Chapter Text
“Anywhere but here!”
Xina blinked back tears, trying not to let a second O’Hara make her cry in as many days.
So much for that.
She huffed, giving the alleyway one last glance, wishing not for the first time she had gone after Miguel alone.
Maybe she was a bit too harsh on Gabriel, but he hadn’t exactly held his tongue, either.
But neither of them had lied.
It seemed rich, that even as he was worlds away all she felt was Miguel’s absence.
And his younger brother was right, there was a time when she would have fumed at Miguel’s behavior, made him feel as low as she did at the discovery. Let him know that he couldn’t just break her heart and carry on, as if it had never mattered.
But that was before she surprised him.
Before he surprised her even more.
Because she hadn’t lied that day he had convinced her to fix Lyla, he had hurt her, and badly.
Her mother had always joked that he was her blind spot and that one day that would come back to bite her. And she had always dismissed it, thinking her mother was just seeing danger where she wanted it.
And still, when she called her, stifling her own emotion down, trying to let her know that she made it home safe and sound, she knew.
There was a beat, a glance too long in the holo-video call.
Her mother had known.
That second-too-long glance was worse than any sort of “I told you so.”
The look was all she gave her, not mentioning anything else about Miguel’s abhorrent behavior, at least not to her face. She was almost certain her family had made him public enemy number one, but she hadn’t had the energy to care. And she silently agreed with their stone-walling.
Instead, her mother had come around more often, bringing homemade dishes, VHS tapes she’d found at pawn shops, and anything else she thought Xina would want.
It was nice, and it was a good distraction, too.
Of course, she had noticed the little ways her parents had tried to slowly get rid of any memory of her former best friend.
Things disappeared from her apartment, like the framed photos of them at their first science exhibition together. The TwenCen scrapbook she had found one day in the back of a shop, trying to fill it with all their school memories, had long since found its way into an unlabeled box in the closet of her apartment.
Her parents hadn’t thrown anything out, even when they were their angriest. Maybe it was the crestfallen look on her face, the expression she couldn’t quite hide around them.
Xina knew Gabriel thought she got over it all, and maybe in some ways, she had. But the only reason she had kept her composure around him was because she couldn’t let another O’Hara see her at her lowest.
Not again.
Besides, she told him about the affair, opened his eyes to how much of a scumbag his brother was, and how casually malicious his so-called girlfriend could be.
As far as she was concerned, she didn’t owe those brothers anything else.
Or at least that’s what she had told herself.
But when someone’s lived in your life for so long, practically a part of your family, it’s tricky to make a clean break.
“And you’re sure they want me there?” Miguel asked, nervously pulling at the tie she’d found for him in her collection of old TwenCen things.
“I promise, Miguel. It’s my seventeenth birthday dinner, they want to meet my best friend. My parents are half convinced you aren’t real since you always seem to sneak away from the school when they visit,” she joked, knowing there was some truth to her words.
He didn’t know how to act around her parents, how to talk to them or even if he was supposed to look them in the eyes half the time.
But she was telling the truth, they wanted to meet him.
And they had invited him to her birthday dinner.
… her mother wasn’t entirely convinced he was going to show up, but she had said on the holo-vid she was thrilled to meet her very real best friend.
“You know you don’t have to dress up for this, right? It’s dinner but it’s not that nice,” she said mildly, pulling on her boots.
He mumbled something that almost sounded like “but I want them to like me.”
Xina smiled softly at him, standing next to him while he fiddled with the tie in the mirror.
“They like everything I like, and I like you,” she said quietly, clocking the way his expression changed at her admission.
Even if it wasn’t what she wanted to say…
But she couldn’t tell him how she really felt.
He would look at her differently, he might not even feel the same way. And she couldn’t risk her best friend over a little crush.
That’s all it was.
And eventually she would get over it.
“Uh…Xina?” he mumbled.
She met his gaze, a flicker of hope in her eyes.
