Back In the Atmosphere (Reunited)
"You better not go see that boy."
"Wha–no. Are you kidding? Why would I ever—"
"Gwen." Jessica snapped, "I mean it."
Gwen sighed, reaching up with her free hand to tug on one of the strands of pinkish-blonde hair in front of her face. “Okay…so what’s up?”
"Peter from Earth-13122 reported vague signatures of a potentially powerful anomaly to Miguel. I wouldn't be giving you this talk if you hadn't been so insistent in taking on the mission to Earth-1610," the furrow in Jessica’s brow slightly deepened, her fingernails slightly digging into Gwen's wrist as she firmly pressed the coordinates on her watch. "But if you're not doing it for Miguel…at least do it for me. He—Miles—cannot be a part of this. You hear me?" Jessica's voice suddenly softened slightly, emotions almost reaching beyond the yellow-tinted glass that shielded her eyes.
Gwen stared back, her eyes slightly wavering. "Yeah, uh, sure."
"As soon as we have a read on the anomalies' future location, I'll give you a call." Jessica tilted her head down, eyes darkening, "Prove to me you can handle this, okay?"
Gwen simply nodded, anxiety clawing in her chest.
Jessica gave her a final look as if to say, Don't you dare screw this up. Then she abruptly let go of Gwen's wrist, her super-powered grip definitely leaving a mark beyond the spandex of Gwen's suit, before disappearing after summoning her own hexagonal portal.
All alone… again, Gwen thought, standing in the twisting corridors of the Spider Societies facility in Nueva York. She bounced on her heels restlessly, staring at the warm blinks of orange light emanating from the watch. A rush of nervousness flowed through her as she stared down at the tiny lines of text detailing the coordinates of Miles's dimension. She was one measly button press from seeing him—Miles.
Even after a year, separated by thousands of multi-dimensional threads, Gwen could still perfectly picture him.
The way dimples formed around his gentle smile, the brush of his curls peeking out from beneath his mask, and the fine lines formed on his forehead as he stared at her. Hearts captured by the feeling of their eyes interlocking, not even the spiral of watercolor interdimensional buildings, trains, and city blocks intermingled in a whirlwind collage of color could pull her gaze away from his. Her heart felt so warm as she stared into those shining golden brown eyes as they made that final promise to each other.
“Friends? ” He asked, holding out his hand to her, eyes twinkling with something not quite familiar to her yet.
She returned his smile, “Friends.” Gwen felt him squeeze her hand once more, she returned the gesture, and fondness grew in her heart. “See you around, Spider-Man.”
Oh, how she wish it were true. That he could just magically appear in front of her, or vice versa, but after she got home, Gwen genuinely believed she’d never see Miles again. That the events of the collider, meeting alternate versions of Spider-Man, and befriending Miles were all some sort of mirage, a wonderful, pleasant dream. So she put up her hood, her one defense, and tried to pretend once more that she was the only spider person out there.
It didn't work for long.
Then Gwen met Miguel O’Hara and Jessica Drew, soon followed by her dad pulling a gun on her. Threatened to arrest her. And looked at her like—looked at her , his daughter—like she was a fucking stranger. Like Gwen’s very existence repulsed him. The expression on his face conveyed all Gwen needed to know that his greatest disappointment was having the Spider-Woman as a daughter.
At that moment, Gwen wished, more than anything, to see Miles. To see his goofy smile, hear his charmingly awkward jokes, and maybe just feel his eyes on her. He looked at her differently than anyone she ever met. In a kind, affectionate way, and something else beyond that was never spoken. When their eyes met, she felt seen—understood.
As soon as Miguel tossed her the multiverse jumping watch, the first thing she wanted to do was to see Miles. Every fiber of her being screamed to throw all caution to the wind and find him.
But she didn’t. She couldn't.
Gwen had tried for what seemed like ages to convince Miguel, Jessica, LYLA—anyone with the modicum of authority to let her see him. Not until the report from Spider-Man on Earth-13122 did Gwen get her chance to present her case. She had a few strong reasons. All conveniently not mentioning Miles in the slightest. The most obvious being she had been to Earth-1610 before, giving her an upper hand in being somewhat familiar with the environment, the twist of buildings, and the location of Alchemax—if that was of any help—but Miguel was incredibly hesitant.
Or cautious, as he would like to say.
Miles was ‘the anomaly.’
He could break canon beyond repair. Miguel told her over and over again.
But even now, Gwen knew that it would break her heart more if she never saw how he was. Gwen wanted to know everything. The intricacies of his school life, how much he developed his artistic skills while universal thresholds had separated them, and how he was handling the grief from his uncle's death. And if he needed a comforting hug because, by god, she needed one too.
