#(i think it's brooklyn nine-nine but i can't remember)

[totally-correct-star-wars]

Rex: Good morning! Cody, checking his chrono: Correct.

#source: ? #(i think it's brooklyn nine-nine but i can't remember) #captain rex #commander cody #the clone wars #star wars #incorrect tcw quote #incorrect star wars quote #incorrect quote

[inknopewetrust]

𝚌𝚘𝚗𝚟𝚎𝚛𝚐𝚎𝚗𝚌𝚎

summary: you are recruited to the spider society after conducting a batch of vigilante actions against the men who killed your husband, miguel and well... their leader isn’t like the man you remembered.

pairing: miguel o’hara x spider-woman!reader [wc: 12.7k]

warnings: language. this has got everything: backstory, meeting, conflict, angst, sadness, tie-ins with the film, (i hope you're reading this in a stefon voice), ethical dilemmas, vigilante shit, violence, romantic love strains, etc., etc.

Manhattan was rainy. It was always rainy.

But let’s do this again, shall we?

The skyline was high. Muddled variants of blues and reds, the colors that had painted your life for a decade now. It was silly to imagine a world of color beyond that–it's all you knew, you had nothing left.

And all of that nothing was the consequences of the dealings of a few bad men.

You breathed in deep. They were right there, right below your feet.

Their laughter in their indifference to life was vexing. It made your blood broil and bubble to the surface where you thought your eyes may have been red and your grip on the stone building was onerous.

In the distance, police sirens blared across the city where crime did not take a backseat because their most treasure hero was rogue. People were in trouble but you saw cessation of hope with every second that passed and those in charge did nothing to avenge your husband.

Husband. Nevertheless, what you had was gone and never coming home to you. The least you could do was try to find the justice to be brought by your own hands.

"Nah, man..." One of the men–a blonde, high-tech worker from the east side of town–shook his head. "We can't go there. They've got cameras all over the place! Ain't no way we are gettin' out free."

"Well then we go downtown and hit one alongside the river. We'll set up a boat and get us to Brooklyn before they can even suspect anyone was there," another collaborator said. Blondie shook his head determined.

"You think Spider-Girl isn't gonna be waitin' for us?" He scoffed, scuffing his shoes against the pavement. You perched straighter as you peered down. Spider-Woman. It was Spider-Woman.

“She got Mikey last week, Simon two days ago… we don’t have much left and if you think robbin’ fuckin’ Wall Street is gonna save us, you’re wrong.”

A sensible criminal with blood on his hands. Nice.

“Besides, they got the police captain on her ass and while they’re out lookin’ for her, they won’t sweat the small stuff,” blondie pulled a black ski mask from his jacket.

“It’s now or never,” he slipped it on and walked to the door of the bodega on the corner. He held out his hand as if his friend was actually a true friend and not a piece to his own networked puzzle.

Your stomach turned and the sight made your spine tingle.

Outside on the sidewalk of the street in the rain of New York City, the two men who were left of the dirty dozen walked into the grocer with no intention to buy anything.

It hadn’t dawned on you that as you dropped to the pavement, you weren’t wearing your suit or mask.

The hub was quiet.

In this slick world, everything was silver and green and the headquarters were no different — yet too different for Peter to know that he wasn’t from this universe and always felt out of place.

A picture on desk that wasn’t his grounded him to a separate reality; one of love and hope and a small child’s laughter.

Spider-Byte’s was typing away on the keys beside him while he tapped away on the table top.

Nothing exciting had happened since the… glitch. It had been a long nine months without the glue that had put him back together.

That was until Spider-Byte’s computer started beeping in a manic fashion. It was a sound neither of them had heard before. A high pitched siren blaring loudly from a machine the the left of Peter, a button glowing red and flashing.

“Uh,” Peter pointed to the button, “you got any clue what that’s about?”

Spider-Byte shook her head as she pulled up a database on a screen. Her tech hands glided over the keys like music, fluid and fast and working with a purpose.

“Some system Miguel’s got here,” she muttered and Peter attempted to cover the small speaker beside the button with his hand—it didn’t work.

“Where is he? He said he’d be right back and now we’re facing the end of the wor—“

“I doubt this is the end of the world, Peter!” Spider-Byte cut him off harshly. “Now would you be useful and go find Miguel?”

As the dutiful Spider-Person he was, Peter rushed out of the central lair and into the bright white halls of the headquarters. Everyone he passed he asked the same question:

“Hey! You’ve seen Miguel anywhere?”

“Yo! Seen the big man around?”

He slid up to a group of variant Julia Carpenters as they sipped on coffee in the cafeteria. Peter gave them a sly smirk, trying to be cool, and snapped his fingers.

“Have any of you seen the boss today? Looking fine as usual.”

Synchronized, the Julia’s pointed to the empanada station and sure as shit, there was Miguel, talking with the vender who yes, just happened to also be a Spider-Man.

“Miguel!” Peter screeched from the table and Miguel’s mind went soured. A violent jolt to his instincts as the new father came barreling toward him.

“¡At no…!” Miguel mumbled to himself as Peter skidded to a halt, dropping his hand on Miguel’s shoulder with a clunk.

“Hey, Boss! Whatcha… watcha doin’ out here?” Peter chuckled nervously and Miguel narrowed his eyes. “You said you’d be right back.”

“I did,” Miguel drawled. “I told you five minutes and it’s only been three, Peter.”

Peter laughed, glancing around the space as confused gazes began to pick up on the pebbles of sweat that dripped from his temple.

“Oh! You don’t say?”

“What’s so impo—“ Miguel began but never finished. Lyla appeared out of thin air with a casual urgency unlike Peter’s frantic one.

“We’ve got a doozy here for ya, boss.”

With Lyla, everything came to life smoothly. As she snapped her fingers, holograms of screens appeared like magic and on them, an un-masked, Spider-Woman was beating the shit out of thieves in a bodega.

“Jesus,” Peter whispered to himself.

“He doesn’t come here,” Miguel replied without a smile nor a chuckle but it took Peter back.

Miguel was watching the woman carefully. This Spider-Woman was not apart of the society and was actively doing what no Spider-Person should do. However, Miguel knew the actions. He felt them deep within his bones and the mistakes he had made as a newly minted Spider-Man 2099.

“Name’s Y/n L/n… a former nurse who got mixed up in a bad batch of blood for a transfusion. This isn’t the first time we’ve been alerted about her,” Lyla debriefed and Miguel snapped.

“What do you mean, ‘not the first time?’”

“These are a group of men she’s been targeting. It’s got to do with her,” Lyla cleared her throat that was nonexistent, “canon event.”

“We have to bring her in,” Miguel began walking away from Peter and Lyla followed. “I am NOT having some vigilante shit show up on this doorstep. Peter, get Jess, brief her and get a day pass to bring along.”

“Miguel,” Peter wagered, “what if this is associated with her canon? What if she’s just an anti-hero in her world?”

“She’s not,” Lyla piped back in. “She’s a hero, hero. And this isn’t part of her canon event. You’ve gotta know how grief moves people?”

Miguel grunted, Peter sighed.

“Get Jess. I’ll wait for you,” Miguel pushed on Peter’s shoulder to send him the other way.

Once alone and down the winding halls near the center of the headquarters, Lyla spoke again perched on Miguel’s shoulder.

“Miguel, I think there’s something you should know?”

“Know what, Lyla?” Miguel’s attitude had always been sour—she had been there from his creation and it never changed. He never truly smiled, he never truly laughed.

Miguel O’Hara was a tough nut to crack in a world full of people who lived off joy and laughter.

But she could feel the sensations radiating off of him. Those strident lines of afflictions that were masked by the way he covered his face. The tense nature of his shoulders as he walked further and further away but closer to a person he’d never thought to face again.

It felt like an intrusion all over again.

“You know what, Lyla?”

“I know what you’re thinking,” she defended, hologramed hand squeezing his shoulder. “But there are a million Peter’s and Gwen’s and MJ’s out there.”

“This isn’t her,” Miguel huffed. “She would never do this.”

“But she is, Miguel… and her canon event is you.”

“So a possible disruption?”

“It’s already happened,” Lyla explained, giving immediate explanation to your actions. Miguel did not know you in this way, but he could imagine why such feelings would manifest in violence.

“Good, good.”

Lyla scoffed, hopping to her feet. “I wouldn’t say it’s ‘good,’ boss. You died in her world. You were married in her world. I think she’s gonna wanna slap you for even existing in another timeline.”

“Why?” Miguel quirked a brow. “You know her or something? Keeping secrets from me now?”

To save her, Peter and Jess entered the lair with their bands glowing. Lyla simply shrugged and disappeared before they jumped into an Earth that would feel like they own but be nothing like it.

“Miguel," Jess was already shaking her head. Three months pregnant and still doing work, both Peter and Miguel would not be surprised if the child arrived wearing a suit of their own. "There's no anomaly there–there hasn't been a case in that world of a villain glitching from another."

"It's not about the bad guys," Miguel walked toward them to meet them in the middle. "What she's doing no Spider-Person has done before and what's the purpose of a society if we don't help one of our own?"

Lyla appeared between the three ready to open the portal.

"One last thing, folks!" She walked around casually glowing and pushed up her heart shaped glasses to her hairline. "She's not wearing her suit - so if you don't work fast, her identity will be known to the public and well! We just can't have that, can we?"

"Fantastic!" Peter complained as Miguel opened up the portal. "They are a bit suffocating really, if you asked me."

"Well we didn't," Miguel gruffed.

"What's her name? Just Spider-Woman?" Jess asked. "Should we just yell 'Hey! Spider-Woman! Stop it! You're actually a good person!'"

"Y/n. Her name is Y/n and don't freeze up when you see her, alright bud? Alright! See you all when you get back! Have fun!" Lyla waved, patting Miguel's leg as she walked the floor and disappeared once more.

Stretching out his legs, Peter did not miss the glare Miguel gave Lyla. His eyes cold and hardened; he knew so little of this leader but felt he knew so much. Miguel wasn't like the other Spider-People and well, he assumed perhaps you were not either.

Peter missed that he should have recognized your name.

He had been there with Miguel when the other world collapsed.

"Anything else you wanna tell us, boss?" He pushed. Miguel shook his head and slipped on his mask in more ways than one.

"She's disturbing her own canon by going rogue. I'm not going to let her destroy it because she's... upset."

Jess laughed and Miguel was indignant. "If she's a bad egg, she's a bad egg, Miguel. You can't save everyone."

"She's not a bad one!" Miguel scolded her, pointing out toward the darkness of the portal. "She's not supposed to do this and we need to fix this! Y/n is good!"

Peter smirked, wiggling his brows. He could sense Miguel's anger muddled with a nervous fear he never had. "Y/n, Miguel... first name basis already and we haven't even met her. You move fast, don't you?"

"Oh, you are so fucking annoying! She was my wife!"

Peter's eyes nearly popped out of their sockets. "Oh no! Not again, nope!"

"She doesn't exist in this world anymore, Peter," Earth 928, "and in another timeline, she's taken the mantle."

Jess jutted her hip out as the whirring of the portal loomed over them. "So you exist in her's too then? This won't be too confusing. It's just like Peter and MJ or Gwen in the thousands of realities that exist."

"Sure, sure," Miguel said. "But there are only three realities where she exists and," he cleared his throat as he looked down the portal, "this is the last one left."

"We shouldn't risk it. We can't collapse another world."

"We won't collapse it."

"How do you know that?" Peter questioned. There was always a level of selfishness when it came to those someone loved most.

"I just... I just know! You're not in charge here, Peter. If I don't have any hesitations right now, then neither can you."

"Well then," Peter strutted through the portal and turned around before his body was completely gone, "Let's go get us another Spidey then, yeah?"

And he saluted Miguel and Jess before jumping in.

"You've been monitoring her world?" Jess asked and Miguel looked to his feet. She had never seen him so bashful. Never one to make a scene of rash emotional actions, the causation would need

"I watch over many worlds."

"Yeah but come on," She dug, "this is a lot different than those worlds. You know her."

"I don't know her," Miguel defended himself and took a step further into the portal. "She isn't my wife. She's just a version of her that I don't know."

"Mhm," Jess hummed and drummed on her arm as they remained crossed from the moment Miguel said you were his wife. "Let's go meet her then. Then you can go on and on about how she's everything you remember but not the same."

And she walked through the portal before she disappeared to leave Miguel alone.

With clenched fists, Miguel breathed in deep and appeared in a reality he promised never to interfere with.

Inside of the bodega, the two men bartered with one another in the aisle. They looked to be two friends having a conversation in the middle of the shop but their intentions were not pure.

The bell above the door rang as you entered. Shoulders and hair wet from the rain, the cashier paid you no mind as he changed the station on his portable radio sat on the counter.

There were three civilians inside. One, the cashier who was oblivious and that is the sole reason these thugs decided to hit the bodega. An 'easy' target to get in and out. Two, a woman who was going grey at her temples. And three, a teenage kid with untied sneakers.

You ducked behind a shelf as you watched them in the aisle beside you. Between the chips and pretzels they concocted their idiotic plan in the presence of innocent people as they always did–it was how their bank robbery disaster went sideways six months ago.

When civilians are present, one of them will always try and become the hero. It is what Miguel did and now he's six feet under in a cold box.

"Excuse me, Miss," the older woman pointed to the bag of chips that your hand was resting on. She turned your attention away from the men. "Could I get one of those? I don't mean to be a–"

The men began to make their moves and you were distracted by the woman. She had kind eyes. Easy and familiar and a familial feeling to them as she waited patiently for you to move.

"Yes, yes," you replied as you got out of her way. "Sorry."

You didn't know why you apologized. Maybe you felt sorry she found herself in this bodega at an hour such as this.

"No worries, dear." The boy wasn't far from her either. He was shuffling through a freezer looking for a drink that wasn't there.

As she grabbed onto the bag, the radio dropped to the floor and turned off. It startled everyone inside and the cashier filled the silence with his desperate pleas.

"Oh my," his jaw chattered, "please... I don't have anything.... I-I-I I've gotta lot of student lo-o-oans and I really n-need this job."

