His mom was sitting on the couch watching tv without watching it when he came home.
It was nearly 3am.
She didn’t stand up. Didn’t ask him where he’d been. Didn’t ask him why he was up or awake. She just sat there.
“Mamá?”
She didn’t answer right away; sucked in a long, shuddering breath instead.
“Your father’s been arrested.”
No. That wasn’t right. Dad was a police officer, he arrested people, he didn’t get arrested. He dropped his bag and scrambled over to the couch. He stopped at the cushions with his heart throbbing in his neck. His mom didn’t move away, but she breathed in harder and longer, tipped her head up so that the tears wouldn’t fall so freely.
“What do you mean?” He felt his own breathing start shuddering to match hers.
His mom swallowed hard and her breath hitched.
“The new guy he was working with pulled a gun on a civilian,” she gasped, “Shot him, baby, before your father could do anything. Tried to shoot your father, too, but your papá, he put him down. Victim’s family claims it was both of them. He’s being held until further notice.”
Held until further notice.
The phrase rang through Miles’s head like the echo of a bell.
“No,” he said.
“Baby, come here.” She held out her arms. He leaned back against the pillows, head feeling foggy, cloudy for some reason.
“No, Dad had nothing to do with it. He—he’d never hurt—he’d never shoot a—a—”
“Baby, please. Come here.”
He went. Because she wasn’t asking for his sake. And his head was cloudy and full and spinning. He let her wrap her arms around him. He pressed his forehead against her shoulder, then pressed his cheek against the hitching heat of her neck.
It didn’t feel real. It couldn’t be real.
“It’s okay, mijo, we’re going to be okay.” He couldn’t tell who was shaking or hiccupping anymore. It didn’t feel like it was going to be okay.
“I’m going to figure this out. Me and papá are going to figure this out.”
It wasn’t his dad’s job to figure this out. He had nothing to do with it.
He had nothing to do with it.
It was all over the news the next day. And of course, the other cop was a white guy. He had a lawyer who claimed that he’d acted in self-defense. That he’d thought that the victim was carrying a concealed weapon. That Miles’s dad, as the senior officer, had been negligent; it had been his responsibility to intervene and he hadn’t until too late.
It was horseshit.
Bullshit.
Hoofed shit of every kind.
It made Miles feel hot from his belly button to his forehead. A scream had settled in the very, very back of his throat, waiting and burning like bile. It wanted out. But if he screamed, if he shouted, got mad, got angry, cried—he’d just be another entitled cop’s kid pulling the race card.
So he couldn’t do any of that, no. He had to take it. Stand up, stand tall, and take it with dignified silence.
It was fucking bullshit.
He wanted to pound his fists into a wall until they bled, until his knuckles cracked and healed over so that he could do it again.
“Miles?”
He didn’t mean to snap at Ganke, the guy was just trying to help. But he did. And then apologized and returned to stuffing notebooks into his bag at the foot of his desk. Ganke hovered.
“Miles, what can I do to help?”
Nothing. There was nothing anyone could do. They needed to wait. They needed a lawyer. They needed that shithead to admit that he’d been lying. That Miles’s dad had nothing to do with what had happened. That he was just a piece of shit, racist prick who wanted to kill a man and had used his new, shiny badge to do it.
“Miles?”
“There’s nothing, man, I’m sorry. If I knew, I’d ask you, I promise.”
Ganke dropped his eyes and his head and nodded a little bit. Guilt felt like anger these days; it too blossomed from Miles’s belly to his chest, warm like spilled butter. It clogged his throat as it solidified, making it hard to speak without choking.
He couldn’t take the silence. It had been three days and the silence, the stillness, the coldness of everything outside his head made him want to loose the scream from his throat. People averted their eyes when they saw him. People whispered to their friends, sent nods of sympathy his way. They carried on with class, with taking notes and chattering in the cafeteria, as though these days were the same as any others. As if the weight of the tumor twisting knots in Miles’s stomach was benign.
He hated them. He didn’t mean to; he thought maybe he didn’t actually hate them, but he hated the coldness and silence they walked around him with.
