under fire

Lights out.

Dark in.

Miles watched Peter set up the computer through his shadows in the trapezoid of light. He went fast. Plugs to plugs. Passwords went through. The whole thing booted up with a welcoming noise which belied the situation they were in.

Miles heard keys clacking. And then, just barely under all that, a soft exhale of breath.

He knew that breath.

I can do this. It said. Go time.

Keys started clacking again, and the skype call started. It rang two times, then three times. But on the fifth time, the hair on the back of Miles’s neck stood up and he reached a hand back behind him. Matt’s bony fingers wrapped in coarse cloth answered. Miles squeezed them.

“Something’s wrong,” Miles said.

“What—”

The phone picked up.

And everything went out.

Blackness.

Blackness.

Blackness.

“Peter?” Miles said. The trapezoid of light was gone. He tried to look behind him. “Matt? Red?”

He held out a hand and no one reached back.

“Peter?” he called again, louder this time. “Matt?”

His voice didn’t echo.

His fingers caught on something and he jerked his head to the side and caught a burst of sparks; green, teal and pink. They lit up his hand for a second and fizzled out like the remnants of fireworks in the July sky.

The in-between. He was back in the in-between, where Peter had been before; where Red and Tats Spidey’s fight had plunged him what felt like ages ago now.

“PETER,” he shouted. His breath came faster; he couldn’t stay still. He had to move. He started running and the ripples went with him.

There was nothing in front of him; the sparks lit only his feet. And after a couple seconds, he slowed to a halt and watched them die off again around him with a stone sinking further and further into his stomach.

If they were here, in the in-between, then where was Doc Ock? Where was everyone else? Were they actually here or were their bodies still back in the warehouse? What if they were? What if everyone was there, waiting for their signal and Peter and Miles had blinked out.

What if Red and Matt had been left guarding two bodies?

What if

What if

“Miles?”

He wanted to cry.

“Peter?” he called.

“Miles! Move so I can see you!”

His heart was up in his throat and he could barely swallow and he didn’t know what else to do so he threw a punch into the dark. The lights went with him.

“Gotcha!”

His throat hurt but he couldn’t cry.

They’d let everyone down.

Let them right into a trap. It had to be another trap. That was exactly what Doc Ock had wanted—she knew they’d come back and she knew they weren’t dumb enough to come alone.

He felt so, so stupid anyhow.

“Hey! There you are, okay, so, I get that this seems bad but—Miles? Buddy, what’s--? No, no, hey, it’s okay. We can fix this.”

Peter’s hands felt big when they wrapped around his wrists and pulled them away from his face. He wasn’t hidden by shadows, somehow, despite the darkness. He pulled off his mask and pulled Miles’s arms around his own back and wrapped his much longer ones around Miles’s shoulders and somehow, somehow he was warm.

“Miles, it’s going to be okay,” he said. His voice rumbled in his chest.

“She’s got you again,” Miles managed to choke.

“She’s got us, actually,” Peter noted offhandedly. “And she’s probably been monologuing at Matt and Red for like, 45 minutes by this point.”

The realization make Miles hiccup and he pressed himself deeper into Peter’s chest.

“We fucked up,” he sobbed. “She’s gonna kill them.”

Peter hummed and rocked back and forth a bit, making a show of thinking.

“Naaah,” he finally decided, sounding 100% exactly like Peter B.

“What?” Miles sniffed.

“I said, nah. Like, kill? Nah. You don’t know Matt very well, he’s secretly a cockroach. Damn near impossible to kill. Fisk tried to drown him in the Hudson last year and he came up swinging and then lived long enough to get hypothermia. And then he lived long enough for me to break his jaw in, uh, unfortunate circumstances. And then he lived long enough to meet you. If Red’s anything like him, we couldn’t be safer. No one could.”

That didn’t make him feel any better.

“But what if—”

“We can’t think about what ifs right now, Miles, Doc Ock’s attacking our friends.”

