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There was an argument happening under a fire escape. Peter knew about it because a concerned dude wearing a fuckin’ Yankees cap had flagged him down with waving arms and told him that someone needed saving, Spiderman. Some tall asshole was kidnapping a young blond dude, the guy and his too-cool-for-him girlfriend explained. They’d heard the two scuffling.
Peter maybe stared for a beat too long at them because the gal pointed two blocks behind him and said, “That way. I think the blond guy might be drugged. He’s slurrin’ something strong.”
Peter liked her shoes. They looked like Miles’s, but blue.
“Spidey?”
Miles told Peter all the time that he wasn’t cool enough to wear Jordans. MJ and Johnny had agreed. Such sad times.
“Spidey.”
“I got it,” Peter sighed.
The gal tsked.
“Man, you’re too young to be this jaded,” she said.
Peter sighed.
“You’re the third person to say that this week,” he said. “You think I should go back to therapy?”
There was a pause.
“You know that answer, dude,” cool-gal said. “Go save the twink.”
Twink. Got it. Thank you, citizen.
“There are websites for that shit, Spidey.”
Bye now.
“Apps, even.”
Bye, bye.
“BetterHelp or Headspace or somethin’—”
“Two blocks, you said?” Peter asked.
Two blocks away, there was indeed a man with dark hair trying to lift a violently intoxicated twink up onto the first steps of a fire escape. Peter examined his options. There were many ways to ruin a potential kidnapper’s day. His favorite involved coke and mentos, although he’d received feedback that that was a waste of perfectly good food. Down the list was also the option to walk over and scream bloody murder so that the kidnapper shat themselves and dropped their target.
That was good, but Peter was tired and the thought of mustering up the energy to scream at a noticeable volume made his thighs turn to Jell-o.
That left snark and violence.
Today, he would not choose violence. Only for today.
He strode out of his dark temporary residence between two dumpsters directly towards the tall dude and his mark. The mark was a messy one. Bless his heart, he was unwittingly making himself the most noncompliant victim to have ever victim-ed. Every time the tall guy got him almost vertical, he gave up his corporeal form to become drunk slime and ooze back to the ground with various moaning sound effects.
It would have been funny if not for the kidnapping context.
The fact that Peter had been standing there under the beams of two separate side-building security lights and neither of those two had noticed yet was also objectively funny—or would have been, if Peter had the capacity for processing humor at the moment.
Alas. This was what he got for telling Tony that he’d evolved beyond the need for sleep. He got caffeine-pilled. And there would be no true rest until that shit wore off, exhausted as Peter’s body yearned to be.
“Kid, work with me here,” the tall guy said.
“I can’t, I’ll die,” the shorter one moaned.
“Luke.”
“I’ve done my time—thirty years in AZKA—”
“Keep your voice down, oh my god.”
Peter was just standing here, fellas.
“Luke.”
“Why’s it always me? Why’s it always gotta be me? The hell did I do to piss off the whole galax-galaxy? HA. My bad, my bad. The whole universe?”
God, what a mood.
The tall guy dropped his grip on the smaller one and loomed over his puddle of ooze with poison in his gaze.
“People are going to die, Luke,” he said.
“So what? They’re always dyin’. Everywhere I go, people’re dyin’ and when it’s not them dyin’, you know who is?”
“Kid.”
“ME.”
“So you’re just gonna wallow there, feelin’ sorry for yourself?” the tall dude snapped.
“Sure am,” the puddle of ooze hummed.
This was not a kidnapping. This was a come-to-Jesus in the back alley of a bar. Peter was not needed here. He turned around on his heel and stopped when he heard a sharp intake of breath.
“Is that?” someone whispered.
“Don’t mind me, pal, just your friendly neighborhood—” he started.
“Look what you did,” Tall and Handsome hissed at Ooze-Man. “Someone went and called Spiderman on us.”
Peter lifted a brow as Ooze-man ripped its chest up from the asphalt and composed itself back into a human shape with fluffy blonde hair and huge wide eyes.
“Omigod, it’s Spiderman,” the guy said. “Wait, no. Gimme a hand. No, not that one, fuck off, nevermind, I don’t need you.”
He drew himself up to standing, only leaning slightly on his buddy there and gave Peter as lopsided smile.
“Hi, there,” he said with a twang that Peter couldn’t place. “Were you lookin’ for someone, handsome?”
Ah, they had reached the time of night when all the drunks needed to tell Peter things he already knew about his ass. He loved this time.
Not to mention that this dude looked eerily like Johnny. Scarily like Johnny. So much like Johnny that Peter almost wanted to take a picture of him to send to Sue so that she could print up some lost and found posters.
“Just lookin’ at you, babe,” he said. “This guy botherin’ you?”
The tall guy blanched and then grabbed at his face in horror. Peter swallowed his laugh.
“He sure is, hon. You got time to rescue me?” Blondie crooned.
“Luke, please. Please.”
“Because I’m in real distress,” ‘Luke’ said with a pout mighty enough to fell Thor.
“You sure seem like it,” Peter said. “C’mere. I’ll walk you home. Leave that tool, he ain’t worth your breath.”
He held out an elbow like proper gentleman and was pleased at the hand that Luke laid over his heart in response.
Peter could imagine Johnny’s face in six different expression of jealous horror at a selfie taken with this look-alike. Each was beautiful in its own special way. As payment for being referred to counseling by the public, he at least deserved to receive at least two of those faces.
“You mean that?” Luke asked him.
“He doesn’t,” his tall companion said.
“I sure do, where do you live? I’ll walk you,” Peter said.
“Oh my god, I’m gonna cry, he’s gonna escort me,” Luke said, all choked up and fanning his eyes lightly.
This tall friend grabbed him before he could escape, though, and pulled him back behind his own body.
“Listen, Spidey, this is a misunderstanding,” he drawled. “I know this idiot—he is technically my idiot— and I’m the one escorting his ass home. Thanks, though. You’re a real menace. Beat it.”
MMMMMMM.
And here Peter had been planning on being jaded and miserable this fine night. How could he now when this dude was ticking every box that made him feel alive?
“What’s your name, dollface?” Peter asked across the short distance.
“None of your business,” Tall Guy answered abruptly.
“Luke,” Luke said around him. “Are you gonna save me?”
“In just a minute,” Peter said, striding forward with a hard roll in his shoulder and deep drop in his knees.
It was amazing how Tall Guy wanted to take some steps back all of the sudden. Peter couldn’t help but let a smirk widen his face as he advanced.
“Okay, hang on now,” Tall Guy said with both palms out in front of him. “You don’t know what this is about, Spidey. You don’t want to get involved with this, trust me. He’s just bein’ dramatic. No need to get testy.”
“You sure do a lot of talkin’ for your friend there,” Peter noted through his grin.
“Yeah, Han,” Luke said.
Ha.
Han. Han and Luke. Ned was gonna be enraptured when Peter told him about this later.
“Luke. Back me up.”
“Why should I?”
“Because,” ‘Han’ finally snapped. “I’m not doin’ this because I want you to suffer, alright? I don’t want nothin’ to do with it either, okay? No one does. But it’s this or—”
“Or everyone else,” Luke finished for him in a strangely toneless voice.
Han sighed.
“It’s always everyone else,” Luke said.
“Not here.”
“Why’s it always everyone el—No, no, here. Why not? We’ve got fucking Spiderman in our midst, how much more surreal can this moment get? No. You listen to me, Han—”
“I’ve been listening to you all damn evening and you know what I’m hearing?”
“—I lost my life for this. I lost my home, my aunt, my uncle, my hand—”
“I’m hearing you making this about you.”
“—everything I ever knew, and I tried to make it right, didn’t I? I made the school. I gathered the kids—”
“And it’s not just about you this time, kid. It’s not about you, it’s not about me, or Leia, or Chewie or—”
“—I lost my kid and the love of my life, and I finally get a second chance at finding them and giving them the goddamn happy ending they deserve, and the next thing I know—”
“Luke, you’re the only one,” Han said.
“I WAS NEVER. THE ONLY. ONE, HAN,” Luke roared out of absolutely nowhere, sober as a saint. “I was never the only one. EVER. Ahsoka. Go find her. She’s everything that I’m not and more. She’s the real—”
“Luke.”
“Stop saying that name. I HATE that name. I would do anything for twenty goddamn seconds where I didn’t have to be him.”
“You don’t mean that,” Han said quietly. His shoulders had rounded out and become black and heavy under the weight of their shadow. Luke’s eyes, however, looked like topaz.
“I mean it,” Luke said.
Oho.
So shit had gotten real tense, real fast, so Peter about to make a decision that was gonna make Shelley so proud of him she would weep when he finally slunk back in through her office door.
He was leaving. He was turning around and taking a wee jog. Maybe turning a corner, having a little jump over a fence, up a wall, to a place as far away from this one as superhumanly possible.
Bye, bye.
“This galaxy needs you, Luke.”
Peter stopped five paces away.
“They need you,” Han repeated. “And I need you.”
Peter slowly looked back to see that Luke’s face had twisted sharply out of the light, towards the alley wall.
