8/26/21. This chapter was edited.
Peter Parker knows that he will get up again. It is overwhelming knowledge.
For years, no matter what, he has always got up. Over and over again.
He always gets up.
He is also tired of doing it.
Sometimes when it was a bad day and the fight the night before had left him too drained, when his bones ached and protested and the world was too loud and demanding too much of him, Peter found himself wondering what it would feel like to die.
He imagined that maybe it wouldn't be so bad.
Maybe one day he wouldn't be fast enough to dodge a bullet, or his wounds wouldn't close as fast as he needed to, or maybe some villain might finally catch up with him. Or perhaps his death would be more heroic, perhaps he would die saving a life.
Perhaps, if he were very lucky, his death would not be painful.
In any case, every time Peter put on the mask, he knew there was a good chance of dying, but he saw that possibility as something distant, a morbid idea that he thought about in his lowest moments.
(And maybe he thought about it more times than he should; maybe he imagined all the possible scenarios, what would happen next. But no one could really judge him for it.)
It is unexpected then when it seems that his death is closer than he had imagined.
He hurts, he is tired, terribly tired and in pain, but despite everything, he feels that he is not ready to die,
(And isn't that hypocritical? Hadn't he wanted to die so many times? At last he has his wish.)
his work is not done.
(But his work will never be done, right?)
The city, the world is still in danger. His aunt May and MJ are waiting for him, they trust that he will return. The kid —It is just like him! He promised to teach him!— needs him. He couldn't die, not yet. He had to get up. Spider-Man always gets up.
In a desperate attempt, Peter warns Fisk of what he saw. He tells him, with conviction, that his plan will not work.
Fisk looks at him, and Peter knows he talked too much. He knows that he was wrong, that it was a mistake to even try to dialogue with him, but he was anxious, longing for any gap that could mean an opportunity, and did not think. He cannot, however, be silent now. To shut up means to die, so he talks, talks and knows that he is not changing his destiny, but he cannot stop, he needs …
He needs...
He had been wrong. He was wrong. Spider-Man was not going to get up again, and he was afraid, he was going to die and he was not ready, he was tired, in pain, but he did not want to die.
KingPin is impulsive, volatile, and violent. Peter watches him raise his arms in slow motion, his spider sense keeps screaming at him to move, but he can't, he can't stop what's coming, and-
Fisk lowers his arms.
At the same time, a web clings to his chest. And pulls.
The ground cracks under the force of Fisk's blow. Peter, very surprised to be alive, is thrown a few meters away.
Incredulous, he grasps the spider web tightly attached to his chest with one hand, which is, in fact, a spider web. Not a copy, not a bad imitation, actually a spider web identical to the ones he uses.
The web continues up above their heads, long enough that he can't see who's at the end. He can't be hallucinating, because the surprise he feels is reflected on Fisk's face. Could it be that the boy...?
"Kill him!"
Uh, uh, Kingpin looks furious. Urgently, he stands up when he sees Wilson's henchmen running in his direction. He staggers for a second, but is prepared to face Prowler when, unexpectedly, the web on his chest tightens.
So he is in the air.
And there is a moment, one between being thrown into the air and beginning to fall, in which Parker still shocked tries to quickly redirect his thoughts from a tragic death to an incredulous possibility of survival, aware that he must let his instincts take over the situation and save his butt once again, when suddenly, too fast to do anything about it, he finds himself unable to move as he wishes.
He… is he being saved by Spider-Man? What?
"That was close!"
Peter B. Parker does his best work in that little moment before everyone dies, and this time around, he's sure he did great.
Quickly, he swings with the Spider-Man of this dimension very well secured on his arm. Wilson Fisk is a threat that he is not prepared to face right now, much less with his package, so he tries to quickly put a distance between them. Behind, he hears his roar of fury, along with the order for Prowler to go after him. He stifles the urge to curse. In other circumstances, the Prowler wouldn't be a problem, but when avoiding unnecessary deaths is his highest priority, it becomes very annoying to deal with him.
He leads his swing towards the hiding place from which Miles observes the whole situation with surprised and scared eyes; the kid must be terrified, and that is a thought he hates. B, however, cannot focus on it when the danger has not yet passed.
