you fall off a horse, you get back on.

[yougetup]

Summer school pretty much sucks.

Okay, so it's cool that they're letting him do it so that he can catch up and start high school in the fall, but not having a summer vacation is pretty crappy, even if he doesn't know what he'd do with one this year anyway. Ganke's not around to hang out with-- Miles never thought he'd miss Legos so much-- and Darrow television is pretty horrible.

He can think of a thing or two that he would spend his time doing, but he hasn't been able to bring himself to put on the Superpower Guy costume again. Not after the first time. It'd been kind of a disaster, all around.

Why would anyone ever wear a cape anyway? How are you supposed to do anything? Maybe that's why none of the Ultimates wear one. Maybe it'd be cool for flying, though.

Man, why don't spiders fly? There's got to be a spider that can fly. I could have spider-flying powers.

So since then, Miles hasn't been up to as much as he'd like. but every once in a while, he hears about something on the news or has to stop himself from wall crawling to go chasing sirens in the distance, and hates that he doesn't feel like Spider-Man anymore.

He should be out helping people, not doing practice questions from his Pre-Calculus book.

Though, he's really rusty with his math, and he really needs to pass a test on Friday.

He's sitting on the floor of the living room, math book on the coffee table while he tries to make his way through chapter three, which is all polynomial functions, and he doesn't think they got that far back at Visions Academy. Or maybe they did, and he just doesn't remember it. That was a pretty rough year.

It's not until he gets to the fifth problem that he realizes he's left his graph paper in his backpack in his bedroom, and heads in there for it, wishing that he just had the money for a graphing calculator instead. Maybe he could even put Tetris on it.



It's on the table when he comes back.



Just like right before he ended up in Darrow, there's a silver case just sat there. This time, at least, he knows what's inside. He's not scared of what's inside. Miles knows now that he has to be Spider-Man, and it seems like somebody else does too.


"Jessica?" Miles calls, though he's pretty sure she didn't have anything to do with this. Not this time.

Comments

[herownway]

Miles had his homework, and she had hers.

She just didn't have anyone to hand hers into, which was probably good, because her wall of string and notes hadn't produced any real results, which had her wondering if she'd done it wrong. You saw it on TV and in movies and they never went into details as to how all the string and pins helped, it was all just kind of... there in the background of the scene. She had her categories, things like DARKLAb off to the side, since it'd been a bust, and then a couple of columns for KIRIN and next to it, 'S HORN (?). She wasn't sure whether they should be the same column.

And string, and pins. She'd bought several colors of each but hadn't really been sure how to apply them, so there was a loose system that she'd had to write a separate note about, which was also on the wall.

But so far staring at it had not produced a moment where everything came together in her head and she knew what to do next. Maybe she'd gone with the wrong color string.

It was sort of a relief when Miles called out, because she was on the verge of ripping it down and starting over.

"What's up?" she said, hopping off the bed and crossing to the door into the living area, eyes immediately settling on the coffee table. "...is that what I think it is?"

[yougetup]

"Yeah, I think so," Miles says, and he hasn't walked much closer to it yet. It's not that he thinks it's going to disappear or something, but... well, he's kind of afraid it's going to disappear. Or that someone broke in.

Maybe it's not his suit and shooters at all. Maybe it's a bomb or something. He doesn't know who'd leave a bomb on their coffee table, though.

"You didn't do this, did you?"

[herownway]

"I did not," she said, which raised the very good question of who did? She can't think of anyone in Darrow who'd be supplying Miles with a suit. Assuming that's what was in there.

Her spider-sense wasn't going off, but it wouldn't until the moment it did something dangerous, anyway. It wasn't a replacement for caution, although that left her without much caution, since she'd never exactly been a natural at that.

"If I'd thought of a way to get you a suit I'd have gotten you a suit already," she added. She'd have to figure a way around that, really, since she needed an option if something happened to her suit. And maybe she should have looked harder for a way to get Miles one. Probably she should have.

