There wasn’t any place on any Earth quite like New York.
That was the first thing Gwen thought when she landed back on her world, gracefully on her feet this time rather than her ass, thankfully.
Spending time in Earth-1610’s New York made her realize how unique of a place it was. That New York was nearly a one-to-one copy of hers, save for some specific landmarks, yet it was entirely different, a completely separate city with its own culture and history for her to experience for the first time. It was a special place in every single universe, and Gwen never realized how much she needed to be reminded of that until now as she stared out at a universe she wasn’t sure she would ever get to see again.
It made her appreciate what she had here on her world. It made her appreciate her city in a way that she hadn’t for a long while now.
Her New York was beautiful, a kaleidoscope of bright colors and sounds with skyscrapers erected everywhere the eye could see. A bustling city, morning or night, filled to the brim with life and love and culture, but also with crime and hate and wickedness which lurked in the shadows, brewing quietly beneath the surface.
A brilliant city of contradictions, an incomparable amalgamation of both light and darkness—her New York was a place worth protecting, even if it hated her for it.
So that was exactly what she did. She stopped every mugging, thwarted every robbery, and defeated every returning supervillain with a newfound drive then came home with a sense of accomplishment that she suspected was, on some level, supposed to feel all along.
However, her reinvigorated spirit only lasted about two months before reality started to seep back in.
Tensions were once again beginning to rise regarding Spider-Woman, and no matter how many lives she saved it wasn’t enough to hinder its pace. Because of the rigorous campaigning of both J. Jonah Jameson and her father, Peter’s death was still fresh in the minds of the public and especially the authorities. Now that they realized she was back, police presence around the city increased tenfold, all in relentless pursuit of her.
They were easy enough to disarm and dismantle with a few well-timed webs, but it was still taxing, to have so many people against her when she was just trying to do the right thing and honor her friend’s memory.
The worst were the many press conferences issued by the NYPD, all of which her dad headed, both because he was the chief of police and because he personally knew Peter. She hated them with every fiber of her being, but for some reason, she could never bring herself to look away. Gwen was sure that she had seen every single one of them, and the experience every time could be described as nothing short of torture.
It was agonizing hearing the cold conviction with which her father described her as a cold-hearted killer, and it was even worse hearing the way his voice shook when he talked about Peter. He was practically family, and she knew her dad was taking the loss nearly as hard as her, if for different reasons.
But these conferences weren’t the worst specifically because it was her dad, though that was certainly part of it, they were the worst because every time she saw one, she had to face the fact that he was right.
Sure, she didn’t know it was Peter beneath the Lizard’s thick, scaled skin and she definitely didn’t mean to kill him, but it was her fists that struck him, her actions that led him to lose his life. And that truth would haunt her for the rest of her life, staining her hands a dark shade of crimson that wouldn’t wash away no matter how much time passed.
Still, Gwen didn’t give up the cause, she just adapted and kept moving. She got used to looking over her shoulder with her web-shooters at the ready in case a cop car was approaching. The yells of protest from the public were a crooked melody that she had no choice but to get used to hearing.
But it seemed that no matter how hard she tried to keep one part of her life together, another began unraveling in its place.
Her relationship with her dad had never been quite the same since Peter’s passing. Between the innate secrecy that came with her being Spider-Woman and the amount of time he spent at work trying to catch her best friend’s killer, things had been somewhat rocky for years, but the strings were beginning to pull taut and the strain was taking its toll on both of them.
Because her father had always been impassioned about this case, but now, with over two years of mounting frustration finally boiling over, it felt as if Gwen couldn’t go a day without hearing a tirade about Spider-Woman and she was just so tired of pretending to support her dad’s manhunt for her. People like J. Jonah Jameson were one thing, but having to hear it in her own home from the only family she had left was too much. So she stopped engaging with it altogether, staying completely silent whenever the topic was brought up in her presence and he took that personally.
He started pressing her on the issue, getting a little too combative with her because she murdered your best friend, Gwen, if anyone should want her behind bars, it should be you.
The words made her stomach coil so tightly that it physically hurt.
