Peter 2

I stared at myself in the mirror. When I got bitten by the spider, my muscles got bigger and my strength improved. But I had never actually gone to the gym. I just didn't have the time. After four grueling weeks of army boot camp, my abs and biceps were more toned. Not bulky, just better-defined.

I slid on a plain, white t-shirt issued by the army.

Since we couldn't use any magic portals, it took us several weeks to get from Nepal to the United States by train and boat.

During that time, we foraged documents and papers.

I was uneasy about the whole foraging signatures thing, but Peter 1 surprisingly knew a lot about copying signatures and making fake documents look like they were the real deal.

Once we made it to the boot camp in Upstate New York, we traded the clothes we came in for actual uniforms.

All of us enlisted; me, the two Peters, Wanda, Strange and Loki.

Peter 3 and 1 signed up as first-class privates. Since I was older than the maximum age of enlistment, I lowered my age to 36 and foraged a few documents saying that I was a warrant officer; the lowest rank in the army that wasn't a new recruit.

Because we were all Peter Parker, we all changed our last names to avoid confusion.

I was Maguire. Peter 1 was Holland and Peter 3 was Garfield.

Wanda signed on as an entry-level agent and Loki made up some kind of story about how he was an officer from Canada.

Doctor Strange was the one who had to do the least fibbing. He just applied as a doctor and they accepted him in a heartbeat. (pun intended)

I pulled on a beige dress shirt and tie that came with my uniform. All the clothes they gave us were either beige, brown, or a drab olive green.

I clipped on a nametag and the insignia showing my rank.

Uncle Ben had served in the military before he married Aunt May. I think he'd be proud of me, even if I was doing this for totally different reasons.

The thought of Uncle Ben reminded me of MJ and the baby, lost in that multiversal storm.

I slumped down on the bed. I couldn't stop thinking about them.

Did they feel any pain like I did when they vanished?

Was MJ still existing in some form?

I looked out through the foggy window of the London boarding room we were staying in.

On the street below were a mom and dad swinging their little girl between them. Despite the war going on, they were still smiling and laughing.

A wave of sadness went through me. I wanted that kind of life so bad.

"Alright, we leave in five hours."

Peter 3 and 1 came into the bedroom we shared with Loki and Strange.

Yesterday, we shipped into London with our regiment and they assigned us bedrooms in an old hotel. There were only three beds so the other Peters taped blankets on the wall and slept upright.

But I knew it didn't bother them. I had done the same thing with ceilings before.

Peter 1 grinned mischievously at Peter three.

"You sound like a dad the morning that we need to get to the airport."

A dad rushing his family out the door so they can get to the airport in time. If I could be a Dad, would I do that?

Peter 3 shrugged.

"I'm just saying. This is the military. If we're half an hour early, they'll make us do forty push-ups and throw us into the ocean in full uniform."

"You're thinking of the Navy SEALS."

They stood in front of the mirror and did their ties.

The younger Peter pulled back the sleeve of his beige dress shirt, showing the watch on his wrist.

It looked like your average watch with a face, hands, and numbers.

But in the center, it showed 00:00:00.

As in zero years, zero months, zero days.

The Ancient One told us that our bodies were out of sync with this timeline. Aging would take a lot longer for us than it would for other people. How she knew this was beyond me. Taking longer to age was weird, but also helpful. For all we knew, we could be working on this mission for years.

The two Peters and I managed to build watches that measured the passing of time by reading your pulse. It wasn't easy without modern-day technology like lasers and computer chips, but we figured out a way.

"Do you think this is against regulation?" Peter 1 asked.

"I don't think so." Peter 3 said.

His eyes wandered to Peter's slightly lopsided tie.

"Here, let me get that for you."

He straightened out the Windsor knot and tightened it.

"Thanks, man."

"No problem."

Peter 1 had obviously put on a tie before. But military regulations were just harder to follow. Their exchange reminded me of when Uncle Ben taught me how to put on a tie.

If our baby was a boy, I could teach him how to do that in ten years or so.

A stab of grief went through me when I remembered where he was now.

