Chapter Text
Let's do it a little bit different this time ... again:
My name is Gwen Stacy.
My name is Miles Morales.
I'm the only Spider-Woman in my dimension.
I'm the only Spider-Man in my dimension.
We thought the multiverse was saved.
But we were wrong.
A new opponent has appeared.
And we had to act.
We thought nothing could stop the Spider-Society.
But he did.
And we had to surpass ourselves again.
And put our friendships at risk in the process.
I had to make a decision...
I was condemned to watch...
And I knew it could kill me.
And I knew she could die.
But let's start from the beginning:
Queens, New York - EARTH-65
"Shit, Miles, where are you?"
Gwen felt the blood rush to her cheeks as she pushed the curtain aside a little and saw the crowd.
She knew that a lot of people had signed up for this concert, but the fact that the whole VISIONS high school was full of people surprised her.
Absent-mindedly, she twirled her drumsticks in her hand, still searching for Miles.
It was laughable. She had helped save the multiverse and talked to Miles afterward. Miles Morales, the boy from Earth-1610, and the Spider-Man in his dimension.
And since then... she didn't feel alone anymore.
But right now, her heart was pounding in her throat.
She had reconciled with her band when the pressure had been lifted off her shoulders after Spot and she had won Miles back. Gwen knew being in the spotlight. However, as an unnamed Spider-Woman, or Ghost Spider as she called herself since the incidents in the old Spider Society, in order to distinguish herself from the other women there.
Gwen Stacy, however... well, Gwen Stacy was a blank slate. Without her mask, she couldn't show all the skills that her spider's bite had given her.
She was suddenly just a normal person, a young woman, looking for her place in society when she wasn't hunting criminals as a spider.
Her father had gotten her a job as a crime photographer in the New York Police Department. So he was able to watch over her, even though he no longer worked directly for the police. But she was so close to the crime that she was able to act incognito as a spider thanks to her father. Of course, George Stacy had to resign himself to exposing his daughter to these dangers, but she had insisted on using her skills in this way.
What else could he have done with her? She was almost grown up by now. He could no longer hold her back from the life she had been living for the past five years.
So the best thing he could do was to support her in her endeavors.
Moreover, he knew that Miles cared about her as much as he did. And that gave both him as a father and his daughter the assurance that what she was doing was right.
"Man, what's wrong with you?" whispered Mary Jane, leader of her eponymous band, to Gwen as she stood behind the closed curtain.
They knew Gwen was the best drummer they had. No one else could play her parts. But no one knew that she didn't have to fear competition because of her reflexes. When it mattered, she was unstoppable. And that made her indispensable to the band. Even if the reconciliation and the many questions that followed were rather a necessary and annoying evil. But for Gwen, playing in a band was a welcome distraction from the hunt for criminals.
"I don't think her guy has shown up yet," the guitarist whispered to MJ. Of course, Gwen could hear them, contrary to her band member's assumption.
Gwen closed her eyes, inhaled and exhaled deeply. Miles must be coming soon, she thought to herself.
Finally, the two women turned and went to their instruments to check them one last time.
"Miles..." she growled tensely.
And then it came, the tingling sensation in her stomach, even before her spider sense warned her.
"I'm here!" he exclaimed, out of breath. When she turned, his portal closed behind him. Typical Miles, she thought amused, until she saw the deep cut in his left shoulder.
"Miles!" she shouted, immediately pulling him into a dark corner of the stage so that not everyone could see his suit.
She examined his face and the rest of his body for other wounds, but the cut was the only outward injury.
"You really want Rio to kill me, don't you?" she sighed and threw him a shirt that she always had in her pocket when she left the house. For exactly these cases.
"It was just a petty criminal, not even the criminal of the week," he smiled at her.
Gwen shook her head in annoyance. "Ugh, what the heck. Miles, I need you here with me, and you're going to do a tour like that first."
"What was I supposed to do? He robbed a store!" Miles complained with a bright smile on his lips.
"Probably just tell your dad? The one who works at the police?"
"But he wasn't there," Miles answered, pointing at himself with his hands. "Problem seen, problem solved."
Gwen put her hand in front of her face. "Miles Morales, I promised your mother that I would take care of you when you were with me. And that's not exactly a good negotiating position for me."
She pointed to the cut, which Miles was sealing with webbing fluid before he put on his shirt.
Surely his mother understood, she knew that anyway. It was her boyfriend's recklessness that drove her to despair - at least sometimes.
"Gwen, are you ready now?" MJ called over from the stage before spotting the man at her side. "Oh, hi Miles."
Gwen and Miles looked into each other's eyes for a moment. It's all right, he told her wordlessly.
I know, Gwen replied just as silently.
