Part One: There was an Old Lady who Swallowed a SpiderThere was an old lady who swallowed a spider
That wriggled and jiggled and tickled inside her;
She swallowed the spider to catch the fly;
I don't know why she swallowed a fly – perhaps she'll die!
Peter did not like to talk about how he ended up in Gotham.
This was not because it was traumatic (although it was).
It was not because it was painful (although it was).
It was because it was heinously, excruciatingly, mortifyingly embarrassing.
It was a Thursday. Late April. Peter liked this time of year because the weather was finally starting to take summer seriously, but not too seriously for things to get uncomfortably hot and sticky like it would in July and August. It made patrol a pleasant experience rather than a grim one, and it was still cool enough that wearing his spider-suit under his civilian clothes was a perfectly reasonable idea, instead of sheer lunacy.
(Not that the presence of the spider-suit saved Peter, in the end.)
That the weather was pleasantly cheery — clear skies, a light breeze and temperatures under seventy-five — was about all that April (or May, which would start up in a handful of days) had going for it. Truly shocking, but May did not look like it was shaping up to be a Good Time for Peter. It bore the dubious honour of not only reminding Peter of his spectacular failure on Titan and getting disintegrated out of existence; but also (more devastatingly) of reminding Peter of Her.
An entire month — thirty-one days — of Hernamesake. Peter wasn't sure how he was going to survive.
But for now, it was still April, and rather than waiting for the inevitable nosedive into a thirty-one-day pit of grief, Peter was instead hunting for work. Again. Because stupid New York rules said he couldn't get his GED as an under 19-year-old unless he'd either graduated high school or been out of school for more than twelve months.
Neither milestone Peter had achieved, thanks to the Erasure.
Doctor Strange had done a much more thorough job than Peter had anticipated. The way he'd phrased it, it just sounded like everyone's memories of Peter Benjamin Parker would be erased. Fine. NBD. Peter could just carry on his life, eventually return to MJ and Ned — the only people he loved he had left — and reconnect with them once they stopped thinking he was insane. He'd have pictures to prove he wasn't lying. Or mad. It would be. Fine.
Bzzt! Wrong.
Instead, Peter Parker had been erased. Not just the memory of him. His entire goddamn identity. Poof!Gone. Files corrupted; pictures blurred or ripped from existence entirely; hard-copy documents Peter might have been able to submit as proof scrambled into gobbledegook. The results were devastating. Every single safety-net — either aunt or Tony induced — was stripped away. He'd stolen back some of their belongings from the ruins of Happy's apartment, only to find his entire childhood and family had been razed to the ground. Suddenly, trying to convince MJ and Ned they knew him didn't seem such a viable option.
It fucked with his head. Peter Parker didn't exist, but Peter did exist. He was there. He remembered the click of Ben's camera as he captured Peter and his aunt at the park, but now the photograph only held Her.
If a tree falls in a forest but there's no one there to hear… did it ever exist at all?
The scale of the spell Strange had cast was frankly terrifying. Did Stephen know when he'd put it up as an option? Was it ignorance or incompetence? Negligence or malevolence?
It didn't really matter, he supposed. Even if Peter were to confront the sorcerer about it, the man would be utterly incapable of answering since he'd erased his own damn memory too.
What did matter was that Peter was once again looking for a job.
Because Peter was a non-entity without a GED, and non-entities without GEDs generally didn't find stable, legally protected work. Especially ones with baby faces like his. To add (self-inflicted) insult to injury, Peter was — perhaps against his better judgement — still Spider-Man. And without the structure of school, or the presence of someone in his life to enforce said structure, Peter had found it incredibly difficult to juggle civilian life with vigilante life in any reasonable manner.
Needless to say… Peter got fired from his job. A lot.
Fortunately, in a world still fighting to return to a new normal after the Blip, work for non-entities without GEDs was readily available… if you knew where to look. And Peter knew where to look.
Only problem was that half his possible employers seemed to know each other and had started clueing in to some guy called 'Peter Parker' having a tendency to turn up to work horrifically bruised or even more horrifically late. Rather memorably, the woman 'interviewing' him for a job last month had literally shoved him out the room when he told her his name. Which was exceedingly rude, but also a telling example of how he'd soured the reputation of his God-given name yet again.
But it was no biggie! Peter just changed his name when he introduced himself. Bam! Problem solved…
It mostly worked.
So it was that on a Thursday in late-April, Peter was chowing down on a New York hotdog as he trekked to the next victim place on his job-hunting list, when his tingle flared with alarm.