She wanted to know every mundane thought.
Every dream. Every hope. Every fear.
Gwen wanted to hear it all—as long it was from him.
Then an idea struck her, as she was in the process of being teleported back to New London. A dumb one. If she really wanted to…she could just jump to Earth-1610. Right now. No permission slips or special sign-offs, and definitely not tell Miguel…or Jessica. However, the longer she gazed down at the watch; she knew it wouldn’t be that easy.
Gwen sat cross-legged in the seclusion of Hobie’s flat—where she’d been crashing for several months since she’d refused to return home. Not like it was much of a home now anyway.
Outside of doing typical Spider-Man, saving the city-type stuff, Hobie spends most of his time outside of his apartment, on the road driving his cool-ass van, or occasionally playing music at a variety of venues. So the place wasn’t much. It was a two-bedroom apartment; the room she was currently staying in was initially a makeshift workspace. Brimming with parts of instruments, bits of tech here and there, and other random items haphazardly strewn about the place. Gwen had to pile some of it in the closet or the corners of the room, but she eventually made enough of an empty patch of carpet for a beat-up mattress.
They were sitting on the floor in the living room among a squished old couch, between a coffee table with a few circular water stains and TV Hobie said he 'borrowed.'
" Easy as that," Hobie announced, a mischievous glint in his eye as he slapped his final card—a green seven onto the table. They were at the thirtieth game of UNO that day. They were tied with fifteen wins each. They had alternated between hovering with one card or two pinched between their fingers for over an hour.
Gwen hadn’t even processed that the game had ended. She held a card tightly. Her gaze focused on the colorful spot of four divisible colors. Wild. She wondered if that’s how Miguel saw Miles, a wild card. Maybe she could somehow convince him that he could be helpful to them. Gwen knew she was grasping at straws, but she chewed down on her lip in thought anyway.
“Oi! Earth to Gwendy—” Hobie crooned, snapping Gwen out of her daze.
She blinked a few times.“Oh, um, yeah?”
He shot her a skeptical look. “You’re staring off for, like—the hundredth time today…” he swiftly gathered what remained of the deck and started shuffling the worn and well-used UNO cards. “...What’s on your mind?”
“N-Nothing,” Gwen deflected, pulling her fuzzy pink sweater tighter around her Spider-Woman costume. “It just sucks that I lost the most important card game of my life, is all.”
“Nothing—doesn’t lose you a match of UNO when you’re holding the most powerful card in the game.” Hobie snatched the card from her, ignoring her humorous quip, expertly flipping it between his fingers. “So you gonna be honest and tell me what’s up? Or am I going to have to figure it out myself?”
“I-I…I don’t know," She mumbled. Gwen pulled her knees closer to her chest, feeling unsure of herself. "I’m worried about this…thing.”
Hobie raised an eyebrow; eyes focused on the card between his fingers. “This thing…how incredibly specific. It’s ‘cause your friend? Miles, yeah?”
Gwen sighed, emotion flooding through her, running her hand across the buzzed side of her hair. "Yeah."
"What about him?"
"I want to see him,” She explained, hope peeking through her voice, before falling to a discouraged one. “but I-I can't."
Hobie raised an eyebrow, giving her an unimpressed look. "Sure you can."
"No, I can't," Gwen insisted. "I told you what Jessica said. He can't know."
"Who cares what Jessica thinks—or Miguel, or any of 'em. They are all just a bunch of gormless, daft sods—" Hobie said, his accent lilted more prominently.
"Hobie." Gwen deadpanned.
He always talked this way about the Spider Society—he was right, of course, but she needed this. She needed this stupid watch, as painful as it was to admit. Gwen often questioned Hobie’s involvement with ‘Miguel and his Spider-Army,’ one of the many things he called them…which was on the side of the more pleasant ones. It was mostly to poke fun at the hierarchy quickly formed as the mouthful, the aracno-humanoid-poly-multiverse, became more well-established—and obviously named by Miguel. After getting to know Hobie, she determined he should be the last person in the entire multiverse to go along with Miguel and his antics, but here he was.
Here he was, helping her.
Hobie continued, "That don't care 'bout nothing but themselves. Just give me 'ya watch—I'll turn off the tracking in no time—" He scrambled for the scattered parts of gizmos that were strewn about his flat, picking up one of his guitar picks, which also conveniently worked as a small electrical hacking device. He reached out to her watch latched around her wrist. “They’re pig-headed, Gwendy. And you know it.”
