Peter woke up back in his universe buried beneath his blanket, groggy and half-asleep in bed. All things considered, it was vastly preferable to the way he'd arrived in the other universe. Showing up there had been abrupt, disorienting. He'd been left to wander the city, lost, for hours upon hours. This return trip hadn't dumped him out into an unfamiliar city of hostile citizens, so that alone was a better start.
He couldn't have been laying there for longer than a few seconds, still caught in that realm between sleep and wakefulness, when someone knocked firmly upon his door.
He frowned into the pillow.
"Peter?" called Aunt May's voice – and what was she doing here? Peter groaned – his chest ached; it felt too sensitive, sore. Before he could ask her, Aunt May spoke up again, voice urgent and bordering on scolding. "Peter, you're going to be late for school!"
He stiffened. Wait. What? Peter blinked hard, trying to dispel his confusion. He made a face into the sheets, and turned to squint blearily at the door. "School?"
"Yes, school, Peter!" she exclaimed. "It's a weekday, remember?"
That… didn't explain anything. He wasn't in school. He'd graduated high school years ago, college hadn't worked out that well, and – ugh. Peter dragged his hands down his face and rubbed at his eyes in the hope that it'd wake him up a little, clear the fog from his head. Right now, he was still feeling overwhelmingly lost. "It is?" he mumbled into his palms, "Uh, what – what weekday is it?"
Whatever Aunt May's answer was, he barely heard it. Tuesday, he thought she said. But he wasn't really listening anymore. Peter found himself distracted by the state of his room.
Things were… rearranged. Or misplaced, rather. There was a box of tissues that he didn't remember being there. His computer was the old, now-outdated one he'd used back in high school. The lamp was different. And perhaps most damningly of all, Richard Parker's briefcase full of secrets sat innocently in the middle of his floor. He'd tucked that away a long time ago. He'd found the secrets. Why was it out again?
He couldn't help it. He stared.
Aunt May rapped on his door again a little harder, dragging his attention away from his stunned examination of his surroundings. "Peter!" she called, impatient. "Would you open the door? Come on, you have to get going!"
He blinked at the door, gaze flicking between it and the bizarre unfamiliarity of his room. "Uh," he said, "Just a sec!"
Pushing himself to his feet and nearly tripping because he'd somehow gotten his foot tangled in the blanket, Peter stumbled over to the door, wrenching it open – or, well, tried to. His lock let out a sharp crack as the little metal rod that held the door closed was subjected to unintentional brutal testing. He spared it a quick glance, baffled by its presence. He… didn't have one of those in his new apartment yet. Not a working one, anyway – he hadn't gotten around to completely installing it. And he wasn't exactly in a rush to do so either, considering he lived alone.
Peter winced and scrambled to find the remote. A quick flick of the switch and the lock slid back.
Yup. Severely dented. He was lucky the doorknob had stayed intact through the burst of strain. He pulled the door open a crack, face-to-face with Aunt May.
Her lips were pulled down into a frown. "What was that?"
No normal person would be going around denting metal locks when casually trying to open a door. "Uh, nothing. Just, you know, um. The – the – it's, I dropped something. M- The…" He glanced over his shoulder. "My keyboard. I dropped it. I mean, it fell."
"Your keyboard? It fell off your desk?" she clarified, brow furrowed. "It's not broken, is it? Do you–"
Peter shifted slightly and leaned to one side, blocking it from her curious gaze. "Yeah, yeah, it's fine!" he reassured her. And it was. It was still there, perched perfectly unharmed atop his desk. He shook his head, trying to find clarity, and let out a short burst of awkward laughter. "I – Aunt May, what are you doing here?"
She looked at him as though he'd lost his mind. To be fair, he was feeling a little like he had. He had no idea what was going on. "What am I doing here?" she repeated, affronted. "I live here, Peter."
What? But he'd moved out years ago.
Some of his confusion must've shown on his face, because her frown faded and she fixed him with a concerned look. "Are you feeling alright?"
He nodded – hasty, perhaps a little too eager. "Mm-hmm," he said, and pressed his forehead to the door, squeezing his eyes shut. This was all so weird. Everything was wrong. But… there was a creeping suspicion starting to emerge in the back of his mind.
Aunt May lingered at his doorway for another beat, her worry practically a tangible thing in the air. He could feel her eyes on him. "Are you sure?"
"Uh-huh, yeah, lemme just. I'm gonna get ready," he said, and shut the door – in her face. Whoops. "I'll be right out!" he called over his shoulder as he spun around and practically pounced on his computer.
It took several agonizingly long minutes for the thing to start up. In the meantime, Peter took stock of his room, to see what was… different. Changed, from the last time he saw it. Or… maybe not changed. Never had changed. Not yet.
He threw on fresh clothes. His chest was marred with still-healing painful-looking claw marks that he was pretty sure he didn't have before. He would've noticed that. And when he looked in the bathroom mirror, it was seventeen-year-old Peter Parker who stared back at him, wide-eyed and more than a little dazed.
The computer screen finally flickered to life. Peter dropped into his chair, punched in his password, and instantly looked to the system tray in the bottom right corner of the screen.
The year was 2012.
…Okay. Okay. Fine. That was fine.
He should… double check. Just to be sure. He went to search the internet and – wait, why was his default search engine Bing? …Whatever, that didn't matter right now. Peter typed current year into the search bar.
Still 2012.
