Archive of Our Own

Miles wakes up. 

It's a slow, painful sort of waking, head lolling forward, trying to inhale with a chest that won't expand all the way. He blinks, bleary. Everything swims before him, hazy gold-green-brown, and it thuds into his eyes like iron weights. 

He can't move. A shiver goes down his spine, revealing something hard behind and lines of fire winding around his chest, arms pinned and slumped back. Chains, not cords; he can feel the individual links, cold even through his suit, biting into his sides. He's facing the ground, weight heavy on his arm, and between unsteady blinks, the fine details of woodgrain swim into focus. 

Miles groans, low and strangled. Everything is sluggish but he manages to crane his head back, pressing into something firm but not solid—leather, almost—and look around. More wood, a distant grey-striped couch, a wall littered with hanging tools, windows blackened and pounded by rain. Thunder howls in the distance like a wolf.

Uncle Aaron stands before him. 

His chest seizes. He knows this, has been here again and again and again—stuck in the apartment, watching Uncle Aaron take off his mask, hearing him call Kingpin sir, invisible and shrinking and terrified. But then he wakes up. He always wakes up.

This doesn't feel like a dream. 

Uncle Aaron moves, eyes flashing in the dark like a cat, arm casting a long, trailing shadow as it lifts. Miles pushes his head further back, trying to see—but then the man touches something, just a twitch of his thumb, and there's a low, mechanical whine. The clatter of chains. 

The winch heaves Miles off the ground, and he knows exactly where he is.

The punching bag dips and sways as it drags him upright, chains tightening around his ribs; air flees from his chest as it's forced out, torn from his lips in a startled gasp, and then his feet skim the ground before they're lifted up, and he's dangling in the air. The winch settles with an uncaring click.  

This is wrong. 

"Uncle Aaron?" He asks. Or tries to ask; his tongue can't keep up and the name comes out soft and slurred, hazing away before he finishes properly. There's an ache, old and familiar, pounding behind his eyes. "What's–"

Lightning erupts—he chokes off a scream as he's flayed alive, skin peeling and nerves shrieking and everything aching and burning and howling. Writhes against the punching bag, kicking at the air, on fire–

Then it ends, and Miles slumps in the chains, saliva pooling on the back of his teeth. 

This isn't his dimension. This isn't his uncle.

This isn't his uncle.

Aaron doesn't say anything, not even to his glitching—just pulls off the wall and walks past. Miles can't reach the floor but he's still swaying from being lifted up, and he spins in slow, horrible fashion as he tries to keep watching. The grogginess has burned away and he's wary now, fire coursing through his veins alongside the ice. He keeps turning. 

"Uncle Aaron," he says, because he can't not, even seeing the man's grey-streaked beard and cold eyes and knowing this is not his uncle, it's still Uncle Aaron. "I– I'm Miles Morales. I'm not– this isn't my world. I don't know what's going on."

There's a flash of a beckoning cat, gold-blue, and finally the bag stops spinning; he's facing Aaron, standing over a table, fingers drumming on the wood. He reaches out, grabs something, and the breath hisses from Miles' lungs. 

He knows this. 

The gauntlet whirrs and activates, purple lighting up the claws; Miles bites back something altogether pathetic and looks away, keeps his eyes on Aaron, on the thundering rain beyond. It wasn't raining before, he thinks; when he went on the roof and saw the fires and the smoke and the mural. That means time has passed and he only has two days to save his father, to save his world—so he needs to move. To leave. He can't focus on anything else. 

"I come from another dimension." His voice is coming faster and faster, croaking in his throat but still understandable. "This– I didn't know, that's why I was there. I didn't mean it. Just–"

Aaron slips the gauntlet on. It rests, cold, impartial, over his hand. The claws click together as he flexes it. 

"You have to let me go." He tugs at his restraints, tries to get his hands free—but they're tight and double, triple, quadruple wrapped. The chains don't bite past his suit but they're rubbing his skin raw, frigid, and he knows that he can't break them in his current position but he keeps pulling helplessly. "I need to go home."

Aaron stares at him. His eyes are flat, uncaring, and there's grey streaked through his beard, through his face. He looks older. He looks dead. He isn't. 

"Please," he says, and his voice shudders and curls in his throat. "I– I know you're the Prowler and you have a job but I'm not it, just let me go, I won't tell anyone, I'm just trying to leave–"

The gauntlet punches through the bag an inch from his face. 

Miles swings back, tossing wildly, stuffing floating over his face in dainty little clumps—his heart echoes in his throat, breathing coming fast and hard and hot, eyes wide and fingers clutching desperately at the chains like they'll provide any comfort. The world lurches around him, back and forth, until Uncle Aaron— Aaron —catches the bag, fingers sinking into the hole he'd torn through its leather surface. He drags it closer until their eyes lock. Miles can see himself, shaking, into the man's flat stare. 

Aaron's eyes narrow. "I'm not."

Then he pushes the bag, lets it spin, and nudges it so Miles faces back the way he did. His gaze, unwillingly, slides up.

There's someone crouched overhead. 

Miles squints, world still woozy and twisting out of alignment, but he sees them, perched on the industrial bars and crossbeams, hand wrapped around the bar. They slip back with practiced ease, dropping to a crouch and straightening up, and there's the jagged cut of their cape, the stark lines of their mask, the white-blank of their eyes. 

But this isn't a dream, isn't a nightmare. It's reality, and Miles curls in on himself as they come closer. 

Aaron tosses the gauntlet. The Prowler slides it on with a mechanical whirr. 

Miles swallows. 

"Just trying to leave?" The voice modulator bites and growls at the air, echoing under the vinyl. They lope forward, all lanky movements and bristling power, and Aaron steps aside as they stop right before the bag. There's something predatory in the way they move, powercells curling around their limbs, reflecting off the tips of their claws; the utter lack of anything in their eyes. Just white. "And where would you be going?"