“I’m sorry that we met again like this,” Han said quietly. “I’m sorry it’s always you. You don’t deserve this. No one deserves this.”
“Shut up,” Luke said.
“But if you don’t do something, then it won’t be just me and you and all these random others sliding back into that cesspit we all barely crawled out of.”
“Stop.”
“You’ll never find him if things go back the way they were.”
“You—you don’t know that. There—maybe—”
“Luke. Listen to me. Please.”
“Maybe there’s a chance—”
“Luke,” Han said reaching out and putting a hand on Luke’s shoulder and clenching it hard enough that Peter should see the bunched fabric, “Do you want Din to live through this shitshow a second time? Hasn’t he suffered enough?”
Peter shivered. The pressure at the base of his neck was building. The Spidey Sense wanted to hiss in his ears like white noise. It pinned him where he was, staring over his shoulder at those two solid shapes, one digging a hand into the flesh of the other.
His stomach turned.
Luke said something that Peter couldn’t hear. Han pulled him toward his own body by the grip he had on his shoulder. At first, Luke seemed to stagger, like he was walking on black ice. He stopped a single step away from Han’s body, still with his face angled severely away. Han said something to him.
There was a long pause, then Luke seemed to fall forward. Han caught him and crushed his head into his shoulder, lowering his own until it was almost touching Luke’s ear. They clung to each other.
Luke was crying.
The Spidey Sense started to crackle and pop in Peter’s ears.
“I gotchu, kid,” Han said in a rasp. “I gotchu. We’re gonna get through it.”
Peter blinked once and finally unlocked the muscles in his neck. He wasn’t meant to witness this. He held out a wrist and fired a line.
It was weird.
It was just weird.
Something wasn’t right. And Peter couldn’t make his stomach not writhe about it.
Luke.
Han.
An offhand mention of like, characters. Character names. They were character names. Leia, Chewie.
Peter had heard of people who lived their lives honestly believing that they had been other people—fake people—in past lives, but like, damn man. Why would you put yourself in a position like that were you were moved to actual tears for some elaborate street-drama?
Maybe it had been a joke? That was the only thing he could think it could be. Maybe the universe had gazed upon his hubris at work and gone ‘ah yes, I know what this young man needs: emotional confusion at midnight on a Thursday. That’ll fix him.’
If that was the case, then yeah. Good job, universe. Good job, larpers. Y’all are equally sick.
But if not—and Peter no longer lived in a world where he could rule out any possibilities—then he had just witnessed—Dude, he’d just witnessed—
He couldn’t even think it. It was beyond him. It was so far beyond him that like he might have a real stroke taking the thought seriously.
There was only one person who could hold that kind of information unscathed.
Only one.
PP: Ned. I need you to listen to me and tell me I’m not crazy.
NL: no promises but go on
PP: I think? I just saw? Luke Skywalker? And Han Solo? In an alley behind Kitty’s?????
NL: fascinating
JS: Say more
PP: who let you in here?
JS: you?
PP: SECURITY
NL: Peter say more
PP: I can’t there’s a nerd in here and it’s vibrating at the wrong decibel. SECURITY???
MJ: yeah?
PP: I’m trying to have a breakdown. Can you remove Matchstick please?
MJ: what kind of breakdown
JS: he thinks he met Luke Skywalker
PP: Security has failed me. God?
NL: Peter can you name three things you can see.
PP: I am not manic. I am in touch with reality. I’m just having anxiety because I just fucking saw two people calling each other Luke and Han fighting behind Kitty’s. Like real fighting.
JS: nicknames?
PP: I—
PP: oh my god nicknames
PP: Johnny I’m so sorry I ever doubted you. never leave my side
JS: 😊
MJ: wow that’s cringe. Imagine naming yourself after SW characters
NL: does kitty do a cosplay night now????
PP: idk it was wild. People thought that ‘Han’ was trying to kidnap ‘Luke’ but when I got over there, Luke started flirting with me and then shit got real and they started arguing over like him hating his name and not wanting to do something and losing everything or some shit
NL: that’s a lot. I’m sure it was nothing, though, peter.
PP: yeah it was. My SS has been going nuts ever since I left. You think they bugged me?
JS: yes I will come search your body imminently
MJ: my job storm, back off
JS: after MJ has finished prelim checks, I will then search your body for you out of the kindness of my heart ❤
NL: that’s weird, the SS doesn’t usually freak out about cosplayers
PP: ikr?
NL: lol imagine if they were serious
MJ: don’t say that
JS: well now we have to lean in. thanks ned
JS: they were definitely real. God they were so real. You hear that Fate? You got us. They’re definitely real.
PP: BUT WHAT IF THEY WERE?
MJ: cue breakdown
NL: that would be so fucking funny. Luke Skywalker and Han Solo trying to save the world from the hellscape of nyc. The rats alone would thwart them.
PP: ned I’m freaking out
NL: oh you mean you’re actually freaking out?
PP: deeply
NL: oh shit sorry. I’ll be over, have you slept yet?
PP: NO
MJ: on it
JS: can I join?
NL: no johnny
MJ: no johnny
PP: 😭
JS: one day our love will build a bridge, peter. In the meantime I am stroking your ear comfortingly from midtown
Need and MJ’s weight pinning him to a mattress brought sleep but not necessarily comfort. They both thought that this was a sick joke someone had played on him that was now destroying his psyche. They thought that the couple pointing him back towards the cosplayers had been in on the joke.
Peter would have agreed with them if it wasn’t for the Spidey Sense. Everything else lined up perfectly.
Ned sighed in the morning and told Peter to go talk to Wade.
Wade’s hallucinations were, by far, more auditory than visual, but he stayed quiet while Peter talked his ear off over the phone in his locked office. He waited until Peter had run out of words to describe the feeling of impending doom and then huffed a bit of a laugh into the receiver.
“Them Star Wars people are unreal, Pete, you know this,” he said. “Look at Ned.”
Ned was perfect.
“Take off those rosy shades, hon. Now, look again.”
Ned had perhaps memorized the entire scripts of the first three movie and 90% of the spaceship names and the jedi lineages.
“Uh-huh. Keep going.”
Peter didn’t want to.
“We all gotta do shit we don’t want do.”
Fine.
Ned’s goal in life was to go to his wedding in a stormtrooper suit.
“Keep going.”
Every Lego project they’d built together since 13 years-old had been a Star Wars-related one. When Ned had decided to move out of his parents’ place, he’d shed actual tears over MJ and Peter mutually suggesting that he sell some of his memorabilia.
“With this delightful buffet before our very eyes, what is the likelihood of your two pals being drunk larpers in too deep to quit?” Wade asked.
73%.
“Uh-huh.”
“Thanks, Wade.”
“No problem. Although, now I gotta see this. You said they were behind Kitty’s? You think I can get a stormtrooper costume in 8 hours?”
“They’re not still gonna be there, Wade,” Peter huffed. “It’s 10 am.”
“You ain’t know that. What if Luke Skywalker’s a useless drunk, huh? You ever think of that?”
No.
“What’d he look like?”
Peter groaned.
“He looked like Luke Skywalker,” he said. “Blond hair, blue eyes—sort of like a chipmunk that forgot its stripes.”
“I’m onto you, Skywalker.”
Peter hung up to Wade’s cackle. He slouched low and tapped his pen against his desk. Then against his fingers.
He stared at the edge of his keyboard.
“What’s the weirdest thing you could imagine, Pete?” he asked himself.
PP: sam
SC: yeah?
PP: do you like star wars?
SC: nah
PP: you’re perfect
PP: do you believe in past lives?
SC: like spiritually or culturally? I know I was a cult-kid for a min there but before that we were Buddhists and like, past lives are part of the package
PP: that’s cool. What do you think of people being reborn as themselves again like, 500000000 years later? From a galaxy far far away?
SC: I don’t think about those people
PP: okay well, hypothetically. Let’s say that you were going to imagine someone who embodied that whole spirit. Who would it be?
SC: Buddha
PP: not buddha
SC: is this a riddle? Is it Jesus?
PP: THOR. Thank you this has been helpful ily bye
Mr. Stark asked him over a cup of viciously black coffee why Peter was seeking out the demigod of his present nightmares.
That usually meant that he and Thor had disagreed on basic physics principles again. Peter took that also to mean that the demigod was still in the building. Possibly loose.
“He’s with Banner,” Mr. Stark said scathingly.
“Thanks, you’re amazing,” Peter said as he sailed out of the room.
Thor was sitting on Dr. Banner’s lab table, despite Dr. Banner telling him to get off no fewer than two times in the five minutes that Peter was in there, schmoozing and making pleasantries. He warmed Thor up to the home-run hit by asking him all about past lives and present lives and what the soul was on Asgard. Thor was only too happy to explain a load of nonsense that made Banner roll his eyes and poke at his muscles with a thermometer.
“So, hypothetically speaking,” Peter drawled in a very casual lean, “With the infinite galaxies and universes, etcetera, there could be one where Star Wars people exist. And so hypothetically, they could get reborn into a universe like ours.”
Thor blinked at him.
“You remember the laser swords?” Dr. Banner deadpanned.
