Chapter Text
“They’re starting to come through and I can’t stop them!” Strange cried, straining to hold back the people that Peter could see through the large, purple cracks in the sky. His voice betrayed how tired he was, how much he was panicking as if his eyes didn’t show all of that anyways.
They were standing at the top of the Statue of Liberty, Strange was using all his magic, trying valiantly to close the rift while Peter looked on, helplessly. He wanted to do something to help, this was his mess. He needed to take responsibility and help to clean it up.
“So - So what do we do, what can we do?” Peter asked, starting to panic a little more. It was becoming obvious that Strange wasn’t going to be able to stop this as Peter had hoped. “There has to be something that we can do, right?”
An odd looked crossed Strange’s face, but he pressed his lips together and simply shook his head. He seemed to push more of his magic out through his outstretched palms, trying to close the rift on his own, even though he knew that he couldn’t. Peter tried to catch the older man’s eye, but Strange determinedly stared straight over Peter’s shoulder.
Whatever the solution was, Strange didn’t seem to want to do it.
“There’s something we can do, right?” Peter pressed, side-stepping into the man’s line of sight. “I’ll do anything to fix this. Just tell me!”
Peter glanced over his shoulder. The sun was starting to come up so he could see the other two Peters standing on the fallen shield near Dr. Osborn. The younger of the two was propping the older Peter up, arm around him. MJ and Ned were standing near the ledge, peering up at the sky. Ned seemed to be pointing straight at Peter and Strange. The others, Dr. Octavius, Max, Dr. Connors, and Mr. Marko, were standing a few floors below Peter and Doctor Strange.
“Tell me what to do, sir.” Peter urged him, looking straight into his eyes.
“Don’t call me sir.” Strange told him, sounding tired and defeated. He gave Peter a resigned look. “I can’t hold them back and letting them come through – it’ll turn into an apocalyptic event, Peter. Our universe won’t survive this.”
Peter felt panic rise in his throat like bile. “So, what do we do?”
“I can cast a spell, but it’s dangerous and there is no guarantee that it will work. That it will change anything.” Strange almost sounded like he wanted to do it, but there was still a hesitance to his words, a kind of dismissal like it was a bad plan.
“What’s the spell?” Peter asked, casting a worried look up at the rift. When he looked back at the Sorcerer, he saw that Strange had followed his gaze. He, too, looked concerned.
Strange looked back at Peter, meeting his eyes. “I can send your consciousness back in time, back into your younger body. You can change things.” Strange explained.
“How far do we need to go back?” Peter asked.
“Twenty-Sixteen.” Strange frowned. “That’s when we got set on this course. You need to figure out something to change things, come and find me at the Sanctum, tell me about this, I’ll help you.”
“You’ll believe the crazy fifteen-year-old blabbering about time travel?” Peter asked.
“No, I’ll access your memories to prove your story.” Strange corrected. “Then I will help you.”
“Oh, you can do that. That’s cool.” Peter said weakly.
“Go say your goodbyes, Peter,” Strange said gently. “I’ll start the spell. See you in twenty-sixteen, kid.”
“See ya,” Peter whispered.
He swung off the Statue and landed in front of the two Peters.
“Hey, I think this is it.” He said breathlessly. “I think you’re about to go home. I just – I just want to thank you guys, I mean – You know – I don’t know”
“Peter,” the oldest Peter said with an amused smile. “You know. This is what we do.”
“Yeah,” Peter nodded. He looked at his two new friends and couldn’t help it. He sprung into their arms, and they hugged him back. He would miss them, a lot. If all went well on his mission, he wouldn’t ever see them again, because this will have never happened. He pulled away. “I need to go find Ned and MJ. See ya, I guess.”
“See ya,” the younger Peter smiled.
Peter sprinted away, wanting to find Ned and MJ before the spell took effect. Where he was going, MJ wouldn’t be his girlfriend anymore, and that was something he didn’t want to think about at the moment.
Peter ran up to his friends and pulled them into a hug. “You guys, okay?”
MJ nodded against his shoulder. “We’re okay. Are you? What’s going on?”
Peter pulled away and looked at them sadly. “What’s happening, it can’t be stopped. It’s going to destroy this universe.”
“What?” Ned gasped, looking up at the rift with wide eyes. The figures were getting closer.
“So, Strange is sending me back in time, well, my consciousness. This will have never happened.”