He was staring into a silver barrel of a gun by the hands of the blonde who orchestrated everything. The older woman screeched behind you and the freezer door slammed shut with a "oh hell no!" following its thud.

You imagined the fear they felt was the same Miguel felt that day. Sitting there, hostage on the bank floor with a check to cash from his mother for his birthday.

The check was in evidence splattered with his blood.

In the neon light of the bodega, you made a choice to never let that happen again.

The cashier kept muttering whole-hearted pleas and the friend reached over the counter to open the register's drawer but it was locked.

"Unlock it!" Blondie ordered, shaking the gun closer and closer to the cashier who looked close to wetting himself. Behind you, the older woman crouched to the floor began praying to herself.

"Unlock it now, you son-of-a-bitch! You wanna end up on the floor? Open it!"

The cashier, who now you realized had a name badge on that read 'Max', began to reach for the keys that were hooked onto the counter.

Fear in his eyes, anticipation in theirs, anger in yours.

Anger always caused the tides to turn.

You reached your hand forward in a quick motion and the web that released itself from your wrist snatched the keys from the hook. Max flew backwards in a jolt of despair and the barrel was soon pointed at you.

"Oh you have got to be kidding!" Blondie screeched and fired a shot. He missed. It was sent right into a chip bag and exploded them all over the floor. You tossed the keys to the older woman and went for the gun.

Like child's play, the gun flew across the bodega and into your palm to be crushed like a piece of fruit. It was still hot from being fired and its pieces crumbled to the floor.

"What the fuck–" the woman stuttered.

"So," Blondie spoke and you hated his tone. Condescending and mighty. "Spider-Woman has a face..."

This friend pulled a bracelet from his pocket that lit up green. It glowed as brightly as the neon signs in the window blurred by the rain.

"She does," you replied. "And it will be the last face you see."

He laughed. They always did. It was an inescapable pattern of dealing with enemies who thought they would win. They never did, and they all thought the same way.

"Is that so? I would really hate to have the Bugle's headline to read: Spider-Woman killed innocent civilians at the 6th street Bodega." He let out a series of tisks with a shake of his head. "Who knew heroes could be so bad?"

He looked to his friend. "Herman..."

The friend, Herman, locked eyes on you and approached quickly and with a heavy hand charging with the green of the gauntlet. You could hearing the whirring and the loading of the power.

Instead of moving out of the way, you turned and pushed the older woman away. She slid on the slick floor into a corner with her bag of chips still in her hand.

The shock hit you with a staggering power. It blew you backwards into an ice freezer in the back of the store. As you landed on the ground, the woman whimpered in the corner and the boy caught your eye underneath a table by the restrooms.

He couldn't have been more than fifteen.

And he wasn't going to die today.

So, you got back on your feet and brushed off your jacket. The residual sting of the shock began to wear off and the men looked at you with a challenge.

"Who knew fighting the Spider would have been so easy?" Blondie laughed. "Where were you when we started? It would have been a much more fair fight."

"Busy," you spat.

"Huh," he hummed with a nod of his head. It was like he was trying to clock you–the way his eyes squinted and he tilted his head just a bit higher than it normally would have been. "Say, have we met before?"

"I'm sure I would remember. This is certainly a pleasurable encounter."

Blondie didn't let the words sting. You weren't a Spider who stung with a bite.

"I've seen your face before..."

"Maybe I just have one of those faces," you quirked a brow and Herman charged his gauntlet again. "Is this the worst you can do? Threaten a few innocents and have your friend do all the work? What happened to real criminals, huh?"

"Funny," he walked like a villain. Hands in his pockets, shoes scuffing the floor. "I've heard that one before." His mind raked the last time he heard that.

"Well it must say something about you then."

Herman went to shock again and you shot a web at him. He went soaring into a wall, head hitting it hard.

"I know!" He snapped his fingers like a lightbulb went off inside. Clarity now in a world filled of unclear ways. "I've seen your picture before."

"So what?" You matched his movements as he moved toward the center of the store. Every tight aisle blocked your view like a shutter.

"'Is this the worst you can do?' Someone told me that a short time ago. A man who tried to get in my way."

Miguel.

He was at the bank. He had his check ready, he was at the counter. Miguel had his wallet out and prepared.

He had a photo in his wallet.

"And I think you know how that turned out for him. But here's the thing, Spider-Woman... I don't hate the idea of having that same fate met you tonight. I imagine being so deep underneath the ground it gets a little lonely."

He stopped at the center, so did you.

"I think it's time for you to join him."

But all you saw was red.

There was an intense pulsing pressure inside of the bodega. You weren't sure how much time had passed as your fist dug deeper and deeper into the man who spoke too much and had little to act upon.

Whimpers of those left inside were deferred. The begging of his friend fell on deaf ears.

In the corner beside the three civilians–the woman, teen, and cashier–a glowing hexagonal portal opened to the dimension in which they lived. It hummed like a freezer and moved like something from the cinema they watched last year but instead of aliens appearing from the abyss, three people emerged no different than the way they walked.

They were people, human. Three Spider-People in a world that already had a Spider-Woman.

In their perspective the heroes were welcome. They were terrified and huddled within one another as one robber was webbed to the wall and the other was being beaten to a pulp by a woman with super-human strength.

"Peter," Miguel motioned to the civilians in the corner, "get 'em out of here."

The humble servant Peter was, he acted quickly. His nervous high-pitched voice soothing their fears with panic and disbelief that three masked people walked through a portal as though it was any other day.

"Get the man down, Jess," Miguel pointed to the guy webbed to the wall. Jess tipped her head to the side with an amused, sly grin on her face as he wept. Chick's a badass, she thought.

A violent one at the moment, albeit, but a badass nonetheless.

Fist hovered in the air, you went rigid as the sensations coursed through you. A striking feeling that felt more like a severe headache that came on too quickly, the immense pressure your body suddenly took on wasn't unfamiliar.

You had felt them before. It happened when something in the air changed. When something you knew could disappear or when time was suddenly running short. There was no term for it nor did any other person in this world feel what you felt.

The man below you gurgled. It was, just like the sensation, a sound that awoken something within you. It cleared the vision from red to reality and suddenly the harsh lighting of the bodega and the reflections of the neon signs on the linoleum filled in the edges.

"Shit," you stammered as your grip on his body lessened with every second.

Those consistent strums of radiating itching went from the top of your head to the base of your skull. A humming in the distance turned into a whirring sound that was too extraneous to come from a small place such as this one.

In an instant, the aluminum window covers were pulled from the ceiling by a pair of red, glowing lines reminiscent of webs. It shut out the outside world and the rain that had been pouring down for hours. The neon lights no longer reflected themselves on the flooring.

A hero, a villain... at some point those had all become the same to you.

The ideas that propelled them to act were all based in something that made them feel passionate enough to target an opposing force. When a hero turns to the fragmented middle of the road and balances the line of enemy and friend, the revelations of such shame grow from a deeper place of pain.

"Let him go."

The voice in your head sounded so much like Miguel.

And once your senses stopped going wild, your heart lept into your throat at the thought.

You buried him. You buried him six feet under.

The door to the bodega's alley opened and closed.

"Come on," the voice said again, "let him go and we can clean up this mess."

"Stop," you mumbled, shutting your eyes as your fists clenched the man's jacket harder. The one that had been in the air dropped to his chest. It was wet with the mixture of sweat and blood.

"Stop it please. Please stop it."

"Those civilians are gonna go get the police," his voice was low. It was that kind of voice that Miguel would use to talk you down from a nightmare–or maybe what this dimension had made you.

"And when they get here, what do you think they're gonna do when they see you sittin' over him?"

"Stop talking, stop talking, stop talking–" you repeated again and again. A thud in the distance set the blonde's friend on the floor and a web kept him in place once more.

"Boss they're gonna take her," another voice, not one you had ever head before filled the room and suddenly you were terrified that it wasn't voices you were hearing in your head. "We gotta bring her back with us."

"Alright! Three darling innocents saved again by, you guessed it," a far too cheerful voice added to the collection, "me."

You were curled into yourself over the blonde. Peter saw a woman, not dressed in a traditional uniform, use her powers for bad. But he saw the destruction of the man and knew that it wasn't from sheer wickedness.

He had seen you care so much before. It had to come from a place of caring.

"Well," he cleared his throat, "this is... a lot." And then he blanched.

"Jess," Miguel motioned to your static figure. He turned around and walked away as if to say 'you got it.'

There was an inflection in his voice that made Jess bristle. She hated the tone; removed and vacant. He was already living a humorless existence and the idea that this dimension made you act this way fractured himself in a new way.

"You heard him," Peter went scouring the aisles, plucking a bag of dried beef from a shelf to shove his mouth with. "You got this!" He gave a half-hearted thumbs up.

So, Jess had this.

She didn't crouch down. She didn't attempt to place a hand on your shoulder or help clean off your hands.

Jess kneeled on the other side of the man and your distant eyes met hers to know you weren't alone. You weren't alone in your pain and you certainly weren't alone in this world.

Your first thought was that she was pretty. Your second thought was that this woman was pregnant and that made you sad.

"Looks like you've gotten yourself in a bit of a mess," she spoke quietly but acted quickly. She placed her fingers on the pulse of the man.

He was breathing.

"Who are you?"

"Name's Jess."

"Jess," you repeated, "and Jess comes from...?"

She saw your lip tremble, eyes welling with tears. Jesus, she thought, she wasn't ready to be a mother if she couldn't deal with a thirty-something spider-woman who happened to be Miguel's wife in three different dimensions.

"Earth–404."

"Earth?"

"You felt that, right?" She motioned to her head, mimicking a tingling sensation with her fingertips. You nodded.

"Well, a lot of us have it... and I mean people like you and me... and I know it makes no sense, but if you can fight mutant enemies, maybe you can imagine there are other worlds out there."

"Like planets?" You sniffed and your hands began to shake. Everything bubbling to the surface of pain and anger. "You're from another planet?"

"Not really, but kinda, sure," she agreed for your sake.

"And your friends?"

"Different planets too."

You breathed in a shaking breath. Somewhere in the distance, you could hear the sirens begin to blare. It may have been 10 blocks or 6 blocks, but they were coming and they were coming in fast.

"Now," Jess cleared her throat, "it looks like you've gotten yourself in a little situation that needs a bit of help."

Jess was the most sympathetic she had ever been. The way your hands shook, your tiredness expanded beyond you. Maybe it was the fact she knew what made you go off the deep end that made her feel more thoughtful.

"They, um-"

"It's ok," Jess said and didn't let you finish. "We just need to get you somewhere safe, ok? Me and my friends can help you."

The sheen in your eyes was cloudy. Face wet and brushed with splatter of a man who was not yours, there was a lifeline to get you out of here and you had to take it.

You shook your head softly before it became more frantic. "I don't have anyone to go to... I don't have anyone."

"You do," her hand hovered over the man's body as Peter came back and lowered himself beside Jess. "You're gonna have a whole group behind you if you let us help."

"We'll get you all cleaned up and then introduce you. There is a whole universe of us out there."

"Us?"

"Spider-People?" He questioned, brows furrowed. Jess hadn't been explicit.

"A society," she drew back from Peter. "Like myself and Peter," indirectly introducing him, "and you and–" she stopped short.

"And you want me there?"

"Yeah," Peter said. "I mean, we could use some more badass Spider-Women around."

"But I–"

"Don't worry about all this, alright? We all have our moments."

Peter reached out his hand for you to take. There was a certain level of hesitancy you felt; perhaps it was a trick or maybe you were trapped in another nightmare. But Peter gave a small smile. He gave off a warmth that Jess had exuded and made you nearly forget that there were three voices and not their two.

You took Peter's hand.

The man was breathing, he would live even if he didn't deserve to. The sirens were no more than 3 blocks away.

"You gonna need one of these," Jess held out her hand to reveal a rubber bracelet.

"A day pass," she explained, "to help you adjust."

"Adjust?"

"It's better to ask fewer questions," Peter scrunched his face. "Less confusion for you."

You slipped on the bracelet.

"We good here?"

It was that voice again, the one from the back of your head.

"We gotta go. Time is ticking."

Except this voice wasn't the back of your head now that you've realized there were others in this bodega. As you rose from the floor and began walking as Jess led the way, the friend was passed out on the floor and a glowing hexagonal portal was lingering in the back of the store.

The sounds, the sensations... it meant something.

"All good, Boss. The robbers will live."

The man in the blue suit–from what you could tell–nodded and looked in your direction but said nothing. There was something in your body that was sending alarm bells to your mind but you ignored them.

They weren't like the sensations you had felt before. These were different in a way you couldn’t explain.

“Right let’s, ah,” he hesitated as his hands rested on his hips. You looked at him and he looked away. “Get moving then.”

“What’s going to happen when I go through that thing?” You pointed to the portal.

He didn’t look at you. He couldn’t look at you. All he saw was his wife who used to laugh at his corny jokes and rest her head on his shoulder in bed. He saw, in one dimension, the mother of his child and he saw a happy, generous nurse who loved her job.

But when he looked at you know, part of that image was shattered.

You were a little bit broken and a little bit worn down by the world you lived in. You had blood-splattered clothing and tear stained cheeks and it was enough to make his heart ache more than it already did.

“It will pop you out just where we want you,” Peter said as he took a step into the portal and his body began to glitch with the moving sphere around him. “Just walk in and it will do the rest.”

“And it’s safe?”

“So far, yeah!” And he ran off before he disappeared.

“I’ll see you there, alright?” Jess turned to you, then looked at Blue before giving a smile that was as flat as a dead man’s heart beat.

She walked in just as suave as she came.

Suddenly, it was just the two of you and it felt strange.

There were so many feelings lingering that you couldn’t grasp onto. The air was comfortable but hesitant; there was a barrier of distrust and burden, but one that itched to reach out a hand to help.

“You know,” you sniffed back a chuckle, “I half thought I was crazy for a second.”

“About what?” He asked. “The fact that you almost killed a man or the portals? Both are equally crazy.”

In any other circumstance you would have thought he was being sarcastic.

You shook your head. You were beginning to feel the weight of your actions.

“I thought I heard voices… a voice in my head.”

“Mhm.”

“Yeah,” you glanced at the portal.

