Chapter Text
Five Years, Ten Months Later
I think if I had known what was coming, I would have dreaded coming here, or perhaps even come here sooner. Either one would have left me devastated like I am now. But I guess this is the universe where I don’t know, and it doesn’t seem to be unravelling, unlike the last time I held Gabriella in my arms.
But as I walk through the portal into that same apartment I walked into almost six years ago, I’m actually feeling okay. And that’s a stretch for me, considering I’m the reason an entire universe has fallen apart. But I take one glance around and realize that this is still home to the woman I’ve been thinking about for five plus years. But this time, she isn’t on the sofa reading her book and rushing to greet me. Not that she did that before, but perhaps a part of me wants her to rush to greet me.
Instead, I find Peter Parker, who apparently just got home from work. I inform him about why I’m here, about the spider society I’m putting together to keep the multiverse from falling apart. He looks skeptical, even more so the longer I’m in his kitchen. His uneasiness doesn’t let up, and even intensifies when we hear keys jingling in the hallway and a woman’s voice. It almost sounds like-
“Don’t,” Peter says softly, giving me a look. He already knows who is about to come through that door, and he’s expecting me to give a reaction. I wait with bated breath as the door opens, revealing the face of the woman I couldn’t get out of my head.
So many things rush through my head. There are about a million things I want to say to her, but not one coherent thought comes to mind. She’s grown, but her body is still a masterpiece. She’s curvier than I remember, if that were even possible. The woman I’ve memorialized in my mind is here, right in front of me, and I can’t think of a single thing to say to her.
She, however, doesn’t look pleased to see me. In fact, she looks pissed. A sneer forms on her face before she slams the door between us. I can only hear the blood rushing through my head as I charge for the door. I stand from the wall where I’ve left a dent after crashing into it, and I face the woman I’ve been dreaming about. She walks backwards slowly, like she’s afraid she’ll trip or maybe it’s because she’s so scared of me.
I hold my hands up in what I hope is a placating manner. “What, not even a goodbye?” I let out a little chuckle, the most laughing I’ve done in the past five years.
She’s not amused though. She steps backwards at a careful pace, keeping the distance between us that I’m determined to diminish. “Now you know what it feels like.”
“I-” My confusion is evident. What the hell is she talking about? “What what feels like?”
She says it – she brings up that one and only night between us. I want so desperately to tell her that I wanted to come back, that I was afraid I would ruin the canon events of her dimension, but none of this would make any sense to her and would scare her off even more.
I’m about to tell her the truth, that there were so many lonely nights I almost opened a portal to this dimension and came through just to hear her voice again. But I settle on a different approach. “You know my mission always comes first.”
“Riiight,” she taunts, but humor is anywhere but in her words. “Your mission is always the most important. So that’s why you’ve decided to come after us instead of following your little mission.”
I want to retort, come up with a rebuttal that would give her reason to treat me the way she’s treating me. I don’t understand, if we only had one night together almost six years ago, why she would hate me so fucking much.
“Us?” I ask, trying to put the pieces together. She sputters a response, but I plow on. “You said, come after us. Not me.”
I watch the realization dawn on her face. She didn’t mean to give away so much. I watch her eyes flick from my face to somewhere behind me and hear a single word aimed at my back.
“Run.”
I watch as the woman I’ve been incessant about, that Lyla has been pestering me to see, that I’ve dreamed out endlessly, dives towards the door to the stairs. She moves three feet to the left, exposing what she was hiding behind herself.
Gabriella.
My mind goes blank. Behind her is the daughter I tore apart dimensions searching for, that I spent years devoting my time to looking for. And this whole time, she was here.
My daughter. My Gabriella.
It takes a minute for me to realize the loud noise that fills my ears is my own growl, that I’m still roaring and moving my feet futilely against the apartment complex’s carpet. Something is holding me back, tying me down to this place, and I feel my legs cave in under my weight. I sink to the ground, my throat aching from the tear I’m causing.
Gabriella looks at me one last time. She looks absolutely terrified. I know that’s because of me. Then her mother grabs her and sprints down the stairs, leaving me behind.
Peter tries to talk me down. He hauls my ass into the apartment and out of the sight of the audience I’ve amassed in the hallway. He tells me they tried to contact me, that they did everything they could think of to reach me but couldn’t get through.
He tells me she’s bitter that I never came back, and although she’s never voiced it, he thinks she missed what we had, if only brief.
He tells me she won’t come out of hiding until she knows I’m gone for sure.
He tells me she wouldn’t let me see my daughter, even if I begged on my hands and knees for it.
He tells me I should go.
But he knows a man like me will never let Gabriella go. So, I wait. I wait for Peter to slip up, to contact her. But he knows I’m trailing him, watching his every move. He makes spontaneity his modus operandi. He tricks me, constantly pulling the switch and doing something else to throw me off his scent.
But I am relentless.
And at the end of the week, he makes a pit stop at a little motel on the outskirts of the city, somewhere no one would’ve considered. It’s so run down and decrepit I wouldn’t have thought she could stomach staying here, let alone for so long. There are only two stories to this little no-tell motel in the middle of nowhere, and Peter looks around suspiciously before knocking four times on the window and then once on the door. There’s a short pause before the door opens and he’s ushered inside.
I know instantly that the woman coveting my child is inside that room.
So, I wait. I wait until nightfall when he finally leaves and swings even further from the city, perhaps trying to throw me off before coming back into the city.
He thinks he’s gotten away with it.