To take his mind off the silence and the scream and the balloon of helplessness in his chest, he looked up criminal law online. He was smart. Maybe he could find a loophole. Maybe there was something, somewhere that said ‘if one cop goes crazy and kills a man, his partner is not guilty of his crime’ in big, red letters.
The going was rough.
Lawyers didn’t like to use big, red letters.
His mom had gotten one—a lawyer. He was, well. He was a white guy, squat, with a kindly face. He said he’d do everything he could to bring Miles’s dad home. He promised he’d do his absolute best.
Miles wasn’t convinced.
He didn’t like what he saw because, unlike his mom and much like his dad, he was starting to see the face behind the kindly old gentleman act. Spiderman helped with that. The more he worked, the more he saw of these kinds of folks; people who looked soft, gentle, harmless. They were the same people who paid others to run human trafficking rings, who got rapists, drug traffickers, child abusers off scotch-free. Maybe a slap on the wrist.
His mom was trying to have faith in his man, and really, they had no other choice, but Miles found a bitter taste in his mouth every time the guy looked his way.
He promised Miles that he’d get his dad out of jail and Miles wondered if whiskey tasted the same kind of bitter as bile.
He found breaking point at the bottom of a bottle. Not a whiskey one, it turned out. Not even his own. Nah, it was the one whose broken pieces smashed into the bottom of his shoe; they pierced through the toe and Miles didn’t even notice the bleeding until his mom asked him what he’d stepped in.
She sat with him on the couch, with tweezers in her hand, and pulled out the shards, unknowing that the foot would heal faster than she could ever imagine.
She didn’t cry while she did it, but the lines around her waterlines looked as if they’d been drawn in by a red ball point pen.
He started crying. She didn’t say anything; just wrapped him back up in her arms and started rocking, back and forth, back and forth, the way she used to when he was little and sick.
“Everything’s going to be okay, baby,” she soothed like she almost believed it.
“Everything’s going to be okay.”
It wasn’t.
The lawyer said there wasn’t enough evidence to prove that Jefferson was innocent. He hadn’t appeared on the camera with the other men. They were being forced to use a lack of evidence as evidence and he wasn’t convinced that it was going to do the job.
Miles thought, guiltily and furiously, that he was the one who wasn’t going to do the job.
The lawyer didn’t have a good answer when Miles’s mom asked him what they were supposed to do.
“We’ll just have to wait and see,” he said.
Wait and see what? Until when? Until Miles’s dad went to jail for five years, only to be liberated by some podcaster with a savior complex who took an interest in his case? Was that the pipe dream they were waiting for? Because if so, Miles wasn’t game.
That night, the last piece of the bottle appeared in his sock, pushed out by the healing skin.
He held the piece in the palm of his hand and hit the true breaking point.
He didn’t often talk to the others. Tried to avoid it, it was bad for the universe. Bad for stability, those kind of things. But sometimes, he couldn’t help it.
There were others, people like him, out there in worlds just beyond his touch and they cared about him and these days, it occasionally felt like they were the only ones who did.
He told Gwen first. Then realized halfway through the explanation that he was sobbing too hard for any of the words to make sense, but she listened anyways with a furrowed brow and serious eyes.
She didn’t have an answer for him, but she shared a few tears in solidarity, or maybe out of empathy or sympathy. Miles didn’t know. It didn’t matter, finally, someone was actually listening.
“I don’t know what to do,” Gwen admitted, wiping her lower eyelids on her sleeve. “I’m so sorry, Miles. I don’t know how to help.”
It was fine. It seemed like nobody did. He didn’t expect her to become somebody just for him.
“Maybe Peter knows?”
Peter had a divorce lawyer, not a defense lawyer, but that was still more experience than either Miles or Gwen had had with the law, so it was worth a shot.
Peter rarely answered any of their calls because, as it turned out, he had more respect for space and time barriers than did they. He was a scientist, after all. And a photographer. And he seemed much more wary with opening up that wall in between art and physics.
But he answered this time when Miles and Gwen called for him.
It was a little like facetime, the speaking through space and time. Miles saw Gwen, sitting on her bed in her room, fidgeting with the edge of a pillowcase hem, and now he saw Peter, sitting at what must have been his desk, surrounded by monitors and paperwork and camera equipment.
