The aftermath
Miles didn’t know when he started moving, but he did.
Immediately running to the rubble and destruction that awaited, his father was safe it seemed, but he was too panicked to go to him.
Miguel just got buried alive in front of him, and this is no small building in the works, this isn’t the same situation as the one that happened in earth-42, this is an entire half of a skyscraper falling right on top of his head.
He lands on top of the wreckage and starts digging hysterically, removing as much ruins as he could.
The world is ringing around him, his breathing does nothing but quicken, his vision Blurs.
He prays that maybe just maybe, Miggy would emerge unharmed from under,but that hope gets stomped on every single second that passes, and there’s no sight of his friend.
He can vaguely hear the sound of people talking from afar, but he doesn’t care, he needs to get him out of there, wherever he is.
He can’t let another Spider-Man die.
Cause all he sees right now is Peter, his Peter, on the brink of death while he just watched there helplessly.
He could’ve done something, he could’ve helped, he could’ve attempted to destroy the collider then and there, but he didn’t, and Peter paid the price, and now Miguel is paying the same price too.
If he never asked him for help, if he stayed at the apartment and listened to him, if he just-
He felt someone grab him from the soldier and pull him back.
“Nononono! He’s there! He’s- he’s trapped- he’s gonna die!”.
Whoever was holding him said something, but he didn’t hear them, he couldn’t hear them, he needed to get down there and do something.
But whoever they were, they pulled him back further and wrapped their arms around him.
“Miles, Miles calm down” he managed to hear as he was struggling to get out of the person’s grip.
Someone taller was next to them, he screamed into his watch.
“Lyla, call backup now! And alert them of the situation”.
“It’s gonna be okay, we’re gonna get him out”, the person said, and it finally registered to him that it was Peter B, “you’re gonna keep hurting yourself if you keep going like this”.
And suddenly, Miles finally started to register the stinging pain originating from his arm, all that digging, he was too worried to notice how much debris and metal was scratching at him and harming him.
He started shaking and he wrapped his arm around Peter in an attempt at seeking comfort.
Orange flashed at his peripheral vision and he saw a lot of spider people emerging from the portals and running past them.
“We’re gonna find him”.
—-
Normally finding someone under wreckage can take days, but given the futuristic technology that the spider used, they managed to find Miguel in an hour max.
But to their dismay, he wasn’t in the greatest condition, it’s a wonder he’s still alive, completely unconscious and barely breathing, but still alive, if that was a normal human being under there, he would’ve died on impact alone.
They hurried him over to the society’s medbay, and immediately started working on his wounds and broken bones, trying their best to keep him alive till he stabilized.
It was advised for Miles to not follow, so he stayed on his earth, he explained everything to his parents.
Told them the truth, of his real identity, and everything that’s been going on.
They didn’t revive the news so positively, but that’s all because of worry, they tried to reason him out of being Spider-Man, they were worried about him getting hurt, but none of it worked, he was determined, so they dropped it.
“As long as it makes you happy, just be careful out there,” his mom said.
He took her and his father into a hug.
“Yeah, I will”.
There was a beat of silence.
“And you’re grounded for a year” his dad said, and Miles laughed.
—-
It’s been a week since the whole thing, Miggy still hasn’t woken up, but at least he was stable, he barely managed to pull through, crashing two times in the first day when they just rescued him and got him to the society’s medical quarter.
Now he’s covered in casts and bandages, sound asleep on a hospital bed while Miles sat beside him drawing on a sketchbook.
He broke a lot of bones, the doctors said, which makes sense, he already heard that they found him stuck under a huge piece of debris, they had to do surgeries on him too, it makes him shudder, at least Miguel wasn’t awake to feel anything or experience anything.
Which also brings Miles to his next thought.
They said that they have no idea when he’ll wake up.
Miggy’s healing factor wasn’t functioning, it was said that the whole hour he was under the rubble, his body, or healing factor, has been working harder to actually keep him afloat for as much time as possible.
It over exerted itself to the point it stopped working.
