Miguel took in a shaky breath, his chest gurgling with the wind that found its way into him.
That was the first thing he heard when he came to; jagged, uneven breathing that sounded like it was breaching a thick film of mucus and blood to force air into battered lungs. As far as he was concerned, for those first few minutes of reconnecting with the earth, that was all there was; his dim consciousness, and a fucked up pair of lungs.
Upon making his return to earth, he realized that those were his lungs.
His eyes flew open, making violent contact with the scorching brightness of a cloudless sky. He could have been in any dimension, and he wouldn’t have been able to guess its name or number. Whatever had knocked Miguel on ass this bad was pretty adept, because the world only managed to come back to him in pieces despite his eyes being open wide enough.
“Lyla,” Miguel tried. His voice came out raw and unfamiliar, like it had no home in his chest. “Where are we?”
Lyla appeared above Miguel’s head. She was strolling in the air like the birds that flew in circles around Wile E Coyote’s head when he’d had an anvil dropped on him, typing something on a holographic phone. Probably tweeting. Or texting Peter. “Earth 16061, why do you— ask…”
Her voice trailed off when she looked down at Miguel from where she stood. “Shit,” the AI remarked. She dropped her phone, and it crumbled like a thousand grains of sand at her feet. “Shit, shit, shit.”
Miguel tried to push himself up off of the ground with one arm, but was met with a searing pain in his shoulder. It felt like an ungodly amount of pressure, muscle spasming against and contorting around the rawness of the pain. He tried to suppress the groan that was forcing its way out of his chest, but gave in and yelped like a kicked puppy when he hit the ground again.
“Don’t move!” Lyla shouted at him just before he could crane his neck to see how badly he was hurt. The spike of adrenaline that came with the fear in Lyla’s voice made Miguel’s stomach turn over. He froze like a deer in headlights, unsure of why the assistant was screaming at him.
They locked eyes. Lyla was covering her mouth in shock with one hand, and reaching out to Miguel with the other as though she could touch him. “Miguel. Please don’t move. Please.” She begged.
Taken aback by how serious she sounded for once in her eternal computer-life, Miguel obliged. “What is it?” He asked, voice softened by fear. “What’s wrong?”
Lyla swallowed hard. “Jess is close, her bike is running. I’m gonna get her on the line and tell her to come help you out, okay?”
“Lyla, what is wrong?”
Lyla jumped in place as if to release anxiety, shook her hands, and smoothed out her hair. “Your shoulder, Miggs— Don’t look. Don’t look— there’s a four foot rod going straight through it. You’re bleeding, bad.”
Miguel’s stomach turned over at the thought of it, suddenly understanding Lyla’s demands that he didn’t move or look at the wound in his shoulder. By some great stroke of luck, Miguel had found himself impaled.
In the distance, he could hear what he hoped to be Jess’s bike nearing. The hum sounded rather familiar, though so far off that he had to strain his ears and close his eyes to hear it. However far away she was, he hoped that she’d hurry.
Lyla tried to keep him talking, clearly worried about what would happen if he blacked out again. Which was unfortunate: the sweet release of unconsciousness would likely feel a lot better than this, but Miguel didn’t have the mental fortitude to tune her out at the moment. So answering the typical “where were you born” and “what is your full name” questions were, in essence, his only option.
“¿Tío?” A small voice came from behind him. Miguel could hear the sound of Jess’s motor bearing in the distance, but relief rushed over him at the sound of another human’s voice. Miles, by the sound of it, was a few feet away from him.
He shouted after Miguel upon spotting him. Remembering the predicament he was in, he said something back a little noncommittally about how he shouldn’t come any closer. Miguel had yet to look at his shoulder in attempts to avoid moving at all, but based on Lyla’s reaction, he was certain it wasn’t a pretty sight.
Despite Miguel’s warning, the kid came closer and took stock of the situation. “Oh… oh shit.”
Based on the way everyone swore upon seeing the wound, Miguel was certain it was as bad as Lyla thought. But now, laying here and phasing in and out of reality, Miguel was starting to realize that other parts of his body hurt too. A little less, of course, but dying by a thousand cuts was a stupid way to go when you were Spider-Man. A radiating pain that felt like a burn in his calf, some weird kind of burning in his side; he was sure it looked as bad as it felt.
Miles stooped to his side and said something Miguel didn’t really catch. His lungs gurgles, his ribcage rattled, and although he tried to ignore it, he was bleeding to death.
That hum got closer, and Miguel was excited to finally see Jess. Jess would know what to do, she always knew what to do.
Oh, joy. Que Marvailla. Excellent. Fantastic. It wasn’t Jess. The details of the FUBAR mission came rushing back to Miguel as soon as he saw that hovering platform with Pavitr and Gwen in pursuit. A Green Goblin from 18108 wreaking havoc in 16061. Should have, could have been an easy capture and release operation, a routine one that these kids had done on their own before. Jess and Miguel there to supervise.
