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Chapter Text

Do you remember when we used to study together? I sat behind you in English and calculus. You explained As I Lay Dying to me, and I taught you differentials.

-

Betty Brant was no idiot. By her junior year of high school, she had made it into a prestigious STEM school despite her liberal arts future, she had gotten an internship with an up and coming newspaper that put a focus on accountability, she had won half a dozen awards for her work in her school's journalism club, she had been accepted into all the top schools of journalism and earned the scholarships to pay for it, and she had helped Spider-Man defeat Mysterio.

But no matter how hard she thought about that trip from hell, she could not figure out why she was around Spider-Man in the first place.

And she could not for the life of her remember the name of the kid in this photo.

It was a stupid picture, just her and the academic decathlon team goofing around after she interviewed them for her article on their win (and the attack on the Lincoln Memorial, but the school hadn't let her publish that one). They were sitting around a table in the library, Liz Allan next to her and the rest of them scattered around, and Betty knew each and every one of them, even the ones not in her class. In fact, Betty would bet she could name every person in their school if asked. Her memory was excellent.

But this kid.

She had no fucking clue.

And despite not knowing who he was, Betty got the strong impression that he was someone important - maybe not important to her, but important.

Brown curls sat wildly over a face still round from childhood (probably freshman or a younger sophomore - that put him way too close to her own age for her not to know him), brown eyes crinkled from his deep smile cutting through pale skin, and speaking of cuts - there were several dusting his whole body, butterfly bandages doing a poor job of hiding the little red scrapes. The rest of the team had little injuries like that, too, but not as many as him. Honestly, she felt the need to find him if only to ensure he wasn't being abused.

Scouring the school website and social media pages did nothing. Flipping through her yearbooks, even staring at the Academic Decathlon club picture like a damn Where's Waldo puzzle yielded no results. It was like the kid in the picture was a ghost.

She hadn't even been looking for this photo. It just happened to randomly pop up in her Snapchat memories. Look what you were doing seven years ago! Because apparently Meta didn't factor the Blip into their little nostalgia reels. And now it was fucking torturing her.

The next day at school, Betty cornered MJ in their first period, biology. The other girl was sitting at her desk in the back of the room reading, hiding from the too loud morning masses behind her long wavy hair. Betty almost felt bad disturbing her, but if anyone knew him, it would be MJ. Her memory was even better than Betty's, and she was AcaDec captain, although not the year of Mystery Boy's picture.

"Good morning," she said brightly. Always a good place to start. "Do you know this kid?" She shoved her phone in MJ's face over the book. Her mother would be horrified at her total disregard for manners. Whatever. Nice people didn't make headlines.

Not expecting Betty's early morning interrogation, MJ flinched backward, then scrunched her face in focus. Betty didn't blame her. It was pretty zoomed in.

Even so, the blonde knew the exact moment MJ recognized the guy because her eyes got super wide. Score. A good journalist always knows who to ask.

"What's it to you?" MJ asked - no, ordered.

Betty could have slapped herself. Of course MJ wouldn't give her a straight answer. (She made a mental note to figure out how MJ asked questions so commandingly. It would be helpful for her future.) "I can't remember who he is, and I remember everyone."

Some unknown emotion flashed across MJ's face (frustration, annoyance, longing? it was so hard to tell with her), and she said, "Well, I don't either."

That was a bald faced lie, Betty was sure of it.

She brought her phone back to herself and zoomed out, thinking maybe adding the memory to the face would help. "How about now?"

Betty didn't have to look at the picture anymore to know exactly what the other girl's eyes were scanning. She had it memorized.

First, her eyes would be drawn to Liz Allan. Because of the memories. And the trauma.

Next to Liz was MJ herself, book open in front of her and a small smile on her face. Mystery Boy was next to MJ, but the interesting part was how close he was to Ned Leeds. He was sideways in his chair and leaning back against Ned's. You could just see Ned's face around Mystery Boy's shoulder. Cindy Moon sat at the end of the table, then in order, Sally Avril, Charles Murphy, Abe Brown, Flash Thompson, and Mr. Harrington, then Betty standing up to take the selfie at the head of the table.

"That's still a no, but it looks like Leeds might." Smooth lie, then misdirection. She was good, Betty had to admit, but not good enough because this guy's memory had settled into the back of her brain like an itch, and she'd be damned if she didn't scratch 'til she bled.

"Right, but I'm asking you," she insisted. "And I don't have a class with Ned until eighth hour."

MJ narrowed her eyes, and, wow, Betty really needed to perfect that look. That was a look that demanded truth. "Do you not have his phone number or socials?"

"Why are you avoiding the question?" Fuck. Too confrontational, she was starting to get loud. MJ's face snapped shut like a Venus fly trap.

The other girl sat back in her chair cooly. Great. Betty definitely wasn't getting answers out of her now. "I think it's time for you to sit down."

Betty took the cue, but vowed to keep on.

Betty did not have Ned's phone number, and his socials were all private. This was particularly unfortunate because the next class she had with AcaDec members was English, third period. The good news was that she did still have Liz's number, so she fired off a text with the picture attached during second period.

It was a writing day in English, a bit more good luck since Betty was already done with her essay (she wrote a stunning exposé on cafeteria food as a seventh grader - a character essay on Jay Gatsby was a walk in the park). She did get a couple odd looks when she sat with Charles, Abe, and Cindy instead of her normal spot at the front table, but that wasn't her problem. She got the picture set up on her phone and placed it against her laptop screen so that the teacher couldn't see it, then she tapped Cindy on the shoulder and quietly repeated her question for what she was sure would be only the second time of many. "Do you know this kid?"

That was all it took to draw Cindy's attention away from her essay - oh, no, that was minesweeper. Well. "I-" she paused. "I don't think so? I don't know, he looks really familiar."

Betty nodded, then zoomed the picture back out. "What about now?"

If anything, Cindy looked even more confused. Eventually, she shook her head. "It's so weird. I feel like his name is on the tip of my tongue."

"Right?" Betty agreed. "I feel like I know him, but any time I try to think about it, it's like a mental block."

Cindy nodded, brows furrowed. "His name starts with an S maybe?" She jumped a little in her seat. "Hey, I don't know why, but I think Flash might know something? Try him."

Betty nodded and added both points to her list, then got similar answers from Charles and Abe. It wasn't much, but it was a start.

When Betty Brant was 11, Loki and the chitauri attacked New York City. She was fine and so were all her people, but there was a city full people that weren't right outside her door. She saw it in the eyes of her friends that lost family members, the missing seats in class, the destruction of her city - everywhere, there was evidence of pain. It lit a fire under her ass that she - and her parents - still couldn't explain.

She read article after article about the invasion, got all the different perspectives, taught herself the difference between credible and bullshit, and then she interviewed her classmates that were hit the hardest and used that testimony to get a week off school for mental health days. Her classmates hailed her as a hero.

