Chapter Text
Peter Parker is so done. He’s so done with Director Fury, secret spy agencies, Mysterio and their world hopping, enchanted, mystic arts bullshit. Peter likes technology, mathematics and physics. Things that are based off observable, replicable rules. He does not like politics, emotional blackmail or magic. He likes it even less when it sees him crawling covertly through foreign sewers systems at one am in the morning.
“I thought travel was good for the soul.” Spider-Man says suddenly, his voice echoing softly in the gloomy tunnel.
“Maintain radio silence unless it’s essential Parker.” Agent Hill’s dry tone crackles in his ear.
“I’m just saying. My friends are up there getting culture and stuff, and I’m,” He skitters to the side, narrowly avoiding a stream of putrid water, “literally crawling through a sewer.”
“Don’t fool yourself Parker. Your friends are up there drinking, because it’s Europe and they are eighteen.” Agent Hill says.
Peter rolls his eyes under his stealth mask, turning left at an intersection in the tunnel.
“Oh now I feel better about being in my situation. I actually prefer, oh gross, Karen what was that? Yuck it touched me and it was squishy. I bet the other Avengers don’t have to crawl through sewers. Maybe Hawkeye. He would do this for fun.”
He taps his watch, bringing the virtual map back up on his heads up display. The strange energy signature Peter’s investigating is still a few hundred metres ahead, at a convergence point in the tunnel system. The map drops from his headset and he pauses for a moment, letting his eyes readjust to the darkness.
“Hey look, there’s a sign. La mort vient à tous lentement. Huh. Karen, what does that mean?”
“Death comes slowly to all.” Peter’s AI chimes helpfully into his headset.
“See?” Hill adds, “Culture.”
“I hate you both.” Peter mutters, moving forwards down the dark tunnel. “I hate you both, a poem by Spider-Man. First up, what rhymes with SHIELD?”
It’s mostly untrue. Peter obviously loves Karen, his supportive AI. He doesn’t even mind Agent Hill. She’s intimidating in a no nonsense, I’d kill you by raising an eyebrow, kind of way but she has a dry sense of humour and seems apologetic about the whole ruined vacation thing.
His other squad partner, Mysterio, or Quentin Beck, is pretty cool too, questionable Roman gladiator meets Aquaman costume choice aside.
No capes! Peter reminds himself while he continues to flesh out his poem.
The other superhero tried to keep Spider-Man out of the fighting in Venice, and listened patiently to Peter’s mid mission breakdown in that random bar in Prague. And he paid for Peter’s juice. So Quentin Beck is alright. Even though he gives depressing advice. Peter’s Spidey sense hasn’t quite calibrated to his weird “I’m from an alternate universe” signals yet either.
But Director Fury…
“Parker,” Fury’s voice drops into the conversation and Peter automatically twitches, “shut up.”
Fury straight up sucks.
Spider-Man had been successful in avoiding Nick Fury and SHIELD for the past few months in New York. It’s difficult to dodge the Director of one of the most extensive covert intelligence organisations in the world, but after their first conversation, Peter hated the man.
Peter’s fingers clench inside his gloves remembering the confrontation. Peter had been scrawling time travel calculations into a textbook at the library, running on caffeine fumes and manic misery when Fury had slid into a seat beside him and set his Spider sense tingling. A power move, showing he knew Spider-Man’s secret identity. He’d seemed friendly enough at first, before he became pushy and Peter became defensive. Fury had questioned Peter’s commitment to his “extra-curricular” alter ego. Implied his late mentor would be disappointed in his lack of responsibility. Peter had barely slept in the weeks since he’d been undusted, and he briefly considered taking Fury’s other eye out. Instead he’d just stared at him through red rimmed eyes, imitating a sullen teenager until Fury had left in frustration.
Fury didn’t get it. Aunt May did. Peter had tried at first, to Spider-Man, to push through the combination of grief, trauma and anxiety post snap. It had resulted in a near constant state of hypervigilance and hyperawareness. Many phones were accidently destroyed for the crime of vibrating. Pigeons were punched at when they flapped past unexpectedly. After Peter put his head through the apartment ceiling when May sneezed they decided it was time for a break. Time to do normal things.
Navigating in this new, post-apocalyptic world was disorienting enough without web swinging.
He’d spent his extra time on therapy and catching up on sleep and five years worth of movies with Ned, MJ and even Morgan. Morgan Stark, Tony and Pepper’s daughter, who both amazed and terrified Peter every time he looked at her. His responsibility as Spider-man had never felt as weighty as his newfound responsibility to her now her Dad was gone.
