everyone just seemed so okay with him being here.

They just seemed happy to stay here and keep doing what they could to help in this dimension. Sure, he’d overheard some of them mention things about their home dimensions, but they all seemed fine to stay here and just… exist.

Hell, they’d taken the time to set him up a place to stay in their home.

A soft, muffled plip reached him as a tear hit the blankets.

And another, and another.

They didn't have to do any of this.

They could have just left me in the city.

Considering everything, they should have left me behind to glitch out.

But they hadn't.

That was more than he could have asked for. He wouldn't have even considered asking for any of this, and yet these random strangers that he'd never even heard mention of in his brief time at the HQ had done more for him than the entire Spider Society as a whole.

Fresh, blooming pain twisted around his heart, a thorned thing that only served to pull him back to the betrayal on the train, the realization that he was alone against them all.

That I'm not one of them.

The reminder carved itself deep through his racing thoughts, and Miles leaned forward to drop his face into his hands. It didn't take long for them to become wet with tears, for quiet, muffled sobs to break free into the air.

The Anomalies didn't have to do any of this. They didn't have to give him one of their watches, they didn't have to help him out when he was sick, they didn't have to put up with his jumpiness and suspicion. They didn't have to share any of their hospitality with him, and yet they'd swung around and shattered his already lowered expectations faster than the damn bullet train.

Nobody was forcing them to do any of that.

Even still... they'd put up a name tag on a blank door for him.

Probably because they don’t think I’m gonna leave, Miles realized. Casey had mentioned painting his door like all the others because it was something the permanent residents did. It was something the people who were stuck here with nothing else to do did to keep themselves occupied, to maybe remind them a little bit of home while they were trapped.

They think I’m trapped here too. They all believe they’re stuck here.

I basically am trapped here, because if I leave, nobody I care about will be safe.

Miles put his face in his hands, fruitlessly trying to dry his tears as air hitched in his lungs. The hissing, furious thoughts pulled at him again, whispering barbed words through his head like snakes winding through grass.

They only helped you because that's what Spider-Man does. He helps people no matter what.

You haven't helped anyone by being here.

You've only caused them problems. You're the reason that they were ever here to make the decision to help you in the first place.

Even your 'friends' saw that.

No wonder they didn't visit.

A real Spider-Man wouldn't hurt so many people just by existing.

"Stop it," he managed to choke out, through shaking gasps and a closed throat. His breathing was too quick, too irregular, pins and needles sparking to life under the skin of his hands as he curled up into a ball on the bed.

A real Spider-Man wouldn't have done any of this.

What does that make you?

Miles couldn't cough up the words to try and get his brain to just shut up, to be quiet, leave him alone, let him b re a  th e-

What does that make you?

The haunting words finally cut some unwanted cord in his head, and Miles scrambled back onto the bed until his back was against the wall.

He could only bury his face in his knees as the question circulated through his mind, over and over again, an overwhelming, screaming cacophony that deafened his attention to the outside world. Needles under his skin, cold and minute like the limbs of a thousand insects, crept up his arms and legs.

Miles didn't know how long he spent crying. At some point, it all just pooled together in a shaking, repetitive mess of hell in his own head, punctuated only by the sounds of his own grief.

At some other point, it died down enough to let him sleep, even just a little bit.

The pillow was stained with tears by the time he did.

Chapter Text

Miles blinked awake the next morning feeling marginally less miserable than yesterday.

If there was a yesterday - it was kinda hard to tell, considering the sky outside his window was still dark when he looked over at the window. The only illumination in the room was from city lights pouring in through the window, gently settling over the floor and resting there expectantly. Almost saying 'come on, time to wake up now.'

The lurking thoughts in the back of his mind woke with him, hissing softly as Miles rubbed the sleep from his eyes. He buried his face in the pillow with a tired mumble.

Out of everything he might have wanted to deal with first thing in the morning, it was not the residues of a panic attack. That wasn't an ideal way for anyone to wake up.

He sighed into the pillow, trying to push away the disappointed thoughts in his brain, but to no avail. They stayed there, memories and words pulling at his mind while Miles just laid there under the blankets, trying to retain the comfort sleep brought before it evaporated completely.

I can’t stay here forever. The realization came to him slowly as he dragged his brain out of sleep. I can’t leave my dimension in a time loop or whatever it is while I hide here for the rest of my life.

I’m not gonna wait and never see my parents again. I’m not gonna stay here and hide while they might be in trouble.

The Spot's still on the loose - I don't even know if he's already there or not.

The image of the Spot back in his dimension, potentially wreaking havoc while Miles was curled up under the blankets and sorting through the mess of his thoughts, twisted his heart like it was wrapped in barbed wire.

Falling buildings, concrete being absorbed into portals, shot toward an innocent while the police captain ran to save them-

And somehow, he had to get home while this dimension was locked. The people here didn't know how to get out, and the only other people who might be able to help-

Miles stopped himself there, a wave of bright anger curling in his gut and washing through him faster than necessary for having just woken up.

His friends wouldn't want to help him. It had been almost three weeks, and there hadn't been a single sign that they'd given enough of a shit to come looking for him. Not once in that time had any of the Spiders mentioned seeing anyone who looked like them, not once had they mentioned anyone searching for him. Miles had seen absolutely nothing of his friends in the time he'd been on Earth-42, and that fact alone immediately dispelled any hope he had of getting outside help.

Not from them. Not from Peni, or from Noir, or from Peter, or from Gwen.

The last one stung even worse, wrapping the understanding that they'd left Miles in a dimension without any form of help to die there in a cruelly neat bow and presenting it to him in a way that sent sharp knives burrowing into his heart and breaking it in half.

No. The Spider Society wasn't an option. His so-called 'friends' were not an option.

Gwen isn't an option.

Miles tried to ignore the way his entire soul seemed to wither up and turn to dust at the mere idea. His only method to combat that was to mash his face further into the pillow, even as the world almost pulled into itself and suffocated him as he turned said idea over in his head. Which didn't do much to help, but it was something to do.

Now he definitely didn't want to get out of bed. Not until he had a solid plan to get out of here, and to maybe save his world after that, and to maybe figure out a way to make the whole situation go away forever so that he never had to think about it again.

The bubbling anger boiled up under the surface again, and Miles finally forced himself to sit up for a second. He buried his face in his hands with a long, annoyed sigh. All he could do about the anger and the hurt right now was just shove it down into a pit and seal it away - bury it down deep enough that it wouldn't bother him anymore.

The anger and hurt rolled together into grim determination, and Miles' hands gripped his face as he glared at the walls across from him through his fingers, which had done nothing to him but were being subjected to his glaring anyway.

I’ll get out of here. Once I have a solid plan in place, I'm getting the hell out of here.

With or without anyone's help.

The thought of the others leaving him for dead made him grit his teeth to distract him from the almost sick feeling the notion brought. Miles shoved it down alongside everything else - memories, thoughts, all of it down in that same pit full of anger that he just as quickly slammed shut.

I have to do it. I will get out of here, whether someone tries to stop me or not.

But until then, I guess I really am stuck here.

Miles flopped back onto the bed, letting his arms starfish out onto the sheets. The ceiling was completely bare, the only indication of texture being the faint shadows cast across the popcorn by the light from outside.

The empty off-white above him made Miles’ eyebrows furrow in frustration.

For a room that was supposed to be his - for now, he reminded himself quickly - it was too barren. No posters on the walls, no messy piles of sketch paper on the desk, no stacks of stickers or art supplies to be seen. Not even a scattered pile of laundry on the floor to indicate he’d ever been here. The most that there was to indicate life was Miles himself, only partially covered by the blankets on his bed, and that was it. Aside from that, the space was cold and dead, without a care for it's sole inhabitant.

Despite the cold, it was pretty warm under the blankets, considering he’d fallen asleep with his jacket on. Not normally something Miles was prone to doing, but it wasn't the sticky kind of warmth that made you feel like you had to get out of bed before it was comfortable again. It wasn't yet, anyway.

Maybe if he just laid here a little longer, pressed his eyes shut a bit harder, Miles could open them again and wake up back home, or in his dorm room at Visions Academy, and be able to move on with his life like none of this had ever happened.

Maybe if he willed it into existence hard enough, he could portal himself home to before this all had ever happened and stop it, or change the past enough that he wouldn't end up trapped on Earth-42.

It's always a 'maybe,' isn't it?

After a few minutes, Miles gave up and opened his eyes again. It wasn't working. Of course not - it wouldn't have been so easy to get home in any universe, no matter how hard he tried to wish it into existence.

With another annoyed groan, he pushed himself up again. He could imagine all he wanted, but the soft, quiet discomfort that the room exuded had no intention to leave him to his imagination. Its presence always there in the background, always pulling at the loose threads of the memories behind Miles’ closed eyes and the worry lines on his forehead.

Always a quiet reminder that he was still stuck in a dimension where he didn’t belong.

And until he figured out a plan, there was no way home.

The understanding was bitter in his mouth as Miles hauled himself upright, properly out of bed this time, glaring accusingly at the wall opposite of him, eyes tracing patterns in the blank, white walls. Looking for things that weren't there, like the posters or drawings or anything familiar.

There was nothing. Just passive, sterile white, that looked back at him and almost asked 'what are you looking for?'

The weight of the watch on his wrist, something that was supposed to be a comfort that would keep him from literally glitching out of existence, grew heavier. A manacle of lightweight metal and small screens that tethered Miles here, to this place, like chains binding a prisoner to the walls of their cage and dragging him down with it.

It took a little while longer of just absently staring at the opposite wall, letting his thoughts circle around in his head until they wore tracks into his mind, for Miles to finally kick his brain into some kind of action. He had to get up at some point. Staying in his room all day wasn’t exactly going to do wonders for helping him get out of here. Neither was sulking about it, but he really didn't want to call what he was doing 'sulking' just yet.

Eventually, moving entailed standing, and after that, tossing the jacket he'd been wearing onto the floor haphazardly. A dull, crinkling, fabric-y thud sounded out as he turned away from it, the way one would expect a polyester fall jacket to sound upon hitting hardwood floor.

Miles could get the jacket back to Milo later. If he remembered to do that.

A yawn escaped him as he went to the door, his hand resting on the doorknob just as another door clicked open somewhere down the hallway and slamming open rather violently. The sound was muffled, but he still felt the vibrations of the doorknob bashing into the wall through the floors. More muffled thuds echoed through both the air and the floor - it sounded like someone was moving through the hallway stupidly fast for how early it was. Or how it felt, because again, it was really hard to tell if it was light out or not.

Miles pulled the door open, expecting the hallway to be mostly empty-

Only for his Spider-sense to yell at him out of nowhere, and Miles stumbled back out of the doorway as a blur of dark blue and long hair sped past him, yelling obscenities at the top of their lungs as they did, toward the other end of the floor hall.

He leaned forward to get a better look, but his Spider-sense went off again, and he pulled away in time avoid getting hit by the second blur of brighter colours and blonde hair that ran by after the first.

“Casey, you get your ass back here right now!”

Aura’s voice rang clearer than the other’s chorus of swearing, and Miles stood stunned in the entrance to his room as Casey came speeding back the other way with Aura hot in pursuit. He had to just keep standing there as they vanished into the stairwell, their yelling echoing louder as they entered it, before blinking a couple of times to shake himself out of it.

What just happened? There wasn't really anyone else he could ask except himself.

I have… no idea.

There’s only one way to find out, I guess.

Miles stretched out his arms, trying to get himself somewhat relaxed and to maybe tell his hyperactive Spider-sense to maybe chill out for thirty seconds, please. There were entirely too many things setting it off, and Miles needed it clear in case he needed to run later.

He shouldn’t have felt the need to run.

He was supposed to be safe here.

A faint twinge in his shoulder, one that skittered along the length of the healed claw marks down to his chest, sent shivers of unease down his spine.

Stay alert, stay awake, stay aware.

Miles shook off the constant little pings of his Spider-sense - to the best of his ability, anyway - and started down the hallway. The stairwell door hung open, gently swinging open and almost politely inviting him closer.

Now, buildings weren't sentient. That was a pretty normal fact of most normal people's lives. Unless you happened to be unfortunate enough to be living somewhere haunted, or in a building that was actually alive and breathing, buildings never quite held the same sense of life as living, breathing beings did.

If Miles were to describe this brownstone as anything, it was definitely using the word 'alive.'

He passed the other doors, bright colours and distinct patterns each jumping out at him, trying to draw his eyes away, to capture his attention. The colours all seemed to cry out and say 'I have something to say, look at what I am!" without care, inviting him to watch as they painted out stories before his eyes. Miles had to force his artist brain to just take note of the things he found interesting now and return to it later. If he didn’t, he’d be staring at the walls all day, and staring at the walls was probably a one-way ticket to getting frozen in place and never doing anything ever again for the rest of time.

Every colour, every style, every brush stroke or texture - all of them said different things, and as chaotic and all over the place as the colours were across doors were, as much as they each individually bartered for attention, they all called out to tell a story that Miles could see, if he wanted to. All he had to do was look closer.

And as much as it would be fun, neither Miles nor the rest of his world had the time for him to stay here and follow every stroke of paint on the walls.

Maybe when he was done fixing things in his dimension, he could come back for a proper look.

Not if. When.

It still took an unholy amount of time for him to kick his brain into gear - again, Miles noted, because of course this had happened again - and to finally get moving down the stairwell. The walls were no less brightly coloured here than in the hallway, although the patterns were much more chaotic than before. Less ordered, with more overlapping styles and colours that didn’t quite fit and others that blended so smoothly it took him a minute to realize the colours had changed at all. The stairwell was less an assorted collection of individual pieces trying to tell a story - this was more a bunch of artists all behind the same canvas, all of them trying to say different but similar things at the same time and layering their messages on top of and next to each other as they fought for more space they didn't have.

Miles' brain struggled to categorize even half of it; how the colours got paler the further down the stairs he went, how random bursts of bright neons would interrupt the flow of something else, how some sections were spray paint, some made from collections of newspaper scraps and highlighter, some made of geometrical green and gray lines of fine paint, some made from layered lumps of oil paints that smelled like they'd just been taken off the palatte.

It was like walking through a dream, or hundreds of dreams, and a surprising pang of loss echoed in Miles' heart as he realized he probably would never have the time to fully unpack the secrets hidden in the walls of this apartment.

And the Spiders here probably weren't even aware of everything he was seeing. They might be so used to it that they just walked past it every day without a second thought.

Peals of laughter and the yells of Aura and Casey running around echoed through the stairwell, coming from further down below him. Miles had to just take a second to process how… normal it all seemed. For being a bunch of anomalies trapped in another dimension against their will, this place was incredibly laid-back. Almost domestic, in a way, but there was just a small part of Miles that had a hard time believing that it was real.

Even despite the doubt, a bright spatter of a yellowy-mango on the walls, coupled with the sounds of chaos below, managed to sneak a smile from somewhere in him.

By the time he got down to the floor where everything seemed to be at its noisiest, Miles could smell the typical warm, sharp scent of coffee being brewed, the low mechanical whirring of the machine slipping into the undercurrent of the chatter and the yelling. The door to this floor was wide open, leaving a clear view into the surprisingly open area of what looked to be a kitchen. It looked like they’d knocked down a multitude of walls to have an open space in here, with small remnants of the wall frames sticking out of the floor and ceiling, capped off by some weird rubbery material. That made sense, considering that broken wood was typically quite sharp and prone to giving people splinters against their will - stepping on the sharp things, or hitting a sharp thing with your face, straight up just sucked, and probably was not what anyone wanted to do first thing in the morning.

Miles managed to snap his brain out of its observatory trance, enough to walk properly over to the door-

And for the third time that morning had to pretty much throw himself out of the way of the entrance as Casey raced past him into the stairwell, emitting a high-pitched screech that he could have only compared to that of a pterodactyl. Or at least, what Miles thought a pterodactyl sounded like - he had never personally met with one, but his best guess was that they sounded like a shrieking toddler with the rasp of someone who'd smoked a pack a day for twenty years straight.

Casey didn't particularly sound like either of the above, in voice or otherwise, but the noise he was making certainly came pretty close.

“Morning, Miles!” Casey shouted up the stairs as he practically flung himself over the railing and onto the web rope dangling down the stairwell, sliding down as Aura rushed through the door after him.

“Casey, for fucks sake!” she yelled, and for half a second, it looked like Aura was going to try chasing after him by running down the stairs at top speed - a very, very dangerous game, but definitely safer than throwing oneself over a railing.

Instead, defying expectations in a way that Miles really should have expected from a Spider, she vaulted over the railing after him, and Miles just watched with wide eyes as she started leaping from landing to landing without a single shit given about how many times she was nearly hitting her head on concrete stairs.

All he could really do was just stare in surprise for a minute, because most people who had just watched two other people throw themselves down the middle of a stairwell would, in fact, need a minute - a minute that was swiftly interrupted by Tarabi walking out into the stairwell, steaming coffee mug in hand, and waving at him briefly before leaning over the edge of the railing to watch the chaos unfolding below. Star's third eye was closed, and the other two eyes were watching half-lidded as she took a sip of whatever it was in the mug. Star wore a baggy gray t-shirt, with constellation-patterned pajama pants, both of which could have blended into the dark blue of the kitchen landing walls.

“Morning,” star offered, rubbing their eyes as she looked down the open well. “Did you sleep alright?”

Is she seriously not fazed at all by that?

The question seemed to answer itself when something on a lower floor crashed and something else shattered, the noise reveberating up the stairwell alongside some more yelling, and Tarabi did absolutely nothing to indicate she'd heard any of that. At most, she just took another sip of her coffee and looked back over the edge.

“Is this normal?” Miles asked, walking over to the railing and leaning over it alongside them, trying to catch a glimpse of what might be going on down there. It sounded like they were somewhere much further down and in the floor below - there was no way for him to possibly see what was happening, but he could at least try, okay?

“Pretty much,” Tarabi answered, and he couldn’t hide a grin at how they almost sounded like they were still trying to sleep while standing. “They started doing that just after Aura got here.”

“It's certainly one way to wake everyone up, I guess.”

A beat of quiet passed - well, as quiet as one could get when there was someone screaming their head off a few floors down and chatter happening in the room behind him - and Miles let his brain wander again, tracing the patterns on the walls and absently filing away colour choices and spray paint styles. Had that blue always been shaded like that? Had the greens always been layered in plastics?

Maybe. Maybe not. He hadn't been this far down the building to be sure if anything was out of place or not.

“There’s breakfast in the kitchen if you want something,” Tarabi said unexpectedly, pushing herself off the railing and giving him a look as she turned around. The mug in her hands made a gentle sloshing noise, but nothing spilled. “There's cereal, croissants, toast… maybe somebody might be making flatcakes. Although I don’t think anyone can guarantee that those are gonna be edible. If you don’t wanna die to Eri's cooking, just have some cereal.”

Miles shifted on his feet, the shock at how casually star spoke about it all flooring him completely. The chases, the questionably edible foods, the small talk - like this was so normal that it was just their life. That this was just how Tarabi and the others lived here, in this place away from their homes, and it was had become enough of their norm that nobody batted en eye when someone threw themself across stair landings or painted the walls in absurd colours.

Tarabi offered Miles a friendly grin and a nudge with her elbow. "Don't worry, I won't let the symbiote's weird taste in food drag you into a repeat of the pizza shake incident."

And without explaining anything about what the hell a 'pizza shake' was, star went back into the kitchen, calling out to someone in the room, leaving him to process by himself.

Was it really this simple?

No secret catches, no hidden strings behind the scenes, nothing?

Just… a normal morning?

Oh, come on, man, don’t freeze up now, Miles scolded himself as he turned to follow, quickly shaking himself to rid himself of the lingering doubt. His Spider-sense hissed as he did so - it really seemed to have a mind of it's own sometimes, and it didn't enjoy him turning his back on the chaos down below - but he pushed it aside for now in favour of maintaining a somewhat normal pace. Even just to make sure it looked like Miles wasn't rethinking half his life choices while standing in the open stairwell.

You just finished having a crisis. Save the next one for tomorrow at the least, man.

Miles shoved away the nagging thought, instead choosing to focus on taking one step at a time into the kitchen, absently rubbing the rest of sleep from his eyes as he went. It didn't work very well, as his exhaustion was immediately proven heavier than expected by a long yawn.

The chatter toned down a little as he walked in, and he kept his focus on putting one foot in front of the next. He couldn't tell who else was in here - he at most only knew Tarabi was in the kitchen too, and that was it.

“Morning, Miles!” someone who sounded like Sidney called, who turned out to be Sidney when he actually looked up from his feet to see the kitchen. A couple people were staring at him, but other than that, everyone either seemed too tired to give a shit or completely absorbed in something else to really notice. The ones who were staring offered him welcoming, friendly smiles, and even despite the uneasy doubt in his gut, Miles tried to return them to the best of his ability. His smile didn't quite reach his eyes, but it was fine.

The kitchen was much less colourful than the rest of the building, sporting mostly warm oak browns and tans on the cabinets and a much cooler ash white stone with little flecks of black on the countertops. The walls here were a warmer ashen brown, with fainter grungy blends of cocoa and tawny mixed in near the corners. An island sat placidly in the middle of the open area, it's counter scattered with empty plates and random objects, was where everyone else seemed to be casually eating their breakfast. Some of them were focused solely on their phones, others making quiet conversation about what the correct drinking temperature of water was.

Which was cold, in Miles' opinion - he hadn't met anyone who drank tap water above a cold temperature before, and feared the day he did.

“Morning?” Yikes, he still sounded a bit like shit. Even his normal morning voice wasn’t so rough. It sounded like he'd swallowed a cheese grater. Miles cleared his throat with a short cough to try and fix it. "Sorry, morning."

“And there’s the anomaly of the hour,” Eri announced, barely looking up from its food and therefore missing how Miles winced at the word. A weird black tentacle extended from somewhere on Eri's arm and smacked it lightly in the face, to which it shot the thing an irritated look before returning to whatever it was doing. “How’d you sleep?”

He shrugged, letting himself lean against the wall with crossed arms. Somewhere in the back of his head, Miles still had no clue if there was going to be some kind of catch to letting himself walk into the kitchen and just relax with everyone else. So for now, wall-leaning. “It was alright.”

Alright except for the panic attack, I guess.

“That’s good,” Eri said, offering a nod and returning to something that might have been toast, if it didn't also look like it was absolutely drowned in hazelnut spread.

Somehow, the faint acknowledgement only made Miles even more oddly uncomfortable to just be standing there. He started messing with his hands without truly paying attention, mostly just picking at a hangnail that was bugging him.

Seriously, where was the catch? The moment where Miles was told that something was utterly and completely wrong or that someone revealed something they weren’t supposed to?

It can't just be this, can it?

There's no way that the only thing happening here is just a casual morning.

There's no way that's all this is, right?

Or maybe… maybe it was.

Maybe this really was all there was to staying with these Spiders - casual mornings and chaotic chases around the halls, stopping crimes around New York with friends, making jokes and coffee before the sun was up.

Maybe it really was just customizing a stairwell with friends when you had the time, painting a room with people who knew what had happened to you and understood, letting someone else see the colours you chose and the ways the brush turned words into a picture of the one who held it.

Maybe it really was just… painting your door.

It was… weirdly peaceful. Not the weird kind of peace that settled in the dust after a fight, or the peace that accompanied you in the middle of a stressful day during a small break, or even the peace that stood and waited in the pause of a chase.

No, this was different. A kind of weird peace and safety that Miles hadn't seen in… well, in a really long time.

The kind of peace that Miles could settle into, even if it was just for a second or two.

This was the weird peace that sat with you while you waited for a clock to tick down, slowing the world and waiting for you to take a breath and recover before moving on to the next round of stress. That paused and waited a couple seconds at the next hurdle, waited for you to catch up to it and follow along again.

For those couple of seconds, Miles could let his worries ease ever so slightly. He could let the constant panic, the half-formed pieces of an escape plan, the anger and the hurt, all settle down and leave his mind wonderfully empty of anything and everything.

Those couple of seconds were swiftly interrupted as a pair of footsteps thudded up behind him, and Miles’ Spider-sense let out a ring of alarm that sent his entire body into alert mode. He scooted to the side just as a blue-green and white blur rushed behind him, with the person in question panickedly grabbing his shoulders and ducking behind him. Miles yelped in protest, but whoever it was steadied him back onto balance as they cowered behind him.

“Bro, help,” Casey's voice hissed in a giggly, desperate panic, almost dragging Miles backwards with the sheer force of how hard he was trying to hide right now. “I think she’s gonna murder me-”

Aura whipped around the corner at that moment with a rather furious expression on her face, glaring behind him at Casey. She did, in fact, look like she was going to commit a murder, but there was half a smile on her face and a messiness to her hair that set his jumpy nerves aside. “Miles, step aside, man.”

“Please do not, she’ll kill me!”

“Help me out, just let me at him!”

“What did Casey even do?” Miles asked, taking a slight step back and Casey almost crouching as he tried to hide from Aura’s near withering glare. He could have just stepped aside, but that persistent little tick of thought in his head that always accompanied helping someone made him pause. He sidestepped Aura's attempt to get around him, with Casey yelping and following suit.

“Somebody,” Aura hissed, still trying to dodge around Miles to get to the other Spider, “is refusing to take his medications like he’s supposed to.”

“What are the meds for?” He raised an eyebrow suspiciously, trying to glance over his shoulder at the Spider cowering behind him. If looks could kill, Casey would probably be dead right now. At best, he would just be dead, at worst, maybe a pile of indignantly squawking dust on the floor.

Casey took another step back. “Don't worry about it, it’s nothing too bad-”

“They’re literally medications to help keep your health conditions in check, you sky-addled dumbass!” Aura took a rather menacing step forward, and a small spike of fear jumped up in Miles as he took another step backwards.

Do I really wanna get on someone’s bad side this early in the morning?

A moment more of thought was all it took for Miles to put his hands up and slowly step to the side, eyeing them both cautiously and with an apologetic grin sent Casey's way.

“Miles, what are you doing? Miles. Miles she’s going to get me, dude-!”

“Sorry man,” Miles said as Aura leaped past him and jumped a panicking Casey, both of them landing on the floor with a loud thump as the other Spiders laughed. “My mum’s a nurse, I’m not getting in the way of interfering with medications. She'd kill me for that.”

“You heard him, Case!” Aura hopped back to ther feet with Casey's upper arm in hand, unwillingly dragging him over to the kitchen with a rather fierce detemination. Miles couldn't help joining in the laughter as Casey tilted his head back to look at the ceiling, the disgruntled look on his face asking what he'd done to deserve this. “Take your fucking medicine.”

“Fiiiine.” The annoyance held no real weight as he walked into the kitchen, and Miles drifted over to stand by the island counter instead of the wall. The others' laughter petered out into soft grins at the sound of the tap turning on and water pouring into a glass, and Aura dropped down onto a stool and put her head in her hands.

“What am I gonna do with you, Casey?” Aura demanded dramatically, rubbing her eyes in annoyance and stretching her arms over the counter, almost reaching the other side of the island. “You’re a serious menace to society.”

A snort escaped the Spider in question, and Casey turned off the faucet before sticking something in his mouth - presumably his medications - and downing it in one go. “Perfect. My mother would be so proud.”

Louder barks of laughter sounded from the other Spiders, with Eri almost choking on it’s coffee and the weird black tentacle poking at it in a way that was almost like it was trying to comfort it. This time, Miles could only really nod along - whatever joke was being made, it wasn't one he understood.

The group settled back down, some bickering starting up between Tarabi and Casey about water temperature again (something something Casey had cranked the temperature on the tap and drank it boiling hot), with Miles hesitantly taking a seat next to Sidney and just kind of watching the goings-on. His Spider-sense was pinging a little bit, although why, he didn’t really care to know right now. It wasn't turning off again, which sucked, but he'd just deal with it.

“You gonna eat anything?”

Sidney's question jolted him out of the trance he started to fall back into, and Miles’ head shot up to look over at her. “What? Uh, yeah, maybe in a bit-”

“Nope,” Aura said immediately, green eyes catching his and fixing him with the same glare that she'd been giving Casey a moment earlier. “No 'maybe in a bit' from you, bucko. We did not just spend three weeks trying to make sure you didn’t die of a cold so that you can worry yourself out of eating something. Case, toss him a croissant.”

Miles felt his face flush in mild embarrassment, and he shifted in his seat a little. “It’s fine, I swear-”

His Spider-sense rang out a short warning of CATCH, and Miles threw his hand up just in time to grab an oncoming flying croissant out of the air. He hadn’t even seen it get thrown, but considering that it was only Casey in the kitchen, you could take a pretty good guess at who had thrown it like they were trying to break a baseball pitching speed record. Miles just kind of looked between the croissant, Aura, and Casey, both of whom were shooting him looks of 'don't play with me right now' that said pretty much everything they needed to.

“Just eat something, dude,” Sidney advised, poking him gently. “Or Aura’s gonna be chasing you through the apartment next.”

His eyes widened, and instead of protesting or continuing to try and defend himself, Miles gave in took a bite out of the croissant. Getting chased this early in the morning was not on his personal bucket list, and given how everyone's shoulders seemed to relax when he did, it seemed like nobody else particularly wanted that either.

“You didn’t put anything on it?” Eri asked, almost scandalized at the very idea of just eating a straight croissant with nothing on it. It was looking at the plain pastry item in his hands like the completely innocent criossant had personally offended it on a level so deep that there was no fixing it. “No butter or jam or anything? Just plain croissant?”

“Hey, you guys just said to eat something,” Miles pointed out with a roll of his eyes, which made Tarabi grin further down the counter. “You didn’t say anything about how.”

“Also, plain croissants are wonderful, Eri, so shut up,” Casey added, dropping down at the very end of the counter next to Miles and ignoring the way Eri's face screwed up with playful irritation. “You’re just weird about it.”

“You’re one to talk! You eat white bread straight out of the bag without batting an eye!”

“Correct, and I’ll fucking do it again."

"You put two slices of bread on top of each other and call it a sandwich."

"Yeah, like, ages ago."

“Heathen.”

“Nuh-uh.”

“The fuck do you mean, nuh-uh?”

“I mean nuh-uh-”

A loud, dramatic sigh from Tarabi made them both stop. “Oh my starborne spiders, can you two shut the fuck up?”

Eri stuck out it's tongue at star, and Casey made that very distinctive face of mischief that one made when they were about to start being an annoying asshole on purpose. Casey's intentions to cause problems were cut short, thankfully, when Sidney waved at someone that Miles was almost too busy eating the croissant to notice. Key word, almost, but the messy brunette hair and neon green shirt really only gave away who it was, because he was also the only one who hadn't come to the kitchen yet.

“Morning Luka!” she called, and the other Spider just offered a tired “mmhn” in reply that probably could have been 'morning.' As Miles watched, Luka pretty much beelined for the coffee machine, and the table went mostly silent as he refilled a mug that he’d been holding.

“Hey Luka, how late were you up?” Casey asked, a slight edge to his voice. “'Cause you look like shit. Did you even sleep?”

“I slept whenever the 19th was,” Luka muttered, not paying attention to the way Aura's shoulders tensed and Casey went a little still. Miles just inhaled a little sharper than necessary - something he should not have done with croissant in his mouth, because he came this close to choking on it and that would have been the stupidest possible way to to die in someone else's kitchen.

Non-professional tip: if you were going to die in someone else's kitchen, at least make sure it was to something cooler than choking on French pastry. Poisoning was a classic, but poisoning also had absolutely nothing to do with what was going on right now, therefore said classic option was unfortunately irrelevant to the plot.

Aura sighed deeply, looking up from her own breakfast with a face that could mean nothing less than Luka was screwed and that she was too tired to deal with anyone else's shit right now. Miles did not pity him for what was probably coming his way, and just focused on trying to swallow the stray piece of croissant that was stuck in his throat without drawing any attention to it.

Right on cue, Aura jumped out of her seat and started after Luka, who had apparently seen what was coming and set his coffee down on the counter, and the two were out of the kitchen and back in the stairwell before Miles could actually tell his brain to focus on that. The only result was a lot more thudding across floors and passive-aggressive yelling from Aura of "go the fuck to sleep, you moron!"

“Is it always like this?” Miles asked as he finally cleared his throat without dying, the question not directed toward anyone in particular. Sure, mornings in his own house could be fast-paced and rushed, but this was fast-paced and chaotic. To anyone who hadn't experienced both, those two things had a totally different kind of vibe.

“Oh yeah, 100%,” Sidney confirmed as Rowan scooted into the kitchen, looking over their shoulder incredulously at the commotion with tired eyes and all four arms swinging absently. “If it’s not one of us, it’s someone else. You'd think that Aura wouldn't have the energy to chase us around the house at 8AM yelling about self-care, but she always does.”

“Sounds fun,” he muttered softly, letting his gaze wander across the island counter and idly counting the black specks in the smoothed surface. The sounds of yelling faded out as he did so, each little black speck forming imaginary constellations in the stone that he followed without really seeing the lines between them. The black and white almost reminded him of-

Miles made himself stop that thought there, and refocus on finishing the croissant in his hands. He didn't need to think about her right now.

Rather unfortunately for him, the second said thought was in his brain, it was immediately cluttered with more thoughts and images of Gwen, and Miles had to spend a few moments just chasing his mind around and trying to cram it all back down into the pit so that he didn't have to keep thinking about that. An endeavour that went about as well as you'd think it would.

A few more minutes passed like that, the only sounds being of chatter across the island and chaotic yelling, until a thump from a couple floors up snapped him out of the mess that his thoughts had become in that time - almost a new record for how fast a single thought could derail everything else in his head. Nobody else looked up to check on what was going on - only Rowan jumped at the loud noise - and about a minute later, Aura returned to the kitchen with a triumphant grin on her face.

“What’d you do?” Tarabi asked, an eyebrow raised questioningly as she dropped back onto the stool she'd abandoned to start the chase. Aura just grinned at the question, messing up her hair a little before putting it up in a ponytail.

“Knocked him out,” Aura answered, completely unaware of how a couple of jaws dropped at the statement. “I had him cornered, and he would have figured out a way past me eventually, so I figured that I may as well get it over with. He's asleep now.”

Casey peered at her curiously, picking at whatever it was he was eating. Miles watched as Casey's hand started to tap on the counter to a rhythm he didn't recognize. “Aren’t you a medic? Always telling us not to knock each other out?”

“You knock people out with more force than necessary, Casey,” Aura shot back without missing a beat. She shot him a very pointed, arch look, clearly implying more history behind the statement than Miles was probably going to get context for. “Especially in training. You are way too brutal during training.”

“And knocking Luka out to make him sleep isn’t brutal?”

“Not if you hit him light enough.”

Miles sucked in a small breath, and a few pairs of eyes turned his way. “All I’m hearing is not to fuck around with sleep schedules.”

“Not if you don’t want to get hit with something, no,” Casey agreed.

Miles leaned back slightly in his chair as Aura and Casey started to bicker a little more, drifting back to counting black specks on the counter out of what was almost boredom. Which led back to the train of thought he'd just managed to to drop, so everyone say thank you, brain. Cue Miles repeating the entire process of what he'd done before, with a little less difficulty and a lot more annoyance, toward himself this time.

Seriously, get your head on straight, he scolded himself. They're not looking for you, and she definitely isn't.

Something in his heart curled up and died again at the thought, but Miles was pretty thoroughly sick of the thoughts invading his head and throwing off everything else, so he opted to ignore it.

A ping from Eri’s phone faintly caught his attention, and Miles’ gaze flicked that way long enough to see it's eyebrows furrow in confusion, before it morphed into something almost like shock. The strange flickers of black tentacles flared to life, sprouting up from under it's hood around it's neck, almost looking more like a frill than anything else.

“Oh, goddammit Morales!” Eri snapped suddenly, making everyone look over at it while it scanned the texts it had recieved again.

“What?” Miles asked, equally as confused as everyone else seemed to be. Was he in trouble?

“Not you, the other Morales,” it clarified quickly, and Miles managed to relax for maybe half a second before he realized that it probably meant Milo. “Dumbass number four decided to try taking on Electro by himself.”

“You cannot be serious,” Tarabi hissed, all three of star's eyes widening at the words. “After last time?”

Eri’s only reply was a sharp nod and a long-suffering sigh. It stood from the island, hazelnut-spread-and-toast-buried-somewhere-in-there breakfast abandoned as it shoved the phone in it's pocket. “I’ll go get him.”

“Wasn’t Milo dumbass number five last time we talked about that?” Casey joked, poking at Eri’s leg with his foot as it walked by. Eri let out a strange noise, something that was akin to a croaky, alien "hey!" It almost sounded like the noises that Endmen from Cave Game 2, although Miles was fairly certain that nobody here would know about Cave Game 2.

“He got upped a rank because of this,” Eri pointed out, a ripple on its arm catching Miles’ eye. As he watched, the inky tentacles that had been popping up throuhgout the morning completely covered it's arm. “And Miles, to my knowledge, hasn’t done anything explicitly stupid in the weeks that he’s been here, so he’s not on the list yet.”

“Where am I on the list again?” Casey called as Eri walked out of sight down the hallway, a cheeky grin on his face. All four of his eyes were smiling with him, so completely relaxed that Miles managed to calm himself most of the way down, too.

“You’re still dumbass number one!” it yelled, before the kitchen floor door slammed closed and left the room mostly silent.

Another small beat of quiet, before Casey sighed and started messing with something in his pocket. “Well, good to know I’m still at the top of the list of dumbasses.”

Miles furrowed his eyebrows, nose scrunching up as he finally finished the fricking croissant. “I can’t tell if you’re proud of that or not.”

“The lower on the list you are,” Tarabi explained with a multitude of eye rolls, the glimmers of stars catching in the warm kitchen light, “the more of the braincell you have. It's pretty much a competition of whose done the most stupid things and what counts as the worst one. Casey, consistently, does not have the brain cell. Ever. Which is why he's dumbass number one.”

The other Spider rolled his eyes dramatically, leaning heavily on the table as he offered Miles a friendly grin that spoke of ages of rolling with this particular bit. “Personally, I think I do have the braincell, just not in a way that anybody ever seems to like.”

“Your record says otherwise, dude. I know Luka's got it all tracked."

"Well, it's not like we can go ask him. Aura put him down for a nap, remember?"

"Whatever you say, man."

Casey's grin widened and he gave another dramatic roll of his eyes, before pulling back and focusing on something on his phone instead of saying anything else. Miles caught Rowan's eye from across the counter, and they grinned before mouthing and signing "Never has the brain cell. Trust me."

Miles grinned at the sight. "Seems like it," he answered, and Casey shot Rowan a mock-offended, dark look. Dark as it was, he was getting better at reading these Spiders - there was nothing behind it except care. Casey started on about talking in a language nobody understood, and promptly switched into speaking in French while Aura and Rowan went back and forth with him in both sign and a language that sounded vaguely like Spanish.

