Her name was Gabriella. She had once been real. Her atoms had occupied space in the universe. Her mother had taken nine months to bring her into the world. To make the concept of her come true. She loved empanadas, but hated apple pies. Was it because her father once called her that in front of all her friends? Or did he call her that because she hated it so fondly? He would never know that.
Later she had no mother. She grew up with her dad. He called her "Applie Pie". She'd get enraged. He would laugh at it. She was real. She had been real.
"Miguel."
She played soccer. She loved playing soccer. She had brown hair, just like him. She would make weird faces before the camera. Her dad was her only world. If he was gone, there was no one to look after her. So when he really was gone, he took his place. He could not bear to see her anything other than happy. That child deserved the world.
"Miguel!"
It took nine months to bring her into the world. It took only a second to erase her entire existence, along with everyone else in that universe. She wasn't just dead. There was no trace or proof that she'd once lived. Not even her ashes. Now that place lay empty and dead and vacant. All because of one selfish move he made, because he wanted to be something he wasn't meant to be. Spider-Man was never meant to stay happy.
"Miguel!" It was Jess. She looked tired amidst the lines of falling rain.
"What is it?" Miguel asked.
"I don't think he's here."
"Who?"
She rolled her eyes. "Miles. Wasn't he why you're here? Well, he's not here."
"Then where is he? Lyla, send everybody els-"
"I think he got sent to the wrong universe," Jess said. "That's my hunch."
"How?"
"I don't know, Miguel. Either something's wrong with the Go Home Machine scanner and we've been sending people to the wrong dimensions, or there's something about Miles we didn't get quite right."
"There can't be anything wrong with the machine." He hopped onto the parapet and almost slipped. He looked at the world that lay spread before him. It was very different from his. At night this universe was a raining neon of blue and red. "Wait. If he got dimension-displaced, there could only be one reason. The spider that bit him. Lyla. Find that universe."
"Miguel," Jess said, her voice just an exasperated sigh. "Why are you doing this?"
"Because, Jess, he's an anomaly. How many times do I have to say it?"
"Then why is his universe still here?" she asked. She got off her motorcycle and walked towards him. "If he is an anomaly, why is his dimension not unravelling? If he is an anomaly, why do we want him to follow canon?"
Miguel didn't answer. Just kept looking into the distance, pretending to ignore her.
"There's something you're not telling me, aren't you?"
Her name was Gabriella. She had once been real. She wasn't anymore, because of him. He was doing this for her.
Chapter-2: Murphy's Law
"Whatever can happen will happen."
-The dude from Interstellar
The glimmering green and purple began to hurt his eyes.
Miles realized he wasn't blinking, staring that he was into the face of his own twisted reflection just inches away, its cold metallic fist pressed against the side of his head. Dazed still from the concussive blow, he had trouble focusing on the depths of his surroundings, but he was well aware of the living and breathing version of his dead uncle behind: a mere spectator watching the two of them in silence.
"Who are you, really?" he – the other Miles – asked.
For one, Miles didn't know if he had to be afraid, overwhelmed, surprised or astonished. This was just him from another reality. Another possibility. Whatever this guy had to go through to become what he became, if he had been anything like Miles before, then there might be a worthwhile chance of talking his way out and even convincing him to set him free.
The ringing bell at the back of his head, though, was he had to get out of here anyway, as fast as he could.
"I think you know who I am," he replied. He had to keep him talking. Keep them engaged, their attention away from his hands, and what he was about to do to the chain that held him tight and dangling with the punctured boxing bag. The ropes that held him captive bit into his skin. Miles could already feel the pins and needles work their way up his wrists. He tried to summon his spark, but breaking out wasn't going to be easy if he couldn't use his entire palm. He needed to make do with just a finger, which would take considerable time, and time was not something by his side today. Even if he could make it out of here, he didn't know where he could go. He had no watch to escape, his atoms weren't exactly jazzed about being here, and he was out of webs.
"You're one of Warren's, aren't you?" the other guy asked.
Miles pressed his finger hard against the cold metallic shackles. A faint, familiar burn of his powers started to surge through his veins. Very faint. "Who's Warren?"
The Prowler retracted that gloved fist and hit back the punching bag with lethal force. Miles's world began to move back-and-forth once again.