A lull. The whirring of the portal, the sounds of police cars went mute when you looked back. Blue was looking at you but you couldn’t see his eyes. You couldn’t see a thing and indeed, you didn’t know his name.

Blue.

Miguel’s favorite color was blue.

“Thank you,” you said earnestly. “For coming here. I think I’m still a bit shell-shocked,” you laughed and he knew you were, “but maybe I was waiting for this… I don’t know.”

“It’s our job.”

Blue was done with the conversation at that point. He walked to the portal, his body glitching just like Peter and Jess’s did.

“Come on,” he motioned to you.

“What’s your name? The other two—they introduced themselves.”

“Spider-Man.”

“That’s not your name.”

He let out a huff. “You wanna be caught by the police? Fine.” He began walking again and the glitching became more erratic.

“Who’s to say you’re all not some group of aliens trying to kidnap me? At least the other two looked like me!”

His patience too was skating on thin ice.

“Come on, kid, let’s go.”

Maybe you weren’t crazy.

“What did you just say?”

He turned his body back to you and walked out of the portal. On the precipice of where you stood just beyond and where he did, he towered over you.

“I’m giving you a chance here. You come with me now or you’re dead here.”

“Kid. You said ‘kid.’ Why did you say that? Why did you say I was a kid?”

“I didn’t mean it like that, let’s go.” Like a rhythmic pattern, he turned back around.

“I’m not crazy. I know I’m not fucking crazy.” You sure as hell looked it. “Why did you say kid? Who told you to call me kid?”

“No one—“

A sudden banging on the door to the bodega caught the attention left in the room. Blondie started to gurgle, you stood steadfast, and Blue was agitated.

You took a step into the portal. Progress.

“Nobody calls me kid, no one. Why won’t you tell me your name? Who the hell are you people? Who are you?”

“We don’t have time for this!” The way he said your name that followed was one you had heard a million times.

It was just like Miguel used to say.

“Take off your mask.” You demanded and stepped further again.

“Take off your fucking mask or I’m stepping out of this goddamn thing and going to prison.”

The police began to feverishly hit the glass with their batons.

“Take it off,” you begged, “please. Please let me see you.”

And how could he say no to his wife who begged so mercilessly?

There was a time where you replayed that moment over and over in your mind.

You could still feel the way your breath caught in your chest. An immense wave of emptiness washed from you and filled with a jittery dismay that had no outlet.

His eyes were no different; the way his lips sat and his brow furrowed.

You felt the silent shed of tears mask your face before the glass breaking set Miguel moving toward you, grabbing your hand and pulling you through the portal.

His touch was the same.

And when he opened his mouth, what he sounded like was different from what he said and you were quick to realize that this Miguel was not your Miguel.

This Miguel despised people who lived happy lives.

This Miguel was mean and callous and demanding

This Miguel worked beyond reasonable hours and made being a Spider-Man his life’s purpose.

That was not your Miguel.

There was no making sense in that moment. You either believed it or you didn't and if you didn't, then they'd drop you back off in a world that had your face plastered on wanted posters and big screens in the middle of the city.

So you made sense of it and made some semblance of life within the four walls of the Spider Society headquarters with the Grade A asshole known as Miguel O'hara – not your husband.

The grief of that worked in waves. It came and went when life continued to move. It was strange to think that what brought you here, to this future, occurred one year ago.

Sat by a window looking out into an Earth that was not yours, you swung your legs as those thoughts crossed your mind. The chatter of a thousand Spider-people filled the space around you.

A thud sounded on the beam a few feet from you. Soft, nearly mute shoes tapping their way beside you. Green. The color of artificial grass in a children's playset, nearly blue.

"Watcha doing?"

There was never a moment of peace here. But you closed you eyes, sighed and a smile quirked on your lips.

"You daydreaming? I wonder what it's like out there..." Gwen Stacy joined the Spider-Society three months ago. "It looks so... contempo."

"Contempo? Where did you hear that?"

"I read you know," she tipped her head up in mock offense. "Kids do read when they're in school."

"Yeah, yeah," you brushed her off.

"So... what are you up to today? I was thinking we could monitor the dimensions with Jess and maybe catch a bad guy or two–" Gwen's fists mimicked boxing, "–and then Peter said he'd bring Mayday around–"

"Slow down," you chuckled. "I am up to nothing, thanks for asking and if that's what you want, sure."

Her eyes lit up when on most days they didn't.

"Really!?"

"Mhm, yeah, sure."

"Great!" Gwen got to her feet and wrung her hands. "Jess was in the control center so–"

"Control center?"

Gwen hummed, hands clasping behind her back comically.

"Yep! Just... chillin' by a screen. You know, she's got that baby on the way and all so we thought it'd be best to keep her inside for the time being and she doesn't like that but she said–" Gwen went on and on as the words came pouring out.

"Gwen."

"–that she would rather die than have to sit here and watch screens all day. I told Peter she would hate it and he agreed with me but sometimes he brings–"

"Gwen."

"–Mayday around just to cheer us up that we haven't gone on that many missions and its always well... you know... and we feel like we can't do anything to help out sometimes–"

"Gwen!" You shouted at her. She stopped her rambling; blue eyes wide and ears listening. "Just... take a breath, alright?"

"Sorry," she said sheepishly.

"You don't have to be sorry," a sharp breath steadied you. "I'm not going to go with you to the control room."

"Please," she begged. You imagined this is what it was like having a teenage daughter who wanted the most unattainable of things. "I promise it will be fine! Miguel's not even there so you don't have to worry about what he said last time!"

"That was three days ago, Gwen!"

"So what!?"

The last time was three days ago.

Ever since you arrived, it had been nothing but anger and hostility pushed toward you from him but you were not easy on him either. It was hard facing a piece of your past that had every connection but no foundation at the same time.

Earth 9591 was in ruins and the screens replayed the horrors of the people over and over. It was desolate. Earth was crumbling in on itself and a medieval Rhino had found itself in the mess as Earth 9591 Peter was on his last leg.

According to Miguel, this Peter was supposed to experience this.

"We can't just let him die, Miguel," you argued as he stood up on his platform above you and Peter. "There is a chance he could live and we're reducing him to nothing because of his goddamn canon?"

"We can't mess with it, you know that." Miguel's patience was running thin. "Every time we can't interfere you come here with the same argument and the answer is always no. It will always be no."

"Why?" You pushed. Sometimes just seeing his face now made you mad. The questions of why this Miguel got to live when your's didn't was something that constantly simmered within you.

"You plucked me from my Earth and brought me here so why can't we do that for him? He'd be healthy and safe here."

"This is supposed to happen to him," he huffed your name as he turned back to the screens. "Not every battle is going to be one that Spider-Man wins and if we mess with it, we threaten that whole dimension."

"Well it sure as hell looks like it's in a bit of trouble, boss," Peter let out a nervous chuckle.

"And so it is."

"But what of Rhino, hm?" He hated the way you rose your eyebrows in question. Every version of you did that. "That's not supposed to be his fate."

"One less villain we have to worry about."

You let out a frustrated groan. "When did you become so heartless? We save people here, Miguel. We don't let them suffer."

"I'm not heartless. I'm being realistic and the fact is that 9591 Peter isn't gonna live and his world will become uninhabitable. That is part of his canon, end of story."

"So my canon said to bring me here?" You asked, hands on your hips. Peter inched backwards from you because he could feel the rumblings of the volcano bubbling.

"Take me from my home and bring me here for what? To have another person go along with every decision you make? Newsflash, Miguel, that's not going to happen."

"Oh, really?" He laughed, sarcastically, and looked down at you from above.

"Yes, really. Maybe this canon bullshit is just that, bullshit. Maybe you made a mistake–"

"I didn't make a mistake," he defended loudly. "I am not letting other worlds get destroyed because of stupid decisions."

"So it's only a stupid decision when it's a reality that we both exist in?"

If Peter hadn't known any better this would have sounded like a fight between a married couple.

"That's not what I said," Miguel brought his hand to the bridge of his nose and squeezed. "We can't go around making those same mistakes. I am not putting any other lives in danger."

"But you did it when it benefitted you."

Miguel mumbled to himself up there. You couldn't hear. Peter took more steps back and Spider-Byte ducked behind her consul. Miguel's brown mop of hair slicked back with the motion of his hand.

"Well you would've liked that world too."

"I liked the one I was from."

God, some days he really disliked you.

At the same time, when Miguel looked down at you, he saw the wife he knew in a different capacity and it sent his mind spiraling. He didn't sleep, he barely took the time to care for himself because all he could think about was the dimensions of happiness that you both had and the one you've both found yourselves in now.

He hated that he loved the body of the woman he knew but couldn't fully trust the version of you that existed now.

"We're not going."

"Miguel,"

He lept from the platform and onto the level you stood on. Still as large as before, his shadow filled your space before he did and for some ungodly reason, the presence of this Miguel made your heart pump furiously as your husband had.

Miguel had that look in his eyes that made them appear red. Fist clenched at his sides and that same lingering sadness emitting from his person.

"Not another word."

He hated the challenge you took from him.

"Why is it ok that you took me from my dimension? To serve some sick purpose of remembering your wife?" You spat at him.

You were just like her... just a little more broken.

"I'm not her, Miguel."

"You think I don't know that?" His voice was nearly caught in his throat. "You think I don't know that you're not her? It's pretty goddamn obvious you're not her."

"Oh yeah?" Your voice was no different.

You hated when you fought with Miguel in your dimension and that didn't change in this one.

Peter thought he should look away.

"Well she's not here, is she?"

Miguel stared at you. He couldn't help the way his eyes moved over your face. He saw the same eyes, nose, and lips. You were his wife just as he was your husband.

"No," he said as a ghostly whisper, "she's not."

"And maybe I'm not like her but you're not like my Miguel either... so don't make this fall on me. I didn't ask to come here."

"You're here now," Miguel's voice was devoid of feeling. "So get used to the rules. We're not going."

And he stalked off with Peter following on his tail.

If you closed your eyes you could see fragments of Miguel. Now, however, this Miguel was beginning to eclipse those memories.

"Shit..." Spider-Byte snickered from behind her monitor. Her blue glow filling your vision as you looked at her. "I wouldn't take that, mama. I'd kick his ass."

Miguel wasn't there. He was off saving a dimension because canon was all that mattered and Jess was monitoring that other universes just as Gwen had said.

It was a relief.

So, you sat back and watched as Jess and Gwen flipped through the different footage from the dimensions that either lit up red for an anomaly or maintained green for a perfect balance.

Jess flipped through them quickly. Every world passing by your face within a second of seeing the light on the panel turn green. The few instances of red sent her pressing on a communication button before Gwen could complain that she wanted to go out and fight.

Gwen lingered on worlds. She looked at the images as though she wished to be a part of them.

She hesitated moving on from a boy in a black suit just a second too long.

"Gwen?" You asked her as her hand hovered over the button. She was intently looking at him as he moved about the fire escape.

"Gwen?" You reached out a hand to shake her shoulder. She bristled out of her spell and pressed the button before you could ask any questions.

It would be several months later that you'd learn that the boy was the source of it all.

Miles Morales had heard a million versions of the same story.

It all began with a name and that named person being bit by a radioactive spider that magically gave them powers and they used them to save the world, or fight street crime, or kill mice (in the case of that Spider-Cat he saw in the lobby).

They were all the friendly, neighborhood hero that the world needed.

Until the collider messed with their functions and required a society such as this to take on a much larger purpose.

And Miles was taken aback.

He had never felt so seen sans the moment he walked through the doors of the complex. Every turn he made, a new Spider-Person was uniquely fit into their world so different than his own.

Within the chamber of villains from other dimensions, he saw a Spider-Woman without a suit.

"So people like, live here?" Miles asked Gwen who shrugged.

"Some do. We can stay for as long as we like and then go back to our dimensions when we need to."

"And suits are optional?"

Hobie turned around and gave Miles as questionable gaze.

"A uniform is binding, man," he told Miles. "Use what makes you comfortable."

Gwen nearly galloped ahead to the Spider-Woman with a digital portfolio. Miles saw the way Gwen's eyes lit up just as they did when they saw each other again.

Hobie was the one to introduce you. Your named rolled off his tongue like butter–so casual and cool in a way Miles did not believe he ever could be.

"She lives here," He explained. "Can't really go back to her dimension so she does a lot of cataloguing. The main man doesn't want her out of missions... you know," Hobie spun his finger near his forehead, "little crazy that one."

"I'm not crazy, Hobie," you called out as Gwen pointed toward your group.

"No, you're right," he corrected himself. "He's the crazy one."

"That's more like it," you smiled and Miles felt a boyish crush form in his stomach. "Hi Miles. I've heard a lot about you."

You did. Gwen had been giddy in the way she reminisced about her time with Miles. Even Peter put in his two-cents about the way he trained him and it went incredibly poorly for the greater part of their journey together.

You missed a good chunk of time by not being present when they all converged on the same dimension. It may have saved you from yourself.

"Hi," he waved back nervously.

The party kept walking with your addition. Beyond the orange cells of villains captured and waiting to be returned home, a center of technology he could dream of appeared in front of him.

It was just a tour.

Lyla appeared beside you.

"Miguel's hangry," she complained as she looked at her non-existent nail-beds.

"He's probably just angry."

"No," she shook her bob, "it's the hangry kind. You should have the kid pick up something for him... a gift."

"Gift," you chuckled. Miles looked so green. He was amazed by the technology of the go-home-machine that you weren't sure how he would react when he reached the hub. Walking through all of the test technology before going to Miguel's station... he'd be on cloud nine.

"He'll be expecting the party soon."

"I'll stay behind."

You were certain Miguel would be able to hear this conversation but Lyla had a mind of her own–she was artificial after all.

"You should come with. Miles could use your perspectives."

"What perspectives?" This was the longest conversation you had ever held with her. "Oh, Miles," you mimicked, "don't beat criminals to a pulp... um, don't let your anger get the best of you... don't kill people.... yeah, good advice."

"I meant a motherly figure here."

"I'm not a mother, Lyla. Besides, he's got Jess for that."

Lyla glitched to the other side of you. "Jess hasn't taken to him like she did you and Gwen."