And that sense of strange peace returned. An unfamiliar environment, mostly unfamiliar people, sounds and sights and smells that he didn’t quite recognize, but there was a safety and comfortability to it that even the doubts in the back of his mind couldn't wholly deny.

Almost home away from home. That was what seemed to make this building feel alive, what made the inhabitants so at ease, what gently invited Miles to stay and rest for more than one moment.

Is that even what I want here?

A place that I can hide until I escape it? The safe room before a boss fight?

I don’t know if I want this. I want my home, but…

The counter under his hands turned cold, sending shivers through his arms. The weight of the watch on his wrist a quiet reminder that he was stuck whether he liked it or not.

He’d have to wait until he could get out of here if he wanted to go home.

Even a home away from home could feel nothing like one.

Sure, maybe there was no catch to staying here - no hidden plans or surprises from the others who lived here - but it meant this alien place would stay his home.

I don't know if I want that.

They have to want to go home too, right? It can't just be me.

The apartment was temporary. For Miles, it was a rest stop.

But the warmth, the gentle invitation to play morning games and talk about silly things like water temperature or making jokes about different languages and the right way to eat a croissant, was an invitation all the same. It was an easy acceptance - just slip into a life here, and nothing would go wrong again.

Miles shut down his thoughts before they could stray into territory that he definitely wasn't prepared to tackle, and snapped back to reality as something skidded across the island counter - a weird little gray disk that flickered with bright green lights.

He could think about it later. Maybe when he was having that later crisis he mentioned at some point.

“Okay, so,” Casey announced suddenly, no longer paying attention to whatever was on his phone. All attention turned his way as the disk flashed a bright green, and to Miles' amazement, a hologram sparked to life in the air just over it. A bright purple Spider symbol - the one on Casey's suit, he realized - slashed through with white and yellow, pulsed to life, before it opened to a now purple welcome screen. “Patrol rotations for the day!”

“You guys have a rotation for this?” Miles asked, eyes wide at the sight. He really had to hand it to these guys - for being stuck here, they were incredibly well organized.

Sidney nudged him with her shoulder, the easygoing grin on her face widening as the hologram displayed a shockingly well organized desktop screen. “Well, when there’s more than one Spider in a dimension, you can afford to take a couple of breaks and let someone else take over for a bit. It’s a huge stress relief, trust me.”

“Alright, so Luka’s off on the premise of not sleeping,” Casey said quickly, opening up an app and dragging a green Spider icon off of a day-calendar layout. “Because historically, swinging sleep-deprived is a fantastic idea.”

Laughter rang out through the table, and Miles managed to crack a small smile at the sarcasm. The hologram flickered, and Miles took a closer look at the day calendar. It had a bunch of markers coloured like the Spiders who wore them - purple, yellow, green, mahogany brown, ink black, white, and dark blue - all of them slashed with that same diagonal tear they all seemed to use to mark their status as anomalies. There was a dark purple insignia for the Prowler, presumably Milo, which was quickly being moved off to the OUT OF COMMISSION section. Also in that area, Miles saw a bright red marker, also slashed through with a tear, but there were no colours in the mark.

That’s… probably mine, he realized. There wouldn’t be another anomaly getting marked in bright red.

The fact that Casey had already thought far enough ahead to make Miles a marker in their calendar was both touching and painful. Sure, Casey probably had good intentions, but for Miles, it was just another reminder that he was stuck.

A bit weirdly, there was a Spider symbol overshadowing the entire day, to the left of the other shift blocks - unmarked by any anomaly symbol. It was coloured simply in the usual red and blue of Spider-Man’s suit. The colours dredged up memories of claws and harsh words, and Miles diverted his attention back to Casey's rambling before anything could hit him too hard.

A random Spider symbol, that didn't currently match anyone Miles knew here. He didn’t want to think too hard about what that might mean.

“And I think Eri’s gonna be busy for a little while, because Electro’s a- OW!” The snide commentary that Miles tuned back into was swiftly interrupted by Rowan jabbing him in the ribs rather sharply. Casey recovered just as quickly, shooting them an actually annoyed glare before continuing. “Since Electro is difficult to deal with.”

“There you go,” Sidney muttered, leaning her head on her hand as she watched it all play out.

“So we’ll move Eri to a later patrol,” Casey said, swapping the black symbol with the yellow one - from an evening shift to a morning one. Sidney groaned dramatically at the change, and Tarabi just reached across the island to offer her a reassuring pat on the arm.

“Tara, you wanna take the night patrol, or do you wanna get paired up with somebody?”

Star-scattered eyes offered Casey a deadpan glare, one eyebrow raised as the middle eye narrowed. “You’re all terrible with night patrols, I’ll do it myself.”

“Just because I fell asleep-”

“Exactly my point, Aura, you fell asleep. The only ones more nocturnal than me are Casey and Luka, and Luka’s off right now. And I highly doubt Casey would trade his day off for a night shift.” 

Miles shifted in his seat again as the blue time block got moved into the 12am slot, running way longer than most of the others. At most, the other patrols seemed to last maybe four or five hours, but the night shift seemed to involve going for a whole seven.

Then again, they had changed once Eri and Luka’s symbols were removed, so maybe the shifts weren’t normally that long to begin with. That made sense - surely being on city patrol for four hours straight would wear anyone out, let alone seven.

If they’re longer because so many people are off right now, Miles thought as they continued to organize themselves, maybe there’s actually something I can do about that.

They’ve been helping me for three weeks. I should try helping them out, too.

“Could I try joining a shift?”

His question silenced the group, and suddenly there were at least thirteen eyes on him. Miles almost shrank back from their collective surprise, before he steeled himself to meet their gazes. "The schedule just looks kinda stretched, if that makes sense."

He could handle a patrol around the city. And he wanted to help! Surely that was a good enough reason alone to volunteer, right?

And also maybe it was to get out of the house. He was starting to get apartment fever, staying in one room all the time. It had helped a little when he’d run over to this building with Casey, but being stuck inside for so long was enough to make Miles restless as hell.

A sharp glance was briefly shared between all five of the Spiders, one of uncertainty and worry and something that Miles didn't quite catch, that immediately set his just relaxed Spider-sense on edge again, pinging with unease as he looked at each one of them in turn. Each person he tried to make eye contact with diverted their gaze quickly, only raising his suspicions more. Only Casey managed to maintain eye contact for a little while, before he inevitably turned his eyes away too.

“What?” he asked, trying to break whatever tension was built between them. “What’s going on?”

Hesitation hung heavy in the air, the peace from earlier completely evaporating in it's presence. Sidney started fidgeting with her hands, most lips around the table flattened into thin, worried lines, and Casey started messing with his braid while taking a deep breath.

There it is. The stupid catch.

Is there something-

“I mean, it’s just… are you sure?” Casey’s question cut his thoughts short. Where Miles was expecting to see something in his face or eyes or movements that said there was more to it, more to their collective aversion and unease, there was only genuine concern in his voice. “You’ve been out of it for a while, Miles. And the villains here don’t go easy on anyone who tries to mess with them - like, they regularly try to actually, straight up kill you.”

“It’s only fair, man,” Miles said, leaning forward a bit more to try and catch anyone's gaze again. “You guys have been putting up with me for weeks now. If I’m gonna be stuck here, then I’m gonna pull my weight like everyone else.”

The words ‘stuck here’ almost caught in his throat. Thinking them hurt, but being the one to say them out loud somehow stung worse than any other time Miles had heard it. He cleared his throat quickly, to push down the hurt again until he didn't feel it anymore.

Being stuck was just reality for now, and Miles was not going to be stuck here forever. He was sure of it.

I have to be sure of it.

“You’ve gotta be sure about this, dude,” Casey said again, a little sharper this time. He finally met Miles' gaze again, and this time the concern visibly ran deeper than Miles thought it would. It wasn't just concern - it was the cold, calculating look of someone who was trying to evaluate if a situation was worth it. “I'm serious, it’s not pretty out there-”

“I'm serious too. I can handle it,” Miles interrupted, standing up before he realized he was doing so. The eyes that had turned away were watching in him shock now, but Miles shrugged off the way every look tried to dig under his skin and rattle the determination that was building in his gut. “I’m gonna do my part, whether I’m on that schedule or not.”

Silence settled over the kitchen as everyone looked between Miles and Casey, a tension there that had been buried between him and the other Spiders that even Miles hadn't caught until now. An odd pulling through the world itself and the small, resonant calls of everyone’s Spider-sense sounded through the air - soundless as those calls were - that made Casey take a small, sharp breath in.

“Alright, fine,” Casey conceded quickly, a weird look crossing his face that was some strange mix of discomfort and worry and something that looked almost like pain. His voice had sharpened as well, but solely based on the erratic tapping of his fingers on the counter and the brief flash of something else under that face, it wasn't because of Miles. “You and Sidney can do the morning shift. But for now, you’re sticking with someone else until you’re fully back on your feet, okay?”

“Fine by me.” Miles almost had to convince himself that that had actually worked. The last time he’d tried to be stubborn with someone - a Spider, no less - it had ended with him having a clawed open shoulder and ending up here.

The reminder was only solidified by the heavy, metallic clang that sounded out when Miles dropped his hand back on the counter, metal cuff on cold stone sending tiny, unnecessary warnings through his head. His Spider-sense wouldn't calm down, though, pinging alarm bells at every little sound, and Miles resisted the urge to massage his temples to try forcing away the oncoming headache.

The universe itself seemed to let out a sigh of relief, whatever tension there was left lingering in the kitchen finally breaking as everyone visibly relaxed. Casey’s shoulders dropped, his second pair of eyes roaming a erratically, before he grabbed the disk off the table and turned it off abruptly.

“Well, if that’s everything settled, I’m going to go get some more sleep before my shift,” Casey announced, terrifyingly cheerfully for the earlier expressions, slipping the disk into the pocket of his hoodie and walking away. “I’ll see you guys later.”

A split second later, and Casey was gone, vanishing from the hallway before Miles could blink. Miles could have sworn he heard a hint of strain in Casey's voice, but if there was something up, then it wasn't his business to figure that out. He'd leave that to someone who knew the boy better.

“Don’t forget to eat something!” Aura yelled down the hallway, exactly when the door slammed shut. A long ring of quiet pulled through the kitchen, and Miles' Spider-sense decided that Casey's absence was enough to completely drop everything it had been previously yelling about and go back to being quiet. A short sigh cut through the room, before Aura stood as well. “He’s not gonna remember, is he?”

“Probably not,” Rowan agreed quickly. “Maybe make sure he actually sleeps, too.”

Aura nodded, before getting up and following after the other Spider with quiet footsteps. Miles watched as she vanished, before letting his own shoulders drop as the tension in the air fully disspated. The door closed much softer this time, and the other Spiders just went back to what they were doing.

That went… a lot better than I thought it would.

The reassurance didn’t settle the unease in his gut. It didn't erase the look the other Spiders had shared, the thought of it alone still setting him much farther on edge than he wanted to be right now. Even with most of his mind calmed, there was still that creeping, nagging idea that tugged at the tail end of every thought that crossed through his head.

They wouldn’t lie to me. They’ve been helping me.

His Spider-sense hissed to life at the idea, even as he tried to shake off the uncertainty. His brain immediately fired back at him, not having any of Miles' efforts to keep himself calm.

Isn’t that what you thought about the others?

Isn’t that what you thought they would never do to you?

This is different. These Spiders know what it’s like to be on the side that’s ‘wrong.’

Is it really all that different?

You still don’t know any of them very well.

They’re not going to lie to me.

And what if they do?

Not about major stuff.

And what if they still do?

A sharp ping from his Spider-sense snapped Miles out of the anxious back and forth running through his head, and he stiffened just before Sidney’s hand landed on his shoulder and she shook it slowly. He looked up to see her offering him something of a smile, although there was something else in her expression that was wiped away before he could unpack it.

“Alright, come on, spinneret,” she said, getting up and nudging his shoulder in case Miles hadn’t already been fully in the present. It was a little silly-looking, considering that Sidney was at least half a head shorter than he was, but it worked well enough. “I’ll go grab your suit - Luka and I were fixing it while you were out.”

“Oh shit, really?”

“That was a pretty nasty tear in the fabric, man.” She hopped away from him, quite literally, suddenly full of entirely too much energy for it being so early in the morning. “Plus, I think Luka was working on this new nano-fiber tech stuff that can automatically repair our suits, so if something like that ever happens again you don’t have to worry about repairing it.”

Miles blinked at her in surprise, trailing along after her while he spun the idea around in his head. “Self-repairing fabric?”

“Hell yeah! Come on, let’s get going!”

It turned out that the early morning energy was infectious, and Miles’ quiet restlessness sprung to life in full as he followed Sidney out of the kitchen and back into the stairwell.

Chaotic as the morning seemed, as many doubts as Miles' brain came up with… it really was just this. Just chatting and joking around and organizing themselves with friends who knew and understood.

It was safe. Not the kind of safety Miles was looking for, but it was safety nonetheless.

“Hurry up, you slowpoke!”

“Wha- hey, I’m not slow!”

Miles didn’t bother trying to find a reason to deny the grin that split his face as he raced through the doorway to the stairwell, energy almost literally crackling under his skin as the two ran up the stairs with loud, playful shouts that echoed long after they'd reached the floor they were trying to get to.

Chapter Text

Swinging for an extended period of time after two weeks of bedrest was demanding. And that was putting it lightly.

If you were putting it literally, it was a just a bit of strain on the body. There was nothing wrong with some exercise after being sick for a little while, to get your body back up and running at full capacity.

If you were putting it figuratively, however, Miles felt like he was going to keel over and suffocate for a minute or fifteen if Sidney ever decided to stop on a rooftop somewhere and take a quick breather. Miles knew most of his limits, but he hadn't tested those when he was sick for obvious reasons.

Hence, his lungs being deprived of oxygen, his muscles screaming for pause, the faint exhaustion that pulled him down toward the streets against his will. All of it was a lot, and definitely a sign that he needed to leave the apartment way more than he had been.

And yet no matter how much Miles' lungs rattled in his chest, no matter how much his throat burned with every breath and his body screamed with soreness and pain, there was a freedom to swinging through the city, even on a patrol, that Miles could never hide from. It was a freedom that made any troubles he might have had melt away into the rushing wind, that made the world fade away into blurs of light and colour that were familiar even in an alternate dimension.

Miles couldn’t hide the grin that spread across his face under the mask, worries slipping to the back of his mind through the river of adrenaline and the slow-building return of sheer joy that accompanied every thwip from his web shooters.

Sure, swinging was just a part of being Spider-Man. Web-slinging and flying around the city to catch villains was part of the job - Miles couldn't have gotten away with not using web shooters in his own city if he tried, because trying to run to any given crime on foot was just a ridiculous idea and would take even more time.

But there was always a freedom to be in the air when nothing urgent was going on. There was always a giddiness, a lightweight pull that enticed him to swing a little more recklessly, to let the air catch him in its feeble grip just a moment longer before gravity pulled him down toward the streets, to throw himself higher than the next skyscraper with every pull of a web line.

When nothing was happening, when the world was at peace, when the universe decided to let Miles have a break… it was hard to hold back on letting himself fly further than before. To go higher, to move faster, to pull harder. There was always the temptation to fling himself recklessly between buildings, weave through sharp corners that were tricky to make, let rushing wind carry away every problem and worry until the only thing Miles could understand was the rhythm of his swings and the screaming of air and the pure joy that carried him into a gentle bliss, even for a moment or so.

It didn’t matter how tired or sore or worried Miles ended up afterwards - when he was up here, when he was swinging and flying through the streets of New York, any New York, Miles was free.

He stretched his shoulder on another swing, the one that had quite literally just healed, a bit too far, and a short twinge from it brought him back to reality for a moment. Not a particularly long moment, mind you, but it was a long enough moment to be back in touch nonetheless.

The New York City of Earth-42 was a bright place, even with so many shadows - the colours pouring out from windows and car headlamps and traffic lights, all of it drowned in vibrant, sharp yellows and bright greens and burning purples. The buildings here were dim by comparison, dim enough to almost be black underneath the near neon splashes of colour. Every shadow Miles could see was sharpened a hundred times over, reaching up and clawing through the colours, needles stabbing into it and drawing away from the life every hue brought back into the dark while he moved. 

He hadn’t yet gone down to the streets below. Most New York streets were busy as hell, and this one in particular didn't really seem all that friendly or open to strangers. Regardless of the city's tone with Miles, though, the streets were still full of life, the constantly moving rivers of people and the lines of pretty much parked cars that decorated the roads a familiar sight that put his nerves at ease.

Miles technically had no reason to go down onto the streets. He could swing between buildings faster than a taxi could move on the streets, which wasn't exactly a difficult thing to be faster than. At this point, he was pretty sure that a snail placed on 5th Avenue could make it to the Queensboro Bridge before the taxi got past three traffic lights.

The only time he should even be going down to the streets, as Sidney had rather helpfully informed him before they'd left, was if there was a commotion that they needed to put a stop to down below. Other than that, it was just a better idea to stay up high enough where the momenttum of a bullet would start to fade out. The high ground was a great thing, especially when it was yours.

Speaking of Sidney, actually…

As Miles swung around another building and took a better look around, forcing the blissful freedom away for long enough to concentrate, he discovered that the golden-yellow Spider was absolutely nowhere to be seen. Not even a flash from between another building or someone swinging up in front of him to tell him where she could have possibly vanished off to.

Oh shit, have I been swinging too far ahead? The mere thought of having accidentally lost his only guide around Earth-42 because he'd gotten lost in his own head was disturbing. Miles threw out another web, passing through a familiar street, but there was nothing.

Dammit, Miles, you've gotta keep your head on straight! he scolded himself quickly. How do you possibly lose a Spider that's dressed in bright yellow?

I don't know!

Then know faster!

Miles moved to make a U-turn down the street, his arms hissing painfully at the motion-

Then a flash of yellow popped up in the corner of his vision, much brighter than any other shade he’d seen while looking around, and the wave of relief that hit him should not have hit as hard as it ended up hitting.

Sidney swung up next to him, her suit temporarily flickering to a more dusty orange colour than it usually was. That was just another thing about these Spiders that Miles hadn't seen coming. The Anomalies had spent a fair amount of their time here developing tech that Miles could have only possibly dreamed of using. Illusion spinners were one such device, small discs that were a built into a larger module in the interdimensional watches and were could be used to visibly warp the appearances of their suits, just enough to make sure that they wouldn’t have recognizable suit patterns that villains could take note of and pin down.

Unfortunately for his and everyone else's curiosity, the last thing he'd seen of anybody who actually knew what they were talking about in regards to how the illusion spinners worked were either back at the apartment or knocked out cold. And unless you had some mystical ability to read minds or drop into someone's dreams, it was kind of hard to ask questions when the other person was completely unconcious. On the premise that most unconscious people Miles knew couldn't exactly stay asleep and give him a detailed lecture on the inner workings of a piece of visual distortion technology.

Most people Miles knew couldn't do that while they were awake, actually. Scratch the entire previous premise, erase it from your brain, and pretend that never happened.

Today, it seemed that Sidney had chosen a much more orange and gray tint for the spinner to put over her suit, the lines of the petal-like patterns on her shoulders and around her eyes sharpening into much more pointed, hostile looking shapes. All the colours of her suit that usually flickered golden yellow or orange were now a dimmed gray, like the buildings around them, while the lines surrounding patterns shimmered a orange scarlet.

Sidney had tried to get Miles to set up his own illusion spinner, for safety. He had declined it pretty quickly. It wasn’t like there was anybody in the city who would actually recognize him by the pattern on his suit, and Miles had no plans on sticking around long enough for that to become a problem. He was fine with using his regular suit for now.

For now. The illusion spinner would probably be incredibly useful for a lot of missions back home, once he got there.

A sharp movement from where Sidney was swinging snapped Miles' thoughts away from the technology, and he turned his head on a higher throw to see her waving to get his attention.

Seriously, how lost in thought can you get that it takes another whole minute to notice that the person you were looking for is trying to get your attention?

Thank you, brain, very helpful. Now shut up, please.

Miles waved back, if even just to show that he was listening and could hear her. The edges of her mask's eyes crinkled up, a surefire sign that the Spider under the mask was smiling.

“How're you doing there, spinneret?” Sidney’s call from across the street echoed over to him, and she was swinging next to him within seconds. Spinneret was something that Sidney had suddenly started calling him right before they left on patrol, and he didn’t quite get the reason why, but at this point it felt like it was too late to ask what it meant.

“I’m alright!” he yelled back, which was 100% a lie because it felt like the inside of his lungs were being scraped out by a piece of jagged glass, but Sidney didn’t need to know that so long as Miles was keeping up with her, right? “What’s up?”

“I was just gonna take a break after the next couple of streets,” Sidney yelled back, diving a little lower before swinging back up to shrug at him. “But, I mean, if you’re good to keep going-”

“Nope, definitely a break!”

A shout of laughter rang out over the sounds of car horns, and Miles let himself smile a little under the mask. The smile faded out pretty quickly, though, because it was hard to keep up a smile while you were actively struggling to keep breathing.

The duo swung over a couple more streets, before Sidney finally dove toward a rooftop down next to a couple of taller skyscrapers. It was only 7 stories tall compared to the buildings nearby, the dark glass reflecting the spatters of bright colour from below as they landed on the building.

Well, okay, landing was probably the wrong way to put it - rolling onto the roof and collapsing into a heap on the floor usually counted as more of a crash than it would a landing. The other Spider yelped as she went tumbling across the concrete, before collapsing halfway across the roof.

Not that Miles’ landing was any better - he landed weird on the parapet, leaning too far forward on his left, and promptly toppled forward and rolled sideways to end up on his back on the concrete roof. It wasn't exactly the world's most graceful crash-landing, but at least Miles was on the roof and not moving anymore.

“Ow,” he managed, although that didn’t really express how much his everything hurt. Miles' lungs gasped for air, the entire world collapsing into only the sharp needles of cold air in his throat and the signature soreness that came from an intense workout.

“Next time you need a break, don’t play dumb with me, man.” Before he could really process that somebody had moved, Sidney was standing over him with an outstretched hand, looking down with an expression on her mask that, underneath the eye lenses and floral pattern, was probably a mildly judgemental deadpan stare.

Miles accepted the help gratefully, exhaustion running rampant through his bones as Sidney pulled him to his feet. A short wince under the mask broke through his attempt to hide how winded he was, but if Sidney noticed, she thankfully didn't comment.

“Man, I haven’t been down this way in ages,” Sidney said, wandering absently across the roof while Miles just leaned over to finish catching his breath. “It’s always so laid back here - I swear, nothing ever happens while I’m on patrol in Queens, it’s almost boring down this way.”

“Don’t say that,” Miles offered, somewhat half-heartedly, his voice still ragged from lack of oxygen. He took another breath, even just to stabilize himself a little, before continuing. “You’re gonna summon all the things that can happen in Queens all at the same time.”

“Aw, come on, I’ve said it, like, three thousand times,” Sidney shot back, now on the rooftop's edge and walking along the short parapet like it was a balancing beam. A quick hop, one that almost sent her tumbling sideways off the building, and the other Spider dropped back and sat on the concrete below. “I’m serious, dude. Nothing ever happens in Queens.”

Miles managed a short laugh, his breath mostly returned now, before slowly walking over to the edge of the roof. He didn't walk all the way over - instead, he leaned against the enclosure, still at a distance.

The open night air was a truly welcome change from being stuck inside all the time. The sounds of the city, unmuffled by closed windows and apartment walls, was fantastic compared to the still air in the apartment that carried only the sound within the echoing space.

Even just standing still, the faint breeze that wove between the skyscrapers like a slow, spiralling dance, was better than the stale quiet inside an apartment. The gentle early morning chill - if it was early - settled serenely around the two. Lights from the city below drifted upward, skyscrapers nearby pouring beams that faded out before reaching the rooftop. The only real presence here was Miles, Sidney, and wind carrying not-so-distant sounds of the lively city.

And yet… Miles couldn’t shake that feeling that he’d gotten yesterday when running across the rooftops. The feeling that everything was perhaps a little too open, that there were too many places to hide throughout the close-pressed buildings, in shadows between walls and lurking just inside windows. That distinct feeling you got when looking at something that was familiar, but was off in some crucial way that made the world a foreign place where you had to keep your guard up.

The feeling you get when the hair on the back of your neck stands on end, a faint, unnerving prickle that skitters just underneath your skin as unknown eyes - be they real or not - watch you from somewhere out of sight.

It was that distinct feeling that set off Miles' Spider-sense, a nagging presence that constantly tugged at the back of his thoughts. It hissed out miniature warnings, warnings that said he was too exposed on the rooftop; even with Sidney around, even with the knowledge that he could fight his way out of a situation if he needed to, even with the understanding that anyone who could have been looking for him had no reason to be here in the first place.

Warnings that there were eyes watching, hostile gazes burrowing under skin and forcing Miles to stay alert, stay aware.

His skin prickled uncomfortably, and Miles' Spider-sense called out a light look around, but even just a few sideways glances at the roof around him solidly confimed that he and Sidney were alone up here.

Well, that's great, he thought sarcastically, rolling his eyes in irritation. First I'm stuck in another dimension, now my Spider-sense is going off because I'm getting hit with the Mendele effect. Spelling great things for my future.

The warning settled back the moment his irritation flashed through his mind, quickly enough that had it had a mind of it's own, Miles would have guessed that it was offended by his remark. The lack of mental warnings left him just to the unusual, uncomfortable aura in the air of being too far out in the open when a predator might be lurking nearby.

“So…” Sidney’s voice managed to pull Miles' focus away from the discomfort, and he turned his head back to see that she was still sitting on the parapet's edge. Clearly, there was no fear of falling off and getting hurt in the way she rocked back and forth.

Miles made a face at her under the mask, eye lenses squinting alongside his actual eyes. “So?”

“So… what do you think?” Sidney boredly messed around with her ponytail, the flower-styled band that she had it in. She stopped after pulling it tight, turning with an almost worried look on her mask. “Of Earth-42? The city? Everything about this whole situation?”

Miles blinked at her in surprise, trying to keep his surprise from showing itself. It was a valid question, but Sidney actually asking about how he was doing hadn't been on his mental list of expectations for how they were going to treat him. These Spiders were very welcoming and friendly, but the fact that he was even taken this aback from it probably said much more than Miles enjoyed thinking about.

Okay, they haven't done anything outwardly malicious since I got here. Maybe it's time to reexamine the personal biases.

“The city is… well, it looks pretty cool,” he finally admitted. “From up here, I mean. I haven’t gone down onto the streets yet, so I don't know what the scene looks like down there.”

“It's pretty messy,” Sidney said. Her eyes narrowed a little more, almost as if waiting for him to say something like a code word or a vaguely concerning statement. “Anything else?”

Miles broke eye contact quickly, resuming his lean against the enclosure and staring out past the roof into New York. The city itself was the only thing that he really paid much mind to right now - or, more realistically, the only thing he wanted to pay attention to. All the other thoughts in his head were a mess of things that, just for now, he didn't want to focus on.

Things like his dimension, his way home, his friends-

Stop it.

Be quiet.

Miles swiftly pushed those thoughts back into the darker pit in his head, where he'd been pushing everything, curbing the surge of anger that reared its head and curled in his stomach like a hissing viper.

Miles wasn't usually someone who got angry at other people. He genuinely tried his best not to do that, because he'd both seen first-hand the consequences and seen what it did to other people.

Digital blue and neon red, tearing into his skin and trying to disassemble everything about Miles that made him Spider-Man.

It - the anger and distress and bitterness - was a dangerous thing. Rage made of claws and teeth, restlessness made from tears and familiar hands, grudges from harsh words and torn heartsrings.

No, his anger wasn't something that Miles needed to snap free and be let loose onto his new friends. Spider-Man didn't get upset at minor inconvieniences, not when he had a job to do. Not when there were people's lives on the line. And these new Spiders had done nothing to deserve him lashing out at them.

Friends. You called them friends.

Are they?

Miles pushed away the questions, the insidious, tar-like exasperation, to deal with later, when it rapidly became clear that Sidney was still expecting an answer from him. Sure, it had only been a couple of seconds, but when you were lost in thought, a couple seconds could feel like thousands of years if you weren't careful.

“Not much,” Miles answered at last, all the other things he could have said being drowned out by two words. “It’s been alright. Breakfast this morning was… certainly something.”

Sidney barked a laugh, a noise that resonated just as loudly across the rooftop as it had through rushing air. “Oh yeah, don’t worry about that. You’ll get used to it at some point. Just don’t put yourself in the way of being chased down by Aura and you’ll be completely fine. And also, don’t eat Eri’s cooking. Ire has a very weird taste in food.”

Confusion rippled through him as he shifted in place, trying to recall if he'd seen anyone else who could possibly be named Ire. But nope, at every possible turn he drew blanks. “Who’s Ire? I’ve heard people mention the name, but I don’t think I’ve seen them around before.”

“Oh no, you definitely have,” she said, a hand tapping the concrete below. “Ire is Eri’s symbiote. Y’know, the alien goop from beyond our solar system that can bond with a human host in a mutualistic symbiotic relationship so long as both host and alien’s needs are met? Eri makes sure the symbiote has a hospitable space to live in and keeps Ire fed, and in return, Ire acts as its suit and keeps it safe and helps out.”

Miles's jaw dropped in surprise as Sidney made jazz hands, just trying to process any and all of what she’d just said.

Holy crap, the Spiderverse was way weirder than he’d been giving it credit for so far. “Sorry, hold up. Aliens are real?”

“Isn’t it fascinating?” Sidney jumped up, hopping from one foot to the other as words poured freely from her. “Sure, certain symbiotic aliens from certain universes are much more volatile and hostile than others, but getting the chance to interact with Ire up close has been incredible! And Ire’s incredibly calm in a lot of situations. It's surprisingly non-volatile for a symbiote. You’d think an alien would be way more apprehensive about weird stuff it's never seen before, but it’s not! That's also how we learned that Ire absolutely despises the smell of citrus, by the way, it'll completely retract whenever there's oranges in the room.”

Miles snorted at her excitement, unable to stop the grin that spread across his face. “Alright, damn. Aliens are real, and apparently they don't like oranges.”

“And biologically fascinating,” Sidney added, before flicking her hands and dropping back down to sit on the roof's edge. “But uh… anything else? Like, do you have questions, or concerns?”

Miles blinked at her curiously, his eyebrows furrowing a little as the words sunk in. “Should I be having concerns?”

Sidney made a face, one that Miles wasn’t entirely sure that he understood. He hadn't spent enough time around all these Spiders to know what expression meant what, especially not underneath mostly unfamiliar masks. Trying to puzzle it out proved to be just as effective as one thought it would - was it guilt? Unease? Something else entirely that Miles had absolutely no idea how to get a handle on?

The memory of that same unease from earlier this morning, the one shared in quick side-eyes and glances by the other Spiders at breakfast that spoke of something else going on, resurfaced in his head, and his Spider-sense re-emerged to say be wary as Sidney started to boredly mess with the illusion spinner on her watch. It clicked softly as the suit's colours flickered from the usual golden yellows of her suit to oranges and reds and somewhat greens, before settling back on that orange-gray that she’d been using previously.

“Oh, no, not really,” Sidney said, her voice almost eerily casual as she spoke. “This whole situation… Well, it’s usually pretty overwhelming for the new anomalies who come through here. Just trying to make sure you’re not losing your mind.”

“I mean, do people usually lose their minds?” The idea that losing it could apparently be a normal thing was definitely cause for conecrn, no matter how much people reassured you that it was normal where they were. People didn't lose their minds without good reason.

Sidney visibly winced at the words, leaning a little further forward and dangling her arms over the edge of the building. “I mean… okay, I said that wrong. It's not really 'losing your mind' in the way you'd immediately think of? It’s more like… hollowing out over time. Like, the longer anomalies have stayed here, the more they sort of just mellow out and let shit happen. Sort of like…"

She stopped for a moment, waving her hands as she tried to find the words, before her shoulders dropped. "Sorry, I don’t really know how to explain it. Someone else probably knows how phrase it better than I can.”

Apathy. The word rang out clearly in his head, almost loudly enough that Miles could have sworn he's said it aloud, but there was no reaction from Sidney. A word that hung in the air surely as flecks of dust and the faint white clouds of exhaust from cars below, lingering and silent.

The blank white of its nature wormed its way free from the doubtful seed that had rooted in his mind, trying to creep into the crevices of every thought and memory and rot there until everything was tainted in a decaying, uncaring mold. A poisonous, infectious hopelessness that Miles had to forcibly shove down into the pit of anger and turmoil sitting in his stomach, to bury it under teeth and harsh words until it was nothing more than a rotting, buried speck deep below the surface

Apathy was something he had to push aside right now. He needed to plan a way out of here, and being apathetic wasn’t going to help him accomplish that at all.

Maybe Spiders didn’t lose their minds being on Earth-42, but if Sidney’s casualness about it was anything to go by, they certainly lost something else.

Miles wasn’t going to let that happen.

He couldn’t afford to let that happen. Not right now, not ever.

“You’re the original anomaly!”

The memory arose unbidden, and Miles bit back the quiet urge to run again.

“That… that sounds like it really sucks,” Miles offered, and Sidney's hands stilled as he spoke. “The ‘losing it’ part, I mean. It doesn't sound like fun.”

She blinked at him for a second, head tilting to the side - it was something a lot of them seemed to do - before she nodded calmly. “Yeah, it sucks. But I guess you get used to it at some point.”

For a moment, she just stared out into the city and Miles tried to follow her gaze. Somewhere in the distance, on a horizon that Miles had been too unnerved by everything to notice before, a hint of bright red began to peek over the skyline, washing the darkness of the city in a dirty, faded pastel red. What once had looked mostly to be darkness now seeped into gentle dull grayish-orange tones, and even the lights around him seemed to soften as the sun started to rise.

“I didn’t think Earth-42 had a sun, at first.” Sidney’s words cut through his observation, and Miles finally managed to pinpoint where she was staring. It was at the sunrise between buildings, light drifting through distant glass and brushing clouds Miles hadn't seen before. “It was dark when I got here. It’s dark a lot of the time here. According to Tarabi, the sun’s only up here for maybe eight hours a day. Just another weird thing about parallel dimensions.”

Miles took a few tentative steps toward the building's edge, away where he was leaning against its enclosure. Sidney kept talking, her voice surprisingly quiet compared to what her normal seemed to be. “I don’t think I saw a proper sunrise here for months, because I always went out at night. Case hadn’t either, and he’s been here longer than most of us. But one day, on the swing home when we were late from fighting, we finally managed to catch one.”

Sidney turned to him as the burning reds faded into soft oranges, and oranges into bright yellows. She made a short 'come here' gesture with one hand, not quite telling him to, but more so inviting him if he so chose.

Go see.

Stay here.

We'll have a better view.

Don’t move.

The two sides circled each other for a moment, before the curiosity won out. It always seemed to be doing that lately.

Miles walked over to stand next to her, squinting as he stared out across the city toward the horizon. Early morning light refracted off of glass skyscrapers, the light bouncing cheerily off the windows and toward the rest of the city. The dark grungy colours of the city turned from dusty grey-tinted into surprisingly soft pastels, only contrasted by the sharp shadows of hidden corners yet untouched by dawn. It almost looked like an entirely different New York. where saturated colours that once stood out against harsh darkness, demanding all your attention and crying out to be seen, now leaped out at him from a backdrop of grays and whites with the promise of enthusiasm instead of menace. Accents to the living city instead of distractions from the lurking monsters.

“You’re lucky,” Sidney said, voice pulling him away from his immersion in the sights as the sun finally cleared the horizon, shining white and cheery yellows down on the world. “It took way longer for a lot of us to see this kind of thing. I’m pretty sure most of us were convinced that the sun didn’t exist.”

“To be fair, I kinda thought so too,” Miles admitted, leaning over to put his arms on the parapet of the roof. “Every time I’ve woken up the past little while, it’s always been dark out.”

A small snort of laughter from the other Spider made him look over to see her mask lenses crinkled up in a grin. “The city’s light pollution helps make up for it, but when it’s the middle of the night? It’s so damn dark outside - midnight is really what it sounds like. It’s a wonder that Tarabi can see, even with her night vision.”

The words sent small jolts of shock through him, and Miles look over at her wide-eyed. “Tarabi has night vision?”

Sidney nodded, absently drumming her fingers on the concrete to a rhythm he didn't recognize. “Her dimension is dark a lot of the time, because star’s planet colony is so far away from the sun. Star’s also super resistant to the cold, but absolutely withers in most sunlight because they’re not used to a lot of heat like we get on Earth.”

“Whoa whoa whoa, hold up, another planet!?”

“Yep! Apparently, there’s a sweet spot in Neptune’s gravitational field where you can safely position starships or space stations so that they’re not gonna get flung out into space or sucked into the gas giant.”

“And nobody thought that this was important to bring up? That Tarabi’s from space!?”

Sidney shrugged, leaning just a little further over the edge of the building, before snapping her hands back. “I mean, most of us don’t really talk about our home dimensions much anymore. No point in making ourselves homesick when we’re stuck, right?”

He winced at how casually she said it, how her tone flattened into a dull edge. Whatever pain was under those worse was long since dulled, an old scar and a fresh wound, and suddenly the wash of whites and grays of New York started to blend into her voice. The words seeped into the pale gray of the concrete underneath his hands, and Miles absently started picking at his suit gloves. Not for any particular reason - he just needed something to do with his hands.

“Well,” he asked quietly, “is there anything about their home dimensions that I can know about?”

A small beat of silence, one that made his heart twist in fearful anticipation. Waiting for Sidney to maybe snap at him or tell him to stop prying, to keep to himself, to scold him-

“My dimension’s New York is called Big Apple City,” Sidney said suddenly, staring out into the sunset with no care for how the light tried to blind them both. “It’s the world’s center of agricultural stuff. Skyscrapers are more like layers of farmland, and everyone keeps at least one kind of plant in their home.”

Huh.

“Sounds kinda nice.”

“It really would be if our classes focused on literally anything else besides agriculture. I can only learn the biology of wheat so many times before I can repeat that lecture in my sleep.”

Miles snorted, trying to keep any laughter at her dramatics to himself. To him, the idea didn’t sound too bad, but growing up there was probably a whole other story. “What, so you know too much about mitochondria?”

Sidney dramatically shuddered, slamming her eyes closed quickly. “God, don’t remind me of mitochondria. I can’t look at any trees without thinking about it, which sucks for Rowan because their whole world is trees.”

Miles blinked in surprise at the mention. “It’s all trees?”

“All trees,” Sidney said, nodded sagely. “Instead of concrete and glass, their New York is entirely built into these beautiful ancient growth forests. The only reason there’s any buildings the height of our apartment building is because the trees closer to Hudson are trying to grow using saltwater instead of freshwater from estuaries.”

“And they’re still thick enough to house people?”

“Oh yeah, definitely. The saplings are the same size as trees in Central Park here.”

