Michael - Day 1/2 - Spider-Man: No Way Home spoilers
Peter Parker & Ben Reilly
☪ Day 1/Day 2 - sometime late at night ⛿ Top of the Ferris Wheel
I remember it. Like one of those weird overnight dreams people talk about here. So, I guess...
I guess I just wanna know....
⚠Major Spider-Man: No Way Home spoilers.
Peter let his chin rest on the tops of his knees. There wasn’t much to see up here in the top compartment of the ferris wheel. Derleth below had the usual amount of residential activity, none of which Peter presently cared about. And the sky? It was the void once more: grayish, sooty. Maybe that felt a little like the city except for the lack of shimmering building lights.
Then again, the point of coming up here wasn’t to have a view as much as to get away from everything for a time. A head full of memories, crammed unceremoniously into his skull. Things that felt old somehow also felt new because they weren’t there yesterday. And, yet, they were older than yesterday. Old news that was new. It made Peter focus on it more, and that became a cyclical thing.
Because if there was one thing that a Parker boy did, it was fixate. Overthink. Try to understand the un-understandable.
And, right now, all of that was unwinding in the bottom of a ferris wheel gondola. The sliding door against his back, knees tucked up. Peter sighed. It was eerily quiet in Derleth. He would’ve taken the ambient noises of Manhattan in a heartbeat right now.
It would be of no surprise that Ben had ulterior motives in regards to the whole ferris wheel thing. Yes, of course, the experiment of it all was enough to join in, especially when there was the angle of making sure Peter didn’t get in over his head. Old habits and all. Hard to ignore them. But there would’ve been a battle of wills if Strange had somehow swayed the experiment to the carousel instead of the ferris wheel. Sure, the carousel would have fit the needs of the test. It might have been a bit more stable too. But the ferris wheel was the right choice. Seeing its frame rise between the campus buildings had been proof enough. And now that it seemed to at least stick through this reset, yup, definitely the right choice.
It wasn’t that he overly minded that the Lokis had set up shop on the highest roof, but that fact did cramp his style considering access was reliant on the occupancy and moods of the tricksters. And while he hadn’t run into a time when the crocodile might be the most hospitable of the bunch, there’d been enough talk on the network of stabbings that having an open ended option was worth whatever trouble came with it. Plus the openness of the ferris wheel made it pretty easy to see whether it was in use or not.
Or so he thought.
In that weird ‘night’ gray of the void, the ferris wheel had looked empty. It wasn’t until he’d scaled up to his goal of topmost gondola that he realized his mistake. Not a surprising mistake honestly. He’d had good reason to warn Peter about the Locus of Lokis after all. When left to their own devices, ‘up’ was the go to. Probably why out of all the things in Schmigadoon that they could’ve taken, Peter had focused on the ferris wheel in the first place. But if he was going to run into the other spider up here, well, he wasn’t expecting it to be finding the teen curled up in the bottom of the basket.
That fact stopped Ben from just going with the knee jerk instinct to just change course. Drop down and pick a different gondola or just another location. Instead he inched up the spoke a little more before clearing his throat and rapping his knuckles on the edge of the gondola.
“Hey… this seat taken?”
The quiet might have been disconcerting to a NYC-born-and-raised boy, but it also helped Peter detect the sounds of something climbing up. Up, up. He closed his eyes and let his Spider Sense scan for threats, but nothing actually pinged. Which meant when Ben’s voice broke the brief silence between scurrying the framework of the ferris wheel, it wasn’t a shock.
And it wasn’t. Because Peter hadn’t actually thought through Ben in the context of a multiverse where Peter Parkers came in all sizes and ages and faces, but when the idea of it came to mind because Ben had clearly scaled up this height without issue…
Without setting off that precognitive alarm…
It added up to something. A whiff of truth about Ben. He wasn’t an enemy. He was something like a Peter Parker. He was currently seeking refuge in the highest point at Derleth, and therein was a fundamental instinct they seemed to share.
Peter looked up and gave Ben a quick survey. In the dark, that blond hair looked ashen. He couldn’t really make out Ben’s face from the way the shadows fell.
“Nah, all yours. Didn’t realize we had a free climber club here, y’know.”
