Chapter Text
MJ wakes in a cold sweat, the fear of falling slowly leaving her mind. She's not sure why she wakes up, she never hits the ground but there are two large white eyes watching her fall. She thinks they're trying to catch her, or maybe they're the ones that pushed her and put her in danger in the first place. She's never been able to make any sense of it.
So she kneels up on her bed, her face near the window she keeps forgetting to lock to cool her down and brushes her hair from her face, annoyed she didn't put it in a bun when she went to sleep.
She looks out the window, her eyes glancing towards the rooftops. There's never anything there but it's where she's drawn too - she swears she saw a flash of red and blue the other day. Her hand instinctively goes to her necklace, MJ found that running her thumb and forefinger over the remaining petals was comforting. She ignores the way she sees a blurry outline of something that feels like home when she does because her mind has been a little off for a while. College stress she thinks - that's her only answer.
MJ looks around her room for anything that might help because this is the fourth time this week she's woken up and she's exhausted. She has to work tomorrow and it's the weekend before Christmas so it will be busy and people will be rude. So she could really use the sleep.
Her eyes run over the drawings of people she can't recognise, a face appearing in a number of them though she can't remember putting pencil to paper at all. She wonders if she should tell anyone about the fogginess that clouds her mind but she's not sure what she would say. Sometimes she smells a hazelnut latte and brown haired guy invades her mind but when she calls out for him, she makes no sound. How her phone background is a generic one and she swears she had someone on it before - maybe she changed it and forgot. She needs something concrete to think about before she tells anyone. She's not even sure who she would tell.
Her eyes fall on her grandma's copy of Peter Pan wedged in her overstuffed bookshelf. That used to be the answer when she needed to let go as a child. She could read about children who never had to grow up and she could close the book when she got sleepy and before the plot turned sad. MJ hates sad endings - always thinking that if it's not happy, it's not the end.
So she creeps across her room, pulling the book with a sharp tug. She can't remember the last time she read it, it must be years. But she already feels calm just having the embossed cover in her fingertips. It probably would answer why her mind feels foggy when she looks through her sketchbook, or when she tries to remember to lock her window but it will help for right now.
She crawls under her covers, opens to chapter one, where Wendy meets Peter for the first time - the boy she loves and will one day come to forget. But she doesn't read any of the printed words, because there, in blue ink she doesn't recall writing at all.
"Find Peter Parker. Peter is the answer."