“Yeah?”
“I…I’m glad we’re friends,” he said, glancing down again.
“Me too,” she kept the disappointment out of her voice, feeling like an idiot for even wondering at the possibility.
“Don’t get too sappy on me, Migue. We’ll never leave the school if you wax poetic about how great of a friend I am,” she joked, covering her tracks.
The drive into the nearest town had her finding her rhythm again. Their headmaster, Angela, had arranged a ride into town, and she swore it was like Miguel knew the taxi cab driver, but that seemed silly. Why would he?
“You two kids have fun on your little date!” the cabbie cheered, looking back at the two of them through the rearview mirror.
“For the last time, it’s not—” Miguel started, heat rising on his face.
“Thanks for the ride,” Xina pulled the boy out of the cab, too many questions swirling in her head.
But there wasn’t time for any of them, because her parents stood waiting outside.
Her mother enveloped her in a hug, and her father joined on the other side.
She was sent to school with the hope of opportunity, with the dreams of her parents and her grandparents and every one before her. It was similar, in some ways, to the weight that Miguel carried around.
It wasn’t the same, but Xina had tried to understand him where she could. Her parents had never raised an ultimatum against her, had never saw her as some sort of consolation prize of their marriage.
And yet, he could never relate to some of her fears.
He had never had the misfortune of running into corporate stooges who distrusted anyone who might be affiliated with Stark-Fujikawa. Men who, like his own father once had, saw her as nothing more than a nondescript Asian girl, a clear threat to Alchemax.
But no one in her family worked for Stark-Fujikawa, they didn’t have any connections to the mega-corporation. They weren’t even Japanese.
Her grandmother had once told her that while the world moved on technologically, hate finds a home in every generation.
She still struggled with the possibility that she was only accepted into Alchemax’s boarding school because men like Tyler Stone wanted to rub it in the face of Stark-Fujikawa.
And when she voiced these concerns to her parents, they had told her it wasn’t true. The school saw her potential, Angela, the headmaster, had seen more possibilities in her than she had seen in a student in a long time.
That quelled some of her anxieties, but brought on a new one: how was she supposed to live up to that?
She came to the school with the dream of reconnecting to the past, of studying where the Heroic Age ended and how to be sure they would never repeat history. And even more, she wanted to understand what was beyond Nueva York and the Earth.
Entire communications with other planets had existed, other worlds.
Maybe places where corporate ghouls didn’t dictate every last resource.
And if those worlds existed, maybe that would be enough to show this world they didn’t have to live at the beck and call of the corporations.
Her grandparents had spoken of the time before, hazy memories of their childhoods. Of the world she never knew.
Those first-hand accounts, however tarnished by time they may be, kept her on track. It reminded her when she was a little too enamored with the advancements in technology by Synthia or Alchemax or anyone else that this was all a distraction.
And her parents worried.
They knew how much she was influenced by the past and the worlds beyond, and they didn’t want her hurt.
Because they knew what happened to people who asked too many questions.
Maybe some small part of them sent her to this school hoping some of that spirit would get nullified, or at least she would be reminded that she could have a place in this society, where her head wasn’t in the clouds.
She pulled away from her parents, remembering her friend still stood the side, unsure in his place.
“This is Miguel,” she started, turning to smile encouragingly at him.
“We’ve heard quite a lot about you, Miguel! Xina has always been a talker, but every time she messages home it seems half the time she’ll tell us all about her best friend and your classes and how grateful she is to have someone like you in her life,” her father started, shaking Miguel’s hand.
The boy looked petrified.
“Thank you, Mr. Kwan. It’s very nice to meet you,” he said, a slight shake to his voice.
Her mother’s expression shifted to something Xina couldn’t place.
“Let’s get inside! I’m sure you two are starving. We’ve heard enough about how much the cafeteria food is only so-so from Xina, too,” her mother joked.
