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Gwen shouldn't do this.
She knows she shouldn't, like she knows with the bone-deep certainty she's going to do it anyway. It's not– it's not even a choice, not really. It never was.
When the mission for Earth-1610 floated across the board, Gwen was always going to take it. Perhaps that's one of her Canon Events—it certainly feels like a law of the universe, because she's been so strong, so wearily, impossibly strong before this. She listened to Miguel, didn't visit Miles. She held out.
But then there's a mission, and that careful control shatters.
Jessica knows what Gwen's doing, she thinks, had that little nerve in the back of her head ping when the request went through. She'd tried to wait a decent amount of time after the mission was announced, tried to sit pretty and not look too eager—but then came the fear that someone else would claim it, that Earth-1610 would slip by in another's hands, and she had thrown herself forward with a volunteer that bordered on desperation.
Because she knows why she can't see Miles. She knows he's an anomaly, how his universe flexes and writhes and behaves oddly with all those around it, remembers Miguel's sharp words as he described the destruction of the world. She knows that, knew that, and so she didn't visit him. She kept her watch, stayed in the Spider Society.
But in the end, Gwen was given the mission, and now she peers through a portal into a world she hasn't seen for a year and a half. To the person she hasn't seen for a year and a half.
And she worries, and she hopes, and she holds this fragile, fleeting desperation that claws at her ribcage like a feral beast, that he will be there, that her coordinates were right, that he hasn't moved or left or forgotten or fled or ran or died–
Miles looks up at her.
He's sitting on his bed, head tilted back, and he's smiling. It's a soft thing, filled with a nostalgia so deep she could fall into it, and she can see his suit peeking out around his clothes.
He looks different—of course he does, it's been a year and a half, she's tried her best to keep him frozen in her thoughts but pieces have slipped away, seeing him again is like breathing anew—but there's something more than just the longer hair and taller set to his shoulders.
He looks ready, jersey around shoulders braced back and chin not tucked in, hands splayed over his knees. There's something bright and weary and altogether old in his eyes.
He looks, quietly, like he already knew she would be there.
"Hello," he says.
And Gwen thinks, for a moment, with the quiet part of her that can still think past the aching relief, that this is not her Miles, and something is wrong.
But he looks like her Miles, and he smiles like it, so she drops through the portal and goes to catch up.
He talks, self-consciously but practiced, about things like the party happening upstairs and how it was too loud for him—a perfect reasoning for why he's in his room—and what kind of villains he's been catching—nothing out of the ordinary—and asking how she got here—appropriate levels of interest in her answers. It's all.
It's all right, technically.
But Gwen's spider sense has always been the most aware of all spiderfolk. Instead of merely warning her of danger, it guides her to where she needs to go, instructs her on proper paths, leads her out of situations before they get dangerous. It's useful. It's wonderful.
It pings.
She checks, just as quietly—but he can turn invisible when she asks, and he makes a spark jump between his fingers in a joke she gives multiple set-ups for. So. It's him.
It's him.
And still.
She thinks, and she laughs, and she chats with him—then they're jumping through the window and spidering across Brooklyn, threading needles through semis and grabbing street food at mach ten. Miles leads her through a tour that doesn't require Alchemax or speed to avoid dimensional glitching, just flying free through his home, and somehow every site is one she couldn't be more interested in—and then there's one, the overhang of the Brooklyn Point, where Miles disappears up ahead, calling back he needs to grab something, and Gwen is forcibly reminded of why she originally came here.
It's easy, to tap her watch against a wall and send the tracking spider off to find the anomaly. If she can just find it, solve this whole thing, then Jessica will never know where she went. Maybe she can come back. Maybe she can prove that Miles' dimension—that Miles—isn't dangerous.
Maybe, maybe, maybe. She's been living for months on nothing but maybes.
So she releases the spider and then loops up to where Miles directed her.
He's already there, watching her, and his eyes are ancient.
But then he laughs, and her spider sense dies back down, and Gwen tries to forget it all. Tries to live in this moment, as fleeting and hopeless as it is, even as her watch beeps with updates and messages from Jessica. She has to hold it together. She can't go back home.
Eventually, there are only so many sites, only so many tours that can be offered before the sun dips below the horizon and the tracking spider finds the anomaly's location. She's got a world's worth of excuses, of reasons, for why she needs to slip away for fifteen minutes—but Miles doesn't push. Just bobs his head, lets her slip away, smiling. Promises he'll see her back at his room before flipping away through Brooklyn.
She wishes she could be that confident. Wishes, beyond wishing, that she could know she'll see him again.
