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The Librarian
Peter emerged on the other side of the doorway feeling as though he'd broken through the surface of an algae covered pond; cold, wet, and slimy from head to toe. A disgusted choking sound tore from his throat as he brushed frantically at his arms and torso. He expected his hands to come away gooey, but there was nothing there. An invasive ickyness permeated him, seeping in deeper than his skin, but his suit was completely dry and spotless. Throwing a glance over his shoulder he saw the film of magic shimmering iridescent like leaked gasoline puddles on cement.
The door fell shut with an echoing thud.
Instinctively, his hand shot forward. Seizing the handle, he gave it a sharp, urgent tug. He sighed when the door smoothly swung open to reveal the sheen of oily rainbows obscuring the hallway beyond it. He pushed the stone slab shut again, taking feeble, stringy breathes to slow his racing heart. It worked steadily, and a tentative calm settled over him. His skin crawled and Peter's jittery hands pressed hard over his arms as he ran them anxiously. Absentmindedly, he took a step back and his stomach bottomed out as his foot sank behind him further than he'd anticipated. With a yelp, he tumbled backward.
His head cracked against stone.
"Owww…" he groaned. His blinked rapidly to clear the spots in his vision. With gentle fingers he poked gingerly at the sore spot on the back of his head, and hissed through his teeth when it throbbed in time with his pulse.
The sensation disappeared as quickly as it had come. It left no lingering trace, no tingles or goosebumps, only a shooting pain from where he'd smacked his head. Lying flat on his back on the frigid stone floor, he struggled to recall the feeling that had just passed. He shivered and blew out a long, labored breath. It hitched painfully in his throat when he finally noticed the ceiling above of him.
Oh, here's the cosmic stuff, he thought weakly. He stared up, slack-jawed, at a giant sphere that was rotating itself without an axis, floating above of a stone pedestal without any visible means of suspension. He realized it was a globe when Africa disappeared over the curvature and the east coast of South America was pulled into view. A dark, concaved ceiling encompassed it, providing a backdrop of constellations in the night sky.
It looked so real. Not like a commissioned celestial mural, but like space as it actually appeared. The distance from his place on the floor seemed so short, like he could climb the wall and reach his hand through the thinning atmosphere.
"Are you okay?" Karen asked. Peter ran a hand over his face, taking a quick inventory of his bodily aches.
"Y-yeah. I'm fine," he stammered and blushed. "I totally didn't trip, fall, and concuss myself like bad slap-stick schtick. Just clearing that up, in case that was what you were thinking."
"I don't detect a concussion."
Peter grinned.
"Nice. That's the power of positive thinking." His smile faded then as he raised himself on his elbows and glanced down at his suit. "Do you detect anything else?"
"None of my scans sense any cardiac or brain abnormalities. Do you feel worrying symptoms?"
"I just… I felt…" he trailed off, frowning. Seeing nothing and feeling nothing, he couldn't find anything tangible to complain about. His lowered himself back against the stone dais. "It's nothing, never mind. I'm fine."
"Then why haven't you gotten up?"
"I- what? Are you serious? Karen, look at that." He opened his arms up wide, as though to hold the space above of him. "When am I ever gonna see something like this ever again?"
"You've been to space. Why does this impress you?"
"It's hard to appreciate when you're scared for your survival. Turns out, I like having both my feet on Earth." He eyed the perimeter of the dome, where it met the walls, with interest. "Hey, do you think if I shot my webs up, they'd hit the ceiling or just keep going?"
"My sensors detect a flexible barrier constructed by an unknown source of energy. I don't know how well your webbing would adhere to it, but it would be unwise to test its durability without any prior knowledge of what it is."
Peter scoffed as he slapped his palm on the dais and hoisted himself to his feet.
"I wasn't really going to do it. I'm just saying what if," he sighed as he straightened up.
For the first time, Peter was able to get a good look around him. He stood in the center of a rotunda like an axel within a tire. Encircling it were four separate areas. To the left, another door like the one behind him. It had an emblem on it like a swooshy letter A. To the right, a similar door but with an emblem of a triangle pierced by a line. Straight ahead of him was an open room with no door. Inside, there was a desk, shelves, metal hexagonal framework, and books.
It dawned on him slowly, but eventually the familiarity stood out to him; This was a library.
Jackpot.
Peter let out a short, stunned laugh. He'd found it. He'd actually found it, despite this stupid house trying to trip him up every chance it got. Staffs, cauldrons, and portal windows were awesome but completely useless for someone like him. But this was what Peter knew.
"Tony Stark was looking for you," Karen said innocently, like Peter hadn't noticed. He dropped his eyes and shuffled towards one of the other tall doors.
"Uh-huh," he mumbled as he pulled open Swooshy A door. Tall columns, that Peter presumed were white, supported a ceiling beyond a film of glimmering rainbows.
"Why are you deliberately avoiding him?" She asked. Peter anticipated the question and thought over a concise answer. He worried his lip as he jogged to triangle with a line door. There was more rainbow film behind it. A tiny smile pulled at the corner of Peter's mouth as he imagined standing sealed inside of a giant soap bubble. Karen, who wasn't to be ignored, repeated: "Why are you-?"