MJ and Ned relaxed but still looked worried. “So, you’re going back to yesterday and not casting the spell?” Ned asked.
Peter shook his head. “I’m going back to twenty-sixteen.”
MJ’s eyes widened. “That was eight years ago, Peter.”
“I know,” he whispered.
Ned and Peter exchanged a significant look.
“I’m sorry,” Peter said quietly. “I have to go back and change things so that none of this ever happens.”
MJ nods and she leans forward to kiss Peter. “I know, you have to do the right thing.”
“Yeah,” Peter nods too. He glances up at Strange and sees a blast of gold magic. He had seconds judging by the nod that Strange gives him through the mist. “I love you guys, and I’ll see you soon.”
Everything fades to black and feels as though he is falling. He even swears that he could feel himself collide against the ground. It hurts and sends a searing pain through his left arm. Then he feels like he’s drowning. He can’t take any air into his lungs; he can’t even bring himself to gasp for it.
When Peter finally comes around enough to gauge what’s happening, he can feel lips leaving his own and hands pressing on his chest.
“C’mon kid, c’mon.” A familiar voice says, sounding stressed. He knows that voice. How does he know that voice? He hadn’t heard it in a long time.
The pressure on his chest starts to get painful and so does the lack of air in his lungs. He finally summons the energy to gasp and open his eyes. The first thing he sees is Tony Stark kneeling next to him.
That alone is enough to thoroughly confuse Peter. Hadn’t he watched Tony die? Hadn’t he cried over his body and attended his funeral? Why was he sitting next to him, mouth moving with no sound coming out? Why was he squinting at him, confused?
Tony moved in closer, using his arm to prop Peter up, instead of leaving him laying against the cold, hard floor. Tony gives him a long, scrutinizing look. Peter also notes the relief filling Tony’s eyes.
“What’s going on?” Peter asks, looking around, disoriented. “Where am I?”
A look of worry flashed across Tony’s face before it disappeared. His eyebrows scrunch together, and he seems to consider what to say. Peter, again, is confused. Tony Stark died fighting Thanos. Did Peter die too, was Tony like his ghost guide?
“Am I dead?” Peter asked, looking up at Tony in awe. Tony would be a great ghost guide.
Tony looks at him, clearly concerned. “No, but you were. You collapsed. We were working on the suit, remember?” Tony gestured to the Iron Man suit that was laying on the workbench in front of them.
Peter looked around. A stool was tipped over on its side beside him, tools were sitting beside the Iron Man suit, gadgets and scraps were on all the different tables in the room. He was in the lab in the Avengers Compound. That seemed to spark Peter’s memory. The compound had been destroyed in the battle against Thanos and his army, it had never been rebuilt. Peter had fought in that battle, Tony had died in that battle, but now, that had been erased. That battle hasn’t, and hopefully wouldn’t, happened. Peter had been sent back in time to change things.
He remembered this day, it was November of 2016, the Friday after Thanksgiving. Tony had finally let him work on the Iron Man suit with him, this was their first time working on it together. After a few times having Happy sporadically start picking Peter up from school after Tony had arranged it with May, Peter had gotten to the point where he consistently started spending the night at the Compound on Fridays. They would spend most of the night working on projects and then spend most of Saturday together. Tony had given Peter his own bedroom at the Compound, it had clearly been decorated by Pepper.
During the time that Peter spent at the compound, Peter had gotten close with its occupants: Tony, his fiancée, Pepper Potts, James Rhodes, and even Happy. They all knew him by name and had gotten to know him and vice versa.
“Oh, right.” Peter breathed, nodding, still studying his surroundings, trying to ground himself and get a grip on his new reality. He had to play this off and figure out how to get to Strange tomorrow.
The spell had worked. It had actually worked. He was in the past, sitting by his mentor – his biological father. Well, maybe. He thinks so. Just yesterday, or eight years in the future, Peter had found a box in a storage unit that made him think so. He’d bring that to Strange, too. Maybe he could help him figure that out, too.
“Kid, we need to go to the medbay, get Helen to check you out,” Tony said, shaking Peter’s shoulder a bit to get his attention. Apparently, he’d spaced out whilst he was trying to get his bearings.
“I’m fine,” Peter said, looking up at his mentor, who looked like he had seen a ghost. “I don’t need to go to the medbay, I just fainted, I’m fine.”
