Chapter 2
Miles swung around The Spot, his eyes squinting to find any sense within the inky instability of his form.
He hadn’t had a chance to breathe since he’d arrived back on Earth-1610, stepping through the portal to find Spot on the verge of havoc. He watched the black holes open on all sides around him, rubble and debris being thrown in every direction he looked.
All of a sudden, he felt the tell-tale churn of his gut as he fell through one of the portals, his feet flipping over his head as he spiraled through nothing.
He reappeared a block away and a few thousand feet in the air, catapulting toward the ground at terminal velocity. Across the battlefield, he saw a building start to slide toward a child in a red jacket. His father’s voice rang in his ears.
“I’m coming!”
Miles felt his throat close. He’d seen this play out so many times since his first vision, seeing the vague outline of his father’s crushed body every time he closed his eyes.
Miles was too high in the air to web off anything, still another second or two from reaching the skyline. He tried to angle his body, but the wind battered him as he fell. He couldn’t move left or right, and the ground and the sky met as he tumbled.
Then, from the corner of his vision, Gwen and Peter B. slung themselves toward the wreckage. Peter B. wrapped the child in his arms, and Gwen managed to shove herself and Jeff outside the building’s reach.
They’d helped. His dad was safe.
Miles stared at his father and his friends for a moment, taking them in and convincing himself they were okay. Then, he took a deep breath, angled himself toward the ground, and started to swing.
His eyes searched desperately for a pattern in Spot’s behavior, some tendency he could use against him, but he couldn’t find it. There was no rhythm or predictably to his attack pattern…until there was.
Miles. Miles was the pattern.
No matter how many people zeroed in on Spot, no matter their power, Miles was always his point of focus.
A plan started to form. Not a solid one and one his mother would definitely kill him for, but a plan nonetheless. It was more than he had a moment ago.
“Hey, Spot!”
Miles swung by the giant’s head, whizzing as he passed where an ear should be. Spot turned, and his voice rang through Miles’ ears.
“Where do you think you’re going, Spider-Man?”
“Wanna find out?”
Miles lured him toward the old Alchemax laboratory. Despite the civilians and superheros littering Spot’s feet and demanding his attention, the villain turned and started after Miles, floating rather than taking steps.
He was closing on Miles faster than he expected. Miles could make it. He was almost there.
The hairs on the back of Miles’ neck stood straight up, and he managed to torque his body away from the portal appearing in front of him.
Just a few more swings. Come on, Spider-Man.
A tower came hurtling toward him from his right. Miles managed to avoid the worst of the damage, but it sent him hurtling to the ground. He skidded along the ground when he landed, and his entire body lit aflame with agony.
He brought himself up to his elbows and looked at Spot. Right here would have to do.
“Back where it all started,” Spot growled, floating ever closer. “I don’t know why you’re offering me such poetry, but I appreciate it nonetheless.”
He held up a hand, and a portal started to form.
“Goodbye, Spider-Man.”
He hurtled the portal forward, and Miles swung himself out of the way at the last second. The portal sailed past him and enveloped the broken collider instead.
Spot’s eyes, whatever remained of them, widened as he eyed the companion portal he’d left above his head, waiting for Miles to drop into his clutches.
“That can’t be good,” he muttered.
The collider crashed back down to the ground, landing directly on top of where Spot once stood. Miles couldn’t see underneath the wreckage, but the portals around him all instantly vanished. He decided that was proof enough for him.
Miles swung back toward his city’s streets, now eerily silent and immobile. He felt himself grin.
Once he reunited with the rest of Spider Society, it took Miles a moment to realize Miguel O’Hara was on his Earth, much less standing 10 feet away from him. Jess Drew and Ben Reilly flanked him on either side. Miles turned to face him, squaring his shoulders and digging his feet into the gravel.
Miguel’s eyes moved past Miles and over his shoulder. Miles knew who stood back there. His father, his mother in his arms as they took in the litany of spider-people.
“You know what has to happen,” Miguel growled.
Suddenly, Miles’ view changed, and he completely lost sight of Miguel. It took him a panicked second to refocus and realize Gwen now stood between them.