"Because I'm tired of being told to get over this," he said quietly. Closing the door as gently as it's weight would allow, he turned to the library. "I can't do it, and I don't want to. It doesn't matter how many times Mr. Stark tries to push me into moving on, I won't."
"Making him chase after you like this-"
"Is really crappy, I know, but I'm kinda out of options here." He stepped inside, and tried to push back the guilt that was rapidly catching up with him. "Mr. Stark isn't going to help me. That's a fact, he said so himself. It's fine that he doesn't want to, really. He done a lot for me, and he's got his own life going on. The problem is that he's also trying to stop me from helping myself, and that's not fine."
He eyed the leather-bound books suspended in chains inside of stack hexagons. They all looked older than Methuselah, but their mustiness was promising. He would need info on ancient magic if he was going to learn how to go about undoing magic from the big bang.
MJ would've loved this, he thought while taking in the library in all of its medieval dungeon glory.
"You should go back. He said he wouldn't leave without you."
Peter paused in front of a large desk. Someone had left a stack of books on it. He traced his fingers over the embossed symbol in the hard cover, and coughed tightly.
"He will. Maybe not today, he's stubborn like that. But he will eventually." He inhaled deeply as his voice threatened to waver. He smiled even though no one was there to see it. "He's gonna go and live his best Paul Bunyan life. That actually sounds really peaceful and well-deserved after all the stuff Mr. Stark's has had to do for other people. And it sounds great for bringing up Morgan. And Ms. Potts will probably be happy to get back to her roots… but, man, it's gonna suck."
"What will suck?"
Peter drummed his fidgety fingers.
"Being on my own," he admitted softly. His mouth clamped shut in a latent attempt to preserve some of his dignity. He was oversharing again, and Karen didn't want to hear his complaining.
"I don't understand."
"Don't worry about it," he muttered and slid a chair out from under the desk.
"What if he catches you?"
"Then he catches me," Peter shrugged helplessly. "After that… I don't know."
He flipped the book open carefully. The creaky spine groaned, making him wince from the sound. His heart sunk.
It was written in English, but it was the kind of English used in ye olden days. (Middle English, commonly spoken in England and parts of Scotland and Whales until the 15th century, his decathlon brain provided obnoxiously). Skimming over faded ink on vellum pages, he picked out a paragraph and tried to read it. He gave up shortly after when he realized that he couldn't understand at least half of the words.
"Can you translate this text?" he asked, despite knowing the answer.
"No, I can't. I'm-"
"Not connected to the network, right," he sighed. "You don't happen to have a translation program installed locally, do you?"
"No. Evidently, Tony Stark didn't think an application like that would've been needed for the usual purposes of this suit."
He slumped against the hard, wooden chair. Tossing his head back, he stared up dejectedly at the high ceiling. It was so tall, everything but the lowest beams escaped exposure from the lit lamps below.
"Remind me when all this is over to write a program," he murmured blandly.
"Sure thing."
Heaving one last tired sigh, he stood and walked to the weird wrack of stacked hexagons. Some of these books had to be written in Modern English, right? He could muddle his way through some Spanish too. That broadened the horizon, didn't it?
He unchained a book and cracked it open. Sanskrit. Nope. He put it back. He opened another. Kanji. Next. The one beside it was in… Urdu… maybe?
No.
No.
No.
Cold sweat dampened his skin. His fingers started to tremble. The book he held slipped from his shaking hands, and he fumbled to catch it mid-air.
"Peter…" Karen hesitated. "Whatever it is that you are doing here, you don't seem to have thought it through."
His laugh came out wet and with a touch of hysterics.
"That's because I haven't," he said, no longer caring what Karen would think of his underwhelming preparedness. He already knew what Mr. Stark would think. He had heard his 'I told you so' speech many times. It was locked and loaded, waiting on standby for whenever Peter jumped and fell into a dirt eating face-plant. He really did love to rub it in whenever he was right.
It was all unraveling.
Dread spurred on desperate determination, and a feeling of deep discomfort over took him. Unshakable restlessness took hold of him, making his fingers jump irritably. A needling twinge pricked at the base of his skull, and an odd, itchy sort of headache crept up from it. He was mindful to relax his grip on the book he carried.
"I'm not going to leave either, so if you're not going to say anything helpful, please be quiet."
A harsh silence followed. Peter tried to swallow the steel in his voice.
"Sorry. I could've said that nicer."
"What are you searching for?"
"I don't know…" He cleared his throat to loosen the tightness. "Something? Anything? I just got a feeling, y'know? If we're gonna find anything helpful in saving the others, it'll be in here… somewhere."
"You think so?" Peter whirled around, heart pounding as he came face to face with a tall, willowy woman. She appeared silently and stood so close that her height forced Peter to tilt his head up. A warm smile lit up her face as she looked over his tensely hunched body. "I'm glad to hear it. A fresh pair of eyes might just be the thing I need."
She looked down at Peter. His mouth dried as he took a step backward.
"Who are you?" he asked finally. She arched a dark brow at him and held her hands out from her body, as though presenting herself.
"I am the librarian," she said. "And yourself?"
"I'm Spider-Man."
The corner of her mouth curved, but she quickly suppressed it.
"Well, Spider-Man, you won't find information about the infinity stones or their inherent properties in that collection of ancient Nordic runes." She gestured to the book, which Peter realized he'd been clutching to his chest. He glanced down at it, flustered.
