I'm going to hit you up with a very firm TISSUE WARNING. This chapter is HELLA rough, and once again does a little back and forth with time and perspectives. Suicidal ideation warning!

Pete acted a bit how Jefferson had always expected Spider-Man to act. A bit twitchy with thinly-veiled disrespect hovering just below the surface, as well as a general feeling of superiority. Pete certainly looked at him with a level of dislike that Jefferson felt he hadn't warranted.

Until Pete mentioned shooting someone.

His Peter Parker had never killed a man. It was one of the things that had separated him from the other vigilantes out there, the ones that thought they could take the law into their own hands, could kill who they wanted without consequence. It was one of the few things that Jefferson had liked about him. To have Pete so callously proclaim that he had been trying to kill someone…

This was something that Jefferson had always been afraid of. This was something that Jefferson had always had in the back of his mind as a possible situation, and it was one that he could never find an answer to.

When it came right down to it, Spider-Man was dangerous.

Spider-Man was a chatter-box, and a charmer, and he had seemed to be a good man, but there was no denying the fact that Spider-Man was able to go toe-to-toe with people and things that the cops couldn't. The idea of Spider-Man crossing that line, of Jefferson being forced to send his men into a situation where they would have to try and take him down… It had scared Jefferson. It had scared him badly. Now, he was looking at a Spider-Man that had crossed that line.

A Spider-Man that was seventeen, so thin he looked sick, white as a ghost, and covered in bandages.

A Spider-Man that was in his home, that was around his family.

A Spider-Man the others had brought here.

They had known what he had done, and they had still deliberately put his family in danger. That was when he pressed further, and Pete asked him a question.

"If you ate your wife and your son would you want to live?"

Jefferson had frozen. It was like his entire body turned to ice, his heart lurching in his chest as he pictured…

Miles had called it a creature, a monstrous thing that had come at him out of the darkness with the singular intent to murder him. What if that had been him. What if that had been… Jefferson looked at his wife, taking in the way her hands were over her mouth, the horror and the upset in her eyes, and then looked to Miles. Miles, who was staring at him as though he had never seen his own dad before, who was so horrified, who had…who had been the one that the other had saved.

Jefferson wondered about the timeline a little, wondered if the man had managed to drag himself across the ground to put three bullets in the thing, to put it down for good after taking the original blow meant for Miles and the rest couldn't put it down in time. Jefferson wondered if Pete knew the man that he had killed.

But he didn't wonder about his answer. Jefferson knew the answer beating in his heart the same way he knew his own name, intimately and without question.

"No," Jefferson Davis finally whispered, forcing the word out around the painful lump lodged in his throat. "I…I'd want to die. Is that…is that why you tried to kill him?"

Pete not only confirmed that was why he had killed him, he basically confirmed that he had been friends with him. That the man was technically already dead. The relief that he showed when Parker confirmed that the man, Curt Connors, really hadn't changed back into a human, further cemented the idea that the man…the kid before him…

The kid. The seventeen-year-old. The boy had killed the shell of a man after he committed the unthinkable to his own wife and child.

God. Pete had killed his friend because it was the only thing he could do for him. And from there it was just an almost unending spiral of pain.

Pete kept talking, and Jefferson kept listening, interjecting at points where he wanted clarification, where he felt he had to understand, when his bias towards Spider-Man and the things that he did poked its way through in a way that he felt he needed a drink and a long period of self-reflection to understand… And then Pete began discussing his aunt, and then…and then he talked about the ultimate fate of his uncle. Jefferson wanted to vomit. Peter B actually did.

From there it somehow managed to spiral further into a description that could have come out of a horror movie, and finally finished with one simple, utterly painful fact:

"Worse, it follows me, and I can't…I can't let it hurt you. You have to let me go."

Pete was seventeen and he killed his friend after they became something else and killed their own wife and kid. He was seventeen and he had had his parents killed by the cops. He was seventeen and he had found his own cannibalized uncle. He was seventeen and, according to him, he had something following him after it granted him power. He was seventeen and he was pushing everyone away in order to keep them safe.

Jefferson didn't know what he was going to do. He didn't know what he could do.

God help him, what was he going to do?

Gwen had stopped breathing sometime between Peter's confession and the sight of him staring out at them, waiting for them to let him leave.

Gwen knew that face. She knew that face. That guilt mixed with such an aching regret that it punched her in the chest. A look that claimed that what had happened was his fault, even though he hadn't done anything wrong.

