Spider-Man: Finding a New Home [Andrew Garfield]

11

11.

Finding Peter

Adalia

Peter sits on the roof with his head resting on his knees. His body shakes with sobs, and his cries travel through the air into my ears. Ned, MJ, and I slowly walk toward Peter with caution. And once we've neared Peter, without hesitance, we bend down to his seated level, and embrace him tight. MJ holds his face and torso, Ned holds his back and chest, and like an adhesive, I hug the four of us together. My head rests against Peter's, and his shaking body makes tears spring to my eyes. His hurtful cries makes my heart tear in two, and my heart is set ablaze. He lets his body fall limp into all of our arms, and we stay silent to let him cry. Ned, MJ, and I have little to no words of solace in fear of saying the wrong thing; we want to give him his space, and not bombard him with condolences just yet.

Suddenly, Peter's body goes still, and he stops crying. He attempts to catch his breath as he moves his body out of our grasps. Choosing to let him move, I quickly wipe my tears away with my hands. Ned and I stand up away from Peter and MJ, giving the couple space.

MJ dries her tears with her white shirt, and whispers to a worried Peter, saying, "There's some people here."

Peter's spidey senses must be going haywire, sensing the two other Peter's from different universes. MJ loosens her hold on Peter, and he jumps on his feet to face the top of the school's highest point. Peter instructs us to get behind him, and looks up to find two variants of himself. I follow Peter's gaze, and the younger and older Peter gracefully jump down to view.

"Hey!" cries Peter, holding his hand up to stop the new visitors from getting any closer to us. His sorrowful, brown eyes, wild with fear and alarm, face his variants with slight curiosity. But he's suspicious of them, and he says, "Wait, wait, woah!"

The younger and older Peter lift their hands up in surrender to signal that they impose zero threat.

The older Peter has a cautious, yet pitiful look in his eyes. He gazes at Peter, and says, "We're sorry... about May."

The younger Peter swallows, then nods his head, saying, "Yeah, sorry." He jumps down once more, slowly getting closer, but he stops as he sees my Peter holds a defensive position. A saddened gleam in his eye catches my attention, and it tugs at my heartstrings. "I've got some understanding of what it feels like."

My Peter shakes his head, and in a curt voice, says, "No, no, please don't tell me you understand what I'm going through." He gives the variants of himself a cold stare. The variants, although being spoken to in a stern tone, they understand.

The younger Peter nods his head, and whispers, "Okay."

"She's gone," continues my Peter, battling tears. He heavily breathes in and out through his mouth. "And it's all my fault. She died for nothing. So, I'm gonna do what I should've done in the first place..."

My Peter walks up to me, and he eyes the spell box in my hands. He extends his hands out to the box, and I reluctantly hand it over. Although I'd prefer to finish what we've started, I do not want to stop Peter from making his decision. He's lost the most important woman in his life, and if he thinks the right thing to do is to close the multiverse right now, then so be it. I'm not going to stop him because it isn't in my place to do so anymore.

"Peter..." worriedly calls the older variant.

"Don't," says Peter, stopping the older Peter from changing his mind. "You don't belong here, either of you... I'm gonna send you home."

The younger Peter hangs his head, and he's hurt by my Peter's slight hostility. But he doesn't say a word to sway Peter's decision to send him home.

"Those guys are from your world's, right?" my Peter asks. He waits for the younger and older Peter to confirm, and once they do, coldly, he says, "So, you deal with it. If they die... if you kill them... that's on you. It's not my problem. And, I don't care anymore. I'm done." Peter pauses to gather his thoughts, and dejectedly, he says, "I'm really sorry I dragged you into this, but you have to go home now. Good luck."

My heart pounds away in my chest, and I fight the voice in my head telling me to stop Peter. Peter, with the spell in hand, readies himself to press it, but MJ—thankfully—stops him. She places a hand over Peter's, and shakes her head from side to side. MJ doesn't want to send them back just yet. She looks to me for validation, and I give her a firm nod. Peter gives his girlfriend a confused look, then faces me.

"My Uncle Ben was killed," says the older Peter. We all avert our gazes to him, and he wears a pensive frown as he tells us of his past. "It was my fault."

The younger Peter, who has tears in his eyes, speaks up next. I notice he's hurting at the thought of who he's lost. A wistful expression takes over his boyish, yet chiseled features. "I lost—," he pauses, choking on his words. He fights back a sob, and a single tear falls down his cheeks. "I lost Adalia." He glances at me, and the moment he does so makes more tears fall down his face. I bite my quivering, bottom lip, then a low gasp falls out of my mouth as his words hit me like a ton of bricks. I feel my entire body go rigid, and I'm shocked by his confession. Finally, I've received an explanation for his saddening reactions and responses toward me. He can't look at me without almost doubling over in pain, and it's like he's seeing a ghost. His brown eyes bore into mine, and I feel he's staring into my soul. The younger Peter doesn't look at anyone else because all he sees is me. And although I don't know him, I can't help but give him an encouraging smile that isn't a half or full smile. I wipe away a tear with the back of my hand as my heart aches for the younger Peter. "She's..." he stops, again, and he swallows hard, "she's my—she was my MJ."

My surprised friends face me to observe my response, then look back at the young Peter.

"I couldn't save her," the young Peter admits in a pained voice. He never takes his eyes off of me, and I hold his stare to offer some form of comfort. As much as I want to look away because of the intense nature of his gaze, I can't find it in me to move. "And I'm never going to forgive myself for that. But, I carried on. I tried to keep going, tried to keep being the friendly neighborhood Spider-Man because I know that's what you—," he stumbles over his words and mumbles an apology to me. He shakes his head clear of his mistake. "Because I know that's what she would've wanted. But, somewhere down the line, I stopped pulling my punches. I got rage-full." Now, he looks at my Peter to speak to him. "I got bitter, and still feel bitter," he says, "I just don't want you to end up like me."

"The night Ben died," the older Peter says. We all face him next. "I hunted down the man who I thought did it. I wanted him dead. I got what I wanted. It didn't make it better. It took me a long time to learn to get through that darkness..."

Both young Peter Parker's look to the floor in a moment of despair.

But my Peter has yet to understand the message the older Peter's trying to tell him. He says, "I want to kill him. I want to tear him apart." Peter's voice cracks, saying, "I can still hear May's voice in my head. Even after she was hurt, she said to me that we did the right thing. She told me that with great power..."

"Comes great responsibility," says the older Peter. A look of realization crosses his features, and he looks at both of his younger variants.

"Wait," my Peter says, looking in between his variants. "How do you know that?"

"Uncle Ben said it," the young Peter says.

"The day he died..." concludes the older Peter. I see tears in his eyes, too, and I fight my own from betraying me. "Maybe she didn't die for nothing, Peter."

Peter's hostility wanes, and there's an air of connection and acceptance between himself and the other variants. He wipes his cheeks, and nods his head to signal his change of heart.

"Okay," says my Peter while he glances at each and every one of us. "Let's finish this. Let's finish this for May."