"Oh, s-sorry. I was just-"
"Perusing through the collective sum of Earth's magical knowledge in the ambitious attempt to single handedly save the vanished half of the universe?"
Peter knew he was as red as his suit. Perhaps redder.
"Yeah…" he muttered, not knowing how else to explain himself. That pretty much summed it up. He held the book out for her to take. For a painfully awkward second, she stared at him vaguely offended, like he'd committed some terrible faux-pas. Then she inclined her head towards the empty hexagon in the wrack, as though to say 'do it yourself'. Blushing, Peter wrestled with the metal bindings securing the book.
"Peter, you should take a moment to rest."
"Not now, Karen!" he hissed, snapping the clasp shut. The librarian's eyes turned keen.
"Who is Karen?" She asked, but Peter ignored her as Karen's voice overlapped with: "If you are feeling too stressed, then I believe you should-"
"Mute," Peter snapped. His hands balled at his sides, and for a moment he glowered at the chained book in front of his face while suppressing the surge of anger that chased his blood.
"Who were you talking to?" The librarian asked. Peter exhaled a long breath.
"Doesn't matter," he muttered bitterly and turned to face her again. He caught a glimpse of her hard features morphing into polite confusion. Shaking his head, he sighed. "Sorry, Ma'am, what were you saying?"
She spared him one last long measured glance before turning away from him. Her hair, pulled back neatly into an intricate, black braid, snapped in her stride as she moved swiftly down the center aisle. Peter followed behind her.
"We may have more success in the Book of Souls. I recall a chapter mingled in there about their everlasting nature. It is my understanding that the vanished are just that, vanished not dead as everyone else seems to assume." She stopped in front of another row of hexagons, and pointed out one of the books.
"We?" Peter asked eagerly. His hands shot up to unchain the book. The librarian had already moved on and he scampered after her again.
"You know, I went through tome after tome of resurrection magic before I had that epiphany? What a waste of time," she called over her shoulder, and turned down another aisle. "It's my own fault though. I have felt rather pressed for time and, in my haste, I overlooked the futility of resurrection without a vessel to place the soul in. That was silly."
When Peter caught up, he found her standing between two rows of towering bookshelves. She pointed to a burgundy spine pressed between a navy-blue volume and a deep green one.
"Unfortunately, the first emergence of earthly magic predates written text, so we may never know its origin. However, Asgardian memory extends further than our own. The personal accounts written by Mímir might be a good place to start. The comparative insight to a society that is so well immersed with mysticism could offer some valuable perspective."
Her arm didn't drop until Peter had taken that book as well. He shifted them clunkily in his arms, all the while being careful to handle the pealing leather bindings with extreme delicacy.
"W-wait, you're helping me?" he stammered out disbelieving. Hope bubbled in him, uncontrollably and dangerously. The librarian's teeth flashed in the weak light when she smiled, and the effect made Peter's stomach clench.
"On the contrary, you're helping me." She swept her arm out at the empty room. "This library was packed full of the world's greatest magical minds, buzzing in a tizzy and combing through tomes. When no immediate solution was found, the most powerful abandoned the search. Then others took their leave. Now there is only me carrying on."
Peter nearly swayed on his feet.
He knew it. Of course, there was a sector of people who couldn't move on, who wouldn't let go, and who had migrated together to work on a common good. He wasn't alone, and never had been. All he'd had to do was go find them. They'd dwindled down to one person, but that was still one more on Peter's side than he'd had before. Even with only the librarian helping, that still doubled the rate that he would've worked at before. And when half of the team was magical, that could only improve their chances. He glanced from the librarian to the rows and rows of shelved books.
"The muggles are giving up too. We'll probably be on our own here."
"I'm sure we will be." She said indifferently. "Apathy is contagious. Once the masters of the sanctums left, everyone else followed in droves."
Peter shivered and lowered his eyes.
"What makes you think we'll find anything?" he asked.
"Faith," the librarian said. Peter glanced up and saw her draw herself up to her full height. He couldn't help but mirror that confidence. "Concluding the search after only a few months' effort is rather premature, don't you think?"
"Yeah," Peter grumbled through a bitter grin. She smiled coyly at him and tipped her head to the stacks.
"Shall we then?"
Peter wasn't sure how much time had passed, and he didn't really care. There was so much to take in, twenty minutes might've been five hours and he wouldn't have noticed the difference. Frolicking through pages of researching bliss, new concepts in which to frame reality poured out of every book.
Magic seemed to separate into a dichotomy; the material and the spiritual. Peter found himself riveted in the former and somewhat perturbed by the latter. The Book of Souls had read like a cross between religious doctrine and Ikea furniture assembly instructions. The 'how to guide' portion seemed only to pertain to the soul's capabilities after creation. Not even ancient magic text could answer what a soul was before birth. But Peter read over words like resurrection, possession, bonding, and having thoroughly managed to creep himself out by those macabre notions, decided to move on.
Material magic was much more fun anyway.
"There's a whole other dimension running parallel to this one, and no one knows about it except for the Masters of the Mystic Arts? What the heck? Why is this a secret?"