“Try it,” she said, matching Miguel’s tone.
Miles looked to his left and right and saw Peter B., Hobie, Peni, Noir, all his friends had moved behind him. Between Miguel and his parents.
Miguel stood to his full height, shoulders back. Miles could imagine his sneer through his mask.
“Do any of you realize what you’re doing? The risk we’re running? He should already be dead!” Miguel began to walk forward, his strides purposeful. “We’ll lose thousands of…”
Then, he fell. Miguel’s feet came right out from under him, and he dropped straight onto his back. Miles noticed the webbing attached to his ankles, tracing all the way back to Jess’s fingertips.
“Miguel,” she said softly. “This isn’t who we’re supposed to be.”
Miguel pulled himself into a sitting position and practically roared with anger. “It’s not about supposed, it’s about what we have to do. What I have to do! I don’t want this any more than you, but I’ll kill him myself if it means…”
Lyla appeared over his shoulder, and for the first time he’d seen her, Miles could have sworn her body language looked…sheepish. Her legs turned inward, his toes digging into the imaginary ground below her feet, her arms behind her back.
“Uh, Miguel?”
“What?” The word slipped from his mouth like ice.
“Um, that anomaly on Earth-50101? Mumbattan? Yeah, it’s, uh, it’s gone.”
Miguel’s shoulders slumped. His whole body went slack. He turned to face Lyla.
“What?”
“Yeah, once the Spot dude disappeared, all the rips in the multiverse…healed? Disappeared? We don’t know how to explain it, but it all aligned with him going away.”
“No, that…that can’t be…scan for further anomalies. Every reality.”
“I did.”
“Do it again.”
“I’ve done it three times, Miguel. It’s all stable.”
Miguel’s knees came up close to his chest. He didn’t speak for a minute. Then, slowly, he dropped his forehead to rest on one of his kneecaps.
“That can’t, that can’t be. There has to be another, another reason, why would it…”
Jess crouched next to him, her hands on his shoulders.
“I think we got this one wrong, Miguel.”
Miguel didn’t lift his head, but he turned it slightly to the side toward the sound of her voice. Miles could hear the emotion in his voice when he spoke again.
“What was I about to do?”
Jess dropped down to sit next to him and pulled him into an embrace. Miles thought he saw Miguel’s shoulders tremble.
“You’ll find your way,” she muttered. Jess looked over to Miles and nodded, and Miles nodded back.
Gwen still stood a foot in front of Miles, and she slowly turned to look at him. He held her gaze for a moment, the eyes of her suit stretched as wide as they could go.
“You did it,” she said softly.
“Yeah,” Miles said back, matching her voice without really meaning to. “We did.”
They held eye contact for a few more moments before Miles turned back toward his parents, still standing in awe a few hundred feet away. Peter B. and Hobie each put a hand on his shoulders as he limped past, and he nodded at them both.
His strides were short with the pain in his sides, but he didn’t think that was why it took him so long to reach his parents. His mouth felt completely dry as he raced through his next words over and over again in his head. He didn’t like how any of the ideas sounded. He liked the idea of lying to his parents further even less.
“Officer Morales,” he said, now only a few feet away from his parents. They stood alone in the rubble, the city block long abandoned in the fight. He was honestly a bit surprised his parents had been so silent and still the entire time he approached them.
“Spider-Man…this is, I mean, what you did–Sure, there was a lot of property destroyed, but…” his father stammered out, looking everywhere but his eyes.
“Thank you,” Rio finished for her husband, finding the words he was too reluctant to say.
“There’s something…” Miles began, still messing with his voice, but his chest couldn’t handle the effort further. He coughed and gave up, and he spoke his next words as Miles. “There’s something else you both should know.”
Jeff and Rio looked at each other, clearly confused.
“Uhhhh, okay, Spider-Man?” he said slowly.
Miles reached for the top of his mask. He grabbed it firmly, then held his hand there for a moment. He took a deep breath, and counted to three in his head. He pulled it off.
Jeff and Rio’s mouths when slack as they stared into the eyes of their son.
“Hola, mami” Miles said sheepishly. He felt his eyes well with tears.