"Don't play dumb," he said. "Next time it's you."
"But I really don't know what you're talking about. Who's Warren?"
The Prowler caught the bag, bringing him to an abrupt halt. "Dr. Warren. Miles Warren. You one of his petty little experiments?" He craned his neck to look past him at Uncle Aaron. "How many of him are here?"
"As far as I know," Aaron's voice said from somewhere behind, "he's the only one."
He was the only one. He had always been the only one. Miles Morales, the Spider-Man who wasn't supposed to be Spider-Man. He had always been alone. But he'd never thought he would have to be. He thought there were people out there somewhere who understood him. That, if he met them once again, they'd never let him be alone. He thought wrong.
Why them? Why Gwen? Why could they have not been on his side? Miles had made up his mind in a second and left his world into the unknown to find her. To tell her how much he liked her and missed her. Now he wanted to go back home and find his family. He wanted to save his father. Where were they now? Where was she?
There was a time she was all he'd think about. Blond hair, one-sided undercut. Blue eyes. A slight touch of freckles. White hoodie. A grey sweater. That's how he'd remembered her. The girl that showed up at his school, the only one who laughed at his joke. The girl who had spider powers. That's how he drew her. She was mostly all he'd draw; the pencil moved on its own.
Those sketches were all he'd had of her.
"You look like you haven't slept in weeks," his mother often remarked when he went home on Fridays. "Miles! Are you getting enough sleep?"
He wasn't. He lay awake at night, squirming and churning under the blankets. Hugging the extra pillow thinking of her, looking at the sketches he made. The lines were not always perfect. They'd go wrong; sometimes he'd mess it up. He feared this was happening every day. Every sketch he made looked more and more different. He worried he was starting to forget her face. He hadn't seen her in a while. Blue eyes, blond hair, a one-sided undercut. Slight touch of freckles. That was all. He didn't have her picture.
"So you want to sneak into the control room and steal surveillance footage?" Ganke repeated, amused, when Miles told him the plan one day. "All that just to get a glimpse of her?"
"Not steal!" Miles replied, sitting up on his bed and dropping his phone to the ground in the haste. "Borrow. I'm gonna return it. All I want is a shot. She was here, after all. In the hallway. The corridor. Must have been caught in the cameras." He stopped, hopes starting to dwindle a little. "They'll be there, right? The recordings? Even though it's been more than a year? How long do they keep them?"
Ganke sighed. "Forget it, dude. Not worth the risk. She's probably seeing someone else right now."
Even though Miles said nothing, he secretly did not like the thought. Life had already turned out to be difficult as it was, lately.
He often lost time atop the clocktower, taking in the vast, overwhelming skyline spread before him – an ocean of lives and livelihood. It was daunting, if he let his thoughts take that route. He was the only one standing between them and oblivion. But he was only one man. One man against the entire world. After the thrills and shrills that came with swinging and zip-lining through the city's high rise, being Spider-Man was a lonely venture, a completely solo and misunderstood path. Something that very few understood.
Aunt May and Ganke were the only people in the universe who knew. While the former moved to Florida, the latter pretty much did nothing. He was not the guy in the chair, after all.
"Where were you last night?" his father demanded early one Sunday morning. "We missed the show waiting for you! You know how much your mother wanted to be there!"
"I had a cold." Miles lied. He hated lying to them. He couldn't tell them he had been just three blocks away, on his way, when a giant electric robot that shot lasers showed up. He couldn't tell them he was Spider-Man. They wouldn't get it. The only ones who would were not here. She was not here. And there was no way for him to get there. He was on his own. Spider-Man was always on his own.
Nobody understood him. Nobody even tried. And that was when he looked at his drawings. Looked at Gwen. She would have understood, the way she smiled at him, standing elegantly atop the tree branch after rescuing him and Peter from Doc Ock. Gwen was the one who always rescued him, took him away from the misery that his life had started to become. The world was still beautiful, but only because of her. Only because he'd met her. If only she were really here.
Sometimes Miles's longing would hit a crescendo.
"I thought you loved drawing graffiti!" his dad said one day. "Officer Gutierrez – my colleague – put in your name."