"He's got Peter."

"But he could use you too."

You gave a tight-lipped hum.

"Or," she countered, "maybe you need someone like him. It's always strange what effect kids have on adults... makes them... soft or something. You should see the videos of Miguel!" She laughed, you didn't.

"He liked to play soccer with her."

Her. In another dimension, you had a daughter.

"Why are you telling me this?" You asked her.

She waved her hand dissuasively. "Miguel's not going to, so I might as well."

The party began to make their exit. Down to the liar they went and as they walked, Lyla floated in the air beside you. Miles kept peaking back like a child on a holiday.

"Miles," you called out to him.

"Yes?" He turned around quickly and at attention. He was a cute kid. So nervous and out of his element. If it weren't for his merry misfit group of friends, Miguel was sure to eat him alive.

"Do you have a question or is there a reason you keep looking at me?"

He rubbed his hand on the back of his neck. Miles then pointed to Lyla.

"Is she a Spider-Person too?"

"No," you told him and Lyla glitched to him. "An A.I. that Miguel created. She knows all."

"She flatters me," Lyla murmured back a smile.

Miles turned back around and continued on with his conversation that bounced between Gwen and Hobie. Lyla disappeared from the hallway as the sounds of old, tinkered experiments and Miles' struggles painted a picture of a much different boy in your mind.

While his struggles were not yours and you'd never understand them completely, his want to belong struck a chord with you in a way it did with Gwen.

There was a family that could be built here if the realities of pain could be ignored.

Above on his floating platform, Miguel slowly descended as Miles gaped in a slight awe. Yes, it was dramatic. Yes, it was unnecessary and it made you roll your eyes.

Hobie stuck to the wall in the back. Gwen took Miles to the edge and you leaned up against a pillar not far from Hobie.

"Miguel O'Hara," Gwen introduced, "meet Miles Morales."

And then Miles butchered his introduction with cheer. He offered up those empanadas which Miguel slipped right into the trash.

And like Gwen, he fumbled his words by rambling about how to catch Spot.

Miguel threw the trash can at them both only for Hobie to sneak the empanada out of the box and into his hand without blinking.

And then everything spiraled out of control.

Miguel's meter began to spike an angry red as the frantic nature of his focus within this world had been protecting the multi-verse. Here, in this room, Miles was the supposed source of it.

If it wasn't for Miles, many of his problems wouldn't exist and he'd be grateful but he can't be, simply because they are truly real.

"Hey Miguel!" Peter's voice broke through the silent seconds. Miles perked up at the sound. "Come on, go easy on the kid. He had a terrible teacher. He had no chance."

"Peter!"

The two hugged like old friends.

"Miles!" Peter put a hand on his shoulder. "Don't be afraid of my friend Miguel. He just looks scary. He's got no bite."

He had seen it once. He chose to ignore it.

So he went on with his little break up of Miguel's serious moment and you watched unfold from the shadows, the orange glow of your tablet keeping you busy while Mayday swung around the room and Miles exasperatedly came to terms with Peter being a father.

"-You always say the 'fate of the multiverse' and my brain dies."

You chuckled to yourself, glancing up at Peter as he circled Miguel. Miguel was holding Mayday like he had never held a child in his life.

That was the kind of thing your Miguel did.

"You guys smell that?" Peter sniffed into the air. He swiftly picked up Mayday and swung right by Miles and Gwen and straight to you.

"You smell that right?" He held her up high. Yes, yes you did smell that.

"That is entirely your problem, Peter."

"Miles–" Miguel caught their attention again. "–You disrupted a canon event."

"Canon event?"

"The kid wasn't thinking," Peter interjected. He held onto Mayday as you strung a web for her to bounce on. Miguel was half torn between the conversation he tried to be stern about and the watching you weave a web for that little girl.

"That's not how he works."

"That's insulting," Miles commented.

Hobie got up from the floor to stand next to you. He caught Mayday in the air, saluting her with two fingers.

"Taking a crap on the establishment... I salute you."

"What are you upset about?" Miles furrowed his brows as Miguel stepped off the platform and walked towards him. The boy would be amiss if he hadn't felt his stomach drop to his feet in the menacing way Miguel O'Hara walked.

"When isn't he upset about something?" You murmured from the back.

"I saved those people."

Ah, yes. Pavitr's dimension. Miguel had been in the go-home-department when it happened.

"And that's the problem," Miguel clarified. "Lyla, do the thing."

As she always did, Lyla appeared with a semi-oblivious nature.

"Huh? What thing?"

"The thing... what do you mean 'what thing?' The information explaining thing!"

She gave a casual 'ok' and the room changed before you.

You had never seen everything before.

Jess had talked about it, Peter mentioned what it looked like, and a few others who had seen it claimed it left them more confused than anything.

It was a bright blue tree, in a sense. Woven with a variation of color that reminded you of the sea at mid-day and the sky at night, everything was a timeline of complete facts of the world. Every moment of every person's lives were tied to this one branch of 'everything.'

Expansive and high, the tree of everything bloomed over your heads and Miles was the one trying to come to terms with the sincerity of it. However, just as he had begun to grasp the idea of everything being resembled by a tree with branches that diverged from its timeline, the room changed to a red web.

Hundreds and hundreds of webs interconnected by lines that captured the very lives in that room. All of them facing convergence by multiple lifelines to different events, canons, and realities that make up a person's existence in the, as he had coined, the Spider-Verse.

"The lines... where the nodes converge?" Miles asked aloud.

"They are the canon."

Every web around him had different nodes. Some had more than others, some had barely any. He noticed a cluster of three big webs with few canon nodes.

"Their chapters apart of every Spider's story, every time. Some good, some bad... some very bad."

Miguel pulled down a cluster to showcase the very bad. You had a sinking feeling somewhere along the line the 'very bad' also included you.

A row of Spider-People emerged in the same position. He saw Peter, he saw Gwen, he recognized you, and then himself leaning over the body of a loved one who perished too soon.

Like a story, Miguel walked through varied canon events that were to occur in many Spider stories. A police captain, a lover, the event that turns someone into a hero, the struggles of the hero.

Miles looked at each of you as a fragment of your past appeared before him.

"That's how the story is supposed to go. Canon events are the connections that bind our lives together and those connections can be broken that why anomalies are so dangerous. Inspector Singh's death was a canon event."

A police captain.

"You weren't supposed to be there."

Even though you weren't there, you saw it unfold from the safety of Lyla's simulation. People running, a bridge nearly collapsing.

"And you weren't supposed to save him. That's why Gwen tried to stop you."

You could see the gears in his brain turning. He was hurt, misguided in his efforts to be a good Spider-Man because it was suddenly becoming a conflict for him. Miles tried to be good. He tried to save people and even doing so, he seemed to mess up.

It was so different from the Spider-Woman you used to be.

"I thought you were trying to save me," Miles admitted to Gwen who had turned her back from him. She kept her eyes to the ground.

"I was. I-I was doing both," she took a chance to gaze back at him only to see the hurt.

She was just doing her job.

"And now, Miles," Miguel sighed and he walked around the space. He planted his feet beside you and Miles took a glance and couldn't tell who was friend or foe.

He didn't know where he stood himself.

"Because you changed the story, Pavitr's dimension is unraveling. If we're lucky, we can stop it. We haven't always been lucky."

Miguel looked at you. He looked at you with a sheen in his eyes that you'd hadn't see from this version of him. For once, he looked as sad as he felt on the inside.

And for once, he wasn't fighting with you about what was right or wrong in that moment.

"That wasn't me!" Miles defended. "That was the Spot."

"It's what happens when you break canon."

"How do you know?"

"Because I broke it once myself."

There was a part of you that wanted out. You wanted out right that second because you had seen enough. You had seen the destruction, had been part of some destruction, and seeing Miguel's world crumble animatedly in front of you wasn't something you wanted. But your feet stuck to the floor. Planted, like mud, waiting to be freed.

It was your story too and you didn't even know what happened.

"I found another world where I had a family. Where I was happy."

In the web, the cluster of three was connected by one single strand to a much larger web with varied canon events. Whatever this was, Miles imagined, was Miguel's universe.

"At least a version of me was. And that version of myself was killed."

This time trying to catch a thief who stole a woman's purse. Not a bank robbery.

"So I replaced him. I thought it was harmless."

You looked away at the scenes. Miguel with her. A little brown haired girl who loved soccer and he did her homework at the kitchen table with her. A father who looked adoringly at a daughter who was joyous and knew no pain.

"But I was wrong."

Then the world began to collapse. In his arms, the girl disappeared as though she had never existed.

"Isn't that right, Peter?"

Your head shot up towards Peter who looked away from you. He had seen you before, in a different reality where you too were happy with the life you lived and where you were happy with a daughter who loved Miguel too.

"Peter?" You gave a weak call to him. He shut his eyes tightly. "Peter, you knew?"

Miles felt the way you felt. A shell of a hero without a purpose with people who made very choice feel like a mistake.

You walked up to Peter. Miles saw the white-knuckle grip you had on the pink robe. This was more than just friends making choices feel like a mistake.

"You knew me?"

Miles glanced back at the web. The three small webs that had little to them stuck out like a bouquet of flowers. Each their own small story.

“Whose is that?” Miles gestured as he tried to ignore the way you prodded at Peter for answers. Perhaps Miles already knew that Miguel had made this more complicated than it needed to be.

He had already destroyed one reality for happiness. Miles imagined that this man could ruin many more if it meant one more second of living.

“These ones?” Miguel pointed to the web of three.

You knew it was yours without even realizing it.

“That’s mine," you breathed in deep.

Even though you hadn't gotten along in this world, Miguel felt the weight of his secrecy fall heavily onto his shoulders.

“You see, Miles,” Miguel started, “there are infinite dimensions were we exist. All these webs here,” he pointed to the connecting lines that reappeared of many lives, “are realities were someone like you may exist. Maybe not as Spider-Man but as something.”

Miguel looked to you and for the first time since he met you in your reality, he saw the woman he fell in love with.

“And her dimensions look a bit different.”

“Why?” Miles questioned. “Why don’t ours look like that?”

“Because you can exist in infinite realities, Miles,” you told him in a voice that reminded him of his mother telling him a relative died. “And I can’t.”

“There is only three of her that exist in our… Spider-Verse, as you put it,” Miguel stated. “And one of them collapsed.”

In a hologram, he saw you in the world they had all just witnessed disappear from reality. Miles saw you running and running and he could see the destination, Miguel and that child, so close yet too far away.

And then there was nothing.

“Oh,” Miles felt sadness creep within him. Gwen wanted to comfort both you and Miles but couldn’t muster it in front of Miguel.

Peter wasn't sure what to do.

One strand of three disappeared.

“And in the other, she’s not here anymore.”

"What dimension is that?"

Miguel sighed. Hands on his hips, he met Miles' intense stare instead of yours.

"This one."

“So there is only me now,” you have a half-hearted smile.

“I thought you said you were the only Spider-Man in this dimension?” Miles asked Miguel as he tried to make sense of this world he found himself in.

“I am,” Miguel clarified. “She’s not from this dimension. Her… alternate self isn’t here anymore.”

He recalled the images of all the Peter’s and Gwen’s and Jessica’s mourning their canon disasters. Loved ones, friends, lovers.

The second strand of three disappeared.

“Does that mean if you…?”

You nodded your head at Miles. Peter put his hand on your shoulder at the admission.

Miguel focused on that hand. He saw the comfort, he saw the friendly love and knew he had wasted time. He had wasted months being angry at you when you weren’t the cause of it.

He had watched over your dimension to keep you safe while you struggled and in his own pain, he made the unity between you strained and unrealistic.

But he also knew the greater purpose.

“I guess I just have to pick the right side.”

You tried to bring levity.

You didn’t realize that you’d be picking Miles and your friends or Miguel and the person you knew because if you didn't you'd lose everything.

And you needed to save yourself in one dimension you still existed in.

Earth 42.

A/N: this isn’t proofed yet. I can totally see a million different sequels to dive deeper into the relationship between reader and Miguel.

As always, comments and reblogs are the best feedback a writer can ask for. I love reading any comments you all leave 🥺. Thank you so much for reading.

Tags:

@csmt-m @er4tous @gracielou0518

#miguel o’hara x reader #miguel o'hara #miguel o’hara x you #miguel o’hara imagine #fanficition #x reader #x fem reader #fanfic #x female reader #x female y/n #across the spiderverse #oscar isaac

[bibuckbuckley]

Had a mini heart attack at the cancellation til I saw it was moving to ABC. I haven’t been in a fandom for a network switch before, do those usually go well or should we be worried about the show?

Same Nonnie! I swear my heart stopped for a second there 😂

The only big network change I can remember witnessing was Brooklyn Nine Nine going from Fox to NBC. That lasted 2-3 more seasons (I can't remember which) and NBC gave them the time to have a final season without just suddenly cancelling it. It had a good run. (I've witnessed more network changes but my alas my memory is rubbish and I can't remenber). So it worked out for B99 but tbh it can go either way. However, given what the article talked about, I really believe it'll work out for 911 and ABC will give it the seasons it needs.

Also, as for storytelling wise, I don't think anything will change. If anything (and this is just me speculating) I feel like ABC might let them be a little more freer with their storytelling.

So yeah tbh I think it's a great move for our wee woo show

Anyways, I hope that makes sense a bit. @911bts has way more knowledge on this though

tysm for the ask nonnie!

#kj gets an ask #kj gets a nonnie

[xihe1874]

AO3 First Lines Tag Game

tagged by @pollyna (thank you so much for tagging me love!!)

Rules: Share the first lines of ten of your most recent fanfics and tag ten people. If you have written fewer than ten, don’t be shy and share anyway.

Here we go----

Hangman's Good Plan (complete, Top Gun, icemav, hangster)

Jake ‘Hangman’ Seresin never feels nervous. No, negative, not in a million years. So when he stands out of the office of Admiral Kazansky - the COMPACFLT - in his best suit, his forehead sweaty, he regards his crazy heartbeat as…positively wound up, yeah.

2. Icarus (complete, Top Gun, icemav)

Ice has known the story of Icarus since he was eight. He still remembers the day when his father told him the myth in his stern way.