A few years later, the Black Widow dumped all of SHIELD's secrets online, and she read every last piece. Then, she wrote an essay on corruption and government overreach to submit to a national journal. The essay became much more robust after the Sokovia Accords.

She'd written pieces on Wanda Maximoff. She had debated the ethics of Daredevil and Iron Man and the Hulk. She wrote in favor of Bucky Barnes when his truth came out.

But there was a file on her computer labeled 'Spider-Man' with nothing in it, and it was less than a year old. She didn't remember making it. Worse, she didn't remember why she felt the need to write an article on Spider-Man, hero of Queens. The only person who didn't like him was J. Jonah Jameson, and he was a bad journalist if Betty ever saw one. It didn't make sense.

But she currently had two distinct memory lapses, and she knew they were connected.

And so the fire burned brighter.

-

Do you remember when I outscored you by one point on a physics test when I started Midtown, and you decided right then and there to hate me, the prodigal kid on scholarship? That's okay. I know now that you had your own problems. I almost miss it sometimes. The only bullying I get now is from my boss.

-

Flash wasn't stupid, but he had enough gaps in his memory from alcohol and generally poor self care that not knowing the kid Betty basically interrogated him on could almost be explained.

But alcohol couldn't explain the bone deep envy he felt when he saw the kid, or that the word that floated to the front of his mind was 'penis' of all things.

Like. Why? Did he have a crush on the kid before he apparently disappeared from their lives forever? Did they actually fuck? Did they have an unfortunate encounter in the locker room? Was he one of the people he sent a dick pic to on that sad, lonely, high night last year? He didn't know because he couldn't freaking remember, and he definitely wasn't telling Betty that his first thought when looking at the guy was (his maybe impressive? Seriously, where was the jealousy coming from?) genitals.

And why did that make him feel guilty? Ugh.

And to think, two minutes ago, he was about to step into the cafeteria to eat shitty pizza with the assholes on the football team. Now, he was stuck in the hallway outside it thinking about the dick size of a stranger.

"No, I have no idea who that is," he said, and felt uncharacteristically bad when Betty's face fell.

"What about now?" she responded, and then it got so much weirder.

The whole AcaDec team, including Flash, were in the picture in a moment he actually did remember, but he definitely didn't remember that kid being there.

Or did he?

The next thing he knew, images were flashing through his mind of this lame ass kid, visions of AcaDec practices, classes, moments from the Europe field trip, even a party at Liz Allan's house, seemingly random except that all of them were accompanied by that same jealousy he'd felt before, so intense it kinda made him uncomfortable.

And then he was thinking 'penis' again, although this time it was clear that it wasn't in a horny way or, like, anatomical. It felt like a name, like it was in the same brain space as 'mother' or 'asshat'.

"Uh..." he said intelligently. "Maybe?"

"Maybe?" Betty repeated, frowning in annoyance. "How do you maybe know someone?"

After a second, he shrugged, not knowing how to explain without it getting very awkward very quickly. And if he was gonna think about a flood of altered memories, it was gonna be in the safety of his bedroom where he could have a breakdown.

There was also the fact that he was starting to get the feeling that he wasn't very nice to this guy when they knew each other, which, honestly, kinda tracked. He knew he wasn't the nicest person before senior year, but ever since that one day in October when he'd been making fun of Leeds for - something - and couldn't even figure out why, he'd been making an effort to not be a dick. If he was gonna be a dick, he at least wanted to have a reason, even if it was just a vibe, and this kid was giving him all sorts of vibes. Not necessarily bad in a worldly sense, but bad to Flash. He did not like this guy, and it wasn't just because he reminded him of a time he was really not proud of.

Betty's sharp voice shook him from his thoughts. "Is there anything you can tell me?"

No. Nope. Absolutely not. Thankfully, he was saved by a text flashing across the top of Betty's screen.

Liz Allan

I don't think I know him, but I'm getting a real bad feeling from him. Sorry

Wasn't that just dandy? Both Flash and possibly the nicest person in the world didn't like someone they didn't even know.

Oh god, what if he was involved with alien weapon smuggling with Liz's dad and used the tech he'd stolen to erase their memories?

Now he had to know.

"Hey," he said, officially accepting that he wasn't getting lunch today, "why don't you search for his face?"

Betty's brows furrowed. "What, like a reverse image search? I don't think that would work on my own photo."

Flash snapped his mouth shut before he said something rude. "Send it to me."

She cocked her head but did it anyway, and a second later, both their jaws had dropped.

"Holy shit," Betty breathed. "That's Tony Stark."

Flash didn't know why, but his first thought was, No, it's not. His second thought was, Must be Photoshop. His third thought was, Goddamn that Penis Parker.

His fourth thought was, Where the hell did that come from?

Not wanting to betray his internal turmoil, he said tentatively, "Are we sure that's real?"

Betty glared at him, but he thought the question was reasonable. This photo was the only result his search had come up with. "Of course it's real. That's way too good to be fake. Besides, who would make the certificate upside down like that on purpose?"

Flash looked closer and, sure enough, the certificate was upside down. That paired with the fancy cursive script made it impossible to read the name, yet that didn't stop Flash's suddenly strong urge to call the internship certificate fake.

This problem was quickly veering from weird communal mental lapse to 'I need to make a quick call to my therapist so that they can assure me I'm not losing my mind.' Besides finding the guy to get the truth out of him, that seemed the most logical course of action.

"Is there a source for the image?" Betty asked.

That would have been a good idea, except when Flash clicked the external link, it took him to the '404 URL not found' page.

Betty made a strange noise, somewhere between a frustrated groan and a confused 'huh.' Sounded like she needed to call her therapist, too. "How does a kid who is apparently our age, if not younger, meet Tony Stark, go to our school and make an impression on all of us, then disappear off the face of the Earth and take his name with him?"

Flash shook his head, stumped. "Maybe he's a criminal, and he took himself off the grid?"

He always forgot how expressive Betty was until she was glaring at him. "And took himself out of our minds? No, something weird is going on here." She gasped. "Maybe it's magic."

"What? No, that's insane." Then he thought about it. Really, the only other option was they were all hit with some mad Winter Soldier type mind wipe. Somehow, that was weirder. "Holy shit, maybe it's magic."

Betty nodded, glad to finally be getting somewhere. "We need to talk to Ned and MJ."

Chapter Text

Do you remember your 17th birthday party? After your cousins left, MJ and I spent the night. You put your phone in a red Solo cup for a shitty speaker, and we played Cards Against Humanity until the sun came up. It's not as fun playing against a computer.

-

If his grades were anything to go by, Ned Leeds was pretty damn smart, but the more important thing was that he had common sense. It was because of this that when MJ told him not to tell Betty about Weird Coffee Guy, he zipped his lips and threw the key out the fourth floor English classroom window. Then he promptly forgot anything was weird until eighth hour when Betty slapped her phone down on his desk and said, "Who is this kid?"