“No, you’re not,” Tony snapped. “Kid, your heart stopped, you stopped breathing, you collapsed, I had to give you CPR. We’re going to the medbay whether you like it or not.”
With that, Tony slipped his arms under Peter’s shoulders and knees and picked him up before he could give voice to any further protests. Tony carried him out of the lab and into the elevator, instructing FRIDAY to take them to the medbay. Peter sighed and just relaxed against Tony’s chest because despite knowing that he was fine and the whole incident was likely just the whole transfer of consciousness, he couldn’t tell Tony that. Tony would just think that he was crazy, or he’d gotten brain damage from lack of oxygen if Peter told him a sorcerer had cast a spell that brought him back in time from twenty-twenty-four.
Once they got to the medbay, Tony laid Peter down on a hospital bed and covered him up with a blanket. Helen Cho came into the room and started speaking with Tony. Peter listened as Tony detailed what they had been doing in the lab, trying to improve upon the repulsors in the Iron Man suit. Apparently, Peter had been mid-sentence when his eyes rolled back into his head and he fell backward off his stool onto the ground, landing hard on his left side. When Tony had gotten to him, he wasn’t breathing, and he had no pulse. Tony had been giving him CPR for ten minutes before Peter had woken up.
Helen did a variety of tests, hooking him up to machines, taking scans, drawing blood. She couldn’t find anything out of the ordinary. That seemed to frustrate Tony to no end.
“What do you mean you can’t find anything? His heart stopped! He wasn’t breathing! It took ten minutes for me to get him back!” Tony cried, gesturing sharply.
“Tony, I told you, I’m fine.” Peter insisted. “I feel fine. It was just a freak accident.”
Tony shot him a look that told him, very clearly, to stay the hell out of it. “The adults are talking.”
Peter had to bite his tongue to remain quiet and not say that he himself was an adult now. Although that wasn’t quite true, he’d been seventeen, not fifteen like he was now. That would take some getting used to, for sure.
“There’s something wrong with him.” Tony insisted. “His heart stopped, Helen.”
Helen frowned and glanced at Peter and then at the machines, recording his heartbeat, blood pressure, and oxygen levels.
“Whatever was wrong with him, he’s fine now,” Helen said firmly. “Keep him here for observation, or in his room with FRIDAY monitoring him. If you’re so concerned, stay with him tonight. But, Tony, I really think he’s fine. His tests and scans all came back normal, his vitals are strong, he’s the picture of health.”
Helen walked out of the room before Tony could argue further. Tony turned to Peter, arms crossed and a frown firmly in place. “We’re staying here.”
Peter groaned. “But I’m fine, and I really want to finish working on the repulsors.”
Tony scoffed and sat in the armchair next to Peter’s bed, propping his feet up next to Peter’s knee. “The only thing you should be concerned about doing is picking which movie we’re going to watch.”
Peter groaned again. “Can’t we at least go back to my room?”
“No,” Tony said firmly. “You’re lucky I don’t call Aunt May.”
Peter’s mind seemed to short-circuit. “Aunt May?” he asked, confused.
Tony turned to him, looking horribly concerned again. “Your Aunt May?” He prompted. “The one you live with.”
Peter’s mind flashed back to just a few hours ago, He was kneeling next to her as she bled out, breathing shallow, cold sweating, and eyes glazing over as she took her last breath.
“Right,” Peter remembered that she was alive this year. Her death was erased when he went back in time. Aunt May is alive. “don’t bother her. This is nothing. I’m fine.”
“I’m really doubting that right now, kid,” Tony told him seriously. “Did you seriously forget who May is?”
Peter shook his head. “No, I just didn’t understand why you would need to call her.”
“You were dead for ten minutes, Peter,” Tony told him seriously. “That’s pretty serious.”
Peter shrugged. “Everything’s fine now. Turn on Empire Strikes Back.”
He crossed his fingers in his mind. He hoped that was true, that everything was fine now. He hoped that Strange would do as he said and look at Peter’s memories and help him. Everything would be fine; they would change things. Tony, Natasha, Vision, and Captain Rogers wouldn’t die. Wanda wouldn’t take a town hostage. The Government wouldn’t launch their new Dollar Store Captain America. Well, that’s what Ned and Peter had called him. Maybe Thanos wouldn’t kill half the planet. Everything would be fine.