After one too many ruined dinners, she started avoiding him. The dissidence was proving to be too much, and she couldn’t be bothered to be on the receiving end of it anymore. She had more than enough to deal with, she wanted her home and her dad to be a safe space, even if that safety was only an illusion. If her dad noticed the sudden distance, he didn’t say anything.
The appeals and protests from both law enforcement and civilians continued, drumming up more civil unrest by the day. What started as a few shouted curses from someone in passing or across the street became her having to dodge bottles and other projectiles while swinging around the city, slowly killing any satisfaction she got from being Spider-Woman.
Over time, standard patrols resulted in her returning home with more and more bruises and wounds as the calculated risks she took during battle morphed into blatant recklessness. The vivid colors injected into the world around her dulled to an ugly monotone, hard lines and structures becoming no more than vaguely recognizable abstract shapes. She began threading the needle closer and closer, uncaring about whether or not she got hurt in the process. Part of her might have even wanted it.
And at some point, one she wouldn’t even be able to pinpoint in hindsight, this city that she loved and risked her life to protect just stopped feeling like home.
In a lot of ways, Gwen would liken herself to a volcano, with the seemingly never-ending amount of pressure building up within her, waiting and begging to be released. Except there was no magnificent uproar of destruction with which she could expel that pressure, it just kept building and building and she had no choice but to continue bottling it and carrying it on her shoulders wherever she went.
She was waiting for some kind of reprieve, but it never came, and her hope for it dwindled with every bruise she gained, every barrel she had to stare down, and every curse thrown her way from the people she fought to protect.
Life took more than it gave, Gwen was acutely aware of that, but with each passing day, it seemed like the universe had no more to give.
She thought about Miles a lot.
Truthfully, Gwen thought about everyone from their little group on Earth-1610. She always found little pieces of them throughout her own world.
Her father’s detestably ugly sweatpants made her think of Peter B. and his similarly horrible fashion sense. Annoying stints in computer class brought her mind to Peni and how insanely quickly she was able to rebuild a hard drive from scratch. The black & white movies they played on Saturday nights at the local parking lot drive-in movie theater reminded her of Noir. And every hotdog cart she passed (shamefully) garnered images of Porker.
But none of them persisted quite as much as Miles.
She thought about him nearly every day, and, unlike the others, she seemed to see him everywhere she turned.
In the graffiti plastered around the city’s alleys and curved along the walls inside the train stations. In the hip-hop music blasting from someone’s car a block away while web-swinging. Amongst the crowded halls at school, making her take another glance back even though she knew full well it wasn’t him. And it never was. Hell, even the most mundane of things, like the Nike’s on display in the shops around the mall reminded her of him.
He was everywhere, and it was almost unbearable. Not because she didn’t like remembering him, no. She loved reminiscing on their short time together, but with the memories came the increasingly unbearable burning ache in her chest that accompanied them.
She missed Miles. She missed him so much that it hurt. He was the first person that she really wanted to get closer to, the first to pull a genuine laugh from her in years, the first that made her want to open herself back up to the heartache that came with human relationships. And despite only knowing him for days, she missed him more than words could describe.
Miles was more than an acquaintance or a colleague or just another spider-person, he was her friend—the first real one she made after Peter.
And it made the fact that she would never see him again all the more painful.
In the end, she was wrong.
The universe still had something in store for her. A gift that she had never suspected would come, one that trumped any and all expectations. But in order for her to receive it, she had to lose everything.
Her unexpected tussle with a displaced Renaissance Vulture was interesting. After a long day that climaxed with her walking out on her band, it was a welcome distraction. Plus, she liked his look. The weathered parchment paper he existed on, the Shakespearian lilt to his voice and vernacular, the distinctively old-timey wood and string contraption that served as his wings—it offered a certain aesthetic that made this fight easily one of her more memorable.
And it only got more memorable with the arrival of a futuristic Spider-Man and a woman on a motorcycle. She fought side by side with them to defeat the displaced Vulture and save nearby civilians, and the entire experience could be succinctly summed up with three emotions she felt throughout.
Confusion, seeing two people who were very obviously from a different dimension able to exist without ‘glitching’ so to speak, as the Vulture they fought periodically was. Embarrassed at the way she audibly asked the woman if she could adopt her. Seriously, she needed to work on filtering her thoughts through something other than her mouth. And astonishment when it finally hit her that these two Spider-people were actively traveling to and existing within other dimensions without any physical repercussions.