His father’s eyes looked like they were about to pop out of his head, and his eyebrows wanted to jump off his face. His mother was completely immobile.
“What…what are you…YOU??” Jeff yelled. He let go of his wife and took a step back, a hand coming up to his forehead to nurse a headache he knew was soon to come.
“All this time, you’ve been in the middle of all this? Do you have any idea how hurt you could have gotten?”
Jeff looked up again, his eyes even wider than before.
“I’ve watched you dodge bullets! Get thrown out of buildings! Miles, what the hell is wrong with you? You can’t put yourself in danger like this, and to do it without a badge? Have I taught you NOTHING?”
Jeff’s voice died as Rio finally moved, stepping forward and cupping her son’s cheek in one hand. Miles could see she was crying even more than he was.
“Mi pequeño,” she said. Miles leaned his head ever so slightly into her palm, and she wiped his cheek with her thumb. “How long have you been fighting this on your own?”
Miles sniffed. In a different situation, he would hate how young and immature such a sound made him feel. Right now? He was willing to give himself a pass.
“Since Kingpin,” he said quietly.
“That was you?” Jeff said, his voice still booming with indignance. “You’ve been lying to us since then?”
“Jeff.”
At the sound of his wife’s voice, Jeff, who’d turned his head to the sky as he rambled and yelled, finally brought his eyes to Miles. The two of them took each other in, and Miles watched his father deflate slightly.
“I just,” Jeff said, the anger evaporating from his tone, “I just want you to be safe, kiddo. And this? This isn’t safe.”
Miles swallowed back more tears before he spoke.
“I know, Dad,” he said. “But if I have the chance to help, the ability to help people, and I avoid it or just sit in my room to keep myself safe, how do I sleep at night?”
Jeff sighed, and Rio pulled her son in for a hug. After a moment, her husband stepped forward and wrapped his arms around his family.
“You did a great thing today, Miles,” his mom said softly. “And we’re proud of you.”
Miles felt warmth grow outward from his heart, his entire body fuzzy and light. He buried his face in his mother’s shoulder. He wasn’t sure when he’d stopped crying, but he knew he wasn’t now.
“Does this mean I’m ungrounded?”
“Don’t push it, young man,” Rio responded, but her smile gave away the lack of malice behind her words.
She tilted her head, and her eyes slid away from his, looking at something behind him.
“Can I guess who the girl in the white suit is?” she said with a slight chuckle.
Miles turned his head to check, and Gwen, who definitely hadn’t been staring, immediately became very interested in her feet and what was going in the other direction.
Miles laughed with her, and he felt the tears well in his eyes again.
“Gwen,” he said. “Her real name is Gwen.”
“Well, that’s way more normal than Gwanda,” Jeff mumbled.
Rio must have noticed the tremor in Miles’ voice, and she brought a hand to Miles’ cheek again.
Miles didn’t think he could feel worse. He didn’t think anything could cut through him the way Gwen’s eyes had before he jumped off that train in Nueva York.
The expression on his mother’s face shattered Miles.
“What is it?”
Miles didn’t want to talk about it. He told himself he didn’t. He wanted to scream that he didn’t want to talk about it, especially with his mother. Yet, when he opened his mouth, he couldn’t help the words that followed.
“She lied to me, Mom” Miles said, the tears spilling from his eyes once more. He’d been able to push it all away, push it down when there was still a task at hand. Now, the adrenaline of Spot and Miguel had worn off and he hurt. His whole body ached from wounds he couldn’t see. “She lied to me about so much stuff, and she could have seen me so many times and she didn’t.”
Miles expected pity. He expected empathy. He half-expected his mother to march over to Gwen and beat her to a pulp or yell words he couldn’t even translate. Instead, she tilted her head quizzically.
“She was there the other night, wasn’t she?”
Miles paused.
“I mean, yeah, but she could have come so much sooner, Miguel just said she shouldn’t.”
One of his mother’s eyebrows arched.
“So she was told not to see you and she still did?”
Miles’ mouth hung open, and he felt gears grinding in his brain.