After very nearly answering on autopilot, he stammered out an, "I don't know," and even managed to hold out through the rest of Betty's interrogation until class started. He then spent the next hour clenching his jaw so hard it probably looked like he had tetanus and pointedly not looking at Betty's suspicious glances because, wow, he was not pulling this 'play it cool' thing off. At one point, he was pretty sure she mouthed, I know you know something, to him, but the joke was on her because he was obsessively checking the clock and definitely not paying attention to his ex girlfriend. Lightly shaking, he bolted the second the bell rang.

MJ was waiting for him on the front steps.

"Hey," he said. "What the hell? Why can't I tell Betty Weird Coffee Guy's name?" He had a hard time not blurting things out to begin with, let alone lying to his cool ex girlfriend.

MJ's brown eyes flashed. "She wants to know too bad."

Ned rolled his eyes at her and thanked his lucky stars that they were close enough friends now for her not to kill him. "Seriously?"

Her weirdly intense gaze shut him right up. "Seriously. There's clearly something deeper going on, and I want to find out what it is before Betty. I don't trust her."

"You don't trust anyone," he said automatically before a slow smile spread across his face. "Wait, does that mean you trust me?"

Her twitched. "Obviously."

"Aw-"

"Come on, we gotta go interrogate Peter."

Yeah, yeah. He knew a segue when he heard it.

When Peter walked into the donut shop, Ned took one look at his shirt and grinned. "I see you like Star Wars."

He looked confused for a moment before glancing down at his shirt. "Yeah, it's the best."

Ha. And MJ though he was just an awkward nerd.

He was too busy congratulating himself on a social interaction triumph to see the girl roll her eyes at him across the room where she was restocking cups. "Which one's your favorite?" he asked Peter.

He grinned. "Empire."

"Same."

Suddenly next to them, MJ cleared her throat, giving Ned a pointed look. "Did you know that George Lucas stole a lot of lore and plot from Dune?"

Ned actually did know that because MJ had used it on him before. However, he still would have wilted, both at the disappointing defilement of a precious childhood memory and at having to table his discussion with Peter, had the other boy not looked absolutely thrilled. Seriously, MJ could have just told him he'd won a million dollars and he would not have been able to smile any wider. Ned kinda wanted to take a picture. It wasn't everyday he saw someone overjoyed by the news that their favorite film franchise was a ripoff of a book series about the dangers of blindly following political and religious figures.

Of course, the brightness in his face was immediately dimmed by MJ's next remark: "Where do you go to school, Peter?"

He paused for a solid 15 seconds before mumbling, "I'm homeschooled."

Need didn't need a seminar on non verbal cues to realize that Peter was lying through his teeth.

However, MJ might have needed a seminar on tactful communication because she wasted no time on stating "You're a terrible liar," leaving Ned to bemoan any budding relationship with his Star Wars buddy. The dude was already a mysterious flight risk; calling him out like this would only scare him away.

Ned made the executive decision that it would be best for him to ask the next question. "You know, you've never told us your last name. Do you have one, or are you like Cher?"

"Oh, it's P-" he paused for another long minute. "It's P."

MJ's eyes narrowed further. "Like the vegetable?"

He blinked. "Nope, just the letter." The poor boy must have realized how ridiculous that sounded because his face turned bright red, and be started fidgeting with his hands.

Ned almost laughed at him. "So your name is Peter P?"

The brown haired boy looked down at his shoes, and Ned really did laugh at him then because when he looked back up, he had the same expression on his face as Mr. Harrington did the time the AcaDec team convinced their bus driver to take them to Denny's after a five hour conference. Like he was praying for death but knew he'd have to deal with the consequences before God took mercy on him. "Yup. That's me. Peter P."

Perhaps sending that they weren't getting anything else out of him name wise - after all, who would stick to a bit that stupid without a good reason - MJ switched tactics and went for the big, burning question: "You ever heard of Midtown School of Science and Technology?"

The poor guy played with the string of his dark green hoodie, biting his lip as his face slowly lost all color. "No."

MJ's eyes narrowed, and Ned knew it was all over. "'Cause I saw a picture of you today in the Midtown Tech library from before the Blip."

Wow. Ned didn't know a face could turn that shade of grey. "Uh, I don't-"

For a second, Ned thought that Peter cut himself off to avoid saying something he didn't want revealed, which honestly made sense; Peter had already proven that his lying skills were doing nothing for him, and Ned could relate. His big mouth had gotten him in some pretty big trouble, too. He'd been grounded for months after he told a chaperone at homecoming in freshman year that he was on the library computers looking at porn even though he'd just been following the car chase Spiderman was in at the time. He still wasn't sure why he hadn't just told the truth. Then at least he'd just be a nerd instead of a pervert nerd.

Then, the other boy's head jerked to the window just as a fire truck raced by, sirens blaring and lights strobing. Was that why he stopped talking? Had Peter heard it from that far away? Damn, if the kid shut up that fast every time he heard a siren, he must barely ever say anything. They lived in New York.

For some reason, Ned's brain protested strongly at that assessment of the boy.

"I have to go," Peter said suddenly, awkwardly pointing out the window as if that explained anything. Maybe he was a pyromaniac. That would fit.

Across the counter, MJ caught Ned's eyes, clearly trying to convey panic. After a second, he understood. This might have been their last chance to talk to Peter since their interrogation failed so badly.

"Hey, Peter," Ned said and turned. But Peter was already gone, the door banging shut behind him.

-

Do you remember when you called me and Ned your first friends? You were both of our second. Your weird fit right in with our weird.

It was an honor to be loved by you, however briefly.

-

Michelle Jones liked to think that she was pretty smart, so when Betty Brant showed her a picture of Peter Parker, or as she'd taken to calling him, Weird Coffee Boy, or as she'd taken to calling him in the privacy of her mind, guy that gave her really scary but good and balanced feelings but not in a crush way more like a favorite book kind of way and she didn't know why, seated next to her in her own school library from two years before the Blip, she knew something was up, and when something was up, old habits died hard. There was no way she was sharing this until she could agonize over it and prepare for the fallout. She kept her trap shut, and she told Ned to keep his shut, too. Shockingly, Ned managed it.

Then, they interrogated him at the coffee shop, learned nothing except that Peter was a terrible liar, and watched him book it out of the place toward the sound of sirens. She took one look at Ned, yelled toward the manager's office, "I'm taking my break!", and then they took off after him.

The bastard had already vanished by the time they got outside, but MJ caught a flash of red and blue swinging over the top of the nearest high rise, and everything in her said, him. For possibly the first time in her life, she didn't think and just ran.

Trying to keep the bright figure in her peripheral, she tore through the streets, dodging pedestrians and flying through puddles of god knows what. She thought she was doing pretty good - jumping over the railroad, skating past boardwalk, passing go, collect two hundred dollars! Then, she turned a corner, and he was just - gone. Completely absent from the skyline, and MJ was left panting, bent over her knees and starkly aware of her sports ineptitude. Again, this was why she was at a school for nerds.

