ULTRAVIOLET, the batman

PROLOGUE

ultraviolet
bruce wayne 𝘹 fem!oc
© WANDARYEN ──── 2024

"They're starting to come through and I can't stop it!"

"Then we'll take them all on!" I shouted directly towards Strange, shifting my feet placement in a position that prepared me for a fight.

Peter suddenly appeared beside me, crouched down on the platform. "There's got to be something we can do!" He slowly stood up beside me and I followed his gaze upwards where the sky was splitting in half. "Can't you just cast the spell again? But the original way, before I screwed it up!"

Stephen Strange shook his head at the both of us. "We're too late for that — they're here. They're here because of you!"

I shifted my focus back towards Peter and a deep pang of guilt punched me directly in the chest. I was partly to blame. Peter rarely ever asked me for help but when he desperately came to me — I felt as if my little brother was asking his big sister to help save the day. I couldn't turn him down.

"What if everyone forgot who I was?"

"What?!" Strange and I shouted simultaneously.

I grabbed the younger boy by his shoulders and whipped him around to face me. My grip tightened as tears started to blur my vision of his beaten up face. "Don't you dare say that! Don't put that out there!"

"They're coming here because of me, right? Because I'm Peter Parker?" His lips dipped downwards for a brief moment but forced himself to smile upon Strange and I. "So cast a new spell, but this time make everyone forget who Peter Parker is. Make everyone forget —- me."

"No." Strange didn't miss a beat.

"But it'll work — no?" Peter turned his gaze back from Stephen towards mine. "I'll still be me and you'll still be you, Gwen — but we have to or else we put the entire world in danger again."

I slowly looked towards Stephen. His eyebrows twitched with frustration. "Yes, it would work. But you have to understand that would mean that everyone who knows and loves you, we —- " His voice barely breaks but he catches himself quickly. "We'd have no memory of you. It would be as though you never existed."

Peter gently grabbed my hands from his shoulders with a slight nod. "I know. Do it."

Dr. Strange reluctantly nods, "You better go and say your goodbyes. You don't have long."

Peter turns to me once more and I couldn't help but clutch my gloved hands into tight fists. "There could still be another way," I whispered to him.

He slowly shook his head. "Remember when we had to fight against Thanos? Out of all the probabilities he could think of, there was only one way — this is it." He reached for my hands and gave them a firm squeeze, offering me a sad smile. "Thank you for being part of my family. You were always at my side when I called — I don't know anybody else who would've come."

"That's what friends are for," I responded softly before forcing him into a tight embrace with my arms around his neck. "I'm going to miss you, Peter Parker." Fresh tears fully blurred my vision and forced me to shut my eyes.

Peter didn't release his hold on me until I was the first to let go. When I looked at him, he wore a broken smile with his own tears threatening to spill across his cheeks.

We didn't say another word and as much as I wanted to keep him around longer, he shot his web out and excused himself from Stephen and I. I watched him swing back towards his friends and my heart slowly sunk deep within my chest.

"You're going to be okay, kid." Dr. Strange encouraged me. Or at least tried.

I wiped under my nose with the sleeve of my suit before laughing sadly. "I'm not a kid — I'm twenty-five."

He scoffed under his breath. "You're all kids to me." He then looks to the sky — the Multiverse continuing to unfold as he raises his hands and begins to cast the new spell.

The sun begins to peek out from my left shoulder but I couldn't tear my gaze away from the purple magic twirling around above us. Runes began to float above our heads and the vortex slowly started to fade.

I want to ask him if I would feel any differently and how we would know when things changed. A tingling sensation formed at the bottom of my feet and slowly worked its way up my legs to my waist.

I looked down with my eyebrows knitted together until I realized my body was visibly turning invisible. Gold magic wrapped around my ankles before climbing up my calves like I was transforming into something entirely. I raised my hands and watched as the magic twisted around my fingers.

"Strange? Is this part of the — "

"Gwen." My name fell from his lips but it was threaded with guilt and fear.

I snapped my head up in his direction. "What's going on!?"

He quickly shifted his hands around as he turned to face me directly. "This isn't supposed to happen!"

The sheer panic in his voice told me that something was horribly going wrong and this might be my cruel fate.

My vision grew blurry but this time not by tears of anger or fear. It was as if I was sinking into the universe and Dr. Strange's body was floating far away from mine. The sun was no longer upon me and I was greeted by pure darkness that caused me to feel sudden dread.

It was a loophole – by some ancient miracle I ended up in a different time or universe. I was falling directly through the rabbit hole and I couldn't get myself to stop floating.

There was no way to brace myself as a strange black city drew closer and closer. Police sirens came from every possible corner and the moon was barely visible amongst the clouds above me. The magic was inevitably drawing me towards my death.

I braced myself for when I would collide into a building or the solid ground but when I closed my eyes and anxiously awaited my final breath — I was suddenly captured by the embrace of something entirely different.