3. The Black cat (complete, Top Gun, icemav)

After they moved in together, Maverick found a little stray black cat in their backyard and immediately decided to adopt it. Ice just rolled his eyes and said he had no interest in fluffy animals, refusing to pet its head when the cat rubbed against his leg.

4. Plans (complete, Top Gun, icemav)

Maverick never makes plans. He bases his judgment entirely on intuition. He didn't plan anything, excited at the randomness and freedom. He is flying both in the sky and on the ground.

5. Where Past and Future are Gathered (WIP, Top Gun, icemav, goosecarole, hangster)

Rooster leans forward on his chair and keeps his eyes firmly ahead.  Cyclone is going on and on about tomorrow’s mission, some shit like patriotism or sacred duty, maybe. He lost concentration a long time ago but still fixes his gaze on the sturdy admiral, even when his mind is blurred by the tedious speech and meaningless lip movement.

6. Then I Open my eyes and see you (WIP, Top Gun, icemav, goosecarole)

“Wallpaper?”Pete Mitchell, endearingly called by his close friends (or friend, honestly, who is walking beside him right now) as “Maverick”, takes the cup of iced black coffee from Nick Bradshow, or “Goose”, co-founder of M+G Design Ltd. 

7. 轮廓 (complete, Top Gun, icemav, Chinese)

Iceman非常讨厌派对和聚会，特别是那些需要他和上级们社交的活动——他很不情愿。虽然，他是个年轻的雄心勃勃、前途无量的海军中校，但他还是憎恨这些互动。

8. Moonlight, Sunshine, and Baby you are Mine (WIP, Top Gun, Brooklyn-Nine-Nine, icemav, peraltiago, background goosecarole)

“Room 99, 99…” Pete Mitchell - or, as he prefers, Maverick - walks down the hallway, murmuring to himself, his blue rucksack hanging off one shoulder. He peeks at the door beside him and shakes his head. “Come on, Goose. We are not there yet.”

9. Be my Love in the Rain (complete, Top Gun, icemav, goosecarole)

It was raining outside. Or, more accurately, it was raining buckets, and the said buckets had the same capacity as the Amazon. Ice glanced at his watch again, surprised that it had only been five minutes since he last checked the time - feeling like a century already. The world was blurred and hazy out of the windshield, all the objects blending together like watercolours. 

10. Season of joy, Season of Love (WIP, Lord of the Ring, Faramir/Eowyn)

My dearest Faramir, Winter is approaching - I can feel it from the chill in the air and the water. This morning I woke up and found my feet freezing. I have to ask Holdwyn to add logs in the fireplace - can you believe it, my dear? I never feared coldness before.

No pressure tag: @abliafina-18782 @derpinathebrave (and anyone who is interested!!! Sorry my brain has abandoned me and I can't even think properly right now...)

#❤️ #icemav #iceman x maverick #tom iceman kazansky #pete maverick mitchell #hangster #jake hangman seresin #bradley rooster bradshaw #top gun #top gun 1986 #top gun: maverick #tagging game #first lines tagging game

[htbthomas]

20 Questions for Fic Writers

Tagged by @ghostcat3000!

1. How many works do you have on AO3?

268

2. What’s your total AO3 word count?

1,092,965

3. What fandoms do you write for?

I don't have a regular fandom right now, I mostly just write for exchanges, and usually one-offs. But AO3 lists Superman Returns (2006), Smallville, Community (TV), Forever (TV 2014) and Arrow (TV 2012) at the top of my dashboard - fandoms I was active in during the first 10 years of fic writing.

4. What are your top 5 fics by kudos?*

Heart-Shaped Bruise (Amazing Spider-Man movie, Peter/Flash, 17K words)

Mona Lisa Smile (Brooklyn Nine-Nine, Jake/Holt, 2k words)

Exclusive (The Story of the Century Remix) (Superman/Batman crossover, Clark/Bruce, 356 words)

Hero at Heart (Amazing Spider-Man movie, Peter/Flash, sequel to Heart-Shaped Bruise, 37k words)

Transform (Miraculous Ladybug, Adrien/Ladybug, 43k words)

*If FFN showed kudos or AO3 existed when I started, then Deja Vu (Superman Returns) would be in this list as well.

5. Do you respond to comments? Why or why not?

Yes. Pretty much within 1-2 days, though spammy comments get a pass.

6. What is the fic you wrote with the angstiest ending?

Um, wow, not sure. Maybe Hero at Heart? The reactions to it are pretty mixed and strong. It was meant to be bittersweet, but I definitely didn't thread the needle between the two as well as I'd hoped.

7. What’s the fic you wrote with the happiest ending?

99.9% of the rest! Couldn't choose, honestly.

8. Do you get hate on fics?

Hero at Heart doesn't really get hate, but yeah. Once I got a Goodreads-style review of Deja Vu on FFN that picked apart every choice they disagreed with.

9. Do you write smut? If so, what kind?

Sometimes. It's not my go to, but in longer fics I will often add it near the end. Just a few fics are devoted to it.

10. Do you write crossovers? What’s the craziest one you’ve written?

I have - about 11, according to my crossover tag. I think the craziest/most fun one is #AngelAss, a B99/Daredevil crossover.

11. Have you ever had a fic stolen?

As far as I know, no.

12. Have you ever had a fic translated?

I've had a few fics translated to Russian, but I didn't tag them so I can't remember which ones!

13. Have you ever co-written a fic before?

Yes, I co-wrote a few for Superman Returns and the Raimi Spider-Man films.

14. What’s your all-time favorite ship?

Clark/Lois wins for highest number of words devoted to them. I've written 31 fics in 5 different media adaptations.

15. What’s a WIP you want to finish but doubt you ever will?

The only WIP I have now is for Yuletide. The other semi-WIPs are abandoned, and tagged that way.

16. What are your writing strengths?

People say that my dialogue is very in-character!

17. What are your writing weaknesses?

Descriptions. I tend to move the plot and dialogue along and spend little time setting a scene.

18. Thoughts on writing dialogue in another language in fic?

I have not written any dialogue in another language.

19. First fandom you wrote for?

The Raimi Spider-Man films, specifically post-Spider-Man 2.

20. Favorite fic you’ve written?

Ugh, I could never choose!

- O -

Tagging @argylepiratewd @empressearwig @hondagirll @xenokattz @boasamishipper

#fic writer meme

[confused-as-all-hell]

Uhhh cym as movies,,, you’ve definitely done that before and you shall do it again

i really do adore you

please note: i associate you all with different movies with these. but these are your Vibes. the movies you'd thrive in.

@saltyfortunes as little women (2019)!!! i am going to cry if i think about this movie!! the love!! the artistry!! crying.

@thehalfbloodfreak as. it's not Vibes really but. revenge of the sith. not that you're a revenge sort of person, and i really love you very much, it's just. i watch it and miss you.

@investmentofmyheart as oceans 11. the heist. the levels of scheming. the wealth and the Money. the exasperation and genius.

@iambecomeyourvillain as now you see me. a heist, but chaotic and confused and what the hell and fuck is going on.

@twelve-kinds-of-trouble as vita and virgina. send help. fucking google it.

god what movies do i even watch.

@juxtaglomerularapparatus as the picture of dorian gray. the morality. the surety of righteousness. the maddening genius.

@the-sky-is-full-of-stars as fast and furious 7. i'm not sure if i can even explain this one. sorry about that.

@thebonecarver as. uh. brooklyn nine nine.

why don't i watch more movies. why can't i remember any of them.

OH @thebonecarver AS MALEFICENT

@wafflesandschemingfaces as brooklyn nine nine. <3

@moobrvoobl-moobmoob-oobmpoobroom as beauty and the beast. pick any version, any at all.

#dear god sorry about this #lyra please show mercy

[imhereforbrownies]

Hi this is my first time sending one of these so i am excited for it to be to you!

- your pronouns: she/her

- 27 years old, black hair, brown eyes, south Asian but born and raised in Canada

- your personality traits: quiet and observant, intuitive, thinking ahead always, "mom" friend, warm

- your hobbies: long walks, reading, memory journal (putting pictures in a journal and writing entries) l, will start singing along to music but has no sense of singing

- favourite shows: crash landing on you, tomorrow, moonlovers: scarlet hear ryeo, move to heaven, little women (basically any show that makes me cry), Brooklyn nine nine, modern family, friends

- songs: taste - stray kids, who you are, kang daniel, hot - svt, good to me - svt, getting closer - svt

- if you have any pets: none, I'm scared of animals and honestly want a partner that will understand and help me get over this fear I don't want to be but I can't help it

- your dreams and aspirations: want to live a normal life, not surrounded by worries, 3 kids and a loving husband

- zodiac sign/MBTI: Gemini, infj

- your aesthetic: nothing specific, varies depending on season and mood

- the group you'd like me to pick from: stray kids but bts is also fine, love both

Thank you!

I'm so so so happy you picked me to be your first one to send a request for ship to omggggg! I really hope I don't disappoint.

Also I love Brooklyn 99 and overall we have a lot in common :) so I'm glad to have you on my blog 💗

Now to your ship...

-

As I was reading through the information you sent me about yourself, I couldn't help but think how much you'd be compatible with Chan :)

(if I had to pick from BTS I'd probably choose Jin for you because I think you two would be a great match too btw 💗)

My reasoning behind it:

- you're INFJ and Gemini which goes along perfectly with Chan's Libra and ENFJ

- you also said you're the mom friend and I remember reading somewhere that Chan likes girls who have this vibe hihi

- I think Chan would definitely be very understanding of your fear of animals and would do his best to help you overcome it <3

- also I think your dreams might really match his own because Chan seems like the family oriented type of guy and he's soooo good with kids it's ruining my heart lol

- also taking a long walk with Chan as a date??? YES PLEASE

-

"You ready?"

You look up from your laptop, first episode of a drama you wanted to start watching already prepared as you awaited Chan's arrival.

The said boy finally made it into his room, bowl of popcorn ready in his hands as he crosses the little distance that kept him from you.

You give him a smile, scooting over a bit to make room for him in his bed and he grins, settling down next to you.

You and Chan love to spend time together like this, mainly because he didn't have enough time for it very often.

He covers both of you with a blanket, making sure you're comfortable before he lets you press play. You lean back, resting your head on his shoulder as you both get focused on the show.

"I missed you."

"I missed you too."

Your cheeks warm up at the quiet admission and you unintentionally press yourself into Chan's warm body even more.

You realize how good this feels, how natural. It always did with him. He was like your safe space, comforting, understanding and gentle. You hope your presence has at least a fraction of an effect on him that he has on you.

Stealing a glance at him, you find a small smile on Chan’s face, making you unintentionally mirror it.

“That’s silly,” he murmurs, commenting on the events of the episode and you don’t even bother looking at the screen as you hum, eyes fixed on him and his handsome face contoured under the purple neon lights of his room.

Sometimes you wonder whether this special thing you two have could ever become something more. You really really wish it could but you know how busy Chan can get and you’re not sure if he’s looking for a relationship in a first place. Maybe having a friend like you is enough for him.

Chan reached for the popcorn in the bowl on his lap, taking a glance at you only to find you already looking at him.

“What’s up?” He asks softly, making you snap out of whatever spell he casted on you and you advert your warm face to the screen.

“Nothing,” you murmur, making Chan chuckle.

“Didn’t seem like it,” he states and you bite your lower lip, not willing to surrender to his teasing as you force yourself to focus on the drama.

You wanted to watch it for so long so why are you letting it slip between your fingers now?

“I mean it though, Y/N. Are you okay?” He assures, his tone much more serious now and you look at him with a smile.

“Of course, I am. All good. Now let me watch the drama, will you?” You state, making him scoff.

“Your wish is my command,” he says with a smirk and you laugh a little, shaking your head at his antics.

“You’re the silly one here,” you murmur, using his previous comment against him, making him chuckle.

“Might be,” he replies before stuffing his mouth with the popcorn and letting you lean your head on his shoulder again, both of you falling into comfortable silence once again and this time even you are focusing on the drama fully.

And the thing between you? Whatever that is, as long as it’s here, you’re not the one to complain.