She had seen it on her own Peter often enough, but it was the last time that she had seen it that was seared into her memory. He had looked like that when Gwen had…when she had killed him. He had stared at her with that exact same crease between his eyebrows, that exact same twist of his mouth, that exact same layer of apology dancing in his eyes. It didn't matter that those eyes were gray and not brown, in fact…it somehow made it worse.

It was like seeing a ghost. A ghost that had come back to haunt her for what she had done. The only thing was…

Something was haunting him, and while Gwen hadn't encountered anything like this before in her own world, she had no doubt that Peter wasn't lying. She could see it in his movements, read it in his face, could see it in the way that he stared at them, the fear that was under the surface. Gwen would do whatever it took to save him from that, to save him from something in his life, because everything else that had happened to him was so… God. Gwen wanted to vomit. Gwen wanted to scream, to cry, to fight everything that had ever hurt Peter, that threatened to turn him into a monster.

He didn't deserve it.

Not like she did.

….

Miles was in shock. His hand hadn't left his mouth the entire time Pete had been talking, at first a product of horror, and then an attempt to keep himself from vomiting. Pete had seemed so callous when Miles had come to them, spoken of the fact that his uncle was a Supervillain, was trying to kill him, with something like a quip, 'hardcore origin story,' but now…after this?

God, Pete must have thought he was pathetic. He must have seen the way Miles was behaving and thought that he was so weak. Pete must have listened and watched what had happened to him and just thought that… Miles thought of walking into a room and seeing his uncle torn to pieces, eaten alive. Miles had already seen his uncle with a bullet through him, had seen him bleed out in a puddle with a hand wrapped around his as his uncle told him that he had failed Miles.

Miles had seen Peter Parker with his defiance and his bravery stare up into the face of his own death, and the result of what happened when Fisk pounded down on a human torso.

Miles imagined that body, that broken, bloody, shattered body in the place of his uncle and he almost followed Peter B to the bathroom. Then, to compound that, the image of his dad turning into something like the thing that almost killed him, that almost killed them had been burned into his brain, taking Curt Connors, that man that had killed his family, ate them alive, and put his father in his place. Miles knew that it wouldn't happen. He knew that his dad would kill himself before he so much as touched them, but the image had been planted in his head with the question Pete had asked.

Miles really was weak.

Miles was so weak that he couldn't say anything when Pete told them that he was being followed, that he didn't want to hurt them. It wasn't fair. It wasn't fair. They'd all lost so much already, this felt like a punch to the gut, robbing him of air and of the ability to talk.

Miles found that he was crying.

He still didn't say anything.

Peni had never heard of the things that Pete was describing. Her world was so grounded in science, in technology, that the idea of these things that Pete was describing were so unnatural, so…foreign, that she almost couldn't wrap her mind around them. Turning into something else, not because of science, or radiation, but because of…because of a magic spider? It seemed so silly, juvenile almost, but she didn't have to look farther than Pete himself to know that it was true. It was painfully and honestly true.

Peter Porker was a pig. An anthropomorphic pig who walked and talked and pulled clothing and a wooden mallet out of nothing.

Peter Benjamin Parker was a man who had been bit by a Spider-God and was followed by tragedy and loss. Peni had lost her own father when she was nine. She hadn't seen the body. She had been kept away from it, for the simple reason that it was shattered so badly that Aunt May and Uncle Benjamin had both refused to let her see it.

It hadn't been much time after she gained control of the mech that she saw her first dead body. Crushed under a girder, the mangled form of someone so torn up she hadn't been able to tell if they presented male or female, had stared up at her with a single remaining eyeball. She had wondered if that was what her father had looked like, put him in its place, and then vomited all over the inside of the mech.

It had taken a long time to clean, partly because she didn't want to get back into the mech, and partly because the sight of it just reminded her of why she had vomited.

Peni watched the man who didn't seem to realize just what kind of bomb he had dropped on them all, the complete lack of emotion that he had facing their silence and wondered just what it took to be that in control. Peni wondered if she would ever be able to do the same thing.

Peni wondered if she would ever want to.

Peter Porker had been turned into a pig and the idea of radical shapeshifting or unseen creatures following someone was accepted without thought or comment.

Porker had been a spider, first, and a pig second, and that was how it had always been. Porker had lost the ability to make his own webbing, something that had pained him at first until he had managed to create a new way of doing so and he'd felt almost whole for the first time in ages. The fact that the other man could produce his own webbing, that if Porker looked, he could see the spinnerets on those white-as-a-ghost wrists had been shocking to him at first.

A part of him had wanted to call it unfair, but now, listening to Pete talk, he decided that he could keep the webbing. There was a level of trauma involved with gaining the damn things that Porker honestly couldn't even call worth it, and it had literally left him feeling gutted.

