under fire

Mr. Murdock –“Matt, call me Matt. Mr. Murdock is weird.”—said that Peter’s scent would be mostly gone by then since it had been so long since his passing, but he remembered it pretty well.

Miles kind of wanted to know why he remembered it so well.

Miles was absolutely not asking, though. Nope, not him.

And it wasn’t like he had time to ask anyways. He’d only heard of Daredevil; he’d seen a few clips of the guy on TV and he’d now met a bigger, slightly more put together version of him, but he’d never actually seen Daredevil do his thing, like, all out.

So here’s how he did his thing:

Fast.

Miles could barely keep up. The dog did not want to keep up; she complained by making little whiney-chattery noises when they paused to breathe.

“Leave her,” Matt told him, toes planted securely on a balcony guard rail. “She’s old. She’s got arthritis in her hips.”

Aw, puppy, no.

“I can’t,” he said when they hit ground level again at last.

“Why not?” Matt asked.

“Because you’ll kill me.”

“I’ll kill you?”

“She’s your dog.”

It was gratifying to make Daredevil choke, if only for a second.

“She’s not my dog,” Matt huffed while Tues rested by a fence. She did not like travel by fire escape, nor did she like travel by rooftop. In fact, Miles was going to go out on a limb here and say that Alternate Universe Matt used her mostly for sidewalk adventures.

“She is,” Miles said. “Alternate Universe you gave her to me to find Peter.”

Matt was not sold on the whole Spiderverse thing. He was of the opinion that Miles needed psychiatric help, but had nothing to say to Miles’s assertion that maybe he needed psychiatric help too.

“There is not a single me in existence who likes dogs,” he grumbled. Then perked up and started doing his head twitching thing. Miles informed him that he looked like a confused bird. Miles got his head shoved by his dad’s lawyer. He informed Matt that that was child abuse and got an ‘oh yeah?’ and an even harder shove for the effort.

His Daredevil, he decided, wasn’t ripe yet. He needed some time before he learned how to play nice with others.

“There,” Matt said, facing east, “Come on, I got something.”

Got what? Miles knew where they were going.

“We can’t just go south, kid. That’s Fisk territory, there’s hella folks there itching for a fight.”

Fisk territory. Like that even mattered, that guy was in prison.

“Yeah, that’s what they want you to think. Come on.”

He started off southeast and Miles went to follow him but stumbled back. Tuesday watched him fall on his ass over her paws. She huffed and lowered her head back on top of them. The little hairs on her eyebrows twitched when she glanced over at his grumbling. He got back up.

“Come on, Tues,” he said, “You heard him. We gotta go.”

Tues twitched her eyebrows away from him guiltily.

“Tues.”

She looked back at him with big sad eyes.

“I know girl, but you can’t stay here.” He gave a little tug of the leash. Tuesday got up, but her back legs shook while she did it and Miles’s heart twisted.

“Mr.—Matt,” he called behind him. He heard the groan of irritation.

“What, now?”

“She’s tired,” he said, turning around to address the guy. Matt made another noise, this time of supreme irritation, and stomped forward to stand over the dog with his hands on his hips.

“This is quitter talk,” he lectured her.

Tues’s tail stopped swaying. She didn’t whimper, though.

“UGH, fine,” Matt griped. He stooped low and picked the dog up in his arms like a toddler, cursing all her smells as he went. He started off back north. “Come on,” he shouted over his shoulder.

Miles blinked after him and once he realized the leash’s loop had slipped out his hand, he jogged after to keep up.

“Matthew,” Mr. Nelson said calmly.

Matt handed him the entire dog through his living-room window.

“Gift,” he said.

Mr. Nelson stared at the dog in his arms. Tues wriggled licked his face. He recoiled from her.

“Matthew.”

“I’ll come get her again before morning.”

“What—why? Dog? Why dog?”

“You’re the best, Fogs. I’ll see you later.”

“Wait—”

“It’s not nice to impose on your friends without asking,” Miles said, finally keeping pace with his red-headed asshole.

“I’m too cool to be nice,” Matt said.

“You’re not cool.”

“Sure, I am. I’m Daredevil. He’s cool.”

