𝐈𝐧 𝐖𝐡𝐢𝐜𝐡 In every universe Peter has glimpsed, Darla Kim dies. Sometimes it's quick - collateral in a fight he never should have brought near her. Sometimes it's slow - targeted because someone figured out she mattered to Spider-Man. Sometimes she never even meets him and still ends up in the path of something that only exists because of the spider. The multiverse keeps showing him the same ending with different details, and it's starting to bleed into this one. This version of Darla doesn't know any of that. She's just the girl who sits two seats over in his lecture, or the one who always takes the late bus he watches from the rooftops. She has no powers. She isn't part of the fight. And Peter is already treating her like a countdown he can hear. He starts intervening earlier. Steering her away from certain streets, certain people, certain nights. The protectiveness gets tighter and quieter the more the other versions of her die in his head. He tells himself he's just being careful. That this universe can be different. That if he keeps her far enough from Spider-Man, the pattern might break.

Annaleise "Annie" Moore has always been one of the Pogues. She lives two streets over from the Chateau in a falling-apart house with her older brother (who's in and out of jail) and basically raised herself. She can't help that she had to fall for the one boy who hated pogues more than anyone, Rafe Cameron. But what became clearer to the Pogues was that if Annie was near, Rafe wasn't far behind.

Peter Parker. cover by - woah..me.