strangetrip | [GP] training day

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[GP] training day

There was a trope that in prison there wasn't much to do except work out or read. As colorful as Madonna Inn might be, it was still a prison. And look, somebody had put together a library.

Put fifty some people, many of them military, adventurers, vigilantes, or superheroes of one stripe or another, in a prison with none of the urgent missions or near-death experiences they were used to, the fitness center was going to be a popular place. Maybe almost as popular as the bar.

... Probably not quite that popular.

There were free weights and weight machines, treadmills and ellipticals, yoga mats and exercise balls. A room set aside for classes, if someone decided to lead. A large square had been taped over an area of the floor off to one side as a make-shift sparring space. Sports equipment had been brought back from Bonesville for those who preferred more organized games. And those who had been stuck here longest remembered there hadn't always been a salmon ladder.

In other words, something for just about everybody. And you could usually find someone in there if you were looking for a spotter, workout buddy, sparring partner, friendly competition too.

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About four exciting things are revealed to Peter all at once:

1. Maya lives/works/something in Hell's Kitchen -- which like she says, isn't that far away at all.
2. That he (other-he) worked with her.
3. That at some point he (other-he) got to go to Japan.
4. That he was a New (?!) Avenger.

And all four things are exciting. So exciting that for one second, Peter's brain almost short-circuits from all the awesome revelations at once. But it's the last admission that finally triggers Peter into frenzied, excited speech:

"Wait, I became an Avenger?!"

"You've been one longer than I have." Although with some of the heroes who'd been around a long time, it was impossible to keep track of who'd been on which teams. "Doing the costumed hero thing longer than I have too." He was so much younger here, but so obviously Peter.

"There are two teams of Avengers, when I'm from. The official, approved team, who all registered after the Superhuman Registration Act passed. And the secret team, who went underground to avoid registration or arrest and still keep doing what needed to be done to protect people. The New Avengers."

That explanation just brings up more questions for Peter.

"Wait, Superhuman Registration Act?" That title alone explained enough for Peter, but it's not the act itself that he has questions about. It's about why there was one in the first place.

And so, Peter clarifies his confusion:

"What happened?"

He was so young. And not from the same timeline. Maya didn't believe in hiding dark truths from people, merely giving them in a way that could be understood. But she wasn't sure how much what happened in her world was relevant to this Spidey.

"A lot of things, over a long time. People were hurt. Killed. Imprisoned. Same things that happen whenever fear and hate and bigotry get the upper hand over those who are different. Anybody with superpowers was supposed to register with the government. In the US. The ones who didn't want to out themselves, or who wanted to be able to act according to their conscience instead of what some bureaucrats told them to do, or not do, became outlaws."

Peter thinks about this for a minute. Peter wasn't exactly sure he'd want to be taking orders from President Trump, or anyone that he appointed. And it probably wasn't safe for him to de-mask, either. If there were any bad guys out there that were angry at him, there was a good chance they'd come after him, or his friends or Aunt May.

"That sounds..." Peter pauses, trying to search for the right word. Terrible? Complicated? Like a terrible idea? "...not great," he supplies lamely. "I know that it's probably not a big deal for some heroes because their identities are already known. But Mr. Stark's house got blown up a few years ago, and -- I mean, I wouldn't want anyone or anything getting hurt because people wanted to get at me when I was just wandering around being Peter Parker."

"Stark." Maya's voice was flat and unimpressed, and she rolled her eyes. "Who do you think is heading up the pro-registration side? And yeah, people got hurt because superheroes revealed their identities, including innocent family and friends who hadn't known this person they loved was also a costumed hero. Known criminals were sent out to capture people who wouldn't register. They turned the Negative Zone into a prison. It's a lot worse than 'not great'.

"The Spidey I know, he changed sides once he found out the truth. We didn't have a chance to talk about it," a Skrull invasion took precedence, "but I imagine he carried guilt about going along as long as he did without asking the hard questions. But he trusted Stark."

And Peter trusts Mr. Stark, too. He trusts him a lot. That was why he was willing to help when he said that Captain America was wrong, and that the friend he was protecting was dangerous.

That thought makes Peter super uneasy. What if he had done the same thing? What if he had blindly trusted Mr. Stark, and had actually done something terrible?

It's a reality that Peter doesn't want to confront, a reality that's landed solidly in the pit of his stomach, solid and hard. And as much as he attempts to dislodge it, it feels stuck. He feels stuck.

"Mr. Stark -- he was the one who gave me the Spider-Man suit. My first real one. And, when I was little, he saved my life at the Stark Expo from these Hammer Drones that were attacking everyone. And he's been -- he's sort-of been mentoring me."

