Chapter 210: Do Me a Favor
Miguel said nothing.
He looked at Miles with the expression of someone who had already made peace with being the villain of this particular moment, because the alternative was worse.
His silence was its own answer. And Miles read it exactly as it was meant.
Yes. Watch your father die. That's what I'm asking.
Miles understood that Miguel wasn't being cruel for pleasure. He understood, somewhere in the part of him that could still think clearly, that Miguel had run through every version of this and arrived at the same conclusion every time. This wasn't malice. It was a man who'd already lost everything to the same mistake Miles was about to make.
That didn't make it easier to hear.
He turned to Gwen. Grasped for something.
"Your dad's a cop too," he said. His voice came out more unsteady than he wanted it to. "You're just — you're fine with this? Whatever they tell you, you do?"
Gwen didn't answer right away. She looked down.
"Yeah," she said, finally. Her voice had gone quiet. "I made that choice."
Miles looked at her for a moment and understood — she'd already been here. Already stood in this exact spot and made the decision he was refusing to make. And she'd never told him.
He moved on. Turned to the one person whose opinion he needed most.
"What about Uncle Ben? If you'd known — would you have just accepted it?"
Peter B. Parker had been quiet for most of this. Now he turned around to face Miles properly, and his expression was the specific kind of heavy that comes from having asked yourself the same question for years and never quite arriving at peace with the answer.
"Without Uncle Ben," he said slowly, "most of us wouldn't be here. Everything we've done — it wouldn't exist."
Miles stared at him. He'd wanted his mentor to push back. To say there had to be another way. To be the one person in the room who still believed both things could be true at once.
"So we just watch?" Miles's voice cracked. "Because some algorithm decided the story's supposed to go that way? You know how that sounds."
He looked around. More Spider-Men had drifted closer during the argument, drawn by the raised voices. They stood in a loose ring, silent, watching.
Not one of them said anything. Not one of them stepped forward to support him.
He looked at them and understood what their silence meant — that they'd all made this same choice, each of them, for their own versions of the people they'd lost. They hadn't done it because it was easy. They'd done it because they believed it was the only option.
"You're asking me to choose," Miles said, voice quieter now, the anger folding into something more painful underneath. "Save one person or save everything. Every universe."
"That's exactly what I'm asking," Miguel said.
"I can do both." Miles looked straight at him. "Other Spider-Men do it. They figure it out every time. Why can't I?"
"Not every time," Peter said, from behind him.
Miles turned. He looked at his mentor — the person who had, in a different universe, sat with him in a diner and told him he could do this — and felt something close to betrayal move through him that he wasn't proud of.
Miguel put a hand on his shoulder, not unkindly.
"Miles. All of us have wanted the life we were supposed to have. I wanted it too. The harder I tried to hold on to it, the more damage I did. You can't have both. I know that's not what you want to hear."
What he didn't say — the part he kept to himself: unless you have Ethan's particular set of circumstances. Which you don't.
Miles stood there with the weight of it pressing down on him. He knew the proverb. You can't have the fish and the bear's paw simultaneously. He'd always thought that phrase was for people who hadn't tried hard enough.
He was starting to wonder if he was wrong.
The ring of Spider-Men around him was tighter now. Penny Parker was somewhere in there. Gwen. Peter. None of them looking at him with hostility — just with the quiet, agonized understanding of people who had already said the same goodbye he was being asked to say.
"What is this?" Miles asked. "Are you all here to lecture me, or to stop me?"
The room stayed quiet.
Then, from the edge of the gathered crowd, from somewhere that shouldn't have been reachable without a dimensional watch, a voice cut through the tension:
"Hey. Is this a morning meeting? Why's everyone standing around like that?"
Miguel spun.
The voice was casual. Completely, absurdly casual, for a room that had been carrying the weight of the multiverse thirty seconds ago.
"Who is that? Step forward!"
Then he saw who it was, and stopped.
He blinked. Looked again. Processed.
"...Ethan?"
Ethan Cross stood at the edge of the room, dimensional watch on his wrist, two Spider-Men flanking him on either side — suited up, unidentified, clearly comfortable here. He had the expression of someone who had walked into an argument he didn't start and had already developed opinions about it.
Miguel stared at the watch. He hadn't given Ethan one. Gwen hadn't given Ethan one. He'd checked. He was certain.
And the two Spider-Men with him had no watches at all.
How.
"What are you doing here?" Miguel asked.
Ethan looked around the room. Took in Miles, the ring of Spider-Men, the weight of what had clearly just been said.
"Making friends," he said. He looked at Miguel directly. "Do me a favor. Let the kid go home."
☆☆☆
-> 20 Advanced chapters Now Available on Patreon!!
-> https://www.pat-reon.co-m/c/Inkshaper
(Just remove the hyphen (-) to access patreon normally)
If you like this novel please consider leaving a review that's help the story a lot Thank you