"Hobie!" Gwen seethed and quickly pulled her wrist away from his grasp. He stopped, sticking out his pierced bottom lip at her outburst.
“What?”
Gwen had already considered it. The possibility ran through her head a thousand times a day. It would be so easy. She already had the coordinates to Earth-1610. Press a few buttons, summon a portal, and there she would be. But it wasn't that simple—she could try and turn off the watch's tracking—then they wouldn't have her location at all times, but the issue was they would find out. The Spider Society was filled with geniuses of every kind—from every universe. Not to mention Miguel's irritating AI companion, LYLA, constantly monitored the interconnected system that allowed multiverse traversal. Besides, on their end, they could easily prevent her from jumping entirely, shutting her off completely from the multiverse.
Or even worse—she could be sent home.
A threat that Miguel and even Jessica had dangled over her head on more than one occasion—reminding her of one of the many consequences of stepping out of line. Gwen didn’t tell Hobie, though, another demand via Jessica.
Besides—Gwen couldn’t deal with her dad right now…if ever.
“I know, alright. I know…” Gwen grumbled, awkwardly fumbling with the watch on her wrist before slumping to lie on the floor. She idly blew on a stray piece of hair that fell in front of her eyes. “You already know why I need this— ” Gwen raised her wrist, signaling to the watch.
“I could make you a watch.” He suggested a hint of playfulness to his words.
“Sure you could.” Gwen rolled her eyes, matching his tone stretching out on the floor. “If it was that easy, I’m sure it wouldn’t have taken Miguel, decades ahead of us in terms of technological advancement, to just barely figure it out with the help of a conscious artificial intelligence.”
Hobie scoffed. “It is that easy—all he got is some fancy tech from the future. If I just had a few of the goobers he stashes away in his office, you’d have your own in no time.”
"Pssh, whatever." Gwen rolled over, facing away from Hobie and towards the once burnt-orange couch, which resembled more like rust in color. She brought her wrist close to her face and stared at the warm light emanating from the watch's small screen. Even though Jessica had dialed in the coordinates only a few hours ago, Gwen swore she already memorized every curve of the white numbers, dashes, and lines making up the code of Miles' universe.
Miles, she thought of his grin and the stray freckles on his cheeks. Her lips unknowingly curled at the image.
Then Gwen felt a whack on her shoulder and glanced up at Hobie’s lean figure. He crouched beside her, his guitar strapped to his back, and he had an even more indecipherable expression than usual due to his face being obscured by his mask. Hobie had always been unwaveringly and palpably cool, making him particularly hard to read.
She frowned. “What?”
“I got ‘ya back,” Hobie reminded her, voice stern and sober. “I’m serious ‘bout the watch, by the way. You’re my drummer, so if you ever need somethin’, let me know, yeah?”
Gwen nodded and sat up, giving him a small smile. “Yeah, yeah. I know.”
Hobie, captured in his arms, quickly gave her a final brotherly hug, which made her chuckle, before he walked to the slightly ajar window on the opposite side of the flat. The faint sounds and flashing lights of police sirens echoed from outside, deep within the cityscape, and he ran a quick test on his web shooters.
“Oh, I know what I need. More cereal. Ran out last night.”
Hobie let out a bark of laughter just as he was about to climb out, “Right. I’ll get your favorite. The chocolate, loopy kind, yeah?” He asked. Gwen could almost see the smug smile beyond the stretch of fabric on his face.
“You know it.”
“And what’s the milk situation?”
“Low.”
“I’ll grab some more. Next time write me a list.” He jokingly lectured, shaking his head at her.
“Aren’t lists too structured and bureaucratic for the anarchist Hobart Brown?” She crossed her arms challengingly.
She could tell he was grinning ear to ear beneath his mask. “When it comes to groceries, Gwendy, I don’t mess around.”
Gwen laughed at his response and stood up, grabbing a stray sticky note and a broken pencil. She quickly wrote ‘cereal, the chocolate, loopy kind’ and ‘milk, the oat kind’ for good measure, approached him at the window, and handed it to him. “Better?”
He snatched it from her fingertips and looked it over like he was examining a historical document. “Brilliant.”
“Thank you, Hobie. For everything. Seriously.” Gwen said gratefully, tucking her hands into the large pockets of her sweater.
“Don’t thank me yet—I still haven’t made that watch. Cheers.” He gave her a final salute and nudged her on the shoulder before disappearing out of the fire escape into New London.
Gwen planned to watch the sunset that night—to stare out at the chaotic stretch of harsh black shadows resembling ink scrawls. The buildings looked like scraps of newsprint plastered together to form a collage and the sky—what a sight it was. It reminded her of the scribblings of a child, cut out of a sketchbook, the sun dipping behind the city’s towering structures, warm colors drawn like crayons onto the paper-like expanse beyond the city's skyline.