Miles pulled out his grip and stared up at him.

“What do we do then?” he asked with his hands feeling wide and empty, “How do we get out of here? How do we wake up? How did you wake up?”

Peter stared at him.

“I heard you,” he said.

“That’s not helpful,” Miles snapped, “I’m right here and there’s no one else from our verse over there.”

Peter blinked at him and Miles could not, for the life of him, understand why he was so calm. He gestured at him in frustration trying to convey these strong thoughts. Peter watched him, almost amused.

“You know something crazy?” he said. “Being here chills me way out.”

Wait. What?

“Like, when I’m not in some torture cycle of waking up to remember getting hulk-smashed and then falling back to sleep: way chill. You know how many meds I used to have to take before to get to this level of chill?”

Meds? Why were they talking about meds? Their friends were dying.

“Mostly anxiety stuff, nothing like what Tats takes, though. Man, those are some next level shit. He is truly living on that nonfunctional edge. Really, he just needs a new job if you ask me. He claims it’s not so bad, something about coming in waves which I cannot relate to at all. Mine’s like, there’s the Spidey Sense and then the constant hum below that is like a blanket of constant anxiety.”

This was already a surreal experience. And it was only getting more surreal the longer this conversation went on.

“Peter,” Miles said slowly. “I’m happy you are chilled out. That’s great, but. People. Are. Dying. How do we wake up?”

“Hmm?”

“Wake up. How do we wake up? We need someone to wake us up, but you only woke up because I touched you, yeah? That is a problem, see, because I am here and you are here, and so we cannot wake each other up. Right? Okay?”

“Oh, wonder if Matt could do it.”

Miles really needed high-key anxiety Peter to come back, now. That guy got shit done.

“Matt cannot do it,” he said carefully, “Because he is busy being killed and he’s not a Spiderman and can’t reach through to other Spidermen.”

“Oh, I think I get it now.”

Thank Jesus.

“You know, it should be much more disturbing.”

And they were off again.

“Peter, come on, man. Focus,” he pleaded.

“I think I’m part of this space, now.”

Wait.

Wait, wait, wait.

“What do you mean, you’re part of this space now?” Miles asked, taking a step back so he could better see the guy’s face.

“Ock says she put me half-in, half-out,” Peter said, watching Miles. “When I went home with you, I thought I felt right, but I don’t think I did now. This feels right. I feel like, I dunno.” He held up a hand and laid it flat in the air like it was resting against something solid. Light pulsed around it faintly for a moment and then it was gone again.

“It feels real,” Peter said.

Miles stared up at him.

“I’m not leaving you here,” he said.

“Miles.”

“I’m not leaving you here to die again. Don’t make me do that.”

“Miles, if what she wants is me, then—”

“No. Don’t you get it? This isn’t a sacrifice. If she has you, even a piece of you, even a part of you that doesn’t feel like you anymore, she’ll just do this over and over. Now I’m stuck here, too. And it doesn’t feel right to me. And it doesn’t chill me out and I don’t want it to. Come on, Peter, snap out of this, you’re Spiderman. Our friends are in danger. We need to help them.”

He didn’t realize how desperate he sounded until he wasn’t talking anymore. Just panting. Staring up at his hero who blinked once, then twice, and bowed his head.

“You’re right,” he said.

Thank god.

“I’d never be this fucking chilled out in any universe, she’s doing something to me to keep me way steady. And actually, feels a little like wading through soup…”

He kind of stopped.

Miles waited. Then snapped his fingers.

He jerked back.

“Soup!” he cried, then recovered, “Okay, soup. Wow. Very distracting. Yeah no. I am drugged to the fucking teeth somewhere. Okay, that is a big problem, that’s me useless. We gotta do something before you get useless, too.”

“Yes, so what?” Miles pleaded.

“Hmm?”

