Work Text:
Piper is working in the lab one day when the space in front of her starts to transform. Morgan, on the other side of the room with a pinched face, is aggressively building some unknown gadget after being told she could not attend a fancy party with Pepper and Tony. Piper is equally annoyed as she had plans to go out—both as Spider Bite and then after to a party that Betty is throwing. Instead, she’s stuck babysitting.
Both sisters are slamming away at their projects, Piper trying to ignore Morgan's miniature tantrum, and Morgan trying to get Piper's attention with her constant sounds of aggravation.
They're equally distracted when the portal appears in a gold, spitting light. Only moments later, it spreads, swirling until it’s glowing, around circular space that’s carved out a different foreground to the work space.
At the sight of it, Morgan’s head whips up.
“Morgan stay there,” Piper warns.
Unfortunately, her sister is vengeful and extremely irate that she couldn’t wear her purple princess dress out tonight. A sly grin slides onto her face.
“Morgan no.”
Morgan rises, places her hands on her hips, and sticks her tongue out right before she points her toe and takes one step through the portal.
“Morgan! Portals are dangerous. You have no idea where that goes.”
“It’s obviously one of Doctor Strange’s portals, dummy.” She smiles ear to ear and then jumps all the way through to the other side.
Piper curses to herself and sighs, slapping on her wrist cuff and chasing after Morgan.
“Morgan Stark,” she hisses on the other side of the portal, grabbing for her arm.
“Get off me!”
Piper turns to drag Morgan back through the portal but it’s gone. “Great, now we’re god knows where and we have to walk home.”
“Ha ha,” Morgan’s nose crinkles in delight, “We could just swing home.”
“Yeah, right.” She starts to tug Morgan down the long hallway they’ve found themselves in, “Dad will kill me and—May?”
At the other end of the hall, Piper is surprised to see May. She looks around, trying to notice any details of the building that might seem familiar, but there's nothing. She has no idea where they are, why May is here, and why she appears so terribly frightened. May, who is furiously pounding at the down button at the set of elevators. She stops when she hears her name and then peers down at Morgan.
“Are you one of the neighbors? Sorry, I haven’t gotten a chance to get to know everyone yet, but we have got to get out of here."
Piper tilts her head to the side, confused by May's question. She's practically staring right through her to the end of the hall as if some scary monster is going to jump out of the shadows any second. As if on command, there is a loud crash from that end of the hall. Piper's pulse quickens. She wrestles with heading towards the danger or staying.
Protecting Morgan and May comes first.
Then the lights flicker.
“The stairs,” May persists, reaching for Piper’s arm.
Piper sweeps Morgan up in her arms and follows May to the stairwell.
“What did you say your name was again?”
While her statement earlier went missed, this question does not and Piper halts. “What do you mean?”
“Piper?” There is a slight whimper in Morgan’s voice that isn’t overly dramatic or whiny. She’s scared and it’s Piper’s job to get her out of danger, but she’s too concerned with the fact that May doesn’t recognize her.
“What are you doing? We have to go,” says May.
“May…it’s me…it’s Piper…your niece.”
May draws back in alarm. “My niece? I don’t have a…” she trails off, her gaze drifting to the set of stairs they’d just descended from. “Oh god, okay, listen, there’s something going on with portals and other universes.” She grabs for Piper’s arm, lowering her gaze, wide eyed so Piper can see the desperation behind them. “I believe you, I do, but now is not the time to explain. Some a really bad guy is looking for this.” May lifts a pillowcase in the air with her free hand. Piper can see that there’s something heavy inside.
“What’s in there can stop this?”
“I hope so,” May nods.
Without hesitation, Piper thrusts Morgan into May’s arms and snatches the pillowcases out of her hand. Above their heads is a loud bang and the whole building shakes.
“Take my sister somewhere safe.”
“Wait! What are you going to do?”
Piper activates the cuff on her wrist and her suit spreads across her body. “I’m going to stop the bad guys.”
She has no time to process other worlds and dimensional portals. She doesn’t even have time to address the thoughts at how much trouble she’s going to be in. She leaps into action, trying to find the source of it. She gets a pretty good idea when she hears a slam and the cracking of rubble down below—as in where she just sent Morgan and May.