Ben gave a nod of thanks and acceptance before crossing the distance between the spoke and the gondola. Hardly a difficult feat. The main difficulty would have been just keeping the balance of the swinging basket, but again, not that hard. Not with his sense of equilibrium. He managed to settle down in the seat on the opposite end of the gondola from Peter and propped his feet up on the seat across with just the slight sway. Honestly a good breeze could’ve caused the disturbance.
“Thanks,” he felt the need to repeat, just in case, as he pulled the 80s bag slung over his shoulder into his lap so he could dig through it. “You’d be surprised. Not that I know everyone’s hobbies or that there’s an official club, but with this group, who knows how many will end up be tempted by the challenge.” He gave a noise of triumph as he found the bit of candy he’d stashed in the bag. He hadn’t really been planning on dipping into his stockpile, but really, as much as he loved it, he needed something to break up just wheatcakes. He held out the package of Starburst towards Peter in offering as he glanced out over the campus. “Honestly, I’m surprised none of the flyers have started a nest up here yet. I know it hasn’t been that long, but seems like something they’d do.”
“What, like Falcon?” Peter asked, and although he pulled a face of skepticism that Sam Wilson would actually roost, his mind wove the mental image. “Nah, I think he’s just bird-inspired. Not bird-y. Bird-brained? …no, that…don’t tell him I said that.”
A hand reached out absent-mindedly as Peter took the topmost Starburst. A similar thought occurred to him: it wasn’t pizza. Thank god for stashes. If he had to eat one more slice, pizza would start to be his least favorite food. But it was just a surface thought, drifting on the top and obscuring deeper, darker things.
Besides, Peter couldn’t look away from the man who had smoothly deposited himself in the compartment without fear of heights or setting the whole thing teetering. They could dance around it all, but Peter found himself in a place where maybe rolling the dice was the best option. The worst Ben could do was deny.
“Was it a spider bite? For you, I mean.”
“Was thinking more Lightning-Bolt-Chest-Statement piece, but…” Ben shrugged as he took a Starburst for himself. “Our Falcon is actually bird-brained, but not like… y’know. There’s something with him talking to actual birds. Don’t know if yours has that or not, I never asked.”
Which was more of the tangent conversation. No weight really. Off hand comments. Not like the main act they were steering towards. It was inevitable really. Neither of them could stop themselves from being, well, themselves. There was always a level of dodging and pretending, but if something needed to get done, that all got thrown out the window. And the longer Ben was here, well, the looser his standards got. The people from his world were in the know now after all. Yes, still plenty of secrets and everything that went along with that, but the main one was out. Really, Peter appearing again was the main reason he just kept up with the just not talking about it act. If just because, well, multiverse and how well a spider deals with other spiders was pretty hit and miss. And that wasn’t including… other things…
Unwrapping his candy, his head wobbled, half nod-half shake. “Yes and no. It’s complicated.” He raised an eyebrow as he popped the candy in his mouth. “You?”
“Always is complicated, I guess,” Peter replied. He chewed on his Starburst. It was a pink one. Mega score. He just wished he enjoyed it more right now, but his mind was busy with so much in the moment that the sensory inputs were dampened. Besides, Ben was confirming some suspicions, and that felt… hopeful? It was hard to put a label on it. It was recognizing the other person in your school year that needed a friend when you both looked up at the same time, and then finding out he was as big a nerd as you were.
“Spider bite, yeah. Right in the neck.” Peter slapped his hand over the spot loosely. “Had a really rough night, and my aunt…” Funny how a throwaway mention now made his heart jump. “She thought I did mushrooms or something. Luckily, there was a fever, right? So she just assumed I was hallucinating because my brain was cooking in my skull. Until she found out what happened to me. Later. You know.” He smiled. In spite of everything, May had embraced it all after the initial shock and concern. No one had been a bigger supporter of Spider-Man than May Parker.