#skz #stray kids #fluff #skz fanfic #stray kids fluff #bang chan x reader #250 followers celebration #shipping hours

[sparklingsin]

73 questions

i was tagged by @justapurrcat lysm bb

on a scale of 1-10, how excited are you about life right now? about 5.

describe yourself in a hashtag? #tiredawkwardanddesprateforloveandafuckingbreak

if you could do a love scene with anyone, who would it be? probably tom.

if your life was a musical, what would the marquee say? "i wanna die but i want to eat a tteokpokki"

what’s one thing people don’t know about you? that i am a smut writer lol

what’s your wake up ritual? wake up feeling exhausted, ponder if i even need my job, check my phone and then go have a bath.

what’s your go to bed ritual? i wash my face with cold water, brush my teeth, drink water, maybe watch a movie or read r if I'm tired scroll through tumblr and sleep.

what’s your favorite time of day? the night, sunrise.

your go to for having a good laugh? watch an episode of brooklyn nine nine or watch daniel sloss.

dream country to visit? Greece.

what’s the biggest surprise you’ve ever had? all of my friends showing up for my birthday when I was 11.

heels or flats/sneakers? prefer sneakers but adore heels.

vintage or new? both.

who do you want to write your obituary? my loved ones.

style icon? probably zendaya and blake lively.

what are three things you cannot live without? my laptop, my loved ones, sweet food.

what’s one ingredient you put in everything? idk lol, salt? 💀

what 3 people living or dead would you want to make dinner for? I'm gonna go for the famous people route and pick d.b. cooper, j.f.k and one of the Alcatraz escapees - to know their story yes

what’s your biggest fear in life? being a failure.

window or aisle seat? window.

what’s your current tv obsession? stranger things/ heartstopper.

favorite app? tumblr.

secret talent? I am a decent dancer and singer lol

most adventurous thing you’ve ever done in your life? held a snake? drove through the night in pelting rain?

how would you define yourself in three words? artistic, calm, sad

favorite piece of clothing you own? my royal blue velvet gown

a must have clothing item that everyone should have? black leather/denim jacket

a superpower you would want? teleportation

what’s inspiring you in life right now? not much, ngl

best piece of advice you’ve received? "expect disappointment and you'll never be disappointed"

best advice you’d give your teenage self? everything you're going through will seem almost insignificant in the future.

a book everyone should read? ahh i haven't read in so long, and honestly i can't think of anything rn.

what would you like to be remembered for? my art and how much I loved my people :3

how do you define beauty? you'll find it where you want to.

what do you love most about your body? on most days i hate it, on days I don't - my height and lips

best way to take a rest/decompress? hot milk, paint something, a blanket, sleep

favorite place to view art? in a loved one's company

if your life was a song, what would the title be? "why am I like this?" by orla gartland

if you could master one instrument, what would it be? guitar

if you had a tattoo, where would it be? inside of my forearm of my hip bone.

dolphins or koalas? dolphins

what’s your spirit animal? an owl

best gift you’ve ever received? anything that was ever handmade by anyone. it means the world to me when people put in that extra effort

best gift you’ve given? i am known to give the best gifts, but personally, a set of hand painted postcards.

what’s your favorite board game? monopoly the hp version

what’s your favorite color? blue and black

least favorite color? pink

diamond or pearls? diamonds

drugstore makeup or designer? idk????? i haven't gotten into makeup yet

blow-dry or air-dry? blowdry

pilates or yoga? Yoga.

coffee or tea? neither

what’s the weirdest word in the english language? English as a whole is weird af.

dark chocolate or milk chocolate? milk.

stairs or elevators? stairs.

summer or winter? Winter.

you are stuck on an island, you can pick one food to eat forever without getting tired of it, what would you eat? burgers or any indian curry with roti <333

a dessert you don’t like? pie

a skill you’re working on mastering? being a better daughter

best thing to happen to you today? had my boss at work praise me a lot

worst thing to happen to you today? i didn't recieve my new laptop and i am pmsing

best compliment you’ve ever received? a visually impaired person told me i was beautiful.

favorite smell? rose, petrichor, old yellowed books

hugs or kisses? hugs

if you made a documentary, would it be about? probably true crime.

last piece of content you consumed that made you cry? final episode of stranger things vol 2 😀

lipstick or lipgloss? lipstick

sweet or savory? sweet

girl crush? every woman ever? ok but my tshwriternet girlies, blake lively, zendaya, gemma chan, lizzo, doja cat

how do you know you're in love? when they're the first person to cross your mind for anything

a song you can listen to on repeat? whatever I'm obsessed with at that moment

if you could switch lives with someone for a day, who would it be? a dog

what are you most excited for about this time in your life? not much really? making them bills for my parents?

tagging: @runesandmoons @rayisthehoe @ebureon @spideysbae @cutetomholland and whoever wants to do this!

#tagged #this was so much fun

[academy13]

Newsies has once again invaded my brain, so lo and behold I'm plotting out an AU... the gist so far is that Adric and Nyssa are siblings, in like the sense that her father took Adric in after his brother died (gonna go ahead and say their parents sent them out of country at a young age because I recently came across someone telling the story of their family history and their great grandfather was sent to the United States at 12 years old to avoid being conscripted by first the Ottoman Empire and then the British because of WWI. So in that vein, Adric and his brother were sent to NYC, with no other relatives with them or even living there.). Nyssa's dad does reasonably well, like not you know super wealthy, but they're definitely comfortable. I have to play around with why she and Adric wind up getting into selling newspapers, but since I can use Newsies as a general idea it'll probably be similar to Davey and Les.

Tegan actually gets similar as well, except it's just her and her aunt, and selling newspapers is a way for her to not only help with the house, but also have a measure of independence. Her aunt's death is gonna be a whole Thing, given that I'm giving her the leadership position of the Brooklyn Newsies (I say its Brooklyn because the whole damn Burrough is pretty no-nonsense and also I think it would be fun to have them be immigrants living there) and Turlogh will accidentally set her off because yeah, he's gonna be there too. He'll be a pain in the ass, but since he and Tegan are basically siblings in canon, it'll work out very well for my plans.

Five I haven't decided on yet, but I think he'll be from a family that's really well off, but he's just like mutually ignoring them (I can't remember what TV show this is from, but one character has a parent who puts money into their bank account and they both pretend they don't know where it's from. It'll be kinda like that.) and he sort of winds up adopting these morons like he does in canon and of course nonsense happens.

To continue the theme, and because I want to do some world building, Sarah Jane will be there as well. She'll be a reporter, but have been a newsie some years before the start of the story and thus have the respect of most of the cities newsies, not only for the reporting, but also because she was the leader of a different burrough's newsies. I don't have a timeline yet, but loose idea is that the 1899 strike depicted in Newsies is something she was involved in.

Nine will also be there, he'll have been a newsie but is working at the docks by the time the story rolls around. Will also have pull with newsies as well because of this, plus he's the most working class of the Doctor's. This man would look right at home at a dock or a ship yard. Anyways, he'll be hanging around Sarah a bit and basically be everyone's older brother, yes that includes Five.

I have no plans for Harry, Four, Rose, Mickey, or Jack as of yet, but I'm sure they'll wind up in there. For the most part the focus is gonna be Team Five, but that doesn't preclude other Doctors or companions showing up, depending on how this all develops. I only have a couple of scenes and some broad ideas.

[starsnheroes]

-Chinhands- Izzzzzzzzyyyy tell me about the time Clint realized he had caught the DEEP feelings for Peter.

mel has unlocked my secret superpower; i love writing /things/ for the besties, for the ship partners. love when im given permission to just write.

HE FELL IN LOVE AND NEVER GOT OUT.

If there was one thing that he had the capacity for, that he always had, was LOVE. From the dawn of time, he would fall and than fall. HEART NEVER RECOVERING. That his heart is scarred, battered, holding onto the first loves, the old loves, the feelings that never could be stamped out than killed.

SOME TIMES, HE WOULD THINK THAT HIS HEART SHOULD BURST. That it would fill to capacity and than leave him there with nothing else; having less than a heart to live by, to live with because all the love has taken up the space and drained out.

It was love that first led him astray, his heart pulling him aside and he almost did anything for her. WOULD STILL DO ANYTHING FOR HER. Even though he know he'd be poisoned, knew he'd be burned.

CAN'T LET A LOVE GO.

Clint could fall in love in nine days and see eternity in that, live in that love; when he was IN LOVE it became the air that he breathed; and than separation, and divorce. THAT LOVE LEFT ITS MARKS, still got sore on Valentine's Day, on October 12th. His calendar may as well less days in the for HOW MUCH LOVE, HOW MUCH HIS HEART held onto, that it would CONSUME DAYS with meaning to him.

Every time that he said he would give it up; give up on love and admit to his mistakes. HIS LUCK WAS BAD, ALL GOOD THINGS COME TO AN END. When would he ever learn that, yet it took only a little for him to give, for feeling to slip away from his grasp, through his fingers and became too big to contain, fill his heart up again and became the air.

Kiss Peter Parker started with desire; started with the quips and flirting; man to match his own tongue. IT WAS EASY. Running into each other in Avengers spaces, on the streets when the webbed hero strayed into Brooklyn or Clint's own work (the stuff he shouldn't be doing), or his work with the Thunderbolts took him all over the five boroughs. A FRIEND, LONG TIME AND DEAR.

That's a friendship that he should feed; did feed, and than there is that fact that he's attractive, admirable, and a dork. WITTY, BRAVE, AND CARING. His type to the T.

How things went on there; it was easy, made sense for Clint to fall, to pull the man aside (divorced now too, and a dad ⸺ KNEW THAT PAIN, AND HAD SOMETHING TO ENVY). It was easy, to grab Peter, push him against the door frame and kiss him.

FALL INTO BED. That was easy; and than it kept happening, and Clint knew what a mistake that'd take on his heart, and there's dates and Clint's already too far gone. BOYFRIEND.

What a fool he had been to think avoiding commitment was a problem; what a fool he had been with Jessica Drew when he knew what he felt, knew what she wanted but knew how he got, thought that he wouldn't be hurt again and than . . .

HE'S GOT A BOYFRIEND NOW, AND HE THINKS HE'S NEAT.

Clint likes him, adores him, and finds himself thinking about him; heart filling with Peter Parker, Spiderman, and making room for little Miss Mayday too. KNOWS THAT'S PETER'S NUMBER ONE, and how he understands that, knows that and that's what only gives him cause to adore him more, admire him more.

he can't say it first, because to say it first would absolutely admit to consuming him.

YET HE CAN'T DENY IT; not when Clint's laid out in a hospital bed. Doesn't even remember when he went down, almost vaguely doesn't remember why. ALL TOO HUMAN, FLUNG ACROSS A STREET, BUILDING FALLING. Thinks perhaps he tried to stand, get up, and ignore the mortal human part of him, he was a hero but there was nothing super about him; nothing that couldn't be achieved by others if they worked hard enough.

Awake, and there is he; the look in his eyes says it all, and than he remembers being awake. FOR A MOMENT. The other says it first, i love you, knows why he would have (look at where they were), and he was feeling it too. DOESN'T SAY IT. Takes his hand, kisses his hand, IT'S OKAY, and into surgery.

WEEKS AGO NOW. He may have said it back; because he can't let Peter dangle on the thread, alone in saying that feeling. It's not to say that he didn't mean it, each time that he had said it, it was meant; but perhaps, there is truth in saying, that it was said for the other first; to not be alone and know, let the other be happy in that love feeling.

The apartment is empty; he wakes up naked, with a bite mark seen in the mirror. A smile to his lips as he remembers the morning, Peter's whining because he had to get up, appointments and than he'd picking up Mayday for the weekend. It's not his Bed-Stuy apartment, to which that in and of itself, should tell how deeply he was already in.

Clint didn't stay at others' places, make homes there, unless he was serious, always to leave early or bring them back to his home (so that only they took up space there). WHEN HE STARTS TO WANT TO TAKE UP SPACE ELSEWHERE. Bed-Stuy, the apartment building, that was his home and it had space there for Peter, for Mayday too, and to share his home, to make adjustments that asked for Peter to be more permanent.

Deep. Deep. DOOMED.

His gear was donned, not the usual uniform that would put on to please the mayor's office, with which he did, at least, have his badge. Loved the way that others took insult to him calling the thunderbolts badge A BROOCH. He cared about this Thunderbolts, but there will always be some insult that this is what this team name had become.

He'd have to fit in his four hour work out regime later, or count going on patrol (sorry that he was late and hadn't checked in) as the work out. Skipping that because he let himself sleep in, mumbled on Peter's lips to turn off the alarm please. SPOILED. DOOMED. Slept in, and decides to leave a made sandwich in the fridge with a note for Peter that he'd catch him later, and give Mayday his love too.

It's on a call, checking where he was and America's pulling him through a portal, to join her in dealing with a problem all that way out in Staten Island, off of the Lower Bay. Clint's certain that he was going to be taking a swim in the Hudson, one way or another.

It's while pulling his bow string back, heels digging into the concrete, sending a shock arrow that his mind does wander to a though, to a feeling. THE FEELING. He had been in Peter Parker's apartment, naked because he had had a good night, and left his boyfriend (as they were using labels) food because he wants to make sure he's fed, a note along too which he thinks they were singlehandedly keeping the Post-It note company alive as everything went digital, and thinking about what Peter was probably doing now, out with little Miss Mayday strapped to his chest.

HE'S NOT DISTRACTED ON THE JOB, BY THE WAY. Although, his thoughts do get interrupted when he does up in the Hudson, and America is laughing at him like the twenty-something brat that she is, NOT HELPING HIM OUT, making him swim to a boat. SORRY, OFFICIAL THUNDERBOLTS BUISNESS, YOUR SHIP IS MINE NOW.

It's at that thought that he's imaging Peter and Mayday, out on a walk or at a park, the little girl tagging along with his boyfriend (tingle in his goddamn toes at the thought) on an errands run. Even if they did grab lunch, his sandwich will not go to waste, because Clint doesn't think he has witnessed the man not inhale any food placed in front of him. His sandwich not gone to waste.

Peter said it first, and he may have said it back; meant it back, but than HOW DID THE HEART SPEAK? In this moment, upon which, he was twisting his body around, taking a punch than giving back twice as hard; he knows that he hasn't really SAID IT. Not to the extent that his heart has been filled, hasn't spoken to the depth of love that he was feeling, knowing he was DOOMED (love always hurt; luck always ran out; good things always end ⸺⸻ nature of the bartont curse), that he was in. COMMITTED.

It's that moment that as he takes a breath, hears his name shouted, and feels the space that Peter takes up. He should say it, as much as he could about what was felt; realizing in this moment that he was deep in his feelings for Peter. Spiderdork shaped space in his chest, filled his lungs with air ⸻ DOOMED. ANOTHER LOVE TO HOLD. Never to fall out; even when this ends, but Clint believed in love, chances, and now he would be in this as long as he possibly could. Nothing lasts forever; but forbid him from ever wanting this relationship he had now to end.

No hope for him; no mercy ever on his heart. HE WAS IN LOVE.

❝ YOU COULD HAVE CAUGHT ME! ❞ He bitches at America when she's punching a portal back to Manhattan to the TBolts office, and he will complain to Helen if she has any extra work for him that will stray lateinto evening because he had to cook his boyfriend dinner.

HELEN, YOU GOTTA UNDERSTAND, HE'S BECOME CO-DEPENDENT. HE'LL STARVE WITHOUT ME.

Yeah, okay, Clint; SURE. That's what it was, is. Peter will starve, and not you even if you saw him last night.

#asks; clint barton #ic; clint barton #long post #crisispider #clint barton; crisispider #clint being dunked into water; HOLY FUCK IM IN DEEP FOR PETE #clint who has said it back cause peter said it so he repeated back. but realize BUT DOES HE KNOW? DOES HE LIKE /KNOW/ HAVE I SAID IT SAID I #ships; crisispider; familiarity is knowing every line and crack even in the dark (spiderhawk) #verse; clint barton; entangled to a loser like me (crisispider)

[dangerously-human]

Can't remember if you said you've watched the man from uncle

Not the show, but you know how much I love the movie!! I need to get more people to watch/obsess over that with me.