But all of that was quickly overshadowed by what followed.
Because, in a cruel twist of fate, the moment that she had been dreading since she first dawned the mask finally arrived. And it went worse than she ever wanted to imagine.
In a moment of exhaustion and desperation, she took her mask off and revealed her identity to her father, bearing the entirety of her soul to him in the hopes that he would somehow understand. That he would see the truth and still love her. But he didn’t.
“You have the right to remain silent.”
Hearing those words fall from his mouth after pleading with him made something in her chest fracture beyond repair. He raised the gun again and for a singular, terrible moment, she thought that her own father might shoot her.
But the Spider-Man intervened before she could ever find out, encasing her father in what looked like some type of polygonal cage—she didn’t know, and she couldn’t really say that she cared. Not when it felt like her heart had shattered in her chest, a million jagged pieces piercing her sternum and the surrounding organs.
What color was left in this world drained, the paint running to reveal a deep, inky darkness that encompassed everything around her. This was her dad, the man she looked up to all her life. Her shoulder to cry on when things got to be too much. The man who supported her in all of her decisions and endeavors. The one that taught her to be strong, to never let the world crush her beneath its feet, and always promised to have her back no matter what. Her rock.
He was the only family she had left, and now he, like everyone else in this city, hated her.
I don’t know how to fix this. The thought looped in her mind over and over, chiding her, taunting her. And the words must have escaped her mouth at some point because they garnered a response from someone behind her.
“Join the club.”
She glanced back just in time to see the enigmatic Spider-Man toss her something. Instinctively, she caught it and gazed down at the device, eyes widening when she realized that it was one of the watches he and his partner were wearing. An endless number of possibilities swirled through her muddled head. Weighing her options, Gwen looked at the duo behind her. The mask on the man’s face made it impossible to get a read on him, but the woman at his side was staring at her with a rapturous mixture of sorrow, compassion, and pity. It made something in her ache.
Her eyes flicked back to her father, facing her harsh reality. He stared back with wide eyes and pounded against the cage, but Gwen’s mind was made up.
There was nothing left for her here. So she turned her back on the burning wreckage of the life she had and stepped through the portal with the Spider-Man and woman, ignoring her father’s pleas behind her.
What she was met with on the other side of that portal was unlike anything she had ever imagined.
She followed the adults onto an elevator, keeping her head down to avoid the woman’s gaze. But once the elevator stopped and the doors opened, she only took a single step into her new surroundings before she stopped, frozen with awe.
Around her was a large compound, unlike anything she had seen, populated with what had to be hundreds of spider-people walking and swinging through the various halls. They were innumerable, and just when she thought she had seen them all, more seemed to appear.
It was insane. Insane that there actually existed so many people, animals, and things like her, more than she had ever dared to dream of. Her heart swelled as her gaze jumped around in awe.
This was simultaneously the most incredible gift she could have ever imagined, and the worst curse she could ever be burdened with.
Because knowing that there were so many other spider-people out there, so many others leading the life that she led was incredible. It gave more meaning to the many hardships she faced back on her world, actually seeing just how many others chose to bear that same burden.
But that comfort was only surface level, and it didn’t take Gwen very long to figure that out.
Within moments of walking into headquarters, she was faced with a truth that she already technically knew, but never really comprehended. In most universes, Peter Parker was Spider-Man. She was already aware of that, and she had even already met one during her first interdimensional excursion, but having so many in one place made it really sink in.
The realization momentarily rooted her feet to the floor. It took all of her strength to keep them moving throughout the tour that the pregnant woman, who warmly introduced herself as Jessica, volunteered to give her because everywhere she looked, there he was. She was wading through a sea of people with the face and voice of her dead best friend, but not the eyes, or the stature, or the slightly too-crooked smile. And it hurt far more than she ever thought it could.
Worse still was the fact that every single Peter she met seemed to know her. They all stared at her with the same despondent, mournful eyes that made Gwen want to vomit. She tried asking them why they looked at her like that, but none of them were ever willing to talk.
And once she was told why, she couldn’t blame them.
