— 𝐇𝐄𝐀𝐑𝐓 𝐎𝐅 𝐆𝐎𝐋𝐃 —

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WHEN MAX WOKE UP, HER HEAD WAS POUNDING AND SHE HAD NO IDEA WHERE SHE WAS. The last thing she remembered was that she'd stepped out onto the stage and completely botched her first line before the ceiling came crashing down. There were a few other lucid moments, but they were difficult to differentiate from the psychedelic dreams her mind had found swimming where they didn't belong.

Her vision was blurred, glitching and swaying between colors and moments that didn't belong together. It was like a child had gotten ahold of the remote that controlled her mind and was constantly switching the channels with discontent. The world was blue then green then purple then pink. It was black and white. It was vibrant. It was dull. It was gold. And finally it returned to what she considered normal.

As she slowly turned her head to look at her surroundings, it appeared she was in some sort of abandoned construction site. And considering it was New York, it was impossible to pinpoint where exactly in the city she currently was. Recognizing that it would do little good to panic, she elected to focus on the facts: counting them one by one on her fingers under her breath as she rose to her feet and paced across the open space.

"It's alright," a voice called from the rafters. Her eyes shot upward, catching sight of the red and blue flash as it fell. And there before her stood New York's very own Spider-Man. "You're safe here."

He was wearing the mask. She knew he was wearing the mask, but her vision began acting up again. One second he was wearing the mask, the next he wasn't. One second he was a brunette with brown eyes, the next he was a blonde with blue. He looked older then younger, wore glasses then didn't. The suit was red then blue, and at one moment a solid black. It was all too quick to take in. She could feel her eyes moving back and forth as if suffering from nystagmus... and then she could feel them rolling back into her head, threatening to knock her unconscious.

She didn't even realize she was falling until he caught her. His voice was warm and currently all she needed to feel comfortable in the foreign environment. "Woah, now. I've got you."

Her breath was heavy. Not from exhaustion, but disorientation. She closed her eyes and simply focused on the breath of her lungs, counting the rhythm as if it were a song playing on the radio. And when she'd counted up to thirty, she decided she was composed enough to come back to reality.

"Are you alright?" he asked as she opened her eyes. There was a small amount of confusion contained in her Hazel irises as she'd forgotten that he had yet to actually take off his mask. Like it was scorched in her mind, she could still see the faint outline of the boy she'd set her sights on in the theater.

"Who are you—" her voice caught in her throat as she glanced at the golden glow emanating from his chest. She knew who he was. It was a ridiculous question to ask, yet it was the only words she could form as she stared at the golden string that connected their fates.

"You must not watch the news very often," he chuckled. "I'm your friendly neighborhood Spider-Man."

She swallowed then finally looked away from the golden string—one only apparently she could see, otherwise she assumed the conversation would certainly not be this calm. She winced as her mind continued to play tricks, unable to pick one way to look at the man while he was wearing the mask. Quickly, her hand reached up as if trying to unveil his face. "No, that's not what I mean. Who are you, Pete—"

"Now let's not do that," he held out his hands, putting some distance between them as he pulled away before she could touch the mask. However, he froze as he processed what she was trying to say. "What was that?"

"I—" she pulled her arms tighter around herself and tried to turn around. "Nothing."

"No, no, no," he shuffled back in front of her as she continued to turn away. "You said Pete. Now please tell me I just interrupted the rest of your sentence which wasn't going to be a name."

"A name like Peter?" she asked, less abashed than before. She finally faced him as if expecting answers, answers to questions she hadn't asked and he couldn't guess.

"How do you know that name?" he asked, almost as if he was trying to dance around the subject.

"How could I forget it?" she asked, dusting herself off as she rose to her feet. It had been the only word her internal monologue had spoken since yesterday evening. He'd flooded her every waking thought and she didn't even know who he was.

"Ah, I'd take it slow," he tried to warn her, but she held up a hand to interrupt him.

"I'm fine. It was just a dizzy spell." She waved away his concern. "They come on in short spells, but I have some time between the intervals. Besides, I'm tired of taking this slow—whatever this is."

"You're not making much sense."

"Welcome to the club," she scoffed. Then looked around the abandoned construction site where she'd woken up. "Maybe I'm still dreaming. Is it too much to hope that I simply had a bad bowl of soup last night and it put me into a coma?"

"That's a pretty bleak hope," Peter noted.

"It'd be better than whatever the hell I've been dealing with since," she countered, waving her finger as if she didn't truly believe he was there. "Then I'll just wake up and see that I haven't made a fool of myself onstage in front of greater New York, and I haven't met Spider-Man, and therefore I'm not going insane since I never saw the sky tear itself open, which means I haven't been seeing strings tying people together or confusing colors, or people as different people than themselves—"

"Hey," Peter gently grabbed her by the arms to ground her in the present. "Let's take a second to slow down. If you keep hyperventilating, you're just gonna pass out again. From the sound of it, you probably have a concussion from the ceiling falling in. We don't want to make it worse."