Someday, Peter would see to it that magic was taught at Midtown. That was next on the to-do list after saving half of the universe. Well, that was as soon as the secret magical society opened up to the world, Wakandan-style. That might take some convincing, but the librarian was totally on board with that idea when he'd suggested it. If non-committal hums could be considered agreeing.
"The mirror dimension," she corrected in a distracted drawl. She stood pacing the room behind him, returning to glance over his shoulder every now and then. Peter wished she would sit, but she'd said bluntly that she preferred to stand when he had mentioned it. He'd thought it best to not rock the boat. "It is simply one dimension among countless others. There is nothing notable about it, other than the beings that inhabit it."
Peter blinked.
"Beings?"
The word 'Demogorgon' flashed before his mind for one chilling second. Many-fanged, chompy monsters were exactly what the world didn't need unleashed in it ever. But, of course, those were a work of fiction and not real… and maybe Mr. Stark had been on to something when he teased Peter about watching too many movies.
"Yes. Those who are powerful enough to threaten this world's magical institution but are also too inept to evade capture and imprisonment."
"What? You're kidding me, right?" Peter said, nearly shouting in his excitement. "There's a dimension that replicates our world and runs parallel to it, occupying the exact same space and time as we do right now without interacting with matter from our dimension, and you're telling me it's basically Shawshank for magical bad guys? How is that not cool?"
He kept his eyes glued to the faded illustration in front of him of a figure crossing through a shattered glass barrier. Like Alice going through the looking glass. Or a wormhole folding two points of space to meet. His knee bounced, and his drumming heel made his chair squeak rapidly. The dusty and under-utilized Quantum Mechanics corner of his brain stirred awake and sniffed the air.
"How does this even work? I mean, if there's a mirror dimension lying on top of our own… how is it doing that? Our world exists in three-dimensional space and a fourth dimension of time, so maybe we can't perceive it if it exists somewhere within the other six dimensions? Man, string theorists are gonna lose their minds if that's what this is all about-"
"You seem rather young," the librarian said. Peter froze. The last chair squeak rang like a gunshot in silence and his hurried blathering died in his throat. He turned to face her with his lenses blown wide. She eyed him shrewdly from a few feet away. "You're just a boy, aren't you?"
Peter sprang to his feet, chair toppling and eyes darting to his escape route: the three-doors rotunda.
"No, no, I'm not-"
She held up a quelling hand, as poorly concealed mirth lit up her face.
"Everyone has been affected by this, not just those who are grown. It is only right that you should be able to help, if you wish."
Peter felt the wind knock out of him. Blinking once, twice, thrice, he turned over those words in his head to make sure he heard that right. The librarian's cutting grin broadened and a teasing twinkle had taken up residency in her eyes.
"Which one did you come from?" She looked towards the rotunda, and Peter followed her sight with his eyes.
"Bleeker street." Peter gestured to the basketball door across from them. His brow furrowed and his eyes flickered between the other two doors. "Where do the others go?"
"Hong Kong and London."
"Whoa…" he mumbled numbly. Under regular circumstances, he knew that he would've been more impressed. But he had already suspected that they lead to… elsewhere. He hadn't left the sanctum yet, but something had told him that this couldn't all be the same building. Even with magical shenanigans at work, this couldn't fit on the corner of Bleeker street and Fenno Place. "So, what is this middle ground? Where are we?"
"Kathmandu," she turned to him with a lofty air. "Curious, that for someone so inquisitive, you didn't care to venture through them for yourself."
Peter shuddered.
"Nah. That would've meant walking through more portal-yuck. Once was enough. That was… gross. Like, super gross." He exhaled shakily, and fought to keep the tremble out of his voice. "Ma'am, am I gonna be okay?"
A soft frown marred her face.
"Oh, course. Why shouldn't you be?"
Peter said nothing, but scuffed his toe and wrapped his arms around his middle. The librarian's gaze turned understanding and she hummed sympathetically.
"I imagine the feeling of teleportation must've been uncomfortable if you're unaccustomed to it."
Peter stared vacantly, accepting her words even as he stiffened. Jumping through Dr. Strange's golden, glittery hoops hadn't felt nasty. It had tingled a little, but that was all. But, he also hadn't walked over a continent and an ocean in an instant.
"So… magical jet lag?" he asked hesitantly and the librarian smiled encouragingly.
"Of sorts. Nothing that a good night's sleep won't fix."
Peter tried to stifle his sigh of relief, but she looked at him knowingly. The amusement in her eyes suddenly grew hard, and without warning, she strode down the center aisle and deeper into the library. Peter stared after her, confused.
"Come," her distant voice beckoned, and Peter obeyed. "We should move on to the archives below. We are getting nowhere here."
He halted at the joining corridor. To the left, the librarian stood like a looming statue next to a descending stone stairwell. To the right, a dim light shone from around the bend in the hall.
"This way!" she snapped and Peter's feet drew him closer to her.
If Peter had thought that the main level of the library was medieval, it was nothing compared to the basement. It was chilly, damp, and dark. The smell of rotting paper settled over him like a haze and the flickering of candlelight caught in the many crevices of the room to create an army of contorting shadows.
Not that Peter was scared or anything, but it was definitely a mood. With a single table sat under a circular, iron chandelier, and the rest of the space crammed with rows of shelves, messily housing books and dusty artifacts, it was like he had strolled into the storage garage of Winterfell.