Miguel informed her of his Spider-Society’s purpose and took it upon himself to show her her place in the timeline. Enraptured, she watched herself die a horrible death a hundred times over, saw countless Peters—some of whom she had spoken to not even days before—cradle her lifeless body in their arms and mourn her the same way she mourned him on her world.
It was…a hard experience to describe. Seeing herself fall for Spider-Man in every single universe and die an early death brought upon an emotional reckoning that words could hardly do justice for. But it also instilled a fear deep within her, knowing the stirrings of something she felt deep down whenever she thought about Miles.
Would she end up the same as her interdimensional reflections? Reduced to nothing more than a corpse for someone to mourn? A lifelong source of heartache rather than a memory someone will happily look back on?
(And would she, in some twisted way, deserve it?)
The truth of her fate across the multiverse recontextualized everything about her past interactions with the various Peters around headquarters. It gave chilling new meaning to their haunted gazes because, to them, she was a living phantom. Their biggest regret given new life.
Just as they were to her.
This morbid type of mutual understanding made it no easier to be around any of them. If anything, it only made it worse, especially since there were no other Gwens to share this fate with. She pondered trying to avoid them, but the sheer multitude would make that a near-impossible task.
Peter Parker was a multiversal constant, and she had never hated that fact more than she did now.
She started sticking to Jessica like glue when walking through the main corridors and Jessica, bless her, must have noticed because she began discreetly putting herself between Gwen and any approaching Peter variants. The simple action inspired such gratefulness that it brought tears to her eyes.
Peter B., both having accepted her death long ago and already being explicitly familiar to Gwen, was the only one whom she felt comfortable around, but with his new baby, he wasn’t around much. So during her time between missions, she was left to wander the winding, overlapping halls either on the heels of Jessica or Miguel or by herself with her hood on, acting as a flimsy barrier between her and the stares of her peers.
The feeling of isolation this cultivated wasn’t too dissimilar to what she felt back on her Earth, but it was also wholly unique—more harrowing in some ways and much easier in others. That made the loneliness it brought no less crippling.
It was ironic, she thought, how she could feel so alone amongst hundreds of people like her.
Gwen thought about him a lot, her Peter.
She thought about his soft, timid voice, his hunched posture, his troubled eyes. Countless times, she had tried to talk to him about everything that was happening—the bullying, the distancing, the internal adversity he was clearly facing—but he staunchly refused to talk about it.
She should have pushed him more, she thought.
Or maybe, she should have opened up to him.
The moments just before he passed were a recurring nightmare. Not because anything about it was particularly horrifying—no, the battle was already over, and the reality of what was happening had already set in for both of them. But the implications those moments brought were damning.
He had said her name. He had tried to take her mask off, and it was knee-jerk, the way Gwen’s fingers were already around his wrist, pulling his hand away. Instinct, the way she denied it to his face, making the last words she said to him a lie. But that wasn’t what stuck with her. What stuck was the fact that Peter knew. He knew who she was, had seen both halves of the whole that was Gwen Stacy, and he idolized her. He did what he did because he wanted to be like her.
She could have saved him if she had just talked to him and told him the truth. They could have helped each other, found a solution together that didn’t end in this. In her pleading with him to stay even after she knew he had long taken his last breath.
She had failed him. Miserably.
Peter was her best friend. He was by her side every second after her mother’s death, supported her through every step of her transition, and she couldn’t even give him the comfort of seeing her face one last time before he slipped away.
That was something she didn’t think she would ever be able to really live with.
Despite the less-than-stellar start, things with the Spider Society weren’t all bad.
It took some time, but she began getting used to the ever-presence of the not-Peter’s, and the reverse seemed to be true as well. Fewer and fewer were the forlorn stares and tense silences, in their stead was a professional sort of camaraderie. It still wasn’t quite comfortable, but it was getting there.
Jessica took her under her wing, letting her tag along on missions to show her the ropes and educating her on the ins and outs of the various pieces of tech she’d be working with from now on. And she had to admit, the whole mentor and mentee thing was nice. She’d only ever been on the outside looking in, mostly with Peter B. and Miles, since there wasn’t anyone to mentor her on her world, but she got why it meant so much to the both of them now. Having an adult that she could rely on, one that wanted her around and volunteered her own time to Gwen meant a lot. Especially after what happened with her dad.