"Well nobody asked him to," Miles replied curtly.
Jefferson crossed his arms. "Excuse me? Nobody asked him to? I asked him to. Seeing how you love drawing stuff and slapping those stickers around. What happened to you?"
"I don't have time for that, Dad, I need to study."
"Whoah" Ganke laughed. "What did you just say? You're giving up art to study Physics?"
"I'm not 'giving up' art," Miles would say, trying to avoid eye contact. "I just need to get a bit more serious about what I wanna do in life."
"And what do you want to do? You're already Spider-Man."
Miles shook his head, taking a deep breath. "I'm gonna study quantum physics and break open the inter-dimensional barrier. And I'm going to re-create inter-dimensional travel. Safely."
~#~
"I am not from here," Miles told his distorted counterpart in purple. "I'm from another dimension. I got lost in another another dimension, and when I tried to go home, I got put here instead. Here is where I suppose the spider that bit me came from. I wasn't supposed to get bit. It was someone from here. Someone who should have become Spider-Man inst-"
A shock-full of pain shot down his body. He saw colours for a second. He was glitching.
The Prowler stepped back and returned with a hard metallic blow under the ribs, knocking the life out of Miles as he was sent swinging back.
The heat pricked her so bad Gwen collapsed on the floor. It was almost like glitching, but she knew it wasn't.
"Gwen, what happened?" Peni rushed out of her robot to her aid. "Are you alright?"
"He's in trouble," Gwen managed to let out as she felt firm hands help her up. "Miles. He's in trouble. He's hurt. And he's glitching."
"How do you know that?" Hobie asked, his hand tightly gripping her by the arm.
"I don't know," she replied between gasps. "My Spider-Sense. It went off."
"For him, or for you?" Ham asked.
"I just know it's him."
It had been happening the past couple of times. Her sixth sense would dial up to unbearable heights, even though there was no apparent danger around. Deep within, though, she knew it was for Miles. It had happened once she realized he was in the wrong universe. It almost felt like she glitched, although she still had her watch. Hobie would also later on confirm it stabilized the wearer's molecules. The second time it happened was when she was in his room back. It was as if someone had smacked her in the side of the head.
"You care about him that much, huh?" Peter B. said. "This thing with the Spider-Sense happens very rarely. You have to care enough for somebody for it to go off when they're in danger."
"See?" Pavitr exclaimed. "I knew it!"
"Gwen! Peter!" It was Margo coming out of the manager's office of the old factory. She looked haggard. "I finished with the simulation. The first one I couldn't believe it. So I ran it again. And again. And again."
"And?" Gwen asked, her heart already beating hundred times a minute. "What did you find?"
"The same thing," Margo said. "I ran the numbers at least a dozen times."
"What did you find?" Peter asked.
She shook her head. She looked devastated. "His universe doesn't survive. No matter what you do. Whether you save his dad or not. It happens nonetheless."
"Dude," Ganke exclaimed, for once bringing his video game to a pause and resting his controller. "What's gotten into you, seriously?"
Miles pretended to pay no heed. "I don't know," he said after an extended silence when he could feel his roommate's eyes burning into his back. "What do you think?"
"I think this is getting a little too much," Ganke said. "I never thought you really meant it when you said you wanted to study quantum physics."
"Why not? It's been done before."
"All this. Just to see a girl. You're going to throw away your whole life. Just to see some girl for a second. Dude, she's gonna get old by the time you figure out that thing. And married. A grandmother even!"
Miles put down his pencil and turned to face Ganke. "I know it's possible because it's been done before. I was there."
"You should probably try something within the dimension for once." Although Ganke was grinning, his voice came off pretty grave. "Kate Bishop's shown a clear interest in you. And you even said she sounds a lot like Gwen. Why don't you give her a chance? You want me to go talk to her?"
"Dude no!" Miles exclaimed. "That would be pretty selfish! Don't even think about doing that."
"How do you even know Gwen's thinking about you? You don't think she's trying hard enough to find a way to get here to you?"
She did. Gwen did come to visit him.
It was as if he almost knew she'd show up. He didn't know how, but somehow nonetheless. It felt impossible, right then and there, as he lay on the cozy loneliness of soft purple light in his room, grounded for two months for saving the world. Gwen would understand, as she always did, smiling down at him from the tree branch, blue eyes and blond hair in the way he'd left it after getting his hand stuck on it.
