Chapter Text
Everything was gone, Aunt May, Tony, and every relationship Peter has ever built. MJ had no memory of him, let alone their almost year long relationship, Ned didn’t know him, and Peter was alone. No one in his corner. The spell worked perfectly, a little too perfectly, so perfectly that every time he tried to establish a new friendship, their memory got wiped of him in less than five minutes.
It was infuriating and emotionally draining. Spider-Man was all he had, and even then his will to continue slowly faded and turned to resentment. Becoming Spider-Man was the reason he got into this mess, getting bit by that spider was the reason why he was now a nobody, a faint blurry memory in anyone’s mind. He was a ghost, and now a shell of his old self.
It’s been two years, a long two years since the spell. The erasure was painful but necessary, and he kept reminding himself that. As much as he missed his friends, as much as he missed having some sort of semblance of a happy life, he had to go on. Spider-Man was needed, was he not? Spider-Man was the people’s hope, he was a person - vigilante - hero - some people of New York City looked up to. But he couldn’t bear this burden anymore.
“With great power come great responsibility”
Those words consistently echoed through his mind. He knows. He feels how much they mean and what they hold. His Aunt’s last words were important, to him, to the other Peters, even if it came from different people. It was a motto he had to live by, but he simply couldn’t anymore. Everything had failed, every invention, every way he tried, but that essence and power he was feeling now… It would definitely work. This was now his only saving grace.
If there could be no Peter Parker, there could be no Spider-Man. He wasn’t needed and he wasn’t welcomed by the majority, so it was time to give them what they wanted. For him to disappear and never come back.
Peter slid his window open and swung towards the Brooklyn Bridge. The fabric outfit around him felt comforting yet excruciating but it was time. It was time for New York to watch as Spider-Man disappeared. He stood on top of one of the posts, eyes closed as the breeze intertwined with his body. It was so relaxing and so freeing. Peter - nay, Spider-Man - held a small ball in his right hand, a button inlaid into it. He turned around, the wind now on his back as he looked down at the cars running along the bridge.
“Karen, are you there?” Peter whispered, a small chime responding to his question, “broadcast,” a few nanobots separated from Peter, floating in front of him as a small camera. He took a deep breath as looked towards New York. It felt silent, the noise of cars blocked out, as if they had all stopped in their tracks. He took off his mask and looked at the camera’s makeshift lens. “My name is Peter Parker, you will not remember that fact in five minutes’ time, I am Spider-Man. It’s been two years since my identity has been erased from the world, two excruciatingly long years of being no one but the spider. I am a nuisance, a menace, and worst of all, emotionally damaged beyond repair. Maybe in the next life, not this one,” he raised the ball, making sure the camera saw it, “I managed to create a device, one that holds the smallest of fractions of the six infinity stones’ power. It will only be used on one person, and one person alone. Me.”
Peter looked up at the sky, the stars looking back at him. He closed his eyes, taking a deep breath before opening them back up and looking into the camera yet again. He gulped. He was ready. The pain he felt, the pain only he felt because of his powers, was reminded to him as he pressed the button, making sure the camera saw it.
“Don’t worry, it will turn itself into dust as well,” he made sure to say, closing his eyes as his body slowly turned to dust, “goodbye New York, I will miss you with all my heart,” the broadcast ended as the nanobots merged back into Peter’s suit at the last second. His body was gone, nothing left behind where he stood. The device was also gone, doing as the spider promised.
There was no more Spider-Man, and the world sure as hell forgot his face and name, exactly five minutes after the broadcast was done. They only remembered how broken and sad the spider looked, and how he was now forever gone.
*.·:·.☽✧ ✦ ✧☾.·:·.*
Peter felt himself be put back together, in the exact same spot as where he disappeared from. Did it not work? Did the device fail? He made sure that was impossible. He made sure that no matter what, he would fade into nothingness.
“Get down from there!” someone yelled, Peter looked down after putting his mask back on. He was greeted by an angry looking policeman, “great, now New York has vigilantes too,” he grumbled, “meta freaks,” he whispered under his break as Peter climbed down the pole. Meta? Now? Too? Peter had so many questions swirling through his mind. So it worked, but it didn’t kill him, it sent him somewhere else. A world where it seemed like there was no Spider-Man on the New York streets. “Get on your way, I don’t wanna see you on this bridge in that way again,” the policeman ordered, Peter nodded before turning towards the direction to Time Square.
He swung away, feeling his body aching in places it hadn’t before, his spider sense going haywire as he flung himself into an alley by Time Square. He keeled over, his stomach hurting for a reason unknown to him. He groaned, knees now of the filthy concrete as he vomited onto it. Peter didn’t know where he was, all he knew is that this was definitely New York, but also not his world.
He figured as such from the fact no one recognized his suit, looking at him in either disgust, confusion, or intrigue. There were so many smells coming from everywhere, the garbage bin by him but also from the people outside the alley. Sure he had always smelled perfume to a heightened degree, but this was different, no smell was the same.
Peter sat up, leaning on the wall behind him, making sure his legs didn’t hit the pile of his own vomit in front of him. “Karen, connect to the Stark satellite network,” Peter ordered, turning the nanobots from his Spider-Man suit to a pair of glasses. A round loading symbol showed up in the middle of his sight before an error message appeared. So no Stark here either.
“I apologize, would you like me to connect to a different yet similar satellite?” Karen asked, showing the three options as small images on the left side of the screen on his glasses. It showed three satellites, each under a different ‘corporate’ looking name. Lex Corp, Wayne Enterprises, and ‘the Justice League’. Peter guessed that was this world’s version of the Avengers. He figured he shouldn’t mess with the most definitely superheroes’ satellite and instructed Karen to connect to Wayne Enterprises’ since the hairs at the back of his neck stood up looking at the one from Lex Corp. “Understood. I will hack into it now.”
Peter took a deep breath, closing his eyes as he heard the quiet hum of the loading bar as Karen hacked into the satellite’s server. “Could you also make me an identity on the government’s server?” he asked, Karen responding with an affirmative chime, turning to multi-task on that as well. Peter was tired, extremely so. He stood up swifting and slowly made his way towards the homeless shelter Aunt May used to work at. Might as well go have a good night’s sleep as Karen worked.