Chapter 1
There are multiple welts on his scalp when he wakes again, each peppered with the marks of tiny crescent moons. Hair is strung between his hands like spiderwebs, and there is a line of blood under his left hand’s middle fingernail. His head is eerily silent. The inside of it. Not a single voice echoes, and if this happened to anyone else, it would’ve been merciful, or even better: normal. But to him, it’s like wading on a steadily sinking buoy. He waits for those tidal waves to swallow him whole again, not letting him resurface until his lungs are tense with the burning need to breathe.
“Hello...?” It’s an alleyway he sits in, he finally registers. He’s still in the suit, feels its metallic shell and Kevlar weavings cramping him up. Besides the scratches on his scalp and an ache near his ribs, he’s not too badly hurt. It’s daylight… daylight? Hadn’t it been nighttime before? He shook his head as if to rattle the memory to the forefront. It was nighttime. Maybe time has simply passed, Norman. Its tone covers and smothers him. Making a feeble attempt to ignore it, he also takes notice that it’s a little too cold, even for late fall. Had Thanksgiving passed yet, or was he just remembering another time? Another time, Norman, another time. Speaking of which- he’s alone, he tells himself over and over, he’s alone, he’s alone, he shouldn’t be so skittish. No one around to see him like this.
He freezes once he spots the Mask. Placed purposefully on the edge of a dumpster, right where the Goblin knows he’ll see. He can’t recall which one of them set it there. He shakes at the thought, hands trembling like autumn leaves barely clinging to their branches.
The silence in his head is splintered the moment he takes the quickest glance at those acidic yellow eyes. It’s a cracking, disjointed, vile laugh that shrieks in his nervous system, making his limbs feel locked up for a second, a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it black out.
“What time is it anyhow?”
The Beast mocks, in a careless and cruel way. The voice always sounds like him, but not quite so, just exaggerated enough to disturb himself. He cannot tell who’s who. Who came first?
“I...” He has no watch, but he still looks at his wrists like he’ll find one. “I’m sorry.” He says it quickly, as if shoving the words out from behind his teeth. The Beast giggles, then coos an assurance that everything’s fine. Its words slither out of his cortex like an eel from a sea cave, like oil permeating fresh water. Nothing bad has happened. I promise, Norman, nothing happened.
Norman knows this parasite thinks he’s stupid, and on most days, Norman gives in and believes it, but there’s no way everything’s fine. Something is wrong, he knows it. Not just the kind of disorder he’s used to being in, not just crashing on the floor and waking up to a new tragedy on the news reel. The buildings look too different, the skyline doesn’t match up with the one in his head, even the sounds of the city are somehow totally off. No, something’s very, very wrong Norman. You must figure out what before you make it worse.
The mask explodes in laughter at him, an ear-splitting cackle that stings as much as it does ram his frontal lobe with pain. Its voice is one big, loud, split in his vision, and his teeth feel shiny once it stops talking, brain fizzling with sharp aches. “You can’t escape yourself!”
He brings the brick down on its head, shattering it to angular pieces on the concrete below. He barely thinks about where he’s going, before he’s already up, and running with stiff legs down the alleyway like the mask will collect itself to follow him. Slink after him like a snake with no head, centipede with all its legs torn off.
Peter might throw up. He knows handling these sorts of things is just parr for the course for him, but there’s something particularly jarring about the knowledge that there’s more clip-and-paste people pouring out from every crack of reality. He’s never seen the octopus guy in his whole life, and not the lizard guy or the electricity guy either. And the sand guy is brand new, too. And they’re all talking about different Peters, the octopus guy talks about how he’s too young. “Peter’s not this young. A young man, a college student, but not a boy.” He mutters to himself under his breath once he thinks this reality’s Peter won’t hear. The others don’t vocalize too much about it, but the silence that follows his statement seems to say they all agree with the doctor. He’s too young for either party’s Peters.
“Sooo...” M.J. says, drawing out the word, “how many others do you think there’s gonna be? We’ve only got so many cells in here.” Peter doesn’t speak up as fast as Ned does. “I don’t know man, Peter, did Strange say anything?” “No, not about that. Can’t be too many more though, can they? How many bad guys could I have?” M.J. gives him a sweltering look, and Ned looks down at his laptop like it will speak for him. “Oh.”
M.J. sighs, more like huffs, and Ned gets back to speed-typing searching for more catastrophic anomalies. In situations like this, he almost wishes someone would blow up an ice cream truck or cause a pile up on the freeway. It's too quiet. His knee begins to bounce from his perch on Ned’s desk.
His mind wanders back over to the multiverse. He can’t help it; the curiosity of a student runs through his veins like streams of water through eroded rock. Are there other versions of these men in the cells? More octopus guys that are slightly different ready to bust through the walls? Will he see new M.J.’s, new Ned’s? Will something worse come barrel-rolling out of reality? … Are there more Peter Parker’s? There are, has to be, these rogues clearly have their own respective Peter’s, but what are they like? There’s a deeply juvenile urge to ask that Doc Ock about his Peter, since he says he’s so different from himself, but he holds back. For now. He can ask questions later.
His phone squalls out a loud tune from his pocket, and he’s jolted right back into his seat on the desk. He picks it up so fast he almost drops it twice.
“Aunt May?” He bounces off the table, “yeah, I know, I remember-” He pinches together his index and thumb, brushing off a piece of concrete grit. “I’ll be there, I know-” his mouth opened and closed while his Aunt still spoke on the other end, gaping like a fish out of water. “I- yeah, of course! Of course, just, uh- I'll be there soon okay?” He’s already built himself up to a run before he’s down the steps. “Alright, I love you too. Bye.”