“No, he’s just rude.”

Matt stopped and Miles bumped into his back. He rounded on Miles and gave him the same annoyed stare he’d given the dog.

“You know, the other Spidey was a lot quieter than you,” he said. “Taller too. Smelled better.”

Mile pouted up at him and then caught himself doing it.

“You smell like Axe,” he told him.

“You smell like—”

“Child abuse. You’re abusing me. I’ll tell my dad you’re Daredevil.”

Matt made a muffled screech behind his teeth and then threw up his hands and whirled around back towards their destination.

“I hate you,” he called over his shoulder.

“I love you, too,” Miles informed him.

The only upside to this beautiful new friendship was that Matt really did have a nose like a bloodhound. He cut Miles off every time he tried to give directions and somehow still managed to take them right to the warehouse Miles remembered. If he hadn’t decided that he’d never, ever tell Matt that he appreciated anything he did, then he might have been in awe.

But things as they were, he now had a reputation to uphold.

“How do you know his smell so well?” he finally asked as they tried to find a way into the warehouse. It looked empty, but it was hard to tell for sure. Dark doesn’t always mean empty and Miles wasn’t too excited about jumping into another boss fight without backup.

“None of your business,” Matt said. He’d just wanted to punch out a window and he didn’t see why Miles wasn’t letting him do this. He needed a lot of work, this one.

“Did you guys share clothes?” Miles prodded as he traced the arrangement of padlocks artfully stamped across the main entrance.

Matt snorted.

“Sure, clothes,” he said.

Ew. That sounded like.

Ew.

“Y’all are nasty,” he declared. That one made Matt laugh.

“Peter was married,” Miles pointed out.

“Peter wasn’t always married.”

“Still nasty.”

Matt laughed again. Miles started to think that maybe Peter B. and Gwen were right, maybe Daredevil was to be avoided as much as humanly possible. He sighed and looked up at the door. He remembered getting inside, he just didn’t remember how. He was pretty sure there’d been hella wreckage that he’d more or less fallen into.

“Hey, can you still smell him?” he asked behind him.

“Mmhm.”

Ugh. Frustrating. Maybe they would have to go with Matt’s brilliant window-smashing technique after all.

“Oh.”

Oh? He looked over to see Matt tapping a toe against a low plank of wood spanning the bottom of the warehouse foundation. He tapped it once, then twice, then stopped to listen. Then he dropped down to hands and knees and pressed his fingers against it, still listening. He frowned.

“You hear something?” Miles asked.

“Mechanical? Metal? Sounds like someone’s talking somewhere down. Below? Underground? It’s echoey.” He pressed in closer until his helmet knocked against the wood. Miles breathed for a beat. Matt lifted his head and sat back on his heels, puzzled. He turned towards Miles. “You said Peter was suffering, right? He was screaming, right?” Yes. “I can’t hear any screaming.”

Now that he’d mentioned it, Miles hadn’t heard any screaming for a while now either, which either meant that Peter was keeping good on his promise to stay quiet or that something had happened to him to make him quiet. Miles didn’t like those options.

He looked up at the door. Matt turned around and went still, staring out back into the city proper. Miles let him. He took hold of the main lock and squeezed it between his hands as hard as he could. As gently and slowly as possible, he pulled it away from the loop it hung on and was pleased to find that it came away easily. He set the broken pieces on the ground next to the door and started in on the other locks.

“Hey, kid?”

Oh, he didn’t like that tone. He started working faster.

“Miles?”

Nope, nope, nope.

“Can we maybe forget the whole polite entrance thing?”

Nope, nope, nope.

Gotcha. Last one. He set it beside the others and lunged out to grab Matt’s wrist. He’d gone all stiff, but Miles couldn’t see anything on the horizon yet, which meant that whatever he must have heard was still a ways off. He pulled Matt with him towards the door and they pulled it back slowly so as not to make too much noise and alert the chatterbox down below. Matt laid a hand on his shoulder to make him stop moving when they slipped inside. He listened and then took his hand off Miles’s shoulder in an affirmative that it was okay to close the door behind them.

It got dark fast. Nearly pitch black. Miles couldn’t see shit.