Up an access road into a parking garage, his instincts screamed at him. Peter bolted without thought towards the flare — there was something dangerous, something he had to stop. A sudden roar — like when the air from the donut ship was sucked into the vacuum of space — exploded into the quiet afternoon and Peter sped up, all but flying up the access ramp. He was tearing at his shirt with one hand to get at his mask and then he—
Then he—
Look. It was embarrassing enough just thinkingabout what he did. But he did it, and it happened.
There was too much going on at once. Peter was running; he was running while distracted trying to get his mask on single-handedly (why hadn't he dropped the hotdog? Even now, he couldn't answer that question); he was running on a scant hour's worth of sleep. There were various reasons why he didn't react fast enough, but much like Strange's spell, the reasons didn't matter.
There was a star-shaped void in the middle of the asphalt, the edges crystalline and fragmenting, curling in on itself and crumbling out of existence. His eyes widened. He felt the rush of hot air sucked into the void. And then he—
He tripped.
On a speedbump.
Peter Parker, AKA Spider-Man, AKA one of the most acrobatically gifted super-heroes around, tripped on a speedbump and fell straight through the strange, star-shaped portal.
And Peter Parker disappeared for a second time. And for a second time, there was no one to mourn his exit, stage left.
He was still holding onto that goddamn hotdog.
— + —
Peter fell through reality.
There was no better way to put it.
He shattered through worlds like panes of glass. Splinters of universes pierced through him, world after world after world after world tumbling past without end.
It was agonising. It was sickening. It was horrifying.
To be made and un-made. Torn apart and rebuilt but wrong wrong wrong only to be unravelled again like an old sweater and re-bound in a new configuration. It was nothing like Thanos and turning to dust. It was worse, so much worse.
In amongst his terror, thoughts of the other Peters struggled to surface. Was this what reality-jumping had felt like to them? He hoped not. He was certain he'd go mad with each new re-write of his body. The fall stretched into eternity. Despair flooded him. Perhaps he would break through worlds forever — no. He was falling forever! This wasn't like the other Peters this was something new entirely and he tried to grab on to something — anything — to break his fall but everything he touched shattered or exploded or burst into nothingness the moment it touched his skin!
And then the multiverse took mercy on him, and he fell one final time — rewritten, reconfigured, refitted — and landed on scratched wooden floorboards, where he promptly dispelled the contents of his stomach with extreme prejudice and force.
— + —
When Peter returned to his senses, it was to the overwhelming stench of bile, a vision of the heart-breaking ruins of his half-eaten hotdog, and the disgruntled awareness of a gun pointed at his head.
"Aw hotdog, no," he bemoaned.
The uneaten remains of his hotdog were long gone, lost somewhere between universes five and ten, he thought. His mask and backpack had disappeared too, but Peter noted that his web-shooters remained intact and were hopefully still in working order after his traipse through what could only have been the multiverse.
"You got a few more things to worry about than a hotdog, dude," a brusque voice said.
Peter looked up. The speaker towered over him, broad-shouldered and hard-faced, suspicion and the threat of violence written into every inch of his posture. The look was only intensified by the handgun aimed at his head.
"Um," he said meekly. His eyes caught on the shock of white in the fringe in black hair. "You mind putting that away?"
The man's eyes narrowed. He didn't lower the gun. "Who the fuck are you? How did you get here?"
"I…" Peter trailed off as he took in 'here'.
'Here' was a clean but slightly run down living room, walls painted the familiar magnolia cream of so many rental properties (Peter had viewed a lot of apartment before he finally stumbled across a landlord who didn't ask questions, so he would know), and a perfunctory but disordered collection of furniture: a battered leather couch; a medium-sized TV perched on top of a coffee table; mismatched stools tucked under the breakfast bar; and notably, three massive bookshelves. Only one had been stocked, but there were several boxes stacked on the floor, their genres clearly labelled. As evidenced by the pool of his own vomit, Peter had landed in the midway point between kitchen and couch, exactly where a dining table should reasonably have gone. Whoever had just moved in clearly had no intention of entertaining.
He returned his attention back to the man. He couldn't help himself. It was the gun. It was always the gun that triggered his smartass meter. "Did you not see?"
"Oh. I saw. I saw a lightshow straight outta hell, and some star-shaped thing spit you out. It shorted out my TV."
"Well." Peter really wished the guy would put the gun away. Or down. He'd settle for down, at this point. Maybe then he'd stop running his mouth. "Then I guess you saw how I got here."
"No. I saw what got you here, but that don't answer how you got here, dumbass."
"Rude." For that, Peter raised his arm and webbed the guy's gun, yanked it back and out of sheer reflex, bent the barrel in half and dropped the mangled weapon on the floor.