"MJ!" Ned screamed from several feet behind her, also panting. "MJ, Peter was gone, like, seven blocks ago. Where are you going?"

"I-" she started, slightly winded and completely bereft of a decent explanation. This is why she liked to observe before drawing conclusions because all she could come up with was: "Spiderman!", paired with what was probably the worst case of crazy eyes fucking ever and a finger pointed toward where she last saw the sticky jerk merrily swinging away.

Ned's eyes narrowed in confusion, but he still said, "Okay. Yeah. Spiderman. Um. Queen's favorite masked crime fighter. Appeared about three years ago and has been the scourge of muggers and super villains alike. Been seen with Iron Man before he, you know, kicked the bucket or whatever-"

"I know that!" she screamed when she finally caught her breath and only felt a little bad when Ned stumbled back a couple steps. "He knows something about Peter!"

"Oh." Ned looked a little lost, which was fair. "How do we know that?"

"I don't know!" she shouted in frustration. God. Fucking boy scouts. She wanted to be prepared, but the only evidence she had was the feeling of an industrial strength magnet pulling her toward the sound of sirens.

Sirens! They could follow the sound of sirens. Why the hell had she not come up with that earlier? Sirens were a far more reliable cue than a goddamn arachnid themed vigilante.

Also reliable was the giant plume of smoke twisting over the buildings between them and the sirens.

This was so stupid. She was gonna get burned alive. She was gonna give herself smoke inhalation related respiratory diseases. She was gonna get Ned hurt.

She was gonna find out what the fuck was up with Spider-Man and Weird Coffee Guy, boy that gave her really scary but good and balanced feelings but not in a crush way more like a favorite book kind of way and she didn't know why. She needed to know why.

She looked back at Ned and took a deep breath, then reassured herself that they had both taken AP Psych the year before. "I don't know why, but I have a really strong feeling that Spider-Man is related to Peter. Maybe I have source amnesia or something, but it really really feels like an implicit memory. Like so strong it's practically explicit if I could just figure out what is connecting them, but I don't think I can do that without talking to Spider-Man."

Maybe she was wrong, and yeah, maybe source amnesia was ruining media literacy. But she didn't think she had ever felt something so strongly before, and the strongest memories were associated with extreme emotional upheaval, the kind a person just couldn't get from scrolling through social media.

This was not a baseless belief spurned by click bait. This was something she should know with her entire heart and brain, something that brought her comfort and thrill and love and grief, something that was stolen from her and never given back. She wanted it. She wanted to know. She didn't care if she got hurt.

Whatever it was must have shown on her face because Ned said, in an upsettingy soft tone, "Okay. I trust you. Let's go find Spider-Man."

Her shoulders collapsed in relief, and she couldn't believe she was actually worried about Ned not wanting to chase a superhero.

What she actually should have been worried about, apparently, was a little grey convertible frantically following behind her through the crowded afternoon streets of Queens carrying an extremely persistent teenage journalist and everyone's favorite schoolyard bully.

The car screeched to a stop partway on the sidewalk, narrowly missing a trashcan and a tree. Hanging halfway over the passenger side door, Betty Brant blew a strand of straw colored hair out of her mouth and said, "Get in, losers, we're going stalking."

Chapter Text

Do you remember Europe? Do you think of Spider-Man or Peter Parker when you remember all the destruction I caused? I kinda hope you think of Spider-Man. At least Spider-Man managed to save your lives.

-

When the bell for dismissal rang at the end of eighth period, Betty ran straight out of the classroom and still somehow managed to miss Ned. First, the asshole had the gall to ignore her during class - during which she took no notes, by the way, didn't even open her backpack - and then he disappeared? On Betty? Not to quote Carly Rae Jepsen, but they were never, ever getting back together.

She quickly changed her trajectory for the class Flash was getting out of, pushing through throngs of now very angry teenagers and didn't even make it all the way to Flash's class before she found him.

"We have to go find that kid," they both said at the same time.

Betty nodded, at once excited and a little worried that Flash has been so haunted by the ghost of Mystery Boy that he was skipping his post class networking to talk to her. "Get your keys out. I have a plan."

Frantically, he pulled his keys out of his pants pocket, and she grabbed his arm to drag him through the hallways and out the side door leading to the parking lot. Within seconds, they had tossed their school stuff in the backseat and climbed in the the front, not wasting any time on the trunk.

Even with their small headstart and Flash's honk inducing exit from the parking space nearly into someone else's car, they were still caught in the long line of people trying to leave the lot. From catching rides with friends, she knew it could be another 10 or 15 minutes before they even made it to the street, let alone the front of the school.

"Motherfucker," Betty muttered, perching her arm on the car door and looking mournfully at the brick boxing them in on the right.

Flash echoed the curse, then glanced at Betty questioningly. "Why do you want to find out about this kid so bad anyway?"

"Do I need a reason?" she snapped, then winced. "Sorry. I just don't like not knowing." She also didn't like her devices knowing more about him than she did. As a future liberal arts major, that just couldn't stand. "What about you?"

Flash went uncharacteristically quiet as he finally managed to pull out onto the road, still stuck behind more than a dozen other cars but at least out of the parking lot. After another minute, he said, "I'm not sure. Something about this just feels important."

She sensed there was more to it than that; after all, when did Flash ever do something unless it would benefit him? Hell, the guy had tried to publish a book about being Spider-Man's best friend. But she let it be since the road had just opened up in front of them, allowing them to pull out in front of the school.

Scanning the crowd, she didn't see Ned or MJ, but there were dozens of students milling around, so they could still be there.

Who was she kidding? They were long gone. But it was fine. Because Betty knew where MJ worked, and she knew that the other girl had a shift starting right about now.

"Go to the café on 6th and 38th," Betty instructed. "MJ has a shift right now."

Flash side eyes her but did as she said. "Should I be creeped out that you know so much about our lives? I feel like should be creeped out."

Betty scoffed. "You go to a school for nerds, just be glad I don't know your exact risk of mortality at this specific moment." MJ or Ned would probably know. They were the nerds at the nerd school.

Once they got to the café, Betty had him park on the opposite side of the street while she took out her phone and opened the camera. She pointed the lens at the cafe's big window and zoomed in until she could see the faces of the people inside. First, there was MJ behind the counter talking to someone and already in her blue uniform. On the other side of the counter was Ned, also talking to the same person as MJ. Whoever it was had their back to the door.

Momentarily, the sound of sirens distracted her, and she almost missed the person turning their head around. Miraculously, she managed to catch a glimpse of their face.

"That's him!" she exclaimed. "Mystery boy."

"What? Where?" Flash's head whipped around. "In the café?"

"Yes! That's him!" Betty started unbuckling her seatbelt. "Let's go, I-"

Suddenly, a fire engine sped past them followed closely by multiple cop cars. When she looked back into the café, the guy was gone, and MJ was barreling out the doors with Ned close on her heels.

"Nevermind, follow them!"