“Aw, poor baby,” Matt murmured. Miles had half a mind to trip him but refrained for the sake of the mission.

“Voices?” he asked Matt instead in a whisper. He felt the hand on his shoulder again. Then it released.

“Voice. Down.”

“Down where?”

“I dunno kid, I ain’t been here before, you tell me.”

Fair.

“Can you smell Peter?” The hand returned and held for a few seconds.

“Follow me,” Matt said. He moved his own hand from Miles’s shoulder and hooked Miles’s fingers into his beltloop.

Ah, yes. He remembered this rubble. Specifically, he remembered crashing through it like a rogue skier after a couple of drinks.

Matt hated it. He needed to get new boots, his had barely any grip left and he was slipping and sliding all over the place.

“Just take them off,” Miles hissed at him. “You’re loud as hell.”

“Take them off? Do I look immune to tetanus to you?”

If, by that, he meant he had a piss poor attitude which would depress even diseases, then yes. Yes, he did.

Matt slipped on a piece of metal and nearly reenacted Miles’s unpleasant short-term sky dive from a few months ago; Miles managed to catch his wrist at the last second on instinct and helped him climb back up onto the debris which seemed to be all around them. It was dark, and Miles knew that they’d entered from ground level, but it still seemed like they were straddling the rafters over an abyss. He couldn’t see it, but he could remember the cavernous expanse of the space. The floor would drop down low where the multiverse machine lived.  If he remembered right, they’d be creeping around the very edge of the drop soon.

Matt slipped again and Miles had had enough.

“Aren’t you supposed to be a ninja?” he hissed.

“Who the fuck told you that?” Matt demanded.

“One of my imaginary friends. If you’re a ninja, then ninja already.”

“It’s not that easy.”

“So you aren’t one?” Miles jabbed.

He didn’t need to see Matt’s face to feel his offense.

“’Ninja’ isn’t a verb,” he scolded.

Oooh. Weak, man. Miles was going to consider that a win.

Then he slipped and felt like he’d died for half a heartbeat before realizing that he hadn’t slipped at all, Matt had just swept him off his feet and pressed both of them into what felt like a hidey hole in the rubble.

“What--?”

“Sh.”

The door above screeched open. The bluish light of the street brought the place into greater focus than before, so Miles could confirm that Matt had crammed the two of them into a hollow between sheets of metal and concrete. The door screeched closed again and the dark settled in heavy once more. A beam of light flicked on above them with a ‘click.’ The sound of heavy footsteps echoed, moving in the opposite direction from them.

Miles covered his mouth to silence his breathing.

The footsteps found something hard and metal to stomp against. Maybe a ladder or stairs or something. It echoed. Miles felt Matt’s chest twitch with a few sharp intakes of air. He seemed to be moving his head a lot now.

The footsteps got quieter as they got further away and then the screech of another door opening made Miles shiver. It closed. Matt then did something weird with his shoulders that made his whole body move in a wave.

His breathing stuttered.

“Matt?”

“There’s no way.”

“Matt?”

“No fucking way, this is crazy, there’s no way.”

Wait.

“Can you hear Peter?”

“Just for a second, like. Barely a second. Did you hear him too?”

No, Miles wanted to say, but I’m keeping you, pal, sorry to disappoint.

“We gotta get down there,” Miles said.

Matt jerked his head around a couple more times.

“On it,” he said. “Stairs or ladder?”

Oh god, there was both?

Miles hated, hated, hated ladders. Stairs? Fine. Great. Excellent. Ladders? Portals to hell. Hell in long strips.

He’d helped his dad replace some shingles on the top of the roof when he was eight once and he was pretty sure that he remembered crying twenty of the thirty minutes it had taken to do that. Most of those twenty minutes had been conducted in anticipation of the ladder. The latter five or so, he’d saved for the descent.

“Aren’t you a supposed to be a spider?” Matt asked him like a dick after he’d had to stop and cling for a moment to collect himself for the second time.

“I’m a spider like you’re a ninja, jerkface,” Miles gritted out at him.

“I am a ninja,” Matt agitated.