But this Goblin was clever, tried to take out Miguel first. Drop a few bombs, divide and conquer the team, and he could wreak as much havoc on this dimension as he wanted.
Pavi and Gwen were struggling with wrangling him, and Miles took note of him. Clearly he was thinking, trying to decide if protecting Miguel or taking out the anomaly was more important. A spark escaped Miles’ fingertips as he considered.
“Go,” Miguel managed. If they couldn’t take out the anomaly themselves, those two kids could wind up like him or worse. They needed Miles on their side. “Help them. I’m not gonna go anywhere.”
Miles just nodded, and Miguel figured the situation was too dire for the joke to land. He swung away, electrifying Goblin’s platform upon landing. With Miles help, the three of them got to cleaning up the situation, and Miguel went back to slowly dying.
He was jolted out of his haze of questions about his favorite color and mothers maiden name when Gwen was thrown to his side. She rebounded immediately, swinging back into the fight, though clearly tired. Miguel blinked hazily at the form of the Goblin’s platform. Miles electrocution had seemed to faze him, but in totality, not done enough to end the fight.
Miguel flexed his claws in his working arm. If Miguel could just get up there, he could use his claws and spinnerets to rip the thing apart, and the last of his team could move in for capture. The only issue was when he told Miles he wasn’t going anywhere, he meant it.
A bomb went off, and Pavitr stumbled a few feet off. Change of plans. Maybe Miguel was really hurt, maybe he’d be out of commission for a while, maybe, if he lost his grip on reality again, he’d die. But one way or another, these kids were going home to their parents. He didn’t care how.
Miguel took a deep breath, preparing himself for the onslaught of pain he knew was coming. Turning his head, he looked at the rod tearing through his shoulder; his suit’s holographics crackled around the edges of the wound. It had dark blood trickling, and despite it going straight through his shoulder, the wound was fairly clean.
Miguel could do this, easy.
“Miguel, what are you doing?” Lyla demanded.
“Don’t worry about it,” Miguel waved her off with his good arm. He gripped the rod and began to pull himself up, a searing hot pain erupting in his shoulder and spreading down the entire left side of his body. Growling against the pain, he shifted so that he could use his legs for more leverage. With Lyla begging him to quit, and a new stream of blood gurgling and trickling down his skin, Miguel paused for a second and blinked hard, preparing himself for the worst of hit.
“Miguel, stop it!” Lyla shouted.
“Shut up,” he snapped. Maybe Miguel should have listened to Lyla more often; after all, she was designed to give the best advice in any given situation. That is, the best advice that would help Miguel execute a goal, and the goal right now was to stay alive. To Lyla, at least.
But Miguel was Spider-Man, and Spider-Man would do something stupid to save some kids.
Miguel squeezed his eyes shut and grit his teeth so hard that he heard a crack. Pushing as hard as he could, he eased himself up off the metal rod and found himself free. Falling forward, he let out a roar of pain, the phantom sensation of the jagged end of the rod scraping against the inside of his shoulder still raw and blazing against his flesh.
C’mon, he thought to himself. All this effort to get free, just one more big burst of energy, and the mission was finished. Just get it over with.
Using his good arm, Miguel shot a web and went coasting towards the bottom of the Goblin’s platform. Miles landed at the same time as him, and they locked eyes. “Man what the hell are you doing?” He demanded.
Miguel flexed his claws and ripped up a metal panel before driving his spinneret into some of the tech on sides, ripping into it like it were paper. “Finishing the mission. Keep him busy.”
Miles, unable to argue with the certainty in Miguel’s voice, did as told. With just one arm and his fangs, Miguel ripped the platform to bits, reducing it to scrap metal. A boom went off, somewhere below, and Miles cried out.
Losing all impulses self preservation, Miguel went after Miles. Flexing his claws on all 20 digits, he ripped across the flying platform and jumped. His lunge was enough to rip out wiring in the platform, and it began to fall from the sky in a tailspin.
Extending his injured arm, Miguel webbed miles and pulled him towards his body in mid-air, cradling him close. Miguel’s eyes darted around the horizon as they fell in search of something to swing towards, and all that he could find was a mass of rubble, flickering with electricity. Out of options, Miguel shot a web and pulled them towards the rubble.
Miguel’s body collided with with the rubble, and a teeth chattering pain reverberated through his entire body. His vision was spotty, and his ears were ringing, but looking down beside him, he was satisfied that Miles was mostly unscathed.
Good. Miguel thought to himself. You did good.
Miguel was starting to realize why Lyla was yelling at him like that. Laying limp in the rubble, staring at the sky, Miguel started to worry that he was dying, finally. His entire body hurt like hell, and upon taking stock of his body, he realized that his left arm was totally immovable.