“Mom, you’re making it sound like all I ever do is write home to you about how much I miss it,” she mumbled.
“Well, you do!” her mother said.
Miguel stayed quiet, but right beside her. She gave him a quizzical look, a silent conversation taking place between the two of them. He sat next to her in the restaurant, and when her parents were still settling in, he reached for her hand under the table and gave it a squeeze.
It was code for them, one squeeze for I’m okay and two for I need help.
She really hoped there wouldn’t be two today.
And at first it seemed like there wouldn’t be, with dinner going so well. They stayed on easy subjects, the school and how she and Miguel liked their classes, what extracurriculars they participated in. She didn’t even get embarrassed when her mother pulled out a wallet of photos of her at different ages. And she tried not to get overly invested in how much fun her best friend seemed to be having at looking at the photos, either.
But the other shoe dropped. And hard.
“So Miguel, what do your parents do?” her father asked, his curiosity piqued.
Xina had tried to warn her parents, unsure how to explain the complicated dynamic in the O’Hara house. They knew Miguel’s father, George, was unkind to her during move-in weekend, and they had made her promise to never be left alone with him.
Like she would ever be around Miguel’s dad by choice.
“My dad designed the security system for Alchemax,” he mumbled, as if reciting from a fact sheet and not talking about his own life.
“Oh,” her mother started, sharing a glance with her father, “that must have been a large undertaking.”
“They’re still putting up all the cameras in the city, so, yeah,” he said unenthusiastically.
“He designed the Public Eye’s new surveillance system?” her father stiffened.
Oh, no.
“Yeah,” Miguel said uneasily.
“The system that has more cameras the closer to downtown you approach, that system?” her father’s voice cracked.
“Dad, can you please just drop it?” she asked.
“Let’s talk about their classes! Xina said you have an interest in twentieth century history as well? Our little girl has loved the stuff since the first laminated subway station card my father gave her—”
Miguel looked perturbed.
“What’s the big deal, anyway? Xina goes to Alchemax, too. She’ll probably end up working there. And she was offered an internship there, same as me,” he argued.
Her parents exasperated looks transferred from Miguel to her.
“—sweetheart, why didn’t you tell us?”
“Absolutely under no circumstances will you—!”
“—we sent her to this school, and this is an opportunity!”
She grimaced, watching her parents debate the merits of her education.
Tentatively, she turned to her friend, wanting him to know it wasn’t his fault.
But his seat was empty, he had no doubt fled the moment her parent’s had started the same fight she had heard the last few years.
“I’m not taking it,” she said, the two pausing to look at her.
Her mother asked why the same moment her father had nodded approvingly.
“I thought… I thought maybe I could change things there. But you can’t change something that doesn’t want to be changed,” she murmured, feeling Miguel’s absence.
She excused herself, and started looking down the hallways of the restaurant, even past to the bathrooms.
Xina called out for him, only to be met with silence.
But when she reached the men’s restroom, she heard a distinct thud against a bathroom stall door. Taking a deep breath, she pushed the door open, ignoring any strange looks.
“Miguel?” she called out.
She watched a dress shoe scurry up the side of a toilet, and she walked to other side of the stall, wishing he wouldn’t put so much distance between them.
“Please don’t beat yourself up over this. I didn’t… I didn’t realize how much my father still resented the surveillance system. You didn’t do anything wrong, I should have warned you—” she started, wishing she had covered her bases better.
“Your parents hate me,” Miguel said miserably.
She blanched, grateful he couldn’t see her face.
“No, they don’t. They just don’t like the corporations… we, my family and my neighborhood… we’ve never been treated kindly. It’s tricky to explain, but it’s rooted in a lot of old feelings that never went away, I guess,” Xina explained.
“But I’m supposed to be the future of that place. That means they hate me, Xina,” he argued.
She frowned.
“C’mon, Miguel. We all get told that kind of stuff at school, it doesn’t have to be true.”