She opens the door to the nearest floor, runs down the hall and crashes through the window, scaling the side of the building until she’s on the ground.
The glass windows have shattered on the ground in tiny particles, the floor on the inside of the building covered by the level above it, and slumped in the middle is a thin figure in a familiar suit. It would be almost identical to Piper’s if it were black instead of blue woven between the red.
Piper throws up a web and swings herself into the building.
“Need some help?”
The figure makes a sound of breathy pain, but the mask doesn’t mimic any facial movement like hers does.
“Hey, you good, Spider Friend?”
“He’s still here,” he says.
Piper turns all around the room but doesn’t spot anyone. She grips the pillowcase tighter in her hand. From across the room, she spots May burst through the bottom staircase, Morgan wrapped tightly around her with her face buried in May’s shoulder.
Piper waves her hands, telling them to get out of the building. May takes one look at the other suited figure and contemplates staying or going, just as Piper debated leaping into action, but the common denominator in both instances was Morgan. Neither of them could put Morgan in danger.
She leaves, carefully stepping out one of the blown out windows and running off into the night with Morgan.
“Who exactly are we looking for?” Piper still sees no one else among the rubble, but she believes there definitely was someone.
“His name is Norman but his other persona goes by The Green Goblin. I was so close to curing him when The Goblin took over and the whole plan blew up.”
Piper and Peter hear it at the same time—the incoming engine, nearly silent. If it weren’t for their enhanced hearing, they’d never have been able to jump out of the way to avoid being struck by the goblin glider as it descended into the destroyed lobby of the apartment complex.
“Who really wants to be erased from existence,” the eerily chipper voice responds. The man in question has a hood pulled over his head and a sneering grin on his lips.
Piper remembers the serum in her hand. It must be the cure. She slides her hand into the pillow case and wraps her hands around the cylindrical device inside. Before he can see, she whips out the injector and jumps onto his glider. She plunges the injector into his leg and releases the electric green glow into him.
Aggravated, he shakes Piper to the ground.
He growls out a noise of contempt and anger. He dips the glider towards the ground and charges at Piper full speed. She rolls away narrowly avoiding being speared with the front of it.
The serum didn’t work.
“While I’d love to stay and chat, I have other plans on the agenda.”
He tosses something in the air and Piper moves to catch whatever it is in hopes of stopping it.
“Get down!”
Peter is nearly too late. The pumpkin bomb explodes and a split second after, his web wraps around Piper’s waist and pulls her to the ground and into the rubble.
She groans out at the instant strike of pain, at being pulled into the rubble.
“Peter Parker!”
The glow of flashlights paired with aimed red target lasers takes over the space.
“Come out with your hands up!”
Peter holds up a finger to his lips to silence her. Then he points up and mimes shooting a web. She nods, understanding what he means.
Stealthily, they both swing upward, and out the blown out back of the building to the next building over. They stay silent, even as Piper takes the lead, and guides him half a block towards the sound of her sister’s heartbeat—a sound she’d rather die than lose track of in any universe.
When they land in front of May and Morgan, there isn’t even a second before Morgan wraps her arms around Piper, squeezing her tightly. Piper rests a hand on Morgan’s head, out of breath, her wrist throbbing with pain.
When she looks up, she finds that May is locked in a similar embrace with the other Spider, with Peter.
Morgan stays put even as the other two break apart.
“Can someone please tell me what’s going on?” Piper removes Morgan’s arms from around her waist so she can hoist her back in her arms. She’s getting a little big to be carried, but Piper is strong enough that she could carry her for as long as it takes to get back to their world if she has to.
“Once we’re somewhere safe, I’ll tell you everything. Are you okay? Will you make it a little further? That was a pretty tough hit you took.”
Piper nods. “I’ll be fine.
If Peter had told her they were going all the way to Midtown, she might have sung a different tune about being able to make it all the way there. By the time they land on the roof of the school, she’s out of breath and severely aching.
“If we were going to go all this way, why not just head to Stark Tower?”
Peter and May stare at her blankly.
KAREN answers instead. “It appears that Stark Tower has been decommissioned.”
“Decommissioned?”