Peter's spidey-sense tingled the back of his head. It was nearly indistinguishable through his persistent itchy headache, but he managed to move out of the way before a glob of hot wax could drip down on him from the candle-filled fixture. Looking down, he saw a ring of dried wax marking the chandelier's place over the table and floor.
"Why would they go with candles in the basement, when there's electric lamps everywhere else?"
The librarian glided into the warm light. Shadows filled the hollows under her eyes and cheek bones, rendering it skull-like. Peter swallowed.
"It's not often that anyone stays down here to read. Those candles are regenerative. They never burn out."
"Cheap alternatives, got it," Peter babbled and cast his eye around to all of the dark corners. "That's smart. Keeping this place lit and heated probably runs up the electric bill. That's not fun for whoever foots it." He paused suddenly as he remembered: "Oh, I take that back. I forgot this place was untraceable. No records of any kind to be found… which I guess means no one pays it?"
When he glanced back at the librarian, he found her staring at him intently.
"How did you find-?"
"Whoa… is that the staff of Ra?" Peter's gaze snagged on the glint of gold repelling off of a long scepter. It lay in display case in the other side of the room, and Peter ran to it and away from the librarian's line of questioning. He recalled Karen saying something about cautioning him against violations or something like that, and he wasn't in the habit of snitching on himself.
"The what?"
Peter whipped around.
"I mean, obviously not the real thing, but it looks like it, doesn't it?" he gestured to, but did not dare touch, the glass case. When her expression remained passive, he sighed. "C'mon. Really? Indiana Jones? Don't tell me you haven't seen Raiders of the Lost Arc, it's a classic!"
"Take the lantern," she pointed to one of the many oil lamps hanging from the walls. "There is still much to do."
Peter complied, taking himself and his single flame to trail after her into the forest of shelves.
"I just don't get it," Peter grumbled, propping his chin on his fist. Standing a foot to his right, the librarian pursed her lips tersely.
"I don't know how I can explain this more plainly."
"No, not this," he flapped a hand at the open book, which the librarian had been translating and paraphrasing for him. He'd only had started to scratch the surface, but surprisingly, learning the A, B, Cs of time travel wasn't nearly as mind melty as he had thought it would be. "What I mean is that I don't get why Dr. Strange needed anybody's help in protecting the infinity stones. The guy owned the time stone. He could've just sent himself back in time periodically every few months to hide the stones in different places. Like changing your passwords regularly to shake off hackers."
"He didn't know all of their locations."
"He knew the location of one of them," Peter challenged. "Maybe even two. This is just speculation, but I have a hard time believing that the Seiðr that Mímir talks about in his accounts aren't, y'know, you guys. Masters of the Mystic Arts. It just seems like too big of a coincidence that Odin and Mímir's old drinking buddies aren't the same wizards that we got here now."
The librarian tapped her chin thoughtfully.
"And you think that if sorcerers knew that the space stone was on Earth, they could've prevented it's theft?"
"Yeah!" Peter exclaimed, a bit too loudly as the librarian shot him an agitated scowl. He couldn't bring himself to care. His niggling headache had been mounting, and now he found himself absentmindedly scratching his fingers over his scalp while he read, as though that would alleviate the feeling beneath it. "I mean when the Nazis tracked down the tesseract, all that was protecting it was a group of acolytes and a super transparent bait-and-switch. You'd think that as an all-powerful energy source, and the second one that was hidden on Earth, whoever the sorcerer supreme was during the second world war would've put some effort in to safeguarding it. And that should've been a breeze, because the sorcerer supreme has had the time stone since the 1300s. Literally all the time in the world was in that necklace to go back and undo mistakes."
The librarian hummed. Peter could tell that she didn't agree with him, but she seemed to consider his point. He smiled under his mask. This was an old argument, but her participation made it feel new. She wasn't just humoring him so he'd shut up quicker.
"It wouldn't have mattered," the librarian said. "Altering the past wouldn't change the present that Strange would return to. All that he would've accomplished by doing that would be the creation of another timeline."
Peter's smile dropped.
"Huh?"
The librarian took a short, exhaustive sigh, as though she were preparing herself for a tedious lecture. Peter couldn't see how such a fascinating topic could ever become tiresome, no matter how many times it had to be explained. She spoke to him like it was a chore, but he was hooked on every word of her 'dumbed-down for the layman' TED talk.
In short, Hollywood had finally gotten it wrong. It was fine though. Star Wars and Alien had gotten him out of a couple of sticky situations. He wouldn't hold this one failed trope against them. His disappointment was barely a footnote anyway. With this new concept on the table, his brain resumed its insatiable chewing on Multiverse theories. There were parallels he could see. Fuzzy ones, but visible enough to incite a myriad of hypotheses.
"You know, theoretically, if you kept looping back in time to the exact same point, just to change one thing, you would create an infinite number of timelines all identical up until that moment and then splitting into different futures."
The librarian stared at him stunned, but not in a flattering way. Peter squirmed in his seat.
"You could do that," she confirmed with a questioning inflection. Peter could hear the unspoken 'but why would you?'. He couldn't address that. His brain had blown a fuse and he needed a second to recuperate. Too many hypothetical scenarios were crowding for mental space. Compounded with the fact that Quantum Mechanics Corner had abandoned all pretenses of chill and was shrieking at top volume, it took all of Peter's effort to appear outwardly calm.