“You wouldn’t get it. My dad, Tyler Stone, they all said so. For whatever reason, it’s my birthright or whatever,” he explained.
Great. This conversation, again. She believed him, at least, to the extent that he felt he owed them. But they didn’t own him. He didn’t have to become their next big brain and bring in a new, worse age of Alchemax.
“You’re more than that! They can’t map out your whole future for you, you have a say! It’s your life, not theirs!” she exclaimed.
Miguel laughed through the stall door, and she felt her anger shift to him.
“It’s never been my life.”
A punch to the gut.
But she could be angry. She could rage at his father and Stone and every Alchemax executive who leered a little too long at him in exams. Because he never did.
In all of their years of schooling, he never let his anger get the best of him. Half the time she would have to coax it out of him, to even get him to confess he felt any sort of negative feelings toward his seemingly preordained future.
“What if it could be?” she asked quietly, leaning against the stall door.
Miguel’s face contorted, finally jumping off the toilet seat, walking apprehensively toward the door.
“What are you talking about?”
“I declined the internship. And Angela is leaving the school this year, starting her own indy project outside of Alchemax’s influence. She said she would give me a chance, let me dig deeper into my research on the TwenCen. And… we only have a year left. We could leave, together. No more worrying about that gilded Alchemax future,” she explained, wishing they could have had this conversation in her dorm, like she wanted.
Miguel opened the door to the stall, regret seeped into his features.
“They already moved my stuff into a dorm for the summer, Xina. I’m interning in their Genetics program. And if it goes well I’ll be guaranteed a job there come next summer,” he explained.
“But you didn’t… you didn’t tell me,” her voice petered out.
“I didn’t wanna upset you on your birthday. So much for that,” he walked past her, absent-mindedly washing his hands.
“Yeah…” she trailed off, following him out the door, wishing she knew what to say.
She ignored the differences in him during the internship, figuring it was just stress. And when she actually got the nerve up to confess her feelings to him, it was almost like he was her Miguel again. The one who would sneak out of the dorms with her at night to go stare up at the sky. He would talk to her for hours about what they could learn from the past, how they could improve the future. Hearing him say all of that to her… it was like someone finally understood her dreams.
And then something just… changed.
He didn’t want to hear about her indy projects or how she side-stepped university requirements.
Instead, he claimed she cheated the system to still be successful.
A system he had had such animosity for, not too long ago…
But then he had had his internship interview with Tyler Stone.
He came back stoic and reserved from it, and weirdly pushy about her accepting her internship, too.
The whole disagreement was so long ago, she had nearly forgotten how on edge he was for weeks.
And now… with everything between them, how their relationship of a few years had imploded, how Tyler Stone had looked at her with such animosity…
Maybe Gabriel was right, maybe Stone did have it out for her.
She thought Miguel knew her better than anyone.
And she thought the same of him.
Which was why she had spent far too much of the last two years spinning herself in circles, trying to uncover the truth. Why her best friend would shut her out so completely, as if none of their history had mattered to him.
Xina had some of her answers when she dumped a box of his stuff outside his apartment, wanting as little contact as possible. She already assumed he had trashed anything she had left at his place, making peace with losing her first ever prototype holo-agent outside of Alchemax’s schematics.
“I guess this means I lose the bet,” the door to Miguel’s apartment opened, revealing Dana in athletic wear.
“I’m just leaving some of Miguel’s stuff. I hope you two and your disregard for other people’s emotions will be very happy together,” Xina snapped.
“Don’t you wanna know about the bet?” Dana leaned against the door frame, the smirk never leaving and humor in her eyes.
“Box. Of. Stuff. Take it in or let it get raided by whatever poor Alchemax goons live on this floor, see if I care,” she bit back.
“I told Miggy there was no way you’d ever come back around here, that no self-respecting woman would. And he said you weren’t like other women. He sure knows how to say just the wrong thing, doesn’t he?” Dana laughed.
