The giant doors before us slide open, revealing a long, shadowy hallway. I hesitate before it.

"If you're gonna Dexter me, do it quickly," I murmur.

The look Miguel sends back at me is monotonous and dry. "You've got trust issues."

"Gee, wonder why?" I breathe sarcastically.

"Do you want to learn about the multiverse or not?"

Reluctantly, because I do want to learn about it and the Arachno-Humanoid Poly-Multiverse, I let Miguel lead me down the dark and ominous hallway. I blink hard, having difficulty adjusting to the lack of light.

  It opens into an equally dark and ominous room with an elevated platform surrounded by neon-lit screens. In the centre of them stands the silhouette of a woman outlined by the yellow light they emit. Beside the figure Lyla flits about, her small figure a beam of yellow illumination in the darkness, typing on the hovering screens as they both work.

  The stranger turns at our entrance, but her expression is shadowed. Her stance is powerful, imposing, undeniably a woman of immense strength. Chills run down my spine. I subconsciously inch closer to Miguel.

  "What's the problem, Jess?" Miguel's voice bounces within the silent room, rebounding inside its echo chamber.

  "No hi? Hello? How are you doing?" the woman scoffs. She deftly leaps to the floor before us, movements sure and graceful, and plants a hand on her hip. "Didn't your momma raise you better than this?"

  My stomach drops. Miguel smiles tightly. If this Miguel's past is anything like my own Mig's, then bringing up his parents is generally a bad idea.

  "No, she didn't." Miguel gently pushes me forward a step. "Jess, this is Y/n. Y/n, this is Jessica Drew. She was one of the first of us."

  Jess shifts her attention to look at me from behind almond-shaped yellow googles. She smiles warmly, sends Miguel a split-second, knowing smirk, and steps forward with her hand outstretched.

  "So, you're the wife from another dimension," Jessica greets amusedly. "You're notorious around here."

  I cautiously shake her hand. "... I am?"

  "Not an everyday occurrence where someone takes the place of an alternate self. Miguel is a usual topic of gossip," Jess answers, before sending me a sly grin. "But from what I personally hear? It's all in the ass."

  A snort escapes me before I can stop it. "He does have a nice ass."

  "Alright." Miguel's voice booms through the operations station and cuts off the topic of conversation. "Jess, the issue?"

  Jess winks at me before turning serious. She taps on her Gizmo and up pops three weird-looking villains. I step towards her for a closer look.

  "Lyla just recorded that there's a Carnage, a Kraven and a Sandman in their wrong universes," Jess explains. She looks to Miguel. "Who do you think we should send?"

  Miguel exhales thoughtfully as he stares down at the holographic images. "Ben and Peter-67 can handle Kraven. Go with Margo for Sandman, use it for training. Carnage, uh..." he waves his hand in the air as he thinks. "Send Patrick and Widow. They've handled a Carnage before."

  Jess raises a brow. "You don't wanna take down one of these guys yourself? You love a good fight."

  Miguel crosses his arms. "Next time. I've got some theory to teach."

  Jess glances at me and cocks her head in understanding. "She does look pretty confused by all this."

  "Severely understated," I agree. Miguel smiles. Jess drops her chin with a snicker and goes to leave.

  "I'll let them know," Jess says on her way out. "Enjoy your class, Dr. O'Hara. Pleasure to meet you, Y/n."

  "You, too," I reply.

  When the doors shut behind her, I turn to Miguel. His red eyes find mine in the darkness, glowing inhumanly, like a cat's, and I try not to flinch or seize up at the intimacy the lack of light creates now that we're alone. He's a creature full of shadows.

  I clear my throat. "Jess said something about people being in the wrong universes..?"

  Miguel chuckles softy. "Let's start somewhere a little easier. Lyla, can you do the thing?"

  Lyla slips into existence, lounging on the top of Miguel's head. "Do I have to? I was gonna redesign myself..."

  Miguel heaves a sigh. "Lyla, please, can you just do as told?"

  Lyla drops her head back with a reluctant groan. "Fineee." She zips back into the aether and, in her steed, a white tree blossoms from the ground between Miguel and I.

  I take a step back, watching with wide eyes as it grows in the darkness, unfurling bare branches glowing in an ethereal, divine white. I reach out and touch the closest twig. It slips around my fingertip, though I feel nothing.

  "What is this?" I ask.

  "This is everything," he answers, watching as I twist my fingers through the hologram. "Universes, galaxies, black holes, big bangs. It's everything that ever was and will be."

  I glance at him through the branches. He's already staring at me, and the pretty glow of the hologram caresses his shapes with a softness that makes my heart stumble. He's so much like my husband.

