It was a beautiful day in Manhattan. The weather was great, the hot dog vendor's new joke had actually been funny, and Mister Criminal hung by his feet outside the police precinct kinda like a big, ugly sprig of mistletoe. Eh, maybe not the best metaphor but whatever. What mattered was that the city was just a bit safer for the little guy. And as a bonus, Spider-Man had avoided the photographer this time. The Daily Bugle had been a real menace in recent months and any day when they didn't slander him up and down in black and white was a good day in his books.
Swinging high up onto the roofs, he surveyed the city that he loved and removed his mask. It was a city that had become unsure of their once-hero Spider-Man. It was a city that had forgotten Peter Parker. In some ways, the forgetting had granted him a freedom no one else could match. No one expected anything of Peter Parker. Peter had no reputation to maintain, no teachers to answer to, no girlfriend to impress. Peter simply didn't exist anymore.
It was better this way, he told himself. He wouldn't be around to hurt the ones he loved or…or bring danger to their doorsteps. He was free of the heartbreak.
This was good. This was fine. He still had a job to do and he was getting it done. Morning patrol was over and he didn't have afternoon patrol for a couple of hours. So he settled on the roof and pulled out his stack of used books from the library sale and read while he ate. He tried to challenge himself with calculus, physics, and chemistry books above his level. He studied diligently and made a ton of notes. Not exactly the kind of thing a normal kid would do for fun. He might have lost the chance to apply to MIT along with his identity, but he was determined to keep up. Who knew, maybe he'd be able to get a real job someday, one that didn't involve scooping ice cream for the summer crowds on weekends. Of course, he'd have to do something about his complete and utter lack of resume and school transcripts.
Man, not being real sucked.
Peter finished his self-assigned homework and laid back on the roof to look at the clouds. He checked his phone. No new texts, obviously. He didn't expect any. Not even the Avengers thought a spider-themed superhero they vaguely knew had fought Thanos was worth inviting to anything. It would have been nice, though. He opened his contacts list and scrolled down with a thumb until he came to MJ. She looked happy. The picture attached to her number was a selfie he had taken with her in Venice during their school trip before everything had gone south. He hoped she was happy right now.
He stared at her picture for an inordinately long time. It would be so easy to just hit call. Convincing her they knew each other would be a challenge but she'd demanded it. She wanted him to try and truth was, he did too. Only it wouldn't be fair. How could he keep her safe when just being his friend put her in danger? He couldn't keep wallowing in despair and staring at her contact on his phone every day didn't help. His thumb hovered over 'delete.' It was best to just forget about the past and move on. The pain didn't do him or anyone else any good. Yet still, he hesitated. The hardest part about life wasn't the changes, it was the letting go. Her static image looked back at him, unashamed, joyful, fierce.
Peter hurriedly tapped out of the app and dropped his hand to the roof. Ugh, it wasn't fair. And the stupidest, worst part of his situation was he had no one to talk to about it. No one to see him cry or give him words of comfort or just listen with an empathetic ear. He had never been so alone and he hated it. He wished he hadn't told Stephen to do the spell. It was selfish and dangerous because he could have broken reality, but in that moment, he wished there had been another way.
Peter closed his eyes and listened to the traffic whizzing by below him. Cars honked and angry drivers shouted obscenities out of their car windows. It was a soundscape so familiar, he could pretend this old city still knew him deep down in its bones.
A long, loud honk blared below – Peter's stomach fluttered with unease and he sat up – and then there was the screech of tires and the crunch of metal. Peter hastily pulled his mask back on and scrambled to peer over the edge of the roof.
A dozen stories down, traffic diverted around a white sedan that had had a nasty encounter with a utility pole. Accidents like it weren't unusual. What was unusual was the figure in brown robes sprinting away from the scene. He might as well have had a big neon sign saying "guilty" over his head. Welp. Break time was over.
Shooting a web to the building across the street, Peter launched himself off the roof. In a series of twists, he descended rapidly down to street level and came to a soft landing near the crashed sedan. The damage sure looked a lot worse up close. The front bumper and part of the hood was caved in and the windshield was broken. The pole tilted at an angle, mostly engulfed in bent metal. Peter checked to make sure no live wires hung dangerously over the car before approaching.
"Hey! Are you okay?" He tugged open the door, his super strength forcing the locking mechanism to yield. The driver, a young man in a business suit, was the only person inside. "Can you hear me?" The man looked disoriented, his hands covering his face. The rapidly deflating airbag had done its job but the guy would still need a doctor. Gingerly, he helped the man to get out of his car. The man stumbled but he caught him. "You're going to be okay. Can you tell me what happened?"
The man blinked and didn't quite look Peter in the face. "He just…he came out of nowhere. There was this light and the next thing I knew…" He shook his head.
"Okay, okay. You're going to be fine. Just stay put until the ambulance gets here." His keen hearing had already picked up the sound of a woman on her cell phone talking to a dispatcher. The guy would be fine but for now, Peter had to make sure this wasn't about to happen again. Backing away, he shot another web and let it pull him into the air. The chase was on.