Jesus fucking Christ. It wasn’t Peter’s fault, whatever this was. He was absolutely intoxicated. Miles had to repeat this to himself a few times so he wouldn’t snap at the guy again. He started pacing in a circle, trying to think, think, think.

They were stuck in the in-between. They needed to get back to their verse before Doc Ock murdered their bodies or their friends. They needed some kind of connection back to their verse. Peter B. was there.

Miles stopped and threw his hands up and crushed his eyes closed as hard as he could. Thinking about Peter B. Peter B. constantly smelled like coffee, even when he hadn’t been drinking coffee. He also constantly had stubble which he lamented just as constantly. Something about being served second divorce papers in the case a full beard ever made an appearance in his apartment.

Stubble and coffee.

Stubble and coffee.

He tried to press into the space. But there was nothing. It was like he couldn’t keep a grip on the image of the guy. Almost like he was too far away, somehow.

“Peter,” he snapped, getting Peter’s immediate and undivided attention. “Reach out to Tats.”

“Who?”

Right, how could he have forgotten?

“Tats Spidey. The Peter with the tattoos. Daffodils on this side, you spent the last week with him?”

“Ah, yeah. They’re his aunt’s favorite flower.”

Adorable. Not helpful.

“Reach out to him,” Miles repeated.

“Reach?”

“CALL HIM.”

“Ah. Right-o.”

Jesus Christ. No wonder Spiderman didn’t do drugs. He was flat out useless on them. Note to self: check susceptibility to mind-altering substances at a later date.

Peter pressed a hand against that weird semi-solid surface again and closed his eyes. Miles wondered if maybe he needed to start up a chant of ‘daffodils and May” to keep him on track, but to his surprise, Peter’s hand sunk through the space easily and was answered almost immediately by a red one.

“WHERE THE FUCK ARE YOU?” Tats Spidey roared.

Things had very clearly gone to shit behind him. Miles couldn’t see much, but he could see Wade choking a guy against a wall with his own gun and Little Spidey slamming a vicious downward kick into a guy’s shoulder. Both victims wore black tact-gear and were armed to the teeth.

“SHE TEAMED UP WITH FUCKING FISK IN PRISON,” Tats Spidey continued, pausing to duck a blow and hurl web at a few guys’ eyes and leave them to their fate at the hands of Bitsy, who dutifully tased them with his hands. “WE GOT FIFTY MOTHERFUCKERS HERE AND NO DOUBLE DS WHATSOEVER.”

No Double Ds?

“We’re in the in-between," Miles said. He tried to get a hand through to Tats Spidey’s side but cracked his knuckles against some kind of barrier. Tats Spidey reeled back in surprise and then thrust a hand forward to grab at Miles’s shoulder. He ran into the same problem. He knocked his fingers against the barrier a few times, then tried to punch it, only to shout out in pain when his hand gave before it did.

“We’re stuck,” Miles said.  “Peter’s drugged, he’s all dopey and stupid. I think Doc Ock did something to us down there, I think our bodies are still there. Matt and Red are too, they need help.”

“We need help,” Tats Spidey said. “Fuck. FUCK. Okay, uh—PETER. BIG PETE. Hey, come deal with this. They’re stuck in the space Blondie was in before and—get the fuck off me I’m talking—apparently some shit is going down with Ock. Figure it out please?”

Tats Spidey was kind of terrifyingly efficient in the face of chaos. The guy he’d thrown over his shoulder whimpered when his buddy joined him down there. Peter B. rushed over from somewhere Miles couldn’t see and let Tats Spidey tear off back to immobilize more folks behind the window with the web.

“Miles, what’s happening?” Peter B. asked.

He tried to explain as fast as possible.

“I didn’t even feel you,” Peter B. said. “Fuck. Okay, hey. Peter, whoo-hoo, hi friend—oh yeah, he’s well gone—yeah, no. That’s not gonna work. Miles, reach out to Gwen, if we can get her the signal, then maybe she can—”

A guy tried to stab Peter B. in the neck with something that looked suspiciously purple and got his ass picked up and thrown over to join Tats Spidey’s pile. Valiantly, he got up and tried to wrestle his arms out of Peter B.’s knee-jerk iron grip.