“Hail Mary, full of Grace, the lord is with thee, Blessed art thou among women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus,” Miguel muttered to himself. There were so many spots in his vision, and his eyes were rolling in their sockets so hard that Miguel became concerned that if he were put to sleep by loss of consciousness, he wouldn’t wake up again. “Holy Mary, mother of God, pray for us sinners now, and at the hour of death. Hail Mary, Hail Mary.” If Miguel was gonna die, here and now, he figured he may as well have done it the way his mother taught him; like a good altar boy.
“Miguel!” Miles shouted, pulling him out of his feverish prayer. Gwen and Pavi fell to his side along with Miles. Instead of pulling him up from the ground, they started compressing his shoulder and his side. Miguel let out a roar that completely failed to sound human upon the contact with his injured flesh.
“We need a med evac, if we move him he will die,” Gwen assumed full control of the situation, commanding Miles to use webbing to temporarily close his wounds and slow the bleeding. “Miles, don’t take any pressure off of that wound. He bleeds any more, he’s dead.” Silent, though just barely conscious, Miguel found himself proud of Gwen. Jess was a great teacher.
“Jess,” Miguel managed. His voice was weak and small, but insistent. “Where’s Jess? I want—“
Miguel gasped for air. One of his ribs had to be broken. Or maybe two. “She’s on her way, Miguel. Try not to talk, you have a lot of blood in your chest.” Gwen tried her best to be a comfort, but it wasn’t much help. Dying without seeing his best friend didn’t sound very nice, and who else would send his regards to Gabriel? Or Peter and MJ?
As he bled out, Miguel found himself thinking about Mayday. Miguel had let himself get a little too attached to the toddler, and now he realized that Peter would have to explain to her that he was gone and not coming back, but that it was more complicated than abandoning her. She wouldn’t think that Miguel abandoned her, would she? Mayday seemed too young to really grasp the concept of death.
Death, kids… Miguel was about to die in front of these kids. That had to be, like, really traumatizing. They’d probably blame themselves if he gave up the ghost right here and now. Maybe they’d see his corpse in their dreams, maybe they’d be to ashamed to go to his funeral. Being Spider-Man kinda sucked.
Miguel’s thoughts regarding his mortality were interrupted when a hand tapped the side of his face, and suddenly, he was pulled back into his body. His lashes fluttered, and above him was Jess. “Hey, Miggs.” She ran her fingers through his hair and smiled at him, clearly trying to be a comfort. He didn’t realize that he was crying until she used her thumbs to swipe away the tears that were streaming down his face.
“You know what to tell Gabi? And Peter?” Miguel muttered. His head lolled as he spoke, and his eyes cast towards the skyline. Sunset. Good ambiance.
Jess grabbed Miguel’s face and shook her head, forcing him to look at her. Somewhere nearby, Miguel felt the pull of a portal opening. “No way in hell I’m letting you die.”
Miguel grinned a bloody smile at her, somewhat amused by her confidence. He trusted her, though, and he kept his eyes open and on her as the med evac transferred him onto a stretcher and rushed him away.
As they rushed him through the halls of the medical wing. Someone demanded three bags of AB- blood and what sounded like enough morphine to kill a horse. In his haze, he found himself on oxygen, being intubated with something else, and having a series of heart monitors placed on him. Here, with Jess at his side, he was fine with falling away.
***
There were a lot of beeping machines and blinking lights surrounding Miguel. He started out dimly aware of them, his seemingly endless rest being only a little disturbed by them. Slowly, they became louder, and louder, pulling him to the surface of consciousness.
He breathed it all in at once. It hurt.
His body hurt more than anything else. Incessant burning on the most damaged parts of his skin, a return of the rattling in his lungs, and an absolutely hellish pain in his shoulder. The mix of burning and aching was almost unbearable, but he was sure it could be far, far worse. He was probably higher than a damn kite right now.
“Morning, sleeping beauty— well, evening,” Jess said from his bedside. Miguel turned his head and took in the sight of her. Solace overtook him, he was so glad to see her that it ached like an elbow into sore muscle. When he let go of consciousness on that stretcher, he was letting go of his life; trusting that someone would either catch it for him or let him die. Miguel was unsure he’d ever see Jess again, and here she was. Waiting for him.
He looked his comrade over with soft eyes, wishing to God he could stand up and hug her. “What’s the damage?”
Jess got up and walked to the foot of his bed, grabbing a clipboard and sitting on the edge. She flipped through a few pages and got to reading. “3 cracked ribs, lacerated spinal column, ‘severe damage to the left shoulder—‘ honestly, that needs its own page— a concussion, bleeding to the brain, a 2nd degree burn on the right side of the upper abdomen, and dumb fucking idiot disorder,” Jess read. She placed the clipboard back where she found it and sat cross legged at the foot of Miguel’s bed. “Also, they tested your hemoglobin level, you’re at around 5 out of 14. They held testing off until yesterday because you lost so much blood they didn’t wanna take any from you.”
