Spiderman Oneshots

Identity Numbers (2)

Hey, guess what I just found in my drafts. Contains nwh spoilers.

Seeing someone without an identity number was uncommon, but not unheard of. Anybody who felt like they could be their whole self all of the time, existing as one identity only, simply didn't have a number. Someone could go from having a number to no number and vice versa.

People who did have numbers, however, always had an actual number. Even the most obscure identities would have a family, a friend, a fan who knew about them. People with spy or assassin identities that nobody ever lived long enough to know would still have a number of at least 2 or 3, for their boss or employers or colleagues or rumours.

Having a zero was impossible.

You simply couldn't have an identity that nobody had heard of or knew about. That wasn't how it worked. Part of the reason multiple identities could exist was because of different people's opinions and how that affected someone's view of themselves. Even if somebody could theoretically have a super niche persona that nobody had heard of but was still somehow strong enough to be classed as an identity, it would have to have always been zero: it couldn't suddenly go from something to nothing.

At least, that was what people thought. Until Spider-Man.

The masked hero went from one day having a big glowing 498 (signifying the number of people aware of his civilian identity) to a simple floating 0.

Impossible.

But it had happened.

Rumours were bouncing back and forth from the moment the hero was sighted with the new number. Chat rooms went crazy with conspiracies; the news rebounded with speculation; the internet exploded into disbelief and theories flitted madly from person to person, ever growing. Nobody had a clue what was going on. 

Had everyone who knew Spider-Man as a civilian died? Had he killed them? Had he created a new identity for a villain they hadn't met yet? Did he feel so conflicted by his secret identity that he thought nobody really knew the true him? Was it a glitch in the number system? Maybe everyone he knew had amnesia. Maybe his number as a hero got so big that it cancelled out his civilian number. Maybe it was all a prank.

Spider-Man finished his patrol and made his way unnoticed to his new home. He pulled the mask over his head, watching his reflection's number 0 rotate slowly, glowing. It didn't change when he took off his costume anymore. After all, his identity number reflected his identity: no longer two sides of a coin, but two masks both longing for a person who no longer existed.

His true identity was Peter Parker. 

Not the Peter Parker he was now, the one whose name was on the deeds to the apartment and scrawled in the front page of his GED textbooks and on the badge he wore at work. No, the hidden identity his number was keeping count of was the Peter Parker who'd been to school and had friends and an aunt and hopes and dreams. A Peter Parker that nobody knew anymore.

At first he'd thought the zero was temporary and it would start to go up whenever he reintroduced himself to the world. But he met his landlord and went to shops and chatted with customers and not once did the zero budge.

He only left his home when he had to. One time somebody asked him if it was contagious. Most just avoided him. Anytime someone saw his zero, he was treated with pity or more likely suspicion. He don't know what they thought the number was hiding, but it sure wasn't good. The sympathy was worse.

He was a shell of a person, striving to fill a hole in his heart that could never be mended.

Miles Morales was pacing.