But there comes the choice between Miles and having to go back home, to a gunshot echoing through her skull and the information that she has the right to remain silent, and she slips away to where her watch directs her.
Except when she finds the tracking spider, she finds an empty room.
The Spot is gone, disappeared, the abandoned apartment building scorched and trembling in his wake; but Lyla is able to pull up where he's gone. Earth-50101. Pavitr's world. Jessica asks where she's been, asks sharp and pressing in the way Gwen has never been able to lie to, and tells her to fix it—and she will, she will, she always will—before disappearing. And.
Gwen looks over Brooklyn, imagines she can see all the way back to his flat, where no doubt he sits, waiting for her to return.
Except.
Still, her spider sense croons, soft and worried.
But there's no time for that, so she throws herself through the portal and goes to fix her mistake—and when she arrives in Mumbattan, searching for the anomaly that could be the end of her time in the Society, there's a part of her, no matter how small, that isn't surprised to see Miles come after her.
He's glitching, catching up with her despite it, and his eyes are old.
But then they're fighting, and there's no time for thinking, not when she has to keep Miles out of Lyla's sensors and try to pin the Spot down. So she barks a few halfhearted words of derision that all feel like they're aimed at herself instead of him, and together they swing through Mumbattan to connect with the local Spiderman and catch the anomaly. She's worked with Pav before, so it's no surprise that he finds her with mask-eyes wide and cheery, and midway through cracking his bangle over the Spot's head, he monologues through a chatty backstory to catch Miles up to speed. Not his first time welcoming someone to the multiverse.
Which is great, fantastic, a nice distraction to the spider sense furrowing its brow in the back of her mind, except–
Miles doesn't let Pavitr out of his sight.
It's subtle, and she doubts she would have noticed it if she wasn't already so on edge from everything else; but during the entire fight, no matter how many portals they get thrown through, how many buildings they destroy, Miles is always close to Pavitr. Catching him when he's thrown back, taking hits meant for him, eyes locked on his movements. He's not even that way for her.
When Hobie arrives, coming through a barrier Miles already shattered with some kind of new power he's clearly been working on—a power he seemed to use halfheartedly, not from a lack of importance, but almost like he forgot, like it's so often he gets to use these incredible electrical abilities and they're just old hat now, it's only been a year and a half, how has he gotten so much training, what has she missed?—Miles greets him with a sort of familiarity that shouldn't come in response to a thick New London accent and a collage of papersketch in various colours. Hobie drawls through his own backstory, which means he gives two sentences and spends the rest of it verbally sparring with society as a whole, but he's watching Miles. There's something almost like confusion in his eyes.
And there's a pitiful relief in Gwen's chest, because at least someone else notices it.
But then comes guilt, sharp and bitter, because– it's been a year and a half, hasn't it? Of course Miles has changed. They all went back to their dimension, and while Gwen got access to the multiverse afterward, he didn't have that. He stayed trapped at home. Of course he's different.
Miles takes another hit intended for Pavitr. He jumps off Hobie's guitar in a move that has to be practiced. His eyes are ancient.
Gwen bites her lip hard enough to draw blood.
The Spot monologues, then activates the collider; he goes through in an explosion of black-white-red- screams, and Miles wobbles back, eyes squeezed shut and hands over his forehead. But he picks himself up and chases after them, and they're webbing together the crumbling Alchemax building and catching falling citizens and saving the day, and at the end, Lyla reaches out and tells Gwen to stop. To slow down. To watch, because something important is happening, because there's a reason that Pavitr has a watch but isn't at the Society, not yet, though after today he will be allowed in.
But that doesn't matter, because Miles springs forward before she can even begin to grab for him—electricity crackles under his suit and he moves faster than she's ever seen, webs arching out. One strand slams into the bus alongside Pavitr's, hauling it back onto the bridge, and another wraps around Inspector Singh and the young girl to drag them both out.
He does both, and he does it fast and successfully and easily, and he lands feather-light on the bridge well after he's already saved them.
Pavitr hauls him into a desperate hug, then promptly goes and does his best to blow his cover to Gayatri. Hobie lands, helps get the last people out of harm's way, and Gwen joins him—she can see Lyla on his watch, the lingering remnants of the warning to let the Canon Event happen. They were both told to stand down.
Miles was already moving.
And she knows that he's a selfless person, that he would have done it because he doesn't know why not to, but she can't shake the lingering, gnawing idea that he was moving before Inspector Singh was in danger.
