Chapter Text
She was falling.
The contraptions of the clock tower had caused the web to snap and now she was in freefall.
She saw the alarm in Peter’s face before he managed to extricate himself from the Goblin’s - Harry’s - vice-like grip and dove for her.
The tone of his voice when he called her name betrayed his fear, the deepest he’d ever felt, the one that caused him to abandon her at the funeral first, then shortly after graduation: the fear of losing his Gwen.
At first, his determination reassured her: his web would reach her and save her from certain death, she would find herself in his arms, safe and secure, they’d cry tears of relief and comfort each other for as long as they needed, the world outside be damned.
But the distance between them seemed to increase, rather than the opposite. She could see his resolve falter and get replaced by desperation. She felt terror for a mere fraction of a second before she resignedly accepted her fate. She closed her eyes, reopened them and shed a single, final tear. She locked sorrowful eyes with him and wore a small, sad smile.
It’s okay, it’s not your fault. I love you.
Their supposed fate, their very world changed in a span of seconds.
The edges of her vision started to blur, and at first she thought she was going to faint - a small mercy, at least; she wasn’t going to feel the impact.
But soon she realized it was not her consciousness leaving her: the very walls of the clocktower seemed to shift, fade in and out, convulse erratically as if they were not made of sturdy metal.
She was still falling; she could still see Peter, arm and web outstretched, desperately calling for her, getting farther away - and yet no ground claimed her.
She was supposed to have crashed to her death already.
Now the very air around her seemed to act as bizarrely as the tower’s walls, going from deathly cold to unbearably hot in the span of a single breath, gusts of wind picking up suddenly and abruptly ceasing afterwards.
Sounds and colors soon followed in this crazed dance of the senses, the first getting increasingly distorted, the seconds rapidly shifting from one to the next.
Fear morphed into dread and then bewilderment in Gwen’s mind. For a moment, she thought she was in the middle of a psychedelic-induced nightmare and had simply imagined her own death.
The ground suddenly came, colder and rougher than she’d expected. She let out a short scream, forcing her eyes closed and feeling a… rather mild bump on her back? Adrenaline snapped her eyes open again, and she let out short, ragged, panicked breaths. She haphazardly staggered back to her feet, eyes wide open, head and blonde hair swinging this and that way in confusion and panic. Had Peter saved her? Had his web actually reached her and slowed her down enough to-
This isn’t the clocktower.
In fact, judging by the unpleasant sights and smells around her, and the not so distant blares of car horns, she was in a (rather dirty) alleyway.
Her breaths slowed down enough to allow her extraordinary mind to start racing; and yet Midtown High’s valedictorian and (supposed) soon-to-be Oxford student could only formulate one question in her mind.
What the hell happened?
Gwen slowly walked out of the alley and took in the sights around her more carefully: ad posters and people’s voices told her she was in an English-speaking country; street signs and car license plates told her she definitely was in the US, and in her home of New York - although in an area of the city she wasn’t familiar with.
She looked back at the alley she came from.
She could make no sense of what had just happened.
Had it even actually happened?
Maybe she did dream the whole falling-to-her-death thing up. Maybe she had a wild night out (even though she definitely was not a ‘party girl’) and drank a bit too much (even though she utterly despised the smell and taste of alcohol): that would explain why she couldn’t remember how she came to wake up in a nondescript alley and-
Gwen shook her head and took a deep breath.
Harry’s maniacal laugh as he snatched her from the ground, Peter’s anguished gasp as the web snapped and she started plunging down the tower were so excruciatingly real in her mind that they could not have been simply conjured up by her imagination.
Something must have happened between the horrific events of the clocktower and… wherever she was now.
Gwen wanted to find Peter and make sure he’d won the fight and wasn’t in (too much of) a bad shape - he’d always needed (and wanted) her gentle care after the latest battle. That reckless boy has practically made a nurse out of me, she chuckled wistfully. She wanted to check up on her mom and her brothers, make certain that they managed to find their way back home after the uncoordinated evacuation caused by Electro’s sudden attack.