Which means that his healing process is gonna take longer than the average Spider-Man and be more like the average human being.
So basically, Miggy is in a comatose state, and it could take from weeks to months for him to wake, even years if it’s really bad, and that makes Miles really scared.
What about the people in Miggy’s universe? What about his family and friends, how would they feel when he just disappears out of nowhere for years possibly.
He doesn’t want to dwell on that thought, so he draws more and more into his sketchbook while he just sits there and listens to the heart monitor beat in a stable rhythm.
He doesn’t plan on leaving in case Miggy wakes up, he doesn’t want him to wake alone, that could be traumatic! He’s pretty sure that he read about it somewhere.
Suddenly his phone buzzes and it’s his mother calling him for dinner, he picks up his sketchbook and markers and leaves the room.
He’ll come back tomorrow.
—-
It’s been a month, no sign of Miggy waking up nor his healing factor getting back to work.
And he also got banned from visiting, only allowed at certain dates and times, he really doesn't understand why they care about his academic life so much, so what if his grades are falling? Not like the guilt in his chest will ever go away.
Because it is his fault isn’t it?
Miguel never had to go through this, but he did, and it’s his fault.
He spends the rest of the day distracting himself with homework, hanging out with his other spider friends or beating up villains.
Without underestimating them.
He is never making that mistake ever again.
—-
Two months.
He’s still not awake.
On the bright side, they removed most of his casts and bandages given how most of his injuries healed, some of them even leaving some scars that Miles thinks are super cool looking.
Even if the story behind them isn’t.
However an update was brought up in the first few days entering the second month, as it seemed that the injuries that still haven’t healed yet started doing so at an abnormal speed, not quite like the average human being, but more like that the average Spider-Man.
His healing factor was finally back at play, and maybe that finally mean something.
They can only stay hopeful.
—-
His body felt really heavy, and he doesn’t know why.
His eyelids were even heavier, but he managed to open a crack then immediately closed his eyes given the light that shined through.
He was about to tell Lyla to lower the light to half, but the word died in his tongue, he couldn’t speak for some reason, and it was still very hard for him to move a finger.
He doesn’t understand why.
He panicked a little, listening to his surroundings, pretending to still be unconscious in case he was kidnapped or drugged or something.
He heard beeping in the room, something like a heart monitor, and even the smell of this place…
Is he in a hospital?
He cracked his eyes open again, this time squinting so he could at least look around, and his thoughts were confirmed, he did seem to be in a hospital somewhere.
Or an Alchemax lab.
Which would make this worse, and just the thought made him panic a little, the beeping on the monitor getting a bit quick.
The beeping seemed to attract the attention of someone who was in the room with him, immediately getting up to check on the monitor and then realizing that his eyes were open.
They also were wearing some sort of Spider-Man mask. And some medical clothing too.
They gasped.
“You’re awake!”. The person said, “hold on, I'll be right back”. They said before running outside leaving him on his own, a few minutes pass and they return with another person in medical wear.
They start asking him to do a few commands, to which he follows, talk about things that he didn’t really pick up on, they make a call on a watch, then finally explain the situation to him.
—-
It’s been a week since he woke up, and apparently he was in a coma.
At first he was confused, but as the days went by he started to recall what happened before the lights went out.
The spot, the spider society, the dimension hopping, Miles’s father, Miles.
All of that started coming back to him, and he wondered where Miles is right now, he asked about his father, he’s alive, and things are getting back to normal in Miles’s universe.
He wonders how his own universe is doing without him there, obviously no one missed Miguel O’hara, but downtown could be set back to zero without Spider-Man to help, the flyboys might be taking advantage of his lack of presence there.
Shock he didn’t even think about the probability of them finding out about his identity for the fact that Miguel O’hara and Spider-Man disappeared on the same day.
That’s a problem he’s gonna need to deal with…
—-
He was still in bed when his hearing picked up on some footsteps that stopped right in front of the door, and waited there.