He knew it wasn't possible, that he would most likely never see her again. Most of the time he just didn't like to acknowledge it. He had to move on, secretly he too knew that. Secretly, he knew Ganke was right on levels much more than he.
Yet again, there she was, dressed in a reddish robe atop her costume, blue eyes and blond hair, still an undercut on the right, surrounded by godly hexagonal hallo-like rings. They stared at each other through zero gravity, through a dozen different things like a shoe or a PlayStation console, a cup or a pair of socks, obstructing his view. Miles tried to make sense of what was happening, everything around him up floating in the air. What was this?
Was he dreaming? Perhaps. Dreaming open-eyed? Maybe not. He knew when he heard her voice. That voice he had no way of reproducing in any notebook. He'd had her picture in his mind. He'd painted it everywhere. But the sound of her. It was even richer than the way he'd remembered.
Got a minute?
It was still her, and she giggled and swooped down onto his bed.
Was he still dreaming? No, because he'd sat up and she was still there. Was she real? Most likely, because he didn't even see her come for him and pull him into a hug so tight like her life depended on it.
That was when he knew she was really real, really here. Feeling her body pressed against his, her head resting on his shoulder, hair brushing against his neck. He could smell the shampoo in her hair, the soap in her warmth and the detergent in that robe. It was really her. How, he knew not. Right now, he cared not. He put his hands on her back, patting her. A little awkward, but before he could tighten his embrace she pulled back.
"Look, all I'm saying is, I don't think it'd be wise to throw away your life to get something you're not supposed to have," Ganke would tell him. "You're losing yourself lately, just being obsessed with cracking the Multiverse formula. That's not even something you're passionate about! Go live a life with the people that really love you for sure. Before you realize you were too late."
"What do you mean 'too late'?"
Ganke sighed. "Your dad. He's a cop, right?"
~#~
Miles gasped for air. He had taken a lot of punches and a lot of hits across a lot of different places in his body, and he always got back up. But none so full of anger as he just did now. It was like his soul had left his body, and then left once more. Breathing in a fresh burst of air seemed impossible. He could hear himself wheeze. He could also taste blood.
The blow was strong, perhaps too powerful for a normal human. How could a person without superpowers hit so hard? Yeah, there was that Prowler gauntlet he donned, but by the time the thought dawned on him, those words came sinking back in.
The spider that gave you your powers wasn't from your dimension. It was never supposed to bite you.
What he'd seen back in the rooftop a little while ago was because there was no one to stop it. A rotten world. A rotten Brooklyn. Damaged, plagued by evil. There was no one standing between the city and oblivion. They'd merged. And the outcome was something Miles had always feared could happen to his own home. The very thing that kept him awake at nights. Nightmare.
There's a world out there with no Spider-Man to protect them, because it bit you instead!
Miles was actually the second one to get bit and get those powers. And the spider bit him only about sixteen months ago. Which meant Spot took that spider from this dimension about the same time. Which meant whoever was supposed to get bit, should have otherwise gotten bit those very sixteen months ago.
But in Miles's dimension, Peter Parker had been Spider-Man for ten years. Spider-Man already existed when Miles got bit, much before those sixteen months. So where was Peter Parker now? Whatever Spider-Man should have popped up a year and a half ago, Peter Parker was already supposed to be here protecting the city, being the original Spider-Person. The one supposed to get bit all those sixteen months ago would actually have been the second Spider-Person. So where was the first? Where was Peter in this dimension?
Unless… unless Miles was mistaken.
Unless the person who got robbed of the spider was supposed to be the very first Spider-Man here. Unless… things took a turn for the worse and that person lost someone close to him, experienced Spider-Man's fate without ever being one. Unless he became one of Spider-Man's own enemies.
Unless… he was standing right there in front of him, a twist of fate, and an altogether different persona.
Unless… he was looking into that person's very eye right now. The person who had become the Prowler because he didn't get the powers he was destined to get. Because he couldn't save his dad.
"It was you," Miles struggled to whisper. "You were supposed to become Spider-Man."
A hard line formed on his counterpart's face.