Thor lit up.
“I suppose it’s possible,” he told Peter indulgently. “But if that was the case then it would be a long tragedy, no?”
…yes…
Say more, Thor-man.
“Well,” Thor said with a big, happy smile, “The series of events that unfolded in that story seemed to me to be one of triumph and tragedy. With one would come the other—that’s how these stories work, yes?”
…yes.
“So if Master Luke Skywalker and his companions arrived into our space here, then they must experience the same in order to be themselves,” Thor said, bobbing his head in pity. “Perhaps what would look like a new start for such people would result only in terror and disappointment until the same conclusion was reached.”
Peter felt his own grin twitch.
“So it’s not impossible?” he asked.
Both Thor and Banner looked at him quizzically at the same time.
“Peter?” Dr. Banner asked. “Is this coming from somewhere?”
Peter’s grin twitched so violently, it turned into a grimace that even superstrength would not let him maintain.
“Can I borrow one of you?” he asked.
Wade was not happy to be met outside of Kitty’s in the middle of the day, especially because his stormtrooper outfit, in his words, ‘did no justice for the size of his balls.’
Peter was ignoring that. He dragged Thor past Wade’s righteous anger until he was standing on the place where the other two had stood the night before. Thor stood there gamely.
“There,” Peter said. “Any like, energy signatures?”
Thor glanced around and shrugged.
Wade scowled at him and hounded him off the spot so that he could stand there instead.
“I feel nothing,” he said, devoid of emotion.
“Same,” Thor said.
Damnit.
“Perhaps you are—”
The Spidey Sense smashed through all of Peter’s sense and screamed at him to get to the street.
Get to the street. Get to the street. Get to the—
There.
Across the way. Chipmunk, no stripes.
That was the guy from the day before. He was on the opposite sidewalk smashed in with the crowd, dragging a hand through his hair and laden with a backpack and two separate totes. He was wearing a strange set of clothes—a mash of casual and formal—and seemed to be in a hurry, the type of hurry that involved pushing past folks at a half-jog and not stopping at streetlights.
“Got ‘im,” Peter hissed.
“No shit?” Wade asked over his shoulder.
Thor made a sound of interest.
“I see him, too,” he said. “What incredible energy, I’ve never seen anything like it.”
Wh—
Peter whirled on him.
“Don’t you fucking say that,” he warned. “I’m gonna go distract. You two, on my six.”
Peter broke four traffic laws on his way around the block. He swung himself around a corner and fucked up the collar on his labcoat and counted to four before stepping out right into ‘Luke’s path.
They collided. Luke stumbled back and dropped one of his totes.
“Oh my god, I’m so sorry,” Peter blustered. “Are you okay?”
Luke swore and dropped down without answering, collecting the odd ends of metal that had clattered out from his bag and now rolled loose over the pavement. Peter stooped to join, gathering rings and pipes of all sorts of sizes in his hands. Oncoming folks gave them a wide berth.
It took a moment for Luke to realize what Peter was doing, but when he did, his shoulders went stiff as a board.
“DON’T TOUCH THOSE,” he snapped, just as Peter made to pick up a little plastic bag with a wad of tissue inside it.
Peter froze.
“Oh. Sorry,” he said.
This time, Luke finally met his eye.
“Oh, Jesus. No. I’m sorry, I didn’t mean it like that,” Luke blustered, “Thank you. I’ll—I’ve got them. Thank you, though. It’s okay.”
He took the metal out of Peter’s hands and stuffed them back into his bag. He snatched the plastic bag before Peter could touch it and put that on top.
“Excuse me,” he said as he stood. “Thanks again.”
And just like that, he hurried off past Peter down the pavement.
Peter watched him go.
“Catch?” Wade asked softly from the corner.
“Negative,” Peter said, reaching into his sleeve and holding up the thin aluminum tube he’d hidden up there by the edge of his shirt-sleeve.
It was shiny and longer than he’d expect for any plumbing project. The inside appeared to be coated with some sort of heavy, non-reactive material, and half of the outside had grooved bands carved into it.
“Someone’s building something,” he said.
“Mid-century sink?” Wade asked, taking the tube.
“Nope,” Peter said.
NL: That is a lightsaber hilt
NL: where did you get that? It’s like mega accurate. Was it etsy?
PP: I stole it
NL: give it back
PP: I can’t I stole it from Luke Skywalker.
NL: Peter.
NL: we talked about this.
PP: He’s Luke Skywalker. I swear on the grave of my mother
MJ: this is a problem. This is now an intervention.
PP: I will prove it. If he’s Luke Skywalker, then he will do ANYTHING to get this thing back.
NL: and if not?
PP: then I will wait two days before politely tracking down his home address and then I will return it via wall crawling
JS: UM
JS: SORRY
JS: PETER CAN YOU CALL ME?
PP: no
NL: no
MJ: no
JS: are
JS: are you sure??? Because there’s a guy in Reed’s lab right now talking to him and Sue, asking SUPER politely for access to—I shit you not—the crystals we picked up from that space trip the other day???
NL: …
PP: …
MJ: …
PP: AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
MJ: fake
NL: no way
PP: WHAT’S HIS NAME, JOHNNY BOY????
JS: I can’t
PP: nope you gotta
JS: I can’t I’m gonna cry I didn’t ask for this
MJ: out with it
NL: please say it’s obi-wan
JS: HHHHHHHHHHH
JS: nope
JS: just a guy named Ben 🙃
PP: AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH
PP: I told you motherfuckers
JS: right. So like. Awkward. But you uh, know that hilt thing you have?
PP: …is Obi-Wan Kenobi about to beat my ass, Johnny?
There was something about putting the hilt into the palm of someone more famous than Captain America that made Peter’s knees weak.
It did not help that Luke Skywalker had flirted with him the other night.
It did not help that Luke Skywalker didn’t recognize him as Spiderman.
Nothing helped, really, especially when those big topaz eyes lifted and Peter could see that their rims were red and raw.
“Thanks,” Luke Skywalker—the embodiment of hope itself—said in a soft, defeated rasp.
Every alarm in Peter’s head said to save him. Save him from what? How? Who knew.
Ned and MJ seemed to feel the same way, if the pressure on each of his arms was anything to go by.
“Well, that’s all cleared up, then. Thank you so much for your help; it is deeply appreciated,” a stupidly pleasant gentleman with a perfectly combed beard and lovingly coifed light hair said to the room at large.
Obi-Wan Kenobi—pardon, Ben Kennedi—was far more handsome than any movie could ever dream to make him. What they’d done to him in the 1970s, Peter saw now, was a fucking crime. He watched as this beautiful human being set a warm hand on Luke Skywalker’s—pardon, Luke Naberry’s—shoulder and used it to steer him towards the Baxter Building’s front entrance.
He watched as the two of them, like true Master and Padawan, stepped out onto the landing and opted for the stairs. For one fleeting, unbelievable second, Luke looked back over his shoulder at all of them before taking the next step after his Master.
He was right the other night.
He wasn’t the only jedi. Not anymore.
“So that just happened,” Sue acknowledged for everyone after the door had clicked closed and the sound of footsteps had faded off to nothing.
“I’m going to cry,” Reed announced.
“This is single-handedly the best thing that’s ever happened to me,” Ned said.
“Obi-Wan Kenobi walked into our kitchen,” Reed told Sue like she hadn’t been there right next to him.
“The empire is trying to establish itself under our very feet,” Sue said back a little viciously.
“The real empire,” Reed whimpered.
Wait.
No, go back.
“For real?” Peter asked.
Sue and Reed looked back at the rest of them and then exchanged a look.
Peter was sad now. Depressed and laid out on his side staring back at Valeria’s huge eyes on the floor while Ned and MJ and Johnny asked Reed and Sue two hundred clarifying questions.
Peter didn’t need the specifics. He was thinking back on the conversation that he’d witnessed between Luke and Han Solo—Han Solo who was tall with dark hair and dark eyes and an accent straight out of New Jersey. Solo who had probably been charged with forcing Luke to face the facts in front of all of them because he was the one who Luke trusted most.
But it had shattered them—both of them.
The New Hope had given up everything. He was tired. His heart was torn. He was jaded just like Peter had been that same night. He’d been avoiding the tightrope that Peter had already started crossing, though, probably looking for every possible way to not have to set the first foot on that wobbly line.
He’d walked it before.
Valeria reached out with a chubby, round hand and touched the side of Peter’s face.
“Spiderman,” she said with terrifying understanding, “Someone needs help.”
He wriggled in close enough to bonk heads with her.
“Baby Storm,” he whispered, “I think you’re right.”
MJ thought that Peter needed to leave things alone. She pointed out that he had plenty of problems without getting involved in universe-saving. She gestured to Johnny and volunteered him for the job.
Johnny refused on account of needing to be the prettiest blond in any room. He claimed that if he wasn’t, he had to fight for dominance.
Ned was on the other end of the spectrum. He had 43 reasons why Peter should get involved with things, and 40 of them ended up in the same place which was ‘it would be cool.’
