Chapter Text
With great power comes great responsibility.
Aunt May’s final words ring through Peter’s head like—a mantra, a blessing, a curse. He can’t decide. Kneeling on the gritty metal of the statue below him, his torso coils into itself wretchedly, fingers twitching uncomfortably, curling to dig his nails into his palms in a weak attempt to ground himself.
In an endless blur, formulas, possible situations, various outcomes, all play through his head like the bad ending of a movie.
A bad ending.
It seems bizarre to put such a childish label on what’s turning out to be the worst moment of his life, but it’s the simplest comparison that comes to mind.
Doctor Strange is chanting something to his left, his brows furrowed, cape billowing behind him, the sorcerer’s magic flaring an acrid amber. He’s chanting some kind of—a spell. Trying to contain the cosmic rifts that litter the sky. To fix all of this. To fix what Peter has caused.
No matter how hard Peter tries, his eyes can only slide weakly over to the man momentarily, the incensed words floating over the haze that has taken over his mind. And yet—Peter needs to listen. He must be saying something important.
He must be.
Peter needs to listen. He needs to shake himself out of it and get it together, but he can’t.
Can’t bring himself to move.
Or speak—or even think.
He can barely process anything past the heavy beating of his own heartbeat. It slams through him rhythmically, boulders beating down in a landslide.
And isn’t that odd?
Peter Parker, one of the few people with the intelligence to be able to calculate the sheer amount of equations required to swing above the skyline and sync with the backdrop. By all definitions, he should no longer be limited by trivial concepts like gravity, having overcome his humanity in ways many others can only dream of to blend with the shadows of night, glow with the light of dawn, slide along concrete and tempered steel like a gale of wind. It’s something he’d been proud of—the way that with webs of his own creation, he’d managed to master the art of gliding, able to look like he naturally belongs there in the backdrop of the city.
That all feels meaningless now.
What does gravity matter when the fabric of reality is coming apart above him?
When May died in his arms.
All because he wanted to go to college.
It seems stupid now. So—insignificant.
Foggy clouds drift overhead to cover the remnants of a blazing sun, its monstrous rays seething angrily, casting down punishing waves of fiery heat that gradually heat the copper Peter stands on. Rain cascades down with just as much fury, dribbling down his suit—aching to soak through, instead pebbling down the dull sheen of nanotech. Shying away from the stormy downpour, wispy clouds turn to mist in violent bursts of precipitation, ashen gray fog wafting over the cityscape.
He can barely feel the chill.
Now, see—Peter is not an idiot.
At least, not when it comes to formulas. Not when it comes to solving equations.
And that’s all this really is, isn’t it? Take this whole situation, break it down, and you find an equation, in its simplest form.
Parker luck is a constant variable, always ensuring that something has to go wrong–it doesn’t matter how small or how large. The only difference is that now, the equation has expanded exponentially. If he hadn’t helped—if he’d just let the villains meet their ends and die, May would still be alive. She would still be here with him, waiting for him at home, back at Happy’s stupidly-nice highrise condo.
And yet—he can’t take back his actions.
“Every good deed has a consequence.”
Peter knows he shouldn’t be thinking of Norman–shouldn’t even be considering words spewed among insults aimed at him by the Green Goblin—by May’s murderer—but he can’t help it.
Everything seems bent out of proportion, and the end behaviors are positive infinity in both directions. There’s no escaping this situation. No matter what Peter does from this point, no matter how he reacts, no matter how many equations he plays through in his head, all directions lead to destruction.
His path is set in stone.
This isn’t the mirror dimension. Peter can’t just—magically geometry his way out of this.
Droplets weep along his temple to catch on his eyelashes, blurring his vision. He clutches his mask close in one hand, half-crushing it in his fist. He can’t tell if he’s crying or not.
He could be—but he can’t tell.
Above him, the sky is ripping open in a frenzy, tearing into deep, bleeding cuts of indigo, incandescent smears that howl with vengeance. The customary pale blue harshly implodes to make space for the intruding gateways that will doom his universe against its will. Around him, the atmosphere shatters like glass, unable to retaliate under the superior force penetrating it. Through the unshapely crevices, opponents of unimaginable proportion lay, bringing promises of danger past human comprehension.
Peter feels the universe’s helplessness like a visceral thing. Vibrating with the violent tremble of the stratosphere, his spidey-sense blares with warning, a high, resonant ring caught in an overload of sensation. Vision narrowing to the ghastly slits in the sky, a bone-deep dread settles in the very root of his veins. No matter how desperately his panicked brain wills it to stop—wills it to be an illusion, a mere trick on his mind, the universe continues its tortured writhe, the cracked expanse above flickering like purple candlelight.