This kid needed a damn hug already. All of these people needed one, and a joke while he was at it, something funny, something to break the tension and ease them out of the weight that seemed to have fallen on them all.

Porker didn't know how he felt about the inability to move, the inability to think of one single joke, of anything to say that could possibly, in some way, make any of this better, make it bearable.

Porker honestly didn't think that hugging the kid right now would be welcome, but he made a note to get him to laugh, and to hug him tighter than anyone ever had at the soonest opportunity. If Pete honestly thought that he was going to be able to leave, to break the Goober and never come back, he'd have another thing coming.

Porker wouldn't let it happen. Pete'd gone through too much pain already, it was time for something to change, and Porker swore that he'd find a way to do it. He owed it to Pete, and he owed it to himself.

He wasn't the best in the business for nothing.

Rio Morales was a wife and mother first, and a nurse second.

She listened to Pete talk with her hand over her mouth and tears in her eyes and a strong desire to take this child into her arms and sign the fucking adoption papers already. Rio had noticed the way that he talked about his aunt and uncle. She had noticed the past-tense usage, just as she had noticed the way they were likely lying about some of the facts they had presented in how Miles had found them. Though the lies may have simply been circling around the fact that Pete had killed something.

Rio did not care that they were lying, not really. She did, but it was an afterthought, hidden behind one simple fact.

Rio only cared about the fact that there was a boy standing in her living room with the pure and honest belief that he was a monster. Not only that, this child believed that in order to keep them safe he had to push them away. Pete stood there with his feet planted and his eyes so sure, and his mouth drawn so tightly, and Rio just wanted to hold him.

No child deserved to feel like that, she didn't care how true it might be. She didn't care what might actually be following that boy. No one deserved to be alone in the way he was attempting. No child deserved to feel like he was a monster. Not even the ones that made mistakes.

Not even the ones that killed a man that would have wanted to be dead to begin with.

Peter B's mouth still tasted of bile.

He'd washed it out twice, staring at the mirror for as long as he dared, taking in brown eyes and damp hair, and… God. Everyone always said he had looked like Uncle Ben. There were times when he looked at his reflection, especially during times like this, and the likeness was so much it almost physically hurt.

His uncle had been Peter B's age when he had been killed. It hurt to know that should he make it to another birthday he would be older than his uncle ever was. Peter B took a breath, gripping the sink and fighting against the pit that threatened to open up inside his stomach. Every universe, it seemed, Uncle Ben had to die, but he had never before thought to hope that it was always with the same bullet. He had never thought to hope that he would never be eaten alive.

Peter B stared at himself in the mirror a little longer, finding that it wasn't hard to picture himself in his uncle's place, and almost vomited again. He took a moment more to gather himself up, to compartmentalize everything into their proper places, and finally walking back to the room to hear the rest of Pete's story. At Pete's insistence that he had to leave, Peter B felt his stomach clench, but he fought it down. Now wasn't the time for sickness, for weakness.

Now was the time for doing something, for proving that Pete was wrong, that he deserved to be with them, that… Wait…

Wait.

"Why did Connors turn into a Lizard?" Peter B asked, his voice strong, and probably a bit too challenging, judging by the way Pete's attention snapped to him. Those gray eyes stared into his with something like confusion, finally darkening to a look that screamed at him to drop it.

Peter B wasn't very good at doing what he was told.

"What?" Pete asked, and he somehow managed to bare every single one of his teeth in a look that practically screamed 'don't touch it'. That was impressive, honestly. It wasn't like…that threatening, not really, the fact that Pete obviously didn't want to hurt any of them was practically screaming from the other man, but that was still a lot of teeth. Peter B honestly didn't know if he'd ever managed to do that.

Maybe when dealing with Wade?

Peter B shook off the rambling thoughts that tittered together when he was nervous and refocused on the question that burned brighter than all the others.

"Why didn't Curt turn into a spider?" Peter B asked, and he kept his eyes locked on the younger man. Pete ducked his chin lower, but his eyes kept their fiery gaze. "Pete. You got bit by a Spider God. A Spider God is the thing that's following you, right? So, shouldn't Curt have turned into a Spider? If…the same thing that happened to you happened to him, why did he turn into a Lizard?"

"Leave it," Pete hissed. "It doesn't matter."