“After SIXTEEN MONTHS, Mom,” he said. A part of him winced at the volume, he definitely saw at least one Spider-Man mask turn in his periphery. If Gwen was curious before, she sure knew what they were talking about now. “And it was only me, she was seeing everyone else and making new friends. She had other people! And I was alone, I was stuck here and doing all this by myself. And she lied about it! And she lied about…”
He sighed. He didn’t have the heart to explain canon right now, not with his father’s heart still beating.
“Other stuff,” he finally finished. “Worse stuff. Things people were saying about me or saying I couldn’t do behind my back. And she just let it all happen.”
“Mijo, I’m sorry,” Rio said, the empathy Miles had expected now starting to shine through. “You have every right to be upset. I don’t mean to say she did nothing wrong.”
Rio’s eyes flitted back behind Miles for a moment to the girl with the pink hair dye and the eyebrow piercing. Her face set for a moment, the hard lines and pursed lips Miles expected all along, and then it softened again. Her eyes stayed on Gwen as she spoke again.
“You know she came back for you, right?”
She took Miles’ silence as an invitation to explain.
“Later that night, after you went after her, she spoke to your father and I..”
“Yeah, in your room and wearing your jacket, is there an explanation for that detail?” Jeff said. Rio held up a hand and he retreated to the sideline again.
“Estaba desanimada. She told us she needed to find you, didn’t know where you were. She told us you loved us,” Rio said. “The look she had when she talked about you, lo he visto antes. She might not know what it is yet, but she cares about you just as much as you care about her.”
Miles turned and looked at Gwen again. She didn’t pretend to look away this time. He held her gaze for a second before he dropped his eyes to his feet.
“I don’t know if I can forgive her, Mami,” Miles choked out. “I don’t know if I can have that conversation.”
Rio smiled softly.
“Our family doesn’t run from things, Miles,” Rio said.
She leaned forward and kissed his cheek before moving past him. She walked slowly over to Gwen, with no anger in her stride. Gwen still looked around like she needed an escape. Her eyes flickered left and right rapidly, but her feet didn’t move.
Rio stood right in front of her and, mimicking how she’d comforted her son, brought a hand to Gwen’s cheek.
“Thank you,” she said slowly. “For bringing him home.”
The eyes on Gwen’s suit softened.
“You’re welcome, Mrs. Morales.”
“Please, call me Rio.”
Rio pulled Gwen in for a quick hug, and Miles felt his father’s hand move to his shoulder behind him as they watched. He turned and look up at Jeff, who was smiling down at him.
“I don’t have your mother’s way with, well, any of this stuff,” he said, gesturing to his chest. “But no matter what I said when you first took off that mask, know that I am proud of you and what you do. And I always will be.”
Jeff squeezed his son’s shoulder gently before turning and talking into his radio, directing police traffic away from his unmasked son and the herd of Spider-people. Rio pulled away from Gwen and moved to follow her husband, patting Miles on the shoulder again as she passed.
Miles and Gwen stared at each other. Miles stood flat on his feet, but Gwen balanced on her toes as if she would need to swing away at a moment’s notice. The eyes on her suit were wide, and the 10 feet between them felt like a gulf.
Miles wanted to be mad. He wanted to be mad so badly. He wanted to hate her, wanted her and Peter B. to go hang out with their new friends and never touch Earth-1610 again. He wanted to hurt her as badly as she’d hurt him, worse if he could.
He thought about the other version of himself, a Miles who wanted the world to feel his pain. He remembered the expressions on his own face. He remembered what Spot let himself become, internalizing Miles’ smallest and least direct indiscretions. His gaze drifted to Miguel, now broken with no anger to cloud his vision. He remembered his father and his uncle, the way Jeff’s voice had crumbled when he stood outside the door to Miles’ room and lamented a bond he’d never repaired.
He remembered the moment he’d gotten stuck to her hair at Visions Academy. Holding her hand for a brief moment before she returned home a year ago. He remembered swinging through the city, the collectible she’d pulled from the box, the drawings she’d seen. He remembered how close they’d been standing on the rooftop before his mom interrupted them just days ago, how close their hands were on the clock tower. He remembered how her shoulder fit against his.
“Can we talk?” he asked.