"Home," he whispers. 

The Prowler tilts their head to the side. "Home?"

Oh.

He needs to ask. If it isn't Uncle Aaron, but they're in the apartment, and they seem close, and there is communication, and maybe he already knows but he needs to know and he can't– "Who are you?"

A pause. The mask folds away, and he stares into his own face. 

"I'm Miles Morales."

There's smoke over his tongue.

He knew, he thinks. He knew when he saw Uncle Aaron, knew when he saw the unlaced Jordans, knew when he saw the mural. Maybe he knew all the way back on the train, when Miguel pinned him to the steel hull and called him a mistake—said that the spider wasn't supposed to bite him, that it had come from another universe. 

They're not the same. He has braids, more prominent cheekbones, a purr to his voice that wraps around his r's. 

He's the Prowler.

He's the Prowler.

Miles Morales— Morales, just Morales, they're different—steps closer. His head is cocked, braids tumbling over his ears, eyes cold and flat and impassive. 

"Watched your little stint at my place." The gauntlet flexes, biting at the air, claws curling in and out like a heartbeat. Miles can't look away. "Fucked up the name but got Mamá to think you were me. What was your goal?"

His goal? Miles doesn't have a goal. He barely knows what's happening. 

"I wasn't trying to impersonate you," he starts to say, and then wants to laugh, just a little—because god, yeah, maybe he was. He had hugged Uncle Aaron and imagined, for a brief, painful moment, what it would be like to stay; to live in a world with his uncle once more, grab chicken tikka on the roof and bump shoulders and tag hidden corridors of Brooklyn. Maybe it would have been nice. 

But in two days, his father dies, and that is not a price Miles will ever, ever pay. 

"I didn't know," he says instead. "I wasn't– I'm just trying to get home, I wasn't trying to take over your life–"

Morales' fist cracks across his nose. 

Miles flies backward, punching bag swinging with the motion, heart in his throat—with the gauntlet, he hits a hell of a lot harder than a normal person, and there's a burning fire that splits his face. Iron pours over his lips. He gasps, feet scrambling for a grip, and Morales swings out again and catches the bag, dragging him to a stop until they're locked together. 

There's a fleck of blood under his left eye. 

"Try again," Morales says. 

"That's the truth," he whispers, and there's panic now, gnawing away at the Spiderman calm until he's shivering, caught by these chains like a pinned butterfly. "I'm not– this isn't my universe. I'm not from here. I need to get home."

"Funny," Morales says, voice impassive and curling with an accent Miles can hear Rio in. "Alternate universe doesn't explain why you're here. Doesn't explain much of anything, actually. Especially how you knew where I live."

"You're me. Or– or I'm you. Both."

Morales laughs. It's a brisk, cruel sound. "Not a thought in that head of yours, is there?"

It's painfully true. They skip and skitter in his skull, latching onto each other in a jumble of panic and connective fear. He's running out of time. 

"In two days," he tries, because he needs to try, because Spiderman always tries. "In two days, my dad dies. I need to save him. You need to let me go."

This punch strikes against his cheekbones and when he goes sailing back, Morales doesn't catch him. The bag swings as Miles tries to spit out the blood draining from his nose into his mouth, face awash in low, throbbing pain. Nausea croons in the back of his skull. 

Morales is smiling, but it's a vicious kind of smile, all bared teeth and slitted eyes. "Not that good of a copy," he says, low and sharp. "My dad's already dead."

"He knew enough to find your home and pretend to be you," Aaron says, voice rumbling. "And whatever these are, I doubt they're friendly."

Miles swivels and bucks, winched too high to try and stabilize—but eventually he swings around enough to catch what Aaron is pointing to, balanced on the tip of his finger. Two red-blue bracelets, prongs from the front. His webslingers. 

They left him in his suit, tattered and torn as it is by Miguel's claws, but the jacket is gone, he's realizing, and his phone with it. He can't see them as he swings around, blood hazing over his eyes, but he knows his Aaron had multiple rooms in his apartment, and this one looks the same, for all it's cloaked in shadows. His stuff must be elsewhere. 

No day pass either, which becomes mockingly apparent as he glitches again with a hoarse scream.

When he recovers, wheezing against the chains, they're watching him. Agony laces through his cells, woven in like his DNA, digging vicious claws in its aftershocks until he's shaking, pleading for his lungs to inhale as they try to collapse. It feels like dying. 

"That ain't normal," Aaron points out, almost conversationally.

Morales narrows his eyes, suit whirring in gleams of purple-black as he stalks forward. "Could be Electro's work," he says, contemplative. "Or Doc Ock—two weeks ago, the medical run. Thought I cleaned up enough but they could've found some blood of mine to take. Tried to recreate me and ended up with a faulty clone."

"Not a copy," he says, voice tight and taut. "I'm from another dimension. This– this isn't my world. Please, you have to let me go."

The third hit is almost expected, and he hates it. 

Stars pop behind his eyes, white-grey-white. The world swims and his head lolls, drifting down—down at the ground where a tarp lays, situated under the punching bag, protecting the wooden panels of the floor. Scarlet drips from his nose and splatters over the green-grey. 

Oh. They planned this, didn't they? And it's not their first time. They're moving with familiar, coordinated steps, vinyl loud where the rain and thunder aren't enough, the stench of disinfectant somewhere in the corner. There's no TV here, for all he recognizes the other elements as Uncle Aaron's place; a couch in the corner, shelves covered in nicknacks, but everything is cleared from the center, punching bag swinging free with nothing around. Maybe to make it easier to clean up, as if they have to do that frequently, like it's normal.

He knew—knows—for Uncle Aaron, knew that the Prowler was someone he could wrap himself in like a cloak as he ran to Kingpin's orders, but– but he'd hoped. Miles should be good. He's always good.

Morales steps closer. Grabs the chain of the punching bag. Pulls it closer. 