"Okay… so…" he took a steadying breath, "it's not a perfect comparison, and the science doesn't totally check out, but that marches to the same beat as the many-worlds interpretation."
The librarian's blank expression didn't shift. There wasn't even the slightest hint of recognition.
"It's one of the mainstream multiverse theories…?" he prompted and waited for the switch to flip. A long second drew out, and still she said nothing.
Peter's fleeting disappointment gave way to confusion. Maybe she was only knowledgeable on magically related topics? It was understandable, being a witch and all. Maybe it was too much to expect her to know both sides of the coin; magic and science. He rubbed the back of his neck, scrambling to organize his thoughts. It wasn't easy, squeezing an ocean into a shot glass.
"Basically, it posits that universal wavefunction is a real thing. So, every time subatomic particles interact with each other, all possible outcomes would have to be realized in a branching of multiple universes. But since our universe can only descend from one outcome at each branch splitting, and we can't observe these other universes, it appears to us like ours is the only one."
She nodded, taking in his explanation with a vaguely disapproving frown.
"I don't see the relevance that has to our situation."
Peter deflated.
"You're right, sorry, that's got nothing to do with anything. It's just really cool," he muttered. His gaze flickered down to the page etched with red and black runes, and he smiled sadly.
Mr. Stark will love this, he thought. If time travel didn't perfectly exemplify controlled chaos, Peter didn't know what did. They would've had a lot of fun untangling this together. He swallowed thickly. Scouring his mind for something to fill the silence, he stood abruptly and snatched up the lantern.
"It's too bad time travel is so crazy dangerous and volatile. Swiping the stones from the past would be the easiest way to unscrew our present. Y'know, like transtemporal lending." He laughed as he strolled lazily down a short path to stretch his legs. Walking into one of the high-shelved aisles, his little light illuminated a few feet ahead of him. "It's a good idea on paper, if you can look past the fact that time travel isn't a thing that we know how to do, and I'm pretty sure they don't even make DeLoreans anymore."
"The price would be quite high."
"Yeah, vintage limited-edition collectors stuff always is," he yawned. Setting his lantern on the floor, a few rays scattered from the swinging light and reflected off of something large, glassy, and oval shaped leaning against the wall ahead of him. He laced his fingers together and reached his hands over his head. Ahead, his poorly lit reflection did the same. His shoulder joints gave a satisfying pop, just as his mind managed to put two and two together. "Oh, wait, did you mean-?"
He jogged back the way he came, too distracted to bother fetching his lantern. When he peeked his head around the tower of shelves, the librarian came into view, staring at him unblinking.
"The price of time travel? Yes," she deadpanned.
Peter couldn't move. It was as if every fiber of his being was waiting with baited breath for more information. The quiet was unrelenting, and finally he managed to squeak out brokenly: "What?"
The librarian smirked as Peter came running back.
"I… what? What? I was joking," he rushed out in a much more controlled and, thankfully, crack-free voice. The librarian shot him a dubious look and he blushed. "I was mostly joking. For real, is this something we can do?"
She crossed her arms over her chest, drumming her fingers on her upper arm.
"The infinity stones provide the foundation on which the universe rests. Removing them from the past would create a new timeline doomed by their absence."
Peter's heart climbed up his throat.
"Doomed?"
"Yes." She paused to press the tips of her fingers into her temples, as though bracing against a migraine. Peter frowned and was about to ask if she was alright, but she dropped her hands with a pained sigh and continued: "The stones only need to exist to fulfill their most basic and vital use. They interact with one another, regardless of the distance between them, in order to regulate and maintain the perpetual flow of cosmic energy that saturates the universe."
Peter gaze flickered around excitedly, as though he could see the cosmic energy swirling. Like the force that surrounds us and binds us, as Master Yoda would say. Still, 'doomed' was a pretty strong word, and implication made Peter shiver. He chewed his lip in deep thought.
"What if you just borrowed one stone from six different universes? That way there's still five others doing their job until the sixth comes back."
The librarian shook her head.
"The process is maladaptive. They wouldn't be able to cope with the loss."
"Really?"
"Of course not. They rely on each other." She shrugged casually. "How long could you expect a universe to hold its shape if reality went missing? How can sentient life continue if the energy responsible for sustaining the minds and souls of such creatures vanished? Individually, each stone possesses power that is limited within the confines of its domain. They can distort the natural laws of the realm it has manifested from. When they behave as a collective, their capabilities expand endlessly to create…" she trailed off, lifting her hand to encompass the room, and presumably, everything else.
All matter. All life. Everything.
Peter fell heavily into his chair before his weak knees could drop him. The librarian paused and regarded him with a grave look that made him flinch.
"Without their infinity stones, the structural integrity of those universes would destabilize and collapse. So, while the option you proposed may become viable with the advanced integration of technology and magic, you don't strike me as the sort to have the stomach to sacrifice an entire universe – or six - for the sake of your own."
"No, I'm not. I don't- I…" his whisper choked off into nothing.
