Spiderman Oneshots

Back to the neighbourhood, please

"I don't want to go, Mr Stark." 

But he was going. He could feel it, and there was nothing he could do to stop it. He saw his hands crumble, then his vision, too, turned grey and faded, leaving only darkness.

Then it all rewound, like someone had hit the back button, and Peter was blinking and stumbling slightly as his body reformed. He looked wildly around. He was still on Titan. What had happened? Had Thanos's plan failed? And where had Mr Stark gone? He'd been there just a moment ago. Come to think of it, the others were gone too.

As Peter watched, the Footloose guy, the egg-laying alien lady and the dude with the cool tattoos reformed, closely followed by Dr Strange.  Peter waited, but Tony stayed gone. 

Dr Strange looked around at them and nodded. "It's been five years," he declared. "Earth needs us."

Peter frowned, trying to process this information.

"Wait," he said as the wizard started doing his sparkly thing. "Can you drop me in Queens?"

"What? You're going to abandon the fight?" Tattoo dude roared. 

"Yeah man, Earth needs us!" Footloose protested. Peter ignored him. If he'd just kept his head, they wouldn't be in this situation in the first place.

Dr Strange's eyes were wide. "I did not foresee this future..." he murmured nonsensically.

"Hurry!" Peter said urgently, activating the mask of his iron spider suit. He would process what it really meant that five years had passed later. Right now, there would be people who needed their friendly neighbourhood Spider-Man. He could leave the Avenging to the Avengers - the little guy needed him more than the army of good.

Dr Strange snapped into action, still gazing at Peter in astonishment. With a rotation of his arm, an orange portal appeared, facing down into New York. Peter leapt through, and it closed behind him.

Spider-Man spotted his first target immediately. A group of people were re-forming in mid-air, sat on clouds like they'd been in a plane. As he free-fell, he shot webs at each of them, linking them together and fashioning a makeshift parachute to slow them all down as best he could, then shooting more webs downwards to create a giant net. The landing would be hard and bumpy, but they'd survive. 

There would be people in hospital in need of life support that was no longer there five years on, but there was nothing Peter could do about that so he went to the next place he could think of - the water. He passed over a bouncy castle, and webbed it along after him, spilling a couple of confused children harmlessly onto the grass. As he swung through the streets, full of re-forming people, citizens looked up at him and cheered.

Spidey reached the coast and spotted a group of thrashing people who had reformed without a boat underneath them. He used his swing momentum to fling himself towards them, using the bouncy castle as a parachute as he neared. He splashed down a few metres from the closest passenger, and began helping those who were struggling to swim onto the inflatable castle. It wouldn't float for long, but it would keep them alive long enough for the coastguard to get their act together. 

Peter didn't have time to wait around - he leapt straight back into action, shooting a web at the nearest building and slingshotting himself back into the city. There weren't many cars around, but he took the brunt of the impact for several citizens forming in the middle of the road, webbing roadblocks int he busiest areas. Panting, he looked around. Seeing nobody in immediate danger, he hurried towards his apartment, only stopping to help a selection of confused old men to their feet in the rubble of what must have been a care home five years ago.

Peter pressed a button and his suit retracted completely.

"May!" He shouted, running towards his door. "May!" He banged loudly on it, and the door appeared to reveal an elderly woman. Peter blinked, terrified - had it been more than five years? - but then May appeared behind, pushing past the old lady to embrace Peter fiercely. 

Once Peter was sure his aunt was safe, and had checked on Ned, he did a round of the city, taking more time to stop and talk to the people who had been dusted like him, and who didn't know what was going on. He couldn't give them any more information other than that five years had passed, but assured them all that he would try to find out more as soon as he was able. 

***

Meanwhile, outside the ruins of the Avengers compound, the army was assembling. Dr Strange stood ready at the front. He'd seen this all before, five years ago on Titan. There was just one key difference - Spider-Man. No matter how hard he tried, Stephen could not see where this branch of reality led. He had been sure there was only one way for humanity to triumph, but that had been out of all the possible outcomes he had seen. In none of those, however, had Spider-Man decided to help the citizens instead of fight in the battle. By one simple selfless decision made in haste, he may have doomed or saved the universe. 

Thanos's army charged, and the battle raged. Dr Strange's thought process was lost in the adrenaline, but he remembered enough to extricate himself from the fighting and support the dam. The reality where he'd failed to do that had not ended well. From then, everything went as he'd seen in that one chance and several others similar to it, up to the point when Tony Stark looked his way. Stephen hesitated. In the one reality he'd seen, he'd raised a finger, indicating that Tony had to sacrifice himself to save them all. Now, he wasn't so sure, and had no way of checking how his actions would affect the fate of the universe.

Strange hesitated for a moment too long, and Tony looked away. He could do nothing but watch as the gauntlet continued to change hands. At one point it was taken by the alien army, and he thought for sure that this was it, but then it flew into the air seemingly by itself, and the Wasp threw it back onto friendly territory. Carol Danvers snatched it up and kept running. She was quickly surrounded by more aliens than even she could handle, and instead of risk losing the stones, she slipped her hand into the metal glove and snapped her fingers.

The world went white, and then the dust of their enemies was clearing and people were cheering and Dr Stephen Strange was staring in amazement at the scenario he hadn't foreseen and wondering how such a perfect child could even exist.

***

"So that wasn't the one chance you saw?" Tony frowned through a mouthful of shwarma. Stephen shook his head, and explained what he'd seen.

"Tony dead? I wish," grumbled somebody, and there was a round of laughs. But Tony didn't seem to join in. Instead, he said very seriously,

"It seems there's a friendly neighbourhood spider-man to whom I owe my life - and quite possibly some thanks." And he put down his food, and left the room.