But that's not here. For now, they all stand in the dying sunlight and stare over Mumbattan, and the people clap and cheer and thank them in a myriad of languages for saving their city. It's welcome, it always is—what's slightly less welcome is the ink-black darkness blooming over the wreckage and the ship descending from on high.
Miles tilts his head back, watching them. She can't see his face through his mask, but she sees the tightness to his shoulders.
And when Jessica Drew comes through the doorway and starts looping around the perimeter of the equation, when she barks orders to other spiderfolk to set up stabilizers, when she informs them of Miguel's summons, Gwen slips away, just for a second. A quiet little second. It's a simple thing, with Miles distracted, to send a quick message to Peter.
Because this is Miles, and he looks like Miles, and he smiles like Miles. She knows it's Miles.
Her spider sense pings.
Something is wrong.
-
Peter reads through Gwen's message for a third time.
It's a relatively simple thing, a footnote on a long, sprawling chain of messages; he was Miles' mentor, back on Earth-1610, but he's done his best to step in with her as well. It's a hard thing, being spiderfolk, in a way that people of their universe just can't understand—and certainly not Gwen, with a father doomed to die and the haunting echo of a gunshot ricocheting off the walls of the Guggenheim. She had told him, in halting, uncertain words, what happened, why she joined the Society when all of her Canon Events haven't yet gone through.
And yeah, Peter knows the jokes. He's an old man. A senior citizen. A silver fox—someone, somewhere has to have said that—and he doesn't understand what the younger spiderfolk are going through. He's too removed from it, with a wife and a baby and the lackadaisy attitude that comes from surviving everything the world's thrown at him.
But he's put in the goddamn effort to be someone for Gwen to lean on, to tell her concerns and fears for the future, and when the message comes through, something warm settles in his chest.
Nothing to do with what's in the message, though.
It's a short thing. Simple. A check-in from a mission he already knew had gone south, given his close connection with Miguel's incessant monitoring of Earth-1610, and he knows that Jess has gone out to retrieve them all.
Only five words.
There's something off about Miles.
It's why he's here, instead of hanging back at the lab, waiting for Miles to come and rehearsing a script for the kid he damn near abandoned. Because Gwen's instincts, when they led her to infiltrate both Visions Academy and Alchemax back on Earth-1610, are rarely wrong, and Peter's accepted he'll have to listen to someone who still worries about high school grades. That's just his life, this time around.
Jess comes through first, all stiff back and war in her eyes—she takes the disruption of Canon Events almost as fierce as Miguel, after the event that pushed her to join the Society. She's never told him what it was, and he's never asked. She goes soft and quiet when she thinks about it, staring at nothing, and Peter's never been good at those moments. Sometimes, he wonders if he's ever been good at anything.
Hobie behind, lanky and drawling and guitar ghosting at his ankles, and Gwen at his side, arms pulled in tight to her sides and gesturing emphatically before her to–
To Miles.
Kid's grown, blooming like one of those weedy trees that get a crack in the cement and pull twenty feet out of it—tall, lean, with a suit that pulls taut over his shoulders and a new spray-painted design. He's growing out his hair, poofing around his ears in what Peter used to use as an argument for why he kept his own style short because it was easier to fit under his mask until he met Hobie, and there's muscle where there had originally been teenage lank before.
He's smiling, but not in a way that Peter recognizes; something softer, almost worn. He looks at Gwen and Hobie like he can't bear to look away.
At least, until his gaze slides up and lands on Peter, and Miles freezes. His eyes go all doe-wide, startled, and it's not at the teleportation room, not at the other spiderfolk.
His gaze is solely locked on Peter.
They stare at each other.
"You're here,” Miles says slowly, shoulders stiff. "You've never been here before. And you don't have Mayd–"
He cuts himself off with an audible click of his jaw.
From behind him, Gwen's eyes have narrowed to slits.
Yeah. Peter thinks he gets why she sent the message.
"Sure am, kiddo," he says brightly, ignoring everything even vaguely concerning about the previous statement. "What kind of mentor would I be without being in the welcoming party? Without me, you'd end up stuck to some ceiling and need a crane to get down. Love the suit by the way—what are those stripes, avant-garde?”
The Miles he knows—and the Miles he's been watching on Miguel's monitors—would say something petulant, like his design is fine or he hasn't been sticking to anything for months. Something quick and bright and full of a teenage defensiveness that is summoned like the lions of Rome whenever their coolness is threatened.
Miles doesn't do that. Just watches him, hesitant, not quite paranoia and not quite nerves lingering in the back of his eyes. "Something like that."