His skin prickled uncomfortably. He was reminded, suddenly, that he lived in a body composed of cells. That air filled his lungs. That neurons fired constantly in his brain to facilitate his cognition. He hadn't felt so disgustingly self-aware since Titan and the days following. Days spent in cyclical panic and reassurance, when any mild ache or itch would nearly trick him into believing that his body, like kinetic sand, was only briefly retaining shape and would soon crumble. Days where he'd seek out Mr. Stark for no reason, other than to see for himself that he was still alive.
He slumped forward. Resting his forearms on his knees, he stared down fixatedly at the gray mortar between the dirty stone tiles and counted his measured breathes. He thought of that day in the Avengers' Compound, five days after waking up, when Mr. Stark had to lay a hard truth on him.
'The stones are destroyed. Using them to reverse the snap was our only option.'
He'd been wrong about that though. They'd been atomized, not destroyed. Mr. Stark had eventually corrected himself in the face of Peter's relentless interrogation. They weren't absent from this universe, but rather broken down to microscopic size. Their usefulness, apparently, was reduced to their basic function; keeping things glued together and alive.
Removing that terrifyingly precarious design flaw from his universe was almost enough to make Peter begrudgingly grateful. Knowing that there was no way for a version of himself from one of the 14, 000, 605 who'd lost, to unwittingly collapse this universe in a rampage of grief-driven desperation was surprisingly comforting.
But still, his original problem remained…
"What if we returned the stones to the moment they were taken?" he asked warily. He thought he could already guess the answer, but he wanted to cover all his bases. Glancing up, he caught sight of the librarian's pinched expression.
"Weren't you listening?" she huffed. "I've already told you that traveling to the past has the unavoidable consequence of creating a new timeline. Of those two timelines, the original would be destroyed while the new one stemming from it would survive. The destruction would be inevitable."
And that was that. Another dead end. Sitting up, Peter exhaled tiredly. He rubbed his palm over his forehead as the frontal lobe underneath it gave a particularly achy throb.
"Man, this is heavy," he muttered. The librarian hummed lightly, and he knew his Marty McFly quote went unnoticed.
"Perhaps it's time you went home."
Like he'd been doused in water, every iota of fatigue was chased away. Peter leaped to his feet.
"No!" he said louder than he'd intended. The librarian lifted a brow. "I-is it okay if I stay? I'll be quiet. You won't even know I'm here."
She took a moment to consider him, and then nodded. Peter's heart soared.
"As long as you can find your way back, stay as long as you'd like." She smiled wanly. Peter's own smile dropped when he saw her swaying where she stood. Alarmed, his hands reached out and hovered near her body, in case she fainted.
"Are you okay?"
"I'm quite tired, but other than that, yes," she murmured and steadied herself. Peter drew his hands back. She ran a hand over her head, and a few strands pulled free of her braid. They fell limply around her face. She turned and looked him up and down. "Really, I must ask as it is a matter of security, how did you get inside of the New York Sanctum?"
Peter looked down at his feet.
"Oh, uhhh…" he shifted his weight nervously, "the door was open."
The librarian stood very still, staring at him incredulously.
"Open?"
"Y-yeah," Peter stammered. "Uh, I mean, not open but unlocked. And I had to, like, really focus on it because my dummy brain kept telling me to go get a cup of coffee every time I got too close."
"But how did you manage to cross the threshold?" she ground out. Peter knew she was likely stressed and disheartened to find her spells weren't as effect as she'd hoped, but still he shrank away from the venom in her tone. "You shouldn't have been able to break through the protective wards, no matter the strength of your mental fortitude."
"Karen helped me."
"It doesn't matter who accompanied you, no one should've been able to-"
"Karen is an AI. She doesn't play by our rules."
There was a beat of silence and slowly, the librarian's anger dissipated.
"AI?"
Peter frowned. He'd thought that AIs were common enough to be recognized by everyone, especially those who weren't even middle-aged.
"Artificial Intelligence," he clarified and watched as it was her turn to frown.
"As oppose to natural intelligence?"
Peter laughed, though he felt guilty for doing so. Sorry, Karen.
"I mean… yeah. I guess that's how you'd describe her: unnaturally intelligent. Kinda insulting, but accurate." He smothered his smile as the librarian's frown grew increasingly irate. "She's made up of a codes and operating systems. She's not human, so she can't get confused like we can."
Sudden comprehension flooded the librarian's expression. She grinned in delight and Peter tensed, inexplicably.
"You required a guide."
"Uh-huh," he mumbled. "Karen's great. I couldn't have done it without her. Those Jedi mind tricks have no power over her."
She smirked and eyed him appreciatively.
"Clever boy," she said. Peter wasn't sure why the praise made him recoil. She looked towards the various open books and unwrapped scrolls strewn on the table. "You remember where those go?"
Peter nodded vigorously and gathered a couple books in his arms.
"Yep. I'll straighten all of this up, no problem." He set off down the aisle where he had ditched his lantern, calling as he went: "Since it's cool that I stay here, does that mean I can leave and come back? You're not gonna lock me out, right? Because I'm getting pretty hungry, and I thought it'd be rude to raid the snack cupboard, but if I leave to go get food I don't wanna be stuck outside either. So, I guess what I'm asking is, do we need a secret knock or what?"
His light burned brightly on the floor, glowing like a beacon in its glass case. He curled his fingers around the lantern's handle and the metal creaked as he lifted it.
