"So….what are you? What planet are you from?" Tony asked, staring at this Eddie and the giant black thing behind him.
"I-I'm from New York, Mr…?" Eddie said.
"Stark, and I was talking more to the gooey mess."
"MESS?! I WILL NOT STAND FOR THIS, EDDIE! I DEMAND WE EAT THIS ONE!"
"We are not eating anybody here!" Eddie hissed at the symbiote, as everyone looked at him in confusion and fear. Tony merely raised an eyebrow at the thought of him being eaten by this thing.
"Are...Are you talking to that thing?" Strange asked, looking serious at Eddie as he squirmed under the gaze of everyone.
"That thing, is a dangerous alien that will try kill us all if given half a chance." Spider-Man 2 said, staring at Eddie with a look that the others could only describe as hatred.
"What do you mean, eat us?!" Ned panicked.
"How do you know this thing? How do you know me?" Eddie asked, wondering who the hell this guy was. He wasn't Peter Parker, he had seen that kid on the news, this wasn't him.
"Ask that thing in you." Spider-Man 2 snarled.
"I HAVE NO IDEA WHO THE FUCK THIS GUY IS." Venom assured Eddie. "WAIT...OUR HIVE MIND HAS A MULTIVERSAL CONNECTION. MAYBE HE FOUGHT ANOTHER ME?"
"Would explain the hate he has to us both. Maybe there's another me with another you?" Eddie mumbled to Venom as the others watched the exchange in confusion.
"Mind filling us in, Mr Brock, was it?" Bruce asked kindly, looking at the man in sorrow. He knew exactly what it was like to have another personality, as it were, in your body with you.
"Well, it's a long story, mind telling me who you all are first?"
"Well, I'm Tony Stark, aka Iron Man." Tony introduced himself.
"Wait...didn't you die, fighting some purple stones alien?" Eddie questioned.
"How do you know about that?" Spider-Man 2 demanded to know.
"There was a bar, in Mexico, we somehow ended up there...we spent a few days, then we decided we were going to go to New York, to speak to this Spider-Man, when we vanished again, ending up back home. After that, I spent a few weeks wandering Central America, then….I was in here." Eddie explained. "I'm not sure where I am or how I got here, all I know is I heard a voice, on my way here, telling me that I was needed to help Spider-Man. I don't know how I'm meant to do that, but if I can help, I guess I'm here to do so."
"Well...thanks." Spider-Man 3 awkwardly said, everyone nodding at Eddie, other than Spider-Man 2, who still glared mistrustfully at him.
"WE NEED TO WATCH THAT GUY, I DO NOT LIKE HOW HE LOOKS AT US. HE MAKES ME HUNGRY. CAN WE EAT ANY OF THEM YET?" Venom asked Eddie who shook his head violently.
"These guys seem to be good guys. Remember the rules?" Eddie demanded.
"WE ONLY EAT BAD GUYS." Venom pouted. He hated that rule. He wanted to eat brains and hunt. Why wouldn't Eddie let him? It wasn't like they weren't fugitives now.
Peter and Ned discussed the attack the night before as they hammered at the tech, setting off the power core inside as a spark flew away and caused a commotion in the shop lab. They headed off to go study it when Peter noticed the new Shocker and someone else in the school hallway, and pulled Ned aside, telling him it one of the guys who attacked him and they needed to hide, before realising he may be able to find out who the Vulture guy was if he followed them.
"So they have trackers on their weapons? That's not good for Peter at all." Natasha frowned.
"He can handle them, without the Vulture, they don't stand a chance." Ned confidently predicted.
"Don't get overconfident, kid. I've seen my fair share of missions go sideways due to it." Sam told Ned, who nodded.
'I guess they're right, I mean, I don't even really know Peter anymore. I can't really say for sure how it would go.'
Peter followed them into the lab as they realised the weapon must have been moved by now, Peter ducking under a table as the two came back, thinking they heard something. As the Shocker was about to leave, Peter fired a tracker with his webs to follow him.
"Smart move." Clint nodded his head.
"Maybe there's hope for him to be a SHIELD agent yet." Natasha said teasingly, as she saw the look of possessed determination on Stark's face. He didn't even fully remember this kid, and she could already tell he'd move mountains to keep him away from Fury and his bullshit. She could respect that.