There's blood in his nose that makes his voice come out slow, choked. "You need to let me go," he whispers. "I need to go home."

Morales tilts his head to the side. "And why would I do that?"

Miles stares at himself, at brown eyes glassy and cold and uncaring. Because I would have, he wants to say. Because I would have, and I need to know that you will, because if you don't then I'm scared that I wouldn't have, either.

He can't.

"You're going to tell me why," Morales says, slow, dangerous, growling. His braids swing forward as he leans in, clawed gauntlet almost gentle as it taps on Miles' chest. "You're going to tell me who you work for, how you figured out who I am, and why you tried to replace me. And if you tell me soon enough, you might even survive it."

Miles can't help how he leans back, how the punching bag dips and sways as he tries to get away; but he can't. The chains bite into his chest. "I didn't," he whispers. "I wasn't trying to replace you. I'm just trying to go home."

Liar, Morales' eyes say. And then he breaks Miles' ribs. 

-

Miles spits crimson. His lip bleeds sluggishly, dripping over his chin and seeping into the lycra of his suit. He's shivering.

It's just Aaron now, squeezing Morales' shoulder before the Prowler slipped out of the room, giving a brief glimpse of a dark hallway shadowed by looming stairs before the door shuts and vinyl fills the empty air. Miles doesn't know where he's gone—can barely string together the thought to wonder why —and just refocuses on his uncle. 

Not his uncle. This isn't his universe. This isn't his uncle.

It's getting hard to remember that. 

Sparks singe and fall from his fingers—there are rips in his suit where they emerge, distant and dim like scattered rain, but he needs energy to produce them. Considering he's chained to a punching bag with nothing to drain, it'll have to be his own energy, and with the faint, horrible humour he can still find, Miles acknowledges he's running well past empty. Even just making the sparks has his head sag back. As much as it can when Aaron is there, waiting, wrapping a new layer of boxer's tape around his fists with those same cold, impassive eyes. 

He just keeps glitching.

It tears anew every time, never something he can adjust to, always sharp and vicious and cruel. He tries to keep from shouting, just because they tend to shut him up when he makes enough noise the vinyl and the storm can't cover him, but he can't help it, and he bites through his tongue, and then he's gagging. It keeps going. It keeps happening.

"You an experiment?" Aaron asks, flicking saliva off his knuckles from where he'd split Miles' lip. "Escaped from your creators or what have you?"

Miles exhales, quiet, dragging his eyes up from the ground. They've been trying to figure out what he is, which member of this Cartel he's working for, why he's targeting the Prowler. This world's real messed up, he's figuring out—crime in the streets, curfews just to keep the death count down, fire and smoke and explosions. Some of the Cartel's names are familiar—Doc Ock, Vulture—but he doesn't know them. Not the ones here. He can't offer any proof. 

"No," he manages. "No one created me. I don't know who the Cartel is."

That gets a surprised bark of a laugh, Aaron's eyebrows flying up. "That's a fun angle." He leans back, low, amused. "Unless you don't call them the Cartel. Sir a little more familiar?"

You know me, sir. I don't ever quit.

Miles closes his eyes. 

This isn't his uncle. This isn't his uncle. 

"Alternate universe," he whispers. "I'm not a villain. I'm trying to save my dad."

He doesn't know what they want from him. Whether they want him to be from the Cartel, an experiment, a clone—what it would mean if he was. Too late to just release him; he's seen their faces, knows where they live. Miles has seen enough villains to know where this could go, but–

But it's Miles Morales, and it's Uncle Aaron. They wouldn't. They wouldn't.

He has two days. Two miserable, useless days to save his father, and he was already panicking over that timeframe when he was standing in the lab, surrounded by hundreds of spiderfolk who he thought would help, portals available and with his friends. He has none of that. He's chained to a punching bag. 

But he has two days, and instead of anything else, now he only has words. Similarly miserable, useless words—because, well. He has a lot of words. It's just that none of them matter because they don't believe him.

"Let me go home," he pleads, quiet.

Aaron finishes tying his boxer's tape. Checks the tightness. Turns to face him. 

Miles closes his eyes long before the hit lands. 

-

"This isn't Scorpion's doing," Morales muses. "Doesn't have a brain cell to call his own."

Miles wheezes. The chains make it hard to inhale fully where the broken ribs don't, and he can feel himself trying to heal, energy pouring through his veins in what scraps remain, but they're not getting far enough. Aaron is gone now, a new vinyl playing, and the world keeps spinning.

"Electro could explain your lightshow, but not how you're flesh and blood. And he sticks to frying things himself, not building shit." Morales taps a claw on his chin, purple light curling under his cheekbones. "Besides, he's about the money, not impersonation."

Miles sags back. The name isn't familiar, though he's fought plenty of villains with electricity powers. No one with the name Electro. Only a few members of the Cartel are in his world, which doesn't make sense—did Earth-1610's original Spiderman already defeat them? Should they already be gone? His head aches.

"I don't know who that is," he manages.

Miles has never hated his own laugh before, and he refuses to start now, but he hears it and something skips in his chest, tight and panicked.

"Funny," Morales says, and it isn't, and it isn't.

Miles needs to escape.

He'd tried today—or maybe yesterday, it's hard to tell, everything is slow and fuzzy and confusing. They're not letting him sleep. Whenever one of them finishes, another shows up, and it continues on and on and on. Is that an interrogation tactic? Probably. God. He's being interrogated. Tortured. And he doesn't have time to gather energy for venom blasts or heal enough to escape or even think because they won't let him sleep. 

But he'd tried, waiting for that switch between the two of them, lurched off the punching bag with muscles straining—had snapped one of the chains, links scattering across the apartment, but then his ribs had flared and his exhaustion loomed and he'd sagged back again. 

Morales had laughed.

He needs to escape.