[yougetup]

"Maybe it's a bomb," Miles says, the kind of thing he would have said if it'd been Ganke there instead of Jessica. As it is, he feels kind of dumb the second he thinks says it out loud. Especially because he doesn't actually believe that for a minute.

It's exactly what it looks like. Somehow.

[herownway]

"I don't think it's a bomb," she said, immediately thinking, oh god, what if it's a bomb?

She continued, partly to logic her way into reassuring herself on that point, "Why would someone put a bomb in a SHIELD briefcase on our coffee table? Why not... anywhere else. So it's the other thing."

If Nick Fury is in town and he's handing out suits to people and not saying a word to the actual deputized agent of SHIELD, I swear to god...

...I am going to nod to myself and think that sounds about the usual for my relationship with Nick Fury.

[yougetup]

"Why would someone bring us to some random city with no way to get home for no reason? I don't know," Miles says, though she's right. It's almost definitely not a bomb.

Miles pauses for a moment, and finally approaches the coffee table, kneeling down to open the briefcase.

I'm going to be really mad if this is a bomb.

It's the other thing. Somehow, it's the other thing.

[herownway]

"If they did it and then blew us up, that would be- okay, that would be the same level of bewildering, admittedly," Jessica conceded, joining him beside the coffee table, keeping- well, not an ear out, precisely, but paying particular attention to the sensations in her head, so if it turned out to be not a bomb but, but snakes or something, she'd pick up on the danger as early as possible.

Now he's got me thinking weirdly. Why would it be snakes?

"Just open it already, the longer we stare at it, the stupider my ideas get. I literally just thought 'what if it's snakes.'"

[yougetup]

But what if it is snakes?

It's not snakes. Probably. Who knows with this place?

At this point, Miles thinks he's built it up too much, because now he's starting to think that they'll both be disappointed if it turns out to not be something completely weird. Not that this briefcase being here in their apartment isn't weird enough already.

Still, he undoes the latches on the case and flips the lid open and nothing blows up. It's just what they both thought it'd be: his suit, or rather, a new one, since he made a point of getting rid of the one he had just over a year ago. And shooters, either new or fixed up by S.H.I.E.L.D.

"Well, it's not snakes," he says and spins the briefcase around so she can see.

[herownway]

Snakes would almost- no, snakes would make zero sense, she had to get out of that mindset, and stop thinking the word snakes. But the fact that it was exactly what it had seemed to be, it was his Spider-Man suit and webshooters -- as far as she could tell the exact same she'd left for him, when she'd been trying to get him back in the game -- was a whole other kettle of snakes.

Fish.

"So," she said, frowning at it. "Someone wants you back in the suit. I can't say they're wrong, even if their delivery method is a little creepy."

Said the girl who also just left the briefcase in his bedroom that time.

Totally different. I left a note.

[yougetup]

"Yeah. Somebody," Miles says, though he doesn't know who. Peter Parker maybe? Does he know? Unless Jessica told him— and she probably wouldn't have mentioned it by now if she had— there's not really any way that he'd know about all that, not to mention Miles doesn't know where he'd even get this suit in Darrow.

"Do you think it's safe?" he goes on to ask, but he's already lifting the suit out of the box, carefully with both hands, so it's kind of a moot question.

[herownway]

Maybe Nick Fury's here, lurking around all... Nick Fury, staying completely under the radar so no one knows where he is or what he's doing as he works against this whole deal.

Which, rude.

"No," she said, "but only in the usual way putting that on and swinging around punching people is unsafe."

She paused. "...but maybe we should wash it anyway, we don't know where it's been."

[yougetup]

"Yeah, good idea," Miles replies, though it doesn't smell or anything. His old one was worse before he realized just how often you have to wash those things.

There's definitely a reason that was part of adult Peter Parker's advice, no doubt about it.

But, speaking of Peter Parker...

"Do you think Peter Parker'll be okay with this?" he asks, suddenly worried.