Peter rubbed an open palm against the stubble on his jaw as he listened, and he too, actually listened.
“Miles, that’s horrible,” he said when Miles was more or less finished explaining, with Gwen’s help when he got too choked up to speak. “That’s just fucking horrible; totally unfair, totally uncalled for.”
Gwen asked him about lawyers when Miles couldn’t speak again. He bit his lip and chewed on it, eyes darting around the ceiling of his room, thinking. Really thinking about it. Even if he didn’t have anything, Miles found he was grateful.
“I—I don’t know,” Peter admitted, then chewed his lip harder and leaned back in frustration, tapping at his desk chair arm furiously with a middle finger. Then his eyes went wide.
“I don’t know,” he repeated, “But maybe another Peter does.”
Another Peter? What, like Spiderham?
“No, listen. We’ve got an infinite number of Spider-verses all lined up around us. If this is happening to Miles, then it had to have happened to someone else, one of Miles’s equivalents in another verse.”
Why weren’t they looking for another Miles then? If this was a Miles-problem, wouldn’t the solution be in another Miles-verse?
Peter seemed unsure. And a little sheepish.
“Listen, I’m not saying this to be a dick, bud, but I think that there might be more Peters than Mileses out there. Out of just the ones we know of, we’ve got more versions of me than of you.”
Yeah, it sucked but it was true.
“How do we talk to more Peters then?” Gwen asked.
Peter hummed.
“Gimme a day,” he said. “I’ll talk to some folks, see what I can dig up on it. See if I can’t find any others willing to chat.”
It was crazy. It was the longest shot that had ever been taken. But it was movement and it was something and it made the heat-creature in Miles’s chest withdraw just the teensiest bit.
“Thank you, Peter,” he choked.
“Don’t thank me yet.”
It was one thing to wait on a lawyer, it was another to wait on a random, maybe even non-existent Spiderman. Miles knew Peter though and while he was frequently kind of lackadaisical, he was also a man about business.
The guy was a dog with a bone if he had to be, and Miles felt safe in the knowledge that, for Miles, he would be.
School kept on feeling empty. Home even more so without his dad’s shoes at the doorway. Without his singing in the kitchen; there was no crooning at the toaster and the whole place felt colder without it.
He toed off his shoes as fast as he could and crashed into his room. Closed the door behind him and collapsed into his desk chair. He had a message on his phone that wouldn’t open. It was from Gwen, none of hers ever opened. He had to forward them to his email to view them.
This one read, “he found one.”
And those three little words made his heart soar.
“My name is Peter Parker,” the man who looked like a younger version of their Peter said. He was maybe 25. He had a more square jaw and larger, softer eyes than their Peter. He sat in a room that was literally shingled in post-it notes and to-do lists. “And something like this happened to me once, not the exact same as you, but something like it.”
“The man you’re looking for is Matthew Murdock,” he said, “He’s a crazy bastard and he can be a real asshole if you catch him in a bad mood, but if you put your trust in him, he’ll throw his all in it for you.”
Gwen went rigid on her bed and her face visibly darkened.
“Matthew Murdock,” she repeated.
The other Peter nodded.
“He’s a friend in my world,” he explained.
“He’s an assassin in mine,” Gwen countered, “The kingpin, as a matter of fact. How do you know he won’t use this against Miles to manipulate him?”
The other Peter was shocked, he gaped a little bit, trying to understand; their Peter also arched an eyebrow at this information.
“Murdock? The kingpin?” he repeated. Gwen nodded once, sharply. Peter huffed a little in disbelief. “Gwen, Murdock hates the kingpin in my verse, he got himself thrown in jail just so he could fight him bare knuckled.”
Dude.
“Matt’s one of my best friends,” the other Peter added, “He’d never do anything like that. He’s basically the phrase ‘and justice for all’ in human form. If your Murdock is shit, I’ll just mail you mine or something, he’d be down, I promise.”
Miles kind of liked this other Peter, even if he did have like, six Monster cans on his desk, all of which he drank from individually, as though he’d forgotten which one was open to begin with. He made Miles feel better.