May Parker is a nice lady; he decides as they both drink tea, his goblin suit hidden underneath a hoodie that’s too baggy around the torso and a touch too long on the sleeves. She is younger than his universe’s May, though not too young to be someone’s mother. A little more sarcastic too. Her hair is darker, and longer, and her tone is playful but in a mature manner that never makes him feel like a liability, a chore. Which to himself- someone who’s lived most of his life around businessmen, which shockingly aren’t the most genuine sects of people- it makes him a little bashful. He tries to make small talk, but it falls completely flat once he realizes most of the topics he could bring up are from another world entirely, like Oscorp or his son. There’s a heat that crawls its way up his neck when he realizes he’s already managed to drink the entirety of his cup of tea, devoured the packet of cookies she gave him, and barely two minutes have passed. And that wasn’t even including the bottle of water she’d given him that he’d guzzled down earlier. His hands fidget among themselves, The Goblin always forgets to do even the most basic of bodily maintenance, so when Norman reawakens, he is always thirsty, tired, and starving. He likens it to having the worst hangover he’s ever had in his life every week.
Despite how desperate he knows he is, he doesn’t ask for her to refill his cup or give him more food, as she idly discusses the city and pops in a few notes about her nephew. He just nods along like he knows what he’s saying, like he’s familiar with this mirror-New York, and their newly rolled out self-driving cars (this, he perks up at considerably, how far away is he from home? This New York has self-driving cars? Who made them?) At one point in their mostly one-way conversation, Ms. Parker stops talking in a gentle lull, and casts her eyes onto the empty mug and plate before him. “Norman- or do you prefer Mr. Osborn? I forgot to ask.” She chuckles. He’s rubbing the cuffs of this sleeves between his fingers, small circular motions that intend to ground him, instead of letting him free-fall into the conversation. “Norman is fine, Ms. Parker, thank you.” “Norman it is then! And hey-” She lightly raps her fingers on the table, catching his attention. “I prefer you call me May, Norman.” She says with a sly smile. He tries to smile back, measuring her composure to gauge his own so he gets the expression right, but he must’ve failed given how pitying her next look is. “Anyhow, Norman, did you want more tea? More cookies, we have so many of them from our last food drive, I wish they would give us less pastries sometimes.”
He swallows, she laughs lightly, but it feels like she’s watching him. It’s a judgmental look, but not in the negative sense, though he still shrinks and hides from her for it in his hoodie. It’s like she’s gauging him for his clothing sizes again, because his shirt is obviously a bit too big for him, measuring his appetite with her eyes alone to guess if he’ll want more or less than beforehand. Given how scrawny he’s gotten, all wiry muscle and protruding elbows, she’ll give him more. It’s a precise gaze, if an intimidating one, like a parent judging whether their child skipped lunch at school. It’s almost comforting.
He tries to speak, but his voice comes out croaky and uneven, breaking apart in his voice box. So, he starts over; coughs, and begins once again. “I’d appreciate it, if you would.” “Oh, good!” She says cheerily, lifting herself from the creaky metal chair. “Like I said, too many damn pastries.” She pulls open a metal cabinet’s door, rustling around with what sounds to him like plastic shopping bags, before she pulls away. “Actually, you know what? We have some donuts leftover from earlier this morning, I completely forgot about them!” His head perks up like a dog called by its owner. Regretfully, he feels his middle growl at that, and prays to any higher power willing to listen that she didn’t hear. She grabs a large pink box from beside the white refrigerator and sets it in the middle of the metal cafeteria-style table. “I’ll get the kettle-” she takes his mug by the handle, which has lost all its warmth from the hot tea, “and you just go ahead and help yourself, you’re way too skinny anyway!” she chides, laughing in a homey fashion.
It's after he’s eaten two jelly-filled donuts (this time, trying his best to refrain from scarfing them down so fast he chokes) that Peter Parker comes. He’s sitting with his fingers still running circles around the edges of the sleeves, but they freeze in place when he sees this boy. And he is a boy, through and through, everything from the awkward way he greets his aunt to the way he introduces himself to Norman. His face goes slack when he watches him, responds with a dazed sort of voice when Peter asks him questions. Peter- his world’s Peter? -isn’t this young. Or, perhaps, he isn’t this juvenile? His Peter looks like a man, a man fresh on his way to college, but he is a man, an adult. He can’t place what exactly it is about this one, but he’s so boyish that it makes Norman recoil. Makes his eyes misty and his knee bounce. Who is this kid? Why isn’t he in school?
The boy and Ms. Parker pull away from him at the doorframe, talking under each other’s breaths in rushed whispers. He begins listening, trying to read their lips, but attention eventually snaps to the box in front of him.
It’s immature. Mortifying, he thinks, as he pulls the box towards himself and plucks two out to shove in his pockets. His knee is still bouncing, and his eyes are always trained on the generous hosts a few feet away from him, but he feels as if he can’t help it. He shovels two more into his eager hands, squirrelling them away in the front pouch of the hoodie like he’ll never see food again. And given the Goblin’s reputation of starving Norman out for days and days until his stomach acid feels like it’s eaten through his lining, he might not get to eat this much for a while.
When Ms. Parker glances back to him with her boy, his hands shoot back to his lap like a nocturnal animal recoiling from sunlight.