Archive of Our Own

(Satin sheets cover my head

the world is louder in my bed

and my hollow window creaks

I haven’t dreamt for weeks

and my eyes are open wide

imagine faces in the night

they disappear when I blink

and reappear when I drift to sleep)

~~~

December 17th, 2024.

Five weeks after the— ?

Peter Parker is a really weird guy