"Perfect," he says, like that was exactly what he wanted to hear. "Well then. Time for grub to return the favour from the last time—all that saving-the-world business brings up an appetite, and I'm more than willing to copy yours."
"Peter," Jess says warningly, but Peter's got a lifetime of skirting authority with the strength only a superhero has, and he's flashing her a well-practiced winning smile and getting an arm around Miles' shoulder.
"C'mon, guy just saved Mumbattan and he can't even grab a bite? I'll take him to the meeting before you can blink. But a little tour couldn't hurt!"
She's fighting a losing battle, considering both Hobie and Gwen are stepping forward, and by the twist of her lips she knows that. So she just rolls her eyes and pads off, presumably to Miguel—and honestly, Peter's pretty sure that's the best-case scenario. Miles wasn't supposed to be here, wasn't supposed to save Inspector Singh, and Miguel's going to need a hell of a speech to make sure everyone understands the situation. Jess can help him run through a few drafts beforehand.
If anything, Peter's doing them a favour by giving them more time. They should really thank him.
So on they trot through HQ's hallways, past twisting industrial beams and endless spiderfolk, all waving their hands in vague greetings to the party. Miles watches them all, curious, but it's a lingering sort of thing. Indominate.
"I'm sure you've got a lot of questions,” Peter says, because, yeah. This is a hell of a lot to throw at the kid. Even walking through these corridors, with the pearlescent walls and hundreds of other spiderfolk, would be enough to pop someone out of their socks.
Miles just keeps moving, though. He stays at Peter's side, looking around, but there's none of that anxiety, not even teenage jitters. Calm, instead, which should be impossible, because Peter's got thirty years on the kid and he wasn't anywhere near calm when the Society was opened to him.
"Gwen explained most of it–" judging by her narrowed eyes, no she did not "–but I don't. I'm." Miles exhales, dragging himself back under control with a practiced finesse that does not leave Peter feeling confident. "I figured it out."
You shouldn't have, he wants to say. Because it's been a year and a half of Miguel's monitors, of watching Earth-1610 and keeping tabs on Miles, and he– he doesn't think he missed this much. Missed something that would make his eyes look so old.
Because this isn't how Miles should be reacting. He should be panicking, or marveling, or scared or awestruck or confused.
He's just. Quiet. Watchful.
The metaphor's a little apt, but there are spiders crawling down Peter's spine.
So instead of thinking about that, instead of dealing with it, he bumps the door open with a hip and emerges into one of the larger rooms of the HQ.
"And this is the cafeteria!” He announces, arms spread wide and all proud of something he had very minimal presence in making—Miguel, for all he's a rotten little stickler and thinks slow-lowering platforms are the best thing since open-floor concepts, does have a substantial amount of money taken from his Alchemax's corpse, and thusly the cafeteria is quite impressive. Glass windows from floor to ceiling, wide chairs with laminate surfaces and inlaid designs, hanging beams for ease of webbing onto, great big fucking tables because why the hell not.
Miles doesn't look particularly impressed.
Or, he does, but it's secondary.
There's something– something sharp in how he scans the room. In how he investigates every spiderfolk sitting there, his new suit pulling taut around his shoulders. It's not the oh-my-god-there's-a-t-rex-in-a-spider-costume kind of watchfulness, nor the helpless wonder at feeling his spider sense reverberate off a hundred others.
It's something else. Peter doesn't know what.
Ordering, at least, is at least something Miles isn't perfect and ready and prepared for—he fumbles, scanning the hundreds of options as Gwen does a little jazz hand in face of the varied selection, before just asking for two empanadas—one chicken, one spinach—and skittering behind Hobie for the other boy to order. Peter gets a Miguel burger, because of fucking course he does, and Gwen just grabs a paper play of fries while Hobie curls protectively around a cup of black tea. It's free, fast, and delicious, because Miguel's got the budget for chefs who are only moderately surprised to see thousands of different superheroes every day, and they all pile into a table at the far back.
It's not quite like the diner, considering this place is still open and he's still never had a better burger than there, but it's familiar, and Peter slots across from Miles. He peers at his empanadas with something sardonic on his face, a little flash of teeth in a grin, before digging in with gusto.
"Never actually eaten here myself," he mumbles around a mouthful of spinach. "Always just grabbed these for him—and man, somehow he's more annoying now that I know he's rejecting something this delicious. Maybe I can get the recipe one of these times."
Peter stills, just a bit. Hobie pauses halfway through a sip.
Gwen's the only one brave enough, though. "What?"