Back at Peter's, Ned watched the display on his shooters as they chose to have a sleepover to see where the criminals went too. Eventually, they found out the guys were in Maryland as Ned wore the Spider-Man mask. Ned wondered how they were ever going to stop them from New York, before Peter remembered the Decathlon he had dropped out of, telling Ned, Maryland wasn't too far from D.C.
"That's sneaky." Abe said.
'I guess that's why I can barely remember him, we spent almost no time together, using our trips as an excuse to be a vigilante I guess.'
"How have these guys travelled several hundred miles and not noticed a tracker on them?" Scott asked. "They must be the dumbest of the dumb."
"You know full well you wouldn't have noticed one either." Hope admonished him.
"I mean, I admit I'm a grade-A dumbass." Scott shrugged.
Peter asked to rejoin the debate team and was immediately welcomed back despite the protests of Flash, as MJ stated how she wanted to get going so she could protest before dinner.
"Protest is a patriotic duty." Steve agreed with Harrington as the other Avengers rolled their eyes.
"Exactly!" MJ confirmed as the other Midtown lot rolled their eyes at her.
As they rode on the bus, quizzing one another to practise, Peter received a call from Happy, saying how he didn't like Happy invading his privacy by tracking him, whispering that it was different to Ned than what they were doing. He told Happy it was no big deal, Happy agreed, but said he was watching Peter.
"I mean, it's really not any different." Cindy stated.
"I think I can give him a pass on illegally tracking someone when he's doing it to help others." MJ said. "Though I don't like that he's using us to do his own thing."
"He had to stop this guy though." Ned insisted.
"Yeah, but do you like having something you've worked hard on being co-opted just so he can play vigilante?"
"Well, no, but-"
"There isn't a but, Ned." MJ said. "Sure, he has to do this, I get that, but finding out that someone was using us all as cover like this? That's not cool."
Peter and Ned hurried to their hotel room as they hooked up his suit to Ned's computer, Ned asking why they were going to remove the tracker from the suit.
"Because you're idiots." Tony told him. "If I've put a tracker on his suit, it's for a reason."
"Well yeah, I can see that, I'm pretty sure even younger me can see that, Sir." Ned reassured him.
Peter said it was because Mr Stark didn't appreciate what Peter could do and that they needed to stop these guys, and if Iron Man wasn't going to take it seriously, he would. Ned told him how he had a bunch of protocols hidden behind the Training Wheels protocol, Peter demanded Ned disable it as he could handle himself, eventually Ned agreed too.
"I'm not sure that's such a good idea." Bruce warned.
"Yeah, I'm kinda regretting this. I mean, I don't recall it quite like this, but I do remember Spider-Man coming to me, I found it weird he was in D.C, he asked me to help him run down some bad guys, he knew I was good with tech he said, he had me hack into his suit, to try and find who the Vulture was, and to help him to shake some tail that was in his suit." Ned explained. It was weird, thinking that all of his memories of his interactions with Spider-Man were fake, the result of a spell, and wasn't that the coolest thing ever? Other than the whole losing his memories, that part sucked. He really wish he knew more about Peter than the few flashes of real memory he had gotten, and he really hoped he could fully separate them. Maybe he could ask the wizard to wipe his fake memories?
"Well at least nothing too bad will happen. He's just following them, we know he's alright, we all remember meeting Spider-Man later on." Steve said.
Peter snuck out of the room, telling Ned to keep the tech safe, only to run into Liz and the rest, heading off to swim. Liz invited Peter as he made an excuse to go studying, before she called him the smartest person she knew. As the rest of them swam and MJ sat reading by the pool, Peter watched from above, in his Spider suit, sorry he couldn't do this important thing for Liz, before his new suit AI activated.
"Poor Peter, you can tell her really likes this Liz." Bucky said, MJ smarted at the idea. She didn't know why, it wasn't like her and Spider-Man had that close a relationship, she had helped him out, especially against Mysterio, but that was it. They weren't that close, she was sure she didn't know who he was under the mask, even before she apparently forgot Peter.
"Duty before himself. That's not fair, he's just a kid." Rhodey frowned.
The AI congratulated him on getting full access to the suit and plotted a course to find the tracker, showing Peter swinging through D.C before jumping off of a truck to a rest stop, seeing a van ahead with the Shocker sat in the front, Peter prepared to attack, before being distracted with all the web options he now had, trying a few out, luckily not getting the attention of the criminals as he fired off taser webs and rapid fire ones. He hid as they began to move out, as a Department of Damage Control convoy drove past, they signalled their boss it was time for him to attack.