The two Peters noticed my sad expression.

"Are you okay?" Peter 3 asked.

I sighed. "Three months."

"What?"

I wasn't going to try to fib to them. Even if I did, they would see right through me. I was them and they were me. We all knew how we lied.

"That's how far along MJ was in her pregnancy." I said. "We didn't even know if it was a boy or girl yet."

"Oh, man." Peter 1's face fell hard. "Peter…"

He looked at Peter 3 and he nodded.

"We're really sorry."

They sat with me on the creaky spring bed.

"If this is too much for you," Peter 3 started.

I shook my head. "No. I need to do this. For MJ and the baby. There's still a chance, right?"

They both nodded.

"Then we have to keep going."

Peter 1 laid a hand on my back.

"We'll do it for all of them."

I remembered Michelle Jones and Ned. They were all that Peter 1 had left. The other MJ told me herself. I realized that none of us had even asked how Peter 1 was doing.

"And what about you? Are you okay?" I asked.

"We both know how much Ned and MJ meant to you." Peter 3 added.

Peter 1 nodded reluctantly.

"I actually haven't kept in touch with them much." he admitted. "You know how people were coming through those cracks in the sky at the Statue of Liberty? They all knew that Peter Parker was Spider-Man, so I asked Doctor Strange to complete the memory spell, this time making everyone forget who Peter Parker was."

He swallowed hard.

"It worked."

We went home with that spell. I never realized how much it cost the youngest Spider-Man. No wonder Doctor Strange didn't remember us. Peter 3 and I weren't wearing our suits when we came back. He would've only remembered Spider-Man.

"Not everyone would have forgotten you." Peter 3 said. "Right?"

With a sad smile, he said, "How do you think I foraged all our birth certificates?"

Literally everyone forgot him. He was wiped out of any computer system that had his name. No wonder he was so good at copying signatures.

Peter 1 opened up even more.

"When I asked Doctor Strange to complete the spell, I thought everyone would be safe. But now the universe is destroyed."

He paused for a minute.

"I think I know how Wanda feels."

"What about Wanda?" I asked.

"You know when she said bringing everyone back came with a heavy price?"

"Yeah."

He explained that the six infinity stones each controlled an aspect of the universe. There was space, soul, time, mind, power, and reality.

"I'm pretty sure your universe has them too. Maybe even on Earth." Peter added.

That was a crazy thought. If I ever got back to my own universe, I would definitely look into the stones.

"All the stones are usually stored in something. Like the tesseract cube that we're looking for is really powerful, but it's just outer casing for the space stone. And there's also the mind stone, which was being held in a scepter that Loki used to take over New York."

He flinched at mentioning Loki.

"There was this evil robot named Ultron and he took the mind stone from the scepter and used it on a new robot that was supposed to be a new body for himself, but the Avengers intervened just in time and the new robot became a humanoid named Vision who had the mind stone in his head."

Peter pointed to the center of his forehead.

"So Ultron destroyed this Eastern European country called Sokovia, which was actually Wanda's homeland. She joined the Avengers and she and Vision fell in love."

"And you saw all of this?" I asked.

He shook his head.

"No. I don't get into the picture until the Avengers split up. But that's another story."

Peter 3 raised an eyebrow. "I'll say."

"So Thanos came looking for all these infinity stones. And he needed all of them to, you know, wipe out half of the universe. Vision needed the mind stone to live. They tried to remove it, but Thanos showed up on Earth too soon. Vision begged Wanda to destroy the mind stone."

He had a faraway look in his eyes.

"And she did it. Only for Thanos to reverse time and take the stone out himself."

I had known Wanda for about six weeks now. She had never told us about any of this. And I didn't expect her to. We barely knew her.

But Peter had just explained the haunted look in her eyes, her usual quietness, how rare it was for her to laugh or smile.

"So that's what losing MJ and Ned feels like." Peter said with his head hung low. "Like the things you sacrificed weren't enough."

"If you didn't do what you did, the multiverse would've been in even more danger. MJ and Ned could've gotten hurt." I said.

He nodded. "That's what I keep telling myself."