There was a profound silence as both of them registered what happened. Peter was horrified at his own casual display of strength without the protection of a mask. Later, he'd blame it on being dimension-addled, but the cat was already out of the bag if they'd seen how Peter got here. What was a little super strength in the face of that?
The man stared at him, open-mouthed and scandalised. "You motherfucker! That was my second favourite gun!"
Peter jumped to his feet — the smell of vomit was still far too close to comfort, and he was a sympathetic puker. "If it was your second favourite gun, maybe you shouldn't have been pointing it at me."
"If you didn't want me pointing a gun at you, you shouldn't've crashed into my living room!"
"Well I couldn't exactly help that!"
The man reached down. Peter raised his webshooter again in warning.
"Unless you want to lose your first favourite gun, I wouldn't."
Grey eyes narrowed. "You wouldn't dare."
"I absolutely would dare."
The man lowered his hand. He was definitely pouting as he looked at the ruins of his gun at Peter's feet. "… was my third…"
"Come again?"
"… I was going for my third favourite."
Peter pinched the bridge of his nose. "Whatever. Look, dude. I promise, I've genuinely got no idea how I got here. One second, I'm in Manhattan eating a hotdog, the next I'm — uh — sucked through a damn portal and puking my guts up on your floor. If you could just like, tell me where I am and point me to like, the nearest ATM, I'll be out of your hair and back in Queens in no time." He frowned. "Assuming we're still in America. Oh my God, we're still in America, right?"
"You're in Gotham."
"Gotham."
"Park Row, more specifically. Which, speaking of, there's no way you wanna use any cash machines around here unless you wanna be immediately mugged or lose all your money to a skimmer."
"Yeah…" Peter held up his hand to pause. "I'm still stuck on the first bit. Gotham? Where the hell is that?"
He didn't like the way the man's gaze turned assessing. "New Jersey."
"Oh. Ew."
The man rolled his eyes.
At least that answered the question of whether he was still in America. But the answer was still fairly unhelpful. And a little bit concerning. Peter went to grab his phone and suddenly, the man was pointing a knife at him. He held up his hands.
"Hey, dude, I was just getting my phone." He did so — slowly this time. The man didn't lower the knife. He looked on edge.
Heh.
Somehow, despite his tumble through realities, Peter's phone still worked. The relief however was short-lived when he saw that it had no service, though it was picking up a Wi-Fi network.
Peter swallowed nervously. His phone was top of the line and then some, after the long string of upgrades he'd made. And he was clearly in a city — one glance out the window was enough to confirm that, if his hearing hadn't already picked up the familiar background hum of people living on top of each other. Not to mention… Peter was no geography whizz, but his time on the decathlon team meant he knew his stuff when it came to cities in the US — especially ones so close to home. But he'd never heard of anywhere called Gotham.
There was definitely a reason why that was, but Peter was clutching at straws. He really didn't want to think of why his phone wouldn't be picking up a network, or why he didn't recognise a New Jersey city called Gotham. A theory was forming (well. Not so much forming as it had already coalesced into something substantial and scary). One Peter knew he wouldn't like the confirmation of.
And in the face of crushing, existential horror or denial, Peter would pick denial any day of the week.
"Say," he said carefully. "I don't suppose Gotham is like, a nickname for somewhere? Like the Big Apple?"
The man raised a brow. There was a nick through the arch, and the faintest trace of a scar that disappeared into his hairline. "No. Though it does have its fair share of nicknames. Shithole. City of the Damned. The Badlands. The Asshole of North Amer—"
"Okay, okay, I get the point!" Peter held up his hands and the man blessedly fell quiet. He glanced out the window again. The sky was overcast and grey; the kind of weather that made it almost impossible to tell what time of day it was.
Alright. Best bite the bullet and get it over with. He looked back at the man.
"So… Quick question… Have you ever heard of the Avengers? Or — I dunno — Iron Man?"
The man raised a brow. "Who the fuck is Iron Man?"
Peter clenched his hands. No biggie. Peter 2 and 3 didn't know about them either. Maybe this could still be salvageable.
He wanted to ask.
He had to ask.
He didn't want to know.
Peter asked: "What about… Spider-Man?"
"Spider who?"
Yeah… Peter really could have gone without knowing. He collapsed back into a crouch and hung his head between his knees, hands pressed against the back of his neck. The man made a quiet sound of alarm, but Peter wasn't bothered — other than the background caution of his Tingle, there'd been no other indicator of danger from him since the knife.
He was fighting back the panic when a thought occurred to him, and he glanced back up at the man, who looked supremely uncomfortable to be in the vicinity of Peter and his imminent breakdown.
"Hey, what month is it?"
"September… Why?"
Peter giggled. The sound bordered on hysteria. "Well. Guess that's how I'll survive May, then."