Miles' eyes flick up like he'd forgotten they were there. "Um." He swallows, tapping at his chest to help with whatever Empire State-sized bite he just attempted. "Sorry. It's a– an inside joke, yeah? I'll tell you later."
But then his lips twist, and that thing—that old, old, old thing—returns to his eyes. He laughs, just a rough huff that sounds like it scrapes at his throat. "I said that last run, didn't I? God. One of these times I'll finally just do it."
Gwen's hands are frozen around a fry that'll never make it to her mouth. Miles sets his empanada down, pushing the plate away.
"Kiddo," Peter says hesitantly. "You're not making any sense."
Miles laughs again. "Yeah. I get that a lot." He's fifteen, and it looks like the weight of the world—of all the worlds—is gathering dust on his shoulders. "But it's true, okay? Next time I'll tell you. Or– next time I see you, I'll tell you everything."
Peter's never wished more for Mayday's comforting presence against his chest. "Must be one hell of an inside joke."
"Yeah. Something like that."
Gwen watches him, and Hobie's got a furrow to his brow, and they're older than Miles. Older than him, have been Spiderman and Spiderwoman for longer, have known about the multiverse longer—and compared to his eyes, they look so fucking young.
"Miles," Peter says, cautiously, like he has to keep the words open and friendly and welcoming, otherwise the kid will spook and disappear past the reach of the multiverse. "Are you okay?"
"I'm fine,” he says, rocking back on his heels. He looks over the cafeteria with what could almost be nostalgia if he had been here before. "Time to meet the big man, yeah?”
They haven't told him about Miguel. Peter wishes, wishes, he was more surprised.
"Alright, kiddo," he says instead. "If you're ready."
Peter leads Miles through the hallways—or, he thinks he leads Miles, but the kid never seems to take the wrong turn and never looks around and never marvels at his surroundings, just keeps walking, chatting with Hobie. He looks unsurprised. He looks prepared.
He looks–
He looks like this isn't his first time.
It's been a year and a half. God, how Peter knows that fact—but he also remembers how it felt to rescue Miguel, to pick him up from the rotten husk of a universe collapsing around them, and he knows that year and a half were necessary. That they were needed, much in the way that Gwen Stacy and Uncle Ben and Captain Stacy are needed. It's not a soothing balm, nothing that brings relief, but just cold understanding. He knows that. He knows he couldn't see the kid.
Now, though, he's starting to understand how long a year and a half is. How much could change in that time; how much the kid that ran doggedly at his heels and spooked at his own powers and marveled at the world isn't the kid behind him. That Miles has changed, as all children do.
It doesn't, however, explain all the changes.
That old, familiar shiver runs down his spine.
Because it's Miles. It's Miles, and through Miguel's monitors, he knows that nothing has happened on Earth-1610 that he's not aware of, and the kid's saying all the right things and moving like he should. He'd known Miles for three days—a year and a half is nothing, in face of that. It's fine. There's always going to be confusion when faced with a situation as confusing and crazy as this.
But there's only so far that confusion will take you.
Something is wrong.
-
Miguel doesn't have a spider sense. He's well grown used to that fact, to relying on his heightened senses to survive threats that other spiderfolk are warned about, and he's over it by now. Just another interesting quirk of his biology.
But he almost thinks he has one when Miles Morales walks into his lab.
Jess briefed him, his holograms did the bulk of the work, and Lyla gave him a rundown on what he needs to bring up. There's a monitor, hissing and sparking around the claw marks through its screen, but it's in the far back of his lab and it probably won't be noticed by everyone. So. He's fine, he's calm, he's ready for one of the most irritating talks of his life.
Miles walks through the entrance, and Miguel feels the hair rise on the back of his neck.
Peter leads the charge, Miles at his side, Gwen and Hobie stalking behind like renaissance-era guards—and Miguel knows them all, whether through communication or through the endless monitors he keeps on anomalies, on one anomaly in particular. It's the sort of thing that tends to summon uncomfortable thoughts if he lingers on it, so he doesn't, but Miguel is very aware of Miles Morales. Ever since he was first bitten, he has known his position as the original anomaly, and he's kept as many eyes as he can spare on him since.
But the Spiderman walking into his lab doesn't look like Miles Morales, for all that Lyla's diagnostics tell him it is.
He's crisp around the edges, his dimension made of bold lines and colour-swaps, a faint splatter-dot effect curling around his face where the light hits. He stares up at Miguel, not needing to look anywhere else, mask peeled off and jaw set.
His eyes are old.