Shrouded faces reach out through the gateways with elongated, unshapely limbs that extend from inhuman figures. They tear at the cracks, deepening the bleeding wounds with vengeful fervor. Despite the tangible power that seeps through the rifts, it is overshadowed by an almost palpable, deep, sorrowful anger.
They’re coming for him.
He watches the scene with a morbid, resigned kind of fascination: an ant realizing its puny existence before the fist of an unbeatable tyrant, moments before being crushed flat.
A loud, bitter part of himself just wants to let them take him. To just—give up.
Peter senses Doctor Strange before the man even enters his peripheral vision, and the sudden appearance of another human being jars him back to reality, slicing through the constant whirring of his spidey-sense. Gummy and heavy, his tongue instinctively sticks to the roof of his mouth, the previous fog abruptly clearing from his mind. Agitated, red-rimmed eyes snap up to Doctor Strange’s own sympathetic blue, the man’s eyes tinged with the burden of understanding.
“Peter,” Doctor Strange says stiltedly. There’s weight to the word. Doubt and insecurity rises in a wave of nausea, settling uncomfortably in the base of Peter's mouth.
“Sir?” Peter whispers, wincing at how small his voice sounds, watery and hesitant, like a child’s.
The wizard looks different in this lighting. In the shroud of lilac, his grey-streaked sideburns look all the more prominent. Curled in close to his chest, his shoulders sag with exhaustion, temples creased with stress as his brows furrow with the weight of the world, aging him prematurely. Draped across his back, even the Cloak of Levitation looks rumpled, its edges furling and unfurling in a mirror image of its bearer’s twitching fingers, the vibrant ruby red darkened to a greyed-out garnet.
“I don’t—” Peter cuts off abruptly, squeezing his mask in his fist, clinging to the sensation microscopic fibers of the nanotech creaking under the pads of his fingers.
Tears prick in his eyes, and he rocks on his feet, watching pebbles leftover from Flint’s transformation skitter over the ledge. Four and a half seconds pass before the first rock hits base-ground with a thud, a sharp drum to Peter’s sensitive hearing. Underneath him, the metal platform groans under the weight of Peter’s form, rustic copper creaking as he begins to curl into himself once more, his own weight feeling like it might be crushing him. He can’t cry here—not again. He doesn’t have the right. Not when he’s the one who caused all of this destruction. All this devastation. Swallowing all of it down, he shoves it deep into the core of his heart.
“I don’t know what to do, sir.”
Chin tucked into his chest, his soaked bangs curl into his eyes, teasing him as droplets slide further down to the bridge of his nose. There’s a moment of heavy silence between them, where neither of them can bear to say a word, and then Doctor Strange is stepping forward, barely hesitating to lay a hand on Peter’s shoulder, squeezing. Peter physically suppresses a lurch, limbs shuddering with the effort. On an ordinary human, it would be a tight, heavy grip—likely meant to ground, but to Peter’s superpowered biology, it serves to soothe more than ground him, more like a pat.
The wizard’s eyes squint shut, his forehead wrinkling with familiar burden. Doctor Strange clears his throat, taking a few moments to take stock of Peter—his unruly hair, the blood streaked down the entirety of his face, the still-healing cut down the side of his cheekbone, the devastated pinch to his lips—and then the wizard begins to explain.
“The fabric of this universe is torn,” Doctor Strange says solemnly. “Those people up there—they’re coming here for you, and I can’t stop them. The Macchina di Kadavus is destroyed. The spell has shattered the universe. At this stage, it’s uncontainable, and unless we can think of something quickly, our universe won’t survive the fallout of an attack of this scale.”
Peter pants raggedly. The wizard’s words echo through his mind in a high, ringing keen. He’s helpless against it—can’t think, can’t breathe as his guilt threatens to choke him. His hands snap up to dig into his hair, eyelids shuttering as he tugs at his roots hysterically. He feels tiny—a pathetic bug of a person. Like he’s six years old again, clinging to Uncle Ben’s leg because a bully punched him. But Uncle Ben’s been dead for longer than Peter can remember. There’s no one to hide behind this time—no one that will come to save him. This is his fault. No one else’s but his own.