Max laughed, folding her legs as she sat on the ground. "How can things get worse? Because my head is pounding, and if you can't feel pain in a dream then all of this has been real—that you are real."

"I'd like to think I'm real," Peter chuckled in agreement. "Why don't we just start from the beginning? You mentioned the sky tearing itself open?"

"Please don't play along." She shook her head. "I'm delusional. I get that, so I don't need pity from a guy in spandex."

"Ouch." Peter lifted a hand to his chest, a feigned reaction to the illusionary pain. He softened though, seeing how panicked she was. "I can't help if I don't know what's going on."

"So you're a shrink now too?"

"I've dealt with my fair share of loonies," he joked.

She rolled her eyes, but it was enough to let down some of her defenses. She took a breath. "Alright, fine. I'd just finished another rather unsuccessful date. I have a routine of cheering myself up with a cone of strawberry ice cream whenever one of these things doesn't go my way."

"I'd say pretty often if you've made it a routine."

She pursed her lips, crossing her arms. "Can we hold back on the commentary about my dating life, Tiger? Otherwise we'd never get to the end of this story and I doubt your unpaid psychiatric session has enough time to cover more than one trauma for the evening."

"I don't know. How much do you think the book would sell for?" he asked. Then noticing the annoyed look plastered to her face, Peter quieted and nodded his head for her to continue.

"Thank you." She cleared her throat and continued. "So I'm walking through the park on my way home when all of a sudden the sky is torn open. A couple beams of light shoot through the gaping hole and then everything is quiet. It's like those couple of seconds after an explosion you'd see in the movies. And then everything comes back to me all at once only so much louder and brighter and more vibrant than before."

"What do you mean?" Peter asked, the fabric of his mask in the center of his forehead scrunched with his brow.

"Could you take that ridiculous thing off?" she asked, breaking her focus from the conversation. "It's really distracting because for some reason my brain just can't process it. It's like trying to watch a 3D movie without the glasses."

"That kinda defeats the point of a secret identity," Peter contradicted, shaking his head.

"It's not much of a secret since I know your name," she retorted.

"There's got to be dozens of Peter's in New York," he countered. "Without a face you still don't know."

"A face with a mop of brown hair that sticks out in every direction and warm brown eyes like a cup of hot cocoa on a cold winter's eve?" she asked in a monotonous tone, but it was clear she was mocking him from the description.

Peter yanked his mask off, discarding whatever policy he'd tried to uphold as he looked at her incredulously. "How could you possibly know that?"

She smirked. "That could have been a bluff."

A mixture of emotions flashed across his face.

"It wasn't," she said, attempting to console the panic-striken look plastered to his face. "But it could have."

"Alright, back to your story." Peter cleared his throat, playing with the fabric of the mask between his fingers as he listened. "You said the world was louder and brighter."

She nodded her head. "I was seeing things that didn't exist here, but like I knew they existed somewhere else." She released a groan as she rubbed her face and shook her head. "This sounds insane."

"Keep going."

She turned her head, shooting him an inquisitive look. It was almost like he believed her, like he was absorbing every word as if they were true. "Um... there were these lights, but they didn't come from the lamps or the stoplights. It was like they came from people's hearts—I don't know. What am I doing? Last night I was an unsuccessful actress, and now today I'm still an unsuccessful actress but I'm talking to a man in tights about seeing things that exist in other worlds. Fliss was right. She said I'd eventually lose it if I didn't take a break. Well, this is it. This is me losing it—"

"Hey," Peter interrupted, pulling her focus back to him. "I don't think you've lost your mind just yet."

She frowned, looking at him unconvinced as she ran her fingers through her hair. "You don't?"

"No." He shook his head. He paused, frozen in a moment of thought before sporadically jumping to the next topic. "Have you ever heard about something called the Multiverse?"

Slowly, Max nodded her head. "Sure, movies use it all the time when their plot lines get too convoluted to use anymore. Different worlds living in something dimensions of some sort."

"It's alot more complex than that, but for simplicity's sake, sure," he agreed. "Now the Multiverse plays with the laws of string theory and quantum mechanics in ways no one understands yet, but I believe that somehow you've been exposed to a temporal... gap—"

"That doesn't sound very scientific."

"Shhh, I'm just spitballing here," he waved away her playful correction. "I think you may have been exposed to a temporal gap in the space-time continuum when my cousin and I were sent back."

Her brow furrowed in confusion. "Sent back from where?"

"The other universe," he replied as if that should have been understood. He then paused, collected his thoughts with the reminder that he wasn't speaking to another specialist. "Right. Through a bizarre series of events that would take quite some time to explain, I was transported from this universe to another. I spent a couple of days there, but last night I returned as if I'd never left."

"Wait a minute." Max held up a finger then pointed it in his direction. "You're the reason that I can't make heads or tails of the world anymore? All because what, you felt the need to conduct a little science experiment?"