Xina glared, wishing she was still the girl in boarding school, who would have hit first, asked for forgiveness later. Who wouldn’t let a bully poison her with their words. But her best friend chose the bully. He chose it in Alchemax, in Babylon Towers and even in Dana.
And she was left with the discarded remains of their friendship and a box of shit he couldn’t be bothered to take with him.
“You know, in all our fun, he was only ever worried about how Gabriel would feel. Asking if I had told him yet, when I would tell him and how that could hurt his little brother. And even those questions were few and fleeting. But you? He never worried about you.”
She dropped the box unceremoniously in front of the other woman, never breaking eye contact.
Fine, she wanted to be catty and cruel?
She’d play ball.
“Hope you don’t crave pet names and ooey-gooey confessions of feelings. Actually, you would need at least a bachelor’s degree in complex thought before you could even begin to dissect the way Miguel O’Hara’s brain works. You won’t understand him. Not in any real way,” she finally spoke, anger lacing her words.
Dana rolled her eyes, nonplussed with her assessment.
“He’s never made me feel dumb. Maybe that’s a you problem, Xina. Maybe he just got tired of being second string to your supposed brilliance. Yeah, I know all about how you were supposedly top of the class. Until you wouldn’t agree to an internship with Alchemax. Then nobody wanted you. Guess history has a funny way of repeating itself,” the other woman giggled, stepping out of the doorway to the apartment.
It slid shut with a resounding thud, and Lyla appeared.
“Uh oh! It seems my safety protocols kicked in. All entry points are sealed until Miguel comes home,” Lyla shrugged, a neon “open” sign appearing beside her holo-form, and she flicked it off.
Dana turned around, affronted.
“Lyla. This isn’t funny, we’ve talked about this. I have access to the apartment, I’m his girlfriend,” she said indignantly.
Xina couldn’t help but smirk at Lyla, and something else pulled at her heart, too.
He kept her.
The holo-agent she gave him, months ago…
And then she remembered the fuming woman in front of her.
“I don’t remember seeing you at Alchemax Prep, but congratulations on getting second-hand information. I wouldn’t sell my integrity. I guess you already have, or you’re fantasizing everyday about the moment you’ll finally have earned a better place in Nueva York. But we shouldn’t rank people. And if Miguel wants you and a corporate future of disparaging anyone below him, then I guess I never really knew him. I hope your money brings you peace, because nothing else will,” she turned and walked away.
Before the goodbye video, before the old lab footage… Xina was certain she was nothing but a footnote in Miguel’s personal history.
She glanced up to the sky again, hopelessly trying to find her way closer to Midtown.
Xina hadn’t spent too much time in Downtown, her family nervous about the warring groups below and the never-ending presence of Alchemax.
But she didn’t see weapons or any danger, really.
She just saw people trying to live their lives.
The road up ahead looked familiar, leading to one of the old city parks turned into a cemetery.
A cemetery she had promised herself she would never step foot in again.
So much for that.
Glancing down at the defunct watch, it still said Universe-2099.
It wasn’t their world, but it was too eerily familiar. Bits and pieces that made her wonder if they hadn’t really just landed on the other side of the city.
She followed the sidewalk, trying to keep her eyes from the grave stones.
But the closer she got, the more she was certain she saw the too familiar figure of Conchata O’Hara in front of one.
That didn’t make any sense.
The O’Hara’s mother had no love lost over Dana, and had attended the funeral out of obligation for her sons. Xina knew as much, because she tried to give her her condolences before the funeral and Conchata had dismissed her.
“…Conchata?” she started uneasily, knowing the woman hated being called by her ex-husband’s last name.
The other woman paused, clearing her throat before turning around.
If Xina didn’t know any better, she would have thought she was crying.
“What are you doing out here, Xina? We both know it isn’t safe. Tyler’s already suspicious, and I don’t want—“
Her breath hitched, finally catching the name on the grave.