"It's my dad," Miles says. "Please. I need to save him. Wouldn't you save your dad–"

Morales' eyes go flat and grey.

His vision whites out as the gauntlet catches him across the face. Blood explodes as the claws catch over his forehead, cut curls of hair dusting over the bridge of his nose, dragging back as he bobs and swings through the air. Iron pours, heavy and dark, into his mouth. 

"Don't talk about him," Morales says, lifeless again.

Miles curls around the chains and tries to keep breathing. 

-

Aaron talks more, curious and contemplative. It makes it worse.

"Doesn't make sense, what you did," he says, like he's opening the door for Miles to explain what his actual intentions were. "We ain't the big guys 'round here, not by a long shot. Training someone up as well as you takes a hell of a lot more effort than a lone gunman."

Was that a compliment? It might've been. Miles, inhaling through a nose he thinks is broken, tries to focus on it. The edges of his vision blur into midnight unsteadiness.

Aaron snaps by his ear, and it's loud and it's shrill and it hurts—it's just a regular snap with a regular hand but his head aches and the world spins and it echoes through his skull like a gunshot. He swims back into awareness, back onto the words peppering around him.

"I'm not a villain." I'm not like you. "I'm a hero."

He pauses. "You a hero?"

Miles pushes his head back. "I am."

Aaron hums. He's wearing the gauntlet, smaller than the one Miles remembers his version having, and he clicks the claws together with his brows furrowed. He looks at him, at his suit, at the spider perched on his chest. 

"Hero, huh." Aaron walks to the front of the bag. "Must be nice."

Miles closes his eyes. It was.

-

Morales pulls back. His eyes are slits. There's blood over his cheek from when he brushed one of his braids back before he'd wiped his gauntlets off, and it curls beneath his eyes. His mouth is moving.

The rain stopped, Miles thinks. They keep him facing away from the window with the lights off so he can't tell how long it's been, but the thunder has gone away, only the vinyl left. But it can't have been two days, not yet.

He still has time.

He has to still have time.

-

"I mourned you," he says, on one of his brief, fleeting, escapable breaks. 

Aaron pauses, halfway through cleaning scarlet off his knuckles. He's got a whole system—takes a cloth, dips it in disinfectant, wipes down his hands. Dumps it in a trashbag suspended open on two hooks, careful not to touch it himself without gloves. There's the tang of iron in the air but the bag is a thick one, large enough to fit the tarp in, and when it's closed it'll block off all smells. With the vinyl churring and simpering, no one can hear him, and the blood will go missing. 

"Had a funeral. Mural." He breaks off in a cough. It echoes wetly up his throat. "Was easier. To get over everything when you were dead."

In the grave, he wasn't the Prowler—he was just Aaron Davis, uncle, brother, friend. He didn't have to be anything more, anything else. Miles can't ask questions to a dead man and expect answers, so those questions don't matter anymore. Water under the bridge.

"You tried to kill me," he says. He should stop talking. He needs to converse his strength, figure out how to escape, try to just keep breathing. He continues. "Three times, I think? I try not to remember. You didn't know it was me, though."

Aaron stiffens at that. The cloth flutters into the trashbag, disappearing beneath the grey. He's not looking directly at Miles, jaw set tightly. 

"Would you kill a kid?" Miles asks. He should probably be scared, curled over broken ribs and shuddering body and bloodstained tarp, but instead there's just a vague, pressing curiosity—are their worlds that different? Or is that fact the same across both?

Would his Uncle Aaron have killed him, if he had the chance? If Miles hadn't gotten his mask off?

He thinks he knows the answer. He doesn't want to.

"I don't think you work for Kingpin here," he says, and catches how Aaron stiffens, knuckles whitening where they curl into fists. "Doesn't–" another hack of his lungs, dark and pressing. "Doesn't fit. You guys haven't mentioned him. Is he dead?"

There's no response. Just the croon of the vinyl, a song he's heard before but with a few notes changed, lyrics switched out even if the tune is the same—he wonders, faintly, why that changed. Whether he could root away at history and find the moment when Earth-1610 and Earth-42 diverged.

Why the Miles Morales in this world isn't him.

"Just tell us what you're here for, kid," Aaron says, quiet. He lets the bag close and faces him, and there's something almost sad in his eyes, not regret, but what could almost be grief. "And this can stop."

Miles laughs a little. It makes his broken ribs jostle in his chest. "I did," he whispers. "You don't believe me."

"Your story ain't exactly believable."

"I know." God how he knows—it's a fantasy, science fiction at best, and there's no proof. "But it's all I have."

-

Miles keeps telling them, keeps trying, but he's not giving the answers they want and Morales is getting pissed. 

The punching bag jerks and lurches back, swinging, and Miles can only groan. Nothing left in his stomach by this point and he's grateful for that, in the weary, sardonic way that aches to think about. But he can't think about it. Just about escape. Always escape.

Morales stalks around him, shaking out his leg from the kick. His eyes are narrowed and he's fiercer today—yesterday, tomorrow, whenever this is—talking more and barely waiting for a response. Angrier.

"Whoever your boss is, they won't last," Morales hisses. "Don't know why they sent you instead of an actual hitman, but if they think you can threaten me into backing down, I don't give a shit. I'll kill you and keep my mamá safe at the same time."

Something about that rises past the murk in his mind. Miles frowns, focuses in. "You're– fighting to get rid of the Cartel? Not as a rival?"

Morales snarls more than speaks. "No shit I'm fighting to remove the Cartel. Your fucking bosses are tearing this city to pieces over their territorial spats, and if you're not with them, you're against them. It's been only me 'n' Uncle Aaron keeping you bastards out of this neighborhood."

Oh.

He's a hero. 

The thought hits him. He's curled over broken ribs, blinking past blood in his eyes, bile on the back of his teeth. Miles Morales stands before him, scarlet on the ends of his claws, winch clicking higher as the punching bag sags, and he's a hero.