Still she was sometimes puzzled by the connection which only they had, and which they had discovered only by chance in the greatest need. But it helped when they felt lonely as soon as the other wasn't around.
On the other hand, if they were in different dimensions, it was much more difficult to communicate in this way. Often they only had the strength for the most important sentence fragments, but even these were enough to communicate to each other what was fundamentally important. A day and time, for example, to describe the most frequently used purpose at the moment.
Gwen finally gave up and turned away from the still smiling Miles. "We'll talk about that later," she baited him, and he was only too happy to agree.
He was just falling in love with this woman in front of him, just as she was in love with him. They complemented each other in a way that was rare in the Spider Society. The chemistry between them was just right.
He watched as she walked over her shoulder to the drums with one last uncertain glance before the curtain opened and the first note was played.
LATER IN THE EVENING
"And you don't think anyone noticed?" she said in her room as she threw on the shirt Miles had bought her after the concert.
Miles put a few strokes on the almost-finished image in his sketchbook. "You mean when you suddenly confused everyone with your solo? Where even MJ looked at you stunned?"
Gwen tilted her head and curled her mouth.
"No, I'm sure no one noticed," Miles laughed honestly. He looked up and watched Gwen as she stripped off her sweaty clothes and looked for a pair of comfortable pants.
"You can be such an asshole sometimes," she murmured, and had to laugh afterwards too.
How could all this happen?, Gwen wondered. And why does it just feel so damn right?
She crawled back onto the bed beside him, and looked at the ceiling of her room for a long moment. That was her life, and by now it was perfect. And every day before she fell asleep, with or without Miles, she thanked him for giving her another chance on the roof that day. That he forgave her for what she had done with her actions. No one else would have done the same for her in this situation, but he just did it.
Finally, she turned to him and rested her head on the bed with one hand. She liked to watch him when he was drawing. And each time she saw that he had made the right decision to go to art school and not to Princeton. He no longer had to study quantum physics, he now had everything he needed to make interdimensional keys. Hobie - Hobie, of course - had shown him.
And now he was a respected artist, who had even received a scholarship from the mayor of his New York, which had enabled him to teach excellently.
His graffiti was now everywhere in New York, and that made her proud as a friend.
"What are you drawing?" she asked him, looking over his shoulder.
She could still remember how embarrassed he was when she landed in his room and grabbed his sketchbook before he could hide it.
And Gwen herself was very... surprised to see so many drawings of himself. He'd missed her, just as she had missed him... And all she did was betray him.
Now he voluntarily showed her his designs, and this time she saw herself, at the drums, just as he had seen her at the concert. The image sparkled with energy. It almost came to life, just as Miles drew it.
"Do you like it?" he asked.
"Yes. Miles, that looks amazing," she replied honestly, noticing his spider icon underneath the picture.
"It's something new, but it's just a draft," he explained as he followed her gaze. "My spider, your eyes, and your hood."
She felt how proud he was of her praise.
She leaned her shoulder against his. "I'm glad you exist," she whispered. "Every day again."
He felt comfortable when she said something like that. And it eased the pain of his scar, which he still bore from the betrayal of the Spider-Society.
"So am I, Gwen," Miles replied, kissing her on the cheek.
This feeling was still a completely new one in both of their lives.
But they were emotions that none of them wanted to miss.
"Would you have thought all this just a few years ago? Before the incident with your collider?" asked Miles thoughtfully.
"No," Gwen smirked. "Certainly not."
Miles looked at her dreamily. Something in his stomach was glad to be here today.
And by looking at his watch, which sounded the alarm directly at this thought, he knew why.
Gwen's watch also pinged, and she was the first to accept the contact attempt.
"Gwen!" said Margo.
"Margo?"
"Hi Miles!" Margo shouted for a moment before becoming more serious again. "We have a problem."
Miles and Gwen looked at each other. "What problem?" asked Miles cautiously.
Not another Spot, he fervently hoped.
"There are reports of a new kind of enemy on one of our worlds."
If they were bothering Gwen and Miles with it at this time, they knew there was a real problem.
Gwen watched Miles cautiously.
"We're coming," he sighed. "What is it about?"
Margo faded out and showed a hologram instead.
"We've been seeing this more and more on Earth-120703 lately. And the Spider-Man of this dimension is helpless. People disappear without a trace."
An opponent who could hide from a Spider-Man? That was new.
Gwen and Miles knew that their quiet evening was now over.
"Are there any clues as to who it might be?"
"No," Margo answered. "But... See for yourself."
A video recording was played and showed several men walking through a park. Until they were caught from something outside the frame. All Miles and Gwen saw was a long reddish object, like a rope or something like that. And a symbol that suddenly appeared on the ground:
a white spider on a black background.