One of Ned’s better reasons, however, involved pointing out that Peter had already stolen half of a lightsaber. He was good and involved now, whether he wanted to be or not. And that was enough for Peter to decide to go on a hunt to give a formal apology.
He recruited Ned to help him locate Luke Skywalker.
That didn’t work.
They tried Luke Naberry.
That didn’t work either.
They ended up going through every possible iteration of every Star Wars name they knew and then filtered out the people who’d been named by exuberant parents and then filtered out anyone who didn’t live in New York and they ended up with fat lot of still nothing.
It was like Luke Skywalker didn’t truly exist in this world.
Until MJ found his Instagram by typing in ‘guys who look weirdly like Luke Skywalker.’
She held the phone aloft in triumph and they all gathered round to gape in awe at her intelligence and research skills.
Luke’s Instagram was nothing but pictures of coffee.
He had one selfie and this selfie was enough to have gotten him onto a BuzzFeed article. In it he was holding—you guessed it—coffee. Iced coffee. One in each hand.
He was shaking them, and one had been labeled with his name—hence the public connection made.
“Someone needs to tell him that coffee is not a food group,” Johnny observed.
“Maybe he works nights,” MJ said.
Ned lifted an eyebrow.
“Maybe this is his job,” he said.
There was a pause.
Some snooping revealed that Luke was an honest to god food website editor. He was a cameraman.
Repeat. Luke Skywalker, cameraman. He filmed all the food hosts for his company’s Youtube channel. He edited videos. He more or less blended into the background of everything, while having his finger prints on damn near everything.
This was a man after Peter’s own soul. They were kindred spirits in hidden identities, content creation, and suffering under a boulder of responsibility too great to cope with.
He had to find him now.
And after they had his Instagram it wasn’t too hard. He seemed to hang out in various parts of the Bronx and Peter just so happened to know some folks out that way.
Louis told Peter that he would never speak to him again if he found, befriended, and then didn’t share Luke Skywalker (the man, the real man, I’m not fucking with you, Louis). But he also recognized a place on Luke’s instagram that he seemed to be working his way through the menu of. He sent along an address and told Peter not to forget his promises.
Angel asked why he was looking for Johnny Storm in the Bronx.
Peter left Louis to rattle sense into her.
He took a walk on Saturday morning. A long walk. A long train ride, then a walk, then a half hour of squinting, and then, lo and behold, he found a blond guy banging his head into the center of an out door metal table across from a woman with heavy braids trailing down the sides of her neck. She was much older than him and drummed white-painted fingernails across her cheek as she thought.
Peter hid and called Ned and MJ for an ID. He peeked the phone’s camera out enough for them to see the other two and then snatched it back.
Ned was about to flip a table.
“That’s clearly Ahsoka Tano,” he said. “She—the braids, dude. Dead give-away. And she put ribbons in them, like what even is discretion?”
Peter didn’t know that person. He continued not to know this person, even as Ned dragged him through a trainwreck of Star Wars lore.
“So she’s a friend,” he said.
“She’s like a jedi, but not like a jedi, she was a jedi, but then she said ‘fuck the order’ and—”
Great. Peter was approaching.
Ned held his face in his hands. MJ told Peter to report back on his findings. Peter ended the call and inched closer, weaving through the crowd and slipping into the coffee joint to see what nonsense they were selling.
It was nonsense with lots of syrup. He could never say no to syrup.
He watched the two outside while waiting for his order. Luke gesticulated to his friend and she spoke, giving reasonable gestures back. He stopped her and dug out his phone and that little plastic baggy full of fluffy material. He answered his phone. His friend took the little bag and held it up to the light.
She frowned at it.
Luke pushed away from the table and walked away to take his call. Peter’s order was called. He grabbed it and swerved out towards the patio.
“Hello,” he said at the edge of Luke and his friend’s table. “Is this seat taken?”
Luke’s friend stared at him.
“It is,” she said. “Move along, hon, you’re ten years too young.”
Wow.
“For your friend?” Peter tried. “Could I leave my number?”
He had this lady’s attention now. She was looking him up and down, appraising. Peter tried not to flex. He stayed cool. Matt-levels of cool. He smiled winningly.
“Alright, why not?” she said, digging through her bag for a receipt and a pen. Peter beamed as he leaned down to scrawl his number down on the back. He got halfway through before he heard a step stop nearby.
“Look alive, kid,” Luke’s friend said. “Hey, Luke, this guy was just—”
“You again?” Luke said.
Peter lifted his head and brows.
“Hi,” he said. “I just wanted to apologize.”
There was a long silence.
Luke’s friend looked between them and then gave Luke a long, judgmental stare.
“You don’t have to,” Luke said. “Thanks, though. How did you find me here?”
Mmm. Beginner’s luck.
“Here,” Peter said, offering his number on the receipt. “If you ever need someone to talk to who gets it.”
Luke’s friend bit her lip and looked away in secondhand embarrassment. Peter ignored her for now.
“Thanks,” Luke said. “You don’t and you won’t. But you’re very pretty.”
Nice.
“You’d be surprised,” Peter told him. “Gimme a text. I’ll leave y’all alone now. Enjoy your coffee.”
He left. But not before hearing, “but that ass, Luke.”
Ned told him that there was no way that Luke was ever going to text him and he was disappointed in Peter’s hostage-taking skills.
But he was proved wrong two hours later and, for his crimes, had to admit Peter’s brilliance publicly.
LS: hi sorry. This is Luke. This morning when you stopped by our table, did you happen to see a little plastic bag on it?
Why yes. The one in Peter’s pocket right now? That bag?
PP: hi!! I did, actually. You guys aren’t very subtle 😏
LS: it’s not coke
PP: I’m not judging
LS: no, it’s not coke, I swear. It’s something INFINITELY more important. Did you happen to see if it had fallen on the ground?
PP: ah, no, sorry. I didn’t see it
PP: OH NO
PP: oh my god I’m so sorry, I think I took it with me when I accidentally took your friend’s pen.
LS: I
LS: what’s your name?
PP: Peter ❤
LS: Peter, you have a fucking problem
LS: I’m starting to think that you want something from me. And listen, you’re a handsome guy, but I’m not available and my type isn’t kleptomaniac. What do you want for it?
PP: well you got me
PP: to talk
LS: about what?
PP: mostly about why you look like you’re a wet phonebook in a bad gutter
LS: a phonebook???? What era are you even from????
PP: I could say the same to you, sir.
LS: I
LS: wh
LS: alright touche. The point is that I’m not going to talk to you. I just need that bag back. It’s a life and death situation.
PP: what are they? They aren’t coke crystals.
LS: how would you know?
PP: what are you, a cop?
LS: NO. This is going nowhere. What. Do. You. Want?
PP: To. Talk.
LS: I’m not going to talk to you.
PP: then why did you ask me to rescue you?
He held his breath.
LS: I didn’t
PP: you did
LS: I didn’t ask you for shit. This is it. What’s your last name.
PP: Man 😊
LS: Man what
PP: That’s my last name.
LS: Peter Man.
PP: oop, nope, sorry. That’s someone else.
LS: …so I’m calling the police, now. That’s what we’re saying?
PP: depends. Do you still need to be rescued?
Come on, Skywalker. Come on, remember.
LS: I never asked you to rescue me.
PP: You did. Think back.
LS: I didn’t
LS: I just made a joke to
LS: WHAT AFAJSDFA DTTH E FUCK
Peter cackled and let himself fall onto his back.
PP: Hiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii ❤
LS: YOU’RE
PP: Just your friendly neighborhood guy ❤
LS: YOU
LS: you
PP: me
LS: THAT’s how the storms knew you
PP: yep 💋
LS: I don’t even know what to say
PP: it’s okay, you don’t have to say shit. The main thing I wanted you to know was that I hear you. And if you need it, I’ve got you.
LS: You’re literally trying to rescue me??
PP: it’s my job
LS: IT ISN’T. How have you never been arrested? how did you find me? Did you track my phone? Is it some kind of spider thing???
PP: yes
LS: I am legally obligated to kill you with the force now
PP: harder daddy
LS: ADaaSDASFSDFSdd
LS: oh my god Han is going to lose his gourd
LS: I’m sorry I just I can’t believe you of all people stole my damn hilt
PP: I’ve got……………………..sticky fingers
LS: go die
LS: no I didn’t mean that sorry that’s a thing with me and my sister. I mean, okay. You got me. Hero of NYC.
Peter’s cheeks were starting to hurt.
PP: I’ll bring them back to you.
LS: Please do, Ben’s about to have a stroke.
PP: you mean obi-wan?
LS: he’s convinced his cat ate them. There’s a staring contest happening. No one has blinked in two minutes and I don’t want to be here for the internal investigation.
PP: where do you live?
Luke sent an address. Peter held his phone high and walked it into the living room where Ned was bitchily composing an Instagram post. He and MJ looked up at the same time.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” Peter said. “Luke Skywalker and Co. live in a cemetery.”
It wasn’t a cemetery. It was a funeral home, but close enough.
Luke was waiting outside on the stoop in a cardigan about four sizes too big for him. It was there probably to protect him from the equally large ragdoll cat in his arms.