Fortunately, Flash was already ready to go, and the next two minutes were a nerve-wracking mess of sharp turns and missed stop signs until their classmates finally came to a stop seven blocks away.

She didn't even need to say anything to Flash for him to pull up right next to Ned and MJ, their shocked and winded faces barely registering as Betty leaned over and said, "Get in losers, we're going stalking."

-

Do you remember when we watched our first rated-R movie on my bedroom floor on my shitty laptop that we rebuilt with parts from a dumpster? It kept buffering, but we were too caught up in the teenage rebellion of it all to care. You were 14 and I was 13. My uncle died less than a year later, and you held me as I cried.

-

Ned was having the weirdest day. First, MJ told him to lie to Betty. Then, suddenly everyone was randomly obsessed with Peter from the café who they all apparently met before and had something to do with Spider-Man, which all led to right now, after a series of increasingly strange events, being packed into the very small backseat of Flash's convertible alongside MJ and Flash and Betty's backpacks while Flash drove - or, really, careened - toward the column of smoke several blocks away.

"So, what, you've just been following us?" MJ asked, accusatory. She was remarkably calm, or at least appeared so, after her sprint and near melt down after Peter vanished.

"Well-" Flash started.

"Yes, we've obviously been following you," Betty interrupted, white knuckling her car door as Flash took another 90 degree turn at 75 miles an hour. "But you're following Spider-Man, so I really don't see what the problem is. Also, you wouldn't tell me about Mystery Guy, so really, this is on you."

"Mystery Guy?" Ned echoed. "You mean Peter?"

MJ glared at him, but the effect was somewhat lost as the shaking car rumbled over the uneven road at cheetah speeds, and the wind from the open top whipped her hair every which way. "Ned!"

"What? They are clearly in this as much as we are. We should pool our resources." He couldn't be the only one to understand that. Besides, he'd seen enough movies of all genres to know that secret keeping always bites the hero in the ass.

"So that's his name," Betty said, sounding very triumphant. Then she thudded against her door.

"And you know him!" Flash cut in, palming the wheel like an expert Formula 1 racer. Ned wondered if he'd been street racing in his spare time.

"I wouldn't really say that we know him," Ned said, thinking about the twitchy boy who rarely said much, just grabbed his coffee and donut everyday, then sat and listened.

"Ned!" MJ admonished again.

Ned rolled his eyes. "Look, none of us really know what's going on, all of us have different information-," he paused for Flash to cut a corner close enough to scrape a trash can, "-and we all have the same goal. The most advantageous thing would be to share info."

MJ pursed her lips but bit out a "fine".

"I'll go first," Betty announced, which was probably for the best. Even after agreeing to this, MJ woild still want to construct her additions based on everyone else's, and she still might not give everything away. "Everyone I've talked to said they feel like they recognize him from the picture I found, but none of them know why. I also found an empty file on my computer labeled 'Spider-Man' that gave me strong Peter vibes."

Ned thought there might have been a better way to word that, but it was still interesting. Not much they didn't know already, though.

In the driver's seat, Flash had started vibrating a little, which was mildly concerning. "I think I bullied him." When no one responded, he continued, "Peter. May have been bullied. By me." When still no one said anything, he threw up a hand and said, "You could be a little more surprised!"

"We really couldn't," Ned said. He still remembered all of the jabs and whatnot from before Flash's random turnaround and was mildly mollified when the other boy's shoulders crawled up to his ears.

"We're sorry, Flash," MJ said in a tone that clearly said she wasn't sorry. "Can you please explain in great detail why you think that, you, the former bully, formerly bullied Peter?"

Flash huffed but answered the question. "When Betty showed me the picture, I got this whole flood of memories with Peter in them." Flash took a deep breath. "I think he went to Midtown. And I called him Penis. Penis Parker. So his last name must be Parker."

"So you did know why you know him!" Betty screeched and started laying into Flash for not telling her before, apparently ignoring the revelation of Peter's last name for the time being.

But Ned wasn't paying attention to that because MJ, putting the pieces together far faster than the rest of them, muttered, "Peter Parker," just loud enough for Ned to hear, and then everything got so much weirder.

Just as Flash described, it was like a barrage of memories smacking right into his brain, memories that he hadn't thought about in forever that were inexplicably altered, plus some that felt totally new and perpetually familiar at the same time. There were movies and video games that Ned thought he'd seen and played alone, there were school lunches and study sessions, there were Lego builds with pale hands next to Ned's darker ones, tears over black clothes, explosions across Europe and D.C., AcaDec practices, burned food in a little Queens apartment, awkward parties next to curly brown hair, investigations into alien tech smuggling and fake superheroes, and so much more. It was like watching his entire lifetime in the span of 30 seconds with one critical addition: Peter Parker, his best friend, who Ned didn't even realize was missing from his life until just now, when everything that had been knocked askew was suddenly right again. Also, Spider-Man, and the guy in the chair. That was also a thing. But more importantly, his best friend, who was probably so lonely right now, and where was he even living? What was he doing? Did he have any friends?

And the biggest question: why hadn't he said anything to Ned and MJ like he'd promised? What made him think that haunting the narrative was the better option?

On top of all the questions, Ned was left with three unacceptable truths: May was dead, the world forgot Peter, and Peter was alone. That couldn't stand.

Ned had been there for Peter when his parents, his Uncle Ben, and Tony died. He would be there for him now.

Fuck Doctor Strange. Fuck the multiverse. Ned's friend needed him.

"Guys," Ned said over the sound of Flash and Betty's bickering. "Peter is Spider-Man."

That shut them up real quick.

In front of him, Betty swiveled in her seat and made a 'go on' motion with her hand. MJ looked pensive; it was to her that he spoke and to her narrowed brown eyes that he focused in a valiant effort to keep his voice even. "I think I just got the same thing that happened to Flash when you said Peter Parker. I remember everything." Ned had to take a deep breath. "He's my best friend. And he's Spider-Man. And he needs us." Just that little bit of information was hard enough to get out, so he decided to save the revelation of Peter being MJ's boyfriend for a more private setting, or to just try and let her remember it for herself. She probably wouldn't believe it if it came from anyone but herself, anyway. She was already looking at Ned with suspicion in her eyes, mouth slightly parted.

"That's great and all," Flash started, voice raised, "but how does that help us right now?"

"Yeah, do you remember why we forgot him?" Betty asked, still peaking around the side of her seat.

Without even thinking, a memory floated to the front of Ned's mind of the Statue of Liberty, Doctor Strange, and despair. Suddenly, Ned didn't feel much like talking.

MJ must have picked up on his mood shift because she said, "It doesn't matter. All that matters right now is finding Spider-Man."

Flash started grumbling, but Betty somehow perked up even more and turned to him. "Speaking of, where the hell are you going?"

"What do you mean, where am I going? I'm going to the fire," Flash said incredulously.

Betty looked to dramatically. "And where do you think the fire is?"

"IHOP," Flash said confidently. "Where do you think it is?"