Miguel.
“This isn’t happening,” Xina started, the terror of her day finally catching up to her.
Conchata looked at her with sympathy.
“I know, sweetheart, but—“
“No. I shouldn’t have listened to those stupid messages, I shouldn’t have found myself back in his orbit. I wasn’t happy, but I wasn’t… this wasn’t…” she trailed off, feeling her hands shaking and her heartbeat in her head.
His mother was many things, but she wasn’t stupid.
“You aren’t… from around here, are you?” she asked, taking another glance around the park.
“I can’t do this! I’m not the answer to whatever mess he made, I can’t fix his mistakes. I have spent half my life trying to keep him out of danger and he jumps in head first at every chance!” she ranted, whatever dam that was keeping her together finally broken.
She took a step closer to the stone, gliding a hand across the marble.
“This is what I was afraid of for so long. Neither me or Gabriel would say it out loud, but we worried… because that’s all I do when I see him. And to know it is merited, because there’s a universe where he…” Xina couldn’t finish the thought, the birth and death dates more than enough to confirm her fears.
Miguel's mother gave her a very long look, trying to piece together this version of her son’s childhood friend.
“Tyler killed him,” she said after a moment.
“What?” Xina wiped her eyes, trying to collect herself.
“He told that monster no, and he killed him,” Conchata glared at the ground, balling her fists.
“…told him no to what?” she asked quietly.
“The Spider-Man project. To advance the Flyboys and make all of our lives that much worse. He finally told that man no and he killed him for it,” the older woman shook her head, disgusted at the memory.
Xina felt too frazzled, the exhaustion of the day finally catching up to her. Miguel leaving for good, convincing Gabriel to help her, getting tossed around by a bunch of Spider-People, the little girl who had his eyes…
And now this, a world where her best friend finally stood up to his biggest terror and he killed him for it.
The man who ruined her reputation with half of Nueva York, all because she wouldn’t intern at Alchemax.
She stepped away from the grave, her fingers lingering on his name.
Some small part of her, remembering all those years ago, all those times she pushed him to fight back against the Stones. Was this always the outcome if he did? Did encouraging him to stand up again someone like Stone lead to this?
She knew the world they lived in was broken and she wanted to fix it… but if this was the cost, maybe…
Maybe some things come at too high a price.
“I always said nothing good came out of sending him away to that school. He became obsessed with being the best, his entitlement only became worse and… too much of it was my fault,” Conchata admitted, looking away from Xina.
Xina blinked, trying to hide her surprise at the older woman’s words.
Conchata glanced at her, and rolled her eyes.
“You don’t have to be so surprised, Xina. I know I wasn’t the world’s best mother. You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to figure that one out,” she joked.
“I… I don’t know how it was here, but for me and him… I couldn’t always understand. How his father was so wicked and how you seemed so disinterested,” Xina crossed her arms.
“That was for his own good,” his mother cleared her throat.
“Good for who?! He thought you hated him! How’s that for his own good?”
The older woman looked conflicted, as if there was something else she wanted to say.
And then she side-stepped the conversation, in proper Conchata fashion.
“But that place wasn’t all bad,” his mother backtracked, “I mean, he met you. And you made him a little less smarmy.”
She didn’t see how that helped anything.
“If being my friend was such a good thing, then why did he end up here?” she asked.
It felt strange, to finally have an actual, unfiltered conversation with Conchata. For years, Miguel kept that from happening, and it always seemed as if he was embarrassed of his mother. Sure, he let Gabriel hang out with them, but even then he would eventually tell the younger boy to find something else to do.
“You didn’t do this, Xina. This wasn’t because of this world’s Xina or her relationship with Miguel. It was because of me. I’m the reason my Miguel is dead, and I already have one Xina filled to the brim with guilt over it, I don’t need two,” Conchata declared, as if that ended the discussion.
Xina turned away from the grave stones, looking out to the cityscape past the park.