  I have to clear my throat. "... this is the multiverse?"

  Miguel nods. "That's right." He curls a finger around a branch and flattens it with his thumb. "Each of these threads is a universe, and in each of these universes are galaxies."

  My brain begins to hurt at the sheer fact that the world is massive - and it seems to just keep on growing. "That's a lot of threads."

  "It is," Miguel agrees. He drops the branch and it furls back into position, threads wrapping around each other. He watches as I circle the tree to examine it from every angle. "There's a Spider-Man for almost each of these galaxies. My original goal was to travel dimensions, explore the realities and study the differences between multiverses. But that... I didn't get to."

  I frown at him through the branches. "What happened?"

  Miguel swipes his hand through the air and the tree curls back into the ground. In its place the inside of a giant lab surrounds me. People rush around in white coats, manning long desk stations before a large contraption - something bigger than two city blocks.

  Miguel's briefly quiet as I peer curiously at the scene, stepping aside on instinct for the frantic scientists who run past me. I look at him curiously.

  "Two months ago, there was an incident in Earth-1610," Miguel begins grimly. "Wilson Fisk created an inter-dimensional collider that blew a hole in the multiverse."

  The hologram of the collider explodes. I grimace away from it.

  "That sounds... bad."

  Miguel's lips pull into a half-smile. "Very bad. Beings from other universes started slipping into worlds that weren't their own. They started to cause dimensional merging, where the molecular DNA of one place gets confused when it meets a structure from another earth."

  The scene warps to a street lamp. It looks normal for a second, before glitching like crazy and then building into some kind of traffic light-colour vomit monstrosity. A gasp sucks through my teeth.

  "When I was designing the Gizmo to explore universes, this collider went off," Miguel continues to explain. "I knew that since I had the tech, I'd have to be the one to set things right. But it got too much, and I was only one guy. So I set up the Spider-HQ."

  "This is what you've been doing all this time..." I murmur to myself. "Well- this and Spider-Manning."

  Miguel huffs with amusement. "Yeah... this is my day job. I've been working on a theory, too - the Arachno-Humanoid Poly-Multiverse."

  "You mentioned that before."

  Miguel nods, and the scene slips into a red spiderweb that spans the entire room.

  "Every Spider-Person I've met has had a similar story," Miguel says, and pulls me through shots of hundreds of different universes within the web, all showing the same scene with a slightly different Spidey grieving a man in a police captain's uniform. "They all lose an uncle, a captain, a lover, a friend..." He smiles painfully. "... you. I call them canon events."

  My heart sinks. "Are you saying that causalities are pre-determined? That everything is?"

  Miguel looks down. He runs his tongue across his teeth. "Yeah."

  "Then what about me?"

  He glances up at me. "I don't know," he admits.

  I turn to the spiderweb again, staring at the images of agony that span across its surfaces. There's something so disheartening about learning that pain like this is inevitable. That people will always die the same way, across a span of universes.

  Miguel studies my expression. He drops his hands from his hips and walks through the hologram, which fizzles and glitches around him, before fading away. He stops before me.

  "It's a lot to take in," he says.

  "You're telling me," I mumble. My eyes drift up to catch his. "It's depressing."

  Miguel lifts a shoulder. "It's life. There's always the good and the bad."

  "I guess." I hold my arm and look away. "Focus on the good and take the bad as it comes. It's every motivational poster ever."

  He chuckles shallowly. My smile is barely there.

  "Do you want to go to the cafeteria?" He tilts his head. "You look like you could do with something warm to drink."

  My eyes slip back to his, magnetised. I couldn't stop myself from looking at him if I tried. I nod wordlessly, too busy digesting this information to speak, and follow him out of the dark, gloomy operations station.

  When we walk across one of the many bridges, I can't help but look at all the Spider-People in a new light. They all have tragedies dragging down their shoulders, and they all, almost, share the exact same past. Isn't it awful? Looking at an alternate version of yourself, knowing that destiny dictates the course of your life?

  Maybe they feel some relief in it. The uncles and captains and lovers and friends - it's not their fault if it's how the course of fate goes. But I can imagine how one could easily come to detest fate, instead. Maybe even try to fight it.

  I'd try to fight it. I'd try, even if I know that trying is useless.

  Miguel walks ahead of me, leading the way. I stare at the back of him as I follow. How did he react when he found out that every other deaths of my alternate selves were inevitable? How did he react when he found out that suffering and misery was a prerequisite of being a Spider-Man? How is that fair?