[herownway]

That's... a good question.

I think it's maybe the wrong question, because it really shouldn't matter what he thinks... but it's going to matter what he thinks.

"Tss," she said, a kind of wincing hiss, as she considered how Peter was liable to react to this. "He will be. Um. He absolutely will not be at first but then he will be."

She hoped. She thought. He'd come round. If he didn't come round she'd yell at him until he came round. He had to understand how important this was, how Miles had every right to this name and this legacy and that it wouldn't be right for him to give it up just because this temporal life-after-death whatever was going on. Miles was Spider-Man. Peter Parker was... also Spider-Man, she supposed.

She had no idea how this was going to work, but it'd work. She'd make it work.

[yougetup]

Can you really be Spider-Man if Spider-Man doesn't want you to be Spider-Man? I thought I'd figured this out already.

Adult Peter Parker had been fine with it eventually, but this is different. It's not the same guy, and it's not the same place. Going out in the other costume had been one thing, but this is another.

"Maybe I should ask him first," Miles says, "Or at least give him a heads up or something."

That'll probably mean telling him I'm Spider-Man, though, won't it?

[herownway]

She wasn't so sure about ask. It implied Miles needed his permission, which she didn't think he did. Or- now that he was here to give it, maybe he should? Since it was directly his mantle Miles was assuming.

Except that here, Peter was still using it, and might not want to share it out, even though it was more that Miles had already picked it up and shouldn't have to put it down because it was as rightfully his as it was Peter's.

This timeline and resurrection weirdness is going to give me migraines.

"I really don't know what the etiquette for this is," Jessica admitted. "Maybe if you do tell him, so he doesn't find out through the newspaper or something. So he gets that it's- it's not some random jerk ripping him off."

[yougetup]

"Unless he still thinks I'm some jerk ripping him off," he says, but that doesn't mean he doesn't agree with Jessica's idea. Though that means he's going to have to figure out just how to do it. Maybe he should look Peter Parker up on the internet and just show up at his apartment. Miles can't decide if that's a better or a worse idea than just trying to run into him while they're both Spider-Man.

This is going to suck, no matter what.

Miles replaces the suit back in the briefcase for now, deciding that he'll figure out how to hide it in his laundry later.

[herownway]

"He's not going to think that," Jessica promised.

Then honesty compelled her to add, "...he's going to maybe think that but then he's not going to think that, and if you explaining that to him doesn't make him come around then I'll yell at him until he comes around. Which he will, because he has to. You're Spider-Man. You're not any less Spider-Man here than you were back home."

[yougetup]

Except back home, there wasn't more than one of us.

...sort of. Maybe I should think about changing the name?

Miles closes the case again for now, though he really kind of wants to put the suit on and go out already. It'll mean leaving his homework until way late or in the morning, but it can't be helped.

But as Miles stands up, to take the case to his room, he realizes something.

"You don't know the formula for web fluid, do you?" he asks.

[herownway]

That's a good point. Luckily for him, I am who I am, to put it in the wise words of Popeye.

"I know everything Peter Parker knew when they- you know," she said, tapping solidly on the side of her cranium with two fingers. "Got it right here. I might be a little rusty because it's been a while, but I can do it."

I hope dArrow Couriers don't fire me real soon. Web fluid's expensive, the money's going to come in handy.

[yougetup]

"You have all his memories?" Miles asks, not really expecting that answer from her.

That's got to be confusing.

They've never really talked about specifics when it comes to the clone thing. It had been kind of a serious moment when Jessica brought it up the first time, and Miles hasn't asked a lot of questions. He's always thought it was something personal, especially if she waited so long to tell him about it in the first place.

[herownway]

"Everything until I opened my eyes and was me and not- until I was me," Jessica said, dropping her hand and looking away, folding her arms around herself and rubbing the upper arm of one. "It was kind of a whole thing."

[yougetup]

And he remembers now why they don't talk about it. Jessica hadn't looked exactly comfortable telling him in the first place, and now he wishes he hadn't asked.