Peter and May flinch back.
“What do you mean decommissioned? Where is dad even working?”
Morgan picks her head up from Piper’s shoulder. “Maybe daddy is at the cabin.”
“Wait…” May looks between the two sisters. “Morgan?” Her face falls like everything has just become clear to her. “You’re Morgan Stark?”
Piper scrunches her nose as Morgan nods her head. “You didn’t recognize her?”
May blinks and makes an odd face of disapproval. “I’m not exactly looking up pictures of children of practical strangers in my free time.”
“Strangers?” Morgan’s eyes grow wide. “You’re not a stranger Aunt May.”
Peter half chokes, half laughs. “This is so weird.”
Then something else registers in May’s face, something soft, something gentle. “You two are sisters.”
“Yes, of course,” Piper urges, wondering how different this universe can be from her own.
Peter practically jolts. “You’re…” he points between the two of them.
May’s lips thin into a smile. “I take it your not Pepper Pott’s daughter in your world?”
Realization dawns over Piper and she doesn’t understand how she didn’t see it before. She locks eyes with Peter whose mask has been long gone since the explosion of the pumpkin bomb. “I take it you’re not Tony Stark’s son in this world.”
His head twitches back and forth.
Piper lowers Morgan to the ground. “Is he here? Is my dad at the cabin or at the new compound?”
The way his face grows even paler tells Piper everything she needs to know, but as to confirm, Peter’s head twitches back and forth once more. There is no Tony Stark in this universe, but she knows for certain, there used to be.
There’s a Morgan Stark too. Which means, somewhere, likely the cabin, Pepper is sequestered with Morgan, mourning the loss of her husband, no step-daughter to worry after, no stake in this fight.
“I think you better start explaining why I’m here,” says Piper.
May shares a look with Peter. “I’ll take Morgan into the school and get her cleaned up.”
Piper lets Morgan go to May and then she follows Peter who has drifted to sitting on the edge of the building.
He tells her all about his identity reveal, and college, and MJ and Ned’s rejection letter (she’s relieved to find out that they’re in this world somewhere), and his stupid decision to have Doctor Strange cast a spell that went oh so wrong, all leading up to Piper's arrival.
“Let me get this straight…you tried to fix the bad guys.”
He shrugs his shoulders. “Well, yeah…they didn’t seem all that bad.”
“They blew up a building with you inside it.”
“Yeah,” says Peter, “but that was only one guy. The others kinda just escaped.”
“Okay, well obviously we have to get them back,” she points out. “You can’t just let alternate dimension’s supervillains run around New York reaping havoc.”
“Obviously,” Peter agrees. Then he pulls out his phone from somewhere Piper is glad she can't see and checks it. “C’mon, MJ and Ned are waiting inside.”
School is exactly the same. She can’t find a single difference and she wonders how this universe can be so the same and so different at the same time.
On the way down, she asks Peter if he’s called for backup.
“I already told you,” he says, voice strained, “Doctor Strange isn’t going to help with this.” His eyes dart to the side.
“No, like Steve, or Bruce.”
“Steve? As in Steve Rogers?”
“Is there another?”
“I’m pretty sure that’s Doctor Strange’s first name too…but Steve Rogers is gone. I haven’t seen him since Natasha’s funeral. He kind of just fell off the face of the earth—and as for Dr. Banner…he’s not doing much hulking these days.”
Piper had thought more of including Bruce on the science front of the solution, but she’s getting the hint that this Peter isn’t as close with the other Avengers as she is. A lot changes when you're Tony Stark’s kid.
“You’re here!”
Piper whips around to see MJ and Ned who look a whole lot like her MJ and Ned, accompanied by two people who would be completely foreign to her if they weren’t wearing a nearly identical suit to Peter’s.
MJ scans her up and down. “This day keeps getting weirder and weirder.”
“No way, a girl Peter,” says the shortest and oldest of the three Peters.
Piper furrows her brow, a slight smile on her lips. “It’s Piper,” she corrects.
Ned releases a sigh of relief. “That is so much easier than another Peter.”
Piper never knew she’d be glad to not be a Peter. She never thought it would be something to consider, but in this moment, she’s particularly glad to be a Piper.
