strangetrip | So about Thanos...

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So about Thanos... - Tag Peter

Ned was pretty excited that he was going to be doing a project with Peter. It felt like old times. It seemed like it had been forever since they were tinkering with something they probably shouldn't be tinkering with. He was excited.

"So, I was thinking. If we can get this virtual reality rig to actually work, we could like, program different things to see and then, I don't know... maybe people like Xavin could like, show us what their world looks like?" He paused. "Or, you know, we could just play Golden Eye or Smash Brothers."

Of course, they were just in the infancy stage of such an idea. They still had to figure out how to actually accomplish any of it. While Ned's laptop was good, storing information enough for more than one game would be difficult. He'd probably definitely have to delete his season 1 of Game of Thrones for sure.

In front of them was a cellphone from Europe, some regular glasses, and a few other objects they were going to tinker with to see if they could make some sort of screen for Virtual Reality.

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"I think it'd be cool if they could," Peter says. "I'd really like to see what everyone else's world looks like." Most people were from Earth, or some variation of it, but there were plenty of people out there who weren't from Earth, or whose Earth was dramatically different from his own.

"Yeah, me too. Like Moana's." Okay, so maybe that wasn't exactly the most exotic place, but she as the first one who really came to mind - she was on his mind a lot. "You have any idea how we can make glasses actually work? I feel like if Google could do it, we can too."

"No idea. But if we really need help, we can ask Tony. He did the whole BARF thing, so I'm sure he knows how to make it work." Peter was pretty positive he did.

"Yeah. He could definitely help." He nodded. "I thinking our best bet first is to try something like Google Daydream, you know?"

He reached for the extra phone they had.

Peter nods, then takes a breath.

"Hey," he says suddenly, breathily. "There's something I've wanted to talk to you about." A beat. "Not related to the project."

Ned looked up from the cellphone. He was able to read that it was probably something important, but his mind tried to fill in the blank as to what was important. His brain landed on the first thing Ned could this of. He sucked in a small breath and his eyes widened.

"Oh my God, is Liz pregnant?" He lowered his voice at the last part, but it was still pretty much a stage whisper.

"No, Ned," Peter says in a hiss, his face reddening. "We haven't even slept together yet, okay?"

Ned let out a little breath like somehow if Liz was pregnant, that would adversely affect his life too.

"Well, that's good. I mean, not 'that's good that you haven't slept together yet' but that's good she's not pregnant."

Of course now he was out of ideas of what Peter wanted to talk about.

"Yeah, I don't know what I'd do if that happened," Peter says, trying not to think about it. "Do you remember back in December, when people were being visited by Ghosts or visions or whatever?"

Ned had no idea what he would do and he wouldn't even be the one with a pregnant girlfriend.

He filled that thought away for another day and listened to Peter, nodding at his words. "Yeah. That was pretty intense. Why?"

"Cause I was kinda visited by someone," he says. "Not Ben." He takes a breath. "Me."

Ned froze, though thankfully this time he didn't drop what he was holding. "Wait... what?" He put the phone down and leaned in Peter's direction a little. "How can you have been visited by yourself? Was it like, your future self? Are we talking like Back to the Future 3 here or more like Spock in the new Star Trek?"

"Like my future self," he says. Peter dampens his lips. "My slightly future self."

He squinted at his best friend. "What does that even mean?" He wasn't being accusatory. Rather, he was just trying to figure out what it actually meant.

Also, Peter had all the cool stuff happen to him.

Peter takes another breath and holds it for a long moment. It takes everything inside him not to utterly lose his resolve, least of all when Ned doesn't seem to be picking up on where he's going with this.

"I'm gonna die when I go back," Peter blurts. "Thanos -- he's going to win and a lot of people are going to die and I'm going to be one of them."