So she took it one day at a time and shifted her focus to learning as much from Jess as possible. And after some more long-term exposure, she even managed to make a few friends.
Pavitr Prabhakar was the first. She had been with Jess on an assignment on Earth-50101 and the moment she introduced Gwen to Pavitr, it was instant friendship. The moment their mission was over, he was showing her around Mumbattan, excitedly narrating the history of various places and landmarks around the city and inquiring about Gwen herself. It was fun.
Pav was a hard guy not to love. He was practically sunshine incarnate, and it was all but impossible not to melt under the rays of warmth he radiated. And Gwen had to admit that having someone so bright and cheerful around was nice since Miguel and Jess were both so serious.
Hobie Brown was completely unexpected. She didn’t meet him out on the field or with Jessica, but while she was tucked away in a small sectored off hallway of the compound, drumming a beat that had been plaguing her for hours. Once she was done, he complimented her on her skill then asked if she wanted to play with him, and the rest was history, honestly.
Pretty quickly, he became something of an emotional crutch to her. He let her crash on Earth-138 when she didn’t feel like staying in her empty room at HQ and allowed her to beat her feelings out against his drum set without judgment, even inviting her to play in his band. It was him that convinced her to dye the tips of her hair pink like she had wanted to for so long, him that affirmed that Miguel and Jessica weren’t always right and that it was fine not to agree with them despite their age and experience, and she was immensely grateful for all of that. For him in general.
After isolating herself and her feelings off for so long, it was nice to have someone who she felt was truly in her corner, no matter the issue. And it was also nice to have someone to look up to that wasn’t a mentor, but a friend.
And Gwen did look up to Hobie, found him to be an amazing role model despite his many protests against it. She greatly admired his ability to unapologetically speak his mind and fearlessly defy orders he disagreed with, even directly to Miguel’s face. It was something that she wished she could do herself.
The three of them became a makeshift trio, traveling to other universes together either for missions or, sometimes while Miguel is too busy to be breathing down their necks, for fun little group getaways. They were her safe space in an unfamiliar, still fragmented future. But there was still something missing. Or rather, someone.
It wasn’t Pavitr and Hobie’s fault. They were amazing. Incredible, even. But they weren’t Miles.
He was still on her mind, lingering in the depths of her thoughts.
Now that she had a watch, she could visit him, and she had to battle the urge to type his location in every single day. She wanted to see him; she wanted it more than anything in the multiverse. But she couldn’t. Not knowing what she knew about canon events. Not knowing what she knew about him.
The idea of seeing him anyway and telling him the truth continued to nag at her, but the fear that overtook her at the thought of Jessica or, god forbid, Miguel finding out was paralyzing. Jessica might understand, but Miguel would have no mercy. He would drag her to the go-home machine that very moment and send her back to her world kicking and screaming. Just the thought of it left her frozen in place, terror pulsing through every vein in her body because she had no place there anymore. For all she knew, she would be arrested on sight the moment she stepped back into her city. By her own father.
Or she might have to go back and watch him die. She wasn’t sure which was worse.
(Had he already died while she was gone? Would she step back into her New York and find murals for him? Sure, she had already saved him from an attempt on his life in the past and Peter had already died, but the police captain was a set canon event, Miguel insisted so. He had shown her firsthand what happened to police captains in every universe, so it was hard for her to believe her father could escape that fate.
A dark part of herself couldn’t help but wonder if she would be responsible for his death like she had been responsible for Peter’s, and it scared her far more than she wanted to admit.)
Gwen just couldn’t risk it. As imperfect as it was, this society was all she had left, and she couldn’t lose it. Nor could she lose Miles, who could very well either die or condemn his world to an unwilling death if he tried to change canon. So she stayed away from Miles’ universe and deleted the location from her watch entirely to resist the temptation.
Instead, she decided to maintain the undercut he had unwittingly made her get as a memento of sorts. Even when her hair started growing out to the point that it made the haircut look a bit awkward, she sustained it, to keep some abstract piece of him with her wherever she went.
She tried to tell herself that it was enough, that keeping this secret was somehow protecting him, and eventually, part of her genuinely began to believe it.