  But good comes with the bad, doesn't it? I think back to Peter and his nervous joy at being an expectant father. How can everything be bad when he has that? When I have Rosalina? When this Miguel, however unaligned our universes might be, has the both of us?

  The Spider-HQ's cafeteria looks just like a bigger, cleaner version of a school cafeteria - if a school cafeteria was set in the future. Multiple Spideys use the space to relax or have a snack, talking in little groups of superhero friends.

  I take a seat by the window. Miguel heads up to the self-serve area to get our drinks.

  I take the opportunity to stare out at the cityscape of 2099's Nueva York. It's so alien, so foreign. It's like visiting a new country, except that this is far, far different, so much that it's unnerving.

  I can't even pick where we are. Is this Manhattan? Brooklyn? Queens? It's so different that it may as well be an entirely new continent.

  "Hey, stranger!"

  I rip my gaze from the view just as Peter slides into the booth beside me. He grins at me and relaxes back.

  "How's your tour been?" he asks. "Seeing spiders in the backs of your eyes, yet?"

  I snicker. "No, not yet. Maybe soon, though."

  "Ah, yeah, it'll happen," he promises. "Did boss give you the whole 'this is the multiverse and everything is predetermined' spiel?" When I nod, he grins thinly. "Depressing, isn't it?"

  "Yep." I sigh. "But I'd hate to imagine the state of the multiverse if he wasn't already planning on making the Gizmo."

  Peter grows stiff, smile slipping. "Ah... he told you that?"

  I look at him questioningly. "Yeah. Why?"

  The Spidey beside me stares at the table and shifts in his seat. I raise my brows.
 
  "Peter," I insist. "Tell me."

  Peter drops his head back, holds his breath as he contemplates for a second, before releasing his exhale with a heavy sigh.

  "One night here - before he found you and Rosa, Miguel and I stayed late to deal with some loose anomalies," he began quietly. "We started talking about our pasts, 'n stuff- you know, what you talk about when it's late and everyone else is gone. Deep talks.

  "Anyway, Miguel told me that before all this, before the anomalies and the Arachno-Human Poly-whatever, he started looking for Spider-Men in other dimensions because he was lonely."

  My eyes widen. They scan the crowd to find Miguel and spot him easily, towering over the rest. "Lonely..?"

  "Mmhm." Peter picks up a salt shaker in the shape of a scientific diagram of a cell and turns it in his hand. "All he wanted was to have his family. Broke his heart when he found out that there wasn't a single universe out there where he did."

  "Except for one," I whisper.

  "Except for one," Peter echoes.

  I can't understand how my heart can break further for Miguel, but it does. It goes beyond what's feasibly possible, shattering into particles and being swept away in the wind. I yearn to comfort him, somehow, but I hesitate. How can I comfort someone I'm still so unsure around?

  As if feeling my lingering gaze, Miguel looks over and catches me staring. The emotionless, stony look on his face melts away and is replaced with a warm smile. My broken heart stumbles.

  In my peripherals, Peter grins, too.

  "He's happier now than what I've ever seen him be." He turns his gaze to me, expression pointed and knowing. "I think he's happier with you."  

  I drop my eyes from Miguel awkwardly. "He's not 'with me.'"

  Peter raises a brow. "Isn't he?"

  I go to confirm and find myself unable to find the right words. Peter's chuffed by my inability to argue. I've locked myself in my own denial.

  Miguel returns, slipping through the crowd with two takeaway cups in his hands. He places one down on the table and pushes it to me with a crooked smile.

  "One hot chocolate, no marshmallows."

  I take it from him. I'm unable to look him in the eyes. "Thanks."

  "No marshmallows?" Peter exclaims in shock. "You monster."

  "It's sweet enough already," I argue, just as Miguel snaps; "leave her alone, Pete."

  Peter backs off with a wide smirk before sending me an elated 'I told you so' look. I turn my face away so I don't have to see the truth he so clearly already knows. Miguel takes the seat across from me.

  "Alright, I know when I'm not wanted. I'll leave you guys to it." Peter stands. "Enjoy your date."

  "Not a date," Miguel says.

  "Yeah, alright," he snorts. "Have fun, you crazy kids." He leaves before either of us can argue further.

  I sink deeper into my seat. Miguel heaves a sigh and rubs the back of his neck. When I risk a peek, I notice that his cheeks are a few shades darker.

  I take an embarrassed sip from my drink. Maybe Peter is right. Maybe Miguel is with me.

  But this is definitely not a date.

••🕷️••

  After Miguel tours me through the rest of the Spider-HQ - the barracks, the training sectors, the labs and equipment rooms - it's time to pick Rosalina up from school.