Ned's reaction came in waves. At first he let out a nervous bark of a laugh - the sort of laugh you do when you're saying something couldn't possibly be true. Peter was joking, right? But then it occurred to Ned that Peter would joke about something like that and his expression changed to shock with his mouth hanging slightly open as he stared at Peter. Peter's words seem to accumulate like heavy snow on a leaf until it was too much to bear. Peter was going to die? Lots of people are going to die? Peter was going to die.

Ned's last expression was somewhere between devastation and 'about to freak out'. His lips were in a frown, but his brow was furrowed more in confusion than in sadness. He opened his mouth and no words came out the first time. He stared at his friend some more. Blink. When he opened his mouth again, his voice was hoarse. "You're going to die?! Peter. you can't die. You can't."

Peter tries to will himself to stay calm even in the midst of Ned's rising panic. "Tony and Thor are both trying to figure out a way to stop it," he says. "So it might not happen."

He looked at his friend like his puppy had just been kicked. Then Ned suddenly lunged forward and bear hugged Peter tightly with his head down. He squeezed with more strength than he usually did.

"H-Hey," he manages to push out with a nervous laugh. He wraps his arms around Ned. "It's okay."

It hadn't even occurred to Ned yet that he might be dead too. He was still just concerned with Peter. "Can I help? I want to help Mr. Stark and Thor." Did that mean he was ready to let go of his best friend right now? Nope/

"I don't really know if there's anything you can do," Peter admits. "I get the feeling even I'm not getting told everything."

He wasn't crying, but Ned did sniffle as he finally withdrew from embracing Peter.

"Why would they keep stuff from you?" He looked earnestly at Peter. "Isn't it better if everyone helps?"

"I don't know," Peter admits. "I don't know for sure that anyone's hiding anything from me. It's not like we did a play-by-play of what we know."

Peter swallows.

"Are you okay?"

"No." He looked at him. "My best friend just told me he was going to die back home so I'm kind of freaking out right now?" He shook his head. "I can't even...we're going to work this out. I can try to have into Mr. Stark's files, if you think he won't tell us the truth. See what's going on."

"I really should try talking to him first," Peter says, thinking back to that time they hacked his suit. Tony had definitely not been happy about that and he probably wouldn't be happy if they started doing that again. He was already pushing his luck already with the AI.

"Okay..." He nodded, but sounded reluctant like when a kid is told he can't go to the movie he wants to watch because he's not of age. "But.. you'll tell me if I can help any?"

"Yeah," Peter says, nodding. "Yeah, I definitely will. Um."

Peter takes yet another breath, trying to figure out how to put the words together. He knows there's a chance that even if Ned even promises this, he might not even be able to fulfill it; he may very well be dead, or May might.

"If things don't turn out okay, can you watch out for May?"

He blinked at Peter. "Yeah. I mean, of course. But I won't actually have to because we're going to fix it before then. Spider-Man doesn't die. He just doesn't. And I need Peter Parker to help me finally ask Betty out to the prom at some point."

Need looked at his friend and felt numb. Peter was too young to just... die. While he knew what Peter did was dangerous, his friend had always been good at what he did. The idea Peter couldn't save himself this time was unreal.

"Just in case," Peter says, looking at Ned solemnly.

"Okay" He nodded, despite not really wanting to no because it was like he was agreeing that it would be needed.

But Ned was a good friend. He knew that talking about it hurt Peter, just like it hurt him. He knew asking the question why Peter waited so long to tell him or who else knew before him would make Peter feel more guilt than he needed to. Ned was just confident that when Peter had found the words, he shared them. Peter wouldn't keep him in the dark forever.

For those reasons, Ned put a smile on his face and he picked up the cellphone he had dropped. "So, I was thinking about using flash for the programming..."

Peter isn't entirely convinced by Ned's smile, but he's willing to go along with it. He probably doesn't want to dwell on it, either.

"Yeah," Peter says, drawing closer to Ned. "I think that's a good idea. We got plenty of time to work on it."

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So about Thanos... - Tag Peter

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