“Holy crap, this kid just solved the loading speed for Electro’s cure,” the oldest Peter stares at Morgan in awe.
Morgan shrugs her small shoulders and wrinkles her nose. “Everybody knows which metals are the best conductors of electricity.” Her eyelids droop for a second then she widens her eyes to shake off sleep.
Peter Two, merely tucks his chin and nods, impressed with Morgan’s prowess. He takes the device in her hands, and connects it to the computer. “Well, thank you Morgan, I am very
impressed.”
Piper slides over to join Morgan and the first two Peters. They rejected her idea to refer to them as Small, Medium, and Large or Tall, Grande, or Venti. Even worse was when she suggested they be Young Peter, Adult Peter, and Old Peter.
“I’m not surprised mini Stark is a genius,” says Ned.
Peter Two ruffles Piper’s hair, then crouches down to Morgan's level. “C’mon tiny genius. Aunt May could use some company over there,” he gestures to where May is sleeping, head resting on her arms, sitting at the workbench, “or don’t you know the rules of superheroing?”
Morgan’s brow furrows. “There are no superhero rules about sleep.” Her head whips around to the other back corner of the room where MJ is kicked back in a chair, feet on the table top, also resting her eyes.
Peter Two gets down even lower, resting his hands on his knees. Piper is pretty sure she hears his back crack at least twice. “Ah, that’s where your wrong. Superheroes have to sleep when they have the chance. Otherwise, we won’t have our energy stored up to fight bad guys.”
At the mere mention of sleep, Morgan releases a reflexive yawn, causing Piper to stifle a laugh, covering her smile with her fingertips. Even fading into sleep, Morgan manages to throw in a, “Piper isn’t allowed to superhero, she’s grounded.”
Peter Two nods the affirmative, “I’ll see to your sister, you focus on sleep.” As he guides Morgan to the back half of the room where May and MJ are fast asleep, Piper mouths a thank you to eldest Peter.
“He’s freakishly good with her,” Piper muses, thumbing in the former Peter’s direction.
Peter Prime smirks. “He hasn’t said too much about it, but I think he’s got kids.”
She starts looking over the work they did on One and Two’s side of the room and she’s pretty impressed. She wouldn’t put it past Peter to inspect the work her and Three did on Sandman and Lizard’s cures. He doesn’t though. He stays with Piper.
She wonders if it has an impact on Peter—the one from this world—hearing that in another universe, an older version of him is a dad. It's not like Piper has to compare herself to them. She's not a Peter—not really. Though, she's starting to think her and the Peter of this universe have more in common with each other than they do the other two. It's not like she's never thought about a future with a partner and kids—well, maybe not kids. In fact, growing up with Tony as her dad, she'd pretty much sworn off the idea of being a parent. Now, seeing how Peter One is with MJ and witnessing how great Peter Two is with Morgan, even being under the protective and watchful eye of Peter Three, she wonders if maybe it's in the cards for her—the whole family thing.
It's not like the Peters had parents to look up to. They all had May, and some of them had Ben. Piper had them and Tony, Pepper, Happy, Rhodey, along with some pretty other decent role models mixed in. She always thought she'd end up failing as a partner and a parent because of how her only parent behaved, but maybe the other Peters have her reconsidering.
“Did you guys have a good chat?”
Her own conversation with Peter Three had been been pretty helpful. He assured her that she wasn't a terrible sister, that they'd get Morgan home, and that all of the chaos was part of some bigger plan that they didn't understand yet.
Again, Peter smirks. “I was wallowing a little bit. He noticed.”
Piper got that. She'd been doing some of it herself. “Must be from our mom’s side because I’m a professional at wallowing. Ask my dad.” She regrets the words the second they're out of her mouth. She sighs, wincing, biting the inside of her lip, mentally cursing herself for stepping in it. “Sorry, I don’t…" How does she fix this? "What was he like? Your Tony.”
For a second, his shoulders slump, there’s a slight pinch to his face—but then, Peter closes his eyes, he takes a second, memories of Tony Stark come back to him. Even the ones that mortified him have started to gain a hint of nostalgia to them. He exhales and he his body relaxes, shoulders falling back, head lifting, hands unclenching, all of the tension released. “He was…” there’s hesitation, contemplation, decision, “an emotionally repressed genius who cared so much that sometimes he came across kind of mean—but he was my hero.”
