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“Hey Peter… I think this is a cape.” Miles says, pulls on the piece of fabric and gives Peter a sly look; something that indicates an inside joke, something maybe Gwen would have had with her own Peter not too long ago, and Peter looks up from the photo of Mary-Jane with a soft look in his eyes and cracks an honest to God smile.
It rips her insides apart. He’s got the same smile lines as her Peter and his nose scrunches in the exact same spot as well, and it’s not fair how this Peter reminds her so much of the other one, but she can never have either one as her best friend again.
Gwen hasn’t missed the sympathetic looks Peter shoots her when he thinks she isn’t looking, either. For the one who’s been Spider-Man longest - except maybe the other Peter, the one who punches Nazi’s, but she doesn’t really want to count him as someone who might be like her Peter - he’s not very subtle. Maybe it’s what she needs, though, when she’s sat on the staircase up to the other,
other
Peter’s room in Aunt May’s house, and Peter B. slides up next to her on the banister and fiddles with his tea cup and sighs before asking;
“So uh… Your Peter. Was he as devilishly handsome as me?”
It shouldn’t make her laugh. This Peter is nearly forty and still jokes around like a kid but he looks out for Miles like he maybe isn’t going to be as bad as a father as he fears and it’s… Comforting. She snorts into her hand and smiles and feels her heart break and mend and break and mend and looks up at Peter who’s own smile mirrors the other one.
“You know… The resemblance is quite uncanny.” She says, when she’d finally calmed down, and Peter laughs.
“It’s the five-o’clock shadow, right? I’m sure not many teens were sporting it, and hell, I definitely wasn’t. Oh my God, what is it like in your dimension, though. Do teenagers get facial hair like way earlier than they do in mine?” He asks, pulls himself over the banister and squishes himself between it and Gwen. They both ignore the clicking of his hips and the fact that he’s far too long to sit there comfortably. This other Peter is like looking at a weird mix of her Peter, her Dad, and her old biology teacher Mister Fhizz. She can’t imagine it; twenty-two whole years of being Spider Woman would surely get her killed, and yet here’s Peter B., still swinging despite everything that’s happened to him.
“No… I uh, I think the whole puberty and aging thing is the same across them all. Or at least yours and mine and Miles’.” Gwen says, and then winces as she speaks Miles’s name. Miles, who’d had these powers all of five minutes before he was being hunted by Fisk and trying to save the multiverse and…
Everyone else was here except for him.
“He’s a good kid. Miles. If only he had a bit more training and then maybe things would be different.” Gwen says, and Peter sends her a perplexed look.
“‘A good kid?’ Aren’t you a kid yourself?”
“I’m fifteen months older than him. And also have been Spider-Woman longer than he’s been Spider… Man?” Gwen says, watches as Peter opens his mouth and closes and opens and
God,
her Peter used to do the exact same thing.
Peni Parker’s robot thing whirrs in the corner then, jumping up on its little legs so Peni can jump out, a slick black goober in her little fist.
Go time, then.
***
It’s infuriating watching Peter swerve around her to get to MJ.
“Peter,
no.
” She hisses, pulls on his arm but feels it tugged out of her fingertips, and MJ is watching the whole thing with a skeptical look on her features, looking like she’s ready to run away at any second.
Gwen slaps a hand to her forehead and slowly drags it down her face, wonders why Peter couldn’t just be normal and focused and
listen to her…
Her heart clenches. She’d said the exact same thing to her Peter before the argument they’d had the night of his death, and suddenly her throat is tight with guilt all over again.
She can’t blame Peter B. for approaching MJ. She reckons if this one looked just a little bit more like hers, she would have acted the same.
“We’ll get that bread to your table right away, ma’am.” She steps in to say, voice cracking over the lump in her throat, and Peter has no resistance as she pulls him away towards the service exit.
“You okay?” She asks, because for months that’s all she wanted to someone to ask her, and Peter’s shoulders slump as he tries to nonchalantly wave her off.
“Oh yeah, totally.” He sighs, all sarcasm and longing and heartbreak, and she can’t help but reach out and pat him on the back in sweeping circular motions just like her Peter used to love.
It works. Peter straightens up and seems to snap back into business, the table and bow ties ditched as the five of them make their way to the secret elevator, and things seem to be okay for once.
Still. Gwen can’t help but feel a little sad that just as quickly as her walls were broken down despite never wanting new people to call her friends, it will all be over just as quickly when this is all over.
***
They’re all stuck to the wall, the three of them, Spider-Man Spider-Man and Spider-Woman.
“So…” Miles says, smile cheeky and endearing and something Gwen wishes she could see everyday of her life.
“Do I have to remind you I’m older than you? Fifteen months, but…” She looks down, cheeks going pink, and she can hear Peter B. guffaw behind her. Her Peter would have done the same thing, and she chooses to ignore them both, instead focusing back on Miles. His eyes are soft in the crinkle of them and his grin has gone lopsided.
“Friends, then?” He asks, holds out his hand for her to take, and she wraps her fingers around his, white and pink merging with black and red for a minute.
“Friends.” She agrees, feels warm all over with the admission of it, and then she’s flipping off into the wormhole, her eyes on Miles the whole way through. The world spins, her body vibrates like it used to do on the old Coney Island roller coaster, and with a squeeze of her eyes she’s thrown back into her old life, knocking into the wall of some old warehouse and landing with an ‘oof’ on the mucky ground.
Ah, New York. She looks up, Times Square in the distance, and feels something settle. Her New York.
***
She visits Peter’s grave for the first time since his death that weekend, after narrowly avoiding being grounded until she’s thirty due to a cover story and a bandmate who owed her a favour. It’s the early days of winter where the snow won’t seem to stick but the skies are nothing but different hues of grey, and it takes her some time to get through the rows of other gravestones in the city graveyard Aunt May had decided to bury Peter next to his uncle Ben.
She’d considered bringing flowers, then considered against it, but now she just feels stupid and hurt as she stands with her hands in her pocket and forces herself to read the words etched into stone. She takes in a deep breath.
“So, you’ll never guess this new friend I made…”