The world faded before Miles realized he had been dealt a serious blow to the head again, and as reality began to slip, engulfed in the darkness, he heard Miguel O'Hara's voice.
If you hadn't been bit, your Peter Parker would've lived! Instead, he died, saving you. He would've stopped the collider before it went off, Spot wouldn't exist, and none of this would've happened!
You're not supposed to be Spider-Man.
You don't belong here. You never did.
You're the original anomaly.
The view from the Williamsburgh Bank Building seemed different than usual. Instead of the otherwise calm and peaceful city he witnessed every day, the sky was bleeding red. A thunderstorm had caught hold of the sight, yet the fire in the burning buildings ceased to stop.
"Oblivion, isn't it?" a voice from a distant memory spoke from somewhere behind. Miles spun around to catch a look.
He could never mistake that mess of blond hair which looked so out-of-place lately, considering the fact that the Peter he'd gotten so close to had it brown. Yet, this had been the first of those faces he had seen, even before Peter B. Parker showed.
He'd seen this face for the first time at the Collider underneath Brooklyn.
"Mr. Parker?"
Peter Parker had been the Spider-Man of his world before Miles. He walked to the ledge and settled beside him. Miles scooted to make space. Mr. Parker was still in white shirt and black trousers.
"I guess every Spider-Person has a favorite thinking spot, huh?" he said. "Yeah. This isn't so bad."
"It would have been nicer," Miles said, pulling at the fabric covering his right knee, "had there been a Spider-Man to protect it." He turned slowly to look at him. Peter Parker looked astonishingly at peace, his blue eyes staring straight ahead. "I'm sorry Mr. Parker. I wasn't supposed to be the one to get bit. If I hadn't, you would still be alive." Mary Jane wouldn't be a widow. "You'd have taken care of it all really well. This universe would've had its own Spider-Man."
"Can't change what happened, can we?" Mr. Parker said, looking at him with the hint of a wise smile dancing on his lips. "Besides, who told you weren't supposed to get bit? Did anyone really write a story like that? I thought you said it was gross to forcefully fit someone into a story."
Miles shook his head. "But if I wasn't there that day in the Collider, you would have stopped it. You'd still be alive. It's all my fault."
"Miles. Was it your fault that the Scientist from Alchemax brought that spider to our dimension? No. It was his. Our line of work is such that there's no guarantee we'll see the next morning. You accepted that role. And that's why it makes you Spider-Man. You are Spider-Man, because of what you chose to do. Not because a certain story says so. Not because you chose to give up or not give up certain people. Everyone's different. Everyone makes their own story."
"It's just that I can't help but wonder how things would have been different here. Dad from this dimension would be still alive. Miles – the other Miles – could have saved him."
"Are you certain? What if I were to say that things played out exactly the way they were supposed to? But who cares. The spider didn't bite him. It bit you. You can't change that. You are Spider-Man now. You didn't ask for your powers. I didn't ask for my powers. But I chose to do what I felt was right. You chose to be Spider-Man. You could have been anything else. You could've used those powers for your own good. But you decide to put on that suit every day and risk your life. Sounds pretty 'Spider-Man' to me."
He stood up, and Miles followed suit.
"Besides," Mr. Parker said. "I think you're stronger than I ever was at your age."
"How?"
Peter smiled. "I think you know that too, by now." He began to walk away, but then stopped. "Do you know what I saw in there? The Collider beam?"
"You saw Kingpin's family."
"No," Peter laughed. "Well, maybe I did. Saw a lot of things. But, say Miles, ever wondered why a host of Spider-People showed up at our dimension? The Collider can find alternate variations of whatever you put in that beam. The Goblin forced me into the beam. Of all the Spider-People you met because of that later on, why weren't all of them Peter Parkers? Why was there a Gwen Stacy and a Peni Parker instead of the Peter Parkers from their worlds? I was the sample. So it should have been all Peters, right? Think about it. Why are you here in the first place? Why did the Go Home Machine send you here?"
"The spider DNA…"
Peter was grinning. "Exactly! It's not the human DNA the Collider beam or the GHM Console reads. What a lot of people don't realize is, it reads the altered DNA from the spider that bit you."