“Dude, just stop,” Peter B. snarled at him. “You ain’t gonna win this one, Christ, this is how people end up with broken arms. You want a broken arm?” The screamed expletive certainly earned him one and Peter B. breathed through his teeth at him in disappointment. He jerked back to Miles.

“Gwen,” he instructed.

“Gwen, thank you,” Miles agreed.

“Be careful.”

“Will do”

The window closed. Miles tried to reach out to Gwen as hard as he could.

He could always reach out to Gwen. She always answered.

But this time it was the same. Nothing. Like she hadn’t even noticed the nudge.

Miles muffled a frustrated scream and rounded on Peter.

“Gwen,” he commanded.

“Gwen Stacy,” Peter repeated.

“Yes, Gwen Stacy,” Miles said, then before the dumbass questions could start up again: “Green eyes, blond hair, gap-teeth. Gwen.”

“Point shoes,” Peter remembered.

He reached out again with his eyes closed while Miles tried to swallow his panic.

Gwen was busy.

Gwen could not talk to Miles or anyone else because she was screaming through the city, desperately trying not to die.

When she felt the nudge, she knew it was time, but she was not prepared to reach back and bust her knuckles on a wall. And then, once that shock was over and Miles was talking a mile a minute to her while Peter appeared to be falling asleep standing up beside him, she made an executive decision.

For the team.

God rest their souls.

She reached out to Peter B. and told him to get everyone the fuck out of there.

“We’re missing two people, Gwen.”

“Who?” she demanded.

“Two Daredevils.”

“Then they’ll just have to fucking deal,” she said. “Get the fuck out now. Non-negotiable.”

“No, it sounds like it’s gotten out of hand down there, we’re not throwing more bodies at that shit until we know what’s happening. Stay in your verse.”

“Peter, listen to me,” she said, “This is not an option, nowhere here is safe for me right now, so just doing what I’m asking you to do—Miles’s Peter is fading fast, we need to catch him before this shit starts all over again.”

Peter B. didn’t want to leave this, but he didn’t have a choice. Someone got a lucky shot in and nearly plunged what was definitely some type drug in a syringe right into his neck.

Yeah, no. Situation dire.

“Trust me,” she shouted.

“Alright, I trust you,” Peter B. shouted back. “But I can’t open a window for you down there—”

“You don’t have to. Get everyone back. MOVE.”

She turned around and screamed as loud as she could.

She knew he heard.

Her breath stuttered while she waited. She never waited. Everything, every muscle, every bone and sinew in her body screeched at her to run. To bolt. To get the fuck off that roof. Hell, out of the city.

She heard the blade before she heard the footsteps.

“I love this game, Spiderwoman.”

Oh, buddy. You ain’t gonna like it for long.

She double-checked that the other side was clear. It was as clear as it was going to be. People were still fighting and shouting, but on the whole they were away from the window. She knew where the warehouse door would be. She knew it would be dark.

She was just going to have to take that leap.

She turned back just as the blade went into attack position.

“Catch me if you can, bitch,” she said.

And launched herself through the window.

She didn’t have time to appreciate everyone’s various ‘what the fuck?’s because she had a fucking serial killer on her tail. She went out, wove through the crowd, and threw herself through the little space she could find in the doorway. Speed was of the essence here because she was about to lose her only advantage.

It wasn’t just dark.

It was pitch black.

Goddamnit.

She had to keep moving because Murderdock wasn’t going to notice the difference.

She heard him enter, but just barely.

She heard the blade which almost connected with her rib cage much, much, clearer. It struck metal. She tried to remember how high the ceiling was and threw out a line of web, blindly.

It stuck.