One thing at a time, Gwen.
She checked her Blackberry phone, and was relieved to find out it remained unscathed in the ordeal against Max Dillon and Harry Osborn. Relief turned into frustration when she realized she couldn’t get any signal; in addition, the date on the phone showed as ‘9th of July, 2014, 21:53 ’ - which was clearly wrong, judging by the warm sun resplendent in the sky.
With a sigh, Gwen marched into a nearby shop, determinedly ignoring the stares of apprehension of the other clients; she certainly was disheveled after the events of the previous(?) night, but that was the least of her worries.
In fact, she was somewhat surprised by how… calm the people appeared. Electro had just blacked out Manhattan last night (but was it last night?…) and businesses reopened the next day with nary a worry?
She shook her head once more and tried to clear her thoughts. One thing at a time, she kept repeating herself. At first she intended to ask questions to the cashier, but the aged man’s furrowed brow (again, she did just come back from two consecutive fights and a long fall to her supposed death) convinced her otherwise: asking where and when she was would attract too much suspicion. Peter’s paranoia has rubbed off on me.
Instead, she noticed a copy of the Daily Bugle (a NY-based newspaper she had never heard before, weirdly enough) and prayed she’d not lost her wallet; she hadn’t, Gwen sighed in relief, and paid for a copy of the newspaper before quickly making her exit.
The more she read, the more she became confused.
The first thing she noticed were the scathing words used to refer to her on-and-off boyfriend’s super-hero persona: ‘Spider-menace’, ‘unrepentant criminal’, ‘reckless vigilante’, and such. Spider-Man had his fair share of detractors (especially back before the whole nasty Lizard affair, when her father was still alive…), but she’d rarely seen such open hostility from a newspaper towards him before.
Secondly, she couldn’t help but frown at the large Spider-Man photo on the cover: the webslinger seemed… shorter and thinner than she’d remembered; his costume was altogether different from the one he’d used - the one she’d seen many nights when he’d appear on her fire escape window with a cheeky smile and tousled hair, waiting for her to open, and come down and kiss her, before she’d start to patch him up after the latest patrol…
God, I hope you’re OK, Peter.
She refocused on the newspaper’s pic of him. Peter wasn’t the type to leave a spare suit lying around, waiting just to be found by Aunt May. And yeah, he definitely was taller and lankier than in the photo. She started reading the article about him, and… simply put, she was left baffled.
The dates were all wrong - the article was written as if they’d lived 10 years in the future, in 2024. There wasn’t a single mention of his fight against Max and Harry; she instead found herself reading about a supposed world saviour by the name of ‘Iron Man’, a catastrophic event she’d never even heard of called ‘the Blip’, a superhero group(!) by the name of ‘the Avengers’ and a final promise by a J. Jonah Jameson to eventually unmask and hand over to the authorities her beloved masked vigilante.
Gwen’s honest first thought was that she’d just bought a weird satirical newspaper. But the more she walked around the streets, the weirder she started to feel. The city was unmistakably New York, and yet… it seemed altogether slightly unfamiliar to her. But most importantly (and worryingly), the world around her legitimately acted as if they lived 10 years in the future .
She’d even abandoned all pretenses of appearing ‘just fine’ and went out of her way to ask the current date to multiple people: she managed to get crazed looks and the same answer from them all: July 9th, 2024 .
What the fuck is going on?!
Gwen started to hyperventilate, her legs wobbled under her, and she had to lean on a wall before throwing up what little she’d eaten the day - decade? Seriously, what was happening?! - before.
She pinched the bridge of her nose to calm her coming headache, pointedly ignored the worried looks around her; after her heavy breathing calmed down, that famous Stacy temper she got from her father resurfaced and she made a decision: she needed to find Peter and understand if either the world had gone crazy… or just her.