Peter smiled. Luke stared at him and then shook his head and went through the screen door. Ned gave Peter a biting look.
“Made friends, I see,” he said.
“We’re doin’ great,” Peter told him, hopping up the stairs. “Look at us, totally—”
“Insidious.”
Peter stopped and turned nervously to see through the screen door where Obi-Wan Kenobi had seized both of the cat’s cheeks. Luke continued to hold it with maximum doneness levels.
“Where have you been?” Obi-Wan asked the cat seriously.
“We have guests,” Luke said. “Take your beast.”
Obi-Wan snatched the cat out of Luke’s arms with contempt all over his face.
“You are a villain of the highest order,” he told it.
“Ben. Guests. Please evacuate. I am hosting negotiations,” Luke said.
“We should have named you ‘Sith.’”
“Ben.”
Peter was not going to laugh at Obi-Wan Kenobi. That was too surreal.
“Come in,” Luke said, returning to hold open the screen. “I hope you’re not allergic. There are two of them.”
T-two?
“The other one is Junior.”
Peter stepped over the threshold and found himself in a room that looked like a human birdhouse. It was full of surfaces that were almost completely empty, as though an enrichment object had once lived there but had been removed as punishment. Luke waved Ned and MJ in and accepted their apologies on Peter’s behalf.
Peter ignored them to lock eyes with a creature more stunning than any he had ever encountered. It sat on the kitchen counter by a single clear jar labelled ‘Not Spice.’ It blinked grumpy green eyes.
“Oh, it’s these people again?”
They all looked behind them to see Obi-Wan peering around a doorframe with the first cat draped over his shoulders.
“Kleptomaniac,” Luke said, pointing at Peter. Peter waved.
“Huh,” Obi-Wan said simply. “I will distract Ahsoka.”
He vanished. Luke grimaced after him.
“Let’s go talk in the back,” he said. “There are no bodies, I promise.”
The funeral home had a little deck and a yard small even for this far out in Queens. It was crammed full of plants that appeared to be in a competition to bloom. Luke invited them to sit and then left to make coffee.
Coffee, yes, how had Peter forgotten.
He peeked over the side of the deck down where there was a large stone set in the center of the garden.
“A seeing stone,” Ned whispered to him.
“Oh, how did you know?”
They all jumped.
Peter swore that Obi-Wan hadn’t opened that sliding door. How had—what—
Ned was at a loss for words in the face of one of his greatest heroes.
“I—uh. M-movie? I mean, sorry. It was in The Mandalorian, second season, with the—”
“Yet more television,” Obi-Wan said derisively.
They all stared.
“Can you teleport?” MJ asked him.
“I thought you were bothering Ahsoka?” Luke asked, from inside. He squeezed past the man and his cat with three glass mugs in hand. He set them down on the little square table off to the side of the desk railing.
“I was, but then I got curious,” Obi-Wan said. “And I lost Junior.”
Luke stared at him.
“I’m going to lock you in the basement,” he said.
“Try, try, and try again,” Obi-Wan told him, petting his beloved cat’s head.
“Do you even know who Spiderman is, old man?”
“More television.”
“That’s what I thought.”
Peter had to keep a conscious watch on his jaw, lest it fall open in the face of the most handsome, clueless man on the planet. He watched as Obi-Wan, disgusted with all this ‘television’ nonsense skulked back off into the guts of the home. Luke shut the door behind him.
“So,” he said, holding out his hand. “We’re talking. Fork ‘em.”
Ah.
Fair was fair.
Peter produced the plastic bag from his pocket and handed it over. There was a shout somewhere inside followed by someone going ‘What the fuck is wrong with you?’
“Ben keeps our home ghost free. He terrifies all the wannabee haunters,” Luke said simply. “Thank you for these. I imagine it’s somewhat of a shock to learn that it’s all real.”
It was, but it wasn’t the weirdest thing Peter had encountered by far.
“How long have you lived in New York?” he asked conversationally.
Luke gave him a weird brow.
He seemed smaller than before in that enormous cardigan. Certainly smaller than the movies made him seem. His face was a little thinner too, and his lips seemed to slope into an almost permanent pout.
“About twenty years,” he said. “We were born in California, but Anakin moved us here when we were eight.”
Anakin? Like, Darth Vader, Anakin?
“’Luke, I am your father’—yeah, that guy,” Luke said with a scoff. “Except, you know, he ain’t dead. And he’s the only one who can make Ben remember that tea isn’t a meal, so we keep him around for that and to scream back at Leia.”
Peter was already completely lost to the dynamics of this household. It wasn’t like the books and movies—Ned’s twitching for his phone to take notes was proof enough of that.
“That’s awkward,” MJ said. “So did y’all do like, collective counselling for the past life shit?”
Luke deflated and moaned into his hands.
“It’s not past life shit if your damn name is the same,” he said. “It’s complicated.”
It sounded like it.
Imagine growing up with your apparently-Star War-obsessed father and uncle who’d built a home and a business (presumably) around that shit, only to find out later that they’d done it because it was literally their religion.
What a trip.
“When did you find out?” Peter asked gently.
“Oh, you know. Last week,” Luke said with a bitter grin. “Quit my fulltime job. Dumped my ex. Broke my lease and now here I am. Once again. Back at this place.”
“Do you want a hug?” Ned asked into the awkward silence.
“You’re very sweet,” Luke said. “If I touch another human, I will start crying and never stop.”
Yikes.
Barely holdin’ on by a thread there, buddy? How’s the hyperawareness going?
“Why does it matter, is my question. For you, I mean,” Luke said with a suspicious squint. “You fought a goblin guy, didn’t you? With a hover board?”
Uuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuh, yeah.
Yeah, Peter sure had done that.
“And like, the bird dude? Didn’t you down a plane?”
Perhaps.
But Luke had blown up the Deathstar, no?
“These things are not equivalent,” Luke said flatly. “I joined a rebel alliance. There were loads of us.”
Mmm. Perhaps so.
“God, how old are you even? You look 22.”
Peter gawked.
“I’m 27,” he said.
Luke did a double-take.
“That’s a lie,” he accused. “Tell the truth or be compelled.”
“By the Force?” Ned asked hopefully.
Luke blinked at him. He pointed at the glass sliding door which revealed Obi-Wan holding Junior the cat above his head by the kitchen sink.
“By the Force,” he said.
Ned’s face fell.
“Do we not have the Force, here?” he asked.
Luke flinched.
“Listen,” he said abruptly, “We’re workin’ on it. This isn’t our original galaxy. The rules are all different. The only one who’s managed to make even a spark happen is Obi-Wan so far, but as soon as we find Master Yoda, it’s over. We’ll already have won.”
“You lost Yoda,” MJ mused.
Luke stammered and caught himself.
“We lost a lot of people,” he snapped. “It happens when you shift galaxies. Anyways, that’s what the stone is for.”
MJ glanced back at the stone and then leaned her forearms onto the small table.
“So, let me get this straight,” she said. “You jedi folks all popped up over here by some cosmic accident. You don’t have the Force. Most of you don’t even remember who you are. You lost your most experienced Master, and you’re going to fight the Sith?”
Peter stirred his coffee nervously.
Luke’s eye twitched.
“We don’t need the others,” he said. “We only need the Force. To fight the Sith. Yes.”
MJ frowned deep and held her chin with both hands.
“So you need the thing you for sure don’t have the most,” she said.
Luke opened his mouth, but not before the window by the door snapped open and Obi-Wan leaned out to say, “We always have the Force.”
Luke covered his face in despair.
“I was listening from the kitchen window,” Obi-Wan told him lovingly.
“GO FIND CODY ALREADY,” Luke roared at him.
“I did, he’s right here,” Obi-Wan said soothingly, stroking his angry cat.
“The other Cody.”
“Oh, I am trying, don’t you worry.”
“Ben, so help me God—”
“Force.”
“SO HELP ME FORCE—”
Star Wars had really left out the part about Luke’s explosive temper. Peter winced, but Ned laughed and the sound seemed to have a calming effect on the Jedi-on-Jedi crime about to take place in the kitchen. Obi-Wan appeared pleased with this development and emboldened. He wove past Luke out onto the desk and came over, cat and all, to point down to the seeing stone in the middle of the garden.
“Others who feel the Force’s energy will be drawn to it,” he told Ned fondly. “It’s how we got Luke back home.”
“It’s not,” Luke said. “You called me.”
“And so others will also come,” Obi-Wan said with confidence. “The most important thing is that we believe in the Force. And from that, we will find guidance and power and—”
“He means Yoda,” Luke translated. “He’s been putting frogs on it as an offering, even though me, Ahsoka, and Anakin told him that this is a human’s world. A human’s world, Ben. Even if he did eat them, he’s not eating them raw.”
“Don’t be discouraged by Luke’s attitude, he is very stressed,” Obi-Wan told Ned and Ned only affectionately. “I told him not to be, you see there are four of us here already, and the Chosen One is among us.”
“Anakin told you to stop calling him that,” Luke moaned, massaging his temples.
“He was the first to be aware of our present situation,” Obi-Wan said.