In Earth-42, he's a hero. 

But what hero means has changed. 

Morales keeps staring at him, all jagged edges and bared teeth. He's got a spraypainted logo and Jordans that make him look taller than he is. 

"I think it was going to bite you," Miles mumbles, drooling around a mouthful of blood. It drips, magma-slow, over his chest. "Suppos'd to give you powers instead. Help you fight them."

Morales narrows his eyes to slits. "Excuse me?"

"Sorry," he offers, in that hollow way of how he's sorry when he touches up the mural streaked by rain. "Maybe– maybe they wouldn't exist, if you had been bit. Maybe this would be easier."

The gauntlet snaps out and catches him by the neck, pinning his head back against the bag. He feels blood mat in his hair. "You're saying you could defeat them where I can't?"

Miles wants to laugh, just a little. It comes out in a croak, windpipe pressed flat and fluttering against the leather. He doesn't feel like he can do much of anything, here. 

"I'm sorry," he says again. Morales snarls and crushes his throat. 

-

Aaron is pulling back, knuckles white-scarlet-brown, when the door clatters. They both pause, Aaron letting his fist drift to his side and Miles releasing a panicked, shallow breath, and look over—in the spiraling darkness of the apartment, vinyl clicking ever on, the door looms, shakes, and crashes open.

Morales storms in, fanged and furious, and there's no pretense of questions before he slams his gauntleted fist into Miles' gut. 

He rockets back with a hollow groan, retching on blood that splatters the back of his teeth. That released breath makes him wheeze, clutching for oxygen, and of course that's when the glitch seizes him—lights and colours and shapes explode through him, electric and terrifying and always, always vicious. He writhes against the chains with a hoarse bark of pain.

When he recovers, or at least can see, Morales is stalking back and forth like a caged tiger, jacket thrown haphazardly over his Prowler suit and fangs bared. 

"Easy," Aaron murmurs, hand on his shoulder—not holding him back, because they've both shown themselves as plenty eager and willing to beat the shit out of Miles, but comforting. Helping him ground himself. 

He doesn't look grounded. 

"Your fucking boss isn't letting up," Morales seethes, eyes white-rimmed with rage. "Got a coupla spotters coming by the flat asking for me. Was that your doing? Trying to escape?"

Miles, for all that he stays swinging and choking and gasping for breath, goes very still.

No.

"Who?" Miles whispers. 

Morales goes to say something but Aaron squeezes his shoulder, jerking his chin forward. Whatever is on Miles' face must give him away because they both pause, watching him. 

"Who?" He asks again, and his voice trembles. 

Morales frowns, but there's something sharp in his eyes. "White girl. Undercut. Guy with a baby. Ringing any bells?"

They're ringing bells. Very loud, very frightening bells—because if Gwen and Peter are here, in this universe, that means they've found him, and if they've found him that means Miguel has, and Miles doesn't know how long it's been but it has to be less than two days which means that he still has time to save his dad because there has to be enough time but if they're here than they could be stopping him and keeping him from his home and that means he can't save his dad and he'll have to–

Vaguely, he's aware that he's not breathing, but it's a faint, distant realization. Morales' face swims, brown-purple-black, Aaron behind. The chains snake around him, arms tight to his side, and he's shaking, shuddering, fragile as a foal. 

Someone is in front of him, and his danger sense shrieks.

"Breathe, dumbass," Morales barks. He's leaning in, jagged edges, eyes huge in the darkness.

"Fuck 'ou," Miles gasps out, rasping, choking on air and sobs and nothing. 

"Puñeta– Uncle Aaron, get over here–" then there are hands clasping around his shoulders, pushing him against a punching bag that's suddenly braced from behind, and the pressure loosens the chains around his chest. He inhales, strangled, but spots keep fireworking over his eyes and every breath is empty and hollow.

The punching bag pushes back. "Miles," Aaron barks, but it's not– he's not his uncle. This isn't his dimension. This isn't his world. Miguel knows he's here and he's going to find him, drag him back, pin him in that ruby-red cage until he rots and his father dies and it's all his fault–

"Motherfucker– are you really going to make me–"

Morales' face appears before him, mask folded around his ears and jaw set. He snaps twice until Miles focuses blearily in, panting and wild, braids swimming in and out of his rapidly-disappearing field of vision. His heart crashes against the chains. "Match my goddamn breathing."

There's a hand on his chest, fingers cupping in, and it lifts away and returns with an odd repetition. Miles blinks at it, wonders why it's moving like that, and there's the odd connection that it leaves when he inhales and comes back when he exhales, just slower. Miguel is still going to find him and his father is still going to die and it is still going to be his fault but he drags in a shuddering breath, watches the hand drift away, and summons it back with a cough.

His thoughts reconnect sluggishly.

Oh. Panic attack. His next breath emerges in a wheeze, some distant cousin to a laugh, and his ribs ache and pull warningly. God. Tied to a punching bag and beaten by his dead uncle and remorseless twin, and it takes the mere mention of Gwen and Peter for him to truly panic. He's pathetic.

But he's useless panicking, so he drags his breathing back under control, ignoring Morales' hand and counting to shaky five in his head. The black doesn't retreat from his vision but it stops actively growing, fluttering around the edges. There's blood in his mouth, tongue cut by vicious teeth, and he can't muster the strength to spit it out. 

The punching bag sags back, chains pulling taut as both Morales and Aaron step away, removing the temporary comfort. Scarlet is on Morales' hands from where he grabbed his shoulders. 

They're watching him.

"You know them," Morales says, eyes clever-sharp. "Not too friendly, then."

Miles kind of wants to laugh. He really does. Maybe he should. But it isn't funny, that's the problem—nothing about this situation is funny. 

Friendly once, yeah. Look where that got him. "Not anymore," he manages, hoarse and croaking. "Trying to keep me from going home. You guys'd get along."

Morales narrows his eyes. 