Miles had to take a second to try and visualize that, the image of the constructed city that he was so used to instead having grown naturally and being symbiotically installed inside of trees as tall as skyscrapers. It threw him for such a loop that he needed a second to remember that breathing was both something he could do and very necessary to staying alive, actually.

“It’s a really pretty place, if the sketches they’ve made say anything about it,” Sidney continued. “Apparently, it's hard to capture on just one or two pieces of paper, though.”

Miles nodded in faint agreement, his attention briefly drawn away from the sun to the streets below as people emerged freely from buildings and crossed streets. Simply going about their life, completely unaware of the two Spiders sitting casually on the edge of the parapet.

It looked so... normal.

“Luka’s world is almost entirely digital - they can jump from the real world into the virtual one whenever they want to.” 

“Like putting on AR headsets?”

“You’d think so, but nope! They actually somehow turn themselves into the necessary code, I have no idea how and Luka won’t explain it to me!”

His jaw dropped pretty solidly on the ground by this point, perhaps even further down on the streets below. How was that possible?

“No, wait, what?” Miles started pacing back and forth next to the parapet, trying to puzzle out how on Earth that could possibly work. “His cellular structure would need to completely change into a different type of matter for him to literally be turning into code. They’d all need to be operating on some law of equivalent exchange for the matter transfer… like, maybe something’s leaving the computer at the same time? Maybe there’s servers involved where you can’t transfer yourself inside if the server’s full…?”

Sidney giggled at his pacing, pulling up her mask to reveal a bright, almost apologetic grin. “Oh, this is going to bother you for the rest of the day, isn’t it?”

“Because it doesn’t make any sense!” Miles protested, earning a shout of laughter from the other Spider. “That’s not how physics works! That’s not how quantum physics works in any sense! You can’t just turn your whole body into data and send that into the computer, cause that would literally be subtracting matter from the universe, and you can’t do that without needing to replace it with something else!”

“But it does happen there.”

Miles tossed his arms up in the air in frustration, before leaning over the parapet with his his face buried in his hands. “That’s not how this works, man! I did not drop all of my art classes to study quantum physics only to get met with the fact that apparently, Luka’s entire universe doesn’t operate on the same laws! How does his world even function if matter’s getting added and subtracted all the time!?”

Sidney shrugged next to him, hopping up on the small wall and sitting there while Miles had a mini-crisis over how fucked up the multiverse’s quantum physics were on so many levels. “I dunno, dude. I’m not a physics kind of science girl. I personally think Luka’s just living in a simulation.”

“God, at this point I wouldn’t doubt it.”

“Maybe it’s Hammerspace.”

“Hammerspace does not make this kind of equation easier!”

The rooftop echoed loud with laughter, complete with Miles’ own even though his confusion was still rooted deep in every thought like thistles in the ground. He’d had to have heard about something like this kind of multiversal divergence somewhere, right? The last place he remembered anything of the sort going on was the class where they’d been teaching about the four levels of multiverse.

Physical variations… that was a Level II, right? And the Spiderverse seems to operate on a quantum multiverse type instead of anything else.

God, it was too early for this. Unless it was their literal job, nobody should be contemplating how the multiverse and its janky physics systems worked at nine in the morning. Especially not where Hammerspace was concerned, because that added at least twelve new variables to the mix and all of them broke the vague theoretical stability that Miles could have established for this.

Unless there was something really messed up with the quantum-

Nope, y’know what? I’m not doing this right now. I can ask Luka about how the hell that might work later.

That resolution was swiftly solidified, and Miles lifted his head to stare back at the horizon. The world almost was entirely doused in the soft yellow-white of the sun’s rays, and yet there was still a sharpness to the light that seemed so distinctive to Earth-42.

A tiny prickle of something in the back of his mind, a nagging thought that he’d mostly managed to shove away, jumped to the forefront of his thoughts. It was something really small, and still kind of stupid, but it was definitely going to bother him.

The strange glances everyone shared earlier this morning.

I can trust them, right? Why is this bothering me so much?

“Hey, we should maybe get going,” Sidney announced out of nowhere, her voice suddenly jumping up a bit as an alert popped up on her watch. Miles didn’t get the chance to see what it was before she closed it. She shot him a worried look, and immediately, the unease that had jumped forward reared its head violently. “It’s honestly too early to stay out here for too long, and we’ve still got most of Queens to cover, right?”

Miles raised an eyebrow under the mask, irritation clocking to life in his head as Sidney fidgeted with her hands nervously. “No, actually, we've gotten through half of Queens. What’re you hiding?”

“Hiding?” Sidney's voice was too high, the golden yellow of her suit suddenly too bright and the eyes of her mask unfamiliar to him. “I’m not hiding anything. I just wanna get a patrol over with, y’know?”

Miles' eyes narrowed, and his entire body tensed as he took a step away from Sidney. 

I knew it.

I should have stayed on it.

“Miles? Are you okay?”

He shook his head slightly, glad that the mask was hiding his expression. “Don’t lie to me man. Why the rush?”

“Miles, what are you talking about? I’m not lying about anything.”

Had his eyes been able to narrow any further, they would have slammed shut.

Maybe that would have been better than looking at her worried face. “You get an alert on your watch, and suddenly we gotta go? That, and your voice changed, and you’re doing that thing with your hands again. You did it in the apartment when you were nervous before.”

Sidney’s eyes widened, before she sighed and dropped her shoulders. “Okay, fine, you’ve caught me. There’s a lot of highly dangerous villains who pass this way on some mornings, and I didn’t want to freak you out too badly.”

He huffed, crossing his arms and taking a few more steps away from her. “You could have just said that.”

The other Spider let out a couple of mildly offended noises, before squawking out, “Look, I didn’t want to freak you out, dude! You’ve been out of it for almost a month!”

“I can handle the truth, Sidney!” he snapped, shocked by the nearly venomous, resentful tone in his voice that cut the air like knives. He quickly cleared his throat, pushing back the sudden flare of anger. “I can handle it. Just don’t try to hide stuff like that from me.”

“Why are you so hung up on the lying thing?”

“Does it really matter? What if I just want people to be honest?”

Sidney’s eyes narrowed as he stalked across the roof, and he could feel her gaze digging under his skin as he did so. “It kind of does matter if you’re going to start snapping at people out of nowhere!”

“You wouldn’t understand,” Miles said, pausing his stride at the other edge of the roof. The city behind the building was still shrouded in the darkness, still untouched by the sun. There was nothing down there for him to fully focus his gaze on, and yet he glared into the dark anyway.

“Try me, Morales.” Sidney’s voice was no longer gentle, a steely edge to it that only made her use of his last name unlock a bit of the fury in the pit of his stomach.

“You’re not gonna get it.”

“I said try me, Miles.”

“You won’t!”

“For fuck’s sake, get your head out of your ass and just say whatever it is that’s got you acting like a child throwing a tantrum!”

That finally made something snap, and Miles spun around. She was fully glaring at him, clear distress and anger morphing across her face, shoulders squared as hands curled into fists.

“Fine!” he said, his voice rising but not loud enough to be yelling. He didn’t have the energy to yell, and he didn’t want to yell at one of the people who had been nice to him throughout his stay in Earth-42. “Fine! You wanna know?”

“I do, actually!” Sidney snapped, storming up to Miles but stopping a fair distance away to stay out of his space.

“Remember when I said that nobody told me about what was going on with the Society?” he bit out, and Miles internally winced when he saw Sidney stiffen at the mere mention. “I meant that. Not even my friends told me what my place in all of that was. They didn’t tell me jack shit about the canon or what would happen if we disrupted it!”

The other Spider’s eyes blew open wide, but Miles continued, the little bits of anger that he’d pressed down about his old friends seeping poisonously into every word he spat out. “They had the option to come talk to me. They could have done it for the longest time, and they didn’t even bother! Peter said he just wanted to talk, and led them right to me! Peni helped them chase me down! Gwen-”

Miles’ breath caught in his throat, caught on her name like a fish on a hook. Of all the offenders, she was the worst of them; and yet his stupid heart, his stupid, traitorous heart, still couldn’t bring himself to yell at her, even though she was entire universes away.

He forced away the thought, the hurt tearing through his chest like snaking coils of barbed wire. “They didn’t have to lie to my face. They didn’t have to dodge around the truth like it would kill them if it did!”

He threw up his hands to the sky, before bringing them back down onto the parapet too hard, the sparks of anger burning in his hands. . It was enough for his venom shock to surge into his hands, violently crackling blue lightning dancing over his hands and across concrete. He heard Sidney shuffle around until she was standing at a distance to his left.

“They could have at least come to visit me,” he managed to spit out after a moment. “Most of them have these… these damn watches! I gave up an entire piece of my life to try and get back to them, and the whole time, this whole damn time, they could have just come to my dimension and told me all of this!”

Miles’ lungs heaved for air, and he almost dropped his head into his hands before remembering the shock that was charged there right now. There was nowhere safe to release it - concrete wasn't conductible, and anything nearby that was could cause a blackout or hurt someone - so Miles just let it go back into his nerves with a sharp, pinching jolt that essentially electrocuted his nervous system. 

The sensation made him hiss out loud, and he glared down into the city with no clear aim for his gaze.

Silence settled over the rooftop, broken only by his shaky gasps as Miles recovered from the angry rant he’d just gone on. One wouldn't think they'd need to recover air from that, but angrily ranting often required a lot more air than peopel gave it credit for.

“I see,” Sidney whispered, sounding almost cowed by his outburst. Guilt immediately flooded Miles, dousing any of the remaining anger and pushing it back into the pit in his stomach.

Nice going, Miles. Now you’ve scared her.

“Sorry,” he muttered softly, pulling his arms in close and nervously fiddling with the glove that had been torn once. There were still no seams in it, the red on his palms bright against the dark city below.

“So… is there anything we can do?” Sidney asked, much more gently than he was expecting. “Like, is there anything the others and I can do to... to just make sure you're okay?”

It was almost cruel how kind she was being. Miles didn’t feel like he deserved any of this kindness, but once again, she offered it regardless of whether he deserved it or not.

“Just… if it’s something really important,” Miles said, his voice almost painfully quietly, “please tell me. Like, if we figure out a way out of Earth-42, or there’s a really big villain attack happening, or someone’s in danger… don’t hide it to try and protect me from whatever it is. I can handle it, and I can handle myself.”

“We know that,” Sidney reassured him. “And no problem, man. My lips are unsealed.” She mimed unzipping a zipper on her mouth, before throwing away an imaginary key. It got a small laugh out of him, past the remaining stings of the venom shock in his arms and hands and back. 

“Now, for real this time,” she said, jumping up to stand on top of the parapet as Miles stood from where he was leaning. “Let’s get moving before we get caught up in a storm of mini Doc-Ock drones. They’re nasty and the little shits always have saw blades for some reason.”

Miles managed a laugh again, the tension in his shoulders slowly releasing as he let himself relax a little. Not by much, but by just enough. 

“I’ll race you to Times Square!” Sidney challenged, a mischievous grin making the edges of her mask lenses crinkle up. Before Miles could have a chance to reply, she backflipped off the building with a joyful cry.

Miles went to step up onto the parapet, to launch himself back into the sky and forget that any of this had happened-

WATCH OUT!

Miles ducked back down, dropping completely behind the wall as his Spider-sense screamed the warning and tore through him with a skull-splitting headache. 

He cried out at the sudden throbbing pain, panic flaring to life through him as his Spider-sense threw hundreds of conflicting warnings at him from out of nowhere. Miles’ head snapped up too forcefully, and he accidentally hit it on the wall behind him with a sharp thud. His eyes darted around rapidly, trying to locate the threat, trying to find whatever it was that was setting him off so badly-

A faint flicker of familiarity, one that made his heart squeeze.

This... this didn't feel like Miles’ Spider-sense.

Somehow, in some way that he couldn’t understand, it felt the same way Gwen’s call felt, shrieking out warnings to dodge and roll and move like she was standing right next to him. But that was impossible, there was no way that was possible-

Miles’ breathing picked up as the headache did, trying to concentrate on anything besides the sudden adrenaline rush-

And the waves of panic from his Spider-sense stopped abruptly, a signal that had been disrupted and was no longer broadcasting.

He had to take a couple of moments to just return his breathing to normal, to convince himself that nothing was really wrong, to ensure he could still feel the ground under his now venom-charged hands.

What the hell was that!?

He didn't know. He didn't know, and he didn't know why his Spider-sense had suddenly resonated a call like hers, because that couldnt possibly have happened. That wasn't something that happened. That wasn't anything that Miles knew could happen. 

All he knew was that it had been there one moment, and gone the next. It had cut off so suddenly-

Stop that. You know where thinking like that goes.

Miles took a deep breath, before letting the mid-level voltage disperse back into his nerves. The pinch was stronger this time, and the aftereffect equally painful - he nearly stumbled after getting to his feet. He bit back a pained hiss, determined not to let the pain escape him. Even if perhaps he was alone, he still didn't want to let it out.

Hands on the parapet, Miles looked back out into the city.

God, he really needed a break if his Spider-sense was bugging out like this. There was no way that his senses and hers were linked like that. At this rate, he’d give himself at least five more panic attacks before the week was up, and he'd already had maybe two in the span of 24 hours. Not the world's greatest track record.

Miles shook out his hands, making sure that they weren’t too shaky from having electrocuted himself twice - as most people's would be - before leaping from the building to let the rushing wind and ambient noise of the city pull his worries away again.

Chapter Text

Tonight was colder than the past couple of nights.

Summer nights in New York usually weren't cold. At most, it was a soft chill over the night, the brushes of gentle air on skin. Gwen was used to that kind of gentle chill, rushing past her on the wilder nights and sitting solid like invisible company on the quiet ones.

This was not that kind of cold. This was bitter, to the point where you could taste it whenever you opened your mouth. A bitter cold that stung at the inside of your nose and in your lungs when you breathed, that settled just under skin and danced over muscle. Enough to distinctly be cold, but not enough to actually need anything to protect from it. Really, at most, this was the kind of chill that could be well-fought off by moving around and getting some blood pumping, if you were the kind of person who had a functional bloodstream.

However, that wasn't the case. The moving around thing, not the bloodstream thing.

Gwen, Hobie, and Peter had been sitting on top of this random apartment building in the Bronx, waiting for some random people to show up, all because Hobie had gotten a tip from a 'mysterious benefactor' saying that they could find something here to help their search.

And while, yes, that potential lead was very worth it, what was slightly less worth it was Gwen's fingers and toes turning into icicles over it. She hadn't moved an inch in maybe three hours, partly from practice, but at some point, it was also because even shifting slightly made her joints creak and a dull sting shoot through them.

If this lead is fake, Gwen thought, barely raising a hand to mess with her hood a little bit, I'm going to strangle someone. it's too cold for this.

Almost conveniently on cue, a quiet sound rang out from below, and all three Spiders froze. Not like any of them had really been moving in the first place, but regardless, Gwen froze completely.

The door in the apartment's alleyway slammed open, metal shrieking against brick wall, and a stream of masked people began to exit the building just as a van pulled up in the back alley further down.

"Get moving!" one of them yelled, and a few grumpier mutters escaped the others. Gwen counted five off the bat, but there was probably one in the van, and there were definitely at least two more in the building.

And every single one of them, without fail and even despite their best efforts, would occasionally let loose flashes of a familiar, round barrel of metal from underneath coats and in not-so-hidden compartments of their clothing.

Armed, transporting unknown goods, and in a mid-sized group, her police brain announced. Probably moving something for their boss or a higher-up.

"You weren't kidding," Gwen hissed softly, just barely rising above the noise of the people below. Unmarked boxes were beginning to stack up near the van's back door, the rest of it eclipsed in shadow to the point where she couldn't see the full logo on the side of it.

Yeah, okay, this really didn't look good. Mass transport of anything to a secondary location always meant something big was happening. If having a previous cop for a father and a few years of experience of being Spider-Woman under her belt had taught her anything, it was definitely that.

"I don't believe in kidding around," Hobie announced coolly, staring down into the alley with what looked like equal scrutiny. "My source would never let me down."

“Uh-huh, and where did you say that you heard about these guys again?” Peter's question stretched thin through the air, the silence dragging on only broken by the sounds of the small gang of criminals in the street below snapping at each other when somebody moved something the wrong way. Honestly, the way they were yelling at each other, you'd think they were trying to transport a grand piano up a curved staircase.

Gwen shifted from where she was sitting almost sideways on a radio tower, hand gripping the cold metal a little too tightly to prove that she was completely calm and normal about the situation. There was no way that she would freak out about something like this.

She didn’t dare to let go.

Totally normal and fine thing to do! Especially considering that falling off of a most radio towers when they were on the sides of buildings would usually just kill you, right?

Gwen mentally facepalmed herself when the thought crossed her mind. Real smooth, Stacy. No shit that falling off of buildings would kill someone.

You of all people should know better than anyone.

She instinctively slammed a wall down in her head before that train of thought could go anywhere particularly unpleasant. Focus, that was what she needed right now.

“One of the others said that they’ve been up to something,” Hobie answered, pointing down toward the group of thugs in the alleyway below. “Not Scooby Doo what, but it's suspicious.”

“Okay, and which of these 'others' did you actually get that information from?” Peter hissed quietly. “Not sure if you’ve noticed, but they aren’t exactly friendly with us.”

Probably because of me, Gwen’s thoughts hissed out, and she slammed the brakes on that train of thought before it tried to spiral away from her. Seriously, she needed her brain to maybe shut up about everything that wasn't the main goal right now. Find a lead, follow it, and hopefully it would lead to Miles.

Hobie shrugged nonchalantly, the eyes of his mask narrowing slightly as he looked over at Peter. “I knew them before they got booted out of the Society. Bunch of troublemakers and anarchists, those guys. They wouldn't let me down.”

“So we’re just supposed to trust them because you used to know them?” Peter’s question was almost accusatory, and Gwen saw when Hobie stiffened this time. Much more than he usually would, and much more than Hobie in general would ever allow anyone to see. “How do we know they’re not distracting us? Or, I don't know, lying to us about something?”

Lying.

Liar.

Shut up.

Hobie didn’t reply for a moment, breaking eye contact with Peter and just observing the robbers below. They were currently struggling to transport a bunch of larger boxes - whatever was in them was much heavier than it looked from up here, and it was taking a couple of them to lift one particularly large box toward the van. Their methods would definitely work better if they weren't hollering conflicting instructions ever three seconds, that was for sure.

“I know them, man,” Hobie finally whispered, shooting Peter a look that was almost withering. Now it was Gwen's turn to stiffen at the soft, quiet tone in Hobie voice, not as angry as that glare would have ever implied; the answer of someone confident, someone understanding, but with a waver to it that hinted at something more painful below the surface. “They wouldn’t do that, not after their own issues. I believe that much.”

“If you say so, bud,” Peter said. The reply wasn’t entirely settling - there was still an open tension in the air, tension thicker than smoke and equally as suffocating. His answer wasn't dismissive, exactly, but it wasn't inviting either.

Gwen checked herself, just to make sure that she was still able to breathe without choking. To make sure that the tension hadn't wormed it's way into her throat with a vengeance to seal off the air and force every muscle in her body to lock in place while it suffocated her.

You're fine, for the love of God.

Stop being dramatic.

The little voice in her head hissed unapologetically, the way it had been doing so often nowadays. The slithering doubts that lurked around her every waking thought and sank into the crevices of every idea, that tried to invade her nightmares on the increasingly rare occasions where she slept deeply enough to dream. It only offered doubt, no matter how much she pushed against it with reason.

Every thought she had of Miles was accompanied by that irritating little doubt, a leech that sucked away at the determination, the hope, that Gwen held so close.

Making it be quiet was a much more difficult task than one would think.

An abrupt clatter in the alleyway snapped her away from the quickly developing hurricane of guilt, and Gwen’s entire focus locked back onto the gang below as it sank back into the darker corners of her mind. They’d dropped the box and it had broken open on the ground. All of the ones transporting it were panicking and trying to pick up the pieces, but Gwen’s entire world melted into ice at the sight of the objects that had scattered across the ground.

No.

A familiar logo was printed across the side of one of the objects, the one that had caught her attention first.

An A printed without a center line, with the cleanly lettered word 'Alchemax' underlining it without so much as a care in the world. A word that glistened with a malice that she couldn't even bring herself to start grappling with.

No way.

“No fucking way,” Hobie mirrored, shifting next to her and messing with the strap of his guitar. Something he only did when he was nervous, and not something that Gwen had ever expected to see for this.

“Their Alchemax is-”

Peter didn’t even get the chance to finish his sentence before Gwen was off the roof of the building and on the alley floor, the terrified chill in her blood slowly beginning to turn into something else.

“Drop the boxes,” she said coldly. She stood to her full height - which in comparison to the five fully grown adults in front of her, was really not that tall - glaring down each individual thug with enough venom to kill a symbiote with nothing more than a sparing glance.

“Oh great, it’s one of these freaks again,” one of them announced loudly, waving a hand at her in mild irritation. Their blatant dismissal of her presence only lit the bubbling anger in her gut more, and Gwen crossed her arms with narrowed eyes. “You a new one? Don’t think I’ve seen you around yet.”

“I said drop the boxes,” Gwen snapped again. Thousands of images were running through her head, her Spider-sense hissing at the mere sight of the contents of the boxes spilled across the ground. Metal pieces, scattered tiny components, and the one thing that would confirm every single suspicion that Gwen was praying were wrong.

God, she didn't want to look at it.

You'll have to at some point.

“You sure this is one of the Spider guys?” one of the other thugs asked, almost genuinely curious as she picked up another metallic sheet. It glistened less like an innocent metal plate and more like a weapon in the dim light, the edge leering in Gwen's direction like a predator's teeth shining in the dark. “They’re usually a lot less cold shoulder when they do this.”

One of the others looked at the her in mild disgust and confusion. “What the hell does that mean? Of course it's one of them, look at the eyes! They all have that eye shape!”

“I dunno. They usually try to be funnier. That green one who got J's team last week was apparently the most sarcastic guy they’ve ever met.”

Two of the others rolled their eyes, before the one by the van clapped loudly. "Oh, don't be stupid. Those Spider-guys can be fucking brutal. From the sounds of it, you haven't seen the purple one, or that creepy guy with two hundred teeth."

"They're usually still funny, though, right?"

“Oh, no, don’t worry!” Gwen’s fists curled slightly as Peter and Hobie landed next to her. “We’re usually absolutely hilarious. Our friend here just woke up on the wrong side of the bed this morning!”

She shot him a brief, furious side-eye, one that Peter obviously did not catch because it was really hard to catch a side-eye when you had a mask on. And especially when you were also, y'know, not looking at whoever was offering you said side-eye.

Hobie scoffed slightly, taking his guitar off his back and swinging it carelessly in a circle. “Whatever you say, mate. I don’t believe in comedy.”

“Look, this doesn’t have to get ugly, fellas,” Peter said, putting up placating hands and taking a couple steps forward. Despite how non-threatening the gesture was meant to appear, a couple of hand's dropped down to wherever they were storing their gun holsters. “We just want to ask a couple questions, maybe get you to drop those Alchemax parts off somewhere where Doc will never find them, and we’ll let you go on your way! The ocean’s a pretty great place to put stuff you don’t want people finding it. Or having it work again.”

Hobie let out a bark of laughter, but Gwen’s eyes were only locked on one of the pieces of equipment that had fallen out of the box. She recognized the thing; there was no world in which she would have ever forgotten about it.

You knew you'd have to look.

They're really doing it.

A small box, transparent thanks to panes of plastic seamlessly fired together. A tiny podium in the middle, obviously meant for holding a glass beaker, but empty at the moment. An odd, camera-like structure, blind to the multiverse it was meant to stare out into.

A tiny box rising on a pole in the middle of the cavernous machine, confusion clear among her friends, before the machine activated and the world was thrown into a violent array of colours and shapes and cities, thrown together and merging in ways they never should have been able to.

The piece on the ground in front of her was the box that had held DNA. The same camera that had stared across the universes and deemed her world an adequate place to take from, that had pulled her into a world not her own. The same box that had powered their first venture into the multiverse, the same vial holder that had nearly brought Brooklyn - his Brooklyn - to ruin in the span of three days.

It was a piece of the supercollider. It was a piece of every supercollider that could exist out in the multiverse, the piece that had the power to tear apart the fabric of reality to drag someone out of their home and into a dimension that would eat them alive.

The piece that almost tore Miles’ dimension apart.

Now, technically, it wasn’t the DNA container's fault that his world had almost ended. It was just a box - boxes really were not sentient enough to be worthy of having any blame for a situation placed on them. As a matter of fact, if your local science box was sentient enough to be worthy of having blame placed upon it, then you may need to reconsider whether the decision to keep said box was actually worth it.

To summarize: it was not the DNA container's fault.

It was Kingpin’s fault that he’d pushed the operation without waiting for safety regulations to get installed and nearly destroyed the world in the process, and surely he didn't care about whether the world ended or not. It was Doc Ock’s fault that the plans that she’d created had such destructive power, and she hadn’t even cared to push and warn Fisk about the dangers or what could have happened without putting in some kind of safety measure.

In every aspect, the incident was their fault.

But neither of those two were here to blame for the supercollider. Gwen couldn’t stand up to them and fight and yell about how insane their plan had been, or furiously tell them ‘look at what you’ve done’ over a city that they’d nearly destroyed. Both of those were things she'd nearly had to do, things that every Spider had probably done once or twice before.

The only things here that Gwen’s fury could even be marginally directed toward were the cardboard boxes that no doubt contained more parts for the supercollider, and the people facilitating its construction. She couldn't see this world's Doc Ock personally, nor it's Kingpin, but there was the metallic plastic that rested serenely on the ground off to her left.

The terror in her bones finally morphed into something else entirely; a writhing, twisting mass of deep-seeded fury that made her clenched fists shake and her gut wrench in anger.

Her Spider-sense, previously shrieking warnings about the supercollider parts and the guns that the thugs were drawing on the group, screaming for her to dodge or run or get out of the way, paused. It just… stopped, changing alongside the fury.

And among the fury rolling through her mind and her hands, Gwen suddenly couldn't find it in herself to care why it might be doing that.

Her fists were raised and ready before Hobie's or Peter's were, a sharp eye catching the way the largest guy was cocking the hammer of the pistol he held.

The warning bells faded away, and without Gwen’s full understanding, her Spider-sense shifted alongside the terror. It wasn’t just warning her anymore.

Her instincts mirrored her fury, and the ringing cry of warnings in her head rose to a ear-pounding roar, and it made itself clear when a loud BANG tore through the alleyway and Gwen cleanly side-stepped the shot fired her way.

Familiar hands raising a pistol to her face, the barrel of a loaded gun aimed directly where it would only take one shot to put her down.

Stop them.

Stop this.

It was the only thought that pierced through the insidious, creeping haze of red. Peter shouted something at the thugs, and Hobie swung the guitar back up as they prepared to fight. Another resounding BANG of another fired gun easily announced that whatever they were yelling, it wasn't working to calm these guys down.

“Look, guys, it’s really not that complicated!” Peter said, casually leaping up to the side wall and leaned almost patronizingly against a fire escape as another thug fired a shot. That bullet cracked louder than snapping stone as it hit the brick wall below him. “Just drop the guns, drop the stuff, we ask you some questions! Seriously, how hard of a bargain are you guys trying to run for?”

“We don’t have time to answer your questions, weirdo!” the one who'd asked the first question shouted, the same one who’d fired that first shot at Gwen. “Doc wants these parts in before the sun goes down! Apparently, there’s a new toy at the labs that he’s been meaning to play with, and he’ll pay us big time if we can get these there without you getting in the way!”

All three Spider stiffened at his words, and the roaring of her Spider-sense went from loud to deafening in the span of a second.

There’s a new toy at the labs that he’s been meaning to play with.

Her heart caught in her throat, beating so violently that had she not already been deafened thanks to the blood pumping in her ears and the screaming of her instincts to do something, Gwen would have completely lost her hearing to the rhythmic pulse in her throat and the remains of the words lingering heavy in the air.

It has to be him.

Supercollider parts appearing when he does, Doc’s lab… somebody's trying something.

I’m not letting that happen again.

Maybe Gwen wasn’t fond of Earth-42. Maybe she didn’t quite enjoy its atmosphere, oppressive and heavy and leaching into every corner of someone's mind and picking away at whatever it could find until the niceties were torn away to reveal the bare bones underneath. Maybe she wasn't exactly fond of the people who protected this dimension, snappy and cold and almost cruel in their methods.

But there was no way in hell she - or anyone else here, for that matter - were letting the supercollider incident happen again. Not while she was still breathing, not while Miles was missing, and not when there was a very real possibility that their timer to find him had just dramatically shortened or been cut completely in half. 

It was not going to happen again.

Absolutely not.

“And what’s he gonna do with it?” Hobie pressed, the slightest edge to his voice as he spoke. It was subtle, but sharp. Shots may have been fired, but there was still a line between interrogation and combat that had yet to be crossed. One wrong move was all it would take to push someone into snapping and attacking first.

“Wouldn’t you like to know, delivery boy?” one of them sneered. “What’re you gonna do about it?”

Something in her mind - willpower, self-control, whatever was holding her back - snapped.

Gwen’s Spider-sense crashed through the haze of red in a violent wave as she lunged for the thug who’d fired the first shot, no longer fully registering the shocked yells and panic that broke loose among both Spiders and criminals alike.

The guy yelled in rage as she disarmed him quickly, just to even get the gun out of his hands, tossing it aside with a loud clatter. Peter and Hobie were moving not even a second later, going after the others as earsplitting gunfire tore the air apart around them.

“Back the hell off, kid!” the guy snarled, taking a quick swing at her that was way too easy to predict and swerve around. Throwing half-hearted punches wasn't going to get them anywhere, and that was quickly proven when Gwen's own fist caught him in the face a second later.

“Tell us what the machine is!” Gwen yelled, swinging around and kicking him in the side. He yelped in pain, and instead of jumping away or leaping for cover, she just got right back up in his face to land another hit.

Her Spider-sense was howling a fury that she hadn't thought possible, and she landed a few more solid punches to the thug before he recovered enough to deflect one of her fists and punch her squarely in the side of the head.

The attack threw her sideways, right toward another of the thugs, who immediately tried to kick her down. She managed to swerve in time to avoid the hit, pain ringing cheerfully through the side of her skull and the taste of metal pouring into her mouth from somewhere, and promptly whirled around to elbow him in the face.

“What’s the machine?” she shouted again, whipping around and just barely missing a hit that her Spider-sense hadn’t caught enough of to warn her properly. The usual warning bell came half a second later than it should have.

That’s just great. First it gets linked up to someone else’s, now it’s just not working properly.

Fine then. If it wasn't going to cooperate, then Gwen could handle things herself.

With a harsh slam, she blocked the warning bells out of mind, the only remnants being the furious scream of red and violent wave of adrenaline that accompanied another blocked hit from the side.

“I ain’t telling you shit!” the guy shouted, and Gwen’s eyes narrowed at the words. 

Somewhere behind her, Gwen heard Peter yell something, almost like a warning, and she moved out of the way in time to have one of the thugs barrel past her into the guy she’d been fighting, completely covered in web. They both promptly toppled over in a pile, trapping the still able-bodied one under the other.

A click from off to her left was what alerted Gwen to the woman next to her reloading a gun, and she dropped low to sweep her legs. The girl went down with a furious shout, scrambling backward as Gwen darted over and webbed the gun, swinging it behind her and securing it to a wall.

The thug kicked at her from behind, and it landed just below the back of her knee - a dirty trick, one that she wasn't unfamiliar with. Gwen yelped at the heel that bit into skin through the suit, the hissing fury building as she stumbled to the side.

That moment was short. It shouldn't have mattered.

It was a short moment, but it was a moment enough-

“GWEN!”

A gunshot fired through the alley, and Gwen shrieked as a biting pain bloomed in her arm. The anger in her Spider-sense, that blood-pumping rush that had powered her through the fight, the fury that had built, flickered back into terror for a second. It shrieked another warning as the guy under the webbed cocoon fired another bullet in her direction, a cackle fading in through the remaining ringing of the sound of the gun.

Gwen fired a web at the weapon, yanking it easily out of his hands and securing it to the side of the building. She moved back to the one she’d managed to ground, who’d gotten to her feet and was running at her with raised fists.

Her arm burned with pain, a fierce thing that bit across skin and through the small slivers of muscle that had been grazed by the bullet, even as her body started working to try and heal itself. Gwen could already feel muscles and skin writhing in distaste, reweaving through damaged muscle, eating away rapidly formed scar tissue, sealing over skin and painting away the wound like it had never been there.

Her Spider-sense cried out another MOVE as the thug swung a fist at her face, and Gwen’s head snapped to the side fast enough for her to hear the bones in her neck crack with the motion.

“Come on! Just go down already!” she snapped furiously, picking up a piece of smooth metal off the ground and trying to bring it down on her shoulder. A move that she easily side-stepped, that left her an opening to hit the woman in the face with her elbow.

Fear turned back to anger, her instincts switching back from hunted to hunter, and the chorus of banshee fury that thundered through her mind returned in full force.

Not happening.

Not happening again.

I am not letting it happen again.

The woman swung the piece of a metal plate around again, yelling in fury as she raised the metal high over her head. Gwen didn't dodge, instead rushing toward her to try and knock it out of her hands.

Metal flashed down in an arc, too close to something vital, and her Spider-sense fixed itself enough to scream a warning-

Chapter Text

-Gwen ducked under the blow, grabbing the woman's arm and bracing it the wrong way against her own as the two thugs still standing went down behind her. With abrupt thuds, the other two were secured to the wall, leaving only the one Gwen had pinned to the wall free of cocooning.

“That should be all of them.” Peter announced casually, the easygoing tone of voice almost making the hissing fury in her head slip away.

Almost.

Not quite enough.

"Put me down!" the thug shouted furiously, trying to kick out and catch her in the stomach. The attempt missed when Gwen easily tilted to the side, glaring her down with a distaste that she had never put up for display before.

"Whoa, whoa, okay. Drop the arm, kiddo, she's pretty stuck." Peter’s address to her momentarily broke through the haze of red and black that drowned the world, but it snapped back to life and steeled her nerves as the woman thrashed in her grip again.

“Let go of me!” she snarled. The thug tried to move her pinned arm, but Gwen firmly placed an elbow against her chest, one hand braced under the extended elbow and the other gripping her wrist.

“Tell us what the machine that you're hauling parts for is,” she said. Her voice was cold and flat, the edge of a knife being slipped into a position that could be deadly if left unchecked.

Gwen wasn't unused to needing to get serious with criminals if she needed information. That was something that just needed to happen sometimes.

This was… this was a different kind of serious. Something in the back of her thoughts, a quiet, worried whisper, said that this was different.

Gwen shoved the whisper to the side. She couldn't afford to listen to it right now.

Not with his life on the line.

“Over my dead body!”

Hobie snorted, approaching on Gwen’s left and leaning on his guitar, which now seemed to have a few more strings loose than earlier. Gwen didn't alter her stance, nor the way her hands threatened to snap the woman's arm backwards if she applied enough pressure. “Don’t think that’s something you actually want, mate.”

“Look, we just wanna know what your boss is up to,” Peter said. “ Doc, right? We didn't actually want to fight you. You guys kinda made this ugly all on your own.”

Speak for yourself, a morbid part of her whispered, a thought that Gwen shot down before it could lead anywhere else.

The woman spat at Peter with a disgusted look from under the medical mask she was wearing, the pale blue and white at the bottom staining a mix of clear spit and gentle, seeping blood that wormed it's way across without a care in the world.

"Doc's business belongs to him," she bit out, even against the glares of three Spiders staring her down. "It's none of yours. Get lost and save your weird vigilante costume shit for the cons."

Gwen’s eyes narrowed at her, and she ramped up the pressure on her arm, pulling the wrist back just a little more. Not by much, but enough that the girl flinched and stopped thrashing for a moment.

Her entire mind, her entire being, writhed and snapped erratically as fury sparked alive under her skin. Her Spider-sense lashed out through her head, radiating with danger even within her own mind, a hissing roar in from the depths that only grew in volume.

This was not the way her Spider-sense, her instincts, usually acted toward street criminals. Where it was usually reactive to danger and mixed with various levels of fear - how one would expect to react when placed into a dangerous situation - this was definitely not.

The change should have been concerning. It should have scared her more in the moment. But that moment was locked on a goal, and Gwen made no move to correct the realization that sank in deep to every part of her until it sang in time with the change.

This was not flighty or jumpy.

This was not fearful.

This was nowhere near close to anything like that.

This was a spiralling, violently reactive haze of furious crimson and frustrated orange and cold, uncaring black. A hellscape of anger, of distress and panic; the kind of frustration that took over when you began to fall short of a goal. When you were running out of time and the clock hands were ticking all too slow and fast at the same time. The need to rush and finish the job before whatever was already going wrong became even worse.

This was almost blinding, a fury marred with memory so jarring that it washed the world blank save for the torrent pulsing through her mind. An urge to fight back, to stop something from breaking to fix it by force.

This was the gut-curling terror that screamed to fight when you were cornered; the urge to lash out, to hurt, to defend; the voice that told you to scream and bare your teeth and bite and scratch until safety was within reach.

This was all of that, branded in painful fire and carved free from a piece of Gwen that she hadn’t known existed. 

It was cruel and dangerous piece, ready to prove that to anyone who wasn’t someone she was trying to save.

Gwen's grip tightened around the thug's wrist as the feeling surged, her eyes narrowing to near slits.

“I’m not telling you anything!” the thug snapped again, with an audible note of panic in her voice this time. “Doc’s stuff is none of your damn business!"

"Atta girl, J!" one of the webbed thugs called. before a brief thwip cut the sound off abruptly.

"Ah ah, it's not your turn to talk yet!" Peter said, still entirely too casually for her preference.

They know.

They all know.

They all know something you don't.

Find out.

It wasn't the pesky, doubtful thoughts that plagued her at every corner. That wasn't who was talking anymore.

It was her determined thoughts, twisting cruelly as she watched the thug in her grip fruitlessly try to pry her hands away again.

A dripping wave of danger, one that didn’t belong to Gwen and one that she only faintly recognized, pooled through the alleyway, but she didn’t dare to take her eyes off of the woman in her grip. That would be dangerous.

“What’s this I’m hearing about Doc Ock being up to something?” an unfamiliar voice asked. One of the Anomalies, as she should have recognized sooner by the call resonating out through the alleyway. There was someone else, too, but no call responded to hers when it detected them.

The new perception from her furious Spider-sense caught the calls before the others did, much more sharply than before. It didn't take a genius to understand why the other Spider's feet hesitated upon approach.

To be fair, this scene probably didn't look the greatest when they'd explicitly been told not to interfere in anything that could be over their heads, and now they'd gotten five or six guys webbed to the walls with scattered transports everywhere.

“Take a look for yourself,” Hobie offered, his voice having lapsed away from the cool, bored tone he'd been using earlier and slipping into something sharper. “Supercollider parts.”