"So, this is a new voice." Bruce said of the AI.
"I don't recall Spider-Man ever mentioning he had an AI, I just assumed I hadn't put one into his suit that I helped design." Tony said. "Damn, that spell really has messed with a lot of my memories, hasn't it?"
"You can't blame yourself, Tony." Wong told him, seeing the look of sadness on the man's face. "Even we do not fully understand the spell, it travels the border between known and unknown realities."
"WHAT? YOU CAST A SPELL, ON THE ENTIRE WORLD, WITH NO IDEA OF ITS FULL CONSEQUENCES?!" Wanda yelled. "AND I THOUGHT I WAS AN IDIOT FOR WHAT HAPPENED IN WESTVIEW! YOU CLEARLY FUCKED UP HIS LIFE AND THE LIFE OF EVERYONE WHO KNEW HIM, REGARDLESS OF WHY YOU DID IT! YOU MAKE ME SICK, STRANGE!" Wanda finished her rant, breaking down into sobs at the end of it. Clint rushed forward and wrapped her in a hug before she could say anything, as she buried her head into his shoulder and kept sobbing.
"Wanda..." Steve said, his voice trailing off. He had been so close to Wanda, at least closer than most of the others had been to the young woman, before the Snap. But this new Wanda, she looked so determined, so powerful, she didn't need Steve's help anymore, he knew that. But what had happened to her? Why was she so affected by the idea of using unknown magic, at least more-so than he would have expected? What had happened in Westview?
"Wanda...I'm sorry." Stephen said sadly. "I don't know what to say, I don't recall doing it, but I know I must have cast this spell. There's nobody else that Spider-Man would have gone too. I know what you've been through, I saw what happened with Westview. I'm sorry if it's brought back any painful memories, I truly am."
"What happened in Westview?" Natasha asked, wanting to know why Wanda was so distraught.
"There was a thing, and I lost control. I did bad things, I hurt an entire town of people. I didn't mean to do it, but I did. There was a fight I had with a witch who has been alive for centuries, I won, discovering a new side to myself, but I lost everything all over again by doing so. Since then, I've tried to do good, to be better. But I know what doing something without knowing everything about it can do now, it hurts people, it hurts yourself. It seems Strange here didn't learn that lesson, if he was willing to wipe Spider-Man from everyone." Wanda said, raising her head to turn her red rimmed eyes towards Natasha.
"I know how it feels, to not mean to do something, but to do it all the same." Bucky explained, turning to Wanda, who looked over to him. "But you gotta move on. It looks like you've tried, from what I've heard, and what I saw about the clean up from Westview on the news, but you can't just sit on it. You have to try more everyday, push on, make amends, until eventually, you can look yourself in the face in the mirror. I know it's hard, I still struggle with it some days, but you can do it, Wanda. I know you can, because I can, and if I can forgive myself for what I've done, anyone can for what they've done too."
"I do have to say, trying all those different webs looked pretty fun, I wonder which he'll use most often?" Abe asked, trying to distract from the darkened mood in the room. It seemed to work as a few people cracked small smiles.
"THESE PEOPLE ALL HAVE ISSUES, THEY'RE AS FUCKED UP AS WE ARE, EDDIE." Venom told Eddie who shook his head. At least these people seemed to have each other, with them on the run, Eddie and Venom had nothing.
The Vulture landed on the convoy and used some Chitauri tech to make a matter phase portal, hopping into the back of their truck and grabbing some alien weapons tech, as he climbed back out, Spider-Man attacked, managing to knock the equipment back into the truck before falling in himself, knocking himself out as the portal closed behind him, leaving Peter trapped and the Vulture to leave empty-handed.
"IS HE OK?!" Betty asked hysterically as they saw Peter hit the floor.
"Spider-Man's had worse, he'll be fine, no doubt." Happy reminded her.
"I hope so." Cindy cried.
I've decided as I'm a sucker for punishment, in addition to these three films, there will be involved in this fic:
. The Battle on Titan and the Snap from Infinity War
. The Battle of Earth and Tony's Funeral from Endgame
. A summary by Eddie of Venom 1&2 and the post credit of Venom 2 being shown
. All Three Raimi Spider-Man films
. The Amazing Spider-Man 1&2
Will be Homecoming I.W & Endgame clips FFH NWH up until the the two Spideys mention finding Peter Raimi trilogy TASM duo Rest of NWH Venom 2 post credit NWH post credit