“Shit. How long was I out?”
“78 hours. They induced a coma so your body could focus on healing— feeding tube, oxygen, a ton of blood— you got the works, Miguel. Oh and you broke a tooth.”
“What happened while I was out?”
Jess didn’t say anything, and Miguel stared at the ceiling blankly for a moment, blinking hard at the sensation of the fluorescent lights burning his eyes. Miguel already knew that he’d be out of commission for a while, but he didn’t know it was that bad. Sure, Jess was probably running the place like the goddamn army while he was out, but he couldn’t imagine having to just lay down for an extended period of time. This was the opposite of relaxing, in fact, Miguel felt like it was something like torture—
“Miguel.” Jess pulled him out of his whirlpool of thoughts and shifted closer to him. She grabbed his hand and looked him dead in his eyes, looking lethally serious. “You almost died.”
“I know. I thought I would.”
She shook her head at him and rubbed the heels of her palms into her eyes. “You don’t get it, Miguel— I didn’t know if you would. I was scared. You know your heart stopped beating twice? They had to put you in a coma so your body wouldn’t kill itself and— and look at you. The fact that this isn’t the first time I’ve seen you with a feeding tube is fucking ridiculous. All to finish the mission? You were being reckless.”
“Would you not have done the same?” Miguel snapped. Reckless? Miguel hadn’t met one version of himself or any other spider that wasn’t reckless. “The mission was fucked, Jess. I had to do something.”
“There’s a difference between doing something and acting like a fucking idiot. That was suicide, Miguel.”
“So what would you have done?”
“Stayed pinned to the ground where I got myself impaled in the first place!”
“You think it was a choice? You think I did it on purpose?” Miguel shouted. He braced against the cracking feeling in his lungs.
“I think that you were trying to kill yourself!”
Miguel bared his fangs and hissed at Jess. His pupils were constricted, claws in his good hand flexed. His expression read with pure ire, and Jess reared at him.
Without saying a word, Jess got up and moved to his bedside table. Miguel’s eyes followed her the whole way there, sparking with a feral looking rage. Instead of continuing, she grabbed the needle-gun with one hand and rolled up Miguel’s sleeve with the other, dosing him with his medication.
Miguel’s pupil’s blew wide, and his muscles relaxed. He fell slack against his pillow, face paled, and the pair sat in silence for a second. The only noise between them was Jess setting down the gun and Miguel’s labored breathing as the medicine worked its way into his bloodstream. Slowly, his heartbeat lowered. His claws disappeared, and he got back to staring at the ceiling.
Jess leaned against the bedside table with her arms crossed. “Sorry.”
“No, don’t be. I’m sorry— too… too angry,” Miguel said softly, clearly ashamed of himself. He bit down on inside of his mouth, counting his the sound of his heartbeats and trying to find the right thing to say. Instead, he just repeated himself. “I’m sorry.”
Jess sighed. “I don’t know what I would have said to Gabriel if you died, you know.”
Miguel’s throat got tight, his eyes getting cloudy with tears. A while back, when Jess became his right hand through some way or another, they drunkenly agreed to be shovel buddies, to handle one another’s affairs in death. In this line of work, you needed one of those. But Miguel realized, laying their exhausted from his brush with death, that if it had been Jess in that hospital bed instead of him, he wouldn’t know what to say to her husband. If they had put Jess in a coma, and given her that much blood, and hooked her up to a feeding tube and oxygen, his hair surely would turn gray.
“I wasn’t trying to kill myself, and I didn’t care if we finished the mission,” Miguel decided aloud. His voice wavered as he spoke, thick with tears. “I— they’re just kids, Jess. And I don’t know, maybe they could have handled it, but I would rather die than have to tell their parents what happened. I would.”
Miguel looked up at Jess, and she looked down at him. Tears streamed down both of their faces, though, Jess cried silently. She always did.
“I wouldn’t wish that kind of pain on anyone else,” Miguel said.
Jess fell to his side and held him close. They sat like that for a while, crying and shaking in one another’s arms, desperate to endure the grief wrought on by Miguel’s admission. Pulling away gently, Miguel used his thumbs to wipe away Jess’s tears, repaying her for the loving act she’d done him earlier on. It was a familiar feeling, wiping away someone’s tears. It felt like poking a fresh bruise, and though it hurt more than anything Miguel could have imagined, he was grateful he could do it for Jess.
Jess laughed quietly through a choking sob, and leaned back. “Look at us,” she gestured towards the space between them. “What’s wrong with us? Why are we like this?”
Miguel gave her a smile. It was wry from disuse, but warmer than sun baked sand. “It’s because we have problems.”
“A whole lot of them.”