“He took a hallucinogen and had a paranoid breakdown,” Luke pleaded. “Ben, please. Go inside. Think of your blood pressure.”
“Perhaps, but it was a useful breakdown, was it not?”
“I am so sorry for him, he’s getting senile,” Luke said to the rest of them.
“Your energy is different,” Obi-Wan informed Peter out of absolutely nowhere. “Are you also Force-sensitive? Were you drawn to the stone?”
Er.
No.
Sorry?
“He’s Spiderman,” Luke said, gesturing pointedly. “Remember Spiderman?”
Obi-Wan did not. Peter suspected, actually, that Obi-Wan still used phonebooks, if he used phones at all, that was.
Luke took a deep breath and let it out.
“Okay, let me just lay it out,” he said. “We’re doing the best we can with what we have. You don’t have to get involved with this. We appreciate your help, but what would help us even more is if you stay out of it, alright?”
Yeah, okay. Sure. Peter could respect that.
“Amazing. And don’t tell other people.”
Understood.
“Unless they’re Force-sensitive,” Obi-Wan said. “In which case, ask them how they feel about rocks.”
Luke just stared at him coldly this time.
“You didn’t used to be like this,” he said dangerously.
“No, I used to be stressed,” Obi-Wan told him. “But you and Ani are doing that for me, so I have resolved to be a free spirit. Nice to meet all of you. Have more coffee. I don’t like this one; I will have it out of the house by sundown.”
He left, and possibly for good this time. No one knew what to say in his absence.
“So,” Peter tried, desperate for something to break up the tension. “You said a few days ago that you were looking for someone?”
Luke finally stopped making growling faces towards the sliding door. He lit up like a bulb.
“I am, actually,” he said.
Luke was looking for a very particular person named ‘Din.’ He described him as ‘six feet tall and covered in armor.’ He asked if they knew of such a person.
Peter had to shove a hand against his mouth in case he made an unwanted connection between this description and Obi-Wan behavior.
“Haven’t,” MJ said. “Who is he?”
“My husband,” Luke said.
Ned choked.
Peter choked.
MJ tilted her head.
“You have a husband?” she asked. “I would have remembered a husband in that series.”
Luke leaned his chin on his palm and gazed sideways over the city. He seemed to sigh.
“I don’t know why he isn’t connected to me in the media created here,” he said. “It’s probably because he’s always been very shy.”
Oh, aw. Peter loved that. The contrast between them was heart-warming.
“We had a son together,” Luke said. “His child. He brought him to me. One of my students, at first.”
Hang on a minute here.
Peter exchanged a glance with Ned. Ned tried very hard to pick a way to approach this sensitively. He landed on asking, “What was his name again?”
“Din,” Luke said. “Din Djarin.”
Ned cringed.
“He was a Mandalorian,” Luke explained. “Very, very, very shy. Like, he would rather chew off his own leg than make small talk with a stranger. I think, before I knew all this, I was still subconsciously looking for him. All my exes are the same type.”
That—
Okay, so like.
Did these people own a TV?
“Do we look like we own a TV?” Luke deadpanned. “No. If Ben senses anything bigger than a datapad happening in this place, he’s driven to madness and breaks it.”
UH?
“He doesn’t actually break it,” Luke sighed. “He just finds a way to make it unusable—putting clothes on it, disconnecting the monitor, that kind of thing. He thinks they waste electricity.”
What a guy. Peter wanted to put him and May in a room and see what conspiracies they could spin together.
“Why do you ask?” Luke asked.
Ned cleared his throat.
“Do you have a, uh, datapad, then?” he asked.
“DIN. That’s DIN. He’s got his own show. Oh my god, that’s—stay right there. Don’t move.”
Bless this man. Peter wanted to hug him so bad. They’d lost him to the staircase leading up from the second floor to the attic. Peter wondered who he was showing the tablet to.
Maybe Obi-Wan?
“I told you this already,” a voice up there said.
“LOOK AT HIM.”
“You’re killin’ me, smalls. We had this exact conversation last week. Did you forget?”
“You knew where he was.”
“Alright, alright. Downward march.”
Anakin fucking Skywalker came down the stairs with a handful of Luke’s shirt in one hand and the tablet shoved under his other arm. He paused and frowned at the three of them in the kitchen frozen in shock, and then apparently decided that that didn’t matter. He carried on dragging Luke with him towards the kitchen counter. He dropped the tablet onto it and Peter realized that the lower half of his sleeve on that side was empty.
He watched as the guy let go of Luke and chased the not-angry cat off the counter, cursing.
“Alright, this?” he said, tapping on the tablet. “Is the link I put here.” He rapped the same finger on what Peter now saw was a whiteboard covered in rows upon rows of symbols that he’d never seen before.
“Din here? Din here. You see?” Vader told Luke with untold patience.
“I can’t read that,” Luke moaned. “You lied to me.”
“It’s up in the kitchen, Luke.”
“You’re a liar and a cad. Do it in Basic.”
“This is Basic.”
Oh, dear. All that fanfic about Luke meeting Darth Vader and having a breakdown was looking real embarrassed now, wasn’t it?
“If it’s Basic, why can’t I read it?” Luke demanded.
“Because, like I told you last night, the night before, and the night before that,” Vader said painstakingly, “It doesn’t all come back at once. It’s going to take time.”
“We don’t have time,” Luke snapped.
Vader leaned his head back with half-lidded eyes. Luke didn’t look even remotely like his kid, even with him looking all pre-quels-like now.
“We talked about this, too, remember?” Vader asked.
Obviously not. Luke was distressed. He had eyes only for the tablet now.
“No, of course not, silly me,” Vader said. “Why are humans here?”
“Ahsoka went home,” Luke said.
“Thank you, that was not my question.”
“What was your question?”
“Why are non-order humans here?”
“I told you, Ahsoka went—”
“Son, I will kill you if you continue to act like Obi-Wan,” Vader said without missing a beat.
“You can try,” Luke said offhandedly. “But only one of us has two handed grip.”
There was a long stare.
“It’s Obi-Wan,” Vader told him. “Why do we have living guests?”
He gestured back to Peter, Ned, and MJ like they were flies on a set of blinds.
“Oh, because that’s Spiderman and he stole your kyber crystals,” Luke said.
Vader rounded on Peter, and Peter actually felt fear.
Vader blinked once.
“This may as well happen,” he decided somehow placidly. “I’m going back upstairs. Where did your grand-master go?”
“Into the mist,” Luke said. “Can you feel Din?”
“Negative, ghostrider.”
“When the Force chooses you first out of favoritism, can you feel for Din?”
“Ah yes, can I feel for your Force-repellant life partner with all of the Force energy that I do not have? Yes, I sure can.”
“Thanks, Dad.”
“Anytime, primary monstrosity of my loins.”
UM?
This felt a little hostile for Peter’s tastes. Not that it wasn’t earned. Clearly it was earned. It was just horrifying.
“Guests, you are dismissed,” Vader said in their direction. “Unless you’re drawn to the rock outside, in which case, you may stay. Otherwise, do not darken this doorstep again, or else we will leave you with the other dead in the morgue.”
“Thanks for bringing the crystals,” Luke said from behind him. “And for talking. I do feel better, actually.”
They left the funeral home. Obi-Wan was outside by the mailbox as though waiting for them. Peter wasn’t sure he had any emotional energy left to approach him with.
“Thank you for speaking to Luke,” he said as the three of them attempted to pass unnoticed. “It’s good for him to talk to others his own age.”
Uh-huh. Good night, sir?
“Good night, Peter, Ned, and Michelle.”
They hadn’t given their names.
They definitely hadn’t given their names.
Ned wasn’t sleeping for two years. He made this clear with a lot of clapping gestures and then rolled around on the floor, talking about all kinds of shit that Peter couldn’t decipher. MJ watched him and flicked her eyes up to Peter with concern on her forehead.
“That family is cinematically dysfunctional,” she said.
Correct.
“They’re barely their own characters.”
Correct.
“What now?”
Peter wasn’t sure. The best he could think of was to just keep an eye on the situation. Maybe check in every couple of weeks?
“If you say so,” MJ said. “I think you made Ned’s life, by the way. Good job.”
Peter tried checking in every two weeks. It started because he happened to hear of a tunnel collapsing in Queens nearby the funeral home. He texted Luke to ask if he needed a save and all he got back was a ‘well, not anymore.’
After that, Peter kept a close eye on happenstances occurring around the city. There were more than he bargained for. And when he glanced at Luke’s Instagram after the first week after the tunnel collapse, he noted that two of the nails on the hand Luke held his coffee to the camera with had gone completely black.
That was worrying.
Peter was used to be the danger-prone asshole in his friendgroup. He did not like this role-reversal. MJ asked him sarcastically what the problem was.
He texted Luke again.
PP: how many nails do you have left bro?
LS: we put a hole in one to release the pressure
PP: that don’t sound great bro.
LS: it’s fine. Oh, but good news
PP: oh?
LS: the most predictable thing ever has happened. The Vader has regained force power
PP: that’s worrying
LS: ? why?
PP: won’t he go dark?