He's relaying the details all out of order, and he knows it's starting to sound like a defense, and he doesn't want it to be. He swallows, and quickly scrambles to explain:

"And, when he first sorta recruited me," he starts, "He told me that Captain America -- that Captain America was trying to protect his friend, who had done a lot of bad things. That he thought he was right, but he was wrong -- and that that made him dangerous. And -- And I helped him out -- I helped him out by fighting against a lot of people -- Captain America, Falcon, Hawkeye, the Scarlet Witch, the Winter Soldier, and Ant-Man, and I--"

Peter takes a breath.

"I know that the two Mr. Starks aren't the same. And, I'm sure that the Peter Parker there isn't quite the same as me. But--"

Peter swallows. His palms are starting to feel a little sweaty now. "I don't know. I'm just... not sure about things anymore. And I can't just ask anyone about it and find out what was really going on because there's no one here from the timeline I was from."

Within us, within our stories, we have the power of the manitou. It was why Maya shared her stories, her people's stories with those who would listen.

Her voice took on a cadence she'd learned watching the Chief, a rhythm that said Listen the way her dance said Look. "After my father died, I was raised by his business partner, Mr. Fisk, who was a very powerful, very charismatic man. He sent me to the best schools, was in the audience at every performance, every match, and gave me everything I could possibly need. He treated me like a daughter." The rage she had once felt was more muted now, the hole inside filling every time she brought some light into another's life.

"One day Mr. Fisk told me there was a lawyer who mistakenly thought he was a criminal, and who was causing trouble for him. He asked me to talk to the lawyer, show him the man I knew Mr. Fisk to be. So I met him, and we talked, and... I think we started to fall in love." Over hotdogs and a movie shared between the deaf woman and the blind man.

"About that same time, Mr. Fisk showed me pictures of someone called Daredevil, who'd broken into Fisk's building and stolen from him, and who, Mr. Fisk claimed had been the man who shot my father.

"Mr. Fisk had been good to me. And my father had loved him. I had no reason to doubt what he told me, about either the lawyer or Daredevil. That was the first time I put on the costume that became Echo. I took the gun that had been used to kill my father, and I studied everything I could find on Daredevil. And when I was ready, I hunted him. I was going to kill him." Even now she could remember the rage-filled void that had threatened to rip her apart.

"Fisk had lied. He was not just a criminal, he was the Kingpin, who ran all the crime in Hell's Kitchen, and probably beyond. And he had been the one to kill my father. If Daredevil hadn't been the lawyer, if he hadn't been falling in love with me and recognized me despite my 'uniform'. If he hadn't stopped me, and convinced me to listen, I would have killed an innocent man and let a truly evil man go free."

After his stories, her father had always asked her what the story taught her, rather than telling her what the lesson was supposed to be. "I know that doesn't tell you what was really going on in your fight with Cap and the others. I wouldn't know without being there, and like you said, our Stark's aren't the same any more than you are the Peter I knew. "But maybe it gives you something to think about, for when you do get home. If someone finds a way out."

Peter listens, taking in every last word of Maya's story. And a part of him is worried. Maybe he did the wrong thing, trusting Mr. Stark blindly. But if he had asked more questions, would Mr. Stark have answered him honestly?

Peter looks down at his hands, fanned out on his thighs. He hadn't been acutely aware of how strange hands looked until that very moment, and he wonders why he's just realizing it now. He's fifteen, and that's more than enough time to really look at things, to really see them.

And when he starts talking again, he's clearly just thinking aloud.

"My YouTube videos had been up for almost six months before Mr. Stark came to our apartment," he says, staring down at his hands. "I mean, maybe it's possible that he didn't see them until then. I mean, I was just a kid in a hoodie. He didn't even get my superhero name right."

Spiderling, Peter thinks to himself, and he takes a breath that comes out more as a sigh than anything else.

"I don't know," Peter says again, and he's sure he sounds like he's whining, and it's stupid of him to keep saying I don't know, because the I don't knows don't change anything. "I mean, the teams were pretty evenly matched --" And Peter starts doing his mental tabulations. " -- when you included me," he realizes.

Peter turns his attention away from his hands and back over to Maya.

"After you found out Fisk lied to you, what did you do?" he blurts out.

Maya had issues with the Stark from her timeline, but they were the same issues the rest of her team had. But the more Peter talked, the more she wanted to educate the Stark from his timeline – with her fists. Putting this kid, and he was a kid, into that kind of fight against those trained opponents just to give Stark's side of things a fighting chance, without giving him the information he needed to make a decision for himself. What the actual fuck, Stark.

Then he asked about Fisk, and her anger shifted to something closer to sadness. "I tracked him down and shot him. I thought I killed him. It didn't help. I still felt as empty and as angry as I had before. So I went to find myself, and a way to fill the hole inside. Started finding ways to give back, do good, make things better for people." She offered a small smile. Sharing stories, listening to other's stories was a big part of it for her.