"Well, keep telling yourself that." Peter 3 encouraged him. "Because I let myself spiral down that train of thought before. And it almost destroyed me."

"I'm really sorry for roping you both into this." Peter 1 said.

"Hey, don't apologize." I told him. "This was completely out of your control."

Peter 1 smiled slightly.

"But you guys are all I have left. Not even Wanda and Strange remember me. So what I'm trying to say is…thanks for being here."

I set my arms around the other Peters and pulled them closer.

"We're gonna be okay, guys."

We sat there for a good five minutes before Loki and Strange came into the room in full dress uniform.

"Alright, everyone's checking out of the boarding house-"

Strange stopped when he saw us having a spider bros moment.

We all stood up.

"We're ready to go." Peter 3 said. "Everything's packed."
"It's not like there was much to pack." Loki said. He had given himself a trim so instead of his hair being shoulder-length, it just reached the top of his neck.

I slipped on my coat and put my brimmed service cap on.

Loki and I were the only ones that had those since we were upper-ranking.

Wanda came into our room- something I knew the boarding house matron would go crazy over. She was wearing the typical uniform for a female army agent- white dress shirt with a black tie, a brown overcoat, and a tight, brown pencil skirt. Her hair was styled according to the army regulations.

The only change was that at bootcamp she wore black flats, now she had on heels.

She noticed us staring at her shoes.

"Ridiculous, I know."

"And they expect you to fight in those?" Loki asked.

"They don't expect me to do any fighting." Wanda said. "It was a man's world in the 1940s'."

"Well, tell that to Peggy Carter, Anne Frank, Noor Inayat Khan, Eleanor Roosevelt, Hedy Lamarr," Peter 1 said.

"Wow. That's quite a list." I remarked.

"MJ showed me a documentary."

Out of all of us, Wanda was having the hardest time adjusting to this time period. She was pretty reserved and quiet for our year, but some of our commanding officers thought she was outspoken.

"Have any Americans ever heard of the Valkyrie at this point?" Loki said.

"Remember, they just think it's mythology." Strange reminded.

Suddenly, another lady agent popped her head in the doorway.

Wanda, Strange, Peter 1 all looked like they were slapped in the face.

She was a no-nonsense woman with mousy brown hair and bright, red lips.

"The Colonels want everyone out in ten minutes." she said in a British accent.

Trying to make up for their stunned expressions, I nodded.

"Will do, ma'am. We were just finishing up here. Thank you, Agent…."

"Agent Carter." she said.

"We didn't see you at bootcamp." Peter 3 said, eyeing Strange, Wanda and Peter 1.

She gave a polite smile.

"Oh, you must be with the 98th. I'm with the 107th infantry."

"Yes, we are." Loki said. "My name is Lieutenant Laufeyson."

He shook her hand.

At this point, Strange, Peter and Wanda were trying to recover from being in the presence of someone they thought was a moviestar.

After Agent Carter left, Peter 3 wanted an explanation.

"Alright, guys. Did we just tamper with history or something? Who was she?"

"That was Peggy Carter." Wanda said, still looking out the doorway.

"Not to make a big deal out of it, but she's about to become a pretty big deal in the espionage world." Peter 1 added.

Great. We had literally just gotten to the war front and we were on the verge of tampering with history.

Hey, guys!

I know I warned you that upcoming chapters will have more dialogue than action and we're coming to some more action scenes.

So for those of you wondering, yes. Peggy Carter will appear in future chapters.

When Peter was listing off female historical figures during WWII, the only fictional one was Peggy. Anne Frank and Eleanor Roosevelt are more commonly known, but Noor Inayat Khan and Hedy Lamar also have amazing stories.

I know that people from different countries are reading this and they may have questions about certain aspects of the story.

In chapter ten, when Peter 3 says, "We're signing up for Uncle Sam." he referencing the Uncle Sam enlistment propaganda that was around in the US during World War 2. If anyone's confused about the randomness of this chapter's title, that's also referencing the propaganda.

Being a history geek, this chapter has been fun to write.

Thanks for reading!