And maybe that's why Miguel doesn't wait for his platform to lower; just swings off with a strand of crimson web, landing with a thump on the floor below. Lyla sparks to life over his shoulder, Jess pulling off the wall to walk closer, and then they're all standing in a circle. Even Hobie keeps his attention bright and focused, flicking between them all.
Both Gwen and Peter have a bite to their energy, sharp and concerned. They think something is wrong.
Miles stares at him, rocking on his heels. "Hello," he says, and it's the tip of an iceberg Miguel can't make out.
"Morales," he intones back, and that urge to throw something simmers under his skin. The script flashes in his peripherals, Lyla steering them on track before they even have time to derail, and he's glad in the way that he has to be, because otherwise he will be feeling many emotions he cannot afford right now.
So he launches into the elaborate, detailed ways that Miles fucked up one more universe, in how saving Inspector Singh has doomed Pavitr for all that the Society will try to save him, and why it must happen to him as well—he sees Gwen grimace and look away, the only other who has not yet lost her officer, but she understands.
They just need Miles to.
But Miles doesn't look like he will. He's watching Lyla's demonstrations, flashing colours reflecting off his eyes like a tempest-tossed lighthouse, but he's not present, in a way. Like he already knows what Miguel is going to say, and his mind was made up before.
And yeah. Miguel understands. There's not a universe in which Miles—in which any spiderfolk—would accept this without seeing why. Because they are always the first to throw themselves on the line, the first to sacrifice, and the thought that someone else must die is not so much foreign as antithetical. They will not allow it.
But that's why Miguel is here, then. That's what he's always had to be here.
Everything about the situation is fucked; he knows that, he gets that. The Canon Events are never something he's happy about, hardly welcome, because they're vicious and awful and cruel and necessary.
So he waits until the spiderfolk have gone through all their events, has experienced the heartache that being bitten brings them, and only then does he show them the Society proper. When they can understand, when the knowledge can be a balm to show them that they couldn't have done anything different. That it wasn't their fault.
But he can't, this time. Because Miles' father needs to die, and Miles is being told that before it happens.
On invisible cue from Lyla, the other spiderfolk he called in—because he knew, he knew, there's a reason he doesn't do this, there's a reason he waits—start emerging from the shadows. They stay quiet, stay slow, but they pour forward, silent and endless.
Miles watches them approach with something like weary resignation. He doesn't look surprised. "I'm going to save my father."
It echoes through the lab alongside the footsteps of all the other spiderfolk.
Miguel exhales. "I can't allow you to do that."
"I'm not asking,” he says, and there's a wry twist to his lips like there's a joke Miguel isn't privy to.
"Neither am I."
Miles looks at him. There's something almost like… disappointment in his eyes, which curls Miguel's gut more than hatred or rage. Like he expected this, but still hoped for something different. Like he knew.
"Yeah," he says, soft. "I know."
And there's a note there, weary and resigned, that keeps the hairs on the back of his neck alert.
But there is no time for second-guessing, not with a universe under the threat of collapse. So Miguel shifts, drags his fingers behind his back and tugs free an anomaly containment device from a hidden pocket.
Miles looks at him, still unsurprised, still disappointed, still old, and disappears.
There's a curse—from him, from Lyla, from Peter—and only a moment of confusion before Miguel hurls the shield, ears pricked and eyes locked onto the empty patch of tile. It clatters to the ground and crackles open; but there's nothing to contain. The ruby-red strands buzz and hiss angrily around empty air.
Miles is gone.
Voices erupt as everyone springs forward, webs firing through the air to trap who they know can go invisible; but they land on the opposite side unmoved. Despite the laser maze that's constructed itself throughout his lab in a manner of seconds, it touches on no one, catches on nothing. Even Miguel would be hard-pressed to move that fast, and that's if he knew it was coming—Miles shouldn't have. He shouldn't have known.
Miguel snarls, ripping a strand off his chest—he's stalking through the crowd, talons out and cleaving the web before him. Lyla's running interference behind him, since he's not in a particularly chatty mood and he'll be lisping worse than ever, but that doesn't fucking matter, because Miles got away and he shouldn't have known.
People come up to him, try to get his attention. He shoves them off and leaves the lab.
Miles, for all he's an apparent fucking genius, didn't do everything right—he left his day pass on and Lyla's tearing through the security networks to find the specific code at nearly the same speed as Miguel charging through the building. He lunges through the gated doorway to the Go Home machine, spooking Margo off her perch with a startled squawk—but it's closed. Deactivated. No Miles.
So where the fuck is he?