So she was Peter Parker up until she wasn't Peter Parker? Or she just remembers everything he does up to a certain point? I wouldn't want to talk about it either.

"Sorry. I shouldn't have asked," he says.

[herownway]

As uncomfortable as she felt going over her history, delving into the ways she wasn't actually a person, she had to wonder. If she'd told Miles sooner, would he have gotten back in the suit? She didn't know if it had been her, maybe she'd just happened along on the right evening, but if she had contributed, was it on her for not contributing earlier?

And, hell, they were in this together. Peter knew everything, but she didn't think Peter wanted to work with her, at least not regularly, and she preferred it that way, too, keeping that separation to help her keep it inside her head, too. She didn't need it so much now, time having faded the connections, every memory that was hers making it easier not to be confused, but still.

"No, it's- I need to get over my thing about not talking about it, maybe," she said. "At least with some people. You should know these things. I can't be a whole woman-of-mystery if we're roommates and partners-in-fighting-crime, that's kind of ridiculous of me."

[yougetup]

"No, I get it," Miles says, because there's a lot of stuff he doesn't like to talk about too. Though, Jessica knows about all that already. She knows about his mother and all the stuff with his uncle Aaron, even if he'd rather not bring it up. Everything she's talking about... he's pretty in the dark about.

"We've all got our stuff, you know? I probably wouldn't want to talk about it either. But if you ever want to... it's cool."

[herownway]

"We do tend to rack up the stuff," Jessica said, head still down, but tilted more to look at Miles. "So- yeah. Sometime, maybe. And just, I don't know, don't be afraid to ask. Not that you'd know what to ask if you don't have anything to go on, I guess. I mean, unless you have something right now? Open season."

[yougetup]

Even though she's said it's cool to ask, he still feels like maybe he shouldn't. They're working together, they're a team, even if it's just the two of them, but it feels kind of like it's her business.

Still, it feels like maybe he should ask something, if they're laying it all on the table right now.

"Does... does Peter Parker know about all this? The clone stuff, I mean," he asks. Of course he knows she's Spider-Woman, but maybe he just thinks she got bit by a spider like Miles did.

[herownway]

"He knows," she confirmed, nodding, relaxing a little, hands unwrapping so she was holding her wrist rather than her forearm. As topics related to her complicated deal went, this one wasn't so bad. "I think sometimes he'd prefer not knowing but he knows."

[yougetup]

"You two don't talk a lot," Miles says, and he kind of gets why Jessica wouldn't want to, she pretty much told him why that night he ended up in Darrow. He almost asks her if she thinks it's just as weird for Peter Parker, but that almost makes it sound like he thinks Jessica knows what Peter's thinking.

She said it was cool to ask questions, but he still wants to make sure he doesn't ask the wrong ones.

[herownway]

"We do not," Jessica confirmed, sitting down on the couch, since it seemed odd to just keep hovering where she was. "I couldn't- I figured if I wanted to be me and not him it'd be easier if I wasn't in the same place doing the same things. Plus, awkward."

To be fair, she thought maybe Peter found it more so than she did, and she'd taken great pleasure in making him uncomfortable in the past, but still, hanging out with him and his friends and being aware the whole time how they were his friends and not hers... it hadn't been appealing.

That had changed, obviously, with time, and she'd built independent connections. And then it had changd again here and she didn't know what it was. Maybe she should see how he was doing more often. He was kind of in a similar boat to her, here. Even if her connection to those old memories hadn't faded, there wasn't so much to remind her of that life.

[yougetup]

It made sense. Everything had to be mixed up enough, not knowing what memories were hers and which were Peter Parker's, and it seemed like that might just make things more confusing, hanging out with the guy all the time.

It kind of sucks, because some part of Miles had kind of hoped that maybe they could all be this team now, the three of them. He'd wondered whether or not he and Peter Parker might have worked together back home if he hadn't died, but now it seems almost selfish.