Then Gwen felt her watch buzz. She looked down, and an orange flickering hologram of Jessica was there. Her arms were crossed, and she looked at Gwen with a doubtful expression beyond the curve of her glasses.
“Is Hobie there?”
Gwen shook her head, her nerves stirring like the feeling in the air before fireworks were about to go off. “He just left.”
“Good,” Jessica said. “It’s time. We got its future location. Make a portal to Earth-1610, retrieve the anomaly, then head back to HQ.”
Gwen’s throat felt dry, “Okay. Sure. Got it.”
“And Gwen—no detours.” Jessica asserted, her voice serious and firm. She didn’t even wait for Gwen to respond before the hologram disappeared, the familiar white lines of Earth-1610s coordinates taking Jessica’s place.
Gwen sucked in a shaky breath, her fingertips hovering over the button.
Then she pressed it.
~~~~
Gwen had every intention of listening to Jessica. To get to Earth-1610, plant the anomaly-detection-device, capture it, stop at The Lobby, and return to playing UNO or any other games Hobie had stashed away in his flat.
Intended to.
Gwen dived through the bands of bright hexagonal gateways, looking out to the space-like expanse of the multiverse. A familiar wave of nausea hit her, making her bite her tongue to suppress the feeling.
Multiverse jumping wasn’t fun. It made her feel sick like her body was being compressed from all directions, and she was taking Peter Porker’s cartoon mallet to head over and over again. She eventually got used to the feeling, but Gwen couldn’t help but wonder what would happen if the portal stopped working in the middle of a jump.
Would she suffocate? Be crushed by the weight of the space between universes like an empty soda can? Or left to float forever, drifting between the webs connecting the worlds? None of the outcomes seemed particularly pleasant. But those were not the thoughts that plagued her in those brief seconds of travel that sometimes seemed to stretch on for much longer.
Beyond the entrapping of the tunnels that guided her were the intricate webs connecting all the universes in her view. In that small, minuscule moment—Gwen started to think.
Why couldn’t she do both? Why couldn’t she see Miles and stop the anomaly?
Gwen had the future location of the anomaly. That didn’t guarantee it would be there as soon as the portal opened.
The system of tracking anomalies was designed by LYLA—who believed that knowing where the anomaly currently was and would be in the future were two different variables that served two different purposes. Frequently jumping to the current location of the anomaly would put whatever Spider-person in more danger than anticipated—even with a watch stopping your body from ‘glitching’ that wouldn’t do much if you were dropped into the middle of a random, new, and unfamiliar universe where everything was different. Not to mention fighting an unknown villain of the week. So to prepare Spider-people for their multiversal missions, LYLA developed a system to track the future location of said anomalies to make the transitions easier. And it was.
It was all very complicated—but the fact was the anomaly wasn’t going to be where it would be sometime in the near future—leaving Gwen to do what for an unknown amount of time? Sit on a rooftop? Swing from some buildings?
So…it probably wouldn’t hurt to see how Miles was. Briefly, of course.
Though the nifty feature of the watch on Gwen’s mind now—was its ability to ascertain the location and identity of whatever Spider-person belonged to a specific universe.
It was like it was designed to tempt her.
I will just pop in, say hi, hug him, tell him I missed him, then take care of that anomaly.
Then she got to the end of the tunnel. Anxiety steadily built in her chest like thousands of fluttering hummingbirds locked in cages begging to be freed. She stuck her hands in the pockets of her sweater and tried to channel a crumb of Hobie’s coolness.
Several bright orange hexagonal rings formed, and multicolored lights shifted below her, slowly revealing…a bedroom, posters, a jersey, headphones…Miles. He hadn’t noticed her yet; his eyes softly closed, head slightly bopping along with whatever music he was listening to.
The first thing Gwen noticed was how different he looked. His jawline was sharper, his limbs were longer, and he looked leaner and more muscular. He wasn’t the same cute and nerdy kid she remembered—though he still had the sprinkle of freckles and those perfect dimples.
But there was also a different air about him that Gwen couldn’t quite place. He seemed more confident and strong than before, reflecting a look of maturity that stirred something within her.
A flutter of butterflies settled at the pit of her stomach as she gazed down at him.
Gwen, you don’t have the time to think about this right now!! She reminded herself as she cleared her throat.
Because after a year of wishing, of wanting, he was just a few feet away from her.
Gwen’s lips curved into a smile as she called down to him.
“Miles! Got a minute?”