Someone knocked on that Peter’s door loud enough that the other three could hear it and he whipped around a little in panic and asked through the wall if that person had ever learned how to read. The muffled response incited a ‘Well, I can’t fucking help you then, go ask Alverez to teach you how to spell.”
He was kind of funny.
“Sorry, my staff are frequently highly intelligent,” the Peter explained, “But they’ve gotta be coached sometimes. Listen, you’ve got my number—or, whatever this thing is—now, so go find your Murdock. If he’s a dick, he’s a dick, what can you do? Ask for Franklin Nelson instead. There is no universe in which Fogs is a dick, I guarantee you. But even so, if they’re both dicks, I’ll go badger my guys and see if we can get some inter-dimensional legal advice going. I mean, so long as the law codes are mostly the same in these universes, they should be able to at least point you in the right direction.”
Miles really liked this Peter.
“Thank you,’ he said.
“No problem, Bitsy,” the Peter said, shuffling paperwork on his desk. He grabbed something, then froze in shock and snapped his head back up, “Fuck, wait, sorry, I, uh, didn’t mean to call you that. My bad, we call my Miles ‘Bitsy.’”
His Miles? He had a Miles?
“Yeah, he’s a lot like you,” the Peter said, softening. “Only with a worse attitude. And far less initiative. And respect. Towards me. Only me, now that I think about it. You know what? I think he might hate me. Do you hate me?”
Miles’s Peter and Gwen exchanged glanced with high eyebrows and Miles couldn’t help but laugh.
“No, I don’t hate you.”
“Oh, thank Jesus. Man, I tell you what, I got a list as long as my arm of folks who do and like, I just got the tat finalized with my artist.”
“Dude,” their Peter interrupted, “You found tats that stay?”
The other Peter held up two sleeves of thoroughly inked arms in a shrug.
“Yeah, like, a couple.”
Miles kind of wanted to trade places with that other Miles. Maybe just until this all was over.
“Thank you,” he said again. The other Peter saluted him and reached through their window to offer Miles a business card. He took it, and just as he did, the pounding on the other Peter’s door returned. Someone was definitely shouting about a fire on the other side. That Peter stared at the source of the sound and Miles could practically see his HP bar shortening.
“Well, that’s my cue,” he said, “And that’s my contact info if something goes crazy and you need it. Best of luck, kiddo.”
He vanished and Miles was left with windows into Gwen and his original Peter’s worlds.
“Guys, I think we finally found the best Peter,” Gwen announced.
Peter gawked, insulted.
“You just think he’s pretty,” he defended.
“He’s pretty and he’s useful,” Gwen pointed out. “You, my man, are only half of both of those things.”
“Wow.”
A little bit more hope. It chased away some more of the heat-monster in his chest.
He looked Matthew Murdock up on Google and was relieved to find out that the guy did, in fact, exist in his universe too. He had some pretty crazy reviews on his Yelp page; it was a mix of glowing praise and things like “are he and Nelson back together this year or no?” and “does anyone know if those two are married or divorced or something?” and “Can confirm, as of Nov. 8, Murdock and Nelson are practicing together. Murdock’s wandering around in a black suit, though, did someone die?”
So apparently that was some drama that people followed. On Yelp.
The world was a mysterious place.
Nelson & Murdock, however, were known for doing some pretty great stuff. They did a lot of corruption cases, housing conflicts, minor immigration stuff. They got involved with some high profile super-people trials, but most importantly, people said that they were the best in the business for freeing innocent folks who couldn’t afford it.
They sounded exactly like the kind of guys Miles and his mom needed right now.
His mom wasn’t so sure.
“Mijo, these guys are too big for us, we don’t have that kind of money.”
He tried to explain that that wasn’t a problem with them, that a lot of people in the Yelp comments said that Nelson & Murdock had really flexible payment scales and often didn’t take payment at all.
He didn’t understand why his mom was insulted at this. He didn’t mean that they were a charity case, he just meant that they would be a really good fit for them.
“Honey, we have a lawyer and he’s doing his best. What do you think these men can do that Mr. Helman can’t, Miles?”
Work miracles.
“Baby.”
“Mom, can’t we just try? For Dad’s sake?” he pleaded.
She sighed and he knew he’d won.
