I have a bad feeling about this
“Parker.”
Peter is jolted out of his thoughts like someone pulled the gravity out from under him.
He had been watching the stars again, or rather, the blurry haze of them through the ship’s side panel. His breath had started fogging the glass, and he didn’t even realize how long he’d been standing there, zoned out, until Dr. Strange’s voice snapped through the quiet like a whip.
Dr. Strange walks toward him, boots silent on the cracked ground. The Cloak of Levitation hovers behind him like a loyal, eerie shadow. He moves with purpose, but Peter catches it — that flicker behind his eyes. It’s like seeing a chess master just realize they might lose.
Strange’s expression is unreadable, but his eyes linger on Peter a little too long, like he’s debating whether or not to speak at all.
“I need you to do me a favor,” he says finally.
Peter, despite everything, perks up. His eyes flash with that eager, can-do energy that has somehow survived space travel, an alien planet, and the weight of the universe pressing down on his skinny shoulders.
“Sure! What do you—OW.”
Peter yelps as Strange reaches out and — very deliberately — plucks a hair from the crown of his head.
“Dude! I need that, you know!” He rubs the spot, eyes wide, staring at the older man in disbelief. “Can’t just yoink my DNA, man, that’s weird!”
But Strange isn’t listening. His fingers are already glowing, but the color is strange — not the familiar ember-orange of his usual spellwork, but something dimmer. Subtler. A yellowish hue, almost like candlelight on the verge of flickering out.
Peter watches, frowning. His brow furrows as the silence stretches.
Strange exhales, slowly. His posture seems to deflate just a bit. The lines around his eyes crease deeper. The spell took something from him—Peter doesn’t know what, but he can see it. A weariness that wasn’t there a second ago.
“Thank you, Parker,” Strange says.
Peter squints at him. “You’re… welcome?”
His voice pitches up at the end like it’s a question. Because it is. The confusion grows louder in his chest, tangled with the persistent buzzing of his spider-sense—which has not shut up all day—and a creeping sense of being left out of a conversation he doesn’t even know is happening.
He rubs the back of his head again. It still tingles.
“What was that for?” he asks. “You didn’t just curse me or something, right? I’m not gonna grow an extra arm?”
Strange doesn’t answer. He turns and walks away.
Peter watches him go, a strange knot forming in his stomach.
Later—
Peter’s eyes widen as the blue portal blazes into existence, a swirl of impossible geometry and starlight tearing itself open in midair. He squints into it and instantly regrets it.
He nearly faints when he sees the huge purple alien, built like the forbidden love child of a brick wall and the Kool-aid man. He pushes the fear down and starts to run over the plan in his head.
“They called me a madman.”
*Yeah, I wonder why.* Peter thinks. His spider-sense is itching for a fight, but the whole… thing… with Dr Strange has him on edge. And Mr Stark keeps giving him funny looks, the kind of looks that a doctor gives a dying patient. The looks that Aunt May gave Uncle Ben no. There’s no time to think about that. Genocidal purple alien straight ahead.
Tony nods to Peter and starts propelling a huge chunk of debris towards Thanos.
And so it begins.