This trip to Europe with his friends was supposed to cap off his recovery, a reward to celebrate his decision to return to low key, friendly neighbourhood level crime-fighting.
Instead, Nick Fury had found him.
And so had terrifying elemental monsters, made from earth, water and fire.
Cue a reluctant superhero team up with Mysterio, the magician/sorcerer from a different universe, and Peter’s least favourite spy agency. They’d blown up the last monster, a water one, two days ago in Venice, using some on-the-fly wave propagation theory Peter remembered from ninth grade.
Fury was pissed. He had ordered a sewer splunking adventure for Spider-Man, and an above ground reconnaissance for Mysterio, looking into unusual energy signatures that had popped up each time a battle had gone down, hoping to find monsters.
All the while Peter’s Spidey-sense had been humming with no reprieve. Putting him firmly back into twitchy, pigeon punching territory.
So yeah, Director Nick Fury straight up sucks.
The order to stop talking was timely though. Peter creeps forward on silent feet as he approaches his target, his black combat suit blending his outline into the shadows. His Spidey-sense is going crazy now, zinging across the back of his head and down his arms like multicoloured electric shocks.
Spider-Man presses himself against the wall and heads upwards. No one ever looks up. Perching at the top of the wall, he slowly pokes his head around the corner. The three tunnels meet in a long, low chamber. In the middle of the room hangs a flat circle of energy, kinetic electricity twisting from the edges into the centre, reflecting off the puddles on the floor.
“Woah.” Peter breathes. “Trip Advisor did not mention this.”
Cautiously, he opens a visual feed to SHIELD. Green smoke spirals along the floor of the room and gathers around the centre, pushing up against the portal.
“Something’s not right.” Peter whispers, his throat mic picking up the hushed tones. “Besides the giant green eye of Sauron in the room.” He amends.
A movement from the corner of the room has Spider-Man shrinking further into the wall. It’s Quentin, his heavy gold chest plate clinking as he crosses the dark room. His movement disturbs the smoke, and Peter can see two purple triangular devices at the base of the portal, pulsing with that same green energy.
Quentin crouches at one of the devices and picks it up, causing the portal to twist through the middle like a sheet. The energy sparks off Quentin’s armour, and his hair lifts around the edges.
Peter taps his watch again, sending a silent signal to Karen to start running scans to figure out what she can about the technology running in the room.
“Parker, get your ass off the ceiling and help Beck shut that thing down.” Fury’s voice snaps in Peter’s ear, prompting him forwards.
“Hey man, I thought you were above ground.” Peter calls hesitantly, unwilling to move from his shadowy hiding place. “Fury’s cranky, probably just missing us. We’ll give him extra cuddles at the debriefing.”
Quentin’s exploration of the device stops momentarily, then he sighs heavily.
“How did you find this so fast?” He asks, looking up and finding Peter in the corner.
Hesitantly, Peter crawls forward from his hiding place. Latching one hand to the cool stones, he slowly unrolls himself towards the ground a few metres from Quentin then drops to the floor.
“Just ran a few calculations, picked up a trace of some other worldly energy, followed it. The usual.” Peter shrugs, pushing his shoulders back, although his feet shuffle unconsciously.
He circles the room looking at the portal. The portal itself is paper thin along the edges, still folded up towards the base that Quentin is holding.
“So this is an inter-dimensional gateway huh? Just like you hypothesised. For some reason I thought it would be bigger.” Peter quips as he kicks away the pooling green smoke at his feet.
“Ladies, this isn’t an ice cream social.” Fury snaps. “Shut that thing down before something else comes through it.”
“Fury wants us to shut it down. Obviously.” Peter comments to Quentin as he comes back around to the front and squats in front of the second triangular base device, reaching out to touch it. Karen’s running energy outputs through his heads up display, and the readings are uniform. He speaks out loud as he processes the data.
“Huh, that’s kinda weird. If I’m reading this right, it’s in stand by mode. Unidirectional energy outputs. Manual activation at the base here. So like, someone’s coming down here and letting these things through one at a time. Set up’s pretty light weight too, bet the system is portable. You could conjure monsters from an alternate dimension whenever you felt like it.”
Quentin contemplates him for a moment.
“Peter Parker.” He says softly. “So clever.”
