"No, not really." He mulls for a moment. "Not like this."

Some explanation was required for his job. But it was the sort of cold, emotionally distant recitation of events related to the dimensional collapse that didn't hurt quite so bad.

"My mutation was different from the other Spiders. The change was more obvious and unstable. It made planning for a family out of the question. At the time, I thought I found a perfect loophole."

With a changed genome came a lot of questions on humanity and species and the nature of all that. These days, it doesn't quite haunt him except when the stabilizer stopped working and the side effects flared and he was reminded that tumbling into monstrosity was merely a few more doses away. And it scared him. And then he adjusted the dose to fix it, because he had to.

He supposes he could call it a curse, but that would feel a little insulting given what Dan just implied. Still, sometimes he wonders if he would trade it all away if he had the opportunity to.

"So where does that leave us? Doomed by fate?"

It wasn't the most depressing thought after a glimpsing a thousand timelines, including those with his own death.