“Spoilers: it doesn’t get any less complicated,” Ben shot back between chews. The comment was accompanied by a wry smile, but as Peter talked, his look softened, turning into something warm and wistful. Because this was nice. Just… talking… There was those times back in his world that they’d gotten to this level and he missed it. Yeah, he knew that he was to blame for the current schism, but that didn’t mean he still didn’t miss it. And it’s not like that whenever they got dumped into a multiversal meet-up that they had chances for this. Always some big danger. Everyone needs to move now now now before they end up losing more compatriots. It meant that he’d only gotten glimpses and passing ideas of what held firm between universes and what didn’t. Honestly, it was a missed opportunity in statistics and science. Like…
He tapped the back of his right hand. “Spider landed and bit right there.” He shook his head as he chuckled. “There was a sick feeling at first, had to rush out of the science exhibition. Dodged some bullies and was about to get hit by a car, but…” His hand waved upwards. “Jumped out of the way and climbed up a wall. I think that shocked all the sick out of my system.” He breathed out a sigh. “My aunt and uncle never knew what had happened.” He frowned, fingers absently rolling up the Starburst wrapped. “I don’t know if she ever figured it out… there was a time we thought she did, but…”
It sounded familiar. A little skewed by whatever universe Ben came from, but the core of the story was known. A spider, a bite, and then…
“Aunt and uncle?” Peter asked. “I know you mentioned them before. I guess I just never…” How to phrase it? Maybe the best would be to just say it. Plain facts. C’mon, Pete.
“I met other Peter Parkers. I remember it. Like one of those weird overnight dreams people talk about here. The multiverse cracked open, and they came through. So, I guess… I guess I just wanna know…” Peter let his head tip back against the smooth surface of the gondola. He looked at Ben across the way. “Are we like brothers? One of the other Peters put it like that. It made sense, I guess. Always been a single child, but being with them for a bit… felt like brothers.”
Ben’s eyebrows went up in surprise. That was a new development. Maybe? He hadn’t really gotten to talk in depth with the other Peter when he was here, so maybe it was just new for this one. Which was a string of words that could produce a headache on a normal day, but seemed pretty regular for life in Derleth.
There were questions that popped up into his mind. Curiosity on specifics. And then that hanging question about his aunt and uncle, but it could wait considering that question. A bolt right to his core. The thought was already there with the chatting, but the actual word spoken, well, it’s what he wanted, but always seemed far too complicated to be within reach. And short-lived when it was.
His lips pressed together in a tight smile as he nodded slowly. “Whichever Peter said that, I like him. He’s a keeper. Because… uh, yeah…” He chuckled softly as he ducked his head. “On the good days, yeah, we’re like brothers. And I want them to all be good days, y’know? ‘Cause I remember always wanting a brother.” He waved a hand in reference to all of the multiverse. “The universe just isn’t always conventional in how that happens, is it?”
There was that chance for Ben to say no. And then Peter would collect up his tiny wish and put it back into storage. They’d carry on, friendly. It might be weird, but there was still a path forward from there. But Peter listened, and he felt his view of Ben click into the proper Ben-shaped slot.
“That one… he told me about someone he knew. Named Gwen. Said she was like his MJ. Good hugger, that guy,” Peter answered. It didn’t explain everything, but maybe something in that would resonate with Ben on some level. “I mean, the two of them… they, uh…”
Peter breathed out, and in that span of time was another fork-in-the-road choice. “They were there for me when something happened. Something real bad. Lost myself, y’know? Just got so angry, and they said they had been through something like I had. They told me my Aunt May was like their Uncle Ben, and she wouldn’t have wanted me to…”
He stopped and there was a quick brush of a sleeve across his face. “Sorry. This is weird. I remember her being happy and just -- I get these memories, and she’s…” He gestured around the immediate space. “She’s not here. And she’s not there, either. It’s a lot.”
With each sentence, another piece clicked into the multiversal puzzle. Granted, this sort of game was something Ben had to play often just in normal life, so this felt oddly easier if just because he knew the pieces. The Peter who called them brothers had a Gwen (which brought up a whole lot more questions), but it sounded like this Peter had skipped Gwen and gone right to MJ. Maybe? Which made his stomach twist considering how this web was being spun. Mention of Gwen, she was like his MJ, and then something bad happening and being so angry. The facts felt like they were falling into a same scenario, different girl.
Except not the case at all. Aunt May was like their Uncle Ben. Time felt like it had stopped. He didn’t need anything more than that. He understood. Everything else just confirmed what he knew from that, except that statement held so much more. Not a simple case of just her being gone. There’d be guilt. A perceived failure. A questioning of what action would have meant she would still be alive now. And that knee jerk need for vengeance against the hand that actually killed her.