An abrupt, furiously bubbling hiss from the Anomaly in question made Gwen flinch. Brief footsteps, alongside the thug grunting a bit as she tried to push Gwen away - an attempt that failed, mind you - before the Anomaly stalked up behind her. A distinctively slimy crackling noise sounded out through the alleyway, one only ever attributed to symbiotes.

“Okay, lady, here’s how this is gonna go,” the Anomaly said, voice cold and layered slightly as the words pierced the air. “You tell us about Doc Ock’s plans for those parts, and we leave you here with your buddies for the police to find before the sun comes up again. It’s not the going to kill you to talk.”

She glared at the group, particularly at whoever was behind Gwen. There was annoyance, but a real fear was sparking just behind her eyes as well. “Oh, great, it’s you.”

"Don't trust a goddamn word that one says!" one of the others yelled unhelpfully. "That monster killed one of my guys on a different expedition!"

Killed.

Spider-Man doesn't kill.

“Maybe I did, maybe I didn't," the Anomaly hissed, the sense of danger washing through the open air and only making Gwen's instincts react with sharp, violent intent.. "And I don't think you'd care to be the ones who'd jog my memory on it. Now spill.”

“Absolutely not.”

Make them say it.

Gwen’s already irritated mind, one that no longer cared for rationality or anything else remotely related, let the jumble of anger harden into a steely resolve. Without another thought given to the prospect, she pressed her hands harder against the thug’s elbow and wrist. She let out a jittery hiss of pain, a sound that immediately alerted everyone else to what was happening.

“Hey, you can let him go, kid,” Peter said quickly, putting a hand on her shoulder but not doing anything to pull her away from the woman. “We can just web her to the wall and keep asking questions from there.”

“Leave her be," Hobie clicked from off to the side, but not in the way he usually spoke when he was trying to bother somebody. There was a tone in his voice that Gwen barely recognized, something detached, but she didn't bother trying to pin down what it was through the haze in her mind. "I wanna see what she does, yeah?"

“Hobie, that’s not helping.”

“I know.”

The Anomaly had gone silent, just watching the interaction go down with only a few signature chitters. Or rather, just watching Gwen - she could feel the symbiote’s gaze slipping under her skin, crawling around and spreading doubt into her thoughts like a weed she couldn't afford to let take root.

Focus.

She might know where Miles is.

We need to know what Doc is doing with that supercollider.

Doc Ock might have Miles, for all we know.

FOCUS.

She squared her gaze with the thug, and the waves of crimson and blood-red anger that had powered the earlier fight simmered just under the surface. Tense, a coil wound too tight and ready to lash out the second the something ticked it too far.

“What is Doc Ock doing with the parts?” Gwen asked, each word deliberately drawn out and laced with poison, poison that lurked too close to something vital and danced around the edges in a dangerous game of cat and mouse.

The thug’s furious gaze switched to her. “Quit sticking your nose where it doesn't belong. You're not getting a damn word out of any of us.”

Her eyes narrowed, ever so minutely, and she put more pressure on his arm. A sharp yelp of pain, and worried whispering from Peter to someone behind her, probably Hobie. The Anomaly's symbiote let out a sharp crackle and a clicking, teeth against teeth, as it watched.

“Do you really want to fuck around with this?” Gwen hissed as the lady tried to struggle. A sharp jolt from the elbow pressing her to the wall, and a couple shouts from the thugs behind her echoed outward. “Because let me tell you, finding out isn’t going to be pretty.”

“And what would you even do?”

A cruel edge slipped into Gwen’s voice, low and sharp as knives brushing against skin, powered entirely by determined, desperate fury. “Well, your arm is positioned in a way that’s very easy to overextend. And from there, it’s pretty easy to break. Tell us what the parts are for, and I won’t snap your arm backwards so the inside of your bones get their first taste of daylight.”

“Okay, whoa, cool it!” Peter’s grip on her shoulder tightened considerably, and she managed to suppress a hiss of pain as he tried to pull her backward. She forcibly locked her feet to the ground. “We don’t threaten to break people’s arms! Back- did you seriously just stick yourself to the concrete!?”

They know something.

“Back off, Spider-Woman,” the Anomaly said, voice cold and sharp. There was a much more distinctive snarl to the tone this time, sounding much more like the symbiote speaking instead of whoever might be underneath. “This isn't how we do things, not if you don't want your head blown off by a bullet!"

A loaded gun, aimed between her eyes.

The ringing remains of a gunshot singing in her skull as desperate pleas fell on deaf ears.

The certainty of safe hands, just as certainly eliminating the fear of lead embedding itself through flesh and bone.

She didn’t listen, her anger didn’t want to listen. They were constructing something that would inevitably hurt so many people - that already had hurt so many people - and Gwen wanted nothing more than to eliminate the possibility of that happening again.

Canon events be damned, wasn’t this world supposedly doomed? Why would it matter if she stopped the supercollider here or somewhere else? Why would it matter if she tried to save Miles in a place that was already unstable and lacking a core component?

The mounting frustration finally snapped, for a moment long enough that she pulled the woman’s wrist downward, and this time she screamed in pain. Peter's hand and someone else's immediately tried to pull her away, much harsher than before.

“That’s enough, stop it!”

“Get back in your lane, Spider-Woman!”

No, I can stop this from happening again.

I can fix this.

I have to try to fix this.

If they tell us, we can fix this.

I can put a stop to this before it even happens, and we’ll be one step closer to finding Miles.

Familiar thoughts rushed into her mind at even the idea. Wondering if he was okay, wondering if he was safe, wondering if he’d figured out a way to stabilize himself, wondering if he'd figured out a way to stop everything from going wrong.

Thoughts rushed forward in a storm, repetitive and laced with her worry and terror and anger and hope, until-

What would he think of this?

A beat.

Time slowing, agonizingly so.

Another beat. Paralyzing.

What would he think of you threatening to hurt people to try and find him?

No.

I'm trying to help.

I'm trying to fix this.

Violent.

Spilling red onto concrete.

Violence is all you seem to know.

Would he understand that?

Stop talking.

This isn't how it's supposed to go.

You don't know that. You can't say that.

Untrustworthy.

Liar.

All you've done is lie.

Stop it.

You're in the way.

We can't save him if you keep planting doubts.

Dangerous.

You're falling apart.

Look at where it's led you.

Just like last time, and every time before it.

Stop.

You… you're making this more difficult. Just let me do what I have to do. Just let me do this my own way, just once-

You’re proving him right.

You always prove them right about these things.

Always caught in the same web.

No wonder you can't break free. No wonder you're so stuck, just like everyone else.

You are not doing this your own way.

…please. I just want to help. I-

Spider-Man isn't supposed to hurt people.

That’s what the Society does. And even they don’t threaten it like this.

The only one who threatens like this is the one who wants him trapped and broken down until he is nothing.

The same thing he would do to anyone who compromised his mission. That is when he threatens.

And for what?

Because you're frustrated?

For petty revenge?

To supposedly ‘prevent tragedy?’”

He would be so disappointed in you.

You’re acting like them .

So what does that make you , Gwen?

A wave of glacial terror made Gwen's blood run cold, and just like that, her fury was drowned as the world seemed to right itself and return to speed, pieces of the universe falling back into place without any question of what could have possibly happened.

A sharp gasp escaped her, and her hands jerked sharply - right in the direction they shouldn't have gone.

The thug screamed as a horrible, distinctive crack broke the air in two, shooting a cold burst of adrenaline through her body that made her forget to focus on sticking her feet to the ground. Hands dragged her away from the screams as the world melted together into a mix of nothing but sound and cold brick as she stumbled back into a wall, the rough texture grating at her hands and tearing something as she scrambled up the side.

What…

Webs shot through her vision of the alleyway in a blur, securely sticking the lady to the brick of the opposing building as Gwen scrambled upward, until the back of her head banged against the metal of a fire escape. Horror seeped into every crack and crevice of her body, slithering like an insidious weed through every part of her mind until the only thing she felt that wasn’t pain and disgust was the creeping, slow wash of sheer, creeping blue cold dripping down every bone and nerve until Gwen couldn't move.

What did… What did I just do?

Bile rose in the back of her throat, a sickness that Gwen shoved back down with all her strength as she raised shaking hands into her view. Someone called up to her from below, but their voice melted away into the rest of the ringing in her ears and the yelling and the screams.

There had to be proof.

There had to be something this time, anything, to prove that this wasn't real, that she hadn't accidentally done what she thought she'd done.

The palms of her gloves were still white. The palms of her gloves were sterile, unfamiliar, hands made for harm instead of help. 

She flipped her hands over, and a sick, twisting wrench coiled through her stomach at the sight.

The fabric on the knuckles of her gloves were torn open; from where she’d hit brick walls, from where it had scraped against skin and metal and concrete somewhere in the torrent of the fight.

The skin underneath was torn open in familiar, ragged circles, the wounds singing a mockingly cheerful red and slowly-brightening stings of pain. The edges of the red were spattered with the stained white of pulled skin and darker greys of tiny, embedded concrete pebbles, following the edges of the torn fabric.

They were nothing more than scrapes, surface layers of skin peeled away by the fight to reveal deeper layers below. Not deep enough to pierce into muscle, but enough for blood to well up in the wounds, to gently seep out of the openings and across undamaged skin in serene rivulets.

It was enough for red to sink into white fabric, to stain it in a taunting ruby that stood out against the white against the dark

It was enough to render her hands unfamiliar and dangerous and wrong.

The blood was already drying, crusting at the edges of the wounds. If she didn't get the injuries cleaned, the rapid healing might find the little pieces of concrete and brick in exposed skin and heal over them instead.

Compared to the wound in her arm, the one Gwen could feel writhing as muscle twisted and rewove itself back together, as it pushed out the bullet and grafted it's own skin back in place, the scrapes on her knuckles were nothing.

It really was only a minute amount of blood. It was a really small wound, in comparison to others she'd received. Scrapes on the knuckles were so common that Gwen could have treated them in her sleep, without even needing the help of an online guide.

But staring at it, the world fading out into background noise and rolling into nothing but distant, hazy perception?

These small indications of violence, her violence, closed her throat and sealed away her voice. 

The only sounds Gwen could make were shaky, ragged gasps for air, her hands shaking as dull pain throbbed through them.

He would be so disappointed in you.

With Violet Weaver, Gwen had almost wished for the blood to appear on her gloves, to prove that she’d done something wrong. She’d almost prayed for it to appear on her hands, to show her what she was capable of. She'd wanted something like proof, and yet nothing had yielded from it.

This time was different. This was so, so different.

Yes, violence was a part of the job. Violence was something that you had to get used to and accept as normal when you were Spider-Man; everything from petty street fights to some of the worst things humans could do was on the table. There was no censorship guide when that mask went on, no instruction manual to prepare you for everything you could encounter.

Gunfire, fist fights, makeshift weaponry, advanced tech, unstable substances - all of it was something that, after a while, you became numb to.

Violence was a base necessity of the job; sometimes, you couldn't solve a huge problem without knocking a couple guys flat on on their asses. Sometimes getting information involved webbing people to walls or sneaking into places you weren't supposed to be.

But that's what it was: necessity.

What she'd just done wasn't necessity.

Look at what you've done.

Draw your eyes away from your hands, and look at what you've done.

Threatening to break someone's arm for information was not entirely necessary. That was a thing that shouldn't have won out, that she should have stopped herself before it got to that point.

Actually breaking the woman's arm, accident or not, was the same thing that every criminal she'd ever sworn to stop partook in: cruelty.

Now that the proof was there, in the background screams and drying blood on her knuckles, there was no denying that anymore.

She’d hurt someone.

She could hurt more people.

She could take out her anger on people who’d done nothing wrong, and the proof of it was right in front of her eyes.

Spider-Man doesn’t hurt people.

Spider-Man isn’t supposed to hurt people.

And yet here you are. Cruel and capable of doing it again

You hurt him. 

Shouldn't that have been proof enough for you?

None of the others are cruel.

They know better. They act better. That's why they are Spider-Man.

You know better. But you can't act it.

So what does that make you?

The question burned its way to the forefront of her mind, not malicious or doubtful, but serene compared to the hurricane of her thoughts and the writhing discomfort in her wounds, of bruises forming and the near-impossibility of breathing.

A question she'd asked before, that she'd asked since the day she'd been taken into the Society, that she'd never found a solid answer to.

This time, an answer slowly started to reach up from the darkest pits of her mind, scattered pieces slowly clicking together from scattered memories of the fight.

The answer ducked away as her Spider-sense, the damn thing, hissed out an alert of warning that made her head snap up just before somebody appeared in front of her. Hands landed on her shoulders, and she refocused her gaze long enough to realize it was Hobie. Hobie, looking at her with a wild mix of concern and pity and almost anger on his mask- no, his face. He’d pulled the mask up to look her in the eye, and somehow that was worse.

“Gwendy," he whispered urgently, looking over his shoulder at the Anomaly and Peter. The woman with the broken arm was webbed to the wall, with the symbiote anomaly keeping an almost hawk-like watch over her, while Peter was doing his best to interrogate the remaining thugs. “Gwen. Look at me, okay?”

The use of her regular name snapped her out of her thoughts, Gwen's shoulders hunched, and she yanked her hands closer to herself. Maybe he'd already seen her damage, but he didn't have to keep looking.

"Are you listening?" he asked, and she nodded, her breathing still erratic and shaky. It almost felt like her lungs weren’t working anymore, a burning hiss of movement deep within her chest even as she tried to breathe.

A small sigh from Hobie, and Gwen's eyes slammed shut. Waiting for something to happen, for something to explode.

“Look, I know it ain't easy,” he said slowly, keeping eye contact with Gwen even as she barely saw through him. “I get that. But that? It ain't a road you wanna go down. Going back gets rougher the further along you go."

Gwen couldn’t even bring herself to speak. Her throat was closed up, it hurt to try and get the words out of her lungs.

“Go take a breather,” Hobie said slowly, passing her something and pressing it toward her hands insistently. "Take this, go calm yourself down-"

-

N̴̨̝̞̜͓͋o̵̡͔̤̮̣͗̓̋͜͠.̴̫̱̋̑̔

̵͇̉ͅͅ

̷̢̡͎̤̥̞͒́̀Y̷̙̫̹̽e̴̟̥͍̺͑́͆͝s̴̝̬͖̮̍̈͛̏̀͐.̶̘̟̰̜͑̎̎̕͝

̷̬͖̩̏̅́͝

̵͚̆̕͝B̴̩̰̉́̀͊ŗ̸͔̬̂͛̾͛͝ȅ̸͙͔̣͔̍́́a̴̛̩̹͔̮͉̩͛̾̐̕̚k̶̲͛̽̄̎́̈́ ̸͈̪̠̳̤̮͊͋ỉ̸̪͂̉̀ţ̸̪͙̹͕̃͆͘̚͘ ̸̢̬̟̣̫̐i̶̩͂̈́̓ń̸̳̖̃̇ ̵̗̋̾͐̀̕h̷͍̃̍̓͒̍̇a̷̛̺̫̅͠l̵̠̺͖̑̅̈́̍f̶̨͓̝̜̐͌̍̿̚ͅ.̸̥͔̬̇͗͘ͅ

̷̪̲̜̳͂́͠͠

̴̤̱̟̜̫̰͛̿̌̕̚͘T̷̡͔̬̉̇̂͗̌͝h̶͙̦̦̬̍ͅi̸̡͉̪͙̱̔ͅs̶̟̫̟̲̺͓̾̃̽̀͘ ̸͔̓ỉ̸̫͌ş̶̥̥͕͒̑̅ ̴̗͚͊͛̂̊̕n̶̟̣̖̰̓̎̀͆o̶̢̩̦͎͋̋̒̈́͆͝ͅţ̴̙̭̖̣͋͊̀̈́̕͝ ̶̘͉͂͆ţ̸̤̙̠̀̅̈ͅẖ̴̥̺̑̏͂̏̚͝ę̸͑̊̀̈̕͝ ̴̨̮̘̬̾͑̋͋͝͝ò̸͓̝͙̜̩̟̑͐ń̶̙̔̑͌̇̉l̷̝͓͚͆̐y̸̖̲͕̬̣̓̐̌͆ ̵̠͖̏̅̀́̈͆t̸̙̰̠̳̱͙̿͝ì̵͓̎̾͝m̷̥̉̋̌̉͝e̶̬̻̝̦͘ͅl̴͇̔ḯ̵̱̟̗̟̦̿́͝n̷͍̟͕̪̖͊́̓̈́͒͒e̶̳̮̾̿͌͒́̕͜ͅ.̶̬̝̘͕̀͝

̸̛̱̣̖͎́͠

̶̡̼͇̐̓ͅẎ̶͓̮͊̂̕͝ö̸̙͖̰̘̈́̌̿ư̴̪̆ ̴͕͉̠̫̠͔͂̊̄̄̎w̴̻̻̭͚̯̋̚͘͜i̸̞̖̥͛͒̉́̄l̷̢͖̪̼̲̙̾̀́̕ḽ̴̛̹́̋ ̷̙͚̅͂̽̊̓͜͝k̵͖̠͈̹͎͆͛̀͐ṇ̶̣̻̻͔̒ò̴̫̬̈w̴̦̪͇͎̃ ̶̦̳̯̙̝́̈͝ţ̵̙͕͇̻͌̅͘͜͠h̶̡͉͎̃͂́è̵̮͒̓̇̈́m̴̩͎̳͙̱̜̓͑͗ ̶̦̩̣͚͒ẘ̵̛͍͖͔͈̫͐̓̿h̸̲̳͓̾͊ë̴̢̱͓̮̠͌̑͐n̷͚͚̪̈́͐̎ ̷̥̀̆͌̀ỹ̷̠͕̳̌̕ơ̴̢̦͍̯̲̱̄̆́ṷ̵͚͇͝ ̶̡̀͒͘͝ṣ̷̹́́ė̸̝̦͈̙̆̎̿ẻ̴͕̟̗̉͒̌̄ ̶̖̓̇͘̕t̵̠͚̋̾̏̾h̵͇͍͚̜̎̅͆͒e̶̛̜͇͎̞̿̈́̃̉m̷͈͙̞͕̰͛̆̀̓͋̋.̸̯̥̀͌͋

-

-said slowly. He moved to give her something, to speak again, but was swiftly interrupted as Peter and the Anomaly landed on the wall next to them.

What-?

"Come on, up on the roof," the Anomaly hissed sharply, cutting through her thoughts and any other distractions that might have been present. "They don't need to hear this."

"Give her a minute-"

"On. The. Roof." It wasn't a suggestion anymore. The venom lacing the Anomaly's voice was so downright murderous that a rush of fear had Gwen scramble out from underneath the fire escape, following Peter up to the roof. Hobie and the other Spider followed swiftly behind.

"You alright, kiddo?" Peter's hand landed on her shoulder as the two got over the parapet of the building. The shouts from the criminals below had quieted.

There was no more screaming.

Gwen's throat only tightened, still unable to speak. It didn't even feel like she could shake or nod her head anymore.

Her silence said enough, and Peter's hand tightened on her shoulder as the sounds of footsteps behind them echoed lowly across the rooftop.

"What the fuck was that!?" The Anomaly's voice cut through the air, and everyone's head snapped it's way as the symbiote Spider bubbled and lashed out with wire-thin tendrils. So much for the criminals not needing to hear this. "What the hell happened to 'don't interfere with anything you have no business in?'"

"Well, my bad for thinking that maybe this could help us find out where our friend is!" Peter snapped, hostility clearer than glass. "Wasn't it one of your guys who gave us this hint?"

"Oi, Peter, don't drag him into this," Hobie said coldly. "This ain't about him."

"Yeah, and we didn't think that it was possible that you Society jackasses couldn't keep one another on your damn leashes!" the Anomaly snapped furiously. The symbiote lashed out closer to her, and Gwen shrank back at the words. "We thought that maybe, just maybe, with time that you guys would fix whatever the hell is wrong with you all, but clearly we were wrong about that!"

"That doesn't mean-"

"Jack shit!" The fury in the symbiote's voice was palpable, the cold night air chilling her to the bone even with the warmth generated by her body trying to fix itself. "We told you not to interfere with things that didn't concern you, and yet here we are! Cyberbyte gave you that lead because we thought we could trust you not to do anything stupid, and instead that one proved that anyone coming out of the Society is worse than they've ever been!"

"Both of you, enough!"

Hobie's shout silenced the rooftop, and everyone froze as the shock of the noise muting everyone immediately.

Hobie didn't yell.

Ice cold fear spread through Gwen. Peter's grip on her shoulder was almost crushing, but she didn't protest even as sharp stings of pain echoed through her bullet wound.

"None of this is right, alright?" he snapped, flinging his arms wide between the two groups. "Peter, it ain't their fault that the lead we got led us to another goddamned supercollider! And I don't like saying it, but not everyone in the Society's sorry and sad! We're trying to help him, and I know that this wasn't how it was meant to go, but we gotta find our friend, okay!?"

Silence.

Cold, terrifying silence.

Gwen had only seen Hobie yell at someone a couple of times. Only this time was there a panic and desperation in his voice that matched her own.

It almost hurt to hear him lose his cool so badly.

The Anomaly took a slow, hissing breath in. "Fine," it snapped, teeth bared and directed at all of them. "I'll trust you, Hobie. But they have to earn that kind of trust, and we're only going to consider it if your 'friends' can keep themselves under control."

A tiny spark of indignant irritation flared to life in her mind-

You know it's right.

The little spark flickered out, nestling itself into the corner of her heart that could even still feel that.

"Get out of here," the symbiote snapped. "Someone has to make sure that these guys get found by the right people, and you certainly aren't the ones that should be doing it."

"Fine," Peter bit out, even his voice sounding choked and uneasy. "Come on, kiddo. We need to get patched up anyway."

"Not you, Hobie," the Anomaly corrected. "I'd like to have a word with you."

A quiet rang out over the rooftop, before Hobie sighed quietly. "Right. I'll catch you two later."

"Are you sure-"

"I thought I told you to get lost, Spider-Man. Take her and leave."

Peter's grip on her shoulder loosened, and he silently started to lead her away.

Gwen didn't protest.

Nobody wanted to acknowledge the quiet ping of a bullet dropping against concrete and a brief spatter of red falling alongside it, just before Gwen and Peter leaped from the roof to swing away.

Chapter Text

Watching the other two swing away made his gut curl in blatant unease.

Unease was not exactly something that Hobie Brown was used to feeling in full. It usually morphed to something else before long; unease, in whatever form it took, didn’t tend to stick around.

Which was fine by him - unease wasn't anybody's favourite feeling. Unless you were rather chronically addicted to stress, it took a relative backseat to everything else that went on in the foreground. It certainly did for Hobie - it was less a backseat and more of a lounge chair on another island.

They didn't believe in needing to feel constant unease, to always be alert and ready in case something happened this time. That was just a recipe for disaster. It always left eventually, and it always came accompanied with relief and any other feeling that one might particularly need, if one was so inclined to need other emotions to accompany it.

It didn’t leave this time, not even as Peter and Gwen turned a corner and vanished completely from sight. No, this unease settled with Hobie and it stayed, permanent marker through important documents; a persistent, hissing sensation that set off his Spidey-sense.

An audible, irritated click echoed from next to him, shifting and crackling filling the air as the symbiote moved.

Alright, maybe it wasn’t a sensation setting his Spidey-sense off. It could, perhaps, be the visibly agitated and jumpy symbiote carrier who was waiting for them to turn around and look at it.

Just some food for thought. A little advice to anybody who might be dealing with particularly annoyed symbiotes in their life, if that was a thing you had to deal with on a regular enough basis to consider it normal.

“I don’t trust them,” Eri announced, its voice unlayering as the symbiote - he’d never really gotten the chance to learn it's name before they’d both vanished - slithered off it's face. The expression underneath was a hesitant glare, directed toward Hobie as he looked over. The picture being printed here wasn't a pretty one. “I don’t… we don't like them. You can’t… Hobie, you can’t be serious with those guys.”

“What’s it to you if I am?” they shot back, trying to wipe the sudden bolt of worry clear from his face and from his fingers as he turned to face it.

Why was he worried? He didn't have any reason to worry. He didn't have any reason to believe in worry right now. Worry was just a word - it couldn't hurt you.

The mental reassurances did little for them.

His fingers tapped against the neck of his guitar all the same, a erratic, nonsensical rhythm that played on a loop that never found it's beginning again.

The words and colours printed across their skin regardless.

“You saw what just happened!” Eri’s shout rang out across the rooftop, a noise that made Hobie’s heart instinctively freeze and the world ripple in and out of headlines before they could regain their self-control. “She just broke someone’s arm out of… I don't know, out of spite!? Just because she could!?”

“It was an accident,” they fired back, still trying their best to keep cool. It was getting harder to do that, but Hobie had to try and at least be calm about it if Eri wouldn't. Plus, they'd done their mascara this morning - if he panicked to the point where it could get ruined, all that hard work would have been for nothing. “Eri, her hands jerked. Everyone forgets their own strength sometimes, especially doing what we do.”

“Not like that!" Eri stormed up next to them, and Hobie stilled as the symbiote let out some angry gurgles. The look on it's face was one of anger, yes, but there was a hint of shock underneath it too. "She threatened to break it before her hands ‘jerked’ or whatever, and you heard it! You had to have heard how she sounded from the outside! That threat was serious, Hobie!”

Hobie’s stomach curled, a sickening, jumbled twist of words that had him gripping the neck of his guitar too tightly. There was an anger there that they didn’t quite know where to place nor who to direct it toward, scrapped together pieces of information that were glued together to make a confusing and irritating collage.

The anger tore him in half, between two parts he believed to be true but couldn't choose between. It tore between agreeing with one friend and defending another; reassuring one of it’s safety and keeping the others from getting hurt as a result.

Between the outcasts - Hobie hated calling them anomalies, the way it was always spoken in the Society sounded so demeaning and dismissive - and between the band.

And just like everything else Hobie knew, there was no one right choice between them. There was no clearly defined label to stick onto either choice, because all labels wore down and dirtied and fell off with time.

Labels were never meant to stick - things always changed too fast for that. A lesson Hobie knew inside and out, better than the back of their hands or the string placements on their guitar.

It was only a matter of how fast the back-liner collected dust, and how long someone would leave it there before peeling it off and replacing it with something new.

Eri noticed their stiffening, it’s expression morphing into one of a pity that Hobie understood wasn’t entirely directed toward him. The symbiote pulled away, settling into a shinier, liquid-like surface that dripped in waves down it’s body as minor headlines and sticky-note blues settled over the night. “You didn’t see it where I did, Hobie.”

“I didn't,” he agreed, forcing his shoulders to relax. “But it ain’t fair to her, alright? She’s scared. They all are.”

“So are we,” it pointed out, voice even quieter now. “And you are, too. Try to hide it all you want, but it’s not as hard to see as you want it to be.”

Quiet settled over the rooftop, bleeding ink through freshly printed pages in the rain. The words rang out in highlighter green, the bubble peeling apart as understanding fully sunk in.

And once again, Hobie was torn. Between the people he’d helped from the Society, out of a system that kept trying to break them, and the people he’d already failed to help, who had been broken and now suffered the consequences.

They were all his friends. The outcasts and the band.

Hobie's jaw clenched. This situation solidly, on every level, sucked.

“She’s the same one who got involved with the first supercollider event, right?” Eri’s question broke the semi-comfortable hush , and Hobie absently leaned to the side to try and avoid it’s lingering gaze. “The ones that got Earth-1610 on Miguel’s radar in the first place?”

“Supposed first anomaly, yeah. Not that I'm buying that load of shit, of course. Dunno if it really was those lads or not.”

“And who is it that you're looking for again? Your friends have given us descriptions, but we don’t actually know who it is you’re trying to find.”

Hobie let the world completely wash into misprint, their breath catching in their throat.

Should he tell it? It would certainly give them a better idea of who to look for, if Miles did drop in through this dimension at some point. And these guys were friends, allies in this fight - they wouldn’t lie to him, not with everything that was on the line.

They wouldn’t lie.

They won't lie to me.

The fact they needed to even question that was absurd - Peter’s probing had done some kind of number on whatever messily put together collage that made up Hobie’s faith, and it wasn’t any number he appreciated, thank you very much.

Hobie forced those words into the collage, stuffing it into the foundation of everything else.

“We’re looking for the lad from 1610,” Hobie said, after only a moment more of deliberation that they despised with every atom. “He got into a row with the old sod running everything, and, surprise surprise, it got ugly, and Miggy was beyond brassed off. 1610 jumped through the totally-humane-bug-zapper to try getting home, but when Gwendy went looking, he wasn’t there. Now everyone's copping' the pot for it.”

Eri stayed silent a moment too long.

Hobie didn't comment on it - only filed the lapse in reply away for later.

“So you think he’s here?” it asked finally, their voice lower than he’d ever heard from the boisterous, loud symbiote. It was almost unsettling, how suddenly the demeanour had changed. From top of the header bold-lines to the back page small print.

“Her Spidey-connection says he is.” His guitar hummed as they absently plucked a couple of strings, the notes popping out and breaking in a slow minor key. “Problem that they ain’t thinking of is how we’re gonna get everyone out of  here when we do find him, if the front door’s locked.”

The sounds of the city lapsed back into the quiet, a half-comfort even in a dimension that didn’t belong to him. It was certainly more comforting than the sounds of their own city, but Hobie wouldn’t admit that to anyone while he still had free will.

This was a city of blaring headlines and overflowing crime report columns, of pasted together pictures that didn't fit each other but combined to make a city regardless.

That was the kind of quiet, the kind of serene picture, that you couldn't replicate easily.

A small snort escaped them. Maybe this place wasn't so different from home after all.

Eri shifted, the symbiote stilling almost completely as they leaned back on the parapet. “You mean everyone…?”

“Oh, come off it now, you’re part of the band,” Hobie announced, casually swinging an arm over the symbiote’s shoulder to drag it into a reassuring side hug. “We ain’t gonna leave you all to scarf the dirt again.”

“In that case,” they said, voice returning to normal as the symbiote morphed back up, covering half it’s face again, “I might have an idea about how you guys could get home. I’d have to run it by Rowan and Casey first, to see if it’s possible, but I have a theory.”

“Oh?” 

Hobie couldn’t deny the small sparkle of hope that strummed to life in his hands. If there was a way out, surely his friends could find it. There were at least 15 incredibly intelligent minds all working together - someone would catch that crucial thread of an idea eventually.

The strums of the guitar jumped up and out of a minor key.

“You have to promise,” Eri said sharply, worry obvious on it's face and in it's voice, in the way the spikes on the top of it's head flicked. “Promise that we can all go home if this works. Promise that we won't have to be stuck in this dimension any more waiting for something outside to change.”

“I don’t believe in promises,” he said cleanly, a cheeky grin on his face. “You’re all coming along whether they like it or not.”

A grin finally broke across Eri's face, mostly confident, but it didn’t take a detective to see the grateful twinge hidden below. It was all in the way it's symbiote's tail started dragging across the rooftop faster, like a dog wagging it's tail. “It’s a really stupid idea, but hear me out on this one, okay?”

“I don’t believe in stupidity either,” Hobie confirmed. “Drop the tea, come on now!”

A flicker of the symbiote warping, before Eri’s face was hidden from view again as it slithered back across skin and settled into the burning neon magenta that always seemed to accompany Eri on a sunny day. “It has to do with that supercollider they're trying to build. If supercolliders have a habit of ripping open tears in the fabric of reality, then all we have to do-”

Chapter Text

“-is let the supercollider run again.”

She didn't know how long it took her to process those words.

She didn't know when she'd bolted out the apartment window, taking only a few sparse items and a spare hoodie to hide her from the chill of the night.

She didn’t know how long she swung through the city, howling wind rushing past her and deafening her thoughts alongside it.

She didn’t know how long her heartbeat had been thundering in her ears, a cacophony that drowned out everything except for her mind.

We have to let the supercollider run again.

The one thing I need to destroy to keep us all safe.

And I can't do that anymore.

That thought alone powered her last swing, and Gwen pretty much threw herself up and onto the roof of a nearby skyscraper. She stumbled as she landed, and while she did try rather desperately to steady herself, it was no use.

Her knees painfully hit concrete, her hands following shortly after, sounds of the city fading in and out through the dragging sound of her own heaving breaths and rhythmic pulses of a heart. The phone in her jacket pocket - one that Hobie had lent her a day or so prior - was pushed to the side quickly, to make sure she didn’t break it, and she ripped her mask off faster than she thought possible the moment that she was able to push herself back up off the ground.

Alchemax parts.

This couldn't happen here.

The glass case.

This wasn't supposed to happen here.

They’re building the supercollider again.

The thoughts sank in, kept sinking in, so many times that Gwen could have sworn something inside her mind had broken. All she could do was pray that she was wrong, that whatever it had been that she’d seen wasn’t real. That what Hobie had told them was wrong, that none of this could actually be happening.

She hadn't really processed the supercollider, the intentions behind it, until Hobie had announced it.

It couldn’t be real.

Not here.

Not now.

No.

She shakily leaned back on her legs, chilled concrete vaguely pulling her back to reality as stray gravel and pebbles dug in under her knees, under her palms, biting with small teeth into skin through fabric.

Gwen pulled out the phone and earbuds, her hands shaking violently with every movement. Unlocking it would have been easy had she not been shuddering like a leaf in the wind, had her mind not been spinning with so many horrible thoughts and memories and worries that the PIN number was buried beneath them.

They’re building the supercollider.

Even as Gwen managed to jam the earbuds into her ears, as she opened the music app and logged into her account, as she grabbed a random daylist and hit shuffle, the rattling, heaving breaths that her lungs drew was unmistakable. It burned through the music, the sharp stings and sudden hysterical opening of her lungs screaming for air that she didn't have the focus to give.

The pounding of her heartbeat roared in her eardrums, blood pulsing through her head and thrumming violently in her chest - it wouldn’t leave her alone, it wouldn’t release its grip. The rhythm's teeth sank in deeper than a knife could ever go, and Gwen couldn't find the handle for the blades.

The sudden addition of loud music did almost nothing to dim the shrieking thoughts, the ringing, the pulsing blood, the swishes of air echoing in her lungs with every inhale and exhale.

It would not stop.

They’re building the supercollider.

And you just presented yourself as a viable threat.

There’s no way that they’ll tell us anything about it now.

You actively just told them that you're onto them, and now your biggest lead will vanish.

The music in her ears - a song that she couldn’t remember the name of through the cacophony, through the cold - couldn’t drown out the slowly creeping horror, the realization that-

You might have just lost him again.

And it really is your fault this time.

tears freely dropped onto concrete, and Gwen blinked in an effort to focus on something

anything. 

the concrete under her knees, the stains of her tears on stone, the open tears in her gloves, the splits in her own skin, the red staining white and darkening magenta.

any of it.

Nothing worked.

Gwen tried again, staring at her hands, looking at the

bloodstains.

Real blood this time,

partly her own, and partly from someone else.

He would be so disappointed in you.

“Stop,” she said weakly, but the sound that escaped her sealed throat barely penetrated the overwhelming, suffocating noise.

At most, she felt the vibrations in her neck, words pressing against the insides of her skin

and still sealed away from everything and everyone that could have possibly heard them.

Completely

muted.

You resorted to violence.

You did it on purpose.

And you put a target on everyone's backs.

For no reason

beyond

rage.

Gwen’s free hand curled up into a fist, and a few tears landed in the open wound. Sharp stings pierced through the buzzing everything, the ins and outs of the things that she could understand, dancing through her hand like sparks of fire eating through dry grass.

She'd hurt a stranger. Not in the way she usually did when fighting, but with nothing else besides malicious intent.

All for information that, in the end, had only just barely gotten them started down a path they could possibly follow.

Some would perhaps argue that information was crucial, that the things they could learn from the Alchemax thugs were important enough to risk a little pain. Others might argue that there was a more peaceful solution to it, that just talking instead of fighting could have gotten her somewhere. Some might even have suggested that perhaps she hadn’t gone hard enough on the woman.

Her hands braced against the thug’s, pressing up and down in a way that could have resulted in a shattered joint if she hadn’t stopped.

No, not if Gwen had stopped.

If the others hadn’t stopped her.

The sickening understanding made Gwen turn the music up to an almost intolerable volume, if only to keep her thoughts quiet for just a moment. The song shifted, changing from a loud, heavier metal song to a surprisingly calm, almost mournful melody. She did not pay the lyrics much mind, too frazzled and lost in thought to fully focus on what it was saying anymore. 

The light of day around her was beginning to fade back into the dark, even if perhaps it was only 4 PM. Earth-42 didn’t seem to stick to its sunny days the way other New Yorks did. Her own city's sun stuck around much longer than this one did.

Distant clouds blocked out the fading sunlight for a moment, whatever sick warmth it could have brought her vanishing in an instant.

Her breathing was still too much, the rhythms of her heartbeat, the pounding bass of the music. She needed to breathe. Breathing was important, and hyperventilating wouldn’t help her racing thoughts.

Just telling herself to breathe almost was mocking.

her body knows she can't breathe

because everything is wrong right now.

breathe, dammit.

breathe, Gwen.

Come on. It’s not that hard.

a forced breath in. a shaky breath out.

again.

in. out.

again.

in.

Out.

Longer this time.

In.

Out.

Her lungs stopped rattling. The effort of simply taking in air lessened.

In.

Out. 

A long pause.

Another shaky breath, no longer filled with pins and needles that dug into her throat and her chest.

Another pause.

She could breathe again.

Her mind may not be quiet yet, but she could breathe again. That was a significant improvement.

Gwen pushed herself back to her knees - she hadn't noticed that she'd curled up into an almost fetal position on the roof. It hurt to do so, especially with the protest of bruises and freshly healing cuts.

Another moment passed as Gwen took off her gloves, making a personal point not to look at them. She didn't want to almost spiral into another panic attack because of her suit, and definitely not because she was getting freaked out by a little bit of blood.

Seriously. She was Spider-Woman.

A little bit of blood shouldn't bother her so much. It wasn't even hers.

It's not even yours.

Gwen swallowed back the choked feeling in her throat, although it did little to rid her of it.

Slowly, slowly, Gwen started to get up. Again, it didn't feel the greatest, considering that her body was still rather potently protesting doing any moving right now. At the very least, had someone else been around, she should have been smart and asked for some help up.

But it wasn't the worst pain she'd felt, and it certainly wouldn't be the last. And nobody was around to help her up right now - as always. She could manage on her own, the way she'd always done as Spider-Woman.

That was enough to get her up and on her feet, enough to get her slowly walking over to the edge of the roof. The parapet was cold under her touch as she reached for it, maybe to lean against in the absence of something else to lean on.

Her vision finally cleared as Gwen wiped any remaining tears away from her face, the lyrics of the song she was listening to kicking in quietly. The city around her faded from the bright pastel colours back into darkness as the sun set, darkness that Gwen had gotten painfully used to in the couple of days she’d been here.