1. Farscape

2. Stargate Atlantis

3. Endeavour

4. Broadchurch

5. New Girl

6. Chuck

7. Continuum

8. Merlin

9. Community

10. Shadow and Bone

11. Stranger Things

12. Derry Girls

13. Brooklyn Nine-Nine

14. Psych

15. Firefly

16. (Sci-fi, loosely book-based)

17. MASH

18. (Sci-fi, bangin' soundtrack, interesting twist on found family)

19. (80s setting, only got one season)

20. (Sci-fi, think Firefly and keep going)

#personal #top 20 guesses

[marielle-heller]

I just said that I haven’t seen the doctor in at least 5 years (#brag) and I have never felt more like Jake Peralta

#i think it's been 5 since i even went to the walk-in so when was the last time i saw our bitchass family doctor? 6 years? 7? #i can't remember seeing him in high school even so that's like... 7 or 8 years #whatever number it is i am THRIVING #brooklyn nine nine #jake peralta

[amesantiagos]

B99 meme // ⤷ [1/6] cold opens ⇢ the vulture   “it was like having sex with a transformer”

#brooklyn nine nine #b99edit #b99 #charles boyle #b99gif #mine #okay so #i think the reason i find this cold open so funny is that i met A Charles once #we basically had this exact conversation around a campfire one night (you know.. minus the whole arrest thing) #a group of us are just sat there in the middle of a game of 'never have i ever' and #like he just randomly blurts out that he once had sex with a (can't remember the age but it was old) year old #and everyones just like what the f- man?! #and he explains that he met this woman through a guy he worked with (he was also early twenties at the time) #and by 'met through' he actually meant that this woman was his friends grandmother #yeah #everyones reaction was pretty much the same as this #we called him The Grand Motherfucker for the next few weeks #he took it surprisingly well #b99meme #b99meme*co

[lilac-den]

Since I have been tagged by unveiled-if (thank you, btw! :D)

Rules: tag 9 people you want to get to know better

Favourite Colour: Lilac. A lovely pastel-purple shade (hence why half of my blog's name had Lilac XD). Otherwise, it would be purple, pink or pastel colors. (I hate yellow.)

Currently reading: Rune Factory 4 Special, if it counts? If not, then sadly I haven't been reading as much :'| But I remember the one I stop midway would be Lawful Attraction by Nora Roberts (One of my fav authors and the one who made me wanna write in the first place).

Last song: Uuuuhh...红绝 (Hóng jué) from the donghua series Heaven's Official Blessing. It's adapted from the novels written by Mò Xiāng Tóng Xiù (墨香铜臭) (Again, another author I love - her writing has enlighten me quite a bit. . .And also made me write better angsts XD)

Last series: Golden Girls and/or Brooklyn Nine Nine.

Last movie: Encanto - it's better than what I expected.

Sweet, savoury or spicy: Sweet. I have a major sweet tooth and it helps me elevate my mind. I love Salty too but I think it makes me a bit more sluggish?

I can't handle spicy ;; Even curry is spicy to me, unless it's Japanese curry (best curry for those who aren't good with spicy stuff!)

Currently working on: Book 1 - The Voice of Silverking. 😭 Which is a very slow progress, much to my shame.

SO, THE PEOPLE WHO ARE GONNA BE TAGGED:

@intimidatingpuffinstudios, @mage-parivir, @leo-interactive-fiction, @seraphinitegames, @if-rabbithole, @thesecrimsonstrings-if, @bouncyballcitadel, @evertidings & @ofna

Enjoy! :3c

#meme chain #tagged

[erithel]

Hunk anon here. Fandom content is too good and the show content negatively impacted our memories so we just make our own content that would make sense.

Most of our content is Klance based and it’s normalized to see him as Lance or Keith’s soft teddy bear love counselor . He’s not meant to be center staged in those stories so people just characterize him in the easiest way possible. It’s hard to write him as a rude ass like he is in canon bc we don’t want anyone to be rude to Lance (anymore) or Keith and it’s hard to reconcile what we see in fanon with the reality of canon. Fanon Pidge is the same way. She’s a good hearted young girl who will apologize if she goes too far and tries to make an effort with her friends because this is the first friend group she had in her life. Canon Pidge? Hard pass.

I do wish fanon content explore more of the friend part of Klance’s rival to friends to lover relationship. Despite the fuckery with some of Keith’s s6-7 characterization (imo Keith is the most inconsistent character written on the show) Keith and Lance have a natural development as partners and you can actually see movement in the way their relationship changes. They could be one of the best duos if given a chance. Mainly cause theyre both on the same wavelength and brain length as each other haha.

But man, if my Hunk thoughts are explosive I don’t think anyone is ready for what I have to say about Shiro.

Fanon Hunk and fanon Pidge are amazing – and I hope they continue to be depicted in fanfics as they have been because that's the way it should be.

I love Hunk as the peacekeeper. I love to think of his character as the guy who would, unironically, be the one to say "seriously, can't we all just get along?"

I love Pidge as the one who noticed everything and uses that knowledge to play harmless pranks or to tease her friends. And I love, moreover, when she is portrayed as the one who will take your secret to the grave if she sees how serious it is.

I love that they are both portrayed in fanfiction as being so stubbornly and viciously loyal, the only time they become rude or inconsiderate is in defense of their friends.

Obviously, the still have their flaws, and those flaws should not be overlooked in good writing. But if they were accurately portrayed as their canon selves in fanfiction, it would be so bleak you might as well tag it "Major Character Death."

I agree about portraying friendship first. Not just for klance, but for literally all relationships. I remember a line from a book I read as a kid where the character said (something along the lines of) "I want to be with someone I like and love." I didn't understand it at the time, because I thought it was a given.

In reality, there is a huge distinction between these two, in terms of a relationship. That's why the fics that portray a klance friendship first – and an accurate and believable build towards romance – are the ones that stick with me. Because your partner should be your favorite person. They should be the one you want to spend time with – not just in a romantic or sexual setting. They should be the one you want to be with just because you like being around them, and you feel comfortable in their company. This is a huge reason why I don't ship a lot of heterosexual couples in movies and TV, because they often don't get the portrayal of friendship first. They go from the "hating" stage to the "love" stage with nothing in between. But that in between stage is literally the most important one, and it definitely should not be ignored. (And it's yet another thing that Brooklyn Nine-Nine gets right).

And...you brought up Shiro. People have commented on him before, so I'd guess there might be something that comes of that...

#asks #erithel's hot takes #hunk garrett #pidge gunderson #klance #canon vs fanon #character development #writing #vld

[buck-buck-boose]

I'll Love You 'Til I Die

Masterlist | Playlist

Summary: A Brooklyn schoolgirl fell in love with James Buchanan Barnes at the tender age of nine. With this love she made a vow, promising to love him until her very last breath.

Pairing: Bucky x OFC

Warnings: Language, violence

Word Count: 4.3k

Author's Note: I am... so sorry for taking so long. I was not expecting the start of the semester to be so hectic. I can't promise I'll go back to posting as regularly as during the summer, but I can promise that I'm not disappearing. I promise. I WILL SEE THIS FANFIC THROUGH EVEN IF IT KILLS ME. Thank you for the kind words and support while I've been MIA. Enjoy a chunky chapter.

Chapter Twenty-Four: Little Saint Lottie

October 27, 1943

“I’m worried about her, Betty.”

“I know, Gladys. I know.”

Lottie couldn’t remember the last time she’d gotten a full night’s rest. Days seemed to bleed into each other, with no slumber to distinguish today from tomorrow. It wasn’t long after arriving at Azzano that she realized that he wasn’t waiting for her. Bucky was gone. In his place, dozens of men awaited her arrival with sunken eyes and twitching lips that begged for relief, whether it be through a healing touch or a final blow to the head.

When the realization hit Lottie, there wasn’t much she could do besides throwing herself into her work; if she couldn’t help Bucky, the least she could do was help his brothers in arms. Although anxiety ate her up from the inside out, Lottie had confidence in Bucky’s abilities. He wouldn’t let himself die in some POW camp, he just wouldn’t. Because then who would take care of her and Steve? He’d fight tooth and nail to get back to them, she just knew it.

She threw herself into her work, rarely stopping long enough to have a proper conversation or a full meal; this bad habit of hers came to a halt, though, when she came upon a boisterous redhead in need of stitches. Lottie had been deep in thought while examining the gash above his forehead when the soldier cracked a grin and peered up at her without moving his head too much.

“Do I know you from somewhere?”

Lottie shook her head, “I’m afraid not, Private—” she glanced at his dog tags, “—O’Connor.”

“Ever done pinup? Maybe I know you from one of those cheesecakes we’ve got hanging up.” The man— more of a boy really, with his lanky frame and jovial smile —wiggled his eyebrows and ruined her diligent work of cleaning the blood from his wound.

The question left Lottie flustered; the idea of dozens of men gawking at her scantily clad figure left her feeling mortified, “Certainly not! I find that my talents are better suited for healing.”

O’Connor nodded and inspected her face carefully as she went to work on his gash once more. “I’ve got it!” Lottie nearly jumped away from him when he clapped his hands together, “You’re Little Saint Lottie, in the flesh!” The boy crowed his revelation, earning him glares from the other men recovering in the medic tent.

Lottie nearly dropped the needle that she’d been preparing to thread, “Excuse me?”

“Ah, it’s a funny story,” O’Connor chuckled, “Y’see, Sarge had this little photo he’d take everywhere. Always had it in his pocket, tucked in his helmet, you name it. Wouldn’t let the damn thing go. Anyway, we stole it out of his fatigues one day while he was cleaning up in some river ‘cause we wanted to see what the big deal was. Once we saw it was some dame—” Lottie shot him a look, “—lady, we started yanking his chain about it. He was just about as obsessed with that photo as my Ma is with her holy cards, so when he finally told us your name, we dubbed you ‘Little Saint Lottie,’ patron saint of the one hundred and seventh. That kinda pissed him off, but it’s not like you’re his girl, y’know? Though he sure acted like you were.”

Lottie was speechless. About halfway through his story, her mouth had dropped open and her hands had fallen to her lap. Here she was, looking dumb as an ox, while the soldier in front of her chuckled with childish glee.

“Me and the guys would even ask for your intercession whenever the chaplain came by to pray with us. Poor guy had no clue which saint we were talkin’ about. We tried to give it a place of honor in the tent but Sarge made us run laps when he found out we’d nicked it again.”

O’Connor nearly doubled over in laughter as he watched Lottie’s expression grow in horror. “Well as I’m sure Bucky— Sergeant Barnes has told you, I’m no saint. I’m just a nurse. Now hold still, unless you want these stitches to be more painful than they already are.” Before she could stop herself, the question came tumbling out of her mouth, “Speaking of Sergeant Barnes, do you know—” she fumbled with the needle as she made the first stitch, “—is he alright? Did you see him?” The soldier let out a hiss of pain, “Yeah, I got a glimpse of him while they were takin’ him away. He was battered but alright. There’s no man quite like Sarge, I know he’ll be back. He’d fight tooth and nail to get back. That’s what he said at least, ‘cause he always went on and on about how you needed him and all that. He sure talked about you an awful lot for a guy who hasn’t even asked you to go steady.”

Lottie’s breath hitched at the final comment, the mere idea of going steady with Bucky reducing her to a stuttering schoolgirl. She began to tie off his stitches, “We’ve been best friends for over a decade, it’s perfectly normal to care for each other deeply without bringing affection into it.”

O’Connor shrugged, which jostled her arm slightly, “I’ve never heard a guy talk about his best friend like that.”

Lottie didn’t respond. She gave his fully sutured wound one last glance, “Looks like you’re all set. Now don’t do anything stupid to get it infected.”

He gave her a crooked grin and wiggled his eyebrows, Lottie nearly scolded him but held her tongue, “As you wish, Saint Lottie.”

Lottie rolled her eyes and moved along to the next bed, where another soldier waited with a smile just as wide. It seemed that these men had become pleased as punch to know their patroness had come to grace them with her presence.

The USO’s visit to their camp took Lottie completely by surprise. She’d spent so much time floating from one medic tent to the next that she’d ended up completely out of the loop of the camp’s other goings-on. It wasn’t until she saw the fully-erected stage in the middle of camp that she realized. Her heart beat powerfully within her; with Steve here, she would be one step closer to finding Bucky. One step closer to bringing him home. “They say he’s gonna be here in a few hours,” Mary beamed, obviously giddy to see the Star-Spangled Man up close and in the flesh.

Lottie returned her smile, though it was weak. The weariness was starting to catch up to her, making her feel much older than a youthful twenty-three. Her stomach was in knots with anxiety; she needed to get to Steve as soon as possible.

Betty stood with them as they watched the hustle and bustle of preparations, “I’m pretty sure we’re the only ones looking forward to seeing Captain America. All these boys care about is seeing a bunch of girls dancing for them on stage, not some hunk of meat in a red, white, and blue suit.”

Nancy, who had just joined the conversation, scoffed, “It’s quite disappointing how little you think of these men and their patriotism.”

Gladys rolled her eyes, “They’re still men, Nancy. Scantily clad women or a guy singing about war bonds? They’re gonna prefer the women.”

Several hours later, Gladys was indeed proven right. Although he’d been driven off-stage with jeers and taunts, Lottie was waiting for him with a warm embrace.

“Hey, Lottie,” She could hear the smile in his voice, she felt its warm timbre as it surrounded her and reminded her of home.

“Good to see ya, Stevie.”

Steve pulled away from her and gazed around the camp, a grimace growing on his features, “Things don’t look to good around here.”

Lottie nodded, a twin grimace gracing her lips, “The hundred and seventh started out with two hundred men. Now they’ve only got fifty left. They’re barely holding on.”

Steve’s gaze shot to hers the moment she mentioned the one hundred and seventh, “Lottie that’s— this is Bucky’s—” The desperate look in his eyes made her own calm exterior begin to crack.

“Stevie, I know,” she whispered, a lump forming in her throat and tears pricking at her eyes, “I know, and I’m sorry. He’s not here. They— Those bastards took him, damn them!” For the first time since arriving at camp, Lottie cried. She sobbed and clung to Steve once more, feeling every bit like a scared little girl from days gone by.

