in the storm, i stay clear
“Keep up, papa! I could outrun you any day!” The delighted squeal came. Miguel allowed just this once to laugh as he chased his daughter along the trimmed and perfectly thinned green plains of Nueva York - of home.
He watched the way she danced around the soccer ball being propelled between her feet, the way she looked over her shoulder every few seconds with a bright smile to check if he was still in her tow. And he was-- he could catch up within seconds though ultimately chose otherwise to entertain his daughter’s amusement and hear that giggling for a few seconds longer.
Her shoes, oh so little, rushed forth in an attempt to beat the leather of the soccer ball forward. Her right shoe stepped on top of one of her flinging laces - he always insisted she tied them but to no avail - and he heard her give a pained yelp as she toppled to the ground. She put her hands out to stop the impact and--
Thud.
Miguel felt his head go dizzy as her cry of surprise was cut short and, suddenly, the world fuzzed from recognition. He blinked, once, twice, and then he was back there, sitting beside the white hospital bed as he watched his daughter inevitably succumb to her illness. He listened to the incessant whining of the flatline, prominent over his wails of anguish.
“O’Hara?” The doctor asked, and though Miguel’s eyes looked over, he couldn’t distinguish the man’s face in such a distant memory. “Mi--”
“--guelll?” Miguel jumped and nearly hit his head on one of the many terminals surrounding him as he blinked back to reality.
For a second, and only a second, he looked shocked - before it faded to that familiar sourness he had developed. He slumped in his chair, replaying the final few seconds of that dream he had had countless times before. If he was just a second quicker-
“There you are,” Lyla noted, and he squinted as her bright holographic form flickered to settle happily upon his shoulder. “And here I was, starting to get worried.”
Miguel bit back a comment about how he wished he’d programmed her otherwise, rubbing his eyes. “What do you want?” He muttered, glowering with impatience.
“So.” She started, expressively holding her arms out. “The gizmo.”
“Goober.”
“Gizmo,” She corrected, equally peeved, “It has something you’re gonna wanna see.”
“If you show me that dinosaur dimension again, I'll deactivate you.” Miguel flatly said and then got up from his hunched form around the terminals to straighten and crack his back.
“Okay, in my defence, the look on your face was--” Upon seeing Miguel’s deadpan stare, she cleared her throat. “--not what I’m going to talk about right now.”
She gave a flourish of her hands, and Miguel rolled his eyes at the dramatics of it all. There was a blur, and then a fizz as yellow screens surrounded him, each displaying a different story, a different dimension.
He sighed and gave his eyes a moment to adjust to each of the hasty moving screens. “Impressive. More impressive than the other 50 times I've seen it.”
Lyla muttered, not at all entertained by Miguel’s sarcasm as her little hologram crossed her arms. Miguel looked around each of the screens, hoping to pick out something that Lyla may have deemed important; a few Spiders swinging around their respective cities, a few variants sleeping, a car-
-Her.
Miguel stared at one of the screens to find his daughter staring back at him, being juggled and caught by the Miguel of her respective universe, he assumed. His shock was apparent on his face, as Lyla let out a soft, “Yeah.” in response to his realisation.
Miguel walked up to the panel, his fingertips reaching out as if he would be able to feel her warmth through it. “What am I looking at?”
“Earth-TRN1042,” Lyla replied, her form just curiously hovering over the screen with an oddly solemn expression that was a stark difference from her usually nonchalant nature. “A universe where..”
“She’s alive.” Miguel didn’t state it as a means of finishing Lyla’s sentence, he said it more so to himself as if to confirm that she was.
This wasn’t a dream. Miguel waited in silence for a few moments as if it could be - as if, within seconds the screen would flicker and show her face tainted, pale and sickly like it had been in her last moments.
But it never did.
“Exactly.” He jumped only slightly, Lyla’s voice stirring him from his thoughts.
“And why are you showing me this?” He was no longer angry, simply exasperated. He looked at the screen, entranced, watching a gleeful Gabriella run around a bright soccer field. His heart hurt.
“You can travel dimensions now, can’t you?” It took Miguel a multitude of moments before he realised exactly what Lyla was talking about. Breath snatched in his throat, he forced his eyes closed to take a deep breath and rid himself of any excess stress he simply couldn't filter right now.
“I can’t..” It hurts to say. For a moment, his breath faltered, as if his body was compelling him to say otherwise. “..do that.”
“Who says?” He still had his back turned, though he could picture her smug little AI smile, “I know I didn’t.”
