At birth, everyone is given a stopwatch, but not a normal one. The stopwatch doesn't count down just any amount of time. It only has one purpose. You can't keep track of how long it takes you to run that mile that you've been trying to achieve, or how long it takes you to do a Rubix cube. It's not an application on a device. It's a small black screen with a matching, unbreakable strap, its technological origin unknown but around since the beginning of history. At least that's what we're told.

The stopwatch counts down to the time you have until you meet your soulmate, Your selected partner chosen for you by fate herself... That of course isn't a promise of true love. No one really knows what it means, but most take it as a sign of something hopeful and prospering. 

Peter Benjamin Parker was given his stopwatch minutes after birth and when the red numbers blinked on it read:

15:63:10:47

15 years, 63 days, 10 minutes and 47 seconds.

It was set in stone for him as it had for the billions that had come before him. That was when he would meet his soulmate. The only thing that existed within the world that could change those numbers was death. 

Only death could steal your time and change your fate.

 So they had said.

• • • • • •

As a teenager, Peter hated his stopwatch. He hated the red, digital numbers on the small, black device that would forever be strapped to his wrist. It was after all, impossible to remove the moment recorder once it was sealed around your wrist. It few with you as a child, the band expanding unnoticeably. No one knew how or why. People assumed aliens, other's God. Some fools credited the Earth itself.

The first time it went off Peter was only thirteen. 

One moment it read:

02:04:21:08

2 years, 4 days, 21 minutes and 8 seconds.

And in the next, it stopped counting with a bloodcurdling screech. He had been out shopping with Aunt May and Uncle Ben when it had decided to announce the death of his awaited person. The whole building went quiet as Peter looked down at his own wrist in shock before the inevitable tears started to stream down his face. Everyone within range knew what the alarm meant. 

The young boy's soulmate was dead...

Seventeen hours later Peter was red-eyed and curled up in his bed, staring at the black screen when the counter relit, shining a with a radiant, almost blinding red light before it dulled in brightness and started to count again.

02:03:08:00

2 years, 3 days, 8 minutes and 0 seconds.

At that time, Peter had thought it was the grace of God. He had run to his Aunt and Uncle to share the news. They were as baffled as Peter was amazed.

He cried again, this time tears of joy.

• • • • • •

00:18:01:05

0 years, 18 days, 1 minute, 5 seconds 

Peter was fifteen when he had jerked awake to the torturous sound that made his heart sink and breath catch. The sound that made everyone's heart flutter with a note of panic. 

No one else heard his alarm nor his sobs as he muffled his uncontrollable cries in his pillow, believing he truly was alone in the world now, that he would have no one waiting for him in the future. His soulmate had already died once after all. What were the chances that they'd come back again?

That night, Peter cried himself to sleep much like he once had when he realized that his parents really weren't coming back for him. Only this time he mourned the loss of a person who he would never meet. He'd never even known their name.

The next morning, he had to wake up for school. Oh, how much he would have given to just die in the bed then and there... He made sure that Aunt May didn't notice his stopwatch as he raced out the door. He also didn't answer questions from his peers about the frozen numbers on his watch when he couldn't hide it anymore. He had tried to hide it on the bus on the way to a lab facility for their science field trip, but everyone knew he'd been close to meeting his soulmate. Attention was unavoidable and people thought he'd met his chosen one. Their faces fell when he eventually revealed the blank screen.

But he had better things to focus on. That trip for example... because it was something to distract his mind with.

Something strange happened when he was on that trip. One would call it a miracle, but he only felt uneasy. While passing through a bioengineering lab with all kinds of strange containers and experiments, his watch began to flicker and glitch, jumping between four different countdowns. 

Peter was distracted, tired, and upset. His foul mood made him oblivious to the spider that crawled along the collar of his plaid shirt before sinking its pincers deep into a vein in his neck.

Peter blamed the stupid watch- No, his soulmate for letting him be so unaware. They had cursed him with his abilities.... 

But he blamed himself when Ben died. 

He blamed himself for not using his powers with more responsibility. But he laid responsibility for the pains of hurt that wracked his heart and soul on his chosen one, he blamed his general misfortune on the person who had ruined his life. The one who wouldn't stay dead. The person with four different dates that took turns glitching across his screen. 

In a period of two months, his watch had gone off four times. One by one, each of the glitchy counts were executed. His watch reacted to each count stop as if Peter had been destined with four soulmates and not just one. Eventually, Peter woke to find his watch completely blank, the way it was supposed to be when your soulmate was no longer existent in the world. 