The space in the gondola wasn’t ideal, but Ben knew what he had to do. Slipping off his seat, he kneeled on the floor of the ferris wheel car and leaned forward to wrap his arms tightly around Peter.
“It’s a lot,” he echoed softly. “I can’t understand exactly. But I know that life just doesn’t feel right without her there. I’m so sorry, Peter.”
What started as trying to get a read on Ben ended up snowballing, and Peter only realized it when the words began to free fall. He was about to stop and back up, but Ben had moved in and embraced him. For all the turmoil in his mind, he was able to anchor onto that and lasso his own arms around the older man for a moment. It calmed him.
“I’m good,” Peter breathed out after a few seconds. “I’m good now. I mean, this is kinda nice, y’know? We’re not alone.” He let Ben go and straightened up as much as he could in such tight quarters. He hesitated, then asked -- if not because he was curious, then because he needed a little movement away from what was on topic mere seconds ago: “Is it really Ben? I should call you Ben?”
Ben nodded as he slowly pulled back. He gave Peter’s shoulder a reassuring squeeze. “It’s ok if you’re ever not good, yeah? I’m here if that happens because…”. A small, soft smile as he shifted his weight back to sit, leaning his own back against the other side of the gondola in a mirror of Peter. “…. Yeah, it’s nice to not be alone.”
He took a deep breath at the question, his head leaning back against the wall. A simple question, but also one that could open a can of worms. Like the whole spider bite question. But he felt they were past the point of brush offs and dodges. Mostly.
“It’s really Ben.” He paused a moment, going over his words before pushing forward. “I’ve been Ben for the past eight years. It’s who I am.”
And with that shift away from the heavier topic, his head tilted in curiosity and worry. “So this multiverse meet-up? Did it involve steampunk rejects wanting to go all vampire on spider energy?”
“Yeah, I hear you.” Peter breathed out, and he puffed his shoulders up, almost as if to readjust to Derleth now that he’d confessed one trinket of Parker truth. There was plenty more he could say about what life was back home, but that wasn’t important. Not now. Not right away. He was fine. “All good for now. I promise.”
Besides, it sounded like Ben was holding onto some more truths as well. They were both feeling out the edges of it all. There was time.
“Also, not sure if you grabbed that from a movie or what, but no. Uh… there was a guy with octopus robot arms. Sand dude. Electric guy… no vampire that I remember. They weren’t from my world, either. Just… some magic went wrong,” Peter replied. There was a skirting around the full cast of a multiversal spell gone awry, but he honestly didn’t know if Ben would even get the references.
Ben nodded. The offer was out there and, well, he knew the varying levels of Parker ‘fine’. And considering everything, the other boy was in a level of the good ‘fine’ considering the state he had been in when Ben had found him. Some of that pressure had been realized. Some of that weight had gotten shifted into a better position to hold easier. Something that could be shouldered to deal with for a later day when something new got tossed onto the worry pile or poked things out of balance.
“I wish it was a movie,” he said with a shake of his head as he tossed the pack of Starburst back over to Peter. “They were the cause of our universe’s last two multiverse spider-meet-ups.” He frowned, his brow furrowing. “That I know of…” There was a thread there. One that kept feeling like it dangled into view whenever the different universes would talk. Like the event being very familiar and yet having no memory of it. He pushed that thread away though considering…
He made a face as his head went back to bump against the gondola wall. “Ugh, man, you got Doc Ock,” he groaned, the distaste clear in his voice. There would've been a time that the name would’ve just been a mild annoyance, but now… well, their relationship was more complicated now. He waved a hand. “I mean, you're halfway to a Sinister Six there and depending on the day, Sandman and Electro can be a handful, but ugh Ock…”
“The what?” Distractions were always the way of things. Peter could find something else easily to latch onto, but this one piqued his interest. “Sinister -- there were… one, two… five? There were five. I mean, that counts Dr. Octavius, but he wasn’t…”
Peter’s nose wrinkled as he tried to think through his memories. Old yet new memories. “He wasn’t a bad guy. He just needed help. They all did. Isn’t that -- wait, what is your Octavius like?”