Matt Murdock and Franklin Nelson, Attorneys at Law, had a full office when Miles and his mom arrived to their appointment. One of the people in the office was speaking Spanish to a someone in one of the little shoebox offices on the far side of the room. Miles hoped that they were scheduled with that guy, if for nothing else, to put his mom a little more at ease.
The lady at the front desk told them to take a seat and they did, between a man holding his head in his hands and a woman reading out loud to her daughter in her lap.
It was a thirty minute wait.
They met with Mr. Murdock, who, it turned out, was indeed the guy speaking Spanish. He greeted them in English, though, and Miles realized, after a moment, that he was blind. He dragged the tips of his fingers against the wall when he came out to say hello and invite them into his office. He had a white cane in there, leaned up against the wall where his coat was.
Miles’s mom managed to get through the first half of the story without crying; when she faltered, Mr. Murdock had tissues at the ready. Miles got the feeling he got cried on a lot. He was cool about it, though. He offered her the tissue box, just a little too far to the left, and then set it down and had her take a few deep breaths before continuing.
Once the story was through, he hummed and hawed for a minute or so.
“Mrs. Morales,” he said, “You’ll understand that I am, in many ways, a perpetual thorn in the police’s side.”
Miles’s stomach dropped a little and he watched as his mom nodded, wiping discreetly at her eyes. Mr. Murdock couldn’t see her, but he seemed to be able to sense her discomfort. He stood up.
“Do you mind if I consult with my partner for a moment?”
Miles’s mom nodded lightly. Miles took her hand and squeezed it a little, trying to have faith in this guy. Murdock nodded at them. Then strode over to the door and leaned out of it like a taxi-driver in traffic.
“FOGS,” he shouted across the office, “YOU WANNA FIGHT THE POLICE AGAIN THIS WEEK?”
“We gotta wait at least 24 hours, bud, I don’t make the rules,” came the answer from the opposite open office.
“It’s definitely already been 24.”
“You’re hallucinating, man, it’s been 12. Did you sleep last night? What day is it?”
Mr. Murdock paused and cocked his head in consideration. He peeked over his shoulder at Miles and his mom who had both gone stiff with shock.
“What day is it?” he whispered.
“Matthew, you better not be asking the clients.”
His buddy was sharp. Or maybe they really were married like the Yelp people thought.
Mr. Murdock ignored the comment and waved at Miles and his mom to hurry it up with an answer. Miles’s mom cleared her throat.
“It’s, uh, Friday,” she said.
“IT’S FRIDAY,” Mr. Murdock called back with confidence.
He was a mess. He didn’t even know the day of the week. They heard the thud of the other guy dropping his forehead to his desk in exasperation. Mr. Murdock waited a few beats, the leaned casually against the door frame like some kind of Instagram model.
“So, is that a ‘yes,’ Mr. Nelson?” he asked in a borderline sexual tone.
Mr. Nelson thumped his head against his desk again and groaned.
“It’s gonna be a big one,” Mr. Murdock added with a grin.
“Why do you do this to me?”
Mr. Murdock’s grin ramped up to blinding. He turned back to Miles and his mom and seemed to light up the room.
“Mrs. Morales, I’m pleased to say your case has been reviewed and accepted by our firm. I’m going to need everything you’ve got and your former lawyer’s name and address and also, to know if you want us to do something about him, because really, this is an open and shut case and he ought to be declared incompetent for dragging it out for so long. It’s almost like he’s more interested in money than defense.”
Hope felt like falling. Like the drop before the arch up on the web.
He was so, so thankful that his Murdock was a good one.
“I am noticing a distinct lack of tears and/or panic,” Peter noted when Miles checked back in with him and Gwen a few nights later. “I am presuming, then, that your Murdock is not the kingpin.”
Miles laughed.
“He’s a disaster. He fell asleep during a meeting with us the other day for like, two seconds and shouted ‘objection’ when he woke up.”
Peter grinned.
“Well, he sounds a whole lot better than mine. Mine’s all secrets-secrets, Catholic stick-up-his-ass.”
Gwen mourned loudly the unfairness of all of the universes that only she had a shitty Murdock. She tried to barter for a trade. Peter wasn’t having it. Miles sure as hell wasn’t having it.