"No, I think it does. Because he turned into a lizard and that means that whatever has you doesn't have him," Peter B pointed at him, his voice gaining certainty the more he talked. "You said it happened because a spider bit you, right? They ate someone else, but it bit you. Have there been others with your power-set in your world?" Peter B watched as Pete hunched further, his eyes flickering back and forth between his own, his hands balling into fists. "No, no, I know there aren't any because it grabbed all the Spider-People. If there was another one that had our skill-set they would have been brought into this universe when you were, so obviously it can't get any of us. It might follow you, but it isn't going to harm us. It didn't harm Curt, obviously, so it's…"

"It can hurt you through me!" Pete finally shouted back, and the fury and the sadness and the pain was suddenly visible in every twist of his mouth, every gesture of his hands. "That's how it always goes with everyone who gains this kind of power! It's a trade, it's always a trade, power for your soul, power for control, and it has me, and eventually it's going to take me! It's why I keep the gun loaded and why I keep it with me, so I can blow my own fucking head off before it takes me fully! You have to let me go because my life is a short-fucking-story with a sad-fucking-ending, and I can't drag you down with me!"

Peter B didn't know how to react. The thought of killing himself had cropped up once or twice during his depressive episodes. During the moments when he lost Uncle Ben, Aunt May, lost Mary-Jane, lost everything… But he had always stopped. He'd never been able to follow through, too stuck on a phrase that burned in his head and in his heart and in his very soul by this point. Peter B had a responsibility, and the one before him had a similar responsibility, but the implications…

Pete had never been taught to be responsible with his power, Pete had been taught that the ones that couldn't be responsible with their power must be removed. Pete had then been put into the terrible, gutting realization that he was the one with the power. Pete was the one that he would eventually need to stop, even if that meant his own death.

The silence stretched out long between them all, horror and fear reflected from all of them in varying degrees, and then Peni broke it with a sob. Pete froze, looking to her, and then his eyes flickered over to Miles, who Peter B noticed had both of his hands pressed over his mouth, silent tears leaking down from his eyes, and finally to Gwen. Gwen who didn't move, her eyes wide and horrified, her own tears trickling.

Peter B was suddenly struck with how young all of them were, and his heart gave a painful lurch in his chest. He hadn't signed up for this. How the hell had he gotten four kids? He hadn't even wanted one!

Peni gave another sob, and Peter B found himself bundling her up in his arms before he could even think of what he was doing. He rested her on his hip, feeling as she buried her face into his neck, tears and snot dampening his shirt as her thin arms wrapped around him tightly, and he returned his gaze to Pete, but found he couldn't think of anything to say. He couldn't even find it in himself to be angry. The only thing he felt was hurt.

"Oh, kiddo…" Porker said softly, so softly, taking a step towards Pete, and Peter B thanked God that he wasn't completely alone in this. "That's not the thing to do. We love you, too, Pete. We'd…it'd hurt us if you did that. We'd miss you."

"I'd hurt you if I didn't, it always goes the same way." Pete replied stubbornly, his head tilted up slightly, jaw stubbornly set. "The Lizard wasn't the first. He won't even be the last, we researched this, I know this, I shouldn't have come here, I should have told you before. I can't love you. You can't love me. I can't…"

"Little too late for that, Pete," Peter B finally said softly, finding his voice again. "It's actually entirely too late for that. Look. I get that you've been researching this, I do. But…there's a lot of us, and some of us have made ways to physically get into another universe without glitching." He bobbed Peni gently as he spoke, and she clung to him tighter, but he could feel when her head lifted, staring at Pete directly. "Maybe we can help. You should…you should have mentioned this earlier, I agree, and I get that seeing the Lizard and what it did reminded you of what's actually happening to you, but… How long have you been like this?"

"A little over a year," Pete responded, his voice rough, but the fight was bleeding from him. His skin looked as though it was actually paler than it had been, exhaustion setting in.

"You're still you, though, right? And you haven't been twisted too much. You still try and…you still try and help people. You aren't a monster, Pete," Porker said gently.

"I don't think you could ever be one," Peter B added, to Porker's firm nod. "I think you're scared, and I think you're lashing out, but I don't think that you're thinking this over very clearly. Maybe for obvious reasons…"

"I don't want you to die," Miles' voice suddenly choked out, the first words he'd said, and all attention turned towards him. His eyes were wide, tears sliding down his face steadily, and his hand still firmly pressed to his mouth. He had curled into a ball, staring up at Pete with those eyes, and Pete in turn made a small noise. Jefferson picked his son up without hesitation in much the same way Peter B had picked up Peni, and Miles curled into him on reflex. His dad's large hand pressed against his son's back, Rio moving to put her own hand against her son's shoulder as Miles gave another soft, "I don't want you to die," from his position pressed to his father's chest.

His father that was staring at Pete with eyes somewhere between horrified and downright angry.