For some reason Peter shivers. The green smoke is leaving a bitter burn on the back of his throat.
“This portal could probably work both ways. Fancy an inter-dimensional field trip?” Quentin asks from the other side, focused on the device in his hand.
“No thanks,” Peter shoots back. “I have a bad history with field trips.”
“Yeah?” Quentin asks.
“Like you wouldn’t believe. Got yeeted into outer space during my last one.” Peter regrets the words as soon as they leave his mouth. They taste funny, like black jelly beans. He wonders if yeet is still a thing.
“Space. You do get around Spider-Man.” Quentin sets his device back down.
The numbers on Peter’s display flip, showing energy levels ramping up in the opposite direction. The portal flickers and the green smoke multiplies, swirling around the room. Peter scuttles backwards.
“Woah! Something’s happening!” He shouts as his display cuts out. He rips the mask from his face and scrambles upright, in time to see the energy around the bases begin to hum. Harsh static crackles in Peter’s ear piece. The smoke twists and Peter’s vision blurs.
“I reversed the energy flow.” Quentin says simply. “You know, Tony Stark is alive in my universe. There’s probably hundreds of universes where Tony Stark is alive.” Quentin steps in front of the portal.
Peter’s head snaps up.
Mister Stark.
“Why,” Peter’s voice fails in his throat. He shakes his head. He takes a breath and tries again. “Why would you say that?”
“You miss him right? I could send you straight to him.”
Mysterio wipes his hand across the green crackling energy like wiping a steam from a bathroom mirror and the surface clears, showing the footpath outside of Stark Tower, looking directly into the lobby. Faint sounds of construction and traffic float from the opening, bouncing around the rank sewer chamber, dropping in and out as Peter’s head spins. Workers in suits and peacoats with their heads buried in their phones push around the portal as if it wasn’t even there, slipping in and out of view.
“Speak of the devil and he appears.” Mysterio comments as he steps back, giving Peter a direct line of sight into the portal.
Peter’s frozen, staring straight ahead, across the room and straight into another universe, as Tony Stark steps out of an elevator. Alive, dressed in a three-piece suit, tinted glasses and sardonic smirk on, he strides across the lobby. Alive.
Mister Stark.
Peter takes one unsteady step forward, then another, hypnotised. He passes Mysterio, leans closer as though to push his face against the portal’s surface. To be closer.
The elevator dings again and out steps Pepper, tablet in one hand, miniature pink backpack in the other.
Miss Potts. Morgan.
Peter jumps back from the portal. Reels unsteadily around to face Quentin.
“What are you doing?” He demands, feeling disoriented. He suddenly wishes he was in the Iron Spider suit made of unbreakable nanotech. He raises a hand and taps his ear piece. “Hill? Fury? Are you seeing this?”
“SHIELD can’t hear you anymore Peter. I disabled your comms.” Quentin says.
Peter sends his still raised hand forward, aiming a desperate punch at Quentin’s head. He’s frozen by green energy streams shooting from Quentin’s hands and lifted off the ground. He flounders in mid-air, completing a slow motion roll over before stopping on his stomach. It feels familiar, like swimming in jelly.
“I’m guessing you’re the baddie then.” He says, words slurring slightly. “Checks out. You are a hella weird guy.”
“You know,” Quentin muses, walking in circles around Spider-Man’s levitating form. “When I was looking through the universes, I saw this one and it was like Christmas morning. Iron man’s dead, Captain America’s old, and Nick Fury, Director of SHIELD, has some seventeen year old kid as his number one hero on speed dial. This world, I thought, is mine for the taking.”
Quentin smiles ferociously and raises his arms.
“Are you seriously monologuing right now?” Peter asks, struggling against the energy holding him aloft. He feels weak and foggy. “Fish for brains.”
Not his best quip, he thinks, but not bad considering.
“You, Peter Parker,” Quentin points imperiously at him, “shut up! You have been a thorn in my side since I arrived. And now I have the perfect way to get rid of you. You should even thank me for it. I’m sending you off to your beloved Iron Man.”
Peter gathers his strength and twists his wrist to the side.
“Hard pass Mysterio.” He shouts, shooting a web out.
Mysterio yells and hurtles Spider-Man forwards towards the portal. The web latches onto one of the purple base plates and Peter yanks it towards himself. The portal warps. He grabs onto the base plate as he tumbles through the room.
There’s a flash of green energy.
Smoke swirls.
The portal folds in on itself with a pop and Peter Parker is gone.