All was quiet.
Peter froze. Glancing over his shoulder, he saw his own long shadow stretching out from under his feet.
"Ma'am?"
He waited. His grip on Unveiling the Astral Presence tightened incrementally.
"Ma'am?"
Muffled sound burst through the air. Running, shouting, and doors slamming rushed down the stairwell from the main floor, making Peter's heart thunder in his chest. He faced forward as a dizzying pressure released in his head. A red and blue figure carrying a lantern and books stared back at him, staggering forward a few steps just as he did and dropping his load to free his hands. He was aware of glass smashing and his light snuffing out while he and his reflection clutched their hands to their temples.
He fell on his knees. A jarring twinge shot through them as he collapsed. He gasped greedily, like air was scarce, and waited out the stinging adjustment. He imagined his brain filling up and snapping back to shape like a foam stress ball that was no longer being squeezed. After several minutes, the feeling numbed. Looking up, the silhouette of his darkened reflection mirrored him.
The black mirror's glossy shine was swallowed up, like all of the light was stripped off by matte paint. Then, within the mirror, something pale flew through an arc. It landed on an invisible surface in the darkness. Momentum carried it through a few rolling tumbles. It fell motionless and Peter saw that it was a hand, severed at the wrist and with a ring adorning one of the fingers.
Peter's stomach turned just as colour exploded and filled the mirror to the frame. Two men stood in an office. One dark hooded, masked, and flicking blood from his katana. The other in a business suit and cowering over his stumped wrist. Pressed to his chest, it leaked scarlet into his white shirt.
The image twisted, and Peter saw himself, soaked and crawling on his front out of lapping waves. The moon lit the beach in a silvery light as he coughed up sea water and clawed his fingers into wet sand.
Mr. Stark stood in jeans and a coat in a long hallway. He hunched over an opening in the wall where a pair of small, pink sneakers poked out of an open air vent. His hands closed above of the wiggling shoes, and he began to pull out a pair of little legs.
Captain Rogers raised his shielded arm to protect his face, just as a bullet ricocheted off of it. His shield, smaller and plainer than his iconic one, landed squarely on the jaw of a guard lunging at him in full tactile gear. Falling like dead weight, the guard's assault rifle clattered next to him on the floor. Captain Rogers snatched it up and fired a few shots into the hallway he was barricading. Behind him, Ms. Romanoff tapped at a key pad securing a metal-plated door.
An orange, setting sun blazed down on a barren field. A tall, blue figure – Nebula, Peter realized - pushed through waist high brown and brittle stalks. She tamped out a path in the field as a man with a mechanical fin protruding from his head stood on the porch of a broken-roofed bungalow. Though wiry and scrawny, he exuded vigilance as he surveyed the terrain. An arrow hovered next to his head, trailing red light and twisting subtly from side to side, like it had a mind of its own.
An absolute giant of a man stood on a dock that was crippling under his weight. Next to the bushy bearded giant, stood a bushy bearded Thor. They watched for a moment as the water tightly wound into a whirlpool. It swirled like a draining sink, pulling at fishing boats tethered to the dock. Thor pushed his bathrobe off of his shoulders, exposing his bare chest, sweat pants, and a heftier body than Peter had remembered seeing. He lifted his arms, pressing his palms together over his head. The giant grabbed him around the middle and launched him into the water like a javelin.
Slanting daylight cut through the opening of a cave, casting long shadows from hanging stalagmites like prison bars over a shallow pool and sloping ground. The back of a robed figure faced Peter. His body was translucent, like a ghost, but filled with faded colour indicating darker hair and skin. Through him, Peter could see a withered body lying against the cave wall, partially buried in the ground. It didn't seem like she had been placed there or that she had burrowed herself, rather the ground had simply eroded over time, weathering around an inanimate object. Wild and matted black hair clung to her head, framing a pair of sunken eyes. They blinked and shifted in her unmoving face. Glancing over the ghost's shoulder, her eyes found Peter's.
Her brow twitched almost imperceptibly. The corner of her mouth curled upward ever so slightly. A misty iridescent sheen coated the librarian's eyes, like puddles of gasoline, and Peter knew they were seeing him.
"Don't!"
A flash of golden sparks danced outside of his field of vision, and Peter felt his knees and shins fusing to the floor. He was trapped, but he couldn't tear his gaze away from the mirror.
"Who are you?" A posh accent shouted at him.
"Spider-Man," he said through tremors.
The gold disappeared from under him, and though free, he couldn't move. A hand on his shoulder curled into his suit, wrenched him up with surprising strength, and forcibly turned him. A short, balding man blustered: "You shouldn't be here!"
"I know," Peter croaked, feeling many leagues out of his depth. The man released him and turned to the side. Moving his hand in a circular motion, his portal wasn't as strong as the ones that Dr. Strange had made. Its wobbling boarders quaked and threatened to fall, but seeing it made Peter back away skittishly. "No, wait! What's going on?"
The man glanced at him, and the raw panic that pierced through Peter left him shaken.
"Leave!"
"No, Mr. Stark is still-"
The portal appeared beneath his feet and he dropped through. His legs buckled from the impact, and his back hit pavement. Above of him, the portal cinched shut.