“Yeah, sure. Secret Ninja Butterfingers.”

Matt made a noise that sounded like a cross between a growl and a yelp.

“Alright, wise guy, move. I got this,” he ordered.

Yeah, like hell he was doing that. There wasn’t room for two of them on this rung.

“Yeah there is. Move.”

Lies.

“Miles. Seriously. Move.”

UGH.

He moved.

They hit the floor of the cavern and Matt grabbed Miles’s wrist and was off like a shot, like his dog actually, scampering across the floor, occasionally halting and cramming himself and Miles against the outer wall of the place, even though Miles couldn’t tell why. The place felt empty again to him, but Matt didn’t seem to be in the mood to be taking any chances.

Not when his buddy was on the line.

Matt sniffed once or twice and changed direction, taking Miles with him in a few zigs and zags, apparently following Peter’s scent until they were standing in front of a door, lit around the edges by something behind it. Miles could hear a voice somewhere behind it. Then, out of nowhere, Matt grabbed him and smacked his own back flat against the space on one side of the door just as it swung open and threw a trapezoid of light onto the ground in front of it. Matt latched a hand over Miles’s face and his chest at Miles’s back seemed to stop moving altogether.

A person wearing heavy boots and overalls stepped out of the doorway and, grumbling into a phone, closed the door behind them. Darkness descended immediately. Matt’s hand didn’t let up on Miles’s face.

The person turned their flashlight on and carried on arguing with the person on the other side of their phone call as they followed its miniature spotlight over to a set of stairs leading up, up, up back to the warehouse floor.

Matt’s hand absolutely did not let up. Not even after the person cursed their knees at the top of the stairs. Not when the warehouse door shrieked open. And not when it shrieked closed either.

They had to have been standing there for nearly five minutes, in silence, when Matt finally released Miles and they both let the tension out of their spines.

“Was that ninja-ing?” Miles asked.

Matt ignored him to scrape his fingers all over the door behind them, feeling for a handle.

“Peter,” he hissed. “Peter!”

They listened.

“Peter!” he tried again. “Come on, I know you’re in there. Peter!”

Still nothing.

As far as Miles was concerned there was only one thing for that.

“Miles,” Matt whispered frantically, which really made no sense at all, given that Miles had just hammered his fists into the rectangular equivalent of a gong.

“Miles, I have a fantastic idea.”

And Miles didn’t want to hear it. The door had no handle which meant that it probably required a key, a key which they very much did not have along with all that time they didn’t have.

“Why don’t we—and this is super novel so listen close—”

Miles’s fingers could feel the dent that he’d made in the door, but it was still shallow. It wasn’t enough to widen the lines of light peering out from the frame’s edges. He needed a running start.

“—not alert the entire planet that—where are you going? No, no. Miles, no.”

“Cover your ears,” Miles told him from his thirty yard head start.

Matt apparently knew more or less what was good for him and shut up to follow the command. Miles took in a big breath and then let it out slowly. He started sprinting.

The door dented in like it had been struck by a cannon ball, and at a later date, Miles would reminisce on that with pride, but in the meantime, he cheered and dug his fingers into the now-widened cracks around it. He pulled and pulled and pulled.

Matt eventually came back to earth and put his hands on top of Miles’s to try to help him. Matt, bless his heart, didn’t have super strength, but Miles let him think he was helping anyways. It took some yanking and scrambling, but eventually the door gave way and slid off its hinges, sending the two of them crashing down with it.

Miles popped up first.

The entrance was wide open.

The entrance fed into a narrow room maybe the size of Miles and Ganke’s dorm room. On one side was a collection of equipment and computers with cords and wires that were strung across the ceiling. Miles followed the wires to what looked like some kind of box mounted on a concrete bench tucked against the opposite wall. There was another door at the head of the box, there. His Spidey Sense squirmed in the center of his back, propelling him forward.

He knew before his hands even hit the box who was inside it.

He still wasn’t prepared, though.

Peter’s mask stared straight up through what looked like a pane of glass fitted over the top of the box. He looked like one of his suits back in his aunt’s shed. He didn’t move. His Spidey suit was just as vibrant as Miles remembered it being; the only thing which gave any hint that he was alive was the slow expansion of his chest and a monitor mounted securely right over his middle which tracked his vitals.

