241. The Dead Hear the Knock. (Patreon)

Aunt May-120703 POV:

I had buried my husband once.

That was the truth I held onto as the city gathered around us.

I had stood before Benjamin Franklin Parker’s grave with my hands folded so tightly that my knuckles had gone white and I had listened to a priest talk about peace while every part of me wanted to scream that there was no peace in a good man dying on cold pavement because the world had decided to be cruel for no reason.

And now?

Now the whole world watched his tombstone.

New York had stopped.

I didn’t think that was possible for this city never stopped for anything. Not grief, not fear, not joy. Not even miracles. But I was wrong.

Today, the streets were lined with people, reporters, helicopters, drones, police barricades, federal agents who looked like they wanted to intervene but had no idea how to intervene against a man who had already made them look obsolete before breakfast.

Peter's army of combat drones had arrived through a dimensional portal. We had convinced him to only bring 200 Combat drones instead of his supersoldiers clad in power armour but now looking at those robots. I realized that the robots weren't any less intimidating.

And then the marching began.

The polished white, blue and silver beneath the morning sun, visors glowing soft blue like winter fire. They marched in perfect rhythm, mechanical boots striking pavement with the solemn thunder of a metal marching.

It wasn't a circus, not a display of arrogance or spectacle for spectacle’s sake.

It was a march. A march dedicated to the impossible. The robots played the instruments precisely.

The music was slow, deep, aching. Brass carried sorrow. Drums carried heartbeat. The sound rolled through the streets like the city itself had learned to breathe carefully.

Peter Parker of Earth-65M walked at the front and center.

He wore his usual tattered trench coat over a dark suit and the scythe rested on his back.

It didn’t look like a silly renaissance piece.

It didn’t look like a toy.

It looked like something old enough to remember the first grave ever dug.

Gwendolyn walked beside him in a solemn black dress blonde-pink hair moving in the wind. Her eyes kept flickering toward Peter, not with fear but with trust. She looked at him like he was doing something terrible and holy at the same time.

Our Peter walked with us.

Maskless.

Silent.

Helen held Simon’s hand. Howard and Philip stood close to her. Their faces were pale with the kind of hope children should never have to carry.

I walked forward on trembling legs.

The cemetery had been cleared but not emptied.

No.

Peter had insisted that this happen in front of everyone.

“If I hide a miracle,” He had said, “then people will call it a lie.”

So he would not hide it.

He would force the world to witness.

We stopped before three graves.

Benjamin Franklin Parker.

George Stacy.

Gwendolyn Maxine Stacy.

My breath caught on Ben’s name.

Peter-65M turned toward us.

His voice carried without shouting, amplified by something I couldn’t see.

“People of Earth-120703,” He said, calm and grave, “today I do not ask you to understand what you are about to witness.”

The cameras zoomed in.

The world leaned closer.

“I do not ask you to accept the impossible with comfort. I do not ask you to forget the laws you believe govern life and death and search for an impossibility beyond your reach.”

He grabbed the scythe from his back.

“I ask only that you remember that love has always made mankind reach for the impossible.”

Helen was crying openly now.

Our Peter looked like he could barely stand.

Peter-65M turned to me first.

“Aunt May,” He said softly, no longer speaking to the world. “I will ask you one last time. Are you certain?”

I looked at Ben’s grave.

Then at him.

Then at my boy, broken and beautiful and terrified.

“Yes.” I whispered.

Peter nodded.

He stepped before Ben’s tombstone.

The scythe glowed blue.

Cold poured through the cemetery.

For one terrifying second, I wondered if I had made a mistake.

Then Peter tapped the blade gently against the stone.

Tap.

The world went silent while the tombstone glowed.

Uncle Ben-120703 POV:

Death was not sleep.

Sleep has dreams.

Sleep has warmth.

Sleep has the promise of waking.

Death was nothing.

Not darkness because darkness implies the absence of light.

Not silence because silence implies the absence of sound.

Death was absence without language.

I had no body.

No breath.

No heartbeat.

No hands to hold May’s hands.

No voice to tell Peter that I loved him.

And yet somehow, I remained.

Not alive.

Not aware in the way living people are aware.

But present nonetheless.

I was a soul pressed beneath a weight that had no shape.

I remembered the gun.

I remembered the pain.

I remembered Peter’s face.

God, I remembered Peter’s face.

That was the cruelest part.

In that endless nothing, love remained.

I couldn’t speak it.

Couldn’t reach for it.

Couldn’t even cry.

But I loved them.

May.

Peter, my boy, my son.

Then... A sound.

Tap.

It echoed through nothing.

A knock on a door that had no hinges.

A crack split open in the absence.

Light burst through.

Not gentle light.

Not sunrise.

It was creation.

I felt air slam into lungs I didn’t have a moment before.

I felt blood surge within my veins, heard a heart thunder within my chest.

I could feel my own weight. I could feel the grass beneath my bare legs.

I gasped, actually gasped.

The first breath hurt and it was beautiful. For the pain proved that I was alive.

I opened my eyes.

The sky was blue.

May stood before me with both hands over her mouth.

She looked older, her hair was grayer and yet she was more beautiful than anything death had stolen from me.

“Ben?” She whispered.

My voice broke.

“May?”

She fell into my arms.

Or maybe I fell into hers.

I didn’t know and I didn’t care.

I held my wife and sobbed like a man who had spent years without the ability to weep.

Captain George Stacy POV:

I died looking at Spider-Man, at Peter.

That was the memory waiting for me in the nothing.

Blood gushing through the stabs, pain blooming through my body.

Peter’s maskless face.

My daughter’s name in my mouth.

Gwen, stay away from him.