"McDonald's," Betty intoned with a pointed side eye.

MJ's sharp gaze turned to the front of the car. "It's obviously coming from the DMV."

Ned had thought the fire was coming from the Laundromat, but between the other three people in the convertible, he was never getting that out, so he let them argue about the psychology of localization and something about sensory and perception - he didn't bother to listen or contribute, everything that had to do with AP Psych from last year was currently overtaken by holy shit best friend Spider-Man Peter - while he took out his phone and found the Spider-Man spotting TikTok page.

A few seconds later, he leaned forward in his seat. "As of 15 seconds ago, Spider-Man is at a burning building on 175th and 90th."

Everyone stopped talking after that because their seat belts were in their throats.

-

Do you remember how many pictures you drew of me? You made fun of me because I was always in crisis. If you could see me now, you'd have so much more material.

-

After all that arguing, it was a bit of a surprise to turn a corner and see a billowing fire - not that bad, honestly, she'd seen worse - and blue and red lights, a frantic crowd, and emergency responders. Through it all, MJ didn't see Spider-Man, but he was probably in the building being a hero or whatever.

She jumped out of the car right onto the street as Flash did another terrible parallel parking job, Betty following close behind her. Like a loser, Ned waited for the car to come to a full and complete stop before joining them.

"Have you remembered anything yet?" Betty asked once they were across the street. It was a struggle to hear her over all the sirens and screaming.

MJ pursed her lips, stubbornly wanting to refuse to share her lack of information, but she could see that that wasn't right. She just tried to not sound too disappointed, mollified by the likelihood that the other girl could barely hear her as long as she didn't scream it. "No. You?"

Betty gazed intently at the smoky fire and partially destroyed building. "Some stuff's coming back."

And, see, MJ didn't understand how that was possible. Because everything she was feeling right now? That was the strongest she had ever felt anything: love, panic, loss, despair, desire, all of it; and she didn't understand why she of all of them was the last to remember. She clearly had a strong connection to Peter Parker and Spider-Man, maybe stronger than any other connection she'd ever had, so why couldn't she remember any of it but freaking Betty could?

Out of the corner of her eye, she caught a flash of tangible red and blue spandex wrapped around a screaming child. Within seconds, the figure had passed the kid off to a firefighter and swung back into the building. Inexplicably, MJ found herself taking a step forward as if to follow the vigilante.

That, more than anything, was proof that he was something big to her. If it was anyone else in that spider suit, even Betty, she would never have considered running into that building.

A hand jumped into her peripheral vision. "There he is!" Ned screeched.

Sure enough, Spider-Man was back on the sidewalk, landing gracefully next to the nearest firefighter on top of the bright red truck. He was actually close enough that she could hear him. "I think I got everyone, but I'm gonna do another sweep."

The man didn't get a chance answer before the vigilante was turning back around. This was her chance. "Spider-Man!" she screamed.

He jolted so hard that he almost smacked his head on the ladder. "MJ?" His eye lenses went wider than they already were. "I mean, yes, ma'am? What is it?"

Ned snorted next to her, and she could imagine that the others had similar unimpressed expressions. Her face would have mirrored theirs if she wasn't so pissed off.

"What the fuck, dude?" Ned said with a voice crack more characteristic of someone three years younger than him.

MJ quickly found that the mask could convey much. more than wide eyed shock. Panic, for example. "Gotta go!"

He started to take off again, but MJ gathered all the breath left in her and shrieked, "PETER PARKER!"

It was kinda comical how fast he stopped, like a Looney Tunes character realizing there was nothing beneath them but empty air. She could almost hear the, "Ruh-roh."

Now she found that the mask could show guilt as well. "I have no idea-"

"No," Ned spoke up for the second time, surprising MJ with a voice of steel. "You don't get to do that. You promised you would find us and tell us about all of this, and now you're gonna tell us in detail why you didn't."

For a second, MJ thought it worked and he was actually gonna stay and talk, but then he pivoted, laser focused on something in the direction of the building. He leapt away.

"That fucker," Ned murmured.

"What do we do now?" Flash asked. "I mean, we already followed him here. What else can we do?"

That was the question, wasn't it? This whole thing had been one long Achilles paradox, and now Peter had gone somewhere he knew they couldn't follow.

Was that true, though? MJ looked at the fire again, pushing past the pain in her eyes. The flames seemed to be contained to the top floor, and heat and smoke rose. Plus, the fire wasn't that big. She'd certainly seen bigger ones, both living in post Chitauri New York and traveling through Europe with Mysterio on the loose. And, Peter said he'd gotten everyone out, so she wouldn't be distracting him from those actually in danger.

So she took a deep breath and ran.

Chapter Text

Do you remember how excited you were when you found out? You were never mad. You just wanted to help, and you did, so much. I hope you're still doing amazing things, even if I'm not there to see it.

-

"MJ!" Ned screamed and started forward, only to be pulled back by a hand on his jacket hood. He whirled around, a protest on his lips, only to see the fear and fury on his own face mirrored back at him.

"Are you crazy?" Flash yelled. "There are firefighters right over there!" He pointed forward and to the right where there was indeed a pack of firefighters all in a tizzy at the teenage girl who had just run into a burning building. "And Spider-Man is in with her!"

"What if he needs help, too?" Ned countered, mind awash with the worst images imaginable - some, he was afraid, were from his newly uncovered memory - because Flash didn't seem to understand that his two best friends were in a burning fucking building.

They needed to - do something. He didn't know what. Follow her in? Alert the firefighters? It didn't matter.

Flash's eyes blazed, the other boy clearly having followed Ned's train of thought and come to the more sane conclusion. Must be nice to not be freaking the fuck out. "It's Spider-Man! And again, firefighters!" The sentence was this time punctuated with aggressive finger pointing.

"They don't know him!" Ned exclaimed, and let a bit of his inner MJ come through. "Do you really think the great city of New York spent money on training emergency responders to handle superheroes? There's still pieces of Chitauri in the street!" What were a bunch of random New York City firefighters supposed to do with Spider-Man? Or, better yet, a traumatized teenage boy who they probably thought was actually a grown man?

"We don't know him either!" Betty broke in, earning herself confused and exasperated looks from Ned and Flash. She bristled. "We don't! Not really, anway. Not this version of him."

What the fuck was Ned supposed to do with that. He knew Peter better than his own hand. Whatever. What the fuck.

Flash threw his hands up in the air. "Then what are we even doing here?"

"I don't know. This was so stupid!" Betty whined as she rubbed a palm across her face. "I thought we needed to find Peter Parker, but he obviously doesn't want to be found." She looked ahead.

Was the asphalt heating up? Ned thought it must have been, because he would swear the ground had just gone all squishy. There was no way in hell these two were giving up when they'd finally found what they were looking for. They didn't get to throw in the towel because Peter was being stupid. Ned wouldn't let them - or Peter for that matter - give up on his best friend. "Listen. I don't care what version of Peter is in there, but it's still Peter. It's still my best friend. And I want him back. And MJ, too." Since she wasn't there to say it herself.