Miles started when one of Matt’s fingers tapped lightly on the glass.

“Is he in there?” he asked.

Is he?

What?

“You can’t see him?” Miles asked. “I mean—sense him?”

Matt tapped on the glass lightly again and frowned.

“Is this glass?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“He’s under the glass.”

“Yes?”

Matt’s frown only got deeper.

“He’s cold,” he said.

Cold?

Miles looked into the box. It didn’t seem like a refrigeration unit; Peter’s chest expanded, but his breath didn’t make clouds. His eyes jumped from Peter’s face to movement at his hand.

It was twitching. He hadn’t seen it before. It was twitching subtly, almost shaking more than anything else. And it was then that Miles realized that the box wasn’t glass; it was some kind of mirror. The far side reflected Peter’s other hand, but it didn’t reflect the lights sunken into the box to illuminate Peter’s body.

It reflected blackness.

Emptiness.

The Spidey Sense squirmed at that too.

“What it is?”

He looked up to see Matt looking at him quizzically.

He didn’t know how to explain.

“There’re mirrors inside the box, but they aren’t reflecting him right,” he said.

“They’re reflecting him wrong?”

“No, they’re just—they’re reflecting something that isn’t there.”

Matt was quiet.

“Why’s he cold?” he asked. “He doesn’t smell the same.”

Miles didn’t know. Miles didn’t understand. But what he did understand was that his Peter Parker was laying in a mirror coffin with all these wires wrapped around his tomb, like he was in some kind of—

Oh shit.

“Matt, we gotta go,” Miles said, pressing his hands against the glass and trying to find a seam, a button, something to get Peter out of there.

Matt joined him without being asked.

“What’s going on?” he asked instead while they searched.

“This is a lab,” Miles said, “Whoever is here is studying him. He might not be alive after all, or if he is, he might be in some kind of coma or—”

The lights went off.

He closed his eyes and sucked in a breath through his teeth. He should have seen this coming.

“Miles?”

Shit.

“What’s going on?”

“Well, there we go,” a voice said sweetly from the front of the portable lab.

Goddamnit.

“I knew at least one of you would come calling. Didn’t expect it to be the newest one, I can admit that.”

Peter was right. It was a trap.

“Now you, I didn’t expect, handsome. Are you a Spiderman, too? What verse do you come from, hmm?”

Oh. She was talking to Matt.

Matt said nothing. Miles pressed his back against Peter’s box. He couldn’t see in the dark, but he’d know Doc Ock’s voice from anywhere now. It haunted him.  

“You’re all so loyal,” Doc Ock said cheerfully. “But I still wasn’t so sure he’d reach you guys. He’s not very loud, you know. It was kind of disappointing, if I’m being honest here.”

Fuck you.

Fuck. You.

“He’s sleeping right now,” Doc Ock continued, sticky sweet through the dark, “But we can wake him up if you want. Is that what you want to do, Spiderman?”

Miles wanted to stuff her in that box, that’s what he wanted to do. He understood now. All Peter did when he woke up was panic. He was stuck inside this box, mirrors all around him. The only thing he could see was blackness and himself.

He was scared.

Lonely.

The last memories he had to hold onto were those of his death.

“Let him go,” he said.

Doc Ock laughed.

“And lose the best specimen of your kind? No, I don’t think so. He’s taught me so much.”

“Let. Him. Go,” Miles repeated.

“What’s your name, honey? Why don’t we make a deal?”

He didn’t know where Matt was. He couldn’t tell if he was still standing next to him, but he sure as hell hoped so because he had the feeling that he was going to need a lawyer here in a second.

“I don’t think so,” he said.

“It’s like this,” Doc Ock said like he hadn’t said anything, “You stop playing Spiderman, and I’ll stop playing with your friend. He’ll die again, you’ll hang up the mask, and we all walk away winners.”

It would probably be kinder to Peter to just let him die again, and Miles was sorry. His heart ached with how sorry he was. The roots of his teeth were sour with it.

He couldn’t. That’s not how Spiderman works.