I had thought I was protecting her.

Maybe I was.

Maybe I wasn’t.

Death gave a man plenty of time to regret the things he said, even when there was no time at all.

I had no body in that place.

No badge.

No gun.

No city.

No daughter.

But I remembered.

I remembered Helen’s laugh, Howard’s stubbornness, Philip’s sharp little eyes and Simon’s small hand in mine.

Gwen’s smile.

God help me, Gwen’s smile.

Then came the sound.

Tap.

A polite knock and yet it carried some form of finality that not even death could ignore.

The endless void of nothingness fractured.

I felt my spine.

My hands.

My lungs.

I sucked in air and staggered forward, feet sinking into damp cemetery soil.

I was standing in front of my own grave.

That was enough to make any man reconsider his skepticism.

“Helen?” I rasped the moment I saw Helen stand there with the boys.

She made a sound I had never heard from her before.

Not a sob, not a scream but something beyond both.

Then she was in my arms.

I caught her automatically because some instincts came back faster than reason.

The boys crashed into me next.

Howard first.

Then Philip.

Then Simon.

All arms and tears and shaking voices.

“Dad!”

“Dad, you’re back!”

“Dad, don’t leave again!”

I tried to answer.

I couldn’t.

I just held them.

I looked over Helen’s shoulder and saw Peter Parker.

My Peter. He looked older and he had that look in his eyes. The look one has when a person is haunted by the past.

Standing there like the weight of the world had been built into his bones.

“Peter.” I whispered.

He flinched and I knew.

Something had happened.

Something terrible.

But I was alive.

And my family was in my arms.

Questions could wait.

Gwen Stacy-120703 POV:

I remembered falling.

That was the first thing.

Not pain.

Not fear.

Falling.

The world slowing down.

The clock tower.

Peter’s voice.

The web.

That terrible stop.

Then nothing.

No heaven, no hell, no stars. Just absence and yet I didn't go insane. I just... existed as something and nothing in the infinite void of darkness.

But somehow, in that absence, I still loved him.

Peter.

My Peter.

The boy who never stopped trying.

The boy who blamed himself for storms he didn’t create.

I wanted to tell him it wasn’t his fault, I wanted to tell him I chose to be there, I wanted to tell him that love wasn’t supposed to become a prison. Because I knew my death won't allow Peter to be at peace, for every moment of his existence he would blame himself for my death just like he blamed himself for my dad's death.

But death had no mouth.

Then came the knock.

Like someone knocking on glass.

Tap.

The nothing itself shattered.

Light flooded everything.

I inhaled sharply, my body arching as if surfacing from deep water.

Cold air filled my lungs.

My heart slammed against my ribs.

I opened my eyes.

Sky.

Trees.

Cemetery.

People.

Too many people.

And then...

“Gwen?”

His voice.

I turned.

Peter stood there. He looked older, his eyes wide with relief and disbelief at the same time.

I looked down at myself. I had hands, I had a body, I had the capacity to breathe.

I touched my throat, half expecting pain, half expecting it to be still broken.

“I…” My voice trembled. “I’m alive?”

Nobody answered because everybody was crying.

Then I saw her.

Another me.

She had Blonde-pink hair, piercings and her eyes were filled with tears.

She smiled at me.

A sad, impossible smile.

“Welcome back, Gwenny.” She whispered.

I didn’t understand what was happening at least not yet. But my Peter was there.

And he looked like a man who had been drowning for years and had just seen land.

Peter Parker-120703 POV:

I didn’t move at first.

I couldn’t because it took some time for my brain to comprehend what I was seeing.

Uncle Ben was alive.

Captain Stacy was alive.

Gwen was alive.

My brain refused to accept all three things at once.

It tried to reject the sight, tried to call it a hallucination even though my mind knew that I was seeing the truth.

But then Uncle Ben turned and looked at me.

Really looked at me.

“Peter,” He said, voice raspy and yet steady.

That broke me. I ran towards them at full speed.

I hit Uncle Ben first, throwing my arms around him so hard I heard him grunt. Then I enveloped Captain Stacy, then Gwen into the hug.

I didn’t mean to lift them.

I swear I didn’t.

But for one brief moment I forgot that I had super strength.

One second I was hugging them the next second all three were off the ground in a crushing embrace while I sobbed into Gwen’s shoulder like a child.

“Peter!” Gwen wheezed. “Air!”

“Oh God... sorry... sorry!”

I set them down immediately, hands shaking.

Then I touched Gwen’s face. I touched her carefully as if she might vanish.

She smiled through tears.

“Hi, bug boy.”

I laughed and sobbed at the same time.

It was ugly.

It was embarrassing.

It was perfect.

“I’m sorry,” I choked out. “I’m so sorry, Gwen. I tried... I couldn’t...I...”

She grabbed my face. “Stop.”

I froze.

Her thumbs wiped my tears. “I’m here and that's what matters.”

That was it. Six words, those six words were enough to undo years of darkness.

Uncle Ben’s hand settled on my shoulder.

Captain Stacy stood beside Helen and the boys, still crying, still holding them.

Aunt May had buried her face against Ben’s chest and refused to let go.

The crowd was silent.

The world was silent.

New York itself seemed to hold its breath.

Then Peter-65M stepped back, the scythe dimming in his hand.

He didn't look tired, he looked proud and Gwen-65M took his hand.

I looked at him.

There were a thousand things I wanted to say.

Thank you wasn’t enough.

Nothing would ever be enough but he met my eyes and gave me the smallest nod.

Like he understood, like he already knew.

So I hugged Gwen again.

This time gently.

And for the first time since the clock tower,

I breathed without guilt.