Fat water droplets spill from the sky out of nowhere. I blink back the rain that forms beads on my eyelashes. I can’t take my eyes off the room for one second. When the light goes off in the room, and only the glow of the tv can be seen through the window shades, I make my move. I swing down from my perch, coming to rest just outside the door.
I raise my hand to knock on the window four times before rapping my knuckles against the door once. But I pause. Maybe there’s a good reason I didn’t find Gabriella until now. Maybe there’s a good reason they ran from me, like I’m something to fear. Maybe-
I knock four times, then once. I hear the soft padding of someone who just slipped out of bed before the door opens.
“Peter, what-” her voice gets caught in her throat. Because instead of her best friend and roommate, it’s me standing in the doorway of her hiding place. I have to bite down my desire to say something funny, perhaps even snarky, like thought you could hide from me, huh? but I resist. I want to be in good favor with my daughter’s mother.
Speaking of, she looks more incredible than she did last week when I saw her at the apartment. She was wearing her office clothes then, a formal look that didn’t suit her wild side. No, here, now, she wears little shorts and a long tee that covers her body, but I know what lays beneath. My hands flex at my sides, desperate to feel the soft pull of her skin, the heat of her flesh against mine.
This is probably the wrong thing to do, because she mistakes the flexing of my arms as a warning. Quickly she goes to slam the door in my face a second time, but I hold the door steady with my palm. We’re at an impasse, her not allowing me to see inside the room and me not allowing her to close the door all the way.
“What do you want?” she hisses, glancing back into the room to ensure she hasn’t woken our surely sleeping daughter.
“I want to see my daughter,” I say, straight to the point without any inflection. This is also the wrong thing to say, because her grip on the door tightens and I can see the strain of the muscle in her neck.
“You might be her father, but you’ll never be her dad,” she spews at me, each word like a dagger. “I raised her myself after you couldn’t bother to come back. She’s no more your daughter than those other daughters you dedicated your life looking for.”
A white-hot sensation spreads through my chest. Her words are dripping with venom, intentional and thought-out. She’s known for a while what she wanted to say to me. It’s physically painful to hear her talk about my Gabriella, my real Gabriella like this.
Shame spreads across my face. She’s right. Of course, she’s fucking right. I never got the chance to raise my own daughter when I left and never looked back. “Can we talk, please?” I ask, slumping my shoulders and doing my best to not appear overbearing. “Just five minutes. Let me explain myself.”
She takes a cursory glance back at our sleeping Gabriella before slipping through the door and letting it close behind her. She’s adamant that I don’t see our daughter, even for a split second.
“Five minutes,” she says stoically.
I launch into the words I’ve been mauling over the last few days. I tell her that I’ve thought about coming back, that I’ve missed what we had since the day I left. I tell her I would’ve stayed if I knew what we were going to bring into this world. But I was so sure I could find another Gabriella, a family I could have without ruining a life. I tell her what I did, the feeling of losing Gabriella in my arms. When I talk about running with my daughter in my hands, she shifts her weight and looks around, uncomfortable.
“Two minutes,” she interrupts my monologuing.
I say her name. I reach forward to cup her face in my hand, but the split second before I can touch her soft skin, she seems to think better of it and backs away shaking her head.
“I missed you,” I say softly. I don’t know how to convey that she hasn’t left my mind since that day almost six years ago.
Her voice is hoarse. “You could’ve come back.” There’s a world of emotion behind her words, an ocean depth I want to swim to the bottom of. She opens her mouth several times before finally settling on what to say. “You’ve changed. You’re not the man I thought I- I thought I knew.”
I’m not sure what I should say – what I can say. I don’t know what’ll remedy this situation. But I’m willing to do whatever it takes.
“Miguel,” she starts, with an absolutely broken look on her face. “You can’t come and go as you please. That would be too confusing for her. I- I’m giving you an ultimatum. You can either stay with us, here, in this dimension and live with your daughter as her father if you never consider leaving her again, or you can choose not to commit and walk right out through that portal to live freely and never see her again.”
I swallow. I know what I want, more than anything. But I have to know something first. “Can I see her?”
She hesitates, contemplating the pros and cons of letting me go into that hotel room. Finally, she unlocks the door and slips inside, leaving me alone under the awning in the pouring rain.
I stare at the door in utter shock. I thought we talked it out, that maybe I would get a second chance. I know I don’t deserve the kindness she’s shown me since the minute we met. Maybe I don’t deserve to see my daughter at all.
Slowly, the door handle turns. I can feel the resistance through the movement, but sudden hope replaces the dread building in my stomach. My daughter’s mother opens the door just wide enough to show her face before finally giving in and opening the door all the way to me.
I want to rush in – I want to crash right through that door and hug my daughter’s tiny frame. But I know my luck is already pushed, and I don’t want to scare Gabriella more than I already have. I step through the door frame slowly, trying not to be imposing as I stoop to fit my entire height in the motel room. Sitting up on the far bed is my daughter, kicking her feet against the side of the mattress while she takes in my movements.
“Gabriella,” I whisper. She smiles up at me, all cheeky like I remember. She’s even missing a tooth that I’m sure will be growing in soon. I take tentative steps towards her, making sure she sees my every move and I don’t scare her. When I get within reach, I raise my hand towards her face, hovering. “Is this okay?” I ask, afraid of her shying away from my touch.
Gabriella moves her head into my hand, rubbing her face against my palm. I want to break into a million pieces. This is my Gabriella, here, now, and not disappearing in my arms. This is real.
I turn back to my daughter’s mother, who has been watching us warily from the door this whole time. I give her a soft, reassuring smile and a nod.
“I’m staying.”