But somewhere deep down, she knew Miles deserved better.
Gwen’s resolve to stay away lasted a lot longer than she thought it would.
Her tried-and-true technique of keeping herself knee-deep in work to avoid thinking about things she shouldn’t, along with the fear that came with the thought of returning to Earth-65 kept her mind from wandering to dangerous places.
But it finally cracked when she heard about a mission on Earth-1610.
The moment she caught wind of it, every last bit of her brittle resolve crumbled, and she couldn’t help it, the way she all but ran to Miguel and Jess and asked to take the mission. Of course, she was shot down immediately, more by Miguel than Jess, who stayed relatively quiet for the entirety of the short conversation, but Gwen wasn’t willing to take no for an answer. Not this time, not when the possibility of seeing Miles was on the table.
She needed to see him, to be with him one more time. Because with Miles, she wasn’t a multiversal singularity or a walking ghost from the past or a displaced teenager without a home to return to, she was just Gwen Stacy. And she desperately needed to be just Gwen Stacy right now.
So she begged and pleaded with Jessica until she cracked and hesitantly gave Gwen the mission with the caveat that she had to promise not to get distracted by Miles. Gwen made the promise with ease, any remorse she felt for her deception being instantly overshadowed by elation.
What she was doing was undeniably selfish, Gwen knew that, really. And she did feel a bit bad about it, but Miles, he was her reprieve, and she didn’t know how much longer she could keep going without that. She wasn’t sure how much longer she could go without him. So with steady hands, she typed in the location that was imprinted on her mind.
Brooklyn, New York. Earth-1610.
A corresponding portal appeared with a brilliant flash of light and color, swirling and shifting around the forming hole between dimensions. Once the portal was fully open, Gwen laid eyes on him for the first time in over a year and immediately all of the tension in her body seeped away. He looked different in some ways, and yet exactly the same, offering the same splendor as his New York did upon her first visit. She was excited to experience it again with him.
Her lips spread wide of their own accord, forming a smile that threatened to split her in two as she called down to him.
“Miles! You got a minute?”
Once it was all said and done, Gwen was left with a lot to think about.
Her father’s acceptance and resignation sat heavily on her mind. These past months, she had been following orders and conforming to expectations because she thought it was what she needed to do to protect the multiverse. And yet, canon had just changed before her eyes, and not a single thing happened. Her world remained intact, the only thing unraveling being her emotions.
But there was no time to ruminate on that.
Everything that had come to pass since her visit to Earth-1610 was her fault, unequivocally. She made a long series of mistakes that ultimately resulted in the multiverse being at stake and Miles being displaced, lost and on his own, and that made her want to hide away from the world. Part of her still wanted to run back to her Earth and lock herself in her room for the rest of her life.
But she wouldn’t run from this. Not this time.
She had spent the past five months running from her problems instead of finding the courage to face them head-on, and that, along with her absent sense of self-worth, was what got her entangled in this intricate web of lies in the first place.
Yes, she had made a mistake. She had tripped and fallen, hard. And maybe the damage she did in the process was irreversible, maybe it wasn’t. She would take things as they came and accept whatever cards she was dealt. But it was high past time for her to dust herself off and stand back up because that’s what she was supposed to do. Because that’s what Spider-Woman did. And that’s who Gwen was.
She was Spider-Woman. Someone who constantly risked her life to keep people safe in spite of the public’s perception of her. A dangerous vigilante. A courageous hero in the making.
But she was also Gwen Stacy. A predestined anomaly, a defier fate by simply existing. She looked the death she was supposedly destined to succumb to in the face every day and carried on because her life was hers alone and she wouldn’t let the death of other Gwen Stacy’s across the multiverse stop her from living it.
Gwen had lost sight of herself but, finally, she had recaptured who she was and who she wanted to be. And she would strive to never allow herself to lose focus of that again, to remember her purpose every single day she woke up and chose to don that mask.
But right now, as she looked to the future with her allies at her side, she had every intention of keeping her promise to Miles’ parents. One by one, she watched as they zipped through the portal before them. And she followed soon after, delving headlong into a blessedly ambiguous future, filled with the certainty that she would find Miles and bring him home.
Whatever it took.