"I'm not saying we have to give up," Betty said with a nervous glance at the flames high above them, "but if we go in there right now, we're just gonna distract Peter and give him more crap to deal with. Staying out here is the best choice for MJ and Peter. They have to come out eventually."

"Exactly." Flash looked down. "And I'm not running into a burning building. That's just stupid."

Ned threw up his hands, feeling red hot anger course through him. "So, what, we're just waiting out here while my two best friends hang out in a building that is literally on fire?"

The look Betty and Flash shared was answer enough.

-

Do you remember how you figured out my secret? Then, you kissed me and fell in love with Peter Parker, not Spider-Man, but now he's gone and so are all of you, and I don't know what to do anymore without you.

-

There was a very slight chance that MJ made a mistake. But she was in the building now, anyway, surrounded by darkness and dusty boxes, probably within yards of Peter, and it felt like she was on the cusp of learning the secrets of the universe. With every smoky inhale, she felt the string connecting her to Spider-Man grow ever tighter, pulling her closer to the fire above that promised to burn her from the inside out.

And that was it, wasn't it? She had been following the vigilante around to regain whatever memories she'd lost, but the closer she got, the more it felt like she'd lost something tangible. Real. And it was just at the edge of her fingertips, like her pencils and sketchbook, or her phone. Her mother. Whatever Peter was to her. So she took another big inhale of smoke, her own body odor, and whatever it was that the building was full of - oil, it was motor oil - uh oh - actually - she didn't have the space to worry about that at the moment - and pulled the string.

She didn't know why the smells that made her think of this boy were the fires of a burning building, sweat, blood, and motor oil, but the olfactory tract passed right by the hippocampus, so she went with it and closed her eyes tight against the dark interior.

Just when it felt like she was getting somewhere, something crashed off to her left, accompanied by a wave of heat and harsh brightness.

She opened her eyes. It was a flaming rafter. And with the old wood and motor oil, the fire was spreading rapidly. Up until now, she had been protected by the fact that she was on the bottom floor and the fire was on one of the upper ones, but now, she needed to get out fast. Fires were deadly, but not as deadly as smoke inhalation.

She turned around, looking to go back the way she'd come, only to see orange and yellow already lighting up the doorway. The heat was becoming more intense, too, beading her neck with sweat and forcing its way down her throat.

Quickly, she pulled her shirt up over her mouth and nose and screamed, "Peter!" before immediately breaking into a coughing fit.

He didn't make her wait; the next second, a red and blue blur dropped down on light feet. "What are you doing in here?" he asked incredulously, with the big white eyes comically wide. "Did you follow me in?"

"Yes, obviously," she said between coughs. "It was the only way I could think of that would make you stay and talk to me, you freaking loser-"

She gasped. There was no preparation or precedent for the veritable shitstorm of memories that came crashing out of whatever brain area they'd been chained up in. Vaguely, she was aware of being lifted up and carried through the air, a whoosh in her ears, and a soft landing a few seconds later, but none of that mattered because Peter had his arms around her waist, steadying her on the top of somewhere high, higher than she ever thought she'd be, and her hands were on his shoulders, gripping him tight enough to mar the leather that survived alien invasions, tighter than she'd ever held anything before in her life, and she remembered him.

Gradually, she untensed each of her muscles one by one, and dragged her teary eyes up from the shingles under her feet, over the smooth lines of the Spider-Man suit, and looked him directly in his buggy white eyes. "I am so pissed at you." It was just one of the many things she was feeling right now, but it was the one that she found easiest to put into words. It was so incredibly easy to pull rage out of the circumstances, at Mysterio, at MIT, at the media, at Dr. Strange, at the stupid multiverse villains, and entrust it on Peter, because he thought he could deal with all of that on his own, and still had the gall to have mercy on the man that killed May. "Why-" she choked out, "Why did you think it was okay to go through all of this alone?" God, he was grieving again. That wasn't okay.

The mask moved, probably with some sort of dumb response locked and loaded, but MJ punched him in the shoulder. "Why the fuck did you not come and tell us? You promised-" her voice broke just a little, and that was enough to get the tears cascading down her cheeks and a sob caught in her throat. "You promised me."

The mask shifted again as Peter's mouth opened, but she stopped him again. "No, Ned needs to hear this, too." She wrapped her arms around his neck and jumped up into his hold, assuming he would get the message because she really couldn't say anymore right now, what with the massive rock in her throat. She burrowed further into him, feeling suddenly cold, and he was so warm. It was normally opposite. She stifled a giggle against his neck at the thought of herself as a lizard snuggling up to a blood-warmed cow. It was probably mean to think of Peter as a cow, but if he didn't want to be thought of bovinely, then he shouldn't have been wearing head to toe leather.

For the second time, she got a soft landing as Peter padded down onto the pavement and gently set MJ on her feet, thankfully away from the firefighters. The others swarmed them.

"MJ!" Ned said. "Are you okay?"

"Yeah," she said shakily, sniffling, hand still clutching Peter's shoulder tight. She wasn't willing to let him go yet. "And now he's gonna tell us everything."

Peter was absolutely silent for a moment, and then he exploded into speech, each word tripping into the next just like normal. "I'm sorry! I'm so sorry, I meant to tell you. I swear, I went to the café, I had my script ready-"

Momentarily, she was distracted by just how Peter of him it was to have written and taken an honest-to-god script to tell her and Ned about something all three had lived through, and allowed her anger to ebb a little bit.

"-and then I saw the cut on your forehead and couldn't stop thinking about May and Ben and Tony and my parents, and how if I brought you back into my life, you would only get hurt again because that's just what happens around me-"

Forget that. She was seeing red.

"But then I was still gonna do it, cause I knew exactly what you'd say to that. You'd say that that was bullshit, and you should at least get the chance to decide for yourselves if the curse was worth being with me. Or you'd just say the curse wasn't real and cite all kinds of research to prove it and then tell me it's a result of confirmation bias, pessimism, and misunderstanding of Murphy's Law. Or you'd do all that and then also know all the reasons widespread belief in Western cultures of curses was offensive or cultural appropriation-"

He knew her so well.

"-But then I remembered from AP Psych last year when we talked about implanted memories and how people can only recover suppressed memories spontaneously and that the power of suggestion has only ever been known to implant false memories, and I knew you'd remember that and got scared you wouldn't believe me even if I did tell you, and then that made me think of source amnesia and how if you did believe that I believed what I was saying, then you probably wouldn't believe that whatever I told you had actually happened. Then I couldn't stop about Slaughterhouse Five." He took a deep, ragged breath, and looked down at the ground. When he spoke again, his voice was thick with tears. "And then I couldn't."

She let his word vomit flow through her, glancing at the others as she processed, tucking the information that her own trust issues were part of the reason Peter had decided to keep everything to himself.