Ben pressed his lips together for a moment, wondering if he’d given too much or the wrong information. But this was an odd tightrope, wasn’t it? On one hand, this Peter had fought Thanos and gone into space. All his talk was of Avengers and Strange and big deal items. Hardly what he’d been dealing with when Peter was in high school. At the same time, big time villains they dealt with at that time were new to this Peter. No Doc Ock, no Electro, no Sandman, no Sinister Six. No Gwen, but yes MJ. Possibly Venom, but he wasn’t sure how that factored in with the last Peter’s history. But also no mutants, yet they still had Wanda.
And two more unnamed villains… Unless he was counting the other Peters in that count of five, but this sounded more like people he might be fighting, not people helping… Although considering how first meetings of Spiders sometimes went…
“You get enough villains, they start to team up,” he offered for the first question..? Questions? Run on verbal flail? “The big theme that keeps popping up is Sinister Six. I think they tried seven at one point but…” He waved a hand. “That many egos usually ends up failing, no matter how close they get to their-” His hands raised for air quotes. “-’destroy Spider-Man’ plan.” He frowned. “Actually… it’s usually Ock that heads up the whole Sinister Six thing…” Which led right into…
He took a deep breath as he ran his hand back through his hair. He needed to think this answer through because… Sometimes it felt so far away. That optimism. That just pure need to fix. To help. And there were many cases where that worked. That it stuck. Broken people got the help they needed and it went well. His lips pressed together a fleeting moment as the irony of the statement wasn’t lost on him considering his current situation. And then other times… He wasn’t even sure how the situation managed to spiral so wildly out of control… Ha, even more irony there…
“Arrogant,” he breathed out finally. “‘Superior’ is his favorite word.” He rolled his eyes. “And he is a genius, so it’s really hard to make him even consider he might be wrong or there might be another way of doing things. Or that something going wrong might be his fault. Because he's the superior mind, right? Any failure has to be because of someone else’s miscalculation or meddling, not his.” He shook his head. “He wasn't always so bad, but…” He threw his hands up in the air. “It just escalated from ‘let's destroy Spider-Man’ to ‘let's destroy the world’. He was trying to turn things around, do that hero thing, but…” A shake of his head. “Seems like he's back to his old game.” He held a hand up. “Which grain of salt here considering, well, me and Otto, it’s complicated.”
Peter was quiet, but it was mostly because he was trying to track similarities. Differences. Casual mentions. They really needed to map this out one day.
“Yeah, he wasn’t leading -- Ock, I mean. Ock? Otto. Dr. Octavius. Honestly, thought the name was a joke. Nah, he had some tech -- AI stuff that went rogue. It was controlling him, not the other way around,” Peter explained, latching onto facts and other things. It took his mind off loss. It gave him something to analyze in his science-geared mind.
“Hey, sorry yours is harder to deal with. I mean, mine wasn’t mine. But…” But if there was a ‘but’ then they’d be here for hours. Hours talking through the details. It was still new -- this shift between how they related to each other. Maybe it needed to breathe a little first. Or, maybe Peter himself just needed some time to let the dust settle before he was braced for that kind of marathon.
Peter shrugged. It’s all he could think to do, as the words fizzled and they sat in quiet.
Ben nodded along. The multiverse, right? Quite the web to untangle. As even if that Ock’s story was different, there was that echo there. Maybe not the full on mind control, but there’d been that bit before, right? That whatever flipped that switch in Otto’s brain to allow him to control his arms also messed with his mind. Damaged it and pushed him into insanity. He wasn’t so certain of the truth to that, but he could see how that could ripple and mutate out into the multiverse. After all, that Doc Ock from the Web Warriors could’ve been more in line with this other Ock.
“I think our multiverse has a sense of humor with some names. And alliteration,” he said before shrugging. “And ours has some years on yours it seems. Add any amount of time and it’s going to shift things.”
Which was all he had to say on that because, well, it had to be a lot. They’d at least moved that brain hyperfixation away from the hardest part of the memory upgrade it seemed. The rest probably required a good amount of percolation that going on about multiple Electros and Sandman bouncing between villainy and heroing wasn’t going to help. Especially with the question marks of the other Peters, Gwen, and whatever magic even caused this whole multiversal adventure. It was a lot to deal with without heaping more on.
So he pushed his bag full of a random assortment of snacks and small tech projects along the seat towards the other boy instead. “I’d planned on defragging up here a bit, but I’m all for a team-up on that.”