Piper gets it. It’s not a lot, but he could easily be describing the dad of her childhood. “Sounds familiar.”
He takes a sidelong glance at her. “No way. Tony can’t be like that as a dad.”
Her lips pinch to the side. Is it worse or better for Piper to admit her dad’s flaws to Peter who is so obviously missing his hero. What good would it do him to lie, though? She grips at the edge of the cold countertop.
“He’s better now,” she admits. “He sucked when I was Morgan’s age, and then Iron Man came along and it was…different, not better really. It wasn’t until I became Spider Bite that we started building any kind of relationship, but then I got blipped.”
“That must have been hard for him. I don’t know if I believe it, but Happy tried to convince me that Mr. Stark invented time travel to save me. I can’t imagine what he’d be like if his own kid had been dusted.”
Piper nods and bites at her lip. She’s tried to put herself in her dad’s shoes a number of times. Of course she’s grateful to be back, but there’s still an edge of resentment. They’re working on things. They might always be working on things.
“I never got to thank him,” Peter mumbles.
“You didn’t need to thank him,” Piper rips back a little too quickly, a little too defensively. She doesn’t know why. His Tony is not her Tony. His Tony was not her dad—but she knows, she knows that he did what he did, he gave up his life, not needing thanks, knowing full well—“He knew. He didn’t need to hear it.”
She hopes he knew, that he knows, because she’s never thanked him, and it makes her think that maybe she should as soon as she gets back—as long as she gets back. She has to. Her attention turns to the back of the room. Morgan is drifting into sleep now. She's on one of the tables under where the lights are off, covered in an oversized sweatshirt, curled up in a ball. Piper at least has to get Morgan home.
Peter catches her staring at Morgan. He sucks in a sharp breath and releases a heavy exhale. “You said he sucked when you were little.”
Of course Peter understands. Of course he gets it.
“It was hard.”
Peter shrugs and makes a smug face. “Couldn’t have been that hard. She’s pretty obsessed with you.”
Piper rolls her eyes and pivots away so she can’t see Morgan’s sleeping form. “That can be hard too, you know.” Then she remembers how jealous she was when she first laid eyes on Morgan in the lobby of a hospital, hand clutched in Happy’s, being swept into Pepper’s arms. How much worse it got when she saw her bedroom and all the pieces of Tony’s life that Morgan had been woven into.
Her jealousy came from a place of wanting something she felt she was owed. Something she didn’t think existed until she saw that Morgan had it.
“I’d completely understand if you hate me,” she says to Peter.
Peter gapes at her and then he laughs, cutting through the room, turning the attention of all those still awake towards them. Peter raises a hand of apology and then lowers his voice. “Why would I hate you?”
“I would hate me,” she admits. “You might even say I’m emotionally repressed and care so much it comes off as kind of mean most of the time,” she repeats Peter’s words.
His laugh is quieter this time. “It’s a good thing I’m not part Stark then.”
With that, a weight is lifted off of Piper’s shoulders. They’re teammates. Two people taking the same journey on different paths. She’s grateful that Peter can be the bigger person, but she still finds a hint of guilt. She wishes she could give him more, even if he’s not envious of what she has.
“Hey teen Spiders,” Peter Three perks up, he points to beakers in front of him, “we’re ready on this end.”
“I guess it’s time to go.”
“Cast a new spell,” Peter is saying to Doctor Strange. "One that makes them forget Peter Parker."
"Peter," Doctor Strange wears an expression that's borderline fearful, "no one would be exempt from this spell. The people who love you, they—we would forget you. Every memory, good or bad, would be erased."
Peter's hands are shaking at his side but he stands tall, chest out, eyes narrow and decisive. He's certain with his choice. "I know."
Piper stumbles forward, almost falling in the shadow of Lady Liberty, towering over the sun kissed horizon. Peter Three has a hand on her shoulder, trying to hold her back. Somewhere, closer to the towering statue Morgan is safe with MJ, May and Ned with them. Piper isn’t worried about her sister anymore. She’ll have her home soon enough.