Steve rested his hand against her back, “I’ll get him out, Lottie. He’s gotta be alive and I’ll get him out.”

She shook her head and wiped the hot tears from her cheeks, “No, Steve. You’re not going alone. I’m coming with you.”

“Lottie, you know I can’t put you in harm’s way like that—”

“Steve. I’m serious. What do you think I was doing that whole time I was with the SSR? Yes, we were making the serum, but they nearly trained us to death. I can shoot, I can use my knife. I can’t let you go without me.” Her voice was starting to crack, “We have to find Bucky together.”

There was silence between the two of them until Steve finally conceded, a wary gaze in his eyes, “Fine. But you need to be by my side the whole time.” Lottie nodded her chest warming with hope. “C’mon, we need to have a conversation with Colonel Philipps.”

The two of them jogged to his tent with their coats held above their heads to shield them from a sudden shower of rain. They entered the colonel’s tent, looking comical with their wet hair and heaving chests. Around them, soldiers and officials paced to and fro, examining maps or signing off various forms. If Lottie squinted, she could just barely make out the words. Letters of condolences; heartbreakingly clinical letters of regret for the losses of these sons, these brothers, these boys.

“Colonel Phillips,” Steve began, “Are you planning a rescue mission? For the surviving prisoners from the Battle of Azzano?”

The colonel looked back at him with a straight face, “Yeah, it’s called winning the war.”

Steve’s blond eyebrows furrowed, “But if you know where they are why not at least—”

“They’re thirty miles behind the lines. Through some of the most heavily fortified territory in Europe. We’d lose more men than we’d save, but I don’t expect you to understand that because you’re a chorus girl,” before Lottie could protest, he shot her a glance as well, “and you’re just a nurse.”

Steve’s gaze on Colonel Phillips was cool, “I think I understand just fine.”

The colonel pushed past them, “Well then understand it somewhere else. Now if I read the posters correctly, you’ve got someplace to be in thirty minutes.”

“Yes sir, I do.”

Steve grabbed Lottie’s hand and pulled her behind him, “C’mon, we’ve gotta get going. You go get changed.”

Lottie nodded; her medical uniform would impede this mission so she’d need to wear the fatigues that the government had finally issued to them. Her heart raced a mile a minute as she scrambled back to the nurse’s tent to change. She knew that Colonel Philipps would be terribly angry once he found out she’d shirked her night duties, but her loyalties to Bucky took precedence. The recovering soldiers were left in the capable hands of her peers. She swore as she nearly toppled over while yanking her boots on; it was rather hard to get dressed in such a hurry. By the time she was ready and had exited the tent, she was met with the somber faces of Agent Carter and Steve.

“Agent Carter, what are you doing?” For a moment, she feared that they’d already been caught, that the SSR was already putting an end to their mission.

The other woman pursed her lips, “I’m here to help.”

A mere half-hour later and they found themselves in the SSR’s plane, headed to Krausberg, where the POW camp was located. Howard Stark called out to them from the cockpit, “We should be able to drop you right at their doorstep.”

Fear was starting to creep into Lottie’s mind and burrowed itself deep within her gut. She heard the conversation continue all around her, but she was still processing the daunting mission before her. She and Steve up against Hydra. All alone. Even Bucky had struggled against them; he’d lost to them in the Battle of Azzano. Bucky. That’s what worried her most. It’s what filled her with the most fear. If she and Steve got through the Hydra camp safe and sound only to find that he was dead, Lottie wasn’t sure how she’d deal with it. She’d probably go mad, in all honesty. She’d end up in some institution, crying over lucky pennies and charcoal drawings while being molly-coddled by some woman in white. How tragic that would be.

Before her thoughts could become any darker, Lottie was jolted back to reality by the sound of bullets against metal. Steve grabbed his shield and her arm, urging her to join him by the plane’s exit.

Agent Carter shot up from her seat, “Get back here! We’re taking you all the way in!”

He turned to respond, “As soon as I’m clear, you turn this thing around and get the hell out of here!” “You can’t give me orders!”

A smile grew on his face, “The hell I can’t! I’m a captain!”

Steve shifted his goggles and nudged Lottie, “It’s go time. When you see me pull the chute out, you do the same.”

Lottie nodded with a quiet determination, and together, they jumped.

Entering the base was painstakingly quiet; once they’d snuck into a truck and eliminated the guards inside, Steve and Lottie were left to mouth words and offer silent support through unwavering gazes. Once they’d safely passed the gate of the base, they exited the truck and swiftly dealt with any opposition.

Steve led her across the base with caution, giving hand signals when it was safe to turn a corner and sprint across a patch of unobstructed space. The two of them traveled with the shadows, avoiding any spotlights that could catch them in the act. Lottie scarcely felt that she could breathe, it was as if one exhale would reveal their presence to the multitude of guards.

Once they entered the main building, the two of them found themselves in what seemed to be a factory. There were giant sheets of metal everywhere and huge bombs seemed to surround them. Amongst them all, Hydra soldiers transported other metal parts and containers of glowing blue material. That did not bode well with Lottie at all.

Lottie spotted some guards walking to a lower level, jangling keys in hand. “Steve, they might be guarding the prisoners.” Her whisper was barely audible, fear keeping her from speaking any louder.

“The blueprints said they were below the manufacturing level. C’mon.”

They followed the guards onto a walkway that had large circular grates that cut into the metal, each forming the ceiling of small cells that the poor prisoners had been separated into. Lottie and Steve knocked the guards out and stole their keys. The two dropped to the same level as the cells and began unlocking their doors.

One of the soldiers gazed at them through the bars of his cell, “Who are you supposed to be?”

Steve panted from stress, “I’m Captain America.” He gave Lottie an expectant look.

“I guess I’m Little Saint Lottie,” she responded somewhat sarcastically, referencing the retrospectively comical nickname that was developed by the one hundred and seventh.

Some of the men cracked grins, “So you’ve heard our prayers, huh?”

“Loud and clear. Now let’s get you out of here, yeah?”

She tried to ignore the growing horror inside of her upon the realization that none of these men had brilliant blue eyes. Not a dimpled chin in sight.

“Is there anybody else? I’m looking for a Sergeant James Barnes.” It seemed that the same horror was growing within Steve.

A man in a scarlet beret responded, his British accent prim and proper, “There’s an isolation ward in the factory, but no one’s ever come back from it.”

“Alright,” Steve nodded, “The tree line is northwest, 80 yards past the gate. Get out fast and give ‘em hell. We’ll meet you guys out in the clearing with anyone else we find.”

“Wait, you know what you’re doing?” “Yeah. I’ve knocked out Adolf Hitler over two hundred times.”

Lottie couldn’t help but stare at Steve in amazement. Gone was that awkward boy from Brooklyn. He was a man now, a leader who could do anything he put his mind to. He’d grown so much, not just physically, but in his character.

While the prisoners worked their way out of the base, Steve and Lottie began their search for the isolation wards. Lottie tried to ignore the sounds of explosions and men crying out from below them while they traveled across metal catwalks. She could only hope that the cries of pain were coming from Hydra soldiers.

After turning several corners, they found themselves in an old hallway, surrounded by brick on both sides. They hurried down the corridor out of desperation; they knew they were running out of time. Lottie stopped suddenly when she heard a groan. It was close. She drew her weapon and dragged Steve into the room, her heart stuttering and her palms slick with sweat.

“Sergeant. Three-two-five-five-seven…” That voice. Oh, how she knew that voice; she loved it so. Lottie heard it whenever she found the time to fall asleep. It crept into her sweetest dreams but tore her apart whenever it wiggled its way into her nightmares.

Bucky lay in front of them, strapped down to a table; his lips moved ever so slightly as he repeated the same phrase over and over again.

She rushed to his side alongside Steve and nearly let out a cry of happiness. Had the situation not been so dire, she would’ve descended upon him with a bone-crushing embrace and great big sobs of joy by that point.

Lottie whispered a quiet, “Bucky?” His eyes were glazed over and his mouth agape, “Is that— is that—”

“It’s us, Buck,” Steve nodded reassuringly as he tore at the straps across Bucky’s chest. Bucky looked up at him, taking his face in,

“Us?”

“Me and Lottie,” he nodded, tugging her closer so that the two of them could be in Bucky’s field of vision.

Tears welled up in her eyes as she looked at him, finally feeling whole again. She’d gotten her Brooklyn boys back. Bucky only looked back in confusion, “Little Lottie, she— she’s always been here. Always. Stayed with me the whole time.”

It was Lottie and Steve’s turn for confusion. Lottie brushed the hair back from his forehead to calm him down and ground him, “Bucky, I’ve been with the SSR this whole time. We’re here to rescue you.”

Steve nodded and dragged him off the table, “I thought you were dead.”

Bucky was obviously having a hard time processing everything that was happening, “I thought you were smaller.”

Lottie listened as the gunfire intensified, “Come on, we need to move.” Steve threw one of Bucky’s arms over his shoulder and the two fell into step behind her.

“What happened to you?” Bucky grunted out, pain etched into his voice.

“I joined the army.”

“Did it hurt?”

Steve was growing agitated, “A little.”

“Is it permanent?”

“So far.” Lottie huffed, “I’d sure hope so after all that effort I put into it.”

Bucky mustered out a befuddled, “Huh?”

“I helped to create the serum that made him like that.”

“So that’s why you left without saying a word.” Bucky’s tone was only slightly accusatory.

Lottie muttered a weak “Yeah.” They’d need to have a lengthier conversation once he wasn’t struggling to walk five yards.

As they crossed the catwalks to get towards the exit, the factory below them began to combust. Huge flames erupted from the metal contraptions and triggered explosions all around them. They hastily climbed the metal stairs to get to higher ground.

“Captain America, how exciting!” A thick German accent cut through the noise of explosions and gunfire. “I am a great fan of your films!” Before them stood two men; one was a short little fellow clad in a jacket and fedora. The other was tall and wore a distinguished Hydra uniform with its menacing crest emblazoned on his shoulder.

The taller of the two gave Captain America a once over as he strode across the catwalk that separated them, “So, Dr. Erskine managed it after all. Not exactly an improvement, but still, impressive.”

“You’ve got no idea,” Steve snarled and punched the man in the face. The swift blow caused a blotch of redness to appear near his eye and a sinking feeling of realization settled into Lottie’s stomach. This was Schmidt, the monster who used the serum prototype.

Before she could say anything, Schmidt struck back and left a dent in Steve’s shield, “Haven’t I?”

There was a brief scuffle before Schmidt backed off while the other man pulled a lever, pulling the catwalk apart. With a grin, Schmidt began pulling at the skin of his face and revealed fiery red muscle and tissue beneath, just as Lottie had seen when she first began experimenting with the formula. “You are deluded, Captain. You pretend to be a simple soldier, but in reality, you are just afraid to admit that we have left humanity behind. Unlike you, I embrace it proudly. Without fear!”

“Then how come you’re running?”

Steve never got an answer. Schmidt and the other man had already boarded an elevator and left them standing on the catwalk, nearly helpless.

Another explosion went off, cueing the trio to leave, “C’mon, let’s go. Up.” Lottie instructed the men to follow her, though she wasn’t too sure how to escape the factory. All she knew was that they needed to keep ascending the stairs.

When they reached the top of the stairs, they were faced with a metal beam that led to a catwalk with an exit. It was terrifyingly slim, with only enough room to place one foot in front of the other.

“Ladies first,” Bucky murmured, “but I’ll be right behind you.” Lottie felt sure of herself knowing that at least she wouldn’t have to cross on her own.

She took a tentative first step, testing how well it would hold her weight. Lottie tried not to look down at the fiery pit below while she carefully moved along the beam. It was a comfort to have Bucky behind her with his chest nearly pressed against her back as he followed her every step. Lottie had just scrambled over the railing of the catwalk when a jarring explosion shifted the beam’s position and sent it careening downwards. She gasped in horror as Bucky leaped to grab onto the catwalk.

“There’s gotta be a rope or something!”

Steve stared at the two of them from across the pit, “Just go! Get out of here!”

Bucky slammed his fist on the railing, desperation tearing at his voice, “No, not without you!”

“Steve, please! We can’t just leave you here!” Lottie pleaded. Steve couldn’t die, not like this.

With a look of determination, Steve backed up and made a running jump to clear the gap between the two catwalks. An explosion threatened to swallow him up, but he made it over safely, although a little worse for wear.

Lottie and Bucky could only stare in amazement. Steve nodded to them both, “Let’s get outta here.”

Several ladders and a whole lot of dodging later, the trio found themselves trudging towards the tree line.

It was silent amongst the three of them; painfully, dreadfully silent. She decided it was time to break the silence, “Bucky, I—”

“Look, Little Lottie, I know you’re sorry, alright? And I forgive you. Even though you lied to my face and left without saying goodbye, I had a whole lotta time to spend forgiving you.”

Now that the fear of being caught by Hydra soldiers had fully subsided, Lottie allowed herself to let out a sob of joy and nearly threw herself at Bucky. She almost apologized for the force of her embrace since it was likely to hurt a man who’d been captured by Hydra, but he didn’t show any sign of pain. She’d need to remember that for later.

“I missed you so much, Bucky. I really did,” Lottie nearly whimpered. Gosh, she sure sounded lovesick. “I missed you too, Little Lottie.” His embrace was sure and strong, and with it, a flood of memories came back to her. Nights on her fire escape. A birthday evening spent swing dancing. A lucky penny slipped into her hand. For the first time in months, Lottie finally felt whole. Her heart that had been splintered into shards of pain and hopelessness had finally begun to mend itself back together. While she found comfort in his arms and forgiveness, she knew there were still so many words left unsaid; words that he needed and deserved to hear.

“Yeah, I missed you guys too,” Steve muttered, obviously peeved that he was being left out of their moment.

“Aw, come on, Stevie,” Lottie grinned and pulled away from Bucky a little to allow Steve to join their hug.

“And if I remember correctly, Bucky, I think it’s actually Little Saint Lottie now,” she grinned. While she couldn’t see his face at the moment, she just knew it was turning a gorgeous shade of scarlet, based on the sputtering coming out of his mouth.

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