Whatever song she was listening to faded in a similar fashion, quiet and soft compared to the music she normally listened to. It was a gentle melody, mournful in the way it hummed through the earbuds, but there was a tiny little piece of it that felt almost ridiculously uplifting.

The only sounds she could really hear now were just a gentle guitar from the song and the remains of her erratic breathing. The only company she had up on this perch in the sky, and even then, the company was almost empty.

Despite better judgment and possibly common sense, Gwen leaned against the wall and stared out at the horizon. Leaning out across rooftops wasn't something she liked to do, especially after being with the Society for a while.

For… rather obvious reasons. If anyone knew better than to lean off of particularly tall skyscrapers, it should have been Gwen for sure.

Tiny instrumentals accompanied the slow-calming pounding of her heart, little plucks of strings that took the racing rhythm and tried to soothe them.

A small spark of curiosity jumped out of her mind, one that made her check the phone. This wasn’t a song she’d heard before, nor an artist she knew. Yes, Gwen had a pretty wide variety in music taste, but songs like these were new to her.

Check the phone.

“Home - Cavetown,” the player read, and absently, even if it was to distract herself from her mind, Gwen hit the back button on the song to restart it. Paying closer attention to the lyrics might keep her from having another full-blown meltdown on a random skyscraper in the middle of the city. She certainly didn't want that to happen.

The music hummed again, and Gwen forced everything clear to tap the background beats of the song and just listen.

“Often, I am upset

That I cannot fall in love but I guess

This avoids the stress of falling out of it.”

Oh.

That… feels familiar.

On second thought, maybe this wasn’t the song that she should listen to. Gwen had a variety of other ones, but something about this one spoke to her.

Not to the panicking thoughts, not to the stress lacing her mind, but a quieter part of her. One that had tiredly fallen back since their search started, content to let everything pass it by without noticing. It was a part that hadn't reared it's head in a long while, but one that Gwen wasn't sure she wanted to see right now.

“Are you tired of me yet?

I’m a little sick right now but I swear

When I’m ready I will fly us out of here.”

Would he be tired of me, if he could see what we were doing?

The thought rose unbidden as Gwen’s gaze absently stuck to the horizon, stubbornly refusing to move elsewhere in the sky. Clouds dipped from bright whites into vibrant oranges, fading into red. Red like his suit colours.

This sky didn’t look like her own sky. It wasn't wrong, exactly, but it was enough to keep her attention drawn to the clouds instead of trailing down to the city below.

As foreign as any New York outside her own was, this one oddly settled with her faster than all the others. Maybe it was just the way that the orange melted into red without care, how the sky changed from pale blue to purple in a matter of minutes.

This sky didn't look like hers. Hers changed at the slightest whim of emotion, from anyone around her or her own.

It didn't look like his sky, either. The one that smoothly faded from colour to colour, that let the world pass below without responding to the lives underneath.

She was tired. Surely, Miles was tired too, right?

“I’ll cut my hair

To make you stare

I’ll hide my chest

And I'll figure out a way to get us out of here.”

A way out of here.

The words felt almost foreign when she heard them.

And she didn't know where 'here' was anymore.

Was 'here' in this dimension? Earth-42 was locked from both ways - there wasn’t going to be any in or out anytime soon. And even if there were, they still needed to actually find Miles, with the help of the Anomalies or not. Surely that qualified as needing a way out.

You’ll have to figure out a way to get people out of here, regardless of what happens, her thoughts sang in tune with the melody. They have to get home, too.

Maybe 'here' was the mess they were all in. The chases, the multiverse starting to unravel at the slightest disturbance, the Spider Society - that certainly could count.

Another, quiet thought.

'Here' could qualify as just her own mind, too. A place she was locked in that was filled with nothing but anxiety and terror, unease and fear, all of it spiralling out around a fragment of hope that Gwen had no choice but to keep alive at this point.

“Turn off your porcelain face

I can’t really think right now and this place

Has too many colours, enough to drive all of us insane.”

Even without the music, it would have been hard to think. The words were only mimicking her thoughts, to an almost painful degree, but Gwen was reluctant to actually turn the music off at this point.

The sky shimmered a variety of colours for a moment, the clouds responding in kind, before returning to it's previous state.

Was it a glitch? No, surely not. She had a watch on.

Maybe that was just how the sky here worked. It changed colours occasionally, those colours probably meaning something, but not the same way hers did.

Someone else probably knew the colours better.

Her thoughts strayed to him unintentionally, all the worry and fear and hope simmering under the surface enough to draw her in.

Maybe Miles would know.

“Are you dead? Sometimes I think I’m dead

‘Cause I can feel ghosts and ghouls wrapping my head

But I don't wanna fall asleep just yet.”

Well, that was possibly the worst timing for those lyrics to come up. The ever-present hiss of worry, the one that said the searching and hoping might be for nothing, reared its ugly head, and Gwen had to forcibly shove it to the side before her thoughts could spiral down that train.

Miles was not dead.

He wouldn't just die that easily. There was no way in hell that was ever going to be possible - he was both too stubborn and too… Miles… to just suddenly be gone like that.

It was almost scary how much the song seemed to get it, where few others could. It almost scared her how much this one stupid little song had almost completely managed to pick apart her brain and the thoughts within it's depths.

Gwen rubbed her eyes harshly, almost trying to push back the tears threatening to spill out.

She didn't want to cry. A song was not about to make her cry, not right now. Not when she couldn't afford to do that.

You need to stay strong.

You can't let them see you failing.

They'll give up if you fall.

Stay strong.

“My eyes went dark

I don’t know where

My pupils are

But I’ll figure out a way to get us out of here.”

There it was again.

Figure out a way out of here.

And she still wasn't anywhere near sure what 'here' might mean.

It could be anywhere, and yet none of those places were here.

Eyes going dark… that probably meant something-

S̸͔͚̠̰̜̟̍͐̎̈́̇͋̍̀̊̚h̴͙̯̞͍͈̯̘͎̤̤̻͔̒̇͊̌̈́̀̂ͅę̷͓̩́̿̄̎̎̊͗̔̎͋̀͘͘̚͜͠ͅ ̶̨͉͔̈͝ä̵̛̟́̉̀̆̀̆̋̎͂̈́̓ļ̴͈̬̃̇̀r̷̟̯̈͌͂̊͋̉́̿̏̌̚͜ͅͅë̶̡͙͓̺̠͈̦́å̷̰̟̩͈̱͇̭̘̥̀͝d̴̬̰̞͎̏͆̋̊̐́́͛͗͆͗͊͒̕y̶̨̨̡̫̞̻̪̼̗͕̪͉̽̏̔͒̈́͒̏͌̏͑̿̉͝ͅ ̷͇͊̐̀̿̇̄͆ķ̴̦̮̟͔̠̤͉̰͔͛̀͐̔̃ͅn̶͈͕̪̩̭̼̺̥͙̓̊̚ó̶̫͌̇̒̋͘͝͝w̷͕̹̓͗̈́̏̄̇͆͋͛̓͛̚͝s̷̘̗̲̱̻̱͇̻̗̠̲͆͒̇͜.̷̡̧̧̧̛̳̯̯͇̻͍͍͌̉̂͑̌͐̕͝ ̵̯̬̼̜̳̩͓̳̳̘̲̣̫́ͅT̸̡̗̳̣̜̭̩̂̋̀̃͌̒̔́̓͘ḩ̷̛̮̱̻̣̫̳͔̠̲̱̀ȩ̸̛̥͎̹̼̦͕̦̦̗̟͙͙̜̾̑̋̒̅r̸̳̰̰̯̠̜̋̇̉̉̓͋̋̈́̽͌͜͠͝ͅe̴̩̼͇̬͇͎̞̥͚̯̩͋̏̊͒̋̂̇͐̾̀͆̚ ̵̻̫̭̝̠̺̥̆͛̉͐̎͒̓̓̍ͅi̴̧̛͚̪̗͉̙̼̟̘̭̬̅̊͆̔ͅs̸̢͖̥̺̩̹̭̱̊̐̔̾͐̈́̀̋̆͒̾͝ ̵̟͙̳͙̥̥̘̠̻̗̙̭̈n̸̹̜͕̮̊͊̆͐̿͜o̸̢͚̖̼͎̮̲̬͕͚̻̅̾̃̾̅̐͛̀͑͜͜ ̷̨̛͚̩̲͍̣̏̓̆̈́̎͐̋̒̃͘̕p̶̧̠̿̔́̓̐̚͘͜͜o̷̍͂͋̅̍ͅî̶̤̳̹̮̦̹̣̩̟͍͍͔̘̈́̉̀͆͝n̸͇̭̣̬̟̠̲̦̤̊ͅt̴̨̧̩̝̠̪̫͎͐̿̓ ̶̛̛͕̹͍̾̉͌i̷̧̤̊̀̓͛̓͛ͅn̸̢̧̛̛̠̣̤̱̠̥̱̂̌̓̄̋̈́͒̈́͜͜͝͝ ̷̠̐̍̾́̆͊̐̏̚͝ŝ̴̳̫̳̜͕̹͙̀̾͋h̶̢͔̟̝͓͓̘͇͖̤̻̖̖̭͙̅̊́̒͂̊́͂̊̍̍̆̕õ̷̫̒̊w̶̨̢̙̹͚̹̾̓͋̔̏͝i̸̳̙̝͙͈̜̞̎͗̽̏́͜͝ͅṅ̵̙g̶̪̗̥͈͔̞̑͗̈́̔̍͠ ̴̛̟́̈́̓̓͂͐̈́̄͐̚͠͠͠͝h̵̡͌͂̈́ę̶̨̞̹͎͙̲̹̘̺̝̼̘͕̦̀̇r̷̨̬̻̠̯̞̰͙̘̫̣̉̌̎̂̍͊͠.̷͍̠͎͎̌

̸̡̛̬͎̦̘̺̰͋́̒̒̄͠

̷̢͉̜͚͉̓͒̈̄̊͗̋̒͋͊́͊̚̚͝S̶̪͇̦̫͖̟̰̳̭̟̜̯̳͐̓͝͝ḩ̶̱́ͅͅȅ̷̡̢̧͚̼͉͖̖̺̝͖͖̼̤͇̈̃̎́͛̈̏͘̚͝͝͝͝ ̴̧̜̘̲̻̙̤͖͎̞̀̏͂̒̐̊̃͊̍̀̉̕̚̚͠ḍ̵̛̙̗̺̳̘͕̾̾͑͆͂̋́͜ớ̶̯̰̗̜̲͔̝̘̮̞͂̏̓̓́͂̅͌͗͋͘e̷̘͋͂̑̚s̷̛̝̯̻̖͈̘̙͚̹̦̊̀̀̆͜ṋ̷̭̥̖̲̼͖͖͉̞̫̏̋̌͑̋'̴̛̺̤̦̼̳͖̦̓̊̋̑̔͌͜t̶̡̢͙̠͇̺̬̬́́̇̿̒͗̓̑̍̓͜ ̸̧̡̝̳͎̺̠̥͛̌̿͛̈͛͂̓͒̌̊̚f̶̦̤̪̖̺̝̳̓͛̓̒̎͌̐̾͑̒̍͐͝ú̵̺̖̣̈́̃̈́̐͊̍̑͝͝͝ļ̵̧̡͚͈̹̭̞͕̫̦̠̜͛̏́̈́̆́̾͗̆̓͗̿̕̕͠l̴͙̬̩̪͚͓̀̾͊̀͘y̶̳̖̿̑̔̎̍͝ͅ ̷̩̞̼̯̹̇̊̃̒̒̓̎͘͜u̷̡̧͉͖̘̻̭̟̹̮̣͆̃͊̂̂͌̔̌͐̉͗͂͝͝͝ǹ̶̨̛̛̛͉̻̫̣͈͙̥͇̞̹̠̆̍̓͒̈́̆̇̓̕͜ď̵̲̲̝̪̭̫͗̌̓e̶̡̧̝̪̲̮̭̥͚͗͒̋̅̃̏̅̿͒̈́͘͘͠ͅŕ̶̦͇̱͇̗̓̈́͂̆̄̕ͅs̷̨̨̼̘̯͔̱̞̺̟̈́͜ͅͅṭ̶̨̛͈̙͇̲͕̹͙̰̰̘͇̱͇͊͑̐͛̽́̓͋̐͠a̴̢̬͊̉̔͒̇̒͛̂̒̄͐͌̕͝n̷̡͓̬̤̼̻͓͎͖̮͕͓͙̠̆̈́̇͂̄͜͠d̷̢̡̳̣̩̪̘̼̦͍͚̏̐̈͋͘͜.̸̭͍̬̥͒̀̇͛̉̐̄ ̷̡̢̹͚͖͙̤̫̈S̶̨̯̲͍̳̻̺̗̜͓̳̩̠͕̅̍̈́̿͊͝͝͝h̶͎͈̥͊̃́̏͗͘ö̷́̋́̀̌͜͝͝ẅ̷̫̖̳̣̭̮̖͔̬̖̊̌͛̀́̆̂͐͋̿̕ ̸̯͓̱̘̥̺͖̮̊͆̅̈́̒͐́͘̕͘ḧ̵̘̬̜̜̲̥̟͇̬̦́͒̈́́̓̍͂̇e̸͉̳̗̙̳̻̙͗͐̽̿͋̀̚ŗ̵̱͓̱̈́̑͗͜ ̸̞́̽̀̏̂̋̎s̵̪͍̿̀̊͗͊̆̋̇̀̕͘ȍ̶̢͔̥͉̘̹͚͓͔̜͕̅̓̔̀͑̈̇̎m̷̡̢͉̯̱͇̦̮͎̠̘̒́̅̐͗̀̒̀̒͜ͅe̵̦̱̼͔̤͕̟͕̼̮̗͖͈͒̑̊̉͐̑͐̌͒̂̈ͅ.̷̛̱̙̩͈̊̈́̈́͆

̷̧͕͎̭͕͕͚̱͇͚̘͍͍̲̥̌̅̈́͠

̵̡̨̳̥͍͈̟̞̆͛̉́͊͗̈́̈́̆̿͗͝͝R̷̰̭̬̱̟͍̐̽̅̆̏̐͐̑̕͝͝e̶̡̮͎̠̜̯̘̺͖͇͙͔͒͒̊̌̈́͝ṁ̶̟̠̱̈́̃̊̄̑̄̋͜͠ō̵̧̯̮̝̟͚͋͛̄́̆͐̉̀̽̕͠͝͝ͅv̵̨̧̡͙̤̱͙̦̍̑̈͒͒͊̈́̀̽̆͌͘̕͝͝e̵̢̠͈̮̦̔͆̈̉̅̽̈́̂ ̶̱̱̣̬̏͑ỉ̷̛̭͇̜͛̓̌͠ͅt̷̗̗͍̣̋́͆̊͌́̀͜͝.̷̧̢̨͙͙̫̜͚̱̼͚͉̀̿̇̍̋̄̿̓̂͊̽̄̒̈́̐ͅ

̷̜̼͈͔̖͓͍̑͒̀̈́̿̿̾̈́̿͘

̵̢͉̖̙͓͇̗̥̗͈̍͌L̸̙͎̯̣̞͎͇͇̘̻̲̼͖̈͋́͐̅̓̃̽̂̀̚̕̚͠e̸͕̥̫͒́a̶͉̖̳͓̥̪͇̞̲̯̩̠̼̿̓̀́̒̓̍͛̀͊̈́̍̿͘͜v̸̖̻͓̻̄̿̈́̾͆̂̔͜ȩ̷̯̙͈͎̬̲̘̼͖̀̋̿͝͠ ̸̢̧̲̻̲̗̥̣̹̰̒͆̅͋̍̉̏̓̍̀̚͝͝i̶̛̜̝̳̭͊́͐͌͑̋̍͐̓̉̓̔͗͘t̷̟̜̖̫̭͍̣̰̻̲̻͋̉̿̓̊̾͆͗͋.̷̡̛̪̪͖̲͎͕͛̃́͛͂̎̒͊͗͝

̸̞̩̀̉̎̅͋́̈́̍͝

̶͈̾̍̔̐̊̅̿̈̊̄̂̕͠W̸̡̱͕̬̱̗̻͕͐̈͌͜ḩ̴̛͉̹̼̒̌͌̇̇̃̐͂̕͝ạ̵͈̳͒͌̍̅̚͝ţ̶̢̛͎̈́͌͆̾̓̽͠ ̴̧̢̜̯̲̮̥͋̈́͌͘͜a̸̧̨͉͍̬̪̯̙͍̱̞̟̓̀́̔̍̎̉̄͝b̶̢̢̢͈̪̲̺̪̗̖̜͍͇͇͋͐̄̓͠o̵̢͙̲̍̊͝͝u̸̡̪̟͓̥̯͚̱̦̓̎̌̊̈́̆̄̿̋͋͗̑̊͜ṯ̷̢̞̭͚̝͓̀͐̅͗͗̀̈͘ ̶̧̛̗̣̱̙̪̬̟̑̍̾̅̌̕t̶̡̝͓̼͎̹͇͎̥̀̆͜h̸̡̜͉͎͊̓̍̿͂̐͐̅͒̑̑́̓͘͝e̸̡̧̧̧̳̩͇̩̖͇͓̿̍̎͐̍ṃ̵̺̱͓̤̼̯͇̈́̇̑̓͗͋̊̾̔͘̕̚?̵̻̞̫̰͕̭̰̗̘͋

̸̧̣̳̙̭̤̿̌̃̃̾͗̃͂͒́̃̑̕̚͠ͅͅ

̶̦̫̖̖͑͆͂̑̈́̇̑̍̑̌̿͗T̴̢̜͉̰̰͋̔͗̽̑̊̓̈̑̀̓̀͗̕̚h̴̤̠̪̱̤͓̪̤̅̂̈͋̓͂͐̍̋̆͊͠e̴̛̥̻̍͆̉̿̈́͠͝ͅy̸̫̮͂̽̾͗̅̎̓̐ ̴̨̧̳̺̫̺͎͙͍̥͕̗̗̔͐̃́̀̉͑̓͑̚ͅẉ̸̡̡̼̠̰̰̦̝̻̣͂̎̍̽̎i̸̱͚̝̭̮͉̺̽̔l̸̨̖͔̮̟͚̗̘͔̺͓̾͆̊̓̏̄͌̿̊͑͛̃̀̚͘l̸̨̛̩͍̫͙͕̯̩͍̘͙̱̅̏̋̈̏͆̐̈̈́̑͆ ̶̡͉̬͓̤̭͖̝͈̫͓̼͂̄͑̉͌̿̓̓̚̕̚̕͜l̵̢̡̨̨̪͔̳̮̘͔̠̰̮̼̅ͅę̸̰͉̹̳̯̪̳͓̫̺̓a̶̛̹̫̺͒̓͆̂́r̴̬̙̩̺̜̖͎̙͔͎̮̞̄͒̓̓̏͋͒̌̊͗͝ń̵̨̡̜͉͓̦̠̭̰̄̑̏̍̐̄͝ͅ ̸͖̦̬̐̑͜ǎ̴̧̢̡̛̼͙̹͖̩̰̦̰̿̅͐̀̒̂̑̆g̷̢̩͚͔͚͓͊̃͐͗̾̒̎̈́̅̽̊͆̊͋a̵̛͉̦͂͗̐̊̽ï̶̧̹̼̪̱͈͚͜n̵̻̉͒̔̽̋̍͋͘͘͝͝ ̵̡̛̭͇͈̲͎̞̱͎̱̝̥̣̜̳̽̆͊̂̄̀̉̏͋̚̚̕s̷͙̈̀̕͜ͅȍ̵̧̢͔̗͉͓̯̠̙̤̰̀͊̐̊̂̔͛̌̎͝͝o̷͇̥͚͉͔̠̦̩͔͋́̎̾͐̔̐͑̀̚͠n̵͓̳͔̩̘̘̣̟̏̔̈̂̽̉ ̸̪̝̳͊̿́̃ę̶̨̢̛͔̭̺͙̱̼̗͙̀̾̆̅̎͐̌͒͜͜͝n̵̲͖̦̬̪̳̖͕̭͙͇̤̓̈͌ͅͅǫ̸̢̛̞̞̬̜̙̮̘̤̠̋̍̆̍̃̋́̂̆͘͝ų̴̥̦͙̞̭̠̘̱͖̝͆̽̋̚ͅg̴̨̱͍͓̖̯̳̬̰̒̓̑̏͋̔̂͜h̷̡̖͉̠̱͉̬̝͇̰́̎̆̂̅͑̒̂́͆̑͜͠͝.̷̧͙̳̺̦̜̣͕̱̯̅

̴̯͓͆͋́̄̔͗̈́̃͛͘͘͝

̴̼̙̥̖̼̝͖̟͗̈́́̄͌͌̌̓͝Ȧ̷̧̛̙͓̪̖͍͔̲͓̮̺͑̏̋̀͆̓̾̋͘͘̚͝ṅ̵̨̧̰̝͎̱̙͍̘͙̀̓́̑́̕̕͘d̵̢̛͉̹͚͓͓̥̞̖̰̘͎̽̅͊̅̍͌͒̍̋̍̂̓̕͜͠ ̴̨̛̼̜͓̞̘̲́̈̽̌̏̂̿̽̃̽ȟ̴̼ì̶̡̡̻̮̳͕͎̯̱̟̼̪̙̀͂̇͐̊̒͗́͠m̷̥̟͙̞̻͔͎̾̓̇́̍̊̽̚͜?̴̢̤͚̬̦͚͈̲͙̫̖̐͋̉̈́́̀͝

̸̲̝͚̱̜͔̉̈̓̐̈͘͘

̷̝̙͐N̷͈̈ỏ̴̡̧̠̦̗̬͚̦̪̌͂̏̀̔̒̓̉̚ţ̴̛̲̠̎̈́͂̀̅͆̔̾̋̚ ̵̢̻̱̼͉͚̼͇͖͊̊́̌ͅͅy̴̱̰̘͔̙̫͎͆́͊̌͒̀̆̌̍ë̷̞͍͇͔̙͓͇́̆̎̕t̵̡̛̼͐̉́̓̀͂̿͂͛͆͆̕̚͝.̴̱̹͖̬̜̘̳̅̊̃̍̒͌̿̉́͛̚͝

-something, it just probably wasn't anything Gwen could properly track down right now. She didn't have enough context to try figuring out what the song was trying to tell her, and she was at this point too busy trying to hold back tears to try dissecting it.

It was almost infuriating how much the song was picking apart her thoughts. Had she not been mostly transfixed by the melting reds and soft purples of the sunset, or been trying to force her brain into silence, she would have turned the music off.

Really, she should have done that a while ago. Sitting on a rooftop sulking and trying not to have a panic attack wasn't helping anyone, and it definitely wasn't helping Miles.

“Get a load of this monster

He doesn’t know how to communicate.”

The sudden shift in the melody’s tone, the way the lyrics shifted, made her heart stop in her chest for a second.

No. No, she didn't like where this was going.

Gwen pulled her hood back up over her head, shuddery breathing starting to wrack her body again as those words sunk in.

She should have turned the song off. Really, really should have turned it off, before her curiosity could have gotten the best of her.

Gwen really didn't like where this was going.

“His mind is in a different place

Will everybody please give him a little bit of space?”

“Get a load of this train wreck

His hair’s a mess and he doesn’t know who he is yet

But little do we know, the stars

Welcome him with open arms.”

The words were almost barbed this time, more targeted as Gwen tried to focus all her attention on the sky instead of the words. Words that cut into bone so they could settle there and rot, an infestation of hissing pain and quiet truth.

I should have turned the song off.

That fact was apparent when her shaking hands slowly gave out, letting her elbows drop to the concrete underneath.

There was no way.

Train wreck.

That about fits, doesn’t it?

Gwen’s hands shook as she slammed her eyes shut, still lingering in the direction of the horizon.

She hated this. She didn't want the lurking revelation under the surface, she didn't want to know what it was trying to tell her.

Gwen forced it back.

She could just keep pushing it away, and then she'd never need to know.

“Get a load of this monster

He doesn’t know how to communicate

His mind is in a different place

Will everybody please give him a little bit of space?”

Is that not what they call him?

Is that not why he ran?

Because they thought he was different?

No.

Stop it.

We can’t fall apart.

We have to find him.

“Get a load of this train wreck

His hair’s a mess and he doesn’t know who he is yet

But little do we know the stars

Welcome him with open arms.”

Tears slipped freely down her face, even if perhaps Gwen hadn’t really stopped crying at all. The trickle turned to a stream, steady breathing to hitching air.

A train wreck. That pretty effectively summed up everything she'd been trying to do for weeks now. Her vaguely cobbled together plan was a mess, they were all exhausted, and Gwen was exactly what was labelled in the lyrics.

A complete and utter wreck.

And still, they hadn't found anything to get them closer to their goal. The one lead they'd been practically given on a silver platter was gone because of her, and anyone willing to help them was also probably not going to.

All because of her.

This whole situation is your fault.

Look what you've done.

Shut up.

This is your fault.

Maybe if you hadn't lied

none of this

would

have

happened.

"Shut up!" Gwen yelled at herself, at her thoughts, trying to make them be quiet. She slammed her eyes shut, trying so hard not to start outright sobbing on the rooftop again.

Tears flowed anyway, no matter how hard she tried through closed eyelids to make them stop.

The music faded out into a gentler melody, back into that mournful, longing tone. It was enough to make anyone feel wistful, even if perhaps they did not know what for.

“Time is

Slowly

Tracing his face

But strangely, he feels at home in this place.”

She forced her eyes open. Everything was blurry, and Gwen wiped her eyes to try clearing her vision. The sun had completely vanished, the bright spark that lit 42’s sky more dead than the interdimensional gateway they’d gotten here through. 

Black sky and neon colours greeted teary eyes as the understanding set in bones, a strangling vine of barbed wire twisting through her heart and slowly tearing it apart.

Gwen’s grip on the phone tightened. For half a second, she debated ripping the earbuds out and throwing the damn thing off the side of the building. It was certainly impulsive, and certainly would maybe make her feel better, but no part of her brain could force her hand to lift upwards.

The next song started, and her anger was pushed down by guilt.

Gwen stopped the music player. She didn't want to accidentally make herself feel worse.

You know what you've done.

They all know it, too. They're above it.

What does that make you, Gwen?

Liar.

Traitor.

Prove you’re something else.

Find him.

Gwen took a shaky breath, making sure that the phone was secure in her hands and the earbuds solidly in place, before tucking the phone into her pocket. She walked back over to where she’d landed on the rooftop, her mask still on the ground and partly covered in obvious tear stains.

Gwen involuntarily winced. Those were hard to clean out - that's why she tried not to cry while wearing it.

The lenses seemed to stare at her rather judgmentally, a skin-crawling, skuttling sensation of insects along her arms.

Even her own mask seemed to dislike the person wearing it.

Not that most masks knew how to dislike things, for the most part - any masks that were capable of such a thing were probably securely locked away in a science lab, for what at that point should be very obvious reasons.

Liar, it seemed to say, and Gwen just abruptly picked it up. If anything just to make her thoughts shut up for a minute. To make the judgmental stare belong to her instead of the mask.

A quick, steadying breath. There was really nothing that could be done.

You know the truth.

…

Be quiet.

We have to find him.

Gwen put the mask on, keeping one ear bud in. She leapt from the building in a free fall, first letting the wind catch her falling body, and after that, her own lines of web.

Chapter Text

Maybe it was weird that Miles felt like he was starting to settle in.

It certainly felt weird. Especially considering he hadn't actually done all that much to prove that things were safe enough for him to pause.

Miles hadn't interacted with the other Spiders much, outside of mornings and the occasional patrols. He still wasn't going on as many as he'd like to, but rather firm insistence from the others about 'easing back into it' had made him stop, at least a little bit. That, and some routine medical examinations that they all did after patrols, just to make sure nobody was injured to the point of needing actual doctors.

Not like they could have gone to the hospital, anyway - none of the Spiders, nor himself, were actually supposed to be in this New York. Showing up at the hospital without insurance or a legal name to go by felt like a surefire way to get unmasked against their will. Plus, most doctors probably would be beyond baffled by any of their physiology, too much so to actually help.

As most people would be, if someone they knew could suddenly inject people with highly toxic venom or had more than one set of eyes or could turn themselves into computer code or hosted an alien symbiote in their bodies. To name a couple of totally, entirely unrelated examples.

So to summarize, no, Miles was not nearly as social right now as he could be considering he was essentially living in the same apartment as a bunch of other Spiders who were actually being incredibly patient with him.

And adding onto that, he wasn't entirely sure how or why it felt okay to just… let himself sit in his room - not my room, his thoughts hissed - at a desk, with stray pieces of paper that he'd nabbed from the room with the printer a couple of days ago. It was weird to let himself sit here and marinate in his thoughts. It was especially weird, considering that he was trying to draw up plans to escape this place.

So far, two out of the five pages of printer paper, scrawled on on both sides with notes and theories and ideas, had already been placed off to the side. None of the plans really worked out, despite each one having it's pros and cons.

He looked over at them, tapping his pencil on the desk with headphones blasting music in his ears, before huffing and pulling them back over, just to look at them again and see if there was anything he could have possibly missed.

Plan #1 was distinctly the one with the most cons, and by far the easiest one. Miles just stayed on Earth-42 and waited for someone to come find him, no matter who it might be.

The pros were that at some point, even if it wasn't the people he'd want to see (not that they were going to help him any time soon), it would still be a way out of here. And given how Miguel had behaved when meeting him, the older man would probably triangulate his position sooner or later.

The cons were everything else. Getting captured, probably getting held hostage, the Spot running loose across his city, the Spider's here probably staying permanently trapped, and of course, the obvious worst part: there was a pretty phenomenal chance that his dad was going to die if he just sat around waiting for something to happen.

The thought stung, and Miles' hand gripped his pencil tighter.

It didn't sting as deep as it usually did.

He ignored that and flipped the page over to look at Plan #2.

This one also kind of involved waiting around, but the only real change was that he bolted the second the Spider Society got their hands on him. If he could stay hidden long enough to bug their Go-Home machine into taking him where he actually wanted to go, then he would be fine. But surely, after last time, Miguel wouldn't leave that thing unguarded if it meant he had a chance of catching him, and Miles didn't personally know how intricate the security systems in the HQ were, so that was another no-go. If that was going to work, he needed someone with either knowledge of the systems or the ability to hack, and both of those people were either stuck here with him or not looking for him anyway.

Plan #3 had been scrawled out in a bout of frustration. Mostly, it involved a lot of causing chaos and being generally reckless, considering the situation. He'd get caught incredibly fast if he went through with that one. The only upside was that in his head, Miles got to punch Miguel in the face a couple of times before he got dragged off.

That kind of thought wasn't really normal either. Yeah, sure, Miles had to fall back on combat being Spider-Man, but the thought punching the older Spider in the face after everything brought something almost close to a twisted sense of release.

Miles elected to ignore that thought for now and keep looking. He flipped the second page over.

Plan #4 was probably, currently, the one that involved more patience than any rational human being could offer - sneak into HQ and hide in there while waiting for the whole fiasco to blow over, then get the Spiders out of Earth-42 and go home. If his dimension was stuck in a time loop until he went back, then hypothetically, his family should be safe.

Also hypothetically, the Society could just elect to switch it off of the time loop if Miles wasn't careful enough. If they thought that he was dead, then keeping the dimension on loop wouldn't make sense anymore.

His stomach twisted at the thought. None of these plans were good, and none of them had enough solid elements to really constitute a 'plan' in the first place. Hell, most of them involved sitting around and waiting to nearly get mauled or trying not to get caught.

Maybe if my friends were here, he thought, not without some bitterness, they'd be able to help me.

Miles immediately pushed the thought away and into a pit. His old friends had no doubt given up on looking for him weeks ago. It had almost been a month at this point - if they didn't have to worry about finding some stupid anomaly lost in the multiverse, then they probably weren't going to.

Besides, they had their own dimensions to protect. This wasn't their problem. It was his.

It didn't stop the sharp twist of guilt that made his heart freeze up, even for just making them worry. If they'd even done that.

The memory of Peter approaching him in the bowels of the ventilation shafts drifted back to the surface, to just talk to him and make him stop. Make him stop just enough to chat, before his watch had led them right to Miles.

The memory bit deeper than he wanted it to. It was promptly buried again, the way one might bury something in the forest that they never wanted to think about again, or laying a picture frame down flat so they didn't have to look at it.

No, this was Miles' issue. It was his fault that any of this was happening. So it was up to him to fix it, and he could do it without needing to drag anyone else into this catastrophe of a situation.

He put his pencil back to the blank paper, still trying to come up with literally anything that could be useful-

A knock sounded at the door, jolting Miles out of his trance. And by loud, it was loud. It was way louder than he’d been expecting any reasonable knock on someone's door to be, managing to cut through the music blaring in his ears. Miles paused the music, right in the middle of one of the better songs on his playlist, and pushed one speaker off his ear.

He waited a couple seconds, trying to see if the knocking sound would come again. It didn’t, so Miles could only assume that one of the others might just be playing a prank on him. It seemed like something they'd do.

He moved to put the speaker back on, but this time the knock sounded louder, cutting through any doubt about it being a prank. Or about it being a figment of his imagination. That could have been a possibility too.

His Spider-sense let out a small, rather unnecessary zing in the door's direction. He knew someone was there, thank you. Miles' ears worked, for the most part.

Whoever was at the door knocked a third time, and Miles rolled his eyes.

"Gimme a minute!" he yelled through the door, and whoever was there paused midway through knocking a fourth time. Seriously, the only time the others really knocked on doors was if they were waiting for something or trying to get someone else's attention. He'd witnessed this fact a week ago when Rowan insistently knocked on Aura's door, all four hands impatiently rapping against wood, before the other girl had swung the door open with irritation and started chasing Rowan around.

How are they so chill about stuff like that? Miles wondered, not for the first time, as he stared blankly at his paper. They act like siblings.

Not that Miles knew how siblings acted, outside the few he'd met at school. Being an only child came with the perks of being an only child and the cons of also being an only child. A lot of pros and cons, debatably.

Great, now I'm thinking in pros and cons lists.

Maybe Miles needed to actually leave his room, if his brain was so badly malfunctioning.

Didn’t the other Spiders mention that they were doing something later? Miles recalled, trying to dredge up the memory. He wasn’t entirely certain what they’d said, only that they’d told him more than once about it. Something that they had all been very excited about, that was for sure.

He pulled his headphones fully off, letting them plop down on his shoulders, and would have maybe waited a few more minutes to go out if he hadn’t heard Sidney start cursing like a sailor. And the sounds of something getting thrown at a wall.

Miles’ brain immediately leaped into panic, a thousand possible 'what-could-go-wrongs' running through his head, but a fifth sudden knock on the door made him jump badly enough that his hands involuntarily turned invisible.

“Hello?” Miles called hesitantly, trying to force his hands back into the visible plane of reality he was used to. They were flickering in and out of view,

The voice at the door belonged to Milo, who seemed completely unaware of how much even the knocking of the door had scared him. “Yo, Miles! We’re messing around with some games on one of the lower floors, if you’re up for it?”

Oh, right! Miles realized as memory returned. Sidney and Casey had both said something about a game night earlier - he’d just been way too incredibly stressed to think about it properly.

Then he stopped. Was he actually up for being around so many people after… after this long of doing exactly not that?

Was he really up for being around so many Spiders after what had happened? It wasn't like they'd been involved, but even at night when Miles was certain he was the only one awake, he still replayed the incident at HQ from weeks ago like it was the only thing left in his head to focus on. Nightmares that had been lasting for weeks at this point.

Weeks. Weeks that I’ve spent here, weeks that I could have been spending back home with the people I care about.

Hell, only one of those weeks so far have had me actually up and moving around. I was sick for the first two.

Weeks is too long. Something could have already happened, and they aren't going to come looking to tell me if anything does happen.

Even as Miles tried to block it out, his thoughts wandered to the other Spiders as his mind mentally listed off the people he’d left behind. Those thoughts ended up, like they always did wandering to her, and he forced it to shut down immediately. He could figure out what was going on with that whole situation later.

If you get the chance.

Shut up.

"You there, man?"

“Yeah, I’ll be out in a bit!” Miles called back through the door, and he heard Milo say something to another person through the door. He wasn't sure who Milo could have been talking to, because the voices through the walls were muffled, but he didn't really get any time to figure it out. Footsteps reverberated through the floor, walking away from his room toward the stairwell.

He grabbed a couple of pieces of paper, a pencil, and a flat piece of hardwood he'd stolen from one of the lower floors. He didn't have his own sketchbook, but he did have the rest of his scrap paper. Miles was too nervous to leave his room without at least something to occupy his hands, and at ease as he was, he couldn't fully bring himself to trust them yet.

Which felt… odd to say. He’d been here for way longer than he felt he was supposed to be, and these Spiders had been very welcoming, but somehow, Miles didn’t feel the same ease around them that he had felt with others.

He heard the sounds of something getting tossed at a wall, and a very stern yell from someone whose voice he couldn't make out through the walls. Aura, maybe.

On second thought… maybe he didn’t really want to go outside right now. It sounded like whatever it was they were doing, it was a lot louder than he had the energy to handle right now.

Miles backed away from the door to his new room. It still didn’t feel like his door. He wasn't sure if it was ever going to feel like his door. 

Backing up into the room made his head spin without reason. It didn’t feel like his room, either, the quiet, background uncanniness settling in full force once more.

Instead of steeling his nerves and stepping back up to the closed door, Miles grabbed the jacket Milo had lent him - something he still hadn't returned - and turned to the window. It was closed, the latch on the windowsill stuck in place as he moved closer to it.

Miles knew from experience how to get the windowsill open. In his own house, the windows used a similar mechanism.

Maybe he didn’t have to talk to people right away. He could walk on walls, after all. And he wasn't particularly opposed to sitting outside for a little bit, even if just to get out of this stupid room to try clearing his head.

The windowsill latch clicked open, and Miles readjusted his grip on the paper and hardwood as he clambered out the window.

He'd need a clear head if he wanted to figure out a proper plan.

The outside air was just as normal as it ever was in the late evenings - a soft, all-encompassing chill, brushing lightly against exposed skin and enveloping him in an invisible blanket. Goosebumps pricked up along his arms, the same way they did when his Spider-sense started going off. City lights from the street beside him, down an alleyway to his right, poured across the open brick and banished some of the darkness that seemed to adore creeping in so close. Distant sounds muffled the cityscape, distant sirens and not-so-distant car horns a familiarity to him. The prickling light emanating from all around passively sat over the buildings nearby, curtains of soft yellows and dark purplish glows oozing over the sides of buildings like dripping slime.

He didn’t want to go too far away from the apartment - as close to his New York as this world was, there wasn’t much of a point in trying to get lost in the city. Not only that, but he didn’t have his webshooters on right now, so swinging was off the table as well. Anywhere else he could have possibly would have wanted to go might be altered somehow, and walking by himself in the dark was logically the stupidest thing he could do in a dimension where nobody could find him.