"Before we start pointing fingers, technically it was the wizard's fault," Peter tried to deflect the blame.

"So then tell the wizard to undo whatever he did to me," Max replied, stepping forward as Peter took a step back.

"That might be a bit difficult since the wizard was from that universe and we're about a wizard short in ours," Peter tried to explained, catching the rock that Max had angrily thrown at his head.

"So what? I'm just stuck like this now?" Max asked, incredulously. "I feel like every time I wake up, I've just experienced a bad psychedelic trip. So what am I supposed to do? Because everything seems to lead back to you, starting with this glowing golden string that connects us."

Peter froze, but with curiosity over anything else. "You mentioned these strings before too. What exactly are these strings?"

"How the hell should I know?" Max asked, throwing her arms in the air. "Clearly my mind is fractured because even my string is different than everyone else's."

"Please, slow down," Peter requested. "Take a breath and try to explain. I can't—"

"I swear if you say you can't help me if you don't know what's going on, I might actually find a brick to throw at your head," she interrupted. She continued to fume, but released a harsh breath then continued her best attempt at an explanation. "I see the world primarily in three ways. One: it's just normal everyday life. Two: it explodes into different colors and I can see little moments of life—I assume—in this Multiverse that you poorly explained. Three: I see these glowing red strings that connect people's hearts."

"What? Like soulmates?" Peter questioned, furrowing his brow. His eyes then widened as he reflected back on her statement a few seconds prior. "You said we were connected... how?"

"Not like soulmates," she denied. "Because I don't believe there's just one person out there for anyone. Do you realize how miraculous it would be to find that person in the billions of other lives milling around? No, I think the strings relate to something else, like someone important to your past or your future—I don't know—that's besides the point. The string connecting us isn't even red, so I don't think it matters that much."

"It's not red?"

"That's what I said," she agreed. "It's gold."

"And what does a gold string mean?"

"If I don't know what a red string means, why would you possibly think I know what a gold string means?" she replied to his question with a question. "Look, you are quite possibly the only person who would believe me and you might be the only person who could help me. Please..."

Peter slowly nodded his head. "Alright. I'll see what I can do."

"Thank you." She sighed with relief as if a burden had been lifted from her chest. She then finally looked him over, realizing she was one of the few people who had seen he superhero's identity. "So Spider-Man is a Peter... My roommate and I used to come up with theories about what and who you might be under the mask. Maybe you were a Tobey, or an Andrew, or a Tom. I don't think Peter was ever suggested. So is it just Peter?"

"Peter Parker," he introduced himself. "But I'm afraid I can't say I know yours."

"Maybe you should've taken a better look at that Playbill, Tiger," she teased then extended her hand. "Maxine Jacobs."

He accepted the gesture, but it looked as if his mind had wandered someplace else as the color faded from his face. Shaking his hand, brought him back to the moment. He blinked then seemed to study her the same way she'd just done to him. "Maxine Jacobs. As in MJ?"

She chuckled, slowly pulling her hands away. "Sure. My friends tend to use the nickname Max though."

He tugged at the collar of his suit, clasped his hands together, then chuckled while muttering something under his breath as he took a step back. He looked back up at her and shook his head again when he noticed her confused look. "Sorry, it's just that I've got another friend who goes by Max and his shocking personality might be all I can think of."

"That's fine," she nodded her head, playfully poking him in the chest. "I can be MJ just for you, Tiger."

She then turned on her heels and walked toward where she assumed the construction site's exit would be, leaving Peter in a shocked stupor that he quickly blinked out of. "Where are you going?"

"To find a burger," she replied. "I'm starving and the least you could do is pay after all the trouble you've caused."

"You do realize that there's something out there trying to hunt you down?" Peter asked.

"Another wonderful bit of information you forgot to include," she called back, urging for him to catch up. "So it's probably a good thing I've got the Amazing Spider-Man at my side, right?"

Peter sighed, then jogged to catch up as he threw his mask back over his face. She smirked, but then shook her head. "What?"

"Maybe Peter should handle this one," she suggested. "Spider-Man might draw too much of the wrong kind of attention."

"I wasn't aware an actress could turn down an opportunity with the paparazzi," Peter retorted.

"Only in the presence of the spider that invented bad press," she countered. "I might not know who Peter Parker is, but Jameson ensures all of New York knows Spider-Man, and that's frankly not the kind of press I'm looking for to advance my career."

And so began the first steps of an unbearably long walk down the side streets of New York. Yet, as Max looked over at Peter and the familiar flickering glow emanating from his chest, she could silently confirm the boy had a heart of gold.

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𝐀𝐮𝐭𝐡𝐨𝐫'𝐬 𝐍𝐨𝐭𝐞𝐬| And here's the final chapter of act one. It took me way too long to get around to finishing this chapter, and I don't know why I waited because it's so enjoyable to write. As always, don't forget to vote and leave a comment. Thanks for reading!