But whatever he's going to say fuzzes out as Miles wobbles, air hissing through his teeth. His feet skim the ground but the sensation echoes through a tunnel, only the reverberations reaching him, and he lets himself fall. 

They don't stop him, this time. His head lolls forward, blood pooling over his lips, and he welcomes the black that crawls over his vision until it swallows him whole.

-

Miles Morales stares at his doppelgänger. 

He's unconscious, sagging in the chains, head spilling forward and feet limp below. The punching bag keeps him upright but unwillingly, and Miles knows from unfortunate experience it's probably hell on his broken ribs and bruises. For all the idiot splutters through explanations with a ridiculous fade and the stupidest onesie Miles has ever seen, he'd held himself together better than they were hoping for. Kept to the same story, didn't bite at any hooks they left dangling, professed innocence with blood-stained teeth. 

Not that he had believed him. Far too easy to toss out bullshit reasons like alternate universes to avoid telling the truth, especially with freak scientists like Doc Ock on the loose. Clones or cyborgs would be the least bizarre thing to happen in this city; the former explains the DNA match, and the latter explains the weirdass glitching thing. That made sense. So then Miles just had to figure out why one of the Cartel did this roundabout way of trying to take him down instead of just fighting him on the streets. 

Well. The why was because they were fucking cowards. 

But that didn't explain what the plan was. 

So he had cast away thoughts of spiraling multiverses and alternate selves and kept trying, for two long, exhausting days, to find evidence of why—of how they had known who he was and managed to make a copy, why he had gone to his mamá, why he had been so close yet so far. 

But now he doesn't know. 

Because this Miles, this Other-Miles, certainly seems panicked. Doesn't know what's going on, doesn't react to mentions of the Cartel beyond fuzzy confusion, doesn't mention any motives or blackmail or reasoning. Knew who both of them were but had the details wrong, like thinking Uncle Aaron was dead, and. 

And.

Two days, he had said, again and again and again. In two days, my dad dies. You need to let me go.

Miles Morales' dad is dead. Has been for a year and a half. Any copy of his should know that, should have that fact written over their core like it's who they are, because it is—he is who he is because of Jefferson Morales, and he became who he did in his absence. Things might have been different, otherwise.

But they didn't, and they aren't, and there's a double suspended from Aaron's punching bag. 

They should have kept him awake. Kept hunting for answers. Instead they let him pass out, and he hangs there, swinging softly from his chained embrace. 

Miles stares at him. He looks like Miles Morales. He looks stupid. He looks wrong. 

He looks hurt, mostly. 

It's dark in Aaron's flat, keeps them from being too visible to anyone searching outside, keeps them safe from anyone who would notice the gleaming purple-black suit as it charges, but there are bruises all over Other-Miles' face, littered like constellations. If constellations were made of splotchy red-yellow stars ringed in darker blacks. Scarlet, leaking from his nose and mouth and forehead, splattering down his stupid suit and over the tarp Aaron spread in preparation. They did their best to avoid cutting him, for all he bled in other ways, because blood loss tends to make people stupid instead of more willing to talk—but there was dried crimson on the sides of his onesie when they brought him in, and tears in the fabric that match the scars beneath. Fucking ruined Miles' jacket with that blood, actually, as if stealing it and pretending to be him wasn't enough. 

But there he swings, and there he stays, and his dim shadow is nothing more than two feet beneath the lump of the punching bag. 

You can't feel guilt in New York, not in the era of the Cartel, so Miles doesn't, but there's a certain silence there. Aaron walks over, shaking the last of some crusted scarlet off his hands before setting one of them on his shoulder. The thought is nice even if it doesn't matter; they're both going to have to shower with disinfectant after this, that bleach solution that burns his nose and makes his mamá wrinkle her nose and ask if he did a lab experiment today. But that's fine. He can shower later. Later is sounding pretty tempting, though.

Neither of them are at their best—tactics like what they did tend to work better when they've got more than two people, but they only have two, they've only ever had two, so they settled for grabbing catnaps while the other continued the interrogation. Kept Other-Miles awake, loosening inhibitions, getting him sloppy and confused and panicked—but still he didn't reveal anything. Just kept expanding on the story he'd already told. But it means that over the past two days, Miles has only slept in scattered hours and minutes. His mamá won't notice his absence, pulling her typical weekend shift that keeps her drawn and weary, but that's a pitiful balm over his exhaustion. He needs a shower, an energy drink, and a week unconscious. 

But he's survived worse, so instead he stands there, watching his double. 

He's taller, in that irritating kind of way that makes Miles hope he gets there, but he's younger, face smooth and round. It's hard to show off muscle definition when chained to a punching bag, but he's not large. More lean. 

He looks soft, even past the bruises and fractures and blood, and that's something that stokes the old, familiar fire in his chest. On the roof, watching Other-Miles look up at his mural, at the last art he'd ever done, with wide eyes like he understood —when he fell from a single punch, gauntlet or not, sprawled right over the roof with his cheek pressed to the gravel. There was nothing in the damn kid that would survive Brooklyn. 

When Miles had first hit him, split his pretty little lip open and broke that earnestness on his face, Other-Miles had gone all flat and grey and scared. And he'd thought, good. There shouldn't be a version of Miles Morales, fake as this one was, who stays open and trusting. That him got swallowed up by New York a long time ago, and instead the Prowler lurks in the shadows, defending those that no one gives enough of a shit about. It's always been him, and a whimpering fool in a onesie can't be him. 

And good, he'd thought, as they kept hitting him and that desperation faded away to weary resignation, because at least the fake knows it, too.

Because he's a fake. A copy. He's soft. He's weak. He cries and gasps and goes into panic attacks at the mere mention of people finding him. 

And maybe that's the point. Whip up a clone that can stutter and cry and wheeze, make it scared enough to trick the original, get their guard down; and maybe he'll blink and Other-Miles will be awake, eyes cold, and there'll be a dagger through his heart. Maybe that's the why for all of this. 