And honestly, even the lights of the city felt too oppressively open. Maybe the openness of it all freaking him out might be strange, but there was just something about how easily exposed he could be out on his own that seriously rubbed him the wrong way. The idea that someone he might not know - or worse, someone he did know - being able to see him and just quietly watch, or attack him without his realization, set his teeth on edge.

So, no, Miles wasn't going into the city to clear his head. It didn't feel right.

None of this felt right.

Instead, Miles walked up the side of his window and sat down on the wall above the windowsill. He set down the hardwood in his lap, tapping his new pencil on the page laid out on it.

A blank page greeted him, watching him with an almost questioning look. Like the paper itself was asking 'what are you trying to do?'

No matter how many times he mulled the ideas over in his head, or turned them or shifted pieces around, nothing came to him. His headphones hung heavy like chains around his neck, weight that he couldn't really get rid of no matter how many times he tried pushing and pulling at elements of his plans.

The page remained blank. The stare was more judgemental now, closer to a 'seriously? Come on, man' kind of look.

Miles screwed up his face at the paper. Paper couldn't actually judge him for being incapable of figuring out a new plan of escape, but everyone had those moments where it felt like inanimate objects were judging them for hysterically failing at some task or other.

He tapped his pencil again, glaring back at the paper. Planning didn't seem like it was going to work anymore, so maybe just actually using the page to draw something would yield better results.

Miles flipped on his headphones, hitting the play button and letting the music carry his mind away.

It was so easy to let himself get lost in minute movements of sketching, lines appearing under his pencil without a care in the world. He didn’t have the highlighters that he’d borrowed from one of the kitchen drawers earlier. Those remained solidly on his desk inside, and he didn't really feel like going back inside yet.

Faces appeared on the page - some of them familiar, others just practice faces that Miles had probably seen somewhere in passing. Movement lines drawn through sketchy humanoid figures danced across the page as he let this mind wander, away from the apartment, away from where he was sitting on the side of a building by himself.

For a few minutes, Miles was back in his own room, drawing to the beats of a new song. For a second, he was in his dorm room at Visions, sketching out the faces of people that he’d only known a few days, yet had been stuck in his mind since. For even just a moment, Miles was sitting somewhere peaceful, drawing whatever and whoever caught his eye.

On the page, he saw the faces of his old friends. Peter, Peni, Ham, and Noir, even Pav and Hobie, staring either back out at him or somewhere beyond the page. His pencil flinched as his hand did, and Miles stared for a moment longer before turning the paper over. Once again, a blank field of white greeted him, unmarred by sketch lines and apathetically awaiting something to fill the void.

Even despite everything, Miles couldn’t deny that he missed them a little bit. He tried to push away the feeling and focus on the new person he was drawing, but it clouded his thoughts quickly. Anger and longing hummed through his pencil and into the page.

They had all known. And yet, none of them had chosen to come find him. All under the guise of trying to keep him safe. Three weeks deep into the effects of their betrayal, and Miles still couldn't believe that it had even happened.

They'd tried to protect him, but not telling him about it hadn't helped at all. Some of them had even been acting like he couldn't understand, like he wouldn't know what to do if they told him.

They'd staged an intervention to stop him from trying to save his dad. That was just fucked up on so many levels. And no matter what they'd said, it still cut deeper than a knife pressed to the throat.

Peter following him into the ventilation shafts of Nueva York, calling out to try and talk about things. Trying to help Miles understand what they were talking about. For a moment, wondering if Peter was on his side and trying to help him. Wondering if he was he was going to actually have someone understand where he was coming from.

Peter's watch going off. Leading them right to him.

The understanding that Peter wasn't going to help him. That he was just like the rest of them, trying to stop him from doing what he had to do.

Falling through those fans had been one of the longest falls of his entire life.

He could handle himself. 

Miles knew that.

It only made their disbelief more painful.

And all because some jackass had preached to all the Spiders that somehow, if Miles ever learned that you could travel to other dimensions, the universe would collapse in on itself and everything would be completely ruined forever.

His grip on the pencil tightened.

Even the good memories of his old friends hurt now.

Breaking into Alchemax, stealing the computer that they needed.

A bus ride back to New York, quiet conversations while autumn leaves fell outside.

Meeting the others, learning a little more about what being a Spider was.

Proving that he could do everything they could.

Meeting Gwen again, the way the world seemed to slow down and stop for them both.

Miles blinked back tears, trying to make sure that he wasn’t going to cry onto the page - and then realized who he’d been drawing while his mind wandered.

Her face stared back out at him from the page, a replica of her smile on the Williamsburg building that day. Soft and kind, sad and understanding, all at the same time.

Miles didn't even think. He crumpled the paper abruptly and tossed it off the side of the building, curling up on himself immediately and pressing the hardwood board to his head.

Of course. Of course she wouldn’t just slip his mind as easily as he’d been trying to make it. His grip on the board tightened sharply, enough that the corner one of his hands was gripping stung with pain.

Dammit.

Why did those memories have to hurt so much?

Why couldn't they just stay as they were supposed to be - happy memories of the good times?

Why did his heart feel like it was being wrapped in barbed wire every time he thought of them, bleeding out with grief?

Tears slipped out of his eyes unbidden, falling far below into the alleyway. At least he wouldn’t have to hear them land.

He didn't dare to make a sound as more fell. If Miles let any sound slip, it wasn't one that anyone could have heard unless they were right next to him.

Miles had no idea how long he stayed there, waiting for his tears to finally dry. He just knew it was long enough for his hands to grow cold and for the board under his fingers to feel like stone.

The chill sunk into his bones, and Miles pulled his sweater a bit tighter around himself. At this rate, if he stayed out here any longer, he’d catch another cold. Getting a cold twice in a row was bound to land him in trouble with somebody.

After a few more minutes, Miles shook out his hands. They were chilled, to the point where it felt a lot less like they were fingers and more like they were barely there. Physically, they felt like and outline around the bones instead of, y'know, actual fingers. Actual fingers were warm all the way through, with little differentiation between the skin to the muscle and bone below.

He sighed, and held the board close while pushing himself up off the ground - or, the wall. It wasn’t hard to do, but his limbs were quite stiff from sitting out in the colder night air. He was only fifteen, but his knees creaked like old floorboards as he walked back down to the open window.

A couple moments passed, moments where Miles hesitated, before he slipped back inside the room he was staying in. It still didn't quite feel like his.

-=-

It took him a stupid amount of time to actually find the room where the other Spiders were for their game night. Mainly because it wasn’t on the floor with all the bedrooms, but also because the stairwell was incredibly echoey and it sounded like it was coming from both directions at the same time. Alongside that, they hadn't been on the floor that they'd initially told him about before. Miles ended up opening at least three floors that definitely did not lead where he was supposed to be going.

He really should have asked if they were going to be moving, because this was ridiculous. The brownstone wasn't even that big, and yet somehow it was way larger than it honestly should have been.

Eventually, though, he chanced on the door that had music blaring out from it the loudest. There were sounds of people shouting and laughing, much more than he'd heard in all of his time here so far. It was loud to the point where his Spider-sense was starting to freak out and panic behind the scenes. Miles had half a mind to run back upstairs and grab his headphones to cover some of the noise, but he’d already gotten somewhat lost before. And again, this was a small brownstone.

At this point he didn't trust himself to remember the proper door pattern that marked the floor with all the bedrooms. Every door was painted somehow, and sometimes they blended into the walls of the staircase as well. Were it not for the landings, he was pretty sure that he would have 100% missed a door.

So, yeah. Maybe running back up wasn't the greatest idea he'd ever had.

Wait, what?

I thought that we knew the door patterns.

I remembered that.

Why can't I-

Miles stopped himself. If he thought too hard about it, he was going to spiral again, and he didn't need to be doing that anymore. He didn't need to have anymore panic attacks today, hopefully not for the rest of the week.

He took a deep breath, readying himself as he let his hands sit on the door handle.

You can do this, he reassured himself. It’s just a game night. Honestly, what could go wrong?

…okay, maybe I shouldn’t ask ‘what could go wrong’ anymore. At this point I'm asking to get screwed over.

He twisted the doorknob, pulling the door open-

And was immediately met with California Gurls blasting through the hallway at full volume, with a few voices of the others practically yelling the lyrics at the top of their lungs.

Somehow, hearing the others screaming lyrics to California Gurls was enough to make Miles grin, because it sounded absolutely hilarious. And out of all the possible songs, this one was not what he’d been expecting to hear upon arrival. The worry in his mind started to evaporate again, even despite the worry in his voice.

He sped up along the hallway, curiosity powering him forward. They really hadn’t been lying about the game night thing, but karaoke? That wasn't anything he'd actually been expecting from them, and his surprise was clear as he walked down the hallway.

He turned the corner into a large common room to see Milo and Aura screaming into two cheap store-bought microphones, the crappy machine hooked up to the speakers easily. The lyrics displaying on a widescreen TV behind them both. The other Spiders were sitting on the couch pushed up against a further wall, laughing their asses off with some of them yelling out lyrics as well. None of their voices were completely in sync, with the main singers in particular fumbling over words when they heard the others singing along.

Miles hung back for a moment, covering a small giggle as Aura accidentally smacked Milo with one of the microphones, earning a yelp through the lyrics and apologetic laughter. Somehow, it was easier to let himself just hang back and watch from a distance than get involved. Looking through a glass window pane at things that he couldn't possibly grasp, nor every fully be in reach with.

Then Tarabi spotted him from off to the side, and with a surprisingly energetic grin, waved him over without breaking her own immersion in the lyrics. The others were mostly too busy paying attention to the ending lyrics to California Gurls, trying to persuade Milo and Aura to wind back a few seconds to sing the finale again. Casey noticed him and also offered a smile, turning back to the singers after a brief moment without giving him too much acknowledgement.

“I didn’t think you’d actually come join us!” Tarabi said as Miles darted over to the floor next to star, dropping down to sit and watch while ignoring the quiet unease in the back of his mind. “Are you gonna take a crack at the mic?”

He mutely shook his head out of embarrassment. Miles liked singing, but singing in front of people was definitely not in the cards. Or in the card deck. Really, just not in the card games section at all, thank you very much. No way he was trying this.

Tarabi grinned regardless, her eyes sparkling - almost literally sparkling, thanks to the starry sclera - as she flicked a wrist toward the TV. “I mean, if you insist. Karaoke night is always batshit hilarious either way.”

He fidgeted his hands nervously, head pounding a little at the hissing of his Spider-sense that lingered still. It had been three weeks, he should be fine around them. It shouldn't be messing with him this badly.

Tarabi seemed to notice, before poking his shoulder carefully. "You alive in there, Miles?"

“Yeah, sorry, my Spider-sense has just been bugged out lately,” he managed, and Luka looked over at him curiously. It was a curiosity that he hadn't actually noticed from that particular Spider before, but it didn't freak him out as badly as some of the others.

“Do you not know how to block it?” he asked, clearly genuinely surprised. “At least enough to keep you sane?”

Miles’ jaw hit the floor at Luka’s question. There was a way to block his Spider-sense?

He could turn it off. Even just for a little while, he could just… shut everything down? Really?

“Not completely,” Tarabi said, noting the look on his face while Luka scooted off the couch to join them. “Just enough that it’s not hyper-focusing on every little detail all the time. There’s some substances in certain dimensions that can do that for you, but it’s really easy once you get the hang of it.”

He just shook his head, trying to process the information he’d desperately needed been given to him on a silver platter.

Block my Spider-sense.

The idea was so foreign and confusing that he almost didn’t believe it. It was something every Spider seemed to have, and the thought that he could just turn it off whenever he wanted was almost beyond him.

It was supposed to be active. It was supposed to warn him. The idea that they just… turned it off willingly? It seemed kind of like a stupid idea, but even just for a little bit sounded incredibly appealing.

“If you wanna know how to do it, I’d say get Luka to teach you,” Tarabi advised. “He’s the best at figuring out how to help people block it out.”

Luka snorted, elbowing him politely. “Yeah, well, once you figure out how someone’s brain ticks, it’s way easier to get down whatever might help them block stuff out.”

“And you’re sure it’ll work?” Miles asked, trying to press for anything that might tell him more about how it worked. Something in his mind just needed the reassurance that it wasn't permanent or problematic or would lead him into danger.

“I mean,” Luka said, gesturing to the rest of the room, “you’ve got seven walking examples in here alone. Myself included. We figured this out about a year back, and I think most other Spiders know how to do it after a couple of months on the job.”

“A couple months!?”

Tarabi nodded sagely. “It gets too noisy in your head otherwise. Why?”

Miles’ shoulders stiffened a little bit, and he stared blankly at the lyrics darting across the TV for a second. “I’ve been Spider-Man for almost a year and a half. I just didn’t think it was possible.”

Two jaws dropped, one audible as somebody’s clicked. It was loud enough to come over the music, but not enough to really draw any attention to the conversation fully. Everyone else was still yelling at the singers.

“How have you not lost your mind!?” Luka asked, even as his own expression could imply to someone that he was losing his mind over this fact.

“It’s kinda just always there,” Miles explained. “For everything. It’s a lot more active for threats, but it’s kinda always there.”

Tarabi sucked in a breath through her teeth. “I dunno man. That doesn’t sound like normal Spider-sense stuff.”

Instant worry bubbled up in Miles - was he doing something wrong again? - but Luka rolled his eyes and patted Miles on the shoulder out of nowhere. He jumped, but did his best not to flinch too far.

“What she’s being too nice to say,” Luka interjected, “is that constantly activated Spider-sense sounds more like anxiety than something an internal threat warning system should be responding to for everyday stuff. It's not always supposed to be on, man.”

“Oh.”

That… yeah, that might make some more sense.

“It’ll get better once we can figure out how to get you to close it off,” Luka said, vaguely gesturing one hand and pulling something out of his pocket to mess with. It was a small metal disc, with a red blinking light on one side. “Trust me. The silence will be so sweet.”

“I’m still surprised that you figured it out before anyone else,” Tarabi jabbed, the words firing over him. “You don’t seem like the type to figure out the weird mental stuff.”

“You wound me,” Luka shot back with the most steady, mildly sarcastic tone he’d ever heard. “It’s just like reviewing code. You figure out what command does what, figure out what the required conditions are to activate the one you’re looking for, and then figure out how you can manually activate the command using specific conditions. Not that hard.”

“You say like you aren’t one of the best coders in the room.” 

Miles managed a short smile from that. Luka’s explanation made something in the way of sense - manual activation of the Spider-sense was easy to understand. But as much as Miles understood the explanation in theory, it didn't seem right in practice. Warning systems were supposed to stay active - maybe his was a little overactive, but it couldn't be that bad.

They literally just told you that having and overactive Spider-sense isn't normal.

Maybe it's normal for some Spiders.

His thoughts cut off, clearing whatever conversation he'd been having with himself pretty much instantly. Miles instead let his thoughts wander again, although given the loud music and the background noise that was his mind, it didn't take long before he started zoning out again.

Tarabi seemed to notice, and offered him a much more polite prod from her shoulder. “Don’t worry, Miles. We’ll help you as much as we can. Friends help friends, after all.”

Miles nodded as she turned back to the TV, the reassurance not fully accepted but still understood. It didn't take all that long for Miles to get fully distracted, joining a chant that had started up for Casey to take a turn at the mic. He was protesting, but it was pretty clear that his stubbornness was starting to slip if the way he was laughing was any indication.

As shouts of laughter and easygoing banter echoed through the room, Miles let himself relax, even if it was just by a little bit.

This place wasn’t home, and he definitely still needed to get out of this universe at some point. It was unfamiliar and unknown, a place where Miles didn’t belong in the slightest.

But then again, neither did any of these Spiders. None of them belonged in this dimension, and yet they’d somewhat made it safe. Somehow, they’d made it a safe place - something akin to a home away from home.

As Miles watched Casey finally get dragged over to the TV by Sidney, excited yells from the others filling the air and making the microphones screech in protest, he let himself lean against the couch with a grin.

Maybe this wasn’t home, but until Miles could figure out how to get to his dimension… maybe it could be something in-between.

Something like home. Not quite, but as close as he could get to it.

Chapter Text

It wasn't exactly hard to get back into the rhythm of swinging, he'd say.

It was more so just like a muscle he hadn’t used in ages suddenly getting pushed to a limit, meaning that everything kind of hurt to do. Miles was 100% going to be sore after this.

The patrol he was helping with tonight was later in the day than he was used to. Casey and Tarabi had agreed to let him join them while they went out to run some errands, and to keep an eye on the city.

Technically, this was Tarabi's patrol. She handled evenings and nights better than most of them did, and especially when everyone else was completely wiped from other daily patrols. But Miles had been itching to do something, and Casey was being weirdly insistent on taking more patrols than usual.

Actually, Casey was generally being kinda weird. Oddly antsy, keeping a close eye outside the windows, almost completely dead silent and alert on the two patrols that Miles had been on with him so far. This one included. Casey was weird, but this was weird weird.

If I knew him any better, maybe this is a normal thing for him to do, Miles thought absently, powering after the other two with as much strength as he could muster. Unfortunately, it wasn't as much as he'd like. Just another thing he needed to fix.

The two other Spiders were swinging way ahead of him, and he was definitely falling behind. Miles didn't want to get too lost, but it was pretty clear that he was still somewhat out of practice for swinging.

Miles reached out and swung again, his arm burning painfully as he reached to fire the webbing. His shoulder, which he'd previously thought was mostly fine and healed, let out blunt throbs of pain whenever he reached to swing.

Have you ever been hit with a blunt object like a frying pan to the shoulder, and tried to move it in the days afterwards? It was pretty much that, but with a tight pulling sensation on either side akin to the feeling of pulling a fleshy, rubber sourdough starter apart. All stringy and full of trypanophobia-inducing holes.

Miles shook the thought off, and swung quickly around a corner. A corner that, in hindsight, should have been his first warning that he probably wasn't where he was supposed to be. The second warning was the fact that there were no Spiders in front of him anymore, which meant Miles had been lost in thought enough to get left behind.

Yeah, okay, too far behind. And he definitely needed to take a break, because he was in a lot more pain than he’d been expecting.

Stupid shoulder.

The memory of claws digging into his shoulder, of jagged metal from the train biting into skin and tearing at it with gleaming teeth that he couldn't see, almost made Miles completely miss the next turn. The only reason he even made it around the corner intact was thanks to a violent warning shriek from his Spider-sense, and a resonant call echoing out in the city somewhere.

Even with the air flying past his face, rushing winds and noises from below deafening everything, the call was oddly familiar, in that sickening, terrible way that something painful always was. It was achingly familiar, an ache that made Miles' heart twist in ways that he couldn't understand or pin down. The call was too distant, too off, for him to properly locate, but-

“Miles, you okay back there?” Casey’s voice suddenly crackled to life in his ears, and Miles nearly missed the next swing. The sound completely dismissed everything else that he'd been thinking of.

He reached out, trying to locate the call again, but it was gone.

Miles didn't even know who's Spider-sense that could have possibly been. He knew it wasn't anyone who was here, and definitely not anyone that he'd been hoping would arrive.

So why was the sudden loss of contact so… jarringly painful?

“Somebody’s out of practice,” Tarabi joked as he properly shook the weird feeling away. “Don’t worry, Miles, we’re almost at our destination.”

Miles didn’t actually know how to answer, and for a few seconds there was a silence stretching between the three. He'd known about the comm system that had gotten installed in his mask, alongside a variety of other upgrades thanks to Luka, but nobody had ever actually told him how to use it.

“Miles, press the left side of your mask to turn on the call function,” Casey instructed, as though he'd read his mind.

Okay, maybe that was a bad comparison to make. A lot of the 42 Spiders had abilities that Miles had never even remotely heard of before - he didn't want to actually find out if anybody could read mind here, otherwise that would spell very bad things for his future.

He could barely lift his arm to do it, but managed to press the left side of his mask. He wasn't sure exactly where to press, but considering he was hearing them directly in his ear, the safe bet was that that was where he was supposed to put it. "So, uh… how many mods did Luka actually put on my suit?”

He heard Tarabi laugh, and vaguely saw the blue of her webs from up ahead as star slowed down to match his pace. “Probably a lot. Well, okay, there’s probably a lot more functions on your suit than we have on ours right now. He's the main person who does technology upgrades for us, but his main problem is that he sometimes forgets to actually tell us what he's done to them.”

“Basically, we just fuck around with things until something happens,” Casey added, somewhat helpfully. He was still nowhere in sight. “Or, as I personally like to call it, Let's See How Long It Takes For Milo To Get Thrown Across The Room By Some Crazy-Ass Tech Thing Day. But seriously, are you doing okay back there?”

Miles winced as he swung past another building, his arm practically ready to fall off. “I am way out of practice, man. My shoulder's gonna rip itself off at this rate.”

Casey barked a laugh over the comms, and Tarabi made a sympathetic sound. Miles wasn't entirely too sure how much of Casey's laugh was genuine or not, because he'd only been half-joking. it really hurt right now.

Miles hissed as he tried to swing in an awkward position, to round a more open corner. Normally, he’d have been able to make the turn, but in his distraction, he fired the web too late. Trying to course-correct forced his shoulder into another position that it protested rather violently, and Miles tried again to fix it-

Only to end up slamming directly into the side of a building without warning. 

A volley of curse words that he would have been grounded for escaped his mouth, and Miles peeled himself off the brick wall. Tarabi let out a much more audible, crackling "ough" over the comms, but Casey made no comment this time. He probably hadn't seen it, thankfully.

“Ouch, that sounded like it hurt.”

“Have you ever slammed into a brick wall before?” he asked, admittedly with some annoyance. Slamming into any wall hurt, but bricks in particular especially sucked because of the texture. Even through the suit, the prickling, grating surface tried to bite into his face as he peeled himself off the wall.

“Oh, I definitely have.”

Miles yelped and nearly fell off the building when he noticed Casey sitting on the wall directly above him. The black and purple Spider blinked at him innocently, but the lower eyes of his mask were crinkled up in that way that seemed to mean he was grinning.

“Hey, don’t fall off now!” Casey said, his lower eyes squinting further as he crouched down to meet Miles' eyes. The hoodie and sweatpants he was wearing to cover his suit were hanging just overhead, casting a particularly dark shadow over his already darkly coloured suit. Really, it just left the eyes reflecting back at him, the way an animal's might reflect black the glare of a flashlight in the dark. “Can’t have the newest Spider get flattened like he’s been hit with a rolled up newspaper, now can we?”

Casey offered him a hand, and Miles tiredly took it. His shoulder shrieked in pain as he was hauled up, and Miles was thankful that his mask covered most of the wince on his face.

“Yeah, so maybe this patrol could have been a little less strenuous,” Casey admitted, a sheepish look on his mask now. “We're just stopping for a quick break at a cafe to get something to eat. I think you’ll love the cafe Tarabi found the other week. I promise, the scones alone make it so worth it.”

“A cafe?” Miles asked, genuinely surprised as he readjusted his hoodie. “In this dimension?”

Casey rolled his eyes. "As hard as it might be for someone to believe, this place does have it's better qualities. It's not all doom and gloom 24/7."

That managed to get a laugh out of Tarabi from the other end of the line, before Casey pressed his hand to the left side of his mask. And audible disconnection sound echoed in Miles' ear, before he pressed his own again too. The comm shut off easily, leaving him with a little more quiet than he'd been anticipating having.

“Remember, mask off, make sure your suit’s hidden enough,” Casey reminded him. “Even though these cafes are pretty safe places, there’s still a lot of people who are pretty willing to pick fights with whatever Spider they meet, if they see us in public. Also the whole 'secret identity' thing, I guess.”

“Not really in the mood for a fight anyway,” Miles agreed. “I’d rather eat an actual spider than pick a fight right now.”

“There’s the positive attitude,” Casey remarked, before jumping down an alleyway. Miles groaned to himself, but followed behind as fast as he could manage. Which apparently, wasn't very fast.

He fell the last few feet to the ground, landing with a pained hiss, his arm stinging brightly as he fell on it. He yanked his mask off and stuffed it into his pocket, not even bothering to try rolling the shoulder that hurt right now. At this point, it was just going to hurt.

"Is there any possible way that the rest of the patrol could be done by taxi?" Miles asked jokingly.

Casey leaned down and helped him up, making sure he was on his feet before answering. “Unfortunately, most of us don't really have the money to pay for a certified NYC taxi. Plus, swinging is faster."

"I can't tell if you guys are broke or not at this point. The money seems more like a matter of convenience."

“Nailed it on the head. Speaking of, watch-”

Miles yelped as he hit his head on a crosswalk pole, nearly falling backward from the impact. Casey steadied him, giving him a deadpan stare.

“-your head. Wow, did you finally figure out how to turn off your Spider-sense or something?” he asked, entirely too casually considering Miles had just smacked his head on a pole. 

Miles shook his head as Casey pressed the cross button, rubbing his face as he looked at the streets around them. “I haven't figured that out yet, because nobody's told me how to do it. Besides, it’s not usually for streetlight poles.”

Casey snorted, tucking his braid into the hood of his sweater. “I think you might need some of that, because I haven’t seen anyone smack their face into a pole in ages.”

Miles only shoved him in response, and the pair crossed the street after five minutes of waiting for cars to get out of the intersection - New York traffic sucked, no matter the universe.

Tarabi greeted them with a wave as they approached, a small grin on her face. Miles pulled his hood up over his head, keeping his eyes to the ground and making sure that he wasn’t looking at anyone he wasn’t supposed to. He didn't quite know who was and wasn't okay to make eye contact with at this point, so best to just avoid it altogether.

“Everyone ready to be normal human people in a normal human public place?” Casey asked, bouncing around on his feet with energy that Miles definitely couldn't match right now.

“I guess?” he replied. “I haven’t interacted with people in weeks.”

Casey dramatically gasped, eyes widening and putting a hand over his chest. “Am I not a people?”

“You're a Casey,” Tarabi answered, “which might be worse.”

He gasped in mock offense and punched Tarabi in the shoulder, before the three finally walked into the cafe.

In comparison to everything that Miles had seen before now, the cafe was the softest coloured thing in the entire city. There were still the sharp shadows, the saturated colours, but the environment was gentle and welcoming, warm and lit in soft oranges and yellows. Even despite the strange shades, the oddity of the colours standing out to him, Miles felt a lot safer than he had a few minutes ago. Tables were scattered around the dining area, some near the tall front windows, while others were nestled away in corners. The counter had the display case that so many small coffee-spots did, pastries and baked goods sitting behind glass while someone worked the register.

“Tari!” a voice called, and Miles looked up from the floor to see the barista waving them over. None of the other customers seemed particularly interested in the conversation, so he looked up a little more. The barista had golden-hazel eyes, freckles, and dark hair tied up in a bun. Her name tag read 'Irene,' with drawn on yellow hearts on either side.

“Hiya Iry!” Tarabi called, darting over to give the barista a fist bump. “How’s it going, girl?”

“Pretty slow today, actually,” the barista answered, grinning politely. “I’m guessing you and Casey want the usual?”

“You got it,” Casey answered, leaning to the side and gesturing vaguely to Miles. “And we made a new friend! We brought him so he could try the scones.”

Irene’s eyes turned his way, and Miles ducked his head shyly. Normally he wasn’t really all that nervous about meeting new people, but forgive his brain for being a little fried at the moment. He was pretty damn tired.

The other three continued their conversation, ordering whatever it was they wanted, while Miles idly stared at the tiles of the cafe floors. He wasn’t sure what he was really supposed to be doing here, but the atmosphere was nice, if anything.

Miles’ brain started wandering away into his thoughts, worries about his parents and his old friends and the HQ swirling through his mind. He still had no plan of escape but one thing was for sure. Miles couldn't stay here.

He couldn't stay and be forgotten as the anomaly that got away.

Miles needed to save his dad.

A light tapping on the counter next to him caught his attention, snapping the thoughts away from him, and Tarabi shot him a look before motioning him over toward a table. Casey was already sitting down, his feet propped up on another chair and reading texts on his phone. 

Miles sat down on the opposite side of the table, putting all his effort into staying present. Tarabi sat down in the chair next to him, shooting a dirty look at Casey while passing Miles a scone.

“Casey. Get your goddamn feet off the chair. You’re being a dick,” Tarabi hissed, leaning forward and glaring at him.

The other Spider just shrugged. “Nobody else is sitting with us, so I don’t really see why I can’t.”

“Would you put up your feet at Miss Rio’s table?”

Miles looked away with a quiet whistle, trying to imagine the consequences of putting his feet, with shoes, up on his mother’s chair. The only thing he could possibly imagine was being grounded for the rest of his high school career, maybe into university.

Casey blinked, but rolled his eyes dramatically and dropped his feet off the table. “Ugh, fine. You’re no fun, stargazer.”

Regardless, Casey was grinning, settling back into the chair he was actually sitting in and refocusing his attention to his phone.

They both seemed very at ease, but Miles couldn’t stop himself from eyeing the other customers, sizing them up in case someone decided to attack. He couldn’t shake the sense that something was just… going to happen. That feeling people got when the hair on the back of their neck stood on end without reason.

Nobody really seemed out of the ordinary. Realistically, there was nothing wrong.

You don’t really believe that, do you?

Miles shifted slightly in his seat, not yet touching the scone he’d been offered. Casey and Tarabi were talking, something about scheduling with the others, but he was too weirdly unnerved to pay attention.

The atmosphere was nice, sure, but somehow, it felt like every pair of eyes in the building were on him. 

Just… watching.

Waiting for… something.

This feeling definitely wasn't going away any time soon, was it?

You have to try.

He absently started tapping his hands on the table, trying to find some way to at least keep himself calm.

Miles could try filling his brain with music. It probably wouldn't do much, but it was better than having his Spider-sense notice every single odd detail around him like pop-up ads covering a website page.

At first, the rhythm was completely irregular. Slowly, Miles felt his fingers tapping to the rhythm of Sunflower, the lyrics and the tone softly forcing the anxiety back. It was enough to keep him tethered to reality, even just a little bit.

Even despite the weird situation, this was one of the better parts of his otherwise pretty terrible month and a half stuck here.

A month and a half. 

Miles had spent an entire month on Earth-42, and he was no closer to figuring out how to save his dad. He was nowhere near figuring out an escape plan that could work out for him.

His friends and family had spent an entire month stuck in the same day, looping constantly, and they didn’t even know that they were stuck.

He’d spent two weeks of these months being sick and injured, not even realizing that days had passed before someone told him.

How long had the Spider Society really been looking for him? Had his own friends cared enough to look for him? Had-

He stopped himself. He didn't need to think about them.

Miles hated that he didn’t know if anyone had come looking.

And he hated that he still wanted someone to care, after everything.

His hands tapped the table a little faster. He wasn’t sure why he still wanted them to care. They’d lied to him. They’d avoided him. They’d explicitly gone out of their way to avoid him, all because they believed Miguel’s spiel about how his dad had to die for the world to stay intact.

Even Gwen. Who he’d trusted with his life, had hidden the truth from him. He had put so much faith in her, and she’d shattered it right in front of him.

Is that why you let yourself fall off the tower?

Is that why you cut the web that she was trying to save you with?

Is that why you were willing to die instead of letting her keep you safe?

Miles blinked harshly, trying to keep his eyes from tearing up. Of course the first time he was actually processing some of it was in the middle of a cafe in public.

Instead of freaking out and dropping back into the anxious thoughts, Miles just instinctively grabbed the scone that Casey had bought him and took a nervous bite. His nerves immediately dissipated, because the others had been right. This thing was amazing. And apparently, he was hungrier than he thought, so this was actually doing a great job of fixing his some of his problems right now.

“Miles, dude, breathe,” Tarabi joked as he shoved the last of the scone into his mouth. “You’ll choke yourself to death eating like that.”

“That would be a hilarious epitaph for a gravestone, though,” Casey said with a wicked grin. “Died whilst feasting very aggressively on a scone.”

Miles’ laughter almost made him choke, which would have been the worst instance of situational irony that he'd ever been a part of.

“Did we not just say don’t choke to death?” Tarabi hissed playfully, smacking his sore shoulder lightly. “At this rate, you’ll probably accidentally get bitten by a second radioactive spider.”

“I… would rather not test that theory,” Miles muttered, recovering as much as he possibly could. "I don't think most people with a brain would want that."

Casey gasped, his eyes widening in mock surprise. “And so the moons foretold - he is someone with a brain!”

Tarabi rolled their eyes, turning star's poking to him. “Unlike you, apparently. And I caught that, Case - you have been spending way too much time around that freaking dragon.”

“Excuse you, Zenith is a delight, and her sayings are even more so!”

Miles blinked between the two in complete confusion. He was about to ask when Casey’s watch buzzed to life, letting out a cheery, eerily villainous sounding ringtone. Miles couldn't really describe the sound any other way, but maybe that was just something that happened on Earth-42. Or Casey just liked that kind of music.

Actually, that wouldn't be too surprising, Miles thought.

Casey looked down at the watch, opening the messages under the table. His face twisted into a series of emotions, ranging from annoyance to confusion and straight off into a mix of cold concern and something almost completely unreadable. Again with the weird faces.

“Case. You only ever get that look on your face when something’s off,” Tarabi said cautiously, star's face morphing into something uneasy. “What's going on?”

Casey blinked a couple times, more uncertain that Miles had ever seen him. “It's nothing too terrible - apparently, there might be something happening near Times Square that we should check out.”

Tarabi's own watch set off, and she looked down at it while Miles observed the cafe again. The watching, lurking feeling had returned full force. By the time he looked back at Tarabi, star had closed their watch and was getting up from the table.

"Come on, Miles," Tarabi said, eerily calm for how concerned she'd looked a second ago. "Let's go."

"Are you sure?" Casey said suddenly. He was messing with his, pulling the hood of his sweater over her head as they pushed the chairs in. "I'm not sure it's a good idea for Miles to get involved."

He blinked, before his eyes narrowed. The trio walked out of the cafe, and Miles sharply glared at them both. "Excuse me? What do you mean by that?"

"I think he meant that you haven't gotten into any fights in a while," Tarabi explained, still uneasily. "And I know that it might not be a good idea considering everything."

"That doesn't mean I can't help," Miles shot back, familiar irritation rising in his gut. Seriously, was this kind of thing going to happen with everyone he met?

“Protest all you want, I know the look of a guy going through shit when I see it,” Casey announced. "You're completely out of your web, Miles."

“What does that mean?”

“Zoned out. A million miles away. Processing the serious shit.”

Miles forced himself to breathe, forced himself to not keep fighting it. Casey was right, although how he'd figured it out that fast, Miles had no idea. Any energy he might have had in him drained away into nothing, exhaustion starting to drag him down again. 

A small look of sympathy - sympathy, he noted, not pity - crossed both of their faces as he fell into silence. Casey sighed, before putting a hand as reassuringly as possible on his shoulder. The not-injured one, thankfully.

"Look, man," he said quietly. "We get it. The first while after HQ is... difficult. It was for all of us. We're not going to push you into doing stuff that might get you hurt, and we're definitely not going to let you mess with anything that could cause more damage. We're not saying that you can't do Spider-Man stuff - we're just worried that it might make things worse, okay?"

Miles resisted the urge to roll his eyes. Casey was scarily on-point with the explanation, and hearing that he was actually worried somewhat made it feel a little worse that he was pushing against them so hard. The Anomalies knew - they all knew - what it was like.

Meaning that they probably knew some stuff that he didn't about this situation.

"Just… look, just head home," Casey said as the three re-entered the nearby alleyway. Tarabi pulled star's mask on, swinging up and away from the two. The look on Casey's face was nothing less than worry and dark unease. "Be as pissed at me later as you want. I get it. But if it's who I think it is, you don't want to stick around for it."

"But-"

"Miles."

He huffed and pulled his mask out of his pocket, putting it on quickly and shooting Casey a short glare. The other boy's worry mixed with that unreadable emotion, and Miles just turned and swung back toward the home base.

-=-

His first thought was that he was home. In some twisted way, it really looked like he was back in his own room.

But the walls were too bare, the shadows all wrong. Nothing here looked the way it should, nothing here was comforting in a way that could force away the fear.

Miles’ suit was off in record time, thrown to the floor while he re-dressed himself and hopped up onto the ceiling. The red of the suit stood out almost tauntingly, the warning clear in it's sharp colour.

Irritation burned in his chest, and Miles webbed it and tossed it into a laundry bin, just out of sight enough that it wasn't easy to see.

It helped a little, but everything in his head was still swirling, still sharply burning every thought into his brain while being a muddled din of sound. It hurt, and Miles buried his face in his knees.

“You’re a mistake!”

“I didn’t know…. how to tell you.”

“You do not have my location!”

“He does these things that are just so stupid…”

“And I will take everything from you…”

“Just make sure you know the cause you’re fighting for before you sign up…”

“Bring that boy back to me…”

“In two days time, when he's sworn in…”

Miles bit his tongue to keep himself from completely breaking down. His fingers dug into his skin, jabbing almost healed wounds through bandages. He'd had enough of panic attacks lately, and the jabs of fingernails and teeth were enough to roll the stressful memories into a tight, painful ball.

The pain made him click in surprise - a noise he’d started making since he'd gotten here - and he pulled even further into himself.

His parents. Were they worried? Did they miss him? Did anyone at home know? Would anyone remember, if the day reset itself over and over again? Would anyone know if he was gone?

The other Spiders. All of them chasing after him at Miguel’s word, all of them ready to stand by and let his father die. From how Miguel had been hitting him, Miles wouldn’t have been shocked if they’d stood by and let him die.

That last thought hurt even more than anything else. That everyone there, people who were like him, were ready to let him die for not following a predetermined path. It hurt to know they were so easily compelled to just do nothing while their leader shredded him alive.

He glared at the top of his doorframe over his arms and knees, no longer biting his tongue but clenching his jaw. The hurt was certainly there, both the memories and from his fingernails digging in, but it was lessened. The more Miles thought about it, the less it hurt.

And the more it pissed him off.

Peter. Had he really meant to lead the other Spiders to him? Had he really been so ready to let them keep him there while his father died like the rest of them?

Hobie. Miles hadn’t listened to what he now realized were warnings, warnings against throwing himself into the web of the Society without thinking. Had Hobie let him escape on purpose? Why was he the only one who’d tried to help him?

His thoughts kept drifting even as he tried to focus. Drifting back to her, even though Miles tried to fight it. The pangs of guilt and regret and heartbreak tore him apart inside every time he thought of her.

Gwen. She’d lied. She’d lied to him so many times, lied about not being able to see him, about the Society, about so many things.

He had let go of the web she’d caught him with on purpose, the more he turned the memory over. He’d rather fight a thousand Spiders than let her save him in that moment. How could he trust her to keep him safe, if she was willing to lie to him on such a scale?

How could he trust any of the Spiders he’d met, if they were so willing to omit the truth like that?