Doctor Strange reaches out again, his face twisted in a scowl. “Stop that,” He mutters, detangling Peter’s hands from their grip on his roots with surprising care. Though he could easily resist, Peter allows himself to be guided along, hands falling limp to his sides instead, scalp aching mildly.
Peter can feel his desperation growing, in the irregular thumping of his heart, the way his breath hitches periodically. “Isn’t there a way to reverse it, sir? Can’t we just, just—” Peter stammers, searching for words that refuse to come smoothly, “—just continue the original spell?”
Doctor Strange’s face twists, mouth twisting like he’s about to interrupt, but Peter lunges forward jerkily at the first sign of his hesitation, knocking the man’s hand off his shoulder to clamp onto his wrist.
He continues, pupils constricting into half-feral pinpricks, “They’re coming because of me,” Peter heaves. “So they need to forget me, right? Forget I’m Spider-Man. Like the original spell was supposed to do.”
Doctor Strange tries to pull his hands back, face unreadable. Of course, his hands don't budge in Peter’s super-human grip. After another testing tug, the wizard sighs and begins to elaborate once more, wary of Peter’s unblinking stare. He lowers his voice, like he’s soothing a wild animal. “Peter, you don’t understand,” Doctor Strange starts. “Circumstances have changed. Even now, as we speak, all nearby multiverses are colliding with ours. What you’re proposing might have worked if it was just our universe involved. But with the involvement of others—well. The multiverse is infinite. There's no telling how many consecutive universes are involved now.” He pauses to let Peter digest, visibly watching the boy work through the information flooding his brain, and then continues, softer this time. “I hate to say it, but it won’t be enough for our universe to forget Peter Parker is Spider-Man. We’re at the end of the line, kid.”
Thick and overwhelming, anxiety gnaws at Peter, threatening to fog over his brain again. He has to pace back a few steps to ground himself, releasing Doctor Strange’s wrists to creep to the edge of the makeshift platform lining the statue, barely acknowledging the deafening groan the copper makes as he stops short in front of the ledge, head tilted downwards, away from the rapturing sky. Away from the wizard across from him.
“Is there really nothing that can be done?” Peter asks, more to himself than to Doctor Strange, practically a plea. There has to be something. This can’t just be game over—the universe can’t just die because of Peter’s stupidity. New York—the people he’s tried to protect for so long—already hate him. He can’t be the reason this world is destroyed. He wouldn’t be able to bear it.
A thought comes to Peter, sudden, sharp and painful. Even in his head, as he sounds it out—does the math, plugs every variable into the right spot—it sounds stupid and sacrificial. He’s never wanted to be a martyr—not once, even when the world pushed him to be the next Iron-man. But, well—it’s not exactly a choice anymore. Even as a small, selfish part of him buried deep down screams resentfully, he can already feel the weight of the decision he has made long before it settles as concrete in his mind.
Decisively, Peter spins back around, eyes snapping up, startling Doctor Strange as he suddenly uncoils, taking multiple steps forward until he and Doctor Strange are nearly chest to chest. At some point during this march, his mask flies out of his hand, taken by the wind.
“Cast a new spell,” Peter orders breathlessly. Even as he says it, primordial dread dredges on the edge of his mind, his spidey-sense buzzing at him in forewarning, but he forces himself to keep talking. “One that’ll make them all forget me. If everyone forgets Peter Parker—if the entire multiverse forgets Peter Parker, then they won’t know to come here, right? If you cast a new spell, it can do that, can’t it? Reverse all of this.”
“I will not.” Doctor Strange snaps.
“But, sir—” Peter protests, fingers curled into menacing claws as he tries to reach out—as if to grip onto the wizard again and force him to listen.
“No, Peter, you will listen to me now!” Doctor Strange barks out. When Peter is silent once more, he continues, “There’s no telling the consequences that casting a new spell could incur. You have to acknowledge that magic is finicky—even the Sorcerer Supreme can never truly understand the possible outcome of every spell, especially not with regard to the cosmos.”
There’s a heavy pause, where the wizard seems to be gathering his wits—finding the right words, lost in a way that startles Peter into taking a few skittish steps back, his nanotech solidifying across his abdomen in a reaction to his mental state—as if it could form a physical barrier between Peter and the unavoidable path he’s driving himself down.
“What you’re asking me to do,” Doctor Strange starts, eyes hardening, molars audibly grinding together as he steels himself, visibly unclenching his jaw. “There’s no set precedent. The Runes of Kof-Kol are considered simple for one sole reason—because of how vague they are.”