Gaining altitude, Peter quickly spotted the mystery guy bolting down Forty-Eighth Street. He was pretty fast and had a headstart but unfortunately for him, he'd caught the wrong attention. Peter swung between the buildings but stayed relatively low, about thirty feet up. In a second, he'd be in position to web him and demand some answers.
The man looked over his shoulder as Peter closed in. Then he changed the rules by putting his hands together and flicking a wrist, sending glowy disks hurling his way.
"Crap!" Peter shouted as the disks sliced through his webs. Momentum carried him right in the middle of the intersection. He shot a web up at the nearest building. Cars zoomed under him so close they were inches away from scraping the soles of his feet. And then he was hoisted out of his fall. He quickly regained control and swung a wide curve around the intersection and onto Fifth Avenue after the man.
"Stop!" Peter gained on him again but made sure to be ready this time if the man did that glowy razor trick again. "I just want to talk!"
The man twisted like he was going to do the thing again. Peter detached his web and as he dropped, he aimed and fired a web at the man's legs. The man tried avoiding it but the web caught him and he overbalanced and fell.
Peter landed lightly on the pavement. "This would have been a lot easier if you hadn't run, man. What's your deal, anyway?" Now that he got a good look at the guy, he saw the man was in his thirties, with hair and a beard that looked like they needed a cut and a wash. But what really drew his attention were the man's eyes. The skin all around them was cracked and gray and shining through the cracks, the skin glistened purple. It was like the guy's face was flaking away to reveal something monstrous just beneath. That wasn't good. "Uh…do you need a doctor?"
Instead of answering, the man reached to his entangled legs and did something Peter recognized. His hands moved with precision and purpose, drawing shapes made of light in the air. It seemed to take no effort at all to disintegrate the webbing and send a spinning blade of death hurling at Peter's neck.
Peter launched himself into a forward flip that took him clean over the blade, which chewed into the storefront before vanishing. "Whoa. You're a sorcerer? But wait, I thought you were the good guys."
The man launched an energy whip at his face.
Peter dodged it. "Okay, not one for talking. That's cool." He shot webbing from both shooters, going for the hands, then latched onto a light pole and used it for leverage so he could follow up with a flying kick.
The man conjured a shield that tore his webs into useless fibers but it flickered out a second too soon as Peter slammed into him, planting a solid kick to his sternum. The man went down for the second time.
"You know, I beat Dr. Strange in a fight once and I can honestly say, you're not as good as he was." He launched some webbing and this time caught both the man's hands, binding them securely. Finally. No more magic tricks for this guy. "Seriously, though. You gotta be more careful crossing the street. You could've been run over. And then I'd probably have to tell Dr. Strange about it and that's just a lot of trouble, you know?" Not to mention awkward. The last time Peter had seen Stephen, he'd brainwashed the whole world into forgetting Peter Parker had ever existed. He didn't even know how much of that Stephen remembered around the big Peter-shaped hole at the heart of it.
The man slowly rose to his feet, eyes darting about warily as if looking for an escape. Then he settled his focus back on Peter, licked chapped lips, and said, "Let me…go." His voice emerged as a strained whisper as if he'd damaged his vocal cords.
Peter rubbed the back of his neck. "I would but you're a safety hazard so –"
A giant black bird dropped from the sky right on top of the sorcerer. Peter leaped back in surprise. He hadn't even heard it approach, but it was huge. Except that when the figure straightened, he saw it wasn't a bird at all. What Peter had mistaken for a pair of enormous wings was only a cape, flared out to look like wings when the figure had come down. It was a guy dressed in black and white with armored bracers and a crescent moon shape emblazoned along the chest. His entire face was covered and further obscured by a dark hood. Before Peter could do anything, the masked man grabbed the sorcerer by the collar of his tunic and shoved him against the stone wall.
"Who do you work for?" the man demanded, pressing an arm against the sorcerer's chest and eliciting a gasp from him. The sorcerer hadn't been running to escape the scene of a crime. He was running because this guy was after him. The masked man withdrew a knife and pressed the flat of the blade against the sorcerer's face just beneath one eye.
"Whoa whoa whoa." Peter stepped hastily toward the pair, hands raised in a non-threatening manner. "I have no idea who you are or what's going on, but that's seriously uncalled for. Look, I already got his hands. He's powerless. You can put away the knife." Was this another superhero? Or maybe a villain. Had he just stumbled into the middle of some kind of super-powered gang war?
The masked man removed the knife from the sorcerer's face – yes! Progress! – and pointed it at Peter. Uh-oh. Not progress. "Beat it, kid."
"Uh. No? That's not really how I do things." He gestured at the sorcerer. "I just want to find out what's going on, okay? I just want to talk."
"Just want to talk, huh? Alright let's talk." The man returned his attention to the sorcerer. Digging gloved fingers into the sorcerer's collar, he slammed his head against the wall. "Let's talk about the five innocent people you murdered in London." He slammed him again. "Let's talk about the fact that a woman who's been missing for eleven years suddenly showed up, started speaking a dead language, and then walked in front of a bus." He slammed him for the third time. "Let's talk about why you have the stench of alien power all over you."