"Yeah, I get that," Miles says, and he nods, "Maybe it won't always be so weird, though. You know, after a couple of years."

[herownway]

"It actually-" she said, about to try and express how she'd felt after Peter had died, how somehow that had canceled out the weirdness, or at least some of it, leaving only tragedy in its wake, which wasn't really a good trade. But she couldn't find a way to explain it that didn't sound horrible.

"It, um. I do have a lot less trouble, I'm not as... connected to all those memories. So, yeah, maybe. Just now there's that other weirdness where he's, um. Not- you know."

[yougetup]

Miles never really knew Peter Parker. There was the older Peter Parker from another dimension, but he doesn't think that's the same. He lived a different life, so Miles is pretty sure he's not really the same person. Still, he gets where Jessica is coming from. It's weird.

"He at least knows that happened though, right?" Miles asks, and it never really occurred to him until now that maybe Peter Parker doesn't know he's supposed to be dead at all.

[herownway]

"He knows that happened," she confirmed, remembering that very odd first meeting, when she'd found herself in Darrow. She'd thought he was a clone. Sometimes she still wondered how she knew he wasn't, but that just led down an avenue towards wondering if they all were, and that way lay madness.

"He was there. And then he was, um, here."

[yougetup]

"Oh. Good," Miles says, then realizes how that sounds, "Not good, but you know, good that no one had to explain it or anything."

That would have sucked, to be dead and not know you were dead, or to show up in Darrow and think that he'd won that fight.

[herownway]

"He was the first person I saw when I got here," Jessica confessed, one side of her lip curling up, eyebrow raising to match it, as if calling back to the bewilderment she'd felt that night. "I thought I'd died, for a moment. I didn't know what I could have died of but I thought I'd died. 'Here's the ghost of your genetic original to welcome you to the afterlife,' y'know?"

[yougetup]

Miles isn't sure what he'd thought when he first turned up in Darrow, but being dead hadn't been anywhere near the top of the list. In a way, he's lucky that he'd met adult Peter Parker from another dimension; at least he knew that people ending up in other dimensions was a thing that actually happened. Even if he still thought it was pretty crazy.

"At least he's alive here," Miles replies, "This place is messed up, but at least there's that."

[herownway]

"Yeah," she said, because what else could you say? Being alive was indisputably better than being dead, surely, even trapped apart from his family and friends. And if there was a way back... well, she didn't know what happened then. Something. "It has a couple of advantages, despite the messed up-ness. Maybe because of, for a couple of them."

[yougetup]

"Otherwise, I probably never would have gotten this back," Miles says, of the suit. Eventually, he probably would have tried to make something of that he wasn't going around in that Superpower Guy costume, but having the suit back that he'd left behind is about as good as it gets.

Just as long as we're not wrong and the suit doesn't blow up after I put it on.

[herownway]

"That definitely is one of the advantages," she said, because however that had happened, whatever slight worries about its provenance, if it meant Miles could get back in the suit, properly back in the game as Spider-Man, she couldn't be down on that.

Plus if we had to come up with an alternative suit it probably wouldn't be as cool. Whoever designed that one was on point.

"Now, if it could see fit to provide a spare or two for both of us, that would also be a great peace-offering," she said, pitching her voice to the ceiling. That was mostly a joke, she didn't think anyone was actually listening, because she'd swept the apartment for bugs multiple times. But there was tabs-keeping, or some sort, so who knew. She just hoped it wasn't some kind of creepy remote viewing.

[yougetup]

Miles frowns for a second, and then looks up at the ceiling like there's going to be someone up there that Jessica was talking to. It's only after he's already done it that he realizes it was probably a stupid idea.

"That's a good point. We're going to have to figure out how to get replacements made pretty soon," he says, because it doesn't happen often, and he really hopes that nothing crazy dangerous ends up in Darrow, but he's banged up a suit or two so badly that he wasn't able to wear them again.