She pulled hard and just barely escaped the second blow. As the arc of the swing slow, she caught sight of a little light shining out of a doorway. She let go of the line and hoped the next one would connect to whatever wall was behind and over it.

It didn’t connect.

Freefall is only fun if it’s your choice.

She didn’t fall far because a mechanical something latched around her waist and hurled her into the wall she’d missed.

Well, on the upside, she’d found Doc Ock. Which meant she’d also found Miles and Peter. She caught onto the wall with a short burst of web and shuddered through the pain in her shoulder. She did not release the web. No, that would be suicide. Murderdock knew exactly where she was and she couldn’t find him for shit. What she needed was a light switch.

“Spiderwoman?” Doc Ock’s voice sang out, “How lovely of you to join us. Come here, my dear. I’ll make a matching set.”

Somehow, even though she couldn’t see him, Gwen knew that that had given Murderdock pause. He was a fucking hound. He didn’t like people touching his things and Gwen, for better or for worse, was one of his things. She delighted a little at the idea of his blood boiling.

Something moved next to her and she nearly screamed when it touched her hand.

“Sh!”

Her breath caught.

“Who are you?” she whispered.

“My name’s Matt,” the poor guy said, he sounded hurt. “I’m Miles’s friend. Come here. You’ll fall if you stay there. This is a ledge, it’s safe. Here, hold my hand.”

His hand was gloved but firm when she took it. He pulled her over onto some kind of metal surface and hissed a little at the noise she made. She was glad to have her weight off her shoulder, but when she settled down next to the body—definitely a man—she put her hand in something.

Something wet.

“Are you hurt?” she whispered.

“It’s just a flesh wound,” he said softly.

“Are you a Spidey?” she asked.

“Uh, no. Definitely not. Peter’s my Spidey. Was my Spidey—is my Spidey? I dunno, things are complicated. And I’m feeling a l’il dizzy. Miles is definitely my Spidey.”

This guy was losing hella blood. Gwen could feel it, it soaked her leg. She squinted out at the darkness. She couldn’t see for shit, but Murderdock was still radio silent and seemed to be well distracted with Doc Ock’s writhing and calling. Gwen could afford to wait a minute. To stay still and not draw either of their attention. She started trying to weave a bandage for the guy next to her out of web. It didn’t take much, five pumps of web layered on top of each other. Just as she opened her mouth to ask him where the bleeding was coming from, he cut her off.

“Who’s that?” he asked.

Who’s that. She looked out into the blackness. Doc Ock was talking at someone down there. Given the lack of dead/dying sounds, it probably wasn’t Murderdock. Yet.

“I dunno. Might be Daredevil,” she said.

There was a pause.

“So, uh. I’m Daredevil.”

What.

She stared into the blackness next to her.

“You’re what?”

“It’s gotta be Red, I guess. But he took a hard one into the floor. I thought he’d knocked out.”

WHAT WHAT WHAT

“Your name wouldn’t happen to be Matt Murdock, would it?” she asked as softly and with as much polite dread as she could.

Another pause.

“What? No. Psh. Who the fuck is that guy? Weird name, though. All these people and their alliterations.”

Oh god, he was Matt Murdock.

He was the friendliest, gentlest, bleeding out Matt Murdock. Fuck. She’d finally found the nice one and he was going to die sitting right next to her.

“Where’s your wound?” she asked.

“Woah. Who the fuck is that?”

He could see Murderdock—or maybe not see. He could sense Murderdock. Gwen could too in her own way (her dad called this her ‘paranoia’ and sometimes he was right, but this time he was wrong).

“That’s the guy who wants me dead,” she said, “Where’s your wound? Here. Wrap this around it.”

There was another pause.

“Thank you,” the nice Murdock said. Thereby proving once more that he was the only decent Murdock. He took the bandage and she heard a slightly shuddery breath as he secured it around wherever it was that he was bleeding. He breathed through his teeth a few times. “Why’s he want you dead?”

“Mostly because he’s a psychopath,” she said.