It all looked so familiar, at first glance.
But the Flyboys in the sky weren’t wearing their normal armor.
No, they wore retrofitted padded armor with… spider symbols on the front and back. Some of their bikes had Spider-Man masks pinned to the front, like some sort of sick prize.
“You said something about the other Xina… so you know this isn’t the only world?” she asked, watching a troupe of Flyboys head toward Downtown.
“Well, obviously. How else am I supposed to explain you?” Conchata huffed.
“Fair enough,” she started, her curiosity getting the better of her, “…so who proved the multiverse theory?”
“You jumped to another universe and your first thought is to ask about that?” Conchata rose an eyebrow at her.
“We can’t get back without a power source so… yeah, I’d like to know who clued you in,” Xina argued.
“Fine. It was our Xina. But that doesn’t matter, because anything of any use to you is trapped in the hell pit that is Alchemax,” the older woman explained.
“It can’t be that hard to break in—”
“Death by a thousand Flyboys. Or Stone’s personal bodyguard. Or any other number of security measures. Alternate universe or not, I’m not letting my son’s… well…whatever you two were, get blown to bits by Tyler Stone.”
Xina grimaced.
“You don’t understand, I have to do this—for Gabriel, he’s here too—I got him trapped here, and I have to fix it.”
Something flickered in his mother’s eyes at that, and for a moment she thought she had convinced her.
Suddenly something in Conchata’s pocket lit up, and she reached down for it, grumbling about how Gabriel worried too much. Well, Xina assumed she meant 2099 Gabriel. Well… they were both from 2099.
Oh, her head hurt.
The older woman read the message and clicked her tongue.
“Come on, it seems my Gabriel found yours,” she sighed.
Xina blanched, turning back to the grave and wondering how this world’s Gabriel was handling any of this.
“And how’s… how’s he been? Since?” she waved a hand, unable to voice it.
“Angry. Hurt. Convinced Miguel died a coward,” Conchata said bluntly.
“Oh,” Xina whispered, staring down at the ground.
The older woman looked on sympathetically.
“There’s more to it than that. He sent her something called Project Socrates. And I think… I think he left us something to take down Tyler for good. But we can’t discuss it out here, it’s not safe. We can’t… we have to go, Xina,” Conchata explained, patting her sympathetically on the shoulder.
She knew they couldn’t stay out here, she had clocked the way Conchata looked around every so often, noticing everyone who walked around them in the park.
But it was hard to leave, when he was so close.
Even if it wasn’t really him.
He was a ghost here, by every definition of the word.
Xina turned around, looking down at his name again, an ache she couldn’t name settling in her.
And something clicked in her brain, a conversation she had over a decade ago. And apparently so did this Miguel and Xina.
“You said Socrates? That’s what he said?” she whipped around, following Conchata out of the park.
“Yeah, so?”
“It’s the truth,” Xina said simply.
Conchata gave her a sidelong glance, and shook her head.
—x—
“What do you mean we can’t tell him?” Jess stared at Lyla, the holo-agent crossing her arms defiantly at the Spider-Woman.
“It’s like I said. You can’t tell him they were here. And when I say this next part, you can’t laugh,” Lyla started, looking between Jess and Peter.
“If you say the fate of the multiverse—”
Lyla glared at Peter.
“Oh, you have got to be kidding me.”
“This never happened, okay?”
Jess and Peter shared a look.
“Fine, Lyla. I just… I hope you know what you’re doing,” Jess said finally, giving one last uneasy look to the holo-agent.
Lyla didn’t feel emotions, technically.
That’s what Miguel told her, and that’s what Xina had said the first time she powered her up.
But she wanted this to work, she wanted Gabriel and Xina to actually bring Miguel out of his slump, make him see that he wasn’t just Spider-Man or a failed brother or friend… or anything else she would define Xina as to him.
He was her friend, and she wanted him happy.
That had to be some kind of emotion, right?