Lyla fritzes before him, mouth closed and eyes uncharacteristically serious—she leads him up twisting sets of stairs that should be locked and unknown until the warm, pollution-stained air of Nueva York bites at his face.
He's on the roof of HQ, a slant, steel-glass thing that towers over its surroundings like an obelisk of old, and sitting across from him, heels kicking over the side and hands resting behind his back, is Miles.
Miguel pauses.
He's got his talons extended, ready, ready, ready to save Earth-1610, but Miles isn't moving. Just sitting there, quiet, staring over the distant horizon.
At least, until he leans back, and he fixes those ancient, ancient eyes on Miguel. "Are you going to kill me?"
Miguel stiffens. "No," he says, and there's a note of frustration he can't chase out of his voice. Because of course you'd ask that to the Spiderman with organic webs and vampire fangs and unsheathed talons. But he's the good guy, holding together the multiverse with fractured scraps of control and whatever can be dredged out of the rotten rust of his fake life. "I'm trying to save your universe."
Miles just hums something under his breath and turns back to the horizon. It's nearing evening, the sunlight trying to peek past the holographic sky that hides all the pollution, and it catches on the edge of his face in gold-orange. He keeps staring.
The Go Home machine is empty. He hasn't taken a watch. He's not pleading to be sent back to his universe.
Miguel, who previously thought he held the cards in this situation, is watching them flutter away with an uncomfortable weight in his stomach. He pads forward, quiet, talons braced and ready to fire webs when necessary, but Miles hardly seems to react. Just keeps staring forward.
"I don't know why I came here," Miles says.
Miguel wants to ask for clarification—the roof, HQ, the multiverse, any or all—but he stays silent, shifting until he's an arm's reach away from the kid. Ready for anything to go down.
Miles doesn't. Just laughs a little, kicking his heels against the building.
"I mean. I guess I do. I've been– I've been thinking about what I'll have to do, to end this all. I keep trying to go through the same motions, the same events, because that way I can predict what happens and be better. But."
He looks at his hands, at the webslingers sitting over his palms. There's a world spinning beyond him, Nueva York in all its holographic glory, and he hardly seems to notice.
"If it hasn't worked before, it won't work next time," he says softly. "If I want to actually save the multiverse, I have to change things."
He's certainly fucking changing things. But Miguel thinks that's not what he means.
"So. I guess this was. Nostalgia, in a way. My last time seeing you guys like this, trying to make it as similar to the first time as I could. Though I don't think I fooled anyone. You all seemed to notice something." He shifts, turning back so he can look at Miguel. There's no fear, no worry in his eyes, even though there's an anomaly containment shield in a lab below and an army of spiderfolk still on the hunt for him. "I looked it up once; it's called breaking pattern. You guys couldn't figure out what was wrong, but you knew something was, huh?"
Lyla stays silent—he wishes he could too, but that's simply not the case this time. He needs to understand. "Morales–"
"It's funny," Miles interrupts, in the tone of voice that means it isn't funny at all, "but I think you'd already be free by now, wouldn't you? If you had been chosen. If it– I think you'd already have figured it out. Solved everything." He exhales, one hand rising to rub at his pulse point. His throat bobs as he swallows. "You're more willing to. To do things you don't want to do."
It could be about the Canon Events—it sounds like it—but still Miguel hesitates, rolling the words around his mind. Because it is and it isn't, and he feels like he's listening to a phone conversation where he can hear only one half. He's missing something vitally important, and he doesn't know what.
"I wish it came that easily to me," Miles admits. "I keep thinking the next run will be the time I try something different. That I won't follow the same beats I already know. But I just keep doing it."
Miguel's got static flickering in the edges of his hearing, hyperactive senses picking up the movement of other spiderfolk closing in on their location—moving slowly so as to not spook Miles, because Lyla is taking her time now that she knows how effective his invisibility is, but they won't get here faster than Miguel can react. When it comes to it, he will have to catch Miles, and it will fall to him.
And Miles, for some reason, keeps looking at him instead of running.
"I'd choose you, if I could. You'd be able to do this better. But.” He leans back, fingers biting at the steel hard enough it creaks. "I didn't have a choice on whether I would make a choice.”
Miles raises an arm, where a small scar, barely visible on his dark skin, sits over the back of his hand. Two small pinpricks.
"A choice on whether to be Spiderman, yeah. But not a choice on being bitten. On getting to make that choice. On getting to make this choice."
Miguel's gut clenches. He understands the feeling.