“Oh, good thing he’s here then. He and Octo-lady can be best friends.”

Mmmmm, they’d see about that.

“Gwen.”

She nearly died.

“Oh hey, Red, what’s up?” the nice Murdock said. “Thought you got tanked there for a second.”

“Who the fuck is that guy?” The dog Murdock asked.

“This gal’s mortal enemy,” Nice Murdock answered for her. His voice was a bit higher than his older counterpart’s. Just a little. Mostly, his accent wasn’t as strong.

“Mortal? Enemy? At your age? Damn girl, good job. I didn’t have any moral enemies until I was like, 25.”

“You lying sack of shit, if there is a Marci in your verse, she is and has been your mortal enemy since you were 23.”

Gwen did not know what exactly was happening here, but what she was now uncomfortably aware of was the fact that she was in a warehouse with three Matt Murdocks, each representing different extreme squares on an alignment chart, and a furious Doc Ock. And most importantly, her friends were nowhere to be found.

“Kid you need to chill the fuck out, Marci is not your mortal enemy. Frank Castle is your mortal enemy. You met Frank yet? He’ll be right under Fisk.”

“No shit?”

“No shit.”

“Do either of you know where Miles and Peter are?” she asked.

“Where are you?” Doc Ock sang ominously somewhere down on the floor level.

“Hey, kid. You still got that blade?” Dog Murdock asked even quieter than before.

“No, gal broke it in half, you know what I went through to get that thing?”

“Elektra?”

“Damn, you’re good. Hey, is it the dog that does it?”

These two were…maybe exactly what Gwen needed right now.

“Miles and Peter,” she said. “Where are they?”

“In the box,” the nice Murdock responded immediately. “But she’s guarding it. And her arm things are very strong. Much stronger than they seem.”

What box?

“The box. The one down there,” he said.

Gwen then realized she was asking not one, but two blind men to describe an object none of the three of them could see. She backtracked.

“What happened to them?”

“Some kind of syringe. Poison, I dunno. Smells bad. Shot it out of a gun. Think she nabbed Peter while he was in the box. She put them both inside.”

“And you let her?” Gwen asked.

“Define ‘let,’” Dog Murdock said.

Oh, okay. Slightly more comforting.

“Are you guys okay?” she asked.

“Define ‘okay,’” the nice Murdock said.

Actually, she took it back. They were kind of great together.

“The guy who I brought here is my Matt Murdock,” she whispered.  “He’s hiding somewhere, but he wants to kill me.”

There were two teeny, extremely validating gasps in response to this.

“We can’t let him kill you,” Nice Murdock said.

“We won’t let him kill you,” Dog Murdock amended.

“No, don’t worry about that. What we need though is for him to get mad at Doc Ock,” Gwen said. “I thought he’d be pissed and follow me straight through to her, but he’s vanished. I don’t—”

“He’s not vanished, he’s right there,” Nice Murdock said and then made a soft choked noise when Dog Murdock punched him and hissed,

“She can’t see, you idiot.”

“But he’s—I can smell him. God, why.”

“I dunno, maybe his sense of smell is fucked.”

“Maybe he doesn’t have one.”

As much as Gwen legitimately loved this beautiful snark being directed at her own personal leech/tick mongrel, she really needed these two to focus.

“How do we make him hate Doc Ock?” she asked. “In like, five seconds.”

There was a thoughtful pause in the dark.

“Oh, I’ve got it,” Dog Murdock said.

Gwen did not understand what was happening, all she knew was that Dog Murdock was gleeful about this whole plan of his and it involved, to her surprise, finding the damn light switch.

“Why?” she whispered.

“You’ll see.”

He scrabbled off with what Gwen now understood to be a set of broken ribs, while the other Murdock told him to be careful and got hissed at.

“He’s super grumpy,” he confided in Gwen. “I hope I don’t get grumpy if I get as old as him.”

Gwen didn’t really know what to say. For Miles’s sake, she hoped he didn’t either.