Miles had changed the entire course of his life for them, and in the end, they’d hurt him worse than any villain had.

Had Miles' glare been capable of it, he would have burned a hole through the opposing wall. Yes, there were tears running in small streams up his face, but no audible crying accompanied it. He was done with that.

Maybe I don't want to see them again.

They lied to me. They left me here.

They hurt me, and didn't bother to explain why.

Miles took a deep, shaky breath. The pain that had once been there when he thought about it, a sharp, twisting thing that wrapped his heart in barbed wire, was gone. Instead, it was duller, a heavy iron weight sitting in his chest that made it a little harder to breath.

No, it hurt like decay. Withering his lungs and turning moldy, a rot that sat there and grew anger in place of the bargaining or denial.

Miles paused, letting the quiet in his room sweep through everything. 

Maybe doing something with his hands would make this go away.

He probably did need something - there was just nothing immediately coming to mind that he could feasibly retrieve. The first thought was of his sketchbook, but it was dismissed as quickly as it arose. It was back in his home dimension, and he had no way out of here. Trying to go back probably meant he'd get stuck in that time loop, too.

Or worse, really, if Miguel was that pissed off at him for trying to break canon.

It took a few minutes, but Miles managed to pull himself down off the ceiling. He dropped back to the floor, taking a couple moments to actually readjust to normal gravity again. Gravity was weird when you could walk on the walls.

He sat back on the bed, debating just falling asleep for the rest of the day so he didn't have to deal with anything else. It certainly sounded appealing, but he still needed to figure out how to escape Earth-42.

A knock sounded at his door. Miles bolted up and quickly wiped his eyes, so that whoever was at the door wouldn’t see that he’d been crying. He hadn't been making any noise, but it would still be kind of obvious if someone looked closely.

“Hello?” he called hesitantly, standing up and moving toward the door slowly. Like a scared animal. 

Coward.

Shut up, brain.

“It’s Aura and Rowan,” someone said, clearly Aura. “Rowan wants to give you something."

“Oh, um… sure,” Miles called back. She seemed alright with that, instead talking to someone else, presumably Rowan. 

Gift-giving didn't really seem to be a lot of people's thing here. Then again, Rowan was the Spider he knew the least about. They were always holed up in their room or writing in odd-looking books - the most that he really saw of them was early in the mornings.

The doorknob turned, and he pulled the door back to see Aura and Rowan standing across the hallway from him. Aura’s blonde hair was pinned up in a ponytail, while Rowan’s hair was let down to the point where it nearly reached their secondary shoulders.

Two pairs of eyes turned toward him - one pale blue, the other deep green - and Rowan blinked at him curiously. He hadn’t actually seen Rowan’s face while paying attention before, so the deep bronze tones and dark brown stripes all across their face caught him by surprise.

Immediately, Rowan hopped over in front of him, a broken clicking coming from their throat, a carefully smile on their face.

'Miles! I have a surprise for you!' Rowan signed quickly, their second set of arms hiding something behind their back. 'We noticed that you like to draw, so we figured you'd probably want one of these.'

Curiosity filled him, and it must have shown up on his face. Without another word, they pressed something into his hands, before drawing away quickly.

The item in question left him speechless. A carefully bound sketchbook, with a texture that felt like a mix of leather and tree bark, made so expertly that Miles would have thought it had been bound by an actual bookbinder. That wasn’t the case, clearly - a small stamp was embedded into the spine, mimicking the spider symbol on Rowan’s suit. 

Now the half-hearted grin was fully genuine, and Miles didn't bother hiding the grateful smile.

'Do you like it?' Rowan asked, a smile on her face as well.

"Did you make this!?" Miles exclaimed, and the grin on Rowan’s face widened. Aura was smiling now too as he turned the book over in his hands. “Wow. Thanks, Rowan.”

The other Spider clicked excitedly, offering him a quick salute, before darting off down the hallway and disappearing back into their room. Aura grinned as they left, before turning their gaze back on Miles.

“By the way, Tarabi told us what happened on patrol earlier,” Aura said calmly. He wilted slightly, but she didn't visibly react to it. “We get it, Miles. Trust me. Casey wouldn't let me do jack shit for months after I got dropped here. He's just trying to help."

Miles shrunk back a little bit, but Aura made no move to do anything threatening. “Oh… I didn't know."

“It's fine, man." Aura leaned back against the opposing wall while Miles messed with the sketchbook cover. "I understand why he does it, annoying as it can be sometimes. Casey came here two years ago, and he was the first. He had to do all of this by himself. I guess the whole reason he keeps newbies off patrols is because he's trying to keep them safe."

Miles shifted a little bit, putting his weight against the door frame. "So he was stuck here?"

Aura nodded. "Luka arrived after him, and then I dropped in. Casey was apparently a very different person before I got here, and I never wanted to ask. He doesn't like talking about it very much, but it's the reason he's so protective of everyone."

That… that made sense. If Miles were stuck here by himself, he'd probably be a very different person, too. It almost made him wonder how much Earth-42 had changed his new friends - had they been different before he'd met them?

“And, Miles?” Aura said softly, making cautious eye contact. Like she was worried about spooking him. “If you need anything, we’re all here for you. I know the adjustment can be awful - I’m still adjusting, really. Just don’t be scared to talk to any of us, okay?”

He relaxed slightly, running his hands over the textured sketchbook cover to distract him. “Thanks Aura. I’ll… I'll try.”

Aura seemed to relax as well, pulling herself up straighter. “Trying is better than doing nothing. You go back to doing whatever it was you were doing, and I’ll come get you when Casey’s got dinner figured out that’s not some terrifying recipe from another world.”

And with that, Aura vanished down the hallway as well, leaving him alone in the doorway.

Miles slipped back into his room, setting the sketchbook down on his desk. It was still unmarked by any colour, but there were scattered pages all over it.

It wasn't much, compared to everything. But it was something he could change, even just a little.

He grabbed the phone that Casey had given to him (somehow equipped with interdimensional Spotify, courtesy of Luka) and logged into his account. It hadn't been opened in weeks at this point, but he navigated it like the back of his hand.

The press of the play button on his favourite playlist, and Miles was lost.

Chapter Text

The call was so damn faint.

She wasn’t sure how her Spider-sense had picked it up, among the mix of other danger signals that were always pinging in the background. There were constant warning bells going on at all times around her, ringing loudly and demanding a small portion of her attention at all times. In short, everything was taking over her psyche and covering most of the background noise with more background noise.

But this was distinct. It was knowable, in a way that was unmistakable from other echoes in the city right now.

This was familiar. The same familiarity that had been calling out to her across the multiverse, the only tiny spark of hope she had that told her he was still alive and okay.

The call was faint, but it was definitely his.

She went completely still, her hands sticking to the side of the building that her and Peter were taking a small break on. Her head snapped in the direction it had come from, and Peter looked over to her. Her neck hurt from moving it so fast, but the pain didn't matter anymore. Especially not if it meant he was here.

"What?" he asked cautiously, trying to track the vague direction of her gaze. She didn't even know where she was staring, just that it was aimed vaguely West. He was somewhere over there, and he was close enough to get there, if she could reach him. "Gwen, did you pick something up?"

"It's him," she whispered, almost barely audible over the noise of a particularly loud, annoying car alarm that had been going off for the past minute or two. The noise blared in her brain as her voice rose alongside her confidence. "Peter, that was his Spider-sense. He's here somewhere, I know it."

Peter sucked in a sharp breath, standing up immediately. "Which way?"

Wordlessly, Gwen stood and pointed westward, in the direction of Chelsea. The call was starting to fade out, and with every moment that passed, she could feel it fading off. Not in a way that felt like he was hurt - no, this had been a connection, the same way she'd first experienced upon finding his room in 1610 empty.

A connection that she was losing, because she wasn't moving yet.

"What's the deal, you two?" Luka's voice crackled to life over the comms he'd installed in their suits, the sound surprisingly clear. "I thought you were taking a break."

Peter responded before she could, making a motion telling her to start moving ahead of him. "We think we found something. We're heading East, I think towards Chelsea? Gwen hasn't really said anything."

His voice faded into that signature over-the-phone type of voice as Gwen raced up the side of the building, practically throwing herself over onto the roof. She landed painfully on her knees, a scraping into the fabric of the suit and into he skin of her knees. The call was mostly gone, but she had a direction.

A direction was more than she could have wanted here.

She scrambled to her feet and kept running, running until she was at the edge of the building roof again.

"You’re going toward Chelsea?" Luka asked, his voice a little sharper than she would have thought. The tone was hard to pick up, and Gwen lost her care to decipher the tone as she threw herself off the building. Air rushed past her face as she fell, letting the world fade into a rushing blur as the wind deafened any communication between her and the others.

That free fall was so calming somehow.

So steadying among the panic, almost enough to wash away the urgency, the need to run and search until she found who she was looking for.

She didn’t hear the conversation that took place over the comms, the one going back and forth between whether or not the location was correct. She didn’t need to hear it anymore. Gwen knew where she was going, and that was everything she wanted to know.

The only thing that she needed to know was that Miles was out here somewhere. He was somewhere out there, and Gwen was so close to finding him. 

Swinging became a blur, alongside her thoughts, alongside the sounds and smells and brushes of air in her hood.

Building by building, swing by swing, until-

She dropped on a building just across from a cafe, almost rolling sideways in her desperation to see. Gwen didn't care that her palms dug into pebbles as she scrambled up to the parapet for a closer look. The cafe was a cozy looking place, surprisingly calm and gentle compared to the rest of the city around it. Warm orange light, muted compared to the sharper colours around it, poured out into the streets in a blanket. Customers bustled in and out of the cafe, chatter and the smell of freshly made goods wafting out into the streets, shortly cut off by the acrid smell of gasoline.

The remains of the call were here. Gwen perched on the edge of the building, no longer caring if there was a chance she could be spotted by someone. She didn't care if there was a possibility for something to go wrong, or if she fell off, or any of it.

Her eyes scanned the crowds, picking out every detail as much as she possibly could through her exhausted mind.

He’s nearby.

Please, let him be somewhere close by.

Gwen waited.

And waited.

At some point, Peter finally landed beside her, having caught up with her and finishing the call with Luka. Apparently, she’d left him behind, in her adrenaline rush to try finding Miles. Peter said nothing, taking up an equally watchful vigil next to her

The remains of the call grew weaker. 

They kept waiting. 

And waiting.

Her connection, after so much waiting, finally closed again. Not to the point where it was dead, of course - it hadn’t done so since she’d first developed the connection - but it was closed to the point where she wouldn’t have been able to track it.

She’d failed to find him.

Again. 

“Are you sure he was here?” Peter asked, his voice nearly quiet as a happy group of customers left the shop. It was almost like a knife to the heart, joining all the others . “He doesn’t seem like he’s here.”

“I know he was here, Peter,” Gwen whispered, her voice shaking with something that she was too tired to pin down right now. Loss, maybe. Something close to that. “The call came from here. I know that it was here, I-”

She stopped herself before her voice could break. Peter had already heard her cry enough - he didn’t need to hear it again. She could keep herself in control, enough so that she wouldn’t break down and get distracted.

The last time she’d broken down-

The sounds of bone snapping under her hand, clearer than the shouts of her friends trying to stop her.

She shuddered. No, she couldn't afford to let it happen again. Not again, not until she had found Miles and was maybe somewhere completely enclosed where she could cry by herself.

“If you say so,” Peter said. “We could wait a little longer, if you’re sure-”

“No, he’s… he’s not here anymore,” Gwen shot back, a bit too harshly. She was being too snappy with him, but it was hard to keep the biting edge out of her voice. “I’ll be faster next time. We’ll make sure of it.”

“Are you sure-”

“Peter.”

Silence finally cut the rooftop dead, before Peter sighed. “Okay. If you’re sure, kiddo. Let’s… let's get back to base.”

The two swung away from what was left of the call, it’s remnant crying out to Gwen while quiet tears soaked into her mask.

Chapter Text

“You guys have a training room?”

“Okay, well, not really a training room, per se,” Casey clarified, pushing the door open as the trio arrived on the second floor landing. “I’d call it more of a demolition zone right now than anything else.”

“I wonder who's fault that is,” Luka said, not even bothering to glance up from his phone as he spoke. Miles snorted as Casey let out an offended squawk, the sound ringing out into the room ahead of them.

Although, upon closer inspection, it definitely wasn’t really a training room. More accurately, it definitely wasn't a complete training room. 

For starters,  it was much less colourful than the rest of the building, having nothing but grey walls, with beige wallpaper being half torn, half peeled off certain sections. There were a wide variety of destroyed walls scattered throughout the space, the remnants of separated rooms in a normal brownstone, alongside some piles of debris shoved into corners that were all that remained of them. The further back into the room Miles looked, the slightly more put-together it seemed - the wallpaper was somewhat intact, with a few of the room walls still intact enough to make for a small barrier between areas.

Demolition wasn’t the only thing that dominated the space, though - there were sets of weights in one corner, a large blue foam mat in the middle of the floor, punching bags hanging serenely further toward the back of the room in their own little corners.

It definitely wasn’t the world’s most polished superhero training room, but it clearly worked well enough for the Anomalies. Which meant it would work for Miles, too.

“You know that construction would have been done at least 1.5 times faster if you stopped getting severely distracted to do weird shit, Case,” Luka continued as they all walked into the room. He peered at something on his phone before elbowing Casey. “By the way, your team just upped their score from 3-1 to 3-2, if you’re still paying attention to this.”

“I absolutely am now, excuse me?” Casey pretty much snatched the phone out of Luka’s hands, peering at the screen like a blind bat, before his jaw dropped with only a hint of dramatics. “Oh my God, since when could he score!?”

“He’s gonna be distracted with that for the next twenty minutes, if we’re lucky,” Luka said, leading Miles over to the mat on the floor. “And if we're extra lucky, his game will go into overtime again, which gives us maybe forty minutes. In the meantime, let’s see if we can get that Spider-sense of yours blocked.”

“While we’re training?” Miles almost hated how innocently surprised he sounded at the idea. “Doesn’t that seem like a great way to get hit?”

Luka grinned, before pulling off his hoodie and tossing it to the side with enough flair to convince anyone that he could have been a theater kid. He stretched out one arm, and Miles watched in surprise as a fully harmless glitch passed across the limb before returning to normal. “That’s the point. Kinda hard to train when both parties have an alarm buzzer telling them what the other guy is gonna do.”

Okay, yeah, that made sense. If everyone could know what the other was going to do before it happened, it wouldn't help any of them get better at fighting.

Alright, so maybe there’s more to this ‘turn off your Spider-sense’ thing than I initially thought. Miles tossed aside his own jacket, trying to get it to land on anything that wasn’t prone to filling it with rocks or splinters later. A task that was almost insanely difficult, considering the state of the room, but he could try his best, okay?

It landed with a signature jacket landing sound, the same clink-shfwup sound that jackets enjoy making echoing through the small room, and the duo stood on opposing sides of the mat. Luka made a small gesture with his hands, indicating for Miles to come closer.

Was that a bad idea? Maybe. But he was actively choosing to help Miles, so it would probably spare everyone's time if he just followed the instructions.

“Okay, so, Miles,” Luka started, rolling his shoulders as he stopped a few feet away. “Before we actually get into stopping your Spider-sense from freaking out, we have to pinpoint what triggers it aside from actual potential threats. Do you know what could be doing that?”

Okay, well that's easy. 

“Most stuff,” he said, which cleared up absolutely nothing. This was made apparent when Luka’s brows furrowed in obvious confusion, before making an 'explain?' gesture with his hands. The one where someone flicks a mostly relaxed hand to face palms up.

The two just stared at one another for a moment, and eventually, Miles let out a sigh. Why was explaining this weirdly difficult? “I say most stuff and it doesn't sound like it makes sense, but I kinda mean that. A lot of stuff triggers it. I don’t really think that I could pinpoint one specific thing - it's kinda just… everything, I guess?”

Luka’s expression went from confused to a mix of worry, pity, and reservation that made Miles' stomach turn with unease. “Okay... Does anything make it calm down? Not to the point where it's just occasional pings, by the way - I mean either as background noise or completely silent.”

Miles just shrugged and shook his head. Nothing, in his experience, had really managed to keep the constant noise in his brain calm, no matter what he tried. Even background noise was always a little more active than just staying quiet enough for him to think without acknowledging it at some point. And there definitely wasn't anything yet that could just completely silence it.

“Eugh boy,” Luka muttered quietly. “Okay, well, my usual method of helping people keep their Spider-sense blocked just completely went out the window. I'm sorry in advance for this, man, but I think I'm gonna have to try something else.”

Immediately, the aforementioned Spider-sense prickled to life in a way that Miles did not like. He took a half step backwards, his entire body tensing up like preparing him to run. “Like, doing something else?”

“Nope. Dodge.”

Miles’ Spider-sense shrieked with an automatic, immediate warning of MOVE, and his head snapped sideways to avoid Luka’s thrown fist. That had been aimed directly for his face.

“What the-”

A mental shriek from off to his left had Miles dropping to the ground, the sound of something whizzing overhead leaving a small whistle through the air.

Unfortunately for Miles, in the few seconds it took for him to drop to the ground, Lukas’s foot swung around and kicked him over onto his side, knocking him solidly sideways and onto the ground.

“What was that!?” Miles yelled, pushing himself off the ground quickly. His freshly kicked ribs protested the speed of the movement, but that was not the important part. He got up in time to see Luka smirking, a hologram hovering over his watch that vanished just before Miles could get a solid read on what was on it.

“How some of us learned what needed to happen to block Spider-sense,” Luka explained, and another tiny object whizzed past Miles’ ear that he snapped away from quickly. “You gotta focus on me, Miles. Casey, how much time do you have left on that game?”

“About fifteen minutes if we don’t go into overtime,” the other Spider announced, with a tone of a sports announcer declaring that there was a tie. “You need something for this?”

“Maybe just some music,” Luka said, vaguely swinging a hand before side-stepping another of the small objects. It landed on the wall a little further away from Miles, and he only got a bit of a good look at it before he had to yank his own arm up to avoid another of the tiny projectiles. "Loud, fast, and through the floor."

“What’s the point of this?” Miles asked, just as Casey's grin darkened and he pulled over a speaker. Within seconds, the room was filled with high energy, fast-paced music, on a volume loud enough to send vibrations through the floor and up into Miles' feet while his ears were assaulted by sound.

“Simple!” Luka yelled over the chaotic song. “We have fifteen minutes. Eyes on me!”

“That doesn’t explain anything!” Miles shouted back, Spider-sense and sound ringing in his ears, while vibrations rattled into his bones. All of them were loud and insanely confusing, too many parts of his brain that were clashing for attention, all of them trying to focus on everything everywhere all at once. 

He didn’t get a chance to think too hard on it, because the random little pings from his Spider-sense about the randomly flying projectiles coming out of the walls proved to be an immediate, problematic distraction. Miles managed to sidestep and dodge a few of the projectiles, trying to catch each alert through the noise and vibrations of music that deafened the room.

Trying to locate each alert through his own thoughts, the music, the physical sensation of having one's bones be assaulted by heavy bass, was like trying to pull a sewing needle out of a pool of molasses while using a pair of sporks as grabbing tools. Ridiculously, stupidly difficult.

Miles turned to face the area where a new set of projectiles were coming from, but that ended up being a mistake. He caught Luka’s shin to the arm before his Spider-sense could switch gears enough to warn him about it,

Miles let out a yell as he stumbled sideways, pain immediately spiking up his arm before dulling to a throb, and Luka practically skipped back away from him. His almost neon green eyes didn't leave Miles for a second, observing him with enough intensity that Miles' fists were up before he realized.

“Come on, Miles, focus on me!” he shouted over the pounding noise. “Block out anything that isn’t the biggest threat!”

“How am I supposed to do that!?” Miles ducked under another of Luka’s hits, but it was hard to force anything to happen at all. His brain was misfiring in every direction thanks to the overwhelming amounts of input, and even just the action of retaliating to swing a fist into the other Spider’s shoulder was like trying to drag his arms out of a tar pit. 

Miles actually managed to get a couple of good punches in before one of the tiny projectiles slipped past his scattered perception and nailed him right in the side of the neck.

Whatever it was, it stung like hell, and Miles let loose a chorus of impressively creative swears while clamping a hand to the side of his neck. The step he took to the side was enough to see what the pesky object was before it hit the ground, disappearing into the dirty floor away from the mat.

“You guys put BB guns into your walls!?”

The revelation was met with a prompt elbow to the ribs, and Miles doubled over with a pained gasp as air rushed out of his lungs. 

The Spider-sense, his warning system that he relied on so heavily, was fractured everywhere, and it only reacted half a second enough to make Miles move out of the way of Luka’s hands trying to come down on his back.

A move all too familiar to him, and one that sent him from a state of somewhat collected but confused to immediate, instinctual survival mode as flashes of deep digital blues and reds played out behind his eyes again.

Danger, move-

Flying from behind-

Okay, maybe we need-

Incoming-

Above-

No, the side-

Confusion made Miles drop and roll backward, managing to avoid both but not to avoid stepping on concrete and debris that stabbed into his foot and made him stumble forward into a hit from Luka's elbow to his worse shoulder.

Eclectic noise, disorienting vibrations, a highly hazardous environment, BB pellets firing from all sides, bruises forming across the skin, malfunctioning Spider-sense, and Luka's lethally fast attacks - all of it, a devastatingly perfect cacophony of too much, of hell both inside his head and out.

There was just too much going on, too many things to focus on all at once, and yet exactly none of them were able to take priority.

That was once again made clear by Miles getting to his feet too late, standing in one place a second too long, and being assaulted with BB pellets for it. 

“Eyes on me!” Luka shouted again, an addition to the everything that Miles could barely register as someone speaking. The song paused for a moment, before another one with a completely different bass tone started up, new noises and thundering floors removing any and all familiarity he could have gauged from before.

“There’s like eighty other things to keep an eye on, if you haven’t noticed!” 

The brown-haired boy rushed forward and grabbed a hold of Miles’ arm, spinning him away from another hailstorm of bullets and ending with his back hitting a wall. The movement made him cry out, both from pain and memory, as Luka ran toward him. “Your Spider-sense can’t help you when your senses and perception are overloaded, Miles!”

Miles is slammed into the painful, hard metal of a train, shredding the back of his suit as the laser-web lets him go. A glitch shreds him, nerves alight with an unholy pain where atoms shifted into places they shouldn't be.

The words come before the memory catches up.

"You're not supposed to be Spider-Man!"

Miles’ panicked curse was quickly drowned out by the music, his Spider-sense screaming, and Casey shouting something unintelligible as he leapt sideways, avoiding another hit from Luka and a few pellets in the process.

Luka turned to him, neon green eyes cold and expression devoid of anything familiar, and the only thing in Miles now that remained fixed and steady was nothing less than unrelenting, blood curdling fear.

Danger was lurking everywhere here. His scattered, overloaded brain wasn't able to piece any of it together into cohesive thoughts or processes, and the one person he was actually fighting no longer seemed to have a problem with hitting him until it hurt too much to get back up.

Only Luka's words stood out as a BB pellet hit him directly in the ear, pain making him leap away from his opponent's oncoming kick more than the two and a half seconds late Spider-sense did.

Your Spider-sense can’t help you when you’re overwhelmed.

The words rang clearer in his head than anything else, but it still didn’t clear anything up. There was something to it, but it wasn't forming into any solid plan.

“Just pick something out and use that as a grounding point!” Luka yelled as he threw another kick toward Miles. It landed with a bone-rattling thmp, and Miles yelled in pain as he threw himself away from it. “Keep your eyes on me! Don’t look for other projectiles!”

“None of that is making any sense!” he objected, the sting of a few more pellets jolting through his leg. "You're not making any sense!"

“Then stop listening to me, Miles!”

“Then stop listening to me!”

“That's the best idea you’ve had all day!”

The memory jarred Miles out of paying attention to anything around him, even if just for a moment. For that half second, he could think, and the half second turned to five seconds as he forced everything away as much as possible.

Focus.

Try just one thing.

Your Spider-sense can't help you when you're overwhelmed.

If the Spider-sense isn’t reliable, then pick something else that we can easily latch onto.

The most obvious thing in Miles’ perception landed, clear as day. The rhythmic, fast-pulsing beats of the music, thundering through the floor and up into his hands and feet.

The more he focused on that, actually, the more vibrations he could feel - the footsteps of others in the building, the approaching steps from Luka, the little rattles the hidden BB guns were giving off just after firing.

The vibrations.

They're gonna say more than just my Spider-sense.

The cacophonous rhythm of the music settled into place, and Miles managed to duck under a few BB pellets while keeping his gaze on Luka. This time, the overwhelming panic was dying down into the back of his brain, vibrations of the rhythm alongside the out of place echoes from BB guns and footsteps telling Miles things he didn't realize he should have known.

“Let’s try this again!” Luka called, side-stepping a few of his own pellets. “Stay focused on me, and ignore everything else!”

Now, technically, he wasn’t ignoring everything else. Everything else had just become a lot easier to understand.

And finally, just as Luka rushed forward, did Miles’ Spider-sense snap to life properly and focus directly on the other Spider. Everything else faded into the hum of the music, loud and thrumming through his bones.

Miles grabbed a hold of Luka’s wrist and yanked him sideways, into the line of fire of a BB gun’s shot. The other boy yelped, and Miles managed to back away just before he could get hit with another of those obnoxiously painful pellets.

Luka whirled around, elbow almost catching him in the side, and another quick and easy movement put him away from the incoming elbow and solidly out of the line of fire for any of the bullets, if just for a second.

“Hey, there you go!” Luka’s eyes had blown wide, the surprise catching him just a little off guard. “Can you feel anything else?”

“How about I tell you when you're not trying to beat my ass?” Miles replied, an excited grin stretching across his face, as another BB pellet zipped past his arm.

Luka smiled wickedly, and the intention was made clear before he’d cleared half the mat. Miles rushed forward to meet Luka’s oncoming blow, almost skipping past it as he dealt a blow to his friend’s back.

A sharp kick to the ankles caught him off guard, the lack of vibrations in the ground a deterrent to keep his attention held, but he managed to push the pain away and land a few of his own hits to Luka’s shoulder. Not particularly well-aimed shots, mind you, but enough to make the other stumble away from him.

The other Spider shouted and let loose a torrent of unfamiliar curses in a language Miles didn’t know, but it didn’t stop him from rushing forward to sweep Luka’s ankles and solidly drop him to the floor. The exact same move Luka had pulled on him earlier, all too easy to replicate now that his focus wasn't nearly as jumbled.

The music finally stopped, and Luka tapped something on his watch as Miles jumped a little further away from him. Luka was down, but that didn't mean he wasn't a threat.

“Hell yeah!” Casey shouted, and Miles turned his head to see that he wasn’t looking down at the phone, but rather over at him and Luka. The obvious glee in the boy's face somehow made the near torture he'd just been put through a little more worth the effort. “You got his ass on the floor!”

“Only because I missed a step!” Luka objected, still from the floor. Miles decided not to point out that it wasn't because he'd missed a step, for the sake of Luka's pride. “I wouldn’t have gone down that easily otherwise!”

Casey barked a disbelieving laugh, and Miles finally let his shoulders drop as the adrenaline started to bleed away. He expected the constant ripples and pings of his Spider-sense in the background to come rushing back, to overwhelm him into panic, but instead of that, there was just… calm.

Less the kind of calm one got when there was nothing happening in their head - there were still at least twenty thoughts running all at the same time in his brain - but the constant be wary alerts and pings about everything that was unfamiliar had melted into the background almost completely. The remnants of the music from before still had the bass running in the back of his head, and everything was humming in a quiet wall behind that. Even just the usual stay alert pings were now much more mitigated by the fact he could physically feel everything around him and identify it.

Holy shit, that worked.

It sucked, but it worked.

“You good, man?” Miles asked, shaking off the revelation way faster than most people who’d discovered a way to suppress a part of their superpower set would have. He offered out a hand to help him up, one that Luka gladly accepted.

“You got it?” he asked, and Miles nodded. “The noise suppression?”

Casey’s laugh appeared out of nowhere next to him, and he clapped Miles on the shoulder. It actually startled him this time, because the overactive Spider-sense was suddenly so laid-back that he hadn't been fully paying attention to where Casey was. It wasn't fully gone, but it hadn’t informed him about the approach this time. 

Huh. Definitely kind of terrifying, considering how accustomed he was to knowing where most potential threats were at all times.

Wait, why am I thinking that? Miles scolded himself. Casey's my friend. He's not a threat.

The image of Luka's cold, blank face as he lunged for Miles, almost robotic and uncaring, made the affirmation wither just a little too much.

“Miles got a noise suppressor,” Casey announced with a smug grin, “and I got video evidence of you getting your ass whooped.”

Luka’s eyes somehow blew open even wider, before he rushed past Miles in an attempt to grab Casey’s phone. The other yanked it away immediately, pulling back with Miles' shoulder still in his grip, and he stumbled back with a yelp.

“Casey, delete that footage!”

“Mm, nah. It’s funnier if I don’t.”

“Dude, give me the fucking phone!”

“Ooo, what if I sent it to the group chat?”

“Don’t you dare-”

Casey danced around Miles, dangling the phone out of Luka’s reach. Miles yelped as Luka tried to jump over him to grab it. That was how he found himself precariously trying to balance Luka on his back and not get tossed sideways for the same reason. Luka's shin dug into the back of his neck, the same place where he'd gotten shot with that BB pellet earlier, which only made the rapidly healing bruise protest with a painful sting.

“Yo, ow, what the hell!?”

“Casey, give me the damn phone right now!”

“Maybe I’ll send it to that server you’re always yapping about-”

“Casey Octavius Parker, you delete that video right now or I’m telling Eri who stole its secret stashes of chocolate!” Luka threatened, almost playfully, but there was still some reasonable panic there. Miles' jaw dropped with amusement, the suddenly calmed part of his brain allowing him to relax just a little more. And besides, dropping someone's full legal name like that was usually grounds for getting your ass beat.

“Hey, don’t look at me like that! We share those bags!” Casey objected, swinging out of reach of Luka trying to snatch the device, earning a shout of laughter from Miles. “Try some actual blackmail, digital moron!”

Luka paused for about three seconds, and in those three seconds Miles could practically hear the evil grin on his friend’s face.

“You want actual blackmail?” Luka pressed. “What about that time that you came back to the apartment with that weird plant chalk-”

“And the footage is deleted now, shut up shut up shut up!” Casey yelled frantically, pocketing the phone and lunging away from another swipe by Luka. “I swear on the three moons in Earth-6392, it’s deleted and gone and never seeing the light of day again, now shut your mouth!”

“Wuss,” Miles muttered with a grin, and that comment earned him a sharp jab on the shoulder from one of them and a peal of laughter from the other.

“Hey, if you were trying to make sure nobody got a hold of an embarrassing incident, you’d cave too!”

Luka jumped off of Miles’ back, up onto the ceiling, and he finally straightened to see that Casey was glaring pretty much everywhere that wasn’t directly at Luka or Miles and was red in the face. Annoyance clearly adorned his face, but there was still a half-smirk there, too.

Luka was grinning equally widely, tapping his foot on the ceiling. “Oh yeah, and considering the contents of that incident-”

Casey was on the ceiling with a hand over Luka’s mouth in five seconds flat, glaring at him with a mocking vitriol that Miles couldn’t have matched on a bad day. “Luka, I swear to God, I’m going to figure out how to glitch a censor bar onto your mouth- did  you just lick my hand!?’”

At that point, Miles couldn’t hold back the laughter, and he broke down into giggles as Casey dramatically wiped his hand off on Luka’s face.

“Eugh, don’t slime me!”

“It’s your slime! Take it back!”

After a few moments, the two broke out into hysterical laughter.

Is this really all it would be, if I stayed here? The thought crossed his mind unbidden, but for some unknown reason, Miles didn’t immediately dismiss it.  Just messing around with these guys, training, doing patrols?

I’d still be doing Spider-Man stuff, sure, but… this place is peaceful. In a weird way, sure, but it would still be peaceful.

If I stayed, I wouldn’t have to worry about the multiverse. I wouldn’t have to deal with the Society’s bullshit or being hunted down like a fugitive.

I could keep everyone safe.

The last thought hit him particularly hard, enough that Miles had to stop whatever he was doing - which for the moment, did include breathing - to grapple with that reality.

Part of him wanted to stay. Everything else told him to leave.

They’d be safe, but he’d never see any of them again. Only the echoes of his family would be here on Earth-42 with him, echoes of a family that couldn’t quite be put back together. 

He wouldn’t have to deal with Miguel or any of the Spiders who followed him, but that also meant that his friends had probably long since given up on him. There was no reason to look for someone who had done nothing but damage to their way of life, and even if he was found, then Miguel would probably screw up everything big time.

Everyone would be safe from the Spider who’d somehow ruined it all.

They’d be safe.

I’d be lost.

What does that make me?

The final piece of the thought arose through his thoughts, pulling a vicious thread somewhere deep down and making his entire face ripple with hurt for a moment.

An anomaly.

Simple as that.

The understanding hurt.

The word hurt.

But there wasn’t any fixing what had already been broken, now was there?

A sudden snapping sound jolted Miles out of his thoughts, and he blinked his eyes back into focus in time to see the door to the training room close, and Casey standing down in front of him with a grin on his face.

“Helloooo? Anybody home there?” he asked, a little mischievously, while waving a hand in front of Miles’ face like he was checking to see if he’d gotten hypnotized. “Do you want to try actually training?”

“I thought everyone else said not to train with you,” Miles said. “Because you’re apparently very brutal.”

A bark of laughter filled the air, before Casey dropped down to the training mat to stand next to them. “Oh, no, they’re 100% right. Why do you think I waited until Luka left to suggest it?”

A harsh swallow from Miles made Casey roll his eyes. “Oh come on, don’t be scared. I’ll go easy on you the first couple of times if that makes you feel any better.”

“That… yeah, I guess that’d be alright.”

Another bark of laughter from Casey helped Miles feel just a little more at ease with the possibility of training with him. 

It made him feel just a little more at ease with the possibility of letting everything fall away and staying.

Chapter Text

The opportunity to actually train his skills with another Spider was great. He hadn’t had really gotten a proper chance in his home dimension; the one person who had offered had immediately gotten killed, his old friends hadn't been around long enough to teach him, and the Spider Society had apparently seen him as a fugitive for a fair amount of time. Chances were, nobody in those fields were going to be particularly prone to helping him out.

The Anomalies offering to help him was a tremendous change. Even if he'd been overstimulated to hell and back not even 20 minutes ago by Luka, it was still a massive opportunity for him.

Said opportunity being provided by Casey, however, apparently just meant that Miles was gonna get his ass kicked. A lot. 

“Get up.”

As much as Casey was his friend, Miles was really starting to hate those two particular words.

“Y’know, this would go a lot faster if you didn’t try shredding me every five minutes,” Miles pointed out, forcing himself to his feet through dull strings from bruises that were probably a bit too deep to be considered as ‘training.’

“It could also go faster if you didn’t have such a skill issue with it,” Casey shot back, which made Miles’ brows furrow in annoyance. He glared at Casey’s retreating form, who shot him a look of equal irritation in return.

"You could always try taking the stick out of your ass.”

"You could try getting better."

Seriously, what was this guy’s problem all of a sudden? It was almost terrifying how cold Casey’s demeanor was now, like he was trying to work with someone he despised instead of a friend.

Whatever. It didn't matter - he could think about it later. Right now, Miles' main focus should really be on not getting his ass handed to him on a silver platter for the fifth time.

Casey went back over to one wall and pressed a hidden button, tucked away along the unfinished unfinished surface. A loud whirr echoed through the room, before the BB guns that they’d been training with earlier slipped smoothly back into the wall.

“What are you doing?” Miles asked, admittedly with some wariness. Casey wasn’t all that big on using the BB guns, but nothing Miles had done so far could have possibly rendered there to be a need to put them away. Despite the pain in his one ear and the bruises from the pellets, Miles was handling the BB guns fairly well.

“We don’t actually need them for this,” Casey explained calmly, almost too much so. “Besides, I’m sure you’re getting tired of needing to dodge tiny BB pellets. I think anyone would. I definitely am.”

That part was true. Miles was getting pretty tired of the little guns in the walls constantly letting off vibrations as an alert. 

The two settled back as the wall panels seamlessly merged back into the grays and browns of the apartment wall. It was definitely cool to watch, but considering how long this room seemed to have been 'under construction…' it was a little weird that they had implemented wall trapdoors before actually finishing the walls. Miles hadn't personally needed to do anything like that, but anybody with enough functional brain cells could tell you that building the secret trapdoor wasn't something done before the demolition.

“So,” Casey said, still entirely too casually for his liking. “You know how to turn your Spider-sense down a couple notches or twelve. That’s good progress.”

Miles nodded, immediately squashing the proud grin that threatened to splatter itself across his face. He'd been getting pretty used to getting rid of expressions like that when he didn't have the mask on as of late.

Okay, so maybe that wasn't a good thing, considering everything, but that wasn't the point right now.

“What’s not good progress,” Casey continued, fixing him with a glare that could have anyone withering in an instant, “is how you actually fight.”

As one could expect, Miles withered under the look. “I think my fighting is just fine.”

“'Just fine’ isn’t gonna cut it anymore, Miles,” Casey said, almost blankly now. There was something about the way Casey stared off into the distance, like he was seeing something that Miles couldn’t, that made his skin crawl. “You're incredibly sloppy, poor form, and your reaction time even with Spider-sense is slow. You fight like you’re aiming to incapacitate instead of dealing with the problem at hand. And you really can’t do that here. Certainly not if you’re fighting someone like Miguel or your Spot guy.”

The last words were spat out, like Casey had eaten something rotten and was pulling it out of his mouth to throw on the floor. “He doesn’t fight fair. Not with regular villains, not with super-villains, definitely not with anomalies, and especially not when someone’s fucking with how he runs the place. You got the exclusive package that somehow involved all four; being an anomaly that he probably considers as a villain at this point, who accidentally let a super-villain loose on the multiverse and is very, very determined to undermine how he’s running things.”

“Okay, and? What does any of that have to do with how I fight?” Miles snapped, a bit uneasy now. The other Spider turned around, before hopping up to the ceiling to look down at him with an expression that he could only interpret from this angle as irritation. “I don’t see what me trying not to accidentally kill anybody with a venom shock has to do with him or the Spot.”

“Do you not remember how injured you were when you dropped in on us?” Casey hissed. Miles snapped his mouth shut, hands balling into fists at his sides. Obviously he remembered - he was the one in his body during that. “Your shoulder was torn open. You were covered in open gashes and bruised like someone put you through a human sized rock tumbler. For fuck’s sake, I’m surprised the skin on your back was even remotely intact based on what you told us.”

Wait, my back?

I didn’t notice anything wrong with it when I woke up.