LS: ah, no. He fucked up and raised me and Leia with Ben this time after our mom died. He had his chance to go dark and traded it for 8 consecutive hours of sleep instead.
PP: I truly don’t know what to say
LS: It’s fine we did 12 years of family therapy after the accident so we are no longer on the DSS watchlist
PP: I know less what to say
LS: he won’t find din :/
PP: is that your priority right now?
LS: aren’t you supposed to be spiderman or something? Don’t you have chaotic things to say?
PP: you know normally I do, this is literally out of character for me. but I think you also might be absorbing my chaos.
LS: that’s fair. I have that effect on people. Hey, is your buddy Ned available to chat? He knows more than I can remember about my old life. Can I borrow him?
That sounded like a horrendous decision.
PP: yeah let me get you his number.
LS: thanksssss
Ned reported a few days later that his services were needed at the funeral home. He was leaving them all now to befriend Luke Skywalker as was his true destiny.
He came back a few hours later and reported that his services had been helpful and he was pleased to say that Darth Vader was now the official herder of ‘wans’ in the house. This included all Obi-Wans and padawans.
He seemed to be the only guy there who could like, retain information given to him for some reason. He accepted this as his lot in life and went around repeating the same things to the others ad nauseum until they finally stuck for them.
Peter wondered if that was his personal hell.
Ned didn’t think so. He thought the guy was pretty chill about it and had probably been doing it for a while now. He did it more for Ahsoka Tano and Luke than he did for Obi-Wan. Although that was probably because Obi-Wan appeared to be on a hunt that made all non-relevant information given to him slip off his back like water.
Another two weeks. Another text.
PP: hey luke, I saw you drowning on the news. You okay?
LS: GOD my ex-workplace keeps calling welfare checks on our house. We’ve had more cops here then flies these last few days.
PP: ex-workplace is one way to refer to your old job. Sounds like they cared about you. What did you do?
LS: preschool teacher.
Peter was going to lose his shit right here on this bed.
PP: was that your calling?
LS: that was Luke Naberry’s calling. Luke Skywalker’s calling is to make the lightsaber go vrrrrrrm
PP: you honestly terrify me
LS: thanks han says the same thing. OH. HE FOUND CHEWIE.
PP: no shit??
LS: yeah I told Ned, not you. But yeah. He found him lugging boxes for a bodega. And now they both work at the same bodega. Which like, objectively, is a bad thing because Han was a UN translator.
PP: I’m
PP: sorry
PP: what?
LS: I know he was all respectable and shit. It was awful. I can look at him again without feeling like I’ve failed in every part of my life.
PP: dare I ask what your sister does?
LS: lawyer
PP: not senator?
LS: we’re not old enough to be senators.
PP: every moment becomes more concerning than the next. You fascinate me. This is why they put you in like, all the films.
LS: because I’m sexy yeah
PP: that too
LS: not to you. I’m off-limits bub. I’m married.
PP: how’s that going for you?
LS: Hhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh
PP: I see. So no Din yet?
LS: I will find him if it kills me
PP: that’s so romantic. Hey you should watch that series. They gave him a little green yoda in it. Really cute.
LS: that’s my son you piece of shit
There was no winning here.
MJ asked him a few weeks later if he was still keeping up with the Jedi drama since the whole city had recently decided that Peter was a snack.
Obviously he hadn’t.
She told him not to worry, Ned had. She told him to talk to Ned, so he went and talked to Ned with a heatpad in one hand and a coldpack in the other.
Ned patted at him sympathetically and informed him that Luke had reunited with the Force. It was going poorly for him, mostly because the Force wasn’t used to people being in touch with it in these parts of the universe. It kept telling each of the jedi that there was a disturbance and then luring them to each other to fight to the death.
Luke described it as the Force-equivalent of an auto-immune disease.
They’d taken to gathering in the living room of the funeral home to meditate in a circle, as though to calm the Force’s anxiety while scenting each other for protection.
It had a 40% success rate. Everyone was sleeping in locked rooms for the time being, just in case someone got compelled to do something rash.
Peter asked Ned if he’d finally lost his crown as King Chaos of NYC.
Ned patted him on the knee more firmly than before and said that he could regain his crown by introducing a calming element into the jedi household.
Peter had his pride to defend, so he asked what that element ought to be.
Din Djarin, the Mandalorian, the leader of all Mandalorians, was bound to have a name that looked nothing like the one they had for him. Luke nearly exploded when Peter approached him to asked him (and his taped fingers) more about who Din Djarin was outside the name.
They proceeded with caution, however. So far, Peter and Ned had discovered only dissonance between Luke’s account of his life partner (his ‘heart, stars, sun, and sand’) and the guy on the screen for the tv show. That was to be expected, given that they had met Luke now and learned of his somewhat explosive personality.
But even still, Luke’s description of Din Djarin as ‘kind, compassionate, tender, shy, emotionally stable, dependable, sweet, caring, and hunky’ seemed slightly biased.
Peter just wanted to know how tall this guy was. Hair color. Eye color. Skin color. Blood type. That kind of shit.
Luke said that Din had brown hair, brown eyes, Type Who Knows What blood, and was about six feet tall. He had no idea how much he weighed. He’d never had need for that information. He knew that Din was human, which was probably helpful in a galaxy far, far away. He knew that he spoke Mando’a as his first language, then Basic, then a whopping fifteen others. And he knew that Din was probably looking after their son.
Vader asked Peter over a mug of coffee (also labeled in the funeral home’s cabinet as ‘not spice.’) if Spidersenses could overcome a dearth of information. It took Peter a few moments to realize that he was sympathizing with him.
“You’re not going to find Din,” Vader told Luke. “You need to look for the kid. You’ll find the kid first, you always have.”
Luke took his coffee and poured it down the drain.
Peter decided that he didn’t want to get in between that burgeoning battle. He told Luke to text him if he remembered anything else.
Wade was pissed that Peter had been meeting and ‘cavorting’ with Luke Skywalker without him. He claimed ownership of the Din Djarin mystery in order to cram himself into Luke’s good graces. But quickly, he ran into the same stumbling blocks as Peter.
Din Djarin was six feet tall with brown eyes and brown hair.
That was what they currently had to go on.
Wade would have torn out his hair if he had any, but he stopped himself and accepted the challenge. Peter watched over his shoulder as he chicken-pecked his way into a list of social security numbers held by the NYC State ID issuing department and started methodically filtering names that did not sound like ‘Din.’
He started broad with all ‘D’s and then narrowed it down further and further and further until he was left with a shitload of Daniels.
He stared at the screen before him and vibrated.
Peter massaged his shoulders before he cracked.
It helped. Wade started filtering by height, then by eye color. Then by hair, and only ended up with several hundred people.
He vibrated again, but this time, Peter couldn’t help him.
He sighed. Wade said that there had to be a better way to do this. He got up.
Wade made about four thousand missing posters with the name Din Djarin on them which he recruited the whole team to plaster up around NYC. This was not a request.
Miles asked him why they were doing this for a tv character and had to be let in on the gig.
He lost his shit.
Louis tried to retain his shit.
Angel still didn’t know how the whole jedi thing worked.
Dave hummed and haw’ed and took his time in calling bullshit. Wade asked him to look deep into his eyes and ask if he was entertaining bullshit that fine evening.
Dave changed his opinion and took a stack.
There was no way that shit was supposed to work. There was just no way. A) because Wade had the worst ideas of all mankind and B) because Peter had the worst luck of all mankind. So the two of them together should have destroyed all the prospects of success for that job.
But instead, while they were hatching a new plot involving setting up a sham sociological study for people who responded to Star Wars names, Wade’s phone went off.
He grabbed it and opened the message and lo and behold right there was a note that read,
“I hope you are not a reporting body because this is going to sound certifiably insane, but I think I might be the guy you’re looking for?”
Wade screamed.
Peter scolded him not to get too excited too soon. They had to see the man first.
Wade texted furiously, asking for a picture and got a message back that said, “please do not dox me.”
They got no answer until Wade promised not to dox the guy.
And then they got an image of a man with brown hair and brown eyes with olive skin. His face was remarkably square. The picture wasn’t just him, though, he had in his arms a little boy with dark skin and a head covered in tight ringlets. His eyes were so brown they were nearly black and he was maybe two years old.
The caption said, “apologies, my son needed to be in the picture.”
Wade cooed and entered Dad Mode to ask how old the baby was and what he liked to do and Peter lost the fathers to that small talk for a while before Wade oh-so-casually asked, “So you feel like you’re from outer space?”
“It sounds strange,” the guy on the other said wrote back, “But I do. Like every day I wake up and look in the mirror and something is wrong. I feel like I’m always forgetting something when I leave the house. I watched the tv show of the guy who’s name was on your fliers and the kid in it reminds me so much of my son. It’s eerie. They make the same sounds. He made the same sounds before we even watched that show.”
Wade whistled.
“I think this is him, Pete,” he said. “He called Baby Yoda a ‘kid’ not a yoda.”
Peter stared. He hadn’t even caught that. That was smart as hell.
“So what now?” he asked.
Wade sniffed.
“Get Skywalker to send you a selfie,” he said.
