The wind in the city felt different when you cut it more than a hundred feet above the ground. Peter slid between buildings like a living shadow, his red and black suit molding with his body like a second skin. The mask covered his face, but not his mind. This, on the contrary, was chaos.
Night patrols no longer felt like an act of rebellion or revenge. Now they were part of his routine. Part of who he was.
But tonight was not about arresting criminals.
It was an excuse.
Because his head was somewhere else.
A few hours before.
The date with Gwen had started simply, as a timid step towards something neither of them wanted to ruin. Midtown Manhattan still shone with the pent-up energy of a weekend. The lights of the street stalls, the couples in the parks, the screaming children in the playhouses... It all felt so normal that Peter almost forgot for a moment that he wasn't from there. Not at all.
They had gone to the movies. A romantic comedy that made Gwen laugh more than she expected. Then they walked through the park between jokes, memories, and the occasional playful push that hid something deeper.
She had known him since they were children. Peter — the real Peter — was her best friend, her confidant, and her first secret crush. And now, though in front of her was another Peter, he carried the memories, the gestures, the emotions, and the unspoken words of the original.
Sometimes, he couldn't help but wonder:
Is this what he would have done?
But then Gwen smiled. And the world seemed to be suspended for a second.
They walked back to their building. Gwen lived in a modest apartment in Midtown, in a brick tower with a generous view of the Hudson if you knew which window to look into.
In front of the entrance, they were silent. A silence that shouted the obvious.
Gwen looked down for a second, as if looking for the courage in her own slippers. pretty. Thanks for that, Peter.
"Yes. I... I had a good time too," he replied, his throat dry.
Their faces were close. Too much. One step, one sigh, one mistake, and his lips would be millimeters away. The world seemed to stop. Peter swallowed. Gwen looked up.
And then...
"Gwen?"
They both turned instantly. Captain George Stacy, still in his uniform, watched them from the door of the building. His eyes showed no anger, no annoyance, and no surprise. Just that typical look of a father who knows more than he says.
Gwen pulled away immediately, a slight blush on her cheeks. "Hi, Dad. I was just coming up."
"Yes, I noticed," he replied in a neutral tone. Then his eyes shifted to Peter. "Good evening, Parker"
Peter felt an icy stake driven into his stomach. "Good evening, Mr. Stacy"
The captain nodded, saying no more. He kept walking toward the building.
Gwen exhaled, frustrated. "I'm sorry... It was not my intention for it to end like this"
Peter shook his head with a nervous smile. "No, that's fine. It was... a good day. Really"
She touched his arm. Just a second. "See you tomorrow"
And he went up.
Peter stood there, feeling like a fraud in a person's suit.
Hours later. In Queens.
He was no longer Peter Parker. Now he was Spider-Man. Or at least he was trying to be.
He jumped between alleys and rooftops with agility. But he couldn't get out of his head what almost happened. And what did not happen?
He stopped at the top of an abandoned laundromat. He took off his mask and set it aside. The city shone in the distance, indifferent to its crisis.
"I almost kissed her. I was about to kiss Gwen. And the worst... it's just that a part of me felt like I'd done it before."
She remembered her laughter as a child. His eyes when they talked about science. The smell of their wet hair when they had been trapped by the rain on their way home in sixth grade. Memories that were not his. Not at all.
"Am I stealing someone else's life?"
He slowly got up and walked along the edge of the building.
"I didn't go out that night. I did not go to those clandestine struggles. I didn't run away in anger. I stayed at home... and Uncle Ben never came out."
A simple fact. A colossal difference.
"You avoided a tragedy. You altered the first thread."
But now, more than ever, I felt that this thread was pulling many more. Because time was not a road, but a spider's web. And he had struck a chord he shouldn't have.
"What if everything breaks? What if Gwen wasn't supposed to feel this for me?"
He looked up at the sky, the stars obscured by the artificial glow of New York.
"I'm here to stop what's coming. The war. The snap. Thanos. But... at what price?"
He put the mask back on. Not out of necessity. Out of cowardice. Because at least Spider-Man could pretend he was emotionless.
And he threw himself back into the void. Flying in the shadows, looking for some crime that deserved it.
Or at least something that would make him stop thinking.
POV: Gwen Stacy
Gwen plopped down on her bed, still wearing the day's clothes. The window of his room was ajar, and the distant lights of the city flickered as if someone were playing with the switches in the sky.
He could hear his father talking on the phone in the kitchen. Something about the work. Something usual.
But her mind wasn't there. It was still downstairs, at the entrance of the building. With him.
With Peter.