“There has to be another way,” Piper urges. “There’s always another way.”
Doctor Strange deflates, he lowers himself to the ground. “We don’t have time to think of another way.”
Moments have passed and already the sky is lined with hundreds of thousands of glowing circles in the distance, each leading to another place with another Peter, each with the possibility of someone scarier and worse than the five villains they’ve just defeated.
She doesn’t even care that her voice cracks, that she’s near tears at the thought of Peter having to erase himself from everything and everyone who has ever loved him. “Please,” she persists. “What if…what if he comes to my universe. You can cast the spell and he, and May, and MJ, and Ned, and Happy, they can come with me until my Doctor Strange finds a cure.”
“It’s impossible.”
“Why? Why is it impossible.”
Doctor Strange lifts himself a little taller. “You can’t remove people from their timeline without consequences. His friends have parents and college, Mr. Hogan is practically running Stark operations, and this world needs their Spider-Man.”
“There are other heroes,” she persists. “Has he not done enough? Has being Spider-Man not already cost him enough?”
Figures, shadows, are coming through those ominous glowing circles in the sky. “Please, give us one month. Peter and May, that’s it. We’ll find another way for the others. Just let him come with me.”
The red cape on Doctor Strange’s shoulders lifts and shakes up and down, shifting him ever so slightly. The wizard tugs at the end and pulls it back into place. “Fine,” he mutters to the cloak and then whips back to Piper. “Fine, one month, but believe me, if this causes some kind of disturbance in the natural order I will figure it out.”
Piper agrees.
“Say your goodbyes.”
MJ releases Morgan to go to Piper as Peter strides over to his loved ones to inform them of the plan.
“You really think you can fix this?” Tall, Peter Three watches the youngest of the Peters with a tear at the bridge of his nose. He grips the oldest Peter a little closer, supporting his weight.
The three of them look on as Peter presses his forehead to MJ’s. Their shoulders shake in each other’s arms. May turns to look away, covering her mouth. Peter is injured in a thousand places but the pain in his chest radiates in waves that don't require a spidey sense to catch.
“We always do. The heroes win. It’s what we do,” she says, assuring herself more than anything.
“It’s time,” Doctor Strange says.
Peter grabs for Ned and pulls him into the embrace with MJ, their arms linked around one another.
“I’ll find you both again,” he promises. “I’ll fix it.”
A new portal opens up. Piper sees her station at the lab, just as she left it.
She says her goodbyes to the other Peters and then convinces Morgan that they’ll find way for her to stay in touch with Peter Two after she tries to take him through with them.
Then, without looking back, her, Peter, May, and Morgan step through to the other side.
When they cross through, the lab is not empty—far from it.
“Daddy!” Morgan squeals and runs straight into Tony’s arms. He holds her tight against his chest, eyes closed in relief.
Piper is busy preparing herself for a lecture and a grounding when she finds herself wrapped in long arms, her face pressed into Pepper’s slim shoulder. “God, Piper we were so worried.”
“I’m sorry,” Piper tells her. She’s mostly sorry for dragging Morgan along to multiple fights, but she’s sorry about worrying them too. She decides, however, that right now is not the time to throw Morgan under the bus for causing their disappearance in the first place. After all, she is only six and Piper is pretty certain that she’d have jumped through a portal to another dimension too.
Pepper releases her only for her to get swept into Tony’s free arm a moment later, the other still holding Morgan. He plants a big kiss on the side of her head and she sneers and slides away. “Ew, stop,” she says, because they’re in front of Peter and other May and it’s probably as off-putting for them to witness as it is for her to experience the unwarranted affection.
Peter is drained of all color when he takes a step forwards and says, “Sorry Mr. Stark. It’s sort of my fault they went missing.”
Tony looks Peter up and down, his eyes tracing the familiar web pattern of Peter’s suit, noticing details that only Tony Stark could have designed, seeing it’s similarities to Piper’s own suit. “Nice look,” he tells Peter, then holds out his hand. “Call me Tony.”
Peter takes it, his eyes wide and glassy like he doesn’t know whether to hide or cry. He swallows a lump in his throat. “Peter, Peter Parker.”