Ned had a very strangled expression on his own wet face, perfectly getting across everything he felt for his friend. Betty and Flash looked a little dumbfounded, like they had reached a goal and now didn't know what to do with it, which made sense. A lot of this was brand new to them, and, honestly, MJ kinda wished they'd just go away, which she knew was unfair since they had done so much to help find him, but still. Peter wasn't really theirs to find. MJ and Ned were looking for him because they knew they loved him, even if they hadn't known who he was. Flash and Betty were looking for him because, what? Curiosity? Guilt that was years too late?

It was time for her and Ned to be alone with Peter. She wanted to see his face, no matter how much hurt there would be on it. She wanted to run her fingers through his curls that she missed more by the second. She wanted to teach him about all of the things she had read since the last time she'd seen him, and she wanted to learn about everything he'd done since then, too. She wanted to kiss him without fabric between them and tell him that she loved him and that everything would be okay. She wanted to help him grieve and get his life back.

Her hand tightened on his shoulder, finally prompting him to look her in the eyes. She was suddenly grateful for the mask, just in this moment, because without it, they'd both be bawling. With it, she could see his muted grief and sorrow, longing and defeat. It would have been 100 times worse on his bare face.

But it was her turn to bear that for him.

"Take us home," she said.

-

Do you remember D.C.? Do you remember Prague? Berlin? London? What about New York? Do you remember all the times we exploded and caught fire and did the impossible? Because I do. I'm never letting you forget it. And I'm never letting you go.

-

Peter Parker was all mixed up. He was exhausted. He felt like he'd just mixed a Monster and a Red Bull and chugged it. He was terrified that if he took MJ and Ned back to his apartment, they'd take one look at the general shittiness of it and decide he wasn't worth it. He wanted them so badly to stay that he thought he might be sick over it. But they remembered him, and that was more than he thought he'd ever get again.

If they decided they didn't want him, he didn't know if he could live with it.

But, lucky him, all signs pointed to them wanting him. After MJ told him to take them home (he honestly wasn't sure what she'd meant and guessed his home? TBD), they'd sworn to meet Betty and Flash the next day to explain everything (he was not looking forward to it). Then, he'd picked MJ back up and taken Ned in a piggy-back ride to swing them to his apartment. Now, they were awkwardly hanging right next to his window, and he was praying that none of his neighbors happened to glance outside.

MJ had to twist her torso in an almost half-circle to slide the window up, except it didn't seem to be working, even with vigorous wiggling.

There was a growing ball in his throat, but Peter still managed to choke out, "Is-is it locked?" That would have been very weird. He pretty much never left the window locked. It just wasn't worth it. Besides, the way he saw it, if someone was able to haul themselves up to his fourth floor apartment from the side of the building, they deserved whatever crap they found, although it wouldn't be much more than GED study books and the odd toy he kept from his and May's place, assuming they thought his suits were knockoffs.

"Yeah, it's locked," MJ answered, equally as shaky as Peter, if not more so.

"Here." He put his free hand against the glass and tried to use his stickiness to pull it up. Of course, it simply shattered, leaving broken pieces of glass stuck to his palm and falling brightly to the ground below. "Whoops." Ned giggled.

Once he cleared the rest of the glass from the pane and got everyone inside, he quickly realized why the window was locked. He'd been robbed.

All his action figures, study materials, suits - all of it was gone. And in its absence were surprisingly clean but bare shelves and furniture. Wow. At least he'd gotten nice robbers.

"Hey, Peter," Ned said, head in the fridge. "Should I be more concerned than I already am?" He emerged from the fridge with a six-pack of beer in one hand.

So apparently there was room in him for more panic. "That's not mine," he said frantically. Ned raised an eyebrow but put the drinks back.

"And this?" MJ asked.

Peter turned. To his horror, in her hands dangled a white sports bra - and Peter was starting to think he made a mistake. He looked outside to see a brick building instead of the top of a tower. This was not his apartment.

"So, I may have fucked up." Just a little, minor accident. Could've happened to anyone, really. Anyone having their lives turned around - or turned back into place, as it was - would have been rightfully distracted.

The giggles he let out were totally normal and warranted. He was going insane.

"I'll say," Ned muttered.

That only made him laugh harder. "This isn't my apartment. I just broke into someone's apartment."

Ned and MJ exchanged a worried glance but came over for Peter to gather them up and crawl around to his actual window, which was unlocked as it was supposed to be.

As they poked around his little shoebox, he pulled a shipping box out from under his bed and a sharpie. One side of the box got torn off and written on; just a simple "Sorry - Spider-Man" and a little spider drawing. He left his friends to go web the piece over his neighbor's empty window pane. Hopefully, they would be back before the stickiness faded.

When he got back, Ned and MJ were waiting by the bed. "We're having a sleepover at my place," Ned declared, "so pack your stuff. All of it."

Peter frowned. "Why all of it?"

"You're not coming back here," MJ said. Her hands were on her hips and an unyielding expression in her eyes to show that she meant business. That, paired with her puffy, teary face were very convincing.

Still, though. He couldn't just not come back. This was the cheapest place he could find, and it wasn't like he had anywhere else to go. "Guys, I know it looks bad, but I promise, I'm fine." And he really was. Yeah, there were the small problems of not having anyone in his life who really mattered and not being in regular school and not having any documents that he could apply to colleges or decent paying jobs with, but he was making it work. He had The Bugle.

MJ shook her head. "You're 17. This is ridiculous. You shouldn't have to support yourself like this. We're all going to Ned's, and then in the morning, we're going to figure out how to fix everything."

"Woah." He made a time out sign. "We can't just do that. I don't know what will happen if I try and put my name back out there."

Ned shook his head, and MJ continued. "I don't care. You shouldn't have to live like this, especially so soon after-" she choked up, and Peter knew exactly what she was going to say. "Well, it doesn't matter. You shouldn't be on your own. I don't care if I have to knock on Dr. Strange's door myself." The image of MJ banging on the doors of the Sanctum Sanctorum to yell Dr. Strange's ear off almost set him off in giggles again.

"Also, I wanna learn magic," Ned added, "so I like that option." That was probably the most convincing argument Peter had heard so far.

He looked between the two of them, and, upon realizing that these were two people that had already been through hell to stick with him the first time around - and who had clearly made up their minds as to how the next 24 hours were going to go - he decided haggling would be the best route. "What about this?"

"Oh, a negotiation," MJ interjected. She looked just a little too intrigued. "Alright, Parker, let's hear what you've got for us."

He clasped his hands together like he'd seen gamblers do on TV. "My rent is due in two weeks. If we haven't thought of anything by then, I will willingly place my fate in your hands. Until then, I stay here."

His two best friends bent their heads together and whispered, Ned stroking an imaginary beard. They looked back at him. He tried not to sweat. It didn't work very well.

"Acceptable," MJ said. "And, just so you know, Parker, your fate was already in my hands."

Oh, he knew it; and, still, he breathed out for the first time since arriving at the fire.