Pete stared at him with his gray eyes and seemed to further crumple in on himself, "I don't want to die," Pete finally replied softly, and Jefferson's eyes softened. "But that's the only outcome. If I do lose control, if I hurt anyone because I can't control myself and what I'm doing…I'd want to die," he admitted softly, and his voice hesitated for the first time, a slight tremble in the words that he swallowed down a moment later. "I'd want to die, because the idea of doing that, of hurting the people I love, well, that's just a thought that I can't take, and I know that that's what would happen."

Gwen gave a soft sob then, her mouth open, and her hands over her face. Porker tugged her down gently and wrapped his arms around her tightly when she finally sat down next to him. Gwen pressed into him, shivering slightly, and finally Porker turned to Pete.

"You ain't a monster yet," Porker frowned up at him. "There's no use thinking of what might,"

"Will,"

"MIGHT! Happen later," Porker snapped. "You've been like this for a little over a year, how long does it take the usual person to hurt their family?"

Pete paused, shifting slightly. "Two…"

"Two what? Months? Years?"

"Weeks," Pete whispered finally, softly, his fingers balling into fists.

"You made it for more than a year, bucko. A year! When the minimum is two weeks?" Porker shook his head. "I'm not going to say you're overreacting because I haven't seen what you have, but kiddo… You're probably going to be fine and we'll figure it out if you're not. Don't write us off just yet, we're Spider-Men, or Woman, or SP/dr. Saving people is what we do and it's what you should work on, too, not planning ways to off yourself. We can do this. Let us try. Maybe the thing that got you isn't the same as what got everything else. Maybe we can find something."

"You said you don't want to die, kiddo. Maybe your life doesn't have to be as short as you think it does," Peter B added.

Pete didn't say anything for a moment, he just stood there, staring at them all through his broken glasses. His shoulders had hunched further up into his ears, and his mouth was slowly pulling down at the corners.

"I can't do this again," Pete whispered finally, so softly, his voice barely audible. "I can't."

"What can't you do, kiddo?" Porker asked gently.

"I can't keep hoping," Pete responded, his mouth twisting. "I can't…I can't do it. It hurts too much. I…I'm just so tired. I can't. I can't lose anything else. I can't hurt anything else. I just…I just want to go home. Please. Just let me go."

Peter B found himself in the terribly awkward position of holding one kid and wanting to hold another. He froze for a moment, his arms full of Peni, and then Rio gave Miles a kiss, and a brief whisper in his ear, before walking over to Pete. Jefferson made a sound, taking a step forward, but faltered. Jefferson was watching Pete with something similar on his face, and Peter B came to realize that there were a couple of allies in this that he hadn't initially expected.

"Puedo darte un abrazo?" Rio asked Pete softly, and Pete frowned slightly, before finally shaking his head.

"I'm sorry my…my Spanish isn't that good yet, what's un abrazo?" he asked.

And if that didn't sum up Pete's entire problem, Peter B didn't know what else would.

"A hug, sweetie, can I give you a hug?" Rio asked, and Pete tilted back slightly, not sure what to say, what to do, those gray eyes staring at her in a mixture of shock and something like worry. "Oh, sweetie, you're not going to hurt me. Please, let me hug you." Rio hushed him gently, looking up into his eyes calmly.

Finally, jerkily Pete gave a nod, and Rio pulled him into her. She held him tightly, her hand guiding his head down to rest on her shoulder, running her fingers through his hair. He didn't hold her, but he seemed to lean into her, his eyes closing behind those busted glasses, unmoving. Rio pet her hand through his hair a few times, hushing him softly in Spanish. It took Peter B a moment to realize that Pete was trembling.

"You can cry, sweetie," Rio assured him softly when Pete didn't move, but didn't try and push her away either, that trembling turning more visible the longer she stroked his hair. "It's okay to cry…" Pete shook his head but didn't make any other movement. "Okay, okay, you don't have to cry…but you can't leave, sweetie."

"I have to…" Pete whispered.

"No. What you have to do is let us try," Rio said softly. "You can do it, Peter Benjamin Parker. Just try, one more time. Please. Just trust us enough to try."

Pete said nothing for a moment, his eyes still closed and his mouth in that thin line.

"It's a leap of faith," Miles said quietly, and Pete looked up at him at that, eyes round behind his glasses. A moment later and he crumbled slightly, and two shaky arms reached up, wrapping their way around Rio, who instantly seemed to hug him tighter, a proud smile spreading across her face.

Peter B wondered how many leaps the other had taken, how many jumps which had ended with him face down in the dirt, broken and crumpled. But as Peter B watched Pete, he knew that one thing was very certain.

"Okay," Pete whispered. "Okay. I'll try."

They always got back up.