Miguel stared at the screen until it felt like his eyes could strain from such a prolonged amount of time. He bit his lip, and exhaled deeply, though felt reluctant to close his eyes for fear that he’d miss even a second of his precious footage of Gabriella and this apparent Miguel. He watched himself -- could he even say that? -- and the resemblance, though he knew it was intended and supposed to be there, was still all the more uncanny.
He raised his fingertips to file the recording and found himself imagining that it was him kicking that soccer ball with her.
Miguel exhaled softly and glanced around the dimly lit room, save for the one too many screens surrounding him.
“Document them.”
“Huh?” Lyla stirred again, perhaps having zoned out in response to Miguel’s silence. She fumbled with her dainty pink sunglasses, rushing to fix them.
“Document them. Everything.” He stiffly replied, as if unsure of his own decision. “All the information I'll need.”
“Well ‘all the information you’ll need’ really depends on what you’re going to do with it, maybe,” Lyla replied, shifting in front of him to steal his attention.
“The information I'll need when I get there.” Miguel briskly walked past her, earning an offended ‘hey!’, though he wouldn’t waste his time apologising to an AI.
Right now, that was. He probably would later, not that he’d ever admit that aloud.
It took a handful of weeks for Lyla to organise a detailed file on every aspect of that reality’s Miguel and Gabriella.
She had a comprehensive dossier on their daily activities, routine, and per Miguel’s request, even down to what they saw fit to have for breakfast each morning. It was a laborious process and by no means enjoyable for her, as she’d much rather spend her time doing something ‘productive’ (when Miguel had heard this, he’d questioned what AI programs even do for fun,) but complied and monitored their behaviour dutifully.
She felt twinges of guilt here and there in her system when she watched the serenity of the domesticated life of the O’Hara family experience. In comparison to the lack of sleep, eating and general energy this current Miguel had, it seemed like a paradise. Knowing that Miguel intended to at least visit, she bit back her initial worry about that and held her tongue from mentioning anything of particular concern.
In the meantime Miguel visited a few dimensions, putting his goober - and he’d forever call it that, no matter what any particular grating AI system insisted - to the test to see its limitations. He made some allies out of foreign Spider-people, and some enemies (he was still repairing the feud he had had with Earth-67’s Spider-Man).
There was one mishap, however; he incessantly glitched when travelling throughout dimensions, whether it was on his wrist or not. And this frustrated him to no end, seeing that the problem was not something he could fix by dissecting it and piecing it back together after a deep analysis.
Because Miguel had tried that. Many times.
And all times returned fruitlessly, so Miguel walked away with no solution and a mind that had memorized all the individual parts of the watch.
With no time to himself, it was true that Miguel’s health was on the decline-- despite Lyla’s constant insistence to close his eyes for about five minutes. “I’ll even set a timer, Miggy.” He would simply brush her off and avouch her to get back to her own designated job. And, of course, she always did.
More often than not, he found himself catching brief glimpses of sleep when he allowed himself to become distracted by the footage he had received of this foreign universe. It was mesmerizing, to say the least, to imagine the fact that Gabriella, in some faraway universe, was living, breathing, and most of all laughing.
It was his driving goal to perfect the creation of the device.
And after weeks of the discovery of this dimension just out of his reach as far as he was aware, Lyla finally came to him with a complete database that exceeded what Miguel initially thought she would have the willpower to complete.
“It’s done.” She spoke and held out her hands as if she’d be capable of physically handing over the information. She watched Miguel glance up from his work, grease-covered fingers and charcoal thumbprints dotted across his cheeks before he impatiently summoned the database to be displayed around him like a glittering sea of information projected above his head.
“About time.” He paused, fingertips lingering over the graphic that was labelled ‘Gabriella O’Hara >> schedule’.
“Thanks.” He slowly added afterward.
The praise was foreign, but she didn’t dare ask what brought it on, “You better be.” She opted to say instead, making the effort to rub at her ‘eyes’ as she hovered just above him. “I’m so tired.”
“You can’t even sleep.”
“Just put me on Shut-Down or something.” She replied, flickering between two displays of crossing her arms and putting her hands on her hips.
Miguel rolled his eyes at her flair for the dramatic, waving off the information seeing as he’d tend to it later. He couldn’t quite be fussed right now, so he scanned Lyla’s programming options and shut her down as she had requested. He knew it wouldn’t do anything except give the systems a break, but it was the most he could do at the time.
He watched where her lingering hologram had been for a few moments longer before rolling over a seat, and pulling up the data collection again.
“Night, Lyla.” He considered getting some rest for himself for just a fleeting second before shaking it off and promptly deciding to analyze.