Chapter 202: Remember Hold Onto Gwen
Otto nodded at Peter's answer.
Getting better. Working on it.
Word for word what the other one had said, the first time. His Peter, his universe — that boy had said the exact same thing.
This wasn't that Peter. He knew that. But standing here looking at the same face, hearing the same words — it still did something.
He didn't try to explain what.
Across the battlefield, Ethan had been watching from a distance, and something in him had gone quiet in a way it rarely did anymore.
That line — getting better, working on it — hit him somewhere underneath the armor he'd built up over twenty-odd years of living in this world.
He'd seen Spider-Man for the first time as a kid, back in his old life. That was his introduction to superheroes. His first. There was no separating Spider-Man from the feeling of being eight years old and having your entire sense of what a hero could be quietly rewritten by a story about a scared, ordinary, trying-his-best kid from Queens.
He'd built a whole life here since then. Abilities. A territory. A family he'd assembled across universes. There were days when he barely thought about before — the other world, the other him — because the one he was living in had filled up with enough that there wasn't room.
But there were moments like this one, when the past walked through a crack in a door he'd thought was sealed, and he remembered that he was also just someone who'd ended up somewhere he hadn't expected, doing the best he could.
Getting better. Working on it.
Yeah. That about covered it, for all of them.
Tobey-Peter would have liked to stay longer. He wouldn't, though.
"Dr. Otto — I have to go. They need me."
He'd already read the battlefield: Garfield-Peter was struggling, and that needed to be addressed right now.
Otto said nothing. Just watched him go.
Garfield-Peter was, objectively, the weakest of the three Peters in this fight. His injuries from the Lizard confrontation yesterday hadn't fully healed, and Electro was an enemy he'd never seen before, let alone a hyper-powered version of him. The losses were adding up fast.
By comparison — Tobey-Peter had Ethan's training behind him, months of spars against Hell's Kitchen's actual heavy hitters, including a Sandman who was currently a Family member back home. He fought differently now. Cleaner. Like someone who'd processed what fear felt like and decided it wasn't running the show anymore.
Holland-Peter had Tony behind him — advanced tech, and a combat resume that included Thanos and the Infinity War. He knew how to fight at scales that were genuinely absurd.
Garfield-Peter had made his own suit in his bedroom, had struggled to handle one Lizard while already injured, and was currently getting handed something close to a proper beating by an Electro who'd already been dangerous before the arc reactor made it worse.
"Why am I the one dealing with two people by myself?" Holland-Peter called out, somewhere between exhausted and genuinely offended.
"That's not on me," Garfield-Peter managed, not breaking stride.
Tobey-Peter threw himself into Electro, leading with a flying kick that sent the man sprawling and buying Garfield-Peter enough space to breathe.
Electro recovered, clocked Otto still standing motionless on the edge of things, and rounded on him with furious disbelief. "What are you doing, Otto? Are you betraying us?"
"Dr. Otto is a good man," Tobey-Peter said immediately, without looking away from his target. "Don't compare him to whatever you think you are."
He shot a web, followed it with the kick, and put Electro down again.
"We should probably coordinate," Tobey-Peter said.
"I've been trying to do that this whole time," Holland-Peter said, landing beside him. "On my own. With two."
Garfield-Peter nodded. No argument from him.
All three of them together — the coordination came naturally, like they'd drilled it. Within a minute, Vulture was brought down from the air and knocked out of the fight. A minute after that, Garfield-Peter used the antidote serum Gwen had brought him to close out the Lizard — watched the claws retract, the scales fade, Dr. Connors' eyes go clear again.
Two left. Electro and Kraven.
Both of them looked at the three Spider-Men converging and somehow seemed to find this more fun than frightening. Kraven, especially, was practically glowing.
"Yes," he breathed. "This is what I've been waiting for. This is perfect."
He swung harder than ever, energized by the escalating odds.
Electro had already stopped pretending this was a straight fight he could win. His eyes swept toward the sidelines — Ned, MJ, Gwen, standing on the statue's platform above the water. He did the math.
If the Spider-Men are busy catching their friends, they're not fighting me.
"If you won't let me live," he thought, "then your people can keep you company."
He sent a sustained discharge straight into the statue's shield — and kept it there. The structure cracked, buckled. Section by section, the platform where the three of them were standing began to come apart.
Gwen, MJ, and Ned ran, looking for anything solid beneath their feet. But the Statue of Liberty was failing faster than they could outrun it, and the last stable section gave way and dropped them all into the open air.
Electro laughed from above.
Three Spider-Men had already stopped thinking about the fight.
They jumped.
Garfield-Peter was already moving toward Gwen on pure reflex, hands out for the web-shooters —
And stopped.
Hold onto her. Don't use the webbing. Hold her.
Ethan's voice, from a conversation that felt weeks ago, clear as if it had happened five minutes back.
He yelled it before his brain caught up with the decision: "Don't web them — grab them! Hold on!"
He pulled Gwen into his arms, tight, and they hit the ground together, him taking most of it, both of them solid and whole.
Holland-Peter caught MJ the same way, and for a long moment neither of them moved, just held on. Then he kissed her, and she kissed him back, and the rest of the war sort of paused for them.
Tobey-Peter caught Ned.
He stood there with Ned in his arms, two feet from the kissing couple, looking at the other embracing pair a few feet further along, and felt the specific awkwardness of someone who had correctly saved the day and had nowhere obvious to put himself afterward.
Ned caught his expression and offered, very seriously: "We could hug too, if you want."
Tobey-Peter laughed. Genuinely, fully, right from the chest.
The tension cracked apart, and for a few seconds it was just that — three Spider-Men and the people they loved and the one person who was technically somebody's best friend, standing on the broken remains of an iconic landmark, alive.
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