He can't stop when he reaches Miles, not with the threat of the Prowler a few feet behind, so he crashes into him, forcing the boy to hold onto his neck if he doesn't want to fall. Miles screams, of course he screams, and the grip on his neck is painfully strong —and a bit suffocating!—, but it works.
The chase continues to what appears to be the subway tunnel, however once there he has no choice but to leave the air and the swing for an escape on foot, he hates it. Peter feels slightly vulnerable carrying the boy and the dying Spider-Man from the ground in such an enclosed space, where he cannot see all the angles or know what is happening behind.
"Kid, tell me what you see! What's going on back there?" Teamwork, he thinks. Miles isn't Miles , not the one he knows, but after days of working alongside him, it's natural for him to think of him first when he needs help rather than the trained hero he's also carrying. This is, obviously, a mistake. Miles is barely a teenager, one who has no experience in life and death situations. He doesn't respond, just takes quick, gasping, scared breaths, and Peter can't handle a panic attack right now. He shakes the boy a bit, hoping to help him to concentrate. "Kid!"
"He is getting closer!" He risks a quick glance at Miles's panic-filled warning. Aaron Davis (is Aaron the Prowler in this universe? Is this universe a copy of the one he left behind or…?) Is skilled enough to be only a few feet behind even with the great effort he goes to losing him, his claws glow in the darkness of the tunnel with the promise of what will happen if he ever reaches them.
He takes a small jump in the air, which he uses to do a quick full turn. For a few seconds, he is able to see the Prowler head-on, and he takes that opportunity to shoot a web at one of his hands. He's not the only one. The other Spider-Man does the exact same thing, and for a few precious short moments, his enemy's claw remains firmly immobile on a wall, providing precious time that he uses to put more distance between them.
"The subway!"
His gaze immediately returns to the front at the warning of the hero he still holds and his own spider sense. In fact, the subway was approaching at high speed, he wouldn't be able to avoid it while still carrying the other two spiders so, oh, he was also able to see the station. How convenient. If he could get to it before the subway...
Peter hurries.
Miles yells in his ear, still holding onto his neck incredibly tight. The other Spider-Man is quietly tense, but he is also holding onto him. The subway light blinds him for a moment, adrenaline rushes through his veins, but he's almost there, almost-
He jumps. His feet touch the floor of the station. Behind him the subway continues on its way. Morales lets out an incredulous laugh and feels the other hero relax.
From there, it is almost too easy to leave the place.
Hitting the streets of New York is liberating in many ways; Parker did not even waste time before swinging again
Under his mask, he is smiling.
"I'll be honest: this ended better than I expected."
The night wind along with the calm swaying do wonders to calm his body and mind. Peter feels slightly satisfied: he found the spider person he was looking for, with the addition that he himself did not die, the Spider-Man of the dimension did not die, Miles did not die, and from what he is able to observe from above, the Prowler himself didn't do it either, and that's a big win according to him. Sure, KingPin's henchman walks away from the subway station with the clear goal of finding him and surely assassinating him, but that's a problem for another time.
The roof of a dirty building that no one would think to look at is his destiny. Peter B. Parker lands on it, finally releasing the boy and the battered hero. He removes his mask once away from curious New York eyes.
"Kid, I need you to let me go"
"I, ah! Sorry, wait a minute! I can't… Come on, stop sticking, Miles! "
He is careful to put the other hero on the ground, where he helps him sit up using the ceiling ledge as a backrest. He's in pain, no doubt, but his healing factor will fix that soon. Meanwhile, now that he has time, Peter takes a curious look at the Spider-Man of this universe, finally appreciating the man's face and, oh.
Oh.
The face that stares back at him is the same one he sees every morning in his mirror, but younger, and blond. It's a face Peter has seen before.
Oh no.
From clothes conveniently in the same place until now. Fisk, the collider, Miles, the blond Peter Parker. All the information that he had been noticing since he arrived in this dimension, all the details that he had been so determined to ignore, began to accumulate, to shape an explanation that he really did not like: Hadn't Gwen mentioned that she'd been thrown into Miles's universe a week before the others…?
Don't be silly, Parker. How likely was it that Fisk's collider hadn't sent him to a different dimension, but instead had him taken back in time? Surely there would be hundreds, if not infinite, of universes that were similar and had Miles and a blond Peter and a collider. But again, how likely was it that all those universes shared so many coincidences?