“No deal,” he said.

“Come on, now,” Doc Ock drawled. “Do you really want to leave him like this? Suspended? Do you even know what kind of work it took to get him where he is? It’s pretty amazing, actually let me tell you. All you Spider people are connected, you know. Like a giant web. But it took ages to figure out what was between it all. You’d think universes would be all stacked against each other, like pages in a book, wouldn’t you?”

Heeled shoes stepped into the lab. Their scraping sounded hollow on the floor.

“But they aren’t like that,” Doc Ock continued, “There’s space in between them. Empty space. Think, like, bubbles. Suspended in water. You guys, you can reach through the water into other bubbles, which is incredible. Unprecedented.”

Miles couldn’t move back even though those hollow footsteps kept coming forward. He had to guard Peter. Peter couldn’t guard himself.

“Your friend here, I just put, pop!” She made the sound with her lips. “Right in that in-between space. He’s half in there. He’s half here. And really, it’s been a miracle worker. He’s not dead anymore! Although I’m not sure I’d say living. But don’t you worry, he’s much happier there. He really likes that in-between space; his cells like it almost better than they like it here. If I don’t give him a little time out in there, he starts getting all glitchy.”

Wait, what did that mean? Did that mean that this verse was rejecting him? Did that mean that he couldn’t stay in this verse, even if he wanted to?

Did that mean—did that mean that Peter couldn’t be saved?

“I know what you’re thinking, little one,” Doc Ock said, just a few feet away now. “Spiderman saves people. Well, I’m sorry, but you can’t save him. He’s done. This is as far as I can take him; some kind of multiverse chimera. But you can save you. And you can save the other Spidermen. Spare them from coming out here for nothing, just like you. Or from becoming new toys for me to play with once I’m bored with this one. Or like I said, we can make a deal.”

“No deal.”

That wasn’t him.

He heard Doc Ock’s intake of breath.

“No one asked you,” she said in the direction away from Miles. Miles shivered.

He heard the sound of metal sliding against something hard.

“Maybe not. But two can play at this game,” Matt said smoothly. Miles didn’t hear his footsteps but he did hear a sharp gasp.

“Let’s you and me make a deal,” Matt said, low and dangerous. “Mine’s easier than yours. You give us the body. No one gets hurt.”

“Spiderman doesn’t kill,” Doc Ock spat at him.

Matt laughed, loud and horrible.

“Spiderman—that’s cute. You think I’m Spiderman? You really think I’m Spiderman? Nah, honey. Try again.”

Silence.

“Let go of me.”

“Who am I?”

“I said, let go of me.”

“And I said who. Am. I?”

Miles could hear Doc Ock’s breathing now. She sounded terrified. He felt sick.

“Daredevil,” she whispered.

“That’s right,” Matt drawled, “Now tell me, darlin’, you wanna make a deal with the Devil?”

Silence.

Miles could practically count his breaths.

“Give us the body,” Matt said, “Or I’ll ruin you.”

Doc Ock said nothing. Matt waited a few beats.

“I don’t got all day, sweetheart,” he said, “I got places to be. People to bury. So what do you say? Body for me, body for you? Or body for me, body for me fucking anyways?”

The lights turned back on.

“That’s what I thought,” Matt said sweetly, leaning his lips right up beside Doc Ock’s ear with one of his billy clubs held tenderly up against her chin. It wasn’t the billy club; it was a blade, but the handle was the same. It must have been hidden inside the club. His other arm was locked firmly across her throat.

“Scram,” Matt said into Doc Ock’s neck. “Now. Before I change my fucking mind.”

He released her in one fluid motion and sent her stumbling back towards the door. He turned around and stood, somehow wider than ever, in front of Miles and Peter’s box. She sneered at him.

“I’ll end you too, Daredevil,” she snarled.

Matt jerked her way and she flinched hard. He laughed. Her lips curled as far as they could and she took a step back, then another; then turned around and started running. Miles heard them start up the stairs and only then did he release the breath he was holding.

“She’s calling the cops,” Matt said, spinning around, all traces of Daredevil gone. “You got any imaginary friends who can help us move a body?”