Bared open to the cosmos, the sky stretches impossibly further with tormented anguish—the figures appearing closer now, painfully scraping their way through the fabric binding his universe together. Their features are starting to become clearer, and it’s not a comforting image. They are every bit as monstrous, as powerful, as dangerous as their forms had made them seem from afar.
Amethyst shards have begun to crumble from the sky, tumbling into the harbor. If he strains hard enough, past the rain, past the crashing thunder, past the wailing of his spidey-sense picking up once more, he can hear screams in the city, panicked voices calling for loved ones, the scent of tangy liquid metal—not just from the statue below him, but further into the city—car alarms blaring, honking violently as civilians try to escape the inescapable. Oddly enough, the scene makes Peter recall his final moments on Titan, fading into ash. Had he crumbled to pieces the same way the sky does now?
Doctor Strange runs a hand through his rain-soaked hair. It makes the wizard look rugged, further from the put-together, clinical atmosphere he typically maintains. Sighing heavily, his voice lowers to a softer pitch, recognizing Peter's lost, distressed expression. “Do you understand what you’re asking of me, Peter? What you’re asking me to do to you?”
He’s not sure he does, not really, but—
“Would it work?” Peter whispers, managing to keep his voice from trembling. He needs to know. Wind whips past him, rain wetting his bangs, plastering them to his forehead, washing away the blood that slicks his cheeks.
“In theory,” Doctor Strange confirms hesitantly, “But are you ready for what will follow? What you’re condemning yourself to?”
Even as Peter rolls the idea around in his head, his hands shake, threatening to break him. Below him, the sleek, ruddy copper of the Statue of Liberty creaks as he shifts his weight once more. If he’s right, if he understands, essentially—he would be a hollow shell of a person. Nothing binding him to this world and no proof of his existence. No proof of the joy or grief he has experienced, or signs of laughter and tears. Just a blank space that no one will even know is supposed to be filled. It’s a punishment in and of itself—one he whole-heartedly deserves.
For May’s death.
For ruining Ned and MJ’s futures.
For himself—for always managing to be so naive. So easily manipulated. So stupid. First with Mysterio, and then with the interdimensional travellers. Sure, they’d been saved, but at what cost? His world is ending. May is dead—because Peter was too soft to let four complete strangers return to their worlds and face death.
- Jonah Jameson’s speech flickers through the forefront of his mind, that repeated live broadcast, like a fucked up omen, echoing in his mind—the reporter’s spitting voice deep and hateful.
“Everything Spider-Man touches comes to ruin…
…And we, the innocents, are left to pick up the pieces.”
And despite himself—his defenses crumble. The words hook into his heart, self-loathing rooting itself deeper into the center of his being to join the words he’ll never get to say to his friends and family—the joy he’ll never get to experience again.
The world is far better off without Peter Parker. Without Spider-Man. Perhaps this spell will be how he atones.
Doctor Strange’s gaze is heavy and seeking. Peter can’t bring himself to look directly at it, lest the wizard see right through him—to see his reluctance, the despair overtaking his greater functions. When he next speaks, his voice does not fail him. “I am. If it’ll work—it needs to happen.”
Doctor Strange’s head lifts to look at the ruined landscape surrounding them. “I wish there was another way,” he says. “A better way. You don’t deserve this, kid.”
I do. Peter has to bite back the urge to say, instead pricking his canines into his bottom lip. He doesn’t notice he’s pierced the skin until tangy blood fills his mouth, jolting him for a moment.
If Doctor Strange notices, he blissfully does not mention it. Instead, the wizard steps back, as if sensing the shift in mood—the finality in Peter’s stiff posture. They both know the situation is a necessary evil—can feel the joint helplessness coursing through them. But Doctor Strange is choosing the many, choosing the world over a single life, and so he bites his tongue, and doesn't call out Peter's unstable, manic decision-making.
Instead, after a few moments, he murmurs a final offering, a quiet, “Go make your goodbyes.”
“No,” Peter responds hollowly. Then once more, louder this time—firmer, unsure if Doctor Strange had heard him, he repeats, “No. I don’t have any.”
And he doesn’t.
In fact, he’s fairly sure that if he went now, he’d just end up getting cold feet, or disassociating somewhere. He’s been on the verge of it for the past few hours—even before the final fight. Ned and MJ don’t deserve to see him like this. Selfishly, Peter wishes he could bring himself to go find them. To wrap them in a tight hug—feel their warmth a final time. To press a kiss to MJ’s dry lips, just to wet them with his own one final time. But, well—the pain of seeing them feels like it might outweigh the pain of completing this new mission. If there’s nothing else he can do, then at least he can see this through without backing out, and give them a second chance to live their lives the way they deserve to, without him constantly screwing everything up for them.