He told himself he didn't have one. Again and again, he told himself he just had a broken timer.  he wasn't sure if the idea made him feel relieved or heartbroken. He decided to sleep it off, and no tears were left to be shed for the person on the other side.

During the morning the watch showed a new time.

His heart fell.

00:48:59:04

0 years, 48 days, 59 minutes, and 4 seconds.

48 days, 58 minutes, 4.5 seconds later, almost two months after but not quite, Peter was staring at his watch through the bug eyes of his mask.

00:00:01:00

Spider-Man was standing at the edge of a building not sure what to do. There wasn't anyone around. And there wouldn't be unless someone came to the roof in the next minute. 

Maybe they were on their way up? He couldn't hear anyone climbing the steps of the building nor the firescape... but they had to be? 

He really wasn't alone in the world was he?

Was his stopwatch truly broken? Would he live the rest of his life with a schizophrenic timer strapped to his body?

00:00:00:36

His heart beat quickly in his chest. He could hear his blood rushing in his ears. He was so close.

The person he most dreaded and desired. He wanted someone to hold him tight. To assure him he wasn't alone, that they hadn't meant for what had happened to become Peter's fate. 

00:00:00:00

The red numbers blinked as Peter looked around.

Nothing.

Nobody. No one to tell him he was loved and would never be left alone in the world. 

No one to treasure him or tell him he wasn't crazy.

Nervousness turned into fury.

But not even the rage-fueled super strength of New York's Spider-Man could rip away the straps of the mystic watch. 

So Peter destroyed his heart instead. Without a heart, there was nothing to break... He didn't need a soulmate, or love. Spiders are solitary predators anyway.

• • • • • •

The next day the countdown read:

02:04:07:30

2 years, 4 days, 7 minutes, 30 seconds 

• • • • • •

The watch went off a total of 47 times in the source of that two-year period. The amount of time it would take for the two to meet also changed. Oddly enough, It had only once skipped ahead 8 hours and 1 minute. Not a huge amount, but enough to both excite the arachnid despite how much he despised the person who controlled the timer. 

The consistency was hope-inducing. 

But what else was he supposed to feel? he was the only one who knew what was going on. No one before him had ever experienced a stopwatch that would reset. But now it was finally acting normal. The timer would go off when his soulmate died, but the timer would not disappear, the way things did when someone was resuscitated before they met a soulmate.

Even so, Soulmates were a cruel, cruel joke in Peter's mind. He wanted to be happy about this change, but it was impossible. 

He was taught as a child that everyone is given their own kind of happy ending, but by now he knew better than to think such a thing. Why should his life be so involved with a person that kept getting away?

Peter wanted to hurt his soulmate. He didn't care, This wasn't fair, He wanted them to suffer through his own pain. To feel what it was like to continuously be crushed and broken.

He wanted to suffocate them. To find a way to choke them to death with a strap made of the same material was the stopwatches. He wanted to see the light drain from their eyes and for the timer to go off for real. 

He wanted them to stay dead forever. 

He didn't want a soulmate.

• • • • • •

The next two years continued similarly.

When college came around the watch continued to go off sporadically, even in his classes. Everyone stared at him while he quietly continued writing down his notes as if the device, wasn't making any sound. He couldn't let himself be aware of its screeching. He just couldn't or he knew he'd panic, he'd lose control and break down. All those walls he had built up to protect him would be torn away the moment the first tear fell.  

The professor asked Peter to dismiss himself each time it happened and each time Peter refused to leave the room. He knew it disturbed his peers, but it made him giddy quite frankly. He felt strong. His classmates started to whisper about him but he didn't care. 

They didn't know.

They didn't understand.

After it happened a second time in his dorm room he went and found his own apartment. The sound had given his roommate nightmares and instead of offering Peter his own room and a scholarship for others who'd lost their soulmates, the school had asked him to leave housing. That was fine. It's hard to have a hero's reputation when you have to fly through campus every night.

But he still hated his soulmate dearly.

His soulmate was ruining his life and he hadn't even met them yet. They were slowly turning his heart to lead.

But that was fine. His soulmate would pay the price.

Special thanks to Patron Jade for their pledge. Their support has brought to you this edited edition of Stopwatch. If you would like to see more of Stopwatch edited in the future, consider pledging $1 to my Patreon. Link in bio.

https://www.patreon.com/Narloch

(Originally published July 2016, officially edited 2022)

Until next time
~ Shadow-Assassin

2022: This is a weird sketch line art thing. idk, but it was quick and I wasn't dedicated.