She rested his head on the pillow and closed her eyes for a moment, remembering the heat of the afternoon, the silly laughter, the accidental rubbing of his hands at the cinema... And that's almost it. That eternal second in which everything could change. In which everything wanted to change.
Sighed.
"What's wrong with me?" she muttered to herself.
I had known him for as long as I could remember. They had shared more than snacks and homework. They had shared losses, loneliness, and dreams. And yet, this new Peter had something... different.
It wasn't just that he looked more confident or that he spoke with a pause that he didn't have before. It wasn't the way he looked at her, as if he already knew what he was about to say. It was something else.
A distance. A mute melancholy. As if I were here but also in another place. As if he were caught between two versions of himself.
And yet...
She liked to be with him. It made her feel safe. Hurrah.
Gwen sat down, walked over to the window, and looked up at the sky.
A faint smile crossed her lips.
"You're keeping something to yourself." And I swear I'm going to find out.
She closed the window, lowered the blind, and lay down again. But the dream did not come easy. Because for the first time in a long time, I felt like what I had with Peter was about to change forever.
And she didn't know whether she should be happy or afraid.
The night wind caressed the buildings of Queens as Peter moved forward in silence, his suit still close to his body, stained with soot and dust. His thoughts came back again and again to what had happened to Gwen. The almost-kiss. The interruption. His father's gaze. Everything was mixed with an uncomfortable sensation that squeezed his chest.
But now was not the time to think about that.
He had been on patrol for almost three hours. Three hours of walking on empty rooftops, distant screams that turned out to be arguments between couples or false alarms. His body begged for a bed, and his mind, silence. Tomorrow was Monday, and I had school. And while his superhuman abilities gave him an edge over an average teenager, that didn't take away his need for sleep. Or of having a bad mood like any normal person.
He was already close to home when he heard something.
A buzz. Not a simple shot. Something sharper. Denser.
Peter stopped short and turned into a narrow alley. Six armed guys. The weapons looked like something out of Halo or Mass Effect: cannons with a shiny core, no visible magazines, and a mark Peter didn't recognize. One of them was hacking into an industrial security panel at the back of a building.
Peter frowned under the mask.
"Really?" he murmured. He gave a long sigh as his shoulders drooped. Did they have to appear just now?
He leapt to the ground with a swift, silent somersault. He fell right behind one of the guys and gave him a sharp blow to the neck that knocked him unconscious.
The rest did not take long to react. One of them shot him, and the discharge went through a metal container as if it were aluminum foil.
Peter rolled to the side and took cover behind a concrete column. He closed his eyes for a second. I felt my muscles burning. He was exhausted.
"I can't believe this," he snorted. I just wanted to sleep. But no, idiots with strange weapons had to go out to play at two in the morning.
He looked up and located the watch of the criminal he had just knocked out. It was 2:47 a.m.
Fourteen minutes outside of their patrol hours.
"Unpaid overtime. Perfect" he growled.
It shot out like a projectile. The second fell with a roundhouse kick to the chest. The third tried to use his rifle, but Peter disarmed him with a web to his face followed by an elbow that made him bite the ground.
There were three left.
And those three had a surprise in store.
A grenade flew towards him. Peter barely saw her cross the air. He acted reflexively: he caught it in flight, turned on his axis, and threw it toward them.
The device exploded half a meter from the group. The impact threw them into the air. Two died instantly. The third did not even have time to scream.
Silence.
Peter stood still for a few seconds. He said nothing.
He was just breathing. Rough. Frustrated.
He knew what he had done. It wasn't like I had planned it. But he didn't regret it either.
"If you had waited ten minutes longer. I wouldn't be on guard anymore," he murmured coldly.
He approached the bodies and observed the weapons. They had pulsating energy nuclei and internal circuitry that I didn't recognize.
Technology stolen from someone great.
"Thank you for the donation," he said as he wrapped the devices in spiderweb and dragged them into a makeshift backpack he had brought with him in case he found "useful things."
He also found a bag with wads of bills. Perhaps a payment or a haul from his last hit.
"Materials for the laboratory," he muttered.
He did not do it out of greed. But I needed resources. And there was no way to build what he was planning without capital.
I knew it.
Prevent a war. Prepare for an intergalactic genocide. Build Parker Industries. Save the Avengers before they are even formed.
And if that wasn't enough, he now had a failed date with Gwen, an embarrassment on the surface, and a police captain who probably already suspected things.
When he finally made his way home, exhaustion hit him like a train.
And for the first time since he arrived in this universe... he allowed himself to say it aloud:
"I'm tired of being Peter Parker"