Peter Parker should have died, at the hands of Fisk.
And he had saved him.
Damn, was this another universe, or had Peter screwed up the timeline?
"You are like me." The other Peter watches him with his big, shocked eyes, ignorant of his existential dilemma, and when his arachnid senses buzz in tune confirming this, he can't keep worrying about ruining a timeline when it means saving a life, someone like him.
"Yeah, I guess I am. In more ways than one." Releasing a weary sigh, he smiles at the other spidersona. Any concerns are pushed to the back of his mind to be examined later. "I am Peter B. Parker."
"Peter Parker." He replied, still staring at his face curiously, aaand yep, what B. was beginning to feel was self-awareness, right? Ugh. Suddenly his beard of a few days began to bother him a lot. "I suspect you are not from here."
"Fisk's collider brought me. I'm from another dimension."
Miles is there, looking at them both like they're the coolest thing he's ever seen and, well, he'd be lying if he didn't say that touches his ego a bit.
"And you, kid?"
"Me? I'm Spider-Man, Mr. Miles." Excited smile, the boy responds without even thinking. Peter, older and tired Peter, takes a moment to cover his face with one hand. Teenagers. "I-I mean, no. You're Spider-Man. You two? I'm not. I'm Miles."
Parker, in contrast to his expression of suffering, smiles equally excited at the child —Ah, youth.—, when his arachnid sense vibrates again in the presence of another person similar to him. His young version (and blonde, he does not think to let that fact pass) uses that opportunity to ask Miles if he is also originally from another dimension and not this as he believed, but the boy is quick to clarify that he is from Brooklyn, that he is in his own universe. Having defined that, he explains why he is here, and how his presence relates to the tremors, Fisk, and the huge machine the villain has had to build, and what he plans to do with it. It's completely unnecessary considering his current situation, but Peter appreciates the effort by not letting him know that; his time travel theory will be kept under wraps for now, it's a bit too crazy, even for Spider-Man.
Suddenly he falls, hard. His atoms go mad; for a moment he sees, hears and feels different universes. For a moment everything is too much, but it is only a moment. The glitch ends and leaves as if it had never been there, and shaken by how unexpected it was, he realizes that among everything that happened, he had forgotten the problem with being in a place where he shouldn't.
He notes, however, that just like the first few days of being in this place, the glitch here is less violent than it was at the end of his experience in the other place (in the other timeline?), almost as if his situation has been restarted, which only reinforces the reasons to believe in time travel.
"Are you okay?" Parker, the other Parker, who shouldn't be on his feet despite his healing factor, doesn't even hesitate to get up to come to his aid. He brushes his worries away with a wave of his hand, standing up by himself.
"Yeah yeah. My atoms don't like this place."
"You must return to your universe, quickly. We will use the override key to get you home. After that I will destroy the machine." The blond Peter turns to look at the boy, so he does the same; his fellow arachnid's plan had included giving Miles the goober, so he must have it, and while there are probably more things to do besides obtaining the little gadget (things like finding the other spiders, if there are any, and he's still thinking about how to mention that), having it would be a good start.
It is because of this, the knowledge that having it would be a good start and because he has been at this for years enough to know intimately the Spider-Man's luck, that he is not surprised when Miles, like a teenager about to be scolded by his parents, admits quietly that he doesn't have it.
" What? "
"It fell! During the chase! We couldn't go back for it, and I didn't know what to do, and I didn't want to distract you, and-"
Of course the goober fell, of course things cannot be that simple. Apparently they will have to do everything again. Ah, the life of heroes.
He looks curiously at Perfect Me's reaction (probably shouldn't call him that): he sighs, exhausted, but gives the boy a smile, assuring that they'll get another one and that he needn't worry. Uh, and that's exactly why he can't stop thinking of that Peter as "Perfect Me", he would have complained.
His stomach growls, he suddenly remembers the restaurant he loves and is still open in this universe. There's a lot to talk about yet, too much, but for now he has no doubt what his next destiny will be, after all, he can't save the multiverse (again) on an empty stomach, right?
"Well, who is hungry?"
.
This got a better response than I expected, thank you!