Doctor Strange pauses, looking exhausted, for once appearing as just an old man, far from a magical, larger-than-life figurehead. His eyes narrow, the ice-blue greying with resignation. The wizard seems to hesitate for a moment, like he desperately wants to say something—and then his mouth clicks shut, jaw locking. The wizard turns away, averting his gaze with resignation, as if he can see the path Peter has gone down, how the young vigilante is spiraling. He seems to hesitate for a moment before replying with a resigned, “If you say so. We must move quickly.”
Exhaustion lining his form, Doctor Strange begins to levitate once more, flicking his fingers up and out in a circular motion, watching the Runes of Kof-Kol reform, fiery simmering embers forming symbols that whirl erratically.
Even through his own conflicting thoughts, Peter can see the pain and indecision deepening the wrinkles on Doctor Strange’s aged face. Picking at the edges of his suit, Peter reluctantly watches for his reaction as he mumbles, “Thank you, sir.”
“Call me Stephen.”
“What? But you said—”
It catches Peter off-guard. Rapidly blinking to re-orient himself, he turns his eyes from the swirling runes back to the wizard. Around them, new runes continuously form in bursts of citrine-gold that fades into a phosphorescent brass, gradually overlapping, growing more gargantuan with each new embellishing wave of Doctor Strange’s hands, thrumming with pure magical power.
The wizard huffs out a small, pained chuckle. “I know what I said. Call me Stephen, kid.”
It feels unique, somehow. Ominous, perhaps. Not like the casual familiarity Doctor Strange—no—Stephen had tried for before. “Stephen, then.” Peter responds wistfully, “Thank you, Stephen.”
Stephen wrinkles his nose in distaste. “Nope, still sounds weird,” he grunts. The wizard allows himself an inaudible chuckle, rolling his shoulders back with a sharp pop. Then, his smile turns bittersweet. “You ready, kid?”
“Yes.” Peter replies simply. There’s nothing else to say.
Peter hopes he is. It’s a decision of his own making, yet it’s not the expected defeat, but the cruel taste of relief that flicks over his dry tongue like the aftermirage of an oasis in a desert.
“For the record, I’m sorry it had to be this way,” Stephen says mournfully. Peter’s not sure what to make of the way it sounds like he’s grieving in advance—grieving now because he won’t know to do it later. The wizard’s eyes find him for the final time. “You’re a good kid, Peter. Don’t forget that.”
Peter never gets a chance to respond.
Nigh immediately, the spell tumbles into motion, a tsunami breaking through a dam. The world flares with an amalgamation of amber and lilac crashing against each other, two tsunamis colliding with equal fervor. Like spider-silk, they intermix, the shimmering arcane inscriptions outweighing the radiant filaments of the cosmos, weaving the rifts together in geometric, artificial stitches. Runes ripple through the cosmos, overwhelming the fabric of reality in order to force its seams shut.
Instead of the spell dissipating, having restored the universe’s order, the runes lunge for Peter, imbedding itself down into his bones, and then impossibly further, chaining him down as raw magic seeps into his veins, lava-like heat branding him. For a mere millisecond, there is relief as it loosens its hold—before it tears him across the cosmos, into the still-closing rifts. Harsh, iridescent rays of astral energy threaten to shatter his being, searing through his physical form as rays of lava-like ciphers wrench him into the in-betweens of the multiverse, past the rifts, past the gateways.
The screaming of his spidey-sense fills his mind with baseless static, an unfiltered terror completely separate to his own. It senses the inevitability of the end, scraping against his mind in a reflection of his own internal torment, a kind of combined anguish cascading through them, his ability to scream brutally torn from him as agony unlike anything he’s ever experienced rips across him, too fast, too sudden for his advanced healing to even begin to locate.
All at once, the air is zapped from his lungs, which collapse inwards as his organs seem to constrict, merciless pressure hurtling into the depths of his body. With his mind keening, spidey-sense wailing with the squeal of a dying predator, his consciousness allows a final spike of glacial, primal terror before his physical form atomizes under the cosmic implosion of the rifts, the chromatic glyphs of the final act of the Runes of Kof-Kol intertwining with his very being.
From one moment to the next, he is whole—and then he is nothing.
The Soul is created.