Gwen laid herself out on her bed in despair.
“Mine’s always down to fight another Daredevil if you wanna borrow him,” the other Peter’s voice suddenly interrupted. They all jumped. He waved a little from a new room; an apartment with a fridge as covered in post-it notes as was the wall in his office.
“Anyways,” he said to their stunned faces, “Hi. I was just checking in because my Miles fell off a bridge today and blamed me for it and I got to thinking, ‘wow, I hope the nice Miles is okay.’”
Miles couldn’t help but laugh again.
“I’m getting there,” he said.
“Oh? Great! Because I’m not, actually. I lied. I didn’t just call to check in, I 100% have an ulterior motive here. Sincere apologies, except not really. There’s a mad woman with Doc Ock arms terrorizing 12th avenue in my world right now, screechin’ something about a multi-verse machine. Y’all know anything about that?”
Oh, dear.
“Yeah,” their Peter said, full of confidence, “And here’s what you’re gonna do; you listening?”
The other Peter perked up to full attention.
“Hit me.”
“Right. Don’t touch it. Walk—no, actually, run away.”
The other Peter beamed like a lunatic.
“Kay, so I’m not gonna do that, what’s option B?”
“There is no option B.”
“Should I like, fight she-Doc-Ock? Or should I go up a level?” the other Peter asked.
“No, no. Listen. No fighting anyone,” their Peter said.
“Well I gotta fight someone.”
“Dude.”
“Sir.”
“You’re gonna need a team if you want to play that game, man.”
The other Peter’s eyes bounced around a little bit and realization started to sink in for the others.
“Wait, you already have a team?” their Peter pressed.
“Yep.”
“You’re—you and your Miles are a team?”
“Yep.”
“Right, uh. Okay. I get that that might seem sufficient for most things, but--”
“We’ve got four Spideys, two Daredevils, and one Deadpool. That’s probably enough, yeah?”
Holy shit.
Holy shit.
This guy was living like, two thousand years in the future. Gwen’s jaw clicked as she closed it and stared off into space in even greater despair than before. Their Peter blinked several times, trying to process this information. The download bar on one of his monitors stalled with him.
“No, yeah, that’s probably enough,” he eventually squeaked.
“I hate this, this isn’t fair, trade me,” Gwen pleaded with the other Peter. He shrugged.
“Sure, alright. I’m into it, come play with me sometime. What’s your name?”
“Gwen Stacy. Spiderwoman.”
It was the other Peter’s turn to short-circuit.
“Gwen Stacy?” he clarified.
“The one of many, I guess.”
“Uh-huh,” the guy creaked. “Perfect. That’s fine.”
There was a pause.
“You fucked Gwen Stacy?” their Peter spat out of nowhere.
“We were in love.”
“Oh my god. You’re thot-Peter. We’ve found thot-Peter. Who else have you fucked?”
“I am not a—you know what? I don’t gotta take this from you.”
“You do Liz, too? Mary Jane? Did you fuck my wife, Peter Parker?”
“Dude, you got married?”
“Answer the question.”
“Marriage is like, a lot. You know that, right? I mean, are you really ready for that kind of commitment?”
“I’ve been married for years. Answer the question.”
The other Peter had zero intention to, Mile could see that from a mile away.
“Oh my god, you’re like, stable me,” he said instead, “Wow. Dreams do come true. Can you just tell me, is it more Xanax that does it or is it like, a near-death experience? Because I’m playing with both right now, and let me tell you: nothing’s working.”
He was just like Mr. Murdock: a disaster. A man hurtling towards regret and devastation, but with a good sense of humor about it.
Yeah, Miles was down.
“Hey,” he said, interrupting the new debate about the merits of different anti-anxiety medications, “Can I help you out with this? You know, as, uh, thanks. For introducing me to Mr. Murdock.”
The other Peter cocked an eyebrow.
“I did fuck all, pal, but if you wanna come over here and fight an octopus-lady with me and my team, then be my guest.”
Miles grinned. Why not? His dad was already half-way home. His mom was more at ease and at work. And besides, it could be fun. Peter had gotten to meet other Peters after all, maybe he deserved to meet another Miles.
“When do we start?”