If so, it's fucking effective, because Miles sits and watches his doppelgänger and wonders.

"I think he's telling the truth," he says. 

Aaron says nothing, which is confirmation enough. Just keeps staring at Other-Miles. At what could have been Miles' face if the world had been just a bit kinder, if it had cared enough to keep him this way; but it hadn't, and this isn't him, but it's close, in that uncomfortable sort of way that sits heavy around his ribs. 

He's been beating the shit out of someone who looks like his nephew. 

Miles can ignore it, hide any misgivings under the grief and rage and hurt, but it's not the same. Aaron got into this business to help him, to hide him; went back to his thieving roots and dug out that old Prowler suit so they could protect Brooklyn. It was them that killed Kingpin together, shot him right where he'd shot Jefferson Morales, bullet through the lapel. The first proper life Miles took. Not the last, not anywhere close, but the most meaningful. 

The two of them. It's always been just them.

And now Other-Miles is saying that's not true.

"Alternate universes," Aaron says, with the kind of hazy disbelief that comes from living in a New York that's eating itself whole with mutants and millionaires and monsters all racing to be the first to kill it. 

It explains things, which is the infuriating part. Why he went to Miles' house, why he talked to his mamá, even the weirdass glitch. Why he keeps talking about going home, as if he doesn't have the most infuriating Brooklyn drawl in existence.

Miles frowns. Rocks back on his heels, the Prowler suit curling around him in its impassive comfort. 

He doesn't look at himself much in the mirror anymore. There's not a point, not when he knows what he'll see, now when he knows what he won't see. He hung a sheet over the one in his room.

But looking at his double is achingly similar. 

"He's involved with something bigger than us, isn't he?" Miles doesn't want to believe it. The Sinister Six have had New York by the throat for so long, and he's watched the city he loves fall from trying to stop them to just trying to survive, and he's been awake on nights where it feels like he's the only one still trying.  

There shouldn't be anything bigger than that. 

But looking at Other-Miles, at the suit, at the injuries, and remembering the wild, desperate way he told his story, it feels like maybe there is. 

"It ain't our fight," Aaron says, quiet. "Getting involved ain't it, man. We're just trying to protect Brooklyn. Keep your ma safe."

Yeah. Yeah, he knows that. 

And still he stares down at himself. 

It's hard to tell, in the darkness, but he thinks Other-Miles spraypainted his suit. The spider on his chest certainly looks like it.

Art is always the first victim of tyranny. He hasn't done anything since the mural of his father. 

Since the death of his father.

"It's not our fight," Miles says, and feels the words echo. "But I think it's his."

Two days. It's only been two days.

If this Miles Morales has a father left to save, this could be his only chance.

Other-Miles isn't weak, maybe. He's soft and naïve and stupid but he's not weak. Held himself together over two days, kept his story straight, tried to escape. But he couldn't leave, and he's being chased by some mysterious fuckers, and he's still trying. 

And Miles Morales has always fought for those that have no one else. 

His heart is a useless thing, for all Brooklyn has tried to stomp it out of his chest. But here it rises, and Miles is looking over his shoulder before he even realizes it, and he doesn't have to say anything before his uncle understands what his decision is.

Aaron walks back and presses the button; the winch whines and lowers him down, piece by piece. Miles ignores how he's actively splashing through blood in order to catch the punching bag, bracing it on his chest and rolling it down until it's flat on the tarp. Other-Miles lolls, lips parted, stays limp.

It's easy, almost, to find those hidden latches in the chains and pry them loose, dumping them in another bag they'd set up for when this was done. He doesn't look at the third one, larger than the others, black, impersonal. It's hard work to find body bags in New York, but so far no one knows that the Prowler team is Miles Morales and Aaron Davis, and they're going to keep it that way, and that means hiding the bodies. 

But it didn't end that way this time. So he doesn't need it.

Other-Miles slips off the punching bag once the final chain comes free, almost falling on his face before Miles gets an arm under his side—fucking shit, he's going to need to shower for years after this—and drags him onto a relatively clean section of the tarp. 

He's properly fucked up, from this angle, but also… less than Miles would have thought. Bruised and battered and all that shit, because he and Uncle Aaron aren't amateurs, but the yellow-purple is already softened, retreating under his skin and smoothing over. Ribs fractured, gash over his forehead, nicks from claws and nails over his face and neck; but already they're healing. 

If people heal this fast in Other-Miles' universe as a regular thing, Miles is going to sue.

But freaky-ass healing aside, he's still fucked up, and if there's only today to save his dad, then he'll need to be patched up. 

There's a gauntlet across the room, arranged on its charging port and stinking of disinfectant. A trashbag to join the pile they toss in the already-full dumpsters several blocks over. A tarp coated in stagnant scarlet. 

He won't apologize. Brooklyn has no room for apologies, not now; maybe it never did. He did what he needed to do to keep himself, to keep his mamá safe, and he'll never apologize for that. 

Shit luck Other-Miles happened to get caught up in it, but that's life, sometimes. 

He won't apologize. 

Aaron walks back over, kicking a nondescript dufflebag over; they give most of their stolen medical supplies to Rio, given her shitty hospital barely has enough to provide for itself, but they have to keep some for themselves. Vigilantism doesn't come without its downsides.

But it's simple, almost, to slot back into their familiar routine. Aaron, pulling out gauze and antiseptic, waiting for direction; Miles, kneeling down, searching for first priorities. 

His hands move without conscious thought, into the well-worn pattern he learned so long ago. It's easy to unwrap a roll of bandages, pull the onesie to the side, press feather-light over ribs to find those broken. 

He is Rio Morales' son, still.

-

"Get up."