Casey dropped off the ceiling, landing directly in front of Miles on the training mat with furrowed eyebrows and that same, terrifying emptiness in his eye that Luka had earlier. “Miguel was willing to tear you apart to protect his version of the multiverse, Miles. Just knocking the guy out isn't going to stop him from trying to catch you again.”

“And how do you know?”

“Trust me, Miles. He’s willing to do anything.”

Miles frowned, glaring at him more pointedly now. “You're dodging the question. How do you know?”

Casey stiffened, but rolled up one sleeve harshly and shoved his arm in Miles’ direction. A still-healing, massive scar twisted up the full length of his forearm, shiny and raw and darkened the way major scars always were after only a year or two of healing. Wide claw marks twisted together halfway down his forearm, merging into one massive gouge on the side of his wrist.

This wasn't an injury meant to stun someone. This was the kind of injury meant to completely eviscerate someone’s muscles or tendons, and make sure they were never able to use that limb properly again, if at all.

It hadn't landed the way it was supposed to, but the results of that if it had?

A shiver crawled down Miles’ spine, the prickle of the claw marks in his shoulder making the dampened Spider-sense rear up in an automatic panic. The placement of his own injury, aimed where it was, could have completely wrecked his shoulder if Miguel had actually gotten to hit him the way he’d intended. The more Miles considered it, the more he was sure that his shoulder could have just been torn half off.

Instead, he’d gotten away with receiving a blow that had only left it sore and painful to move.

“You got lucky,” Casey said, repeating what Miles had already realized. “Sure, the advanced healing factor we have helps. Getting this stitched up helps. But it doesn’t get rid of it. It will never get rid of this. Do you understand me now?”

Miles just nodded.

“You’re a mistake!”

Casey reached for him, and Miles drew back.

“Alright, man, I get it,” he hissed quickly. “I still don’t see what I'm supposed to do to make sure that he doesn't try that again.”

A harsh noise from Casey, before he took a couple steps back, letting the sleeve fall back down over his arm. “First thing?”

In a moment that Miles was only just a little too late to catch, Casey spun around and managed to land a solid, heavy blow to his arm. It was almost to the point where Miles considered he was actually using super strength, solely because of how much it hurt.

“Ow, what-!?”

“You need to stop holding back!” Casey snapped suddenly, rushing forward with a level of calculation and unnerving danger that had his muted Spider-sense shrieking back to life. Casey managed to get a hold of one of his wrists, twisting it around sharply, and Miles let out a pained yell.

He jabbed an elbow back, trying to hit Casey, but the boy was horribly fast. He twisted Miles’ arm again, before levering him over his shoulder and dropping him onto the mat below.

A sharp spike of pain drilled itself into the back of Miles’ head, his arm stinging violently from where Casey had twisted it. 

The other Spider didn’t help him up this time, and Miles forced himself to his feet after a couple moments of regaining his balance. 

What the hell was that!?

Casey had attacked him more like an actual threat than a friendly training partner, and he seemed to know it based on the hard expression he wore.

Maybe that expression he'd been wearing earlier mattered more than Miles initially thought.

“What the- you didn’t warn me!” he spat. He shook out the arm that Casey had grabbed, trying to maybe find a way to mute the pain.

“Miguel wouldn’t warn you,” the other Spider shot right back. “Neither would the Spot. So, I won't either.”

“I thought we were training, Casey,” he said, pulling his arm closer and glaring at his friend. “That didn’t seem like training to me.”

He just glared right back, cold and unreadable. Not only was his facial expression hard to read, but his body language had changed too. His stance had changed completely - his feet were placed further apart, fists curled and at the ready, slightly hunched over, secondary eyes keeping an even closer watch on him than the regular ones.

Miles let out a yell and rushed at him, but Casey ran at him at the same time, aiming for his side instead of where his hit was supposed to land. It caught Miles painfully off guard, and Casey had the chance to kick him behind the knees and level him with the floor again before darting off to the other side of the mat.

He’s using his Spider-sense, Miles realized, the understanding of how Casey had dodged so quickly hitting him like a truck.

Fine then. If he wants to play like that, then I’ll give him what he’s asking for.

Miles let the background hum of the rhythm in his head fade out, and his Spider-sense returned in full, violent force, screaming warnings in Casey’s direction. Whatever it was the other Spider was doing, it was setting him off and definitely ending with a headache later.

Casey lunged forward again, this time a move that Miles was able to see coming and dodge with much more ease. It was a lot easier to manage with his Spider-sense screaming, counterintuitive as that sounded.

He swung around to land a blow on the other Spider, even just a light one, but was thrown off course by another announcement to DODGE by his instincts and a sharp kick to the ribs that came a millisecond after. It sent him stumbling backward, and he dropped to the ground again.

“I’m not using my senses, Miles,” Casey said, not even a hint of pain or emotion in the way he spoke. “Why did you turn yours back on?”

He's not!?

That really should have clicked sooner. Other Spiders gave off calls, and he hadn't picked up on one from Casey.

“I don’t know, because you’re literally beating my ass?”

Casey snorted. “Second thing: you can’t always rely on your Spider-sense to help you through a fight. It's so easy to tell that you rely on yours too much, even as disorganized as it is. Just because an enemy like Miguel has no Spider-sense doesn’t mean yours will always be able to give you an advantage.”

Miles’ jaw dropped when the words were spoken.

Miguel has no Spider-sense.

After a short sort through his jumbled, painful memories from that day, though, understanding came through clearly. He’d never gotten any kind of call back from the older hero, only warnings if he was about to attack. Nothing like a resonant frequency the way any other Spider seemed to have.

Which made sense - it was the multiverse. There was bound to be a Spider-Man without that particular power at some point. It was just kind of weird that it so happened to be the one that seemed so happy to pulverize someone if they weren't the right kind of Spider-Man.

“Miguel doesn’t rely on intuition the way a lot of us do, which means that we can't always rely on it either,” Casey explained as Miles got back up again. “He relies on three things to overpower an enemy, and they’re all brutal. If you ever want to stand another chance of fighting him and coming out of it alive, you're gonna have to suck it up and learn. Turn your senses off.”

“How do I know you’re not gonna try brutalizing me again?” Miles asked. Casey just shrugged, blinking at him blankly with his uppermost eyes. His secondary pair, though, were flicking around the room, visibly sizing him up, narrowing and almost glowing with an emotion Miles didn’t quite understand, before shutting quickly.

"You don't," Casey stated plainly, which only made him even more nervous. "That's the point, Miles. Deactivate your Spider-sense."

"Are you really just gonna stand there and stall on me until I do?"

"I'm not telling you."

Miles rolled his eyes, but forced the rhythm in the back of his head to overtake the constant buzzing of his Spider-sense once more. He fell into a defensive stance immediately afterwards, waiting for Casey to strike again. His friend wasn’t opposed to lunging without warning, or using trick to catch him off guard.

If the rapidly forming bruise on his arm said anything, then it would hurt to catch another blow like that.

“The first thing he relies on,” Casey said, an audible clicking sound in his voice echoing as he spoke, “is brute force. Both on and off the mutagen injections, Miguel is incredibly strong and fast. It makes for a pretty nasty combination, especially if he’s chasing you. He's not the only one - most criminals on Earth-42 rely on brute force as well, through their goons or otherwise.”

“Tell me about it,” Miles muttered, which only earned him a sharp glare.

Miles moved to take a step back, but he’d picked a rather terrible time to do so. Casey practically tore across the training mat, knocking him over entirely too quickly and with force that was completely unnecessary for just training.

“Dude, ow!” Miles shouted, as the other Spider threw a punch. “Seriously-”

Miles tried to push Casey off of him, only to be met with a knee to the face. Pain spiked through his mouth as he bit the inside of his cheek, a yell slipping out as he tried to jab Casey in the ribs. Harder than Miles would have, if he was training with anyone else, but considering how violent Casey was being?

Miles's patience was starting to wear thin.

The elbow connected with Casey's side, and he swore violently as he was properly pushed away. Miles grabbed a sharp hold on the knee that had kicked him, trying to shove that away as well, but it just made his face a prime target for getting hit again.

The force threw him across the floor, the impact, jarring him away from all focus on fighting. His shoulder, the bad one, screamed in protest, even as Miles forced himself away from the other Spider.

“Get up,” his friend hissed, and Miles had to actively push down every thought of running. Casey was his friend. He wouldn’t hurt him too badly during training.

As if he’s actually been holding back at all during this, a quieter part of him commented, and Miles shoved that down into the pit, too.

“The second thing Miguel relies on is keeping you scared,” Casey said, with no hint of any regret or worry in his voice. The other Spider backed up, and Miles scrambled to his feet immediately to get more distance between them. “In my experience, he’s not the kind of person who messes around and plays with you before he catches you.”

“Says you! You seem fine with just hitting me!” He readied himself for the incoming blow, waiting for Casey to follow through with an attack to knock him down, but the other Spider just stood there watching. Sizing him up again, eyeing him without any visible emotion on his face.

A small trickle of fear wormed down his spine, the anticipation making him too nervous to focus now. Seriously, what was he playing at-

Casey lunged forward and landed a solid blow to Miles' jaw, one he'd been too nervous to properly register it. The pain spiked through his jaw, and he let out a wordless shout as he backed off.

“He is brutal and doesn’t hold back,” Casey snarled. “Constantly staying on your tail, persistently, is how he makes you scared. The fear comes from keeping you looking over your shoulder and actually seeing him after you, okay?”

“What the hell am I supposed to do about that?” Miles hissed, rubbing his face. His jaw and mouth were stinging with pain, but there was no way he was getting the taste of his own blood out of his mouth anytime soon. “It just sounds like I’m supposed to hide from him!”

“You need to play by his rules if you want to get out of there alive!” Casey snapped. “Otherwise, you’ll probably end up captured, or worse!”

“When has playing by his rules ever done anything for you?”

Silence settled over the room, and Casey shifted with a look in his eye that seemed different, somehow. Seeing something different compared to what he saw before. It was almost pity, but it evaporated just as fast as it had appeared.

“Third thing,” he said, completely cold now. “Miguel uses words to beat you down just as much as he’ll use his hands. He will use any leverage he has against you, especially if it’s something that he thinks you’re in the wrong for.”

“How is telling me any of this helpful?” Miles asked, backing off the training mat. “It really doesn’t seem like you’re actually trying to teach me anything here. It seems like you're just trying to make me less ready to fight him, man.”

“Oh, really?” he said. “Then prove that you're ready. Fight me like you would fight him right now if he was here.”

Miles resisted the urge to ball his hands into fists, instead dropping his one hand down from the bruising side of his face. “Casey, you’re not him. I’m not gonna fight you like that, okay?”

"That's not exactly telling me that you're capable."

"I'm not gonna fight you like that! I didn't even fight him the way you're saying I'm supposed to!"

“Maybe if you had, you wouldn’t be stuck in this mess.”

That caught him off guard, and he took a short step back. “What- excuse me?”

Casey grinned, a little too cruelly for his liking. “Come on, Miles. Don’t try to play dumb with me. Maybe if you’d been able to beat him before, you wouldn’t be trapped here.”

The words tore through his heart, and Miles shook his head to try and shake off the doubt he’d managed to bury earlier.

What the hell was that for?

“What are you talking about?” he snapped, backing away as quiet panic started to settle in. Casey was starting to really piss him off, but he wasn't going to let him have the satisfaction of seeing him snap.

Casey rushed him, and Miles shifted to the side as fast as he possibly could. He stuck to the floor where he landed, and Casey turned on one foot to lunge for him again. This time, he struck, hitting him again in the face.

Pain blossomed in his nose, and he wrenched away as hot blood started to pour freely down into his mouth. It had been fractured at least, broken if Casey really wasn't being careful.

“Come on!” he yelled. “You can’t dodge me forever, Miles!”

“I can sure try!”

“That’s not gonna be good enough!”

Casey’s next hit landed squarely on his bad shoulder, and the residual stings made him cry out in pain. He threw himself to the side, trying as much as possible to avoid throwing a punch back.

He wasn't letting himself throw a punch back. It could have been a noble thing, if he wasn't trying to make sure Casey didn't get what he wanted.

Why is he actually trying to fight me!?

The other Spider grappled his shoulders, grip tight and crushing, before violently throwing him into the wall. Miles didn't get the chance to recover before Casey had him pinned to the wall with one arm, effectively almost choking him, and Miles finally had to retaliate by kicking him off.

“Oh, so now you’ve got some bite!” Casey shouted, recovering and skirting sideways as Miles gasped for air, covering his throat with one hand. “Took you long enough!”

“I’m not gonna fight you, Casey!”

His muffled Spider-sense tried to warn him about something, and Miles dodged the wrong way. The punch hit him square in the chest, and he didn’t get time to move before an elbow came up and hit him across the jaw. Air rushed out of his lungs, leaving him gasping like a fish while he struggled to regain his balance. 

“That’s your problem here, Miles!” Casey shouted, knocking him to the floor with a kick to the back of the knee and pulling one leg out from under him. “You’re not fighting me because maybe I can be reasoned with, right? Because I’m supposed to be helping you?”

“And because you’re a friend, and I don’t wanna hurt you!” Miles countered. Getting up off the floor proved to be impossible as Casey placed his foot on Miles’ chest to keep him down, leaning into it and making it harder to catch his breath. Struggling to get out from underneath him proved even more impossible when Casey put his full weight onto the foot.

“Your old buddies didn’t seem to have a problem hurting you, did they?”

Miles stopped struggling, jaw dropping as the words burned through the room.

“W-what?”

“Aw, come on, just think about it!” The cruelty dug deep into his head while Casey dug his heel into Miles’ chest. “Keeping secrets, lying about being able to visit you, betraying you by letting Miguel trap you? Following him to try and capture you so that you could be 'brought to your senses?'”

“Stop, stop it, Casey, that’s not-”

“And not only that, but then they just leave you here to die.”

“That’s not true!”

“Then where are they!?” Casey’s voice was a thunderous yell now, and Miles was barely able to lift his chest to breathe under the painful weight of his heel. “Where are those precious friends who cared so much about you, huh? Where could they possibly be, if you've been stuck here for a month already?”

“They’re… they’re coming, okay?” Miles tried, even as his heart sank lower and lower He'd known somewhere in the back of his mind, he really did, but he didn't want to show the others that he was starting to give up. “I know they-

“No, they’re not! You need to get that through your head, Miles! They’ve had an entire month to come for you, and there isn’t a single trace of them anywhere!”

He’s right.

Not a single trace of them anywhere on Earth-42.

It's been too long - they've probably abandoned me by now.

He hated how easy it was to believe. He hated how easy it was for the doubtful seed in his mind to agree, to spring to life with resigned anger and despair.

“You wanna know what I think?” Casey hissed, and Miles tried to shove him off. It didn't work, and Casey kicked down into his chest. “I think they’re glad you’re gone. Just another anomaly that they don’t have to deal with anymore, right?”

He didn’t say anything. Partly because he didn’t have the air to do so, but also because… Casey was right.

He really was just another anomaly causing problems. And if Earth-42 was the place where they were locking up anomaly Spiders, then he would have wound up here anyway, right?

But what about Dad?

What about the Spot?

No, they… they can’t think that, right? Even if they did give up on me, they have to know that they need to stop the Spot, right?

“Doesn’t that piss you off?” Casey demanded, watching him with an eerily blank expression. “That they really saw you as so much of a problem that the best solution was to just leave you here? Multiversal threat or not, it’s gotta sting that they didn’t even give you the decency to go home and get that canon event over with, right?”

“It’s not happening,” Miles gasped out through gritted teeth, the doubt in his mind replaced with that slow-growing anger lurking under the surface. “I’ll find a way to stop it. I will.”

The words burned in his mouth as Casey’s fist connected with his jaw, a bright pain that hurt less than the barbed words the other Spider was throwing his way.

“You won’t. Not while you’re stuck here.”

The anger in his body solidified into something dark, and Miles glared at Casey with a vitriol he’d never felt before. “Get. Off.”

“The only way I’m moving is if you can hit me off, anomaly,” Casey spat. Miles had no idea where this side of Casey had come from, this bitter, angry, cruel person that seemed so okay with hurting others, but he wasn’t going to deal with any of his bullshit.

“Don’t fucking call me that.”

“Isn’t that what you are? One of us?”

Miles tried several times to take in enough air to yell or scream, but he couldn’t. The pressure on his chest was too consistent, too practiced, to be a mistake anymore. Miles’ blood ran cold - Casey was actually starting to suffocate him.

He's going to suffocate me, the primal, survival-driven part of his brain shrieked, and Miles started trying to push him off even more.

Casey tilted his head, and the blank expression turned to a chilling, cruel grin. “Some friends those guys were, huh? I don’t think they’re the smartest people, leaving a threat like you unmonitored in a prison dimension like this. Especially stupid not to come looking for you if you've supposedly got the power to destroy the multiverse just by existing, no?”

The fury burned in his mind, and Miles worked again to get away as Casey continued in that mocking, bitter tone that made his skin crawl. “Oh, please. You don’t have get so offended on their behalf. If they had any brains rattling around in those empty skulls, they would have realized that leaving you here is the worst possible thing they could have done. I’m surprised Miguel hasn’t personally come tearing this dimension apart looking for you yet.”

The idea made his heart freeze for a moment, but it was not moment enough to dissipate the anger. “Don’t call them stupid,” he spat, managing to get one arm under him that was promptly shoved away by Casey. "You… you don't know them."

“Seriously?” the Spider said, disappointment obvious. “Come on, man, you told us yourself. Hobie tried to warn you, and you were too blinded to listen. I’d have thought he’d at least break the rules somehow to come looking for you, but I guess I was wrong about him. That Pavitr guy? He seems too nice to really hate anyone, but I bet he wouldn’t want anything to do with you after how your villain basically started a countdown timer on tearing his dimension to shreds.”

“Shut up,” Miles snapped, trying harder to get up. The pressure on his chest increased, alongside the anger that was threatening to boil over. Breathing was a painful task, every inhale burning like fire in his lines. "Shut up, Casey."

He was not going to let Casey win this. He wasn’t going to hurt his friend.

But trash-talking the others was a step too far.

He didn't know them, even if apparently, Miles didn't really know them either. He knew nothing about them.

“What about that Peter Parker variant you mentioned?” Casey added, and furious tears stung in Miles' eyes as he tried harder to get up. “He literally led everyone right to where you were! And immediately after saying that he was trying to just talk things out, like how you seem so intent on doing with everyone else! What kind of friend lures you in and betrays you like that?”

“Peter’s… he’s not a bad guy!” Miles protested, pushing fruitlessly at Casey’s ankle while trying to get him off. “Just stop talking!”

Casey’s cruel grin turned malicious. “And who was that last person you mentioned? Gwen?”

Even despite the pain, the pain that she’d inflicted on him, the pain of breathing and the bruises and the bleeding, something in Miles’ head and in his heart was not letting this slide anymore.

“She’s the one who really betrayed you, right?” Casey continued as he got more insistent on trying to free himself. “The dumb blonde knew all along what telling you about the multiverse could do, about the consequences that could happen, and she didn’t say shit. She avoided the questions every time they came up, and all while completely playing you? I don’t know about you, Miles, but she sounds like a deceitful bitch to me.”

“Don’t call her that,” he hissed, his patience finally snapping. "You don't know anything about them, just-"

“Oh no, did I hit a nerve?” Casey asked, the mockery vicious now as his voice dropped low. “Right, I forgot! It wasn’t actually just her being a liar that let her get away with all of that - it was because you were so completely blinded by her that you would have let anything weird slide if it meant you could spend one more second with her.”

“Casey, don’t you dare-”

“You are so fucking hopeless. Almost willing to let everything weird go, and thanks to it, you fell for her lies. And look at where that landed you! Stuck in a prison dimension of their society’s making, and the stupid, manipulative girl doesn’t even give enough of a shit to come find you. She-”

A loud CRACK sounded out through the room, and the pressure on Miles’ chest vanished as Casey wrenched himself sideways with a yell. Miles took a full breath of air for the first time in what could have been forever, a burning cold that made it hurt even more, and got to his feet faster than he thought possible.

The other Spider was hunched over, hands covering his face from where Miles had punched him. Actually hit him. All because he'd lost control. And for what? Because he'd actually been listening to him?

That worried thought vanished quickly, though, in the face of Miles’ anger. “You don’t know anything about them, Casey!” Miles snapped, storming forward and shoving him just for good measure. “You don’t get to say any of that about them, do you understand me?”

Casey looked up, and his obviously broken nose was dripping with crimson. It stained his face, his shirt, the training mat below, as he smirked. The cocky expression only made Miles angrier, but Casey instead started laughing. Not a mocking laugh, but a genuine one.

“And that,” he announced, wiping his face and smearing blood across his right cheek, “is what you need to do if you ever fight one of our villains, or Miguel. It apparently takes a lot to piss you off, and even more to get you to fight like you should be.”

Miles’ anger didn’t dissipate. He couldn't be serious. “Okay, wait, so you were trying to make me mad enough to hit you?”

“Yep,” Casey said, dusting himself off and wincing slightly from pain. His expression hardened, not into cruelty, but into regret and sorrow. “We all need something to fight for, Miles. And we have to be ready to play dirty and be brutal to protect it. Your optimism can only get you so far, especially here.”

Finally, finally, the fury seemed to cool, but that didn’t make Miles feel any better. It only cooled into something darker, something he immediately pushed as far away as possible. “You were trying to see what would get me to fight that way.”

“Yeah. And don’t take this the wrong way, but you have a nasty left hook. Perfectly pairs the bitch who broke my nose with her right one,” Casey added. 

That actually got a small laugh out of him, and he could have let it go to point out that Casey also had a pretty painful but he couldn’t let the insults and mockery slide. “Don’t call them that.”

“Hm?”

“Don’t call the other Spiders what you did,” Miles repeated. His gaze hardened as he made eye contact, not bothering to wipe away the blood draining out of his nose. “They’re not bad people for being a part of the Spider Society. They did what they thought they had to, okay?”

Quiet settled over the training room, the only sound being the fabric fplip of blood dripping onto the training mat. Miles took a few more lungfuls of air, ignoring the painful way it burned when he did. He didn't want to say anything that could upset Casey, but none of that was fair to the others.

Others. Not even old friends anymore?

I have to think about it more.

“That’s what we all thought, too,” Casey whispered, quiet enough that Miles almost missed it. “It’s always that they were doing what needed to be done. To protect everyone. Because you’re right - they are good people.”

The other Spider walked up to him, stopping on his right while staring toward the door. Casey was somewhere far away now, farther than anyone could have reached him if they tried.

“But good people do terrible things if they’re convinced it’s right.”

And with that, Casey walked away. The only indication of his departure being when the door softly shut, as opposed to the slamming that Miles had grown so accustomed to hearing.

Leaving him alone in the training room, and with the thoughts that swirled aimlessly in his head, each one a bitter mockery of the taunts thrown his way.

Miles left not long after. He needed to think.

Chapter Text

“Gwen, you need to rest-”

“I’m FINE!”

The shout rang through the apartment, and Peter flinched at the sound of the window slamming shut. Everyone did, actually. Even Ham, who was usually pretty chill, perked an ear at the noise.

“Gone again, is she?” Hobie asked, in an almost painfully calm tone compared to the writhing pit of anxiety in his gut. The fact that he'd kinda appeared out of nowhere didn't really help. Peter shot him a sharp look, and the boy just shrugged like he didn't care.

For some reason, that only made Peter's worry turn to something akin to irritation.

“She’s been ‘gone again’ for the past four days, Hobie,” Peter said quietly. Everyone else in the small apartment had already dispersed, some of them obviously resting while others seemed to be fidgeting with their watches. Pav was watching them much more closely than before. “I dunno if you’ve noticed, Hobie, but the constant going out and looking for him is getting her hurt.”

“Better than sitting around doing fuck-all, no?” Hobie said. He was fiddling with the strings of his guitar, but the tone of his voice had sharpened into something new and unfamiliar for him.

Peter stiffened, still staring out the window Gwen had run out of.

For the past week, after she’d apparently gotten that signal from Miles somewhere around the North end, his friend’s search had almost turned into a frantic obsession. She went out more by herself and would be gone for hours at a time, only to return with more news of Alchemax thugs and with more injuries than any person fighting should have.

Sure, everyone else was going out in shifts, the way they’d all agreed on when they’d gotten here. Peter himself was spending way more time out looking for his friend than not, admittedly, but not to the degree Gwen was. Hell, even the others were spending a lot of time out by themselves. Why, he wasn't sure - he wasn't going to ask them about what they were doing.

But with every passing day, the idea that Miles was actually anywhere near Earth-42 kept withering away. With every day that they saw no sign of him, Peter's hope died just a little more.

Even with Gwen's Spider-connection and the pings that she kept getting, it was really starting to feel… well, it felt like they weren't going to find anyone here, no matter how long they stuck around.

But Gwen was out every day and night chasing those signals. Getting into fights on purpose, from what he could tell from her injuries. She barely even stuck around long enough to get proper sleep.

She’d done this before, in the year where she’d stayed at the Spider Society. Peter hadn't been too close with her during that time, but it was enough that he'd known about it. The first few months after her arrival, Gwen had been going on every single mission, without fail. He’d only truly learned how bad it was when Gwen had ended up in the medical bay with a broken hand and nasty case of sleep deprivation. It took a lot after that to pressure Miguel or any of the higher guys to stop including her on certain missions.

This was something akin to a more intense version of that - less doing it every mission, more doing it every few hours. And there wasn't really anyone stopping her from going, either. He'd been trying to at least convince her to sleep longer than a couple hours, but as just proven, it wasn't really working all that well.

Sure, Peter probably sounded like a worried dad. He wasn’t Gwen’s father, or Peni’s or Hobie’s or anyone’s here. But becoming a dad made it even harder to shake those kinds of worries, especially now that he was seeing a problem like this up close and personal. Even if he hadn't been, the problem was still obvious.

Summing that all up? Peter was worried as hell about his friend.

“Oi,” Hobie said, shaking him out of his trance. “She’ll be alright. The bird can handle herself without an old tosser going gray over it, yeah?”

“What- hey, I’m not old!” Peter hissed. Hobie shrugged again, picking at the strings of his guitar and raising a doubtful eyebrow at him. “And… okay, hang on.”

Peter made a ‘follow me’ motion with one hand, and Hobie eyed him suspiciously. He'd rather talk to Hobie in private than address him for everyone to hear.

“Na-na-na-nah, don’t think so,” Hobie announced, much louder, so that the entire apartment could hear him. Heads turned at the noise and Peter winced as Hobie dragged him back toward the open area. “Whatever you gotta say, you can say it to everybody. No more secrets.”

“Thank you so much for putting me on the spot,” he grumbled. Everyone was watching now, so there wasn't really a point in trying to slip away.

“Spot was always there,” Hobie pointed out. The look on his face was not quite friendly anymore. “You just didn't wanna be in the limelight.”

Noir stood from his place on the couch, eyeing Peter sharply. Peni and Ham had leaned forward in their seats, but Pav's face was really setting him on edge. “We’re all behind the eight ball, Peter. If there's something you've got in the back pocket, you gotta tell us.”

Peter went completely still, looking around the room in worry. How was he supposed to explain what he was thinking? To any of them?

Peni and Ham were both watching him expectantly, both Hobie and Noir were regarding him with something along the line of unease and a hint of distrust. Pav's face was unnervingly blank, without any sort of indication of what he could possibly be thinking.

Maybe. If Peter was reading the faces right.

Look, faces were hard, okay? You try interpreting vague facial expressions while under scrutiny!

“Look, guys,” he said, trying his best to keep a neutral face that wouldn’t betray everything going on in his head. “I- okay, listen, Gwen’s really starting to worry me.”

“She always used to go out like this,” Peni pointed out, apparently seeing nothing wrong here. The girl looked away, and something recognizable crossed the gap. “I think she just needs to… get it out of her system. She'll be back to normal soon.”

“Get it out of her system!?” Pav's voice suddenly snapped through the air, much harsher and angrier than Peter had ever heard from him. The sudden dark look on his face wasn't helping. “This isn’t getting anything out of her system. This is just making it so much worse! She's gonna burn herself out at this rate!”

“Running around like there’s a hornet hive chasing her?” Ham said. "This kind of thing would mess with anyone."

“I’m telling you, this is different,” Peter insisted. “She’s barely eating or sleeping. I almost never see her around unless we’re on the same patrol, and she’s going out way more often than anyone else is.”

“Are you saying we’re not putting in our share?” Noir hissed. “We’ve all been scraping the concrete trying to find our friend, Peter.”

“No! The point is that she’s gonna drive herself into the ground if she keeps going out all the time like this!” Peter’s words seemed to strike some kind of chord, at least with the older Spiders. “I know she’s worried, and we all want to find Miles, but there’s a line between searching for a missing person once a day and searching for a missing person to the point where you’re barely functioning and getting hurt all the time!”

“We can’t really stop her,” Peni pointed out. Everything about her seemed oddly defeated, like she was already settling into the reality Peter was avoiding like the plague. “You know she’s going to try going out no matter what we try.”

Peni made a very good point there, but Peter couldn’t shake a weird sense of unease that came with said point. “If we don’t try something, she’s going to kill herself working like this.”

“Peter, listen,” Hobie said, slinging an arm over his shoulder and tapping it with his fingers. “Trying to stop her ain’t gonna do shit. She’s doing her best, and-”

“It’s not anyone’s best if they’re hurting themselves!” Peter exploded suddenly, losing the struggle to keep himself calm. He took a deep breath, a terrible feeling sinking into his gut as he tried not to choke on his next words. “I think… I think we all need a breather. If not just for Gwen, then for us to recover enough to search properly again.”

The room went dead silent, and Hobie took his arm off of Peter’s shoulder. Everyone was staring at him, with a mostly blank expression that Peter definitely couldn’t read, except for Hobie and Pav.

“We’re all tired,” Peter tried, watching faces fall to the side as thoughts ran through their heads. “We’ve been searching for weeks, and the most we’ve found here is the Alchemax stuff. We’re hitting a dead end.”

He saw a few shoulders drop, but what he wasn't expecting was for Pav to leap off the couch and rush forward.

"Are you seriously giving up!?" he shouted, so loud and in his face that Peter backed up a few steps. Hobie stood behind him, fists clenched and shaking as he glared. "It's not healthy, I agree, but everyone? Have you lost your mind!?"

“You’re shitting me,” Hobie spat his way, grabbing hold of his guitar and slinging it harshly over his shoulders. “You’ve gotta be joking, Peter. You’re telling me that we’re just gonna stop everything?”

“We need a break, Hobie,” Peter said sharply, the tone of his voice strengthening with every word. “If everyone’s dimensions are time-locked, then we can take some time to calm down. Nothing is going to disintegrate if we stop for a second.”

Maybe that was the wrong thing to say, considering how Pav’s furious expression turned distraught.

“What do you mean, nothing’s gonna disintegrate!?” he cried, and everyone jumped at the sound. “My dimension is falling apart, and his will too if we can’t find him! We can’t just stop and take a break because you're too tired!”

“Not to mention, we don’t know how long we’ve got ‘til someone does find him, and it might be by someone we really don’t want doing it,” Hobie hissed, glaring at the rest of them with distaste. “Maybe Gwendy’s onto something, looking for him all the time. If none of you are all that keen on finding our friend, then you’re off your damn rockers.”

“We can’t just leave either of them out there by themselves just to stop for a bit!” Pav yelled, and it was at that point that Peter started to panic. "To… To take a break!"

“Guys, I’m not saying we’re abandoning him or Gwen!” he tried to clarify. “We just need a few days-”

“A few days could be too long!” Pav objected, scooting back to join Hobie by the window. Peter followed after them quickly, trying to remedy the shitshow he’d accidentally created. “What if Miguel finds him? Or what if he finds us here and sends us back home? How are we supposed to help or do anything if we’re sent back home and stuck, Peter!?”

That made the entire group go still. 

Peter hadn’t even considered the idea that Miguel might be looking for them, too. Looking for Spiders who were deserters, chasing an anomaly, knowing that they were friendly with him and were completely willing to help him. 

Apparently, nobody had, given how Peni’s eyes went wide and terrified at the words.

“How on Earth are you guys okay with this!?” Pav cried, and Hobie put an arm around his shoulders. Peter’s anxiety spiked through the roof as he realized the boy was crying. “How is any of this okay!?”

“Pav, it’s… it might just be what has to be done,” Peni said, sounding weirdly defeated. “If we can’t-”

"Our homes are at risk, Peni!" Pav shrieked, pulling up his mask to hide his face. Even so, the distress was clear. "How is just letting that happen okay!?"

"We're not letting it happen!" Peter objected. "Kid-"

"He was right!" Those words sent the entire apartment into a chilling silence, as Hobie pulled his friend closer. "And Gwen was too! We were supposed to be the good guys, and look at what's happened! This isn't right, and neither is giving up on them!"

Peter could have sworn his heart went cold.

"We're supposed to be the good guys."

"We are."

God…

"Guys, please," Peni whispered, ever so carefully. "If any of this is supposed to be fixed, maybe-"

“No,” Hobie snapped, cutting Peni’s words short so coldly that Peter couldn't find it in himself anymore to breathe. What had he done? “Fuck you if that’s what you’re gonna do. We’re going, right now, and if you don’t like it, then you can-”

“Hobie,” Pav whispered, shaking like a leaf in the wind. Hobie stopped, shooting everyone a dirty look that made Peter feel like the worst human being alive. The two of them turned and re-opened the window, escaping before anyone could really stop them.

Not that Peter would have stopped them. Not that he had the strength to try.

How had he managed to screw this up so badly? First with Miles, then with Gwen, now with Hobie and Pav.

How did everything keep turning out like this?

What had he just done?

Peter wasn’t sure. He didn’t have an answer for it, too exhausted to deal with this anymore. He needed to rest.

He needed to be alone.

Chapter Text

At this point, Miles really should have learned that having his Spider-sense turned off meant he was easily prone to getting jump-scared.

Which was why it was so painfully embarrassing when Casey jumped his shoulders with a shout, and maybe, just maybe, Miles’ scream was incredibly high-pitched and panicked. Not that he’d actually do that, obviously.

“Chillax, man!” Casey announced, hopping over the back of the couch to sit next to him, with an entirely-too-smug grin on his face. “How is it possible that you’re still so jumpy even with your Spider-sense off?”

“I didn’t jump,” Miles protested immediately, even as the other Spiders gathered in the small living space. “I just… was surprised.”

“Whatever you say, man,” Milo announced out of nowhere, dropping onto the couch next to him. He was grinning though, which wasn’t something that Miles had seen very often.

It didn’t take too long for Miles to realize that everyone had gathered in the living room, sitting on the couch or on the floor, some of them staring almost expectantly, while Rowan held a large duffel bag that was covered in various sprays of colour. The general air around the room was full of excitement, something that he couldn’t quite place yet but that his body ran with anyway.

“What are you all doing?” Miles asked, a playful grin overtaking his face. “You’re all up to something, I can tell.”

“Well…” Luka said, grinning back and pointing cheerfully at the bag in Rowan’s hands. “We figured you’ve been here long enough to warrant running out to get some new spray paint cans.”

Miles’ jaw dropped in shock, and he leaned forward to look at them all with bewildered eyes. “No way!”

A bark of excited laughter from the others got him fully, genuinely smiling, for what honestly felt the first time in days. After the false alarm in Times Square, repeatedly getting his ass handed to him by Casey, and weird stuff with Rowan’s research, this was a pretty nice change of pace.

“Come on, Morales!” Sidney announced. Both Milo and Miles looked up, and she laughed. “Lets see what you can do to a blank Spider suit.”

-=+=-

The blank suit turned out to really be just that - a monotone gray, obviously already covered in primer so that the paint would stick. There was masking tape over the eye lenses, to prevent anything from getting on them, and it was on a stand to make sure that the coverage would be even enough.

Miles couldn’t contain his grin, and when Rowan tossed the paint bag at his feet, it barely took a second before his music was playing and he was picking up a black spray paint can.

The others grinned at him, and Miles got to work.

-=+=-

The suit was almost done. By now, most of the people had left, but there was still one thing he wanted to do. Partly, it was out of necessity, but partly, it was because he wanted to do it.

Absently, Miles looked over to Aura and Rowan’s suits, the only two Spiders who were left in the little garage room. All of the Anomalies had a special symbol on their suits, a glitching slash through the Spider insignia they all had. It marked them all as Anomalies, defying what they were supposed to be, defying what they thought Spider-Man was supposed to be.

It made less sense to him, but these people had helped him. They’d given him support, safety, and most of all, even if they didn’t really know it, a little bit of hope.

Miles looked over his colour choices, and started working on the insignia.

-=+=-

“You’re done?” Milo asked. He looked almost impressed by Miles’ speed, but he didn’t make any other commentary. The other Spiders also looked pretty surprised, but Miles couldn’t really keep himself contained.

“Hell yeah!” he announced, still standing in front of the suit. “I think it looks pretty cool!”

“Show it off, then!” Luka said, and the other Spiders were fidgeting and dancing from foot to foot with anticipation. 

Miles grinned, a little too slyly, and let himself flicker into invisibility. He darted away to the other side of the room, doing his best not to laugh or do anything that could give him away. He already had a suit on, so it wasn’t too hard for him to take change out of his shirt and pants so he was only wearing the suit. He pulled his mask on with a grin, and the new eye lenses adjusted to his face.

“Miles, dude,” Casey said, obviously unimpressed as he invisibly walked back over on the ceiling. “This is just your normal suit.”

“You sure about that?” he asked, weaving a quick web and dropping down to hover in front of Milo and Casey. All eyes snapped to where his voice was coming from, and Miles let his invisibility drop.

An audible gasp escaped Rowan, and the others followed suit as they started to freak out with excitement.

Miles couldn’t blame them for freaking out - he was pretty proud of his design.

The suit was still completely black, styled similarly to his old one with the placement of red palms, feet, and down the sides of his body. But he had added back the red shoulder from his first suit, and across both Spider insignias, he’d put in a sunrise coloured, glitchy slash through both sides. The sunrise colours were painted around the eye lenses and on his legs.

“OH MY GOD, NO WAY!” Tarabi squealed, flapping her hands rapidly at the sight of the new colours. “You added it! You added the glitch!”

“Yeah!” Miles said, grinning under the mask. “I figured I’d fit in a little better if I had one too!”

Sidney was squealing incoherently, Tarabi was bouncing around, Rowan was watching with a curious look on their face, and Aura was shaking Luka’s shoulder to the point where it looked like he was going to pass out. Milo was grinning too excitedly, while Casey looked like he was trying not to cry.

“Are you okay, man?” Miles asked, gesturing to the purple Spider.

“I’m FINE,” Casey said, covering his face immediately. “This is FINE. I just got an eyelash in my eyes!”

Milo laughed, and clapped the boy on the shoulder. “In both of them at once?”

“SHUT UP.”

Miles couldn’t stop smiling. It felt like he belonged here, more than ever, and he let himself excitedly chatter with his friends as time slipped by outside.