invisible foundations
“When I said this isn’t the last time I’m seeing you, I didn’t mean that the next time I saw you should be the last,” Harry says as soon as Peter wakes up. “Like I said, you never make things easy for me.”
He’s lying on a couch, in what he assumes to be Harry’s apartment. It’s too fancy to belong to Gwen and too tidy to belong to M.J. He’s in his new costume, still, but the mask is still off. His phone is on the table, and he can see that he’s got seven missed calls from Miles and twenty texts, all of which are variations of “where r u???”
He texts back a quick “I’m fine, just got caught up in something” and then puts the phone back on the coffee table.
He takes a quick look around the living room he’s in. There’s a couple of framed picture on the walls. A few of him, M.J., Harry, and Gwen all together, one of Flash grinning at the camera holding a basketball, and a candid of Johnny and Peter laughing. It makes his heart ache.
His head feels like it’s been hit by an anvil. Or a particularly powerful Goblin grenade. He glares at Harry until Gwen walks in with M.J. in tow. Something in his expression must twist, because all three of them sigh in unison.
They look so young. Peter must be at least half a decade older than them. He’s in his twenties, while they can’t be older than eighteen. It’s surprising, how young they had looked.
Peter sighs internally, because he never expected to get caught so quickly. Or see Gwen ever again. If he thinks about it too hard, he’s going to start crying. Or run away. M.J. hands him a cup of coffee, and then crosses her arms.
“Are you Peter Parker?” she asks, and he knows she means business.
“Yes,” he manages. “But not yours.”
She’s on the verge of tears now.
“What does that mean?” she snaps. “You look just like him, you act just like him, by which I mean you’re an idiot like him. If you’re not Peter Parker, then who are you?”
“I am Peter Parker.” M.J. looks like she might actually slap him now, so he quickly adds “from a different dimension.”
M.J. looks even more like she might slap him.
“I fell through a portal and got stuck here. The portal that was supposed to take me home never appeared.”
Gwen speaks up from where’s she’s been sitting in the corner. “So, you discover you’re dead in this world, and your first instinct is to go back to patrolling?” She’s still got tearstains on her cheeks, but her glare is bold and defiant. If there’s one thing Peter loves about his friends, it’s their ability to bounce back from almost anything.
He’s saved from answering by Harry, who says “And you didn’t come to us.”
Harry pauses, before continuing. “Are we not…close, in your world? Is there a reason you didn’t want to find us?”
Peter can feel his uncertainty, his confusion at a world in which the four of them don’t take on the world together. If only that world could be a reality. His universe is missing Gwen. This one was missing Peter. He takes a sip of the coffee.
“We were close. You were my best friends.”
Nobody misses his use of the past tense. Gwen’s hand tightens on the paper cup of coffee she’s holding, her grip so hard that Peter’s afraid it will crumple. For a second, he’s afraid she’ll start crying again. He doesn’t think he’d be able to take it.
M.J.’s already yelling at him though. “You don’t get to stop there! I mourned you, ok? I cried. I cried for you, my stupid friend, who couldn’t keep himself alive because he insisted on playing a hero. Who died because he put on a spandex, non-bullet proof suit every night to go fight muggers. You don’t get to stop there. What happened? I lost you once, and I don’t want to lose you again. Why didn’t you come to us?”
The silence after she finishes rings, the way it did after Gwen fell. The way it did after Ben fell.
It’s rare that he feels unbalanced. The sider bite gave him a sense of balance that isn’t humanely possible. However, sitting here across a girl who had mourned him, a dead girl, and a friend who had turned into an evil alter-ego, he remembers what vertigo feels like.
His voice sounds ragged when he begins again.
“I…I tried to save Gwen. You had a Green Goblin, right?” They nod, and Harry’s face tightens. “He...killed her.” It feels damning to say it out loud. He remembers Matt telling him that going to confession was freeing. Peter doesn’t agree. It feels like a trap, like a Goblin bomb, like a gunshot.
Gwen does end up crushing the cup she’s holding, although its empty. Her face doesn’t betray anything, but Peter can read her like the back of his hand. She’s shaking under their stares. He continues.
“Things only went downhill from there. Harry went off the deep end with the Goblin serum. I couldn’t save him either.” Another failure. Another gunshot.
“M.J. and I, we drifted apart. I guess we reminded each other too much about what we were missing.”
The whole sorry story is out, and Peter can’t help but wonder how his world had gone so wrong, so badly. Tragedy after tragedy and the only thing holding it together was spider webbing.
Harry’s gone white. He’s gotten far more than he bargained for when he asked the question. But Peter owes him the truth at the very least.
Nobody says anything for a moment. M.J. slowly walks over until she’s standing behind him and squeezes his shoulder. Which is good, because that means he can’t see her. Every time he looks at her all he can see is her counterpart from his universe superimposed over her features. Slightly older, a little calmer, but still full of the same spirit.
“That explains a lot, tiger.” M.J. says it softly, and she no longer seems angry.
Harry and Gwen share a look. Gwen looks down at her crushed cup before asking “Would you like to try again? We could do better, this time.”
Peter gives her a small smile before, nodding.
“Yes.”