"I wish this hadn't happened to me," Miles says, and it sounds like a confession. "But– but if it hadn't, we'd all be dead. So." He turns his ancient eyes back to the horizon. "I'm happy it happened, too. I'd rather it be me than anyone else."
What's 'it'? Miguel wants to scream, wants to shake the kid by the shoulders until he answers—because it's not anything that's happened today. Mumbattan was a vicious battle but not the type that would have killed four spiderfolk in their prime, and the Spot, for all he's dangerous, is predictable insofar as he needs time to gather his power. He wouldn't have killed Miles or anyone today, not with his current strength. What could possibly be the thing that kills them all? Why does Miles think it will?
Why is any of this being spoken about?
"I'm going to go see my dad,” Miles says, leaning back. His eyes reflect Nueva York's skylights like a million distant stars. "Spend one last night with him, yeah? Before I change everything.”
Ah. There it is.
And Miguel is almost glad, in a twisted, agonized way, because this is at least familiar territory; somewhere he's got his feet beneath him. He's glad he's telling a kid his father needs to die, because at least here, he understands.
That old, familiar grief writhes in his stomach.
"I can't let you do that, Morales."
Miles laughs a little. "I know."
He stands, unfolding from the edge of the roof, and turns to Miguel, but not in the manner of squaring up for a fight; his shoulders are hunched, eyes downcast. He looks like he's giving up.
Maybe he was talking about the Canon Events, about the inevitability of this pain that they all have to carry along with their powers. Maybe that was his way of coping with everything that'll happen. So Miguel, though he keeps his talons out and feet braced, allows Miles to get closer.
There's the briefest, softest touch on his wrist—and then, quite suddenly, Miguel is on his side, gasping for breath through a chest that only inflates halfway. Sparks flash across his vision like dying stars, a dryness bundled around his tongue like cotton—but no pain. Just–
Just frozen. Paralyzed.
Instantly.
"Took me forever to figure that one out,” Miles says, rolling his shoulders back like he's shaking out a tight muscle, not like he just paralyzed Miguel in one second. "Hardlight's a bitch to fight, y'know?" He huffs. "Of course you know. You definitely designed it that way.”
Lyla blitzes overhead, display glitching through a variety of postures all more incensed than the last, mouth moving a million miles a minute. Miles peers at her, a little fond, and holds up a hand—a hand currently holding Miguel's watch.
Both she and Miguel freeze.
Miles slips it onto his own wrist, tightening it with a click of his tongue. Lyla disappears with a tap of a button, arms waving frantically above her head before something swallows her code and shuffles her out of the access point.
Fingers moving frankly much too fast, Miles whips through the screens, types in Miguel's authentication without blinking, and starts prodding through various security holograms. Authorization codes are brought up and bypassed, passwords dozens of characters long inputted without hesitation, until a holographic map of the multiverse spirals above his wrist. He hums something under his breath and flicks through them until he arrives at Earth-1610, tapping neatly on the display and diving back into the code.
"Access to my universe will come back in three days, when the fight happens,” he says, damn near conversationally. "Don't bother trying to go before. You tend to fray a few holes in the time-space whatever, and it'll only get you there a day earlier. Not really worth it.”
He taps a few more things and a portal crackles to life, spiraling against the roof in every shade of fire; Miguel can see a glimmer of concrete rooftops and graffiti-light beyond, the same that appears on his monitors, the same he's forbidden everyone from traveling to. The dimension where Jefferson Morales is still alive.
"Next time,” Miles says, and he's fifteen. He's fifteen and Miguel has to keep thinking that, because Miles' eyes are aching and weary and ancient. "Next time it'll be different. I don't know what I'll do, but I'm glad we had this talk, y'know? Makes it. Easier.” He laughs a little. "Not that this is ever easy.”
Miguel lies there, stuck on his side, eyes wide and staring upright. The faux sun casts a halo behind the kid's—the kid, he's a kid, why isn't he a kid—head, bright and brilliant.
Miles, he tries to say.
"Next time it'll be different,” Miles says to the portal, gold-orange splashing over his face. In a brief flash, fast enough he can think he imagined it, he sees an enormous, fractaling web spreading out behind the boy. "But thank you for listening, Miguel.”
And then Miles Morales steps through the portal, and he is gone.
Miguel stares at where the light was, Nueva York glimmering beyond; he can still hear the echoes of the portal, the remaining thrum of the multiverse stitching itself back together. Other spiderfolk will be closing in soon, able to get him a new watch, able to try traveling to Earth-1610—but some part of him knows it's useless. Some part of him knows that it doesn't matter.
Miles Morales is gone.
Something is wrong.