The sorcerer grimaced in pain but there was nothing he could do with his bound hands. He glanced at Peter but wouldn't see any help there. If this guy was telling the truth, the sorcerer was a murderer. All the more reason to get him off the street.
The sorcerer worked his mouth and jaw as if unaccustomed to using them. "Their deaths…were worthy…sacrifices," he said in that strained whisper.
"For what?" the masked man growled. "Tell me or this knife is going in your eye."
The sorcerer's cracked lips opened into a grin. "This body…doesn't matter. Even now…it fails. But I will have another…and another…and another…"
"Fuck this." The man raised his knife to make good on his threat.
"Wait!" Peter said even though he didn't really have a good reason to back his stance other than "killing is wrong." He didn't think this guy cared much about that.
The sorcerer huffed out a dry, breathless laugh. He looked as if the masked man's grip was the only thing keeping him on his feet. "How…disappointing. You can tell the Timekeeper…the Dread Dormammu comes for him."
His eyes collapsed. Peter winced and the man released his grip. From dark, empty sockets, gray flesh spread out over his face. Lips shriveled away from yellowed teeth. The contours of collarbone and sternum stood out from shrinking flesh until the sorcerer was nothing but a desiccated corpse. Its spine contorted, its fingers reached out, and it took a single, shambling step forward before collapsing. The masked man hastily stepped out of its path. As soon as it hit the ground, it burst into a cloud of ash.
Peter put his hands to his head. "Oh my god. Did you just…did he just…oh my god." How could this happen? One minute standing, the next minute dust, just like… For one horrible second, Peter thought it was happening again. He was back on Titan, watching his fellow heroes dissolve one by one. And then he'd had a feeling, the feeling you get when something's not quite right, when everything seems normal but you know that at any second you're going to receive horrible, life-changing news. And then he just wouldn't be anymore but that wasn't right, he didn't want to go…
He was on Earth. New York. And Thanos was dead, the Infinity Stones destroyed. There was no way that would ever happen again.
The masked man was kneeling on the ground and sifting through the sorcerer's ashes. Peter thought he was going to be sick. He looked away and realized the area around them was deserted. It seemed that over a decade of super-powered individuals and aliens running amok in the city had instilled New Yorkers with a fine-tuned sense of get-out-while-you-can.
The guy stood back up and examined the dust on his fingers. "What a load of bullshit. Who the fuck is Dormammu?"
This had Dr. Strange's weird dimensional stuff all over it. "Uh. I don't know but I think I know who might –"
The man cut him off. "Yeah, no shit, genius."
Peter balked. "Wow. That was really rude."
But whatever had the man irked, it didn't seem to have much to do with Peter. He wasn't even looking at him. "Then what good are you, huh? What was the point in keeping your pact with me?"
Oh…kay, this was rapidly making no sense.
"Yeah, well, if you hadn't pissed off a bunch of self-absorbed, animal-headed dicks, you wouldn't need to be 'too proud' to crawl back to them for help, you oversized chicken!" the man yelled at the sky.
Peter took two very quiet steps backward. "Du–sir, are you okay?"
"And who is this Timekeeper?" the man wondered, still not looking at him.
Peter was starting to get tired of being ignored. "I know who that is," he said with confidence.
"Yeah, but –" The man stopped mid-rant. He looked at Peter. "What do you mean, you know?"
Peter really hoped this guy wasn't a villain. "Yeah. Dr. Stephen Strange? He's like this really powerful wizard. He's not really a Timekeeper, though. Well, he was. He had this magic green stone and he could control time with it and he saw, like, a billion futures with it, but it was destroyed so, uh, yeah, he doesn't have it anymore." Peter paused for a beat, not sure if much of what he said made any sense. "I think he can help."
"More likely he'll end up like this guy." The man kicked the diminishing ash pile, sending up a puff of fine dust.
Peter pointedly looked up at the man's hidden face so he wouldn't see the ashes drift. "Why would you say that?" What was going on? Was it a virus? Something that only affected people with magic?
"A week ago, in Cairo, a magic man turned to dust just like this. Then two days ago a woman here in New York walked in front of a bus. They were both spouting that crap about Dormammu and the Timekeeper. This isn't going to stop."
This guy might have seemed a little rough around the edges but the way he spoke of those people, was there…regret in his voice? He cared. Maybe he was one of the good guys after all.
"Sounds like you could use some help," Peter said. "We could get a lot done if we join forces. I'm Peter." He thrust out a hand.
It was hard to tell the man's expression through the mask but he seemed to be considering. "The name's Jake but it doesn't matter. You're gonna have to get yourself a new pal, kid. I work alone." With a snap of his cape, the man strode off around the corner.
Peter slumped then went after him. "Come on. It makes sense and we'll get to the bottom of this…faster." When he reached the corner, the man was gone. Great. Way to go, Peter.
But wasn't this just a problem. And it had Dr. Strange written all over it. It was just that the last time Peter had gone to him for help, things had been messed up. Like, a lot. But it was a matter of magic and didn't Stephen have some kind of sacred duty to deal with all that stuff? And besides, this was way outside Peter's skillset and he didn't really trust this Jake guy to not try and kill people along the way.
With a sigh, Peter took to the rooftops, his destination: the New York Sanctum.