"Then why do I still glitch in this universe?" Miles asked. "I have the DNA from this dimension's spider. Why are my atoms not synced here?"
"Well, I guess you have to figure that out yourself."
"Is it because I was not supposed to be bitten?"
Mr. Parker bit his lips. "You want reassurance, don't you? I think I've convinced you enough that you are who you are. You are Miles Morales. You were bitten by a radioactive spider. And since the last sixteen months, you are Spider-Man."
"Yeah," Miles ran a hand over his head. "Sorry."
"One other thing, before I go," the former Spider-Man said. "Do you know who else I saw in the Beam?"
"Who?"
"I saw this Spider-Man dressed in black and red. I saw him unmasked. Kind of reminded me a lot of you. As I said, whatever can happen will happen. Murphy's Law. You are Spider-Man. What matters is what you do now."
"Aaron," Miles heard his own distant voice. "I need you to go and check once again if there's any more of him. I can't understand enough how Warren got to us. Do you think she met with him and told him?"
"I don't think she would ever do that," Uncle Aaron's voice came gruffly. "Yeah I don't know how he got to us, but I don't think it's her. I'll go and check anyways. What do you want me to do if I find any more of you around?"
The reply came after a beat. "Kill them."
Uncle Aaron's footstep grew fainter and disappeared.
When Miles Morales opened his eyes the world was still purple and green, but all he saw this time was blue. A bright burning shade of electric blue.
"Good, you woke up," his other self said. "I feared I knocked you out too long."
From deep within, the warmth of his powers began to surge through his veins, boiling with his blood, stronger that he'd ever felt.
"I think I'm gonna ask you just one more time: are you all alone?"
Yeah. Unfortunately, he was all alone. He thought he had friends who cared for him as much as he did for them. Who loved him as much as he'd loved them.
Being Spider-Man, however, was often the solo act. And now he didn't mind anymore. He had what he needed. He had who he really needed. And it was not Gwen. She did come to visit him. But not because she missed him. She came because she was on a mission. In Mumbattan, she was not trying to save him from the falling debris. She was trying to stop him.
He was going to spend his entire life looking for her. He was going to dedicate the rest of his years into cracking the Multiversal code just so that he could be with her. He had missed her so much. All the while she had the technology to show up anytime, but instead spent months enjoying her time with other Spider-People. She knew what was supposed to happen to his father all along. They knew. And they'd talked about how to handle it without telling him. They'd talked about how they would let his dad die. With that vampire. That vampire was not a good guy. Miguel was a rude, self-obsessed and self-pitying monster.
Miles didn't need all of them. The whole point of being Spider-Man was his independence of trying to do what he felt was right. Of trying to save whoever he could.
A searing pain he'd never felt before tore across all his flesh. Miles welcomed it. He knew now how strong he was. And he was strong because of his mom and dad. Nobody was taking that away from him.
The Prowler put his hand back beside Miles's head. "You still want to play the sorry, dimension-displaced hero don't you?" he said. "What can you teach me about it?"
"Here's lesson number one," Miles said. "Something you've been doing wrong all this time. Don't watch the mouth." The ropes and chains that held him together didn't even hold back as he spread out his hands. They melted like butter. He didn't even feel it. "Watch the hands." As the dumbfounded Prowler could only watch, Miles took hold of his metallic gauntlet and the light in it died. Miles put a hand on his shoulder. "Lesson number two. Learn to say hey."
Brilliant blue and white light engulfed Aaron Davis's apartment as the Prowler was sent flying back. Miles spun around and hurled the gauntlet towards the window.
He was Spider-Man. Nobody could take that away from him. Not fate. Not Spot. Not any Vampire. Not Peter. Not Gwen.
He beat them all. And he'd beat them again. He knew now how strong he was. And he was strong because of his mom and dad. Nobody was taking that away from him. The spider that wasn't supposed to bite him, bit him. There was nothing anybody else could do right now. There was no use crying over spilled milk. What mattered was what he did with those powers now.
Miles jumped out the window with the flying pieces of broken glass.
A/N: Thanks everyone for your reviews and follows and favorites. This was one difficult piece to write. Took me a long time. Again, any feedback from your end is appreciated. Next chapter is named "Dear Gwen."