He did get a bunch of visitors in the span of this week, his counterpart was here a few days ago, then there was the heroic age Spider-Man, who really insisted to just call him Peter.
Pav brought him some Chai.
Gwen passed by.
But these footsteps weren’t theirs, the person then kept pacing in front of the door, which prompted him to finally talk.
“You do realize I can hear you right?” He said and the footsteps came to a halt, he could hear them backing away and he sighed, “just come in Miles, I don’t bite”.
He heard a sigh, a deep breath, then the door opened.
“You know, it’s funny, Peter said the same thing about Miguel” Miles finally spoke with a little chuckle, a very nervous chuckle, while he entered the room.
“I heard you woke up!” He said.
“I have, like a week ago, but yeah”.
“Yeah…” Miles shifted nervously, “so… are you okay?”.
“Could be better” he replied, and the room lapsed to silence once again, very awkward silence, it reached the point that it became unbearable for Miles, and he finally gave in.
“Listen Miguel, I am so sorry- I- I shouldn’t have dragged you into all of this, and- and you got all hurt and injured, and it’s my fault, I should’ve kept you out of this, I should’ve-“ Before he could finish a web was shot at his face, shutting him up, and Miguel was looking at him with an unimpressed look.
“You apologize too much,” Miguel said when Miles stared at him confused, “It’s not a big deal” he said, and Miles’s eyes shifted to frustration before he ripped the web from his mouth.
“Yes it is a big deal!” He said, “Miguel you were comatose for two months and a half! You don’t just wake up from a coma and say ‘oh it’s not a big deal’!”.
“It really isn’t though, I’m awake now aren’t I?”
“You could’ve not been!”.
“But I am”.
“You don’t understand!” Miles said, tears threatening to fall from his eyes, “you almost died! You got crashed under a fucking skyscraper! Your heart stopped beating two times! You got injured so badly that your healing factor just stopped working, that’s not normal, you don’t just lose your healing factor like that!” The tears finally spilled, “I thought that you weren’t gonna wake up, at some point I genuinely believed that you were gonna stay like this for years, do you know how long a person can go under a coma? You could’ve been out for decades!”.
Miles took a second to draw in a shaky breath, a sob escaping him.
“Miles-“.
“I thought that I killed you…” he cut him off.
“Miles.”
“And I’m so sorry, if I never asked for your help, if I just was more careful-“
“Miles!”.
Miles closed his eyes and looked at the ground.
“Look at me kid” Miguel said and Miles lifted his eyes to meet another red pair that looked at him sympathetically.
“It wasn’t your fault-“.
“It is! I know it is-“.
“It’s not.” Miguel cut him off firmly, “I’m the one that made the choices that led me here, I’m the one that agreed to help you out in the first place, I could’ve said no, but I agreed, it was my choice”.
“But-“.
“And I’m also the one that made the choice to pull that stunt, you had no say in it, it was my choice and my choice alone, do not blame yourself for my reckless decisions” he assured, “nobody is responsible over my choices and actions but me, you hear me?”.
“…”
“It’s not your fault, and I won’t stop saying it until you’re convinced, got it?”.
Miles nodded slightly, it was small but it was there, and the. They stood there in silence once again, before Miles out of nowhere crashed into Miguel with a hug, one that he wasn’t expecting but welcomed nonetheless.
Miguel could feel his clothes getting damper with tears.
He doesn’t say anything about it, god knows how long the kid needed to let it out.
—-
A melody somewhere in the multiverse rang before it halted to a beep.
“The number you’re trying to call isn’t available at the moment, please leave a message after the beep” rang the voice of Lyla.
There was a sigh on the Calling side.
“Hey Miguel, it’s Gabriel, although you might already know that, holos am I right? Heh… it’s been over two months and I have no idea if you’re even receiving these messages, but if you do, please respond, shit hit the fan ever since you left and… and downtown really needs its friendly neighborhood Spider-Man back… and I need Miguel O’hara back… at least respond so I’d know that you’re not dead in a ditch somewhere… I love you, I really do, bye…”.