PP: Luke are you pretty right now?
LS: My face is intact
PP: take a selfie and send it to me
LS: cannot do that. Face is intact is a baseline situation. Let me find an old one. Oh, they all have my ex in them. This is awkward.
PP: it doesn’t matter I can crop it.
LS: no I have to be cute or I’ll perish hold on
PP: are you sure you’re not Johnny Storm?
LS: yes, he’s got loads of muscles. Sent.
Selfie acquired.
Luke looked very smiley in it. His eyes were blown out from the lighting, but it showed his sloping smile and his low, back-set dimples. Peter sent it to Wade. Wade sent it to his new friend.
They waited.
They waited five minutes.
Then ten.
Then half an hour.
Then nearly two.
And finally, Wade’s phone rang. He picked it up and set it on speaker so that Peter could hear.
“Hello?” Wade said.
There was a long pause.
“Where did you get that picture?” a low, almost smoky voice demanded on the other side.
“A friend,” Wade said sleazily. “You know him? He’s a cute little thing, ain’t he?”
It took the dude on the other side of the line worryingly long to respond.
“What do you want?” he finally asked.
Wade brought his head down in interest.
“What’re you willing do to?” he asked.
They waited. Peter didn’t know what was taking this guy so long to—
“Anything.”
Ah.
Okay. That.
That sounded about right.
Wade cackled.
“You know his name?” he asked.
“I do,” the man said.
“What’s his name then, pal?” Wade asked.
“It’s none of your fucking business.”
Holy shit. Holy shit. Peter clutched the back of the couch. Wade was grinning so hard, Peter could see it through his mask.
“You want him, you need to show me that you know who he is,” Wade said. “I ain’t got ‘im here, but I know where he is. Come on, big boy. Who is he?”
Peter could hear the man take in a deep, shaky breath.
“His name is Luke,” Din fucking Djarin, the Mandalorian himself, said.
Din fucking Djarin’s name at the moment was Danny Jabaran. He stood six feet tall with a medium build and that baby of his in his arms.
He was not afraid of Wade.
He was not afraid of Peter.
The suits didn’t scare him; this man was a space warrior. The leader of the space warriors. Peter was humbled to stand in his presence, old jeans and tattoos and all.
“Vigilantes,” he acknowledged.
“Deadpool,” Wade said, offering a hand. “And this is?”
“Grogu,” Djarin said.
Baby Yoda lifted his big liquid eyes up to Wade and blinked twice. Then he wriggled around and hid in Djarin’s neck. Djarin put a hand on his back and didn’t drop eye contact.
“Tell me everything,” Djarin said.
Ned screamed. Michelle screamed. Peter reminded them that he had neighbors and invited Mr. Mand’alor to sit on the couch for a bit while he called Luke.
Michelle claimed the spot next to Djarin and asked Baby Yoda Grogu for his little hand. He studied her and hid again, making a prolonged sound of distress that Djarin cut off by saying, “Hey. Manners.”
This somehow made baby Grogu turn back to Michelle to stare at her offered hand.
He took it. She shook with him and then took hers away.
Grogu perked up and reached for it again.
“You’re the Mandalorian,” Ned said.
Djarin looked right at him.
“A Mandalorian,” he corrected.
Ned blinked back tears.
“You’re so cool,” he creaked.
Djarin frowned.
“You...are too?” he tried.
Ned wept into a fist.
Peter left them to call Luke in his bedroom. Luke picked up on the third ring with the start of an ingrained greeting that sounded a whole lot like a customer service recording. He caught himself, though.
“I have someone I’d like you to talk to,” Peter said. “I think you might want to sit down.”
Luke’s unusual quiet on the other side made Peter grin.
“Are you sitting?” he asked.
“I’m sitting.”
“Alright, one moment,” Peter said, walking out into the living room. Djarin had edged far, far away from Ned, as far as he possibly could without being rude. He looked up when Peter came over and sat down on the arm next to him.
“Say hi,” Peter said.
Djarin frowned at him and then the phone.
“Who’s that?” he asked.
Peter waited. Djarin lifted his head over to see the phone’s screen.
“Hello?” he tried.
“Din?”
The Spidey Sense crashed through Peter like a tidal wave.
Djarin had gone completely still.
“Din? Is that you? Can you hear me?”
“Shit,” Djarin said, lifting a hand to cover his eyes. “Goddamnit. Jesus.”
“DIN.”
“Dank Fucking Farrik.”
“Oh my god.”
Baby Grogu’s face snapped toward the phone with huge eyes. He grabbed at Djarin’s collar, then his jaw and started bouncing a little in his arms.
“Bu?” he asked.
Djarin couldn’t make himself move.
“Grogu?” Luke asked. “Hey, baby, is that you, bubba?”
Grogu grabbed Djarin’s face urgently, so that he couldn’t hide his raw eyes anymore.
He pointed at the phone.
“Yeah, I hear ‘im, kid,” Djarin said.
“MMMMM. Gib.”
“Ah. That’s not ours. We don’t grab. We ask,” Djarin reminded as Grogu pleaded for the phone. Peter snickered and gave it to him. He just held it, staring.
“Do you wanna see him?” Peter asked. “Luke, can we maybe video chat?”
“Y-yeah,” Luke said. “Hold on. Oh god, my face. Uh, hey Din are you still near-sighted, hon?”
Djarin huffed a laugh that turned into a whole-body tremor.
“I got contacts,” he said a little hysterically.
“You got WHAT?” Luke yipped, “Okay, no. No, I gotta. Be still, this heart. Okay let me just take off the butterflies. On moment, Grogu, Daddy’s just gotta dunk his face in the damn sink.”
MJ bounced her eyebrows at Peter as he gently took the phone back from Grogu and tapped on the camera. He offered it back the kid and received a deep gaze of wonder in return. Djarin turned the screen right-side up in his hands.
Luke finally turned his camera on and revealed himself to be very swollen in the jaw with damp hair and a cut very close to the rim of his left eye.
Grogu screeched.
Luke laughed.
“Look at you,” he said, “I’m gonna cry. Oh my god. Where’re your ears, pal?”
Grogu analyzed this reaction for 2 full seconds and then shoved the camera right into his dad’s forehead. Djarin took it from him and liberated himself so that he could see Luke who was clutching at his face, absolutely already sobbing, bless him.
He looked up to see Grogu and instead got Djarin and finally just broke right in half.
Peter swallowed back the growing lump in his throat. His eyes were starting to warm a little.
Djarin found a watery smile in himself.
“I know you’re not cryin’ because of me,” he said gently.
“Where’s your helmet?” Luke sobbed, wiping viciously at his eyes. “People are watching, you harlot.”
“I know,” Djarin said. “I lost it.”
“I’m so sorry.”
“Luke.”
“This is all my fault. I should’ve—I should’ve—”
“Luke,” Djarin said again, full of warmth, “You died for us.”
Luke shook harder than ever.
“There is no greater sacrifice a warrior can make,” Djarin told him. “I was honored for you to have made it for me and our son. This has always been the Way.”
“This is the Way,” Luke stammered.
“I missed you,” Djarin said. “Where in God’s name have you been?”
“I was a preschool teacher in the Bronx, man, I dunno what happened,” Luke said tipping his face up to force the tears back in.
“In the Bronx? Where?”
“Uh, off Allerton and Lurting?”
Djarin started shaking with laugher.
“I work off Laconia and Mace,” he said.
“You what?”
“We’ve been blocks apart this whole time.”
Awwwwww.
“I’m going to stab myself,” Luke moaned. “I’m going to stab myself in the arm. I was right there and I sold out for my part-time gig barely weeks ago. Oh my god. I’m going to—move, old man, I’m suffering—Wait. Din, did you find your parents?”
Djarin stood up and held the phone out straight.
“Where are you right now?” he asked.
Look at all these people hugging each other.
Look at them crying all over. There was a baby in there, wailing because he was so happy to be back in the arms of his other dad.
Aww. AWWWW. Peter was getting emotional again, he was going to see himself out.
“Wait. Peter.”
He looked up to find Luke holding a hand to him.
“Thank you,” he said. “You really are a superhero, you know that?”
Yeah.
Sometimes, he did.
The city had plenty of problems as it was, yeah, more now with a bunch of jedi running around, linking up with each other and spreading memory like mushroom spores. But it didn’t feel that much different.
What it felt like now was Ned showing Grogu how to hold his hand at the seeing stone in the funeral home’s back yard to make the Force happen while Obi-Wan reported cheerfully that the cat perched on it was still not levitating.
It also felt like watching Luke freak out over text to Ned and Michelle about his ex losing their mind at him dumping them after two years to marry this random mechanic within a week of getting together.
Peter got to see this from new angles, too, one of which was the bottom of the funeral home’s attic stairs, which Anakin Skywalker liked to sit on while his grandkids—both Grogu and Han Solo and Leia Organa (pardon, Leia Naberry)’s son—came over to show him things that he was very well aware of. These were stolen from him by Auntie Ahsoka and her friends who Ned knew and Peter did not.
And there was something warming about how even these folks—people from a galaxy far, far away, occasionally needed a Spiderman.