Something nudges his arm, pulling him from the enveloping darkness; he twitches once and fire crawls up his side, ribs clattering in his chest, and he's groaning, curling in on himself because there's just more attacks, there's always more attacks, and he can't stop them and they don't believe him and they won't–

He can curl up. 

What?

There's lancing pain and the raw stretch of muscles that haven't been allowed to move in what feels like days, but when he moves, his body obeys. There's nothing keeping it pinned, no fire-cold chains around his chest. 

Miles' eyes fly open. 

He's on his side, head lolling back with the crinkle of plastic, loud and grating in his ears. Something clumps his eyelashes together, heavy, but he peels them open and drags his head off the ground, heart skipping and stuttering in his chest. 

Grey-green below, the tarp, streaked with scarlet. He's in his suit, but through the rips Miguel's claws tore in his shoulder and sides, there's the cream-white of bandages. Crusted blood ghosts over his hands and face but most of it has been wiped off, thin pieces of what feels like tape holding the gash on his forehead closed. 

Miles bites back a groan as his head spins, bucking against his control, but he forces it to look up anyway. He needs to know. 

They're both there. 

Morales looks at him. He's changed out of his suit, jacket swollen wide around his wrists and jeans with kick-ups over the hems and knees. A teenager again. Aaron's behind him, hands in his pockets, face scrubbed clean. They've turned the lights on, the vinyl off, and the air sits heavy with bristled anticipation.

"Hello?" Miles says warily, which is more than earned, and can't help but wince at the shake in his voice.

Morales steps forward. "Get up," he says again. "I'm not carrying you. If you want out, you get up."

Miles stills.

His arms shake but he pushes himself into a sitting position, the tarp crumpling under his fingers, stagnant and stinking of iron. But his hands move now, and there's weight there, over his wrists, on his side. They've given him his phone and webslingers back—put them on the wrong hands, actually, wow—and there's no more punching bag.

Morales' words sink through him. 

Hope is such a useless, fleeting thing. It rises through his chest regardless.

"You're letting me go?" 

"Yeah." Morales keeps his voice pitched low, like he can't believe he's doing it himself. "Alternate universes. Hero in yours, yeah? Got a dad to save? Then get up."

Spiderman always gets up. So he hooks his knees around each other, legs feather-weak, and pushes himself upright. Stumbles once, swallows the gasp—his ribs are bound but they still shift against each other, barking their displeasure at being moved—but then he's standing. Taller than Morales, shorter than Aaron. They're some fifteen feet away, and he can feel a chilled breeze from the window behind him. They left it open. 

They're letting him go. 

He should run right then, throw himself out and web away from this apartment, find some abandoned roof to huddle on to try and make sense of it all. See the date, see the time, come up with a plan to get home. 

Instead, Miles stands, and he looks at his double. 

"You're fighting the Cartel," he says. "Are you just protecting Brooklyn, or are you trying to get rid of them?"

Morales hums. There's a casual air around him, almost bored, but Miles knows himself, for all this isn't him. He's tense under the sloped shoulders and pocketed hands, eyes narrow, waiting for any sign of an attack. Waiting to see if Miles will lunge for him.

It seems impossible to live in this world, where gangs control the boroughs and crime chokes the street. Where hostility is the norm and children suit up to kill. 

It seems lonely.

"Brooklyn comes first." Morales' voice tightens. "But I'm going to murder those bastards for what they did."

Miles can't help his flinch. He noticed the body bag on one of the many times the punching bag swung around the room.

"I'm a hero," he says, slow, cautious. "I'm a hero to protect people. I don't kill."

Morales doesn't bat an eye. "Sounds awfully nice." He's not in his suit but if Miles squints, he sees the Prowler around him like an echo, streaming away in watercolour outlines. "Not all of us got that choice."

He isn't apologizing, and Miles realizes he wasn't expecting it.

In another world, I would take you down like any other villain. It's a cold, impartial fact, in the way he webs muggers to brick alley walls or venom blasts genetically modified monsters. Kidnapping, imprisonment, torture—plenty to get him knocked out and taken in.

But in another world, Miles Morales is still a hero.

Maybe he always was.

"I'll come back," Miles promises. "To help you with the Cartel. You're– we're not the same kind of hero. But I can help."

Morales scoffs. "Get your head out your ass. You're too trusting. Just go back to your pretty little home and leave."

Aaron shifts behind them, just a feather-light transfer of weight between his feet—for all they're in street clothes again, Miles doesn't believe for a second that they aren't armed to the teeth, watching with wary eyes as he moves. Guns, maybe traps in the apartment; they wouldn't have given him back his webslingers if they didn't think they couldn't take him down if he acted up. There are two days worth of reasons why he should.

And yeah. Maybe he is too trusting. There's blood still coating his mouth.

But his danger sense stays silent.

"I'll come back," he says again, and he will. After he defeats the Spot, after he saves his father, after he heals from this and recovers and is able to wake up without expecting chains and vinyl and fists, he will come back. Help save the world he doomed when he took their spider bite away. 

Morales pauses. Looks at him with more considering eyes—because yeah, maybe in Earth-42 they don't promise to come back. Maybe they live in starving streets and find comfort only in those that don't have any other choice. 

But Miles has a choice, and he made it when he donned his suit and promised to save a city of eight million people. 

What's two cities, in face of that?

Morales keeps watching him. His face doesn't– it doesn't soften, because Miles isn't sure it can, but there's something there. Less grey. Less flat. 

"Talk to Mamá again and I'll gut you," he says, in lieu of agreeing, and Miles laughs. It comes out wild and disbelieving and pulls on his fractured ribs, but he laughs, and he welcomes the sound. 

Miles Morales is a hero. Miles Morales is also a hero.

I'm a hero, he thinks, so I can be only a hero. So I don't have to be whatever kind of hero you are.

There's nothing he can say about that.

So Miles nods. Morales nods back. 

He slips out the window, into the pressing cool of a Brooklyn night, and goes to find his way home.