  I'm glad to be returning home. I didn't expect to miss the stink of smoggy Neuva York, but I do. The smogginess is familiar - it's where I grew up, and it's where Rosalina is. So, while the Spider-HQ is certainly a marvel and I'd happily return to properly acquaint myself with the place, right now I'm gunning for home.

  Miguel types in the coordinates for the brownstone and when I step through the portal and am briefly tossed through space-time, I'm staggering into my living room. When I come to, I relax in my own environment. I find myself overcome with exhaustion.

  "I knew I should've majored in physics at college," I comment huffily. "I have a headache from all the information I just learnt."

  Miguel snickers and picks up my discarded jacket from the couch. He tosses it at me. "We should pick up Rosita."

  I pull the jacket on and nod.

  My eyes scan out my side window as Miguel drives us to Rosalina's school. I keep noticing the differences between 928's Nueva York and mine - the colours, for one. My one has colour. Some of it's old and grungy, but it's home. 

  Another difference are the cars - everything in Miguel's world is self-driven. I'm surprised he even knows how to drive. Maybe he doesn't, and these three weeks have all just been a fluke.

  My attention quickly diverts to the road.

  It's silent, nothing but the sound of the world outside and the hum of the electric motor to accompany us. But the silence isn't awkward or tense like how it's been all these times before. It's thoughtful. I'd dare say even companionable.

  I peek at Miguel from the side of my eyes. He's the spitting image of my husband but it still sometimes feels like he's an entirely different person. I suppose running something as
massive as the Spider-HQ would change someone - but even still, there's difference. There's a sadness that engulfs Miguel like a cloak he can't shed.

  I close my eyes. Watching someone you love die would definitely change a person. And he still risked telling me who he is. He went even further than that - he's trying to actively get me involved in the side of his life that my husband refused to.

  It's a risk. But it's a risk I'm grateful he's letting me take.

  "Thanks."

  Miguel glances at me. "What for?"

  "For showing me this side of you," I murmur, watching the traffic. "You could've just left it at telling me you're Spider-Man, but you didn't."

  Miguel shifts his eyes back to the road. The smile on his full lips is all content. "It's like you said. You deserve to know."

  I smile softly. "Still. Thank you."

  Miguel sends me a soft look. He doesn't say anything, just stares for a second, before returning his full attention to the road. 

  That silent look alone had my brain warping with the new possibilities that our closeness brings. I'm not sure whether I like these new ideas or loathe them.

  Rosalina guns it to Miguel as soon as she spots us waiting in the car park with the other parents. She flings her arms around his waist before quickly doing the same with me. Miguel takes her bag and opens the door for her, and she clambers inside and clicks on her seatbelt.

  It's Tuesday, which means soccer practise. I usually work late on Tuesdays, and Rosa's ecstatic to have me watch her training. She then jumps into the usual ritual of her telling us every minute of her day, filling the previously quiet car with the life and joy she always brings.

  I find it not so hard this time to listen to her ramble. My mind is clearer, and the grief that usually darkens my shadow has lifted somewhat. Not completely - I don't think it ever will completely. But a little bit. And it's enough for now.

  It's a mad rush when we get home - one of eating afternoon tea, emptying her lunchbox, Rosa getting changed into her training gear and grabbing her soccer bag. It's chaos, but it's domestic chaos, and I find myself appreciating the craziness even more after spending the day in Miguel's universe. This is my comfort level of insanity.

  We're back in the car and Rosalina's forgotten half of the details during her first gab, so now she takes the opportunity to fill us in while strapping on her shin guards. She tells us a story about how one of her friends slipped over in the mud pit at the bottom of the school field, and she's howling with laughter. Miguel laughs, and I do, too.

  Rosalina's out of the car as soon as it stops, and she's out on the pitch in the next second. I grab her forgotten bag and Miguel locks the car. We head to where the other parents converge in the pitch's dugouts, sheltering from the bite in the winter breeze. It's already starting to get dark.

  We watch Rosalina's training; the drills, the theory, the run through of game plans. I've missed watching her trainings. The other parents gossip amongst themselves about things I don't care to overhear. Miguel and I stand apart, leaning against the pitch's fence.

  My gaze flickers up to the side of his face. His strong profile, outlined in warm yellow from the pitch's floodlights. The red in his eyes, once so frightening, watching my daughter race around after a ball as if it's the most important thing in all of the multiverses. He's the almost-carbon copy of everything I fell in love with.

  'He was lonely.' I recall Peter's words. 'All he wanted was to have a family.'

  I hope Miguel is happier now he's got one.