Then, clear as day, the lights flicked on. The whole place shuddered a little and flickered and then the world went from black to gray. The warehouse was a tangled mess, a jumble of metal since the last time Gwen had seen it. Obviously, she and the others had caused some damage here.

Standing way down in the middle of the cavern, however, was Murderdock with his blade drawn, moving his head like a snake around Doc Ock’s whole deal. His face snapped up to Gwen sitting with the nice Matt who was, Gwen now saw when she glanced over, a brunet. No red for him. She almost gasped. At that and also because he had a fucking hole right over his hip that wasn’t sluggishly bleeding at all. He couldn’t move. That hadn’t been an option for him.

Murderdock snarled and jerked towards them, having apparently worked his way through all the other new sounds and smells going on in the warehouse. He lunged and was immediately caught by one of Doc Ock’s tentacles. She laughed wildly as she smashed him into the ground over and over and then held him up to eyelevel.

Gwen covered her mouth in horror.

“And here I thought you were done. Daredevil they call you, more like--” Doc Ock said, then paused as she realized that he was not, in fact, the Daredevil in black she’d been beating the shit out of before. He was, in fact, far more armed than that one.

And now, he was far, far more angry.

“That’s your cue, honey,” the nice Matt said.

Ah.

“I’ll come back for you,” she promised.

He smiled and there was blood in his teeth.

“Get Miles,” he said.

Oh god.

“I’ll come back for you,” she promised again.

Hell hath no fury like Matt Murderdock scorned and he laid into Doc Ock with single-minded rage and Gwen had never been so thankful for his dedication. She dropped from the metal ledge and landed, thankfully, nearly on top of the lab.

Doc Ock noticed her and screamed out, but she needed all her tentacles to control the beast. He’d worked his way soundly through two of her tentacles already and seemed dead intent on getting her on her back on the floor.

Gwen went inside and got to work. Miles had been stuffed into a new glass box set perpendicular to Peter’s on the opposite lab wall. She’d already played this song and dance. She shattered the glass for Miles. He didn’t move. She shattered the glass for Peter. He didn’t either. Both laid still and silent like they were asleep.

Dead weight. They’d be dead weight.

Peter had been hard enough to get out of his box with both her and Miles; Gwen didn’t know how she was going to get them both out—except wait. Yeah, she did. They’d gotten Peter B. to do it last time. She just needed another Peter.

“NOIR,” she screamed slapping her hands against the air. “I need you, NOW.”

And lo and behold. Sometimes, Peter Parker was reliable.

Noir didn’t ask questions. He had very obviously just come in from a hard night out, given the uh…mysterious substance on his clothes, and Gwen owed him two thousand favors or egg creams or whatever the fuck he wanted for answering back so fast and addressing the situation with the due level of sensitivity.

Mostly.

He threw poor Peter over his shoulder like he was a sack of flour and told her to get Miles. She scooped him out of the glass and by the time she looked up, Noir had already formulated an evacuation plan.

It was his secret extra super power. Either that or a terrifying learned behavior. Either way, regardless of where he was in the world, Noir’s ultimate goal was to identify the nearest exit ASAP. And he was great at it.

It was, and Gwen was not exaggerating here, the most useful skill of his whole Spidey set. She didn’t have to think. She just had to follow. Noir picked his way through rubble like a man who professionally sifted through people’s trash. He gave the battle between Doc Ock and Murderdock an appreciative glance, then hurried along  on his way to his favorite place in every universe, the exit.

He slammed a foot through the broken boards without a care in the world for himself or Peter and performed his next amazing trick of finding Peters before they found him. He dumped Peter into Peter B.’s arms and was off again before he could even finish his startled yelp.

“Thank you,” Gwen called after him and got a silent thumb’s up as he went back into the building.

The others stared at her in shock. It looked like a good majority of the cronies had been taken care of by that point.

“He’s really good at finding things,” she said.