Peter leaned back in his chair, and sucked in a deep breath. Alright. Fine. So, was this because of the magic spell that brought him back? Because, honestly, that seemed like the only explanation. Was this normal? Was this how it was supposed to go? He hadn't really expected this, but maybe it was. Who even knew how magic worked? Well, aside from the actual wizard guy, of course he knew, but, like, most other people didn't. Peter certainly didn't know. He reached up with one hand and pressed it to his forehead, not quite sure what to do with this revelation.
Aunt May chose this moment to knock gently on his door again and without the lock to keep it closed, pushed it open. "Oh, good," she said, seeing him fully dressed in clean, unrumpled clothes. "Are you ready? I told you, you're going to be late!"
He gaped at her for a second. "For school," he said, numbly.
"Yes, for school." She gestured for him to get going, and Peter did so, belatedly remembering to snag his backpack off the floor. She handed him a sandwich as he passed. "For breakfast," she informed him. "You don't have time to eat it here, you can eat it on the way."
He nodded his thanks, still feeling dazed.
Okay. So it was 2012. He had… school. He could handle that. Spider-Man fought criminals on a regular basis, he could go to high school… in his twenties. Yeah.
He needed to figure out what was going on. He just had to get through the school day first.
Peter spent the commute more or less straightening out his thoughts. The year was 2012. He was several years in the past. He didn't know whether this was supposed to happen, but quite frankly, the how and why of it all wasn't actually at the top of his priority list despite how curious he was. What was at the top of his priority list was Dr. Curt Connors. If the slashes across his chest were any indication, the Lizard was currently active. And Peter had to stop him.
…Or did he? Back in the other universe, he and the other versions of himself (and, yeah, that was still wild to think about) had cured everyone, including Dr. Connors. So – shouldn't he be cured now? Probably? That seemed like a logical conclusion. If Connors was put right back in the time he'd come from, it'd probably be right around now.
Peter didn't expect to be here with him, though. He'd sort of expected to… well, he didn't really know what he'd expected. He hadn't thought all that hard about the actual effects of curing people from the past, of essentially changing history. It was just… the right thing to do. And it felt good to do something like that. Made him feel like he was actually helping people, rather than just going through the motions.
Peter had kind of figured he'd get transported back to his own universe around the time he'd left it. But if they cured everyone, then maybe… that future didn't really exist anymore.
So caught up in his own thoughts, Peter barely realized when he arrived at Midtown High. He was indeed late – there were no students milling around. The walkways were empty, aside from a faculty member Peter didn't recognize who walked by and gave him a very pointed you're late, hurry up and get to class look.
Peter ducked his head under the woman's gaze and took a grand total of five steps onto campus grounds before he realized he had no idea where to go.
It wasn't that he'd forgotten the layout of the school – no, he still had a general idea of how to not get lost, but he just… didn't remember his schedule. Didn't remember what buildings were where, either. Not every building, of course – like, he knew where the library was. Knew where the cafeteria was. Some of the other buildings, though… not so much.
Feeling a bit foolish, Peter slid his backpack from his shoulders and let it hang from one arm while he pulled the zipper down with his free hand. Pushing aside books and papers he only vaguely remembered, he grabbed his binder. Instead of pulling it all the way out, he pried it open from the top with two fingers and tipped his head to one side, trying to get a good look at the contents of its front pocket, full of excess papers.
He flipped through them slowly, a little awkwardly, considering he was doing so through the narrow space on top instead of pulling it out and opening it up, but there should be, maybe, somewhere, hopefully–
There. He pressed one finger down, letting the paper stick to it, and slid it out of the still-closed binder.
A printed schedule, from the beginning of the school year. Aunt May had always insisted he carry a schedule with him. In the beginning of a year, of course it was useful, although after a bit, once he knew where to go, he no longer needed it. Then the next year would come, he'd get a new schedule that he'd look at for a few days, then leave untouched for the rest of the year in the front pocket of his binder.
He'd never been more grateful to still be carrying it around. Apparently you never knew when you'd travel into the past and need it to remember what your day was like back in high school.
Peter zipped his backpack shut again, and looked down at his schedule.
Period 1: Italian 415. D-building, room 203.
Okay. Cool, one step closer. Now he just had to figure out where D-building was.
D-building, it turned out, was not actually all that hard to find. Small mercies. He didn't have to spend an extensive amount of time searching across campus but of course, just as he began to think that maybe he wouldn't be that terribly late after all, he remembered that there was probably-definitely a book he needed for the class that he needed to grab first.
And thus, Peter dealt with the struggle of relocating his locker, realizing he didn't remember the combination, and digging through his backpack only to find that unfortunately, unlike his schedule, he didn't have anything with the combination on it. He was pretty sure he must've written it down or something at one point, but he didn't have it on him now. He tried two or three combinations off the top of his head that vaguely felt right, but evidently none of them were, so ultimately he ended up just wasting several long minutes trying to get into his own locker and failing.
Eventually, he just gave up. The only way to get in would be to bust it open, but that would break it, and… then he'd probably have to pay for it. Or actually, since he was in high school and without a job, Aunt May would have to pay for it. She didn't need that stress in her life and besides, the book probably wasn't even that important. Maybe. Hopefully.
This was not the greatest start to his day.
Peter entered D-building, room 203 about twenty minutes late. If he had any hope of his tardiness somehow being overlooked or, at the very least, ignored, the chances of that were gone the moment he entered. Several heads turned to look at him as he pushed the door open and stepped inside, including the teacher's, but Peter was blind to all of them. They may as well have not even existed.
Because there, in the second row, sat Gwen Stacy.