Somehow, listening to Maya talk about her own experience makes Peter feel a little better. But just a little. Because even if everything he's worried about being true with Iron Man is true, it's still not as bad as a family friend killing your father, lying to you about it, then you killing him and not feeling better after all of that.

"Do you -- do you feel better now?" he asks. He hopes that she does, that she found some way to fill that space inside of her. Because he hasn't known her for very long, but she seems really nice, and he hates to think that that emptiness is still boring itself inside of her.

"Yeah." Almost all of the time. "I've done a lot of soul searching. Besides, back home, we've all been too busy to focus on the small stuff." Her father and his death had made Maya who and what she was. The handprint she wore was a symbol of how it would always be a part of her.

"But being killed and brought back, finding out Skrull had invaded without anyone noticing or knowing what they had planned, people from the past, hiding from SHIELD – you know, the little things – it all put life in perspective."

Peter has no idea what Skrull or SHIELD are, and while he could easily ask more about them, he's already hyperfocused on just one thing Maya has said:

"You died and came back to life?"

Maya laughed, letting the sound spring forth rather than try to hold it back. But it only lasted a moment before she grew more serious. "The Hand has all kinds of tricks. I went up against them on my own. They brought me back to life, threw me in a deep hole, and brainwashed me.

"It was Spidey pulled me out of the hole, while the rest of the team fought of the Hand. I joined up not too long after." They'd had fought together once before, but that was the start of things becoming official, or as close to official as they got.

Peter can't help but swell a little with pride at that story. Sure, that Spidey wasn't him, but it probably felt a little like when your brother won an award or something. Peter wasn't entirely sure how that felt like, either (he had no siblings or cousins who could fill that role), but he was sure that that was how it felt.

"I'm glad you're alive, though," Peter says, because he is. "But who's the Hand, exactly? I mean, his name doesn't really give me any idea of what kind of powers he has."

Unless they had slapping powers or something. Peter somehow doubted that was the case, given he could resurrect people from the dead and brainwash them.

"The Hand isn't a person. It's a group. An order of ninja assassins, including practitioners of dark magic, deeply integrated in organized crime. Trust me, you don't want to get involved with them if you can help it." Or you could be Maya, donning a completely different costumed persona to investigate them singlehandedly. To be fair, she'd thought she'd be able to call for backup more easily than reality turned out. She hadn't planned on the fight over registration turning everything upside down.

"Ninja assassins," Peter echoes, thinking how utterly cool magic assassins that are also practitioners of dark magic, deeply integrated in organized crime would be, if it were a movie and not actually Maya's reality. It was definitely the kind of movie he and Ned would watch. Probably even in theaters. But only during the matinee or at one of the theaters that gave student discounts.

"I'll be sure to watch out for them," Peter says, filing this information for later on. "Thanks for letting me know."

A beat, and then he asks: "Do you think that we'll meet in my timeline? That sometime we'll like--" Peter pauses there. "--be friends and stuff?"

Maya wasn't sure the Spider-Man in her world counted as a friend. Teammate, sure. If he wasn't actually a Skrull. She'd liked him okay, although they weren't as close as her and Clint or Logan. For all his chatter, he'd kept most of them at arm's length, from what she'd seen.

"Maybe. All this timeline craziness is, I don't know, not my area of expertise." It wasn't something she could learn simply by watching, and what she had picked up from Strange had mostly left her with more questions, and no time for answers. "But we're both here now. Maybe that's the better place to start a friendship."

Peter likes to think that someday, if he does ever get to go back, he'll meet all the other-versions of all the people who already know the other-him. Though it'd be really weird for him to try and act like he didn't know them. But considering all the weird things that happened to them, maybe they'd believe him. Just like he believed everyone here who told him they met another Peter Parker.

"So," Peter starts uncertainly. "Does that -- does that make us friends now?"

Friendships took time, or intense experiences the inn seemed to lack. Not that Maya was complaining about that. Yet. She could see how people got bored in time. And if she was honest with herself, which she tried to be, Maya wasn't always good at letting people close enough to be friends.

"It's a start." Direct. Honest. Not implying a closeness they hadn't built yet, nor suggesting it was impossible. It was the best answer Maya had for him now.

That answer doesn't seem to dampen Peter's enthusiasm in the least.

"Great!" he exclaims. "I should, uh--" Peter glances behind him. "--hit the showers." He's kind of gross right now, and he's pretty sure he smells and if he does, he really doesn't want to keep inflicting that on Maya. He had kinda a workout earlier.

He stands up, then wipes his hands on his shorts. "Think we can hang out again sometime?"

The inn is a lot bigger than Strange's sanctum, but it's not New York City. Or Queens. Or Hell's Kitchen. "We're stuck here with fifty other people and no way out. We'll see each other again. Talk to you later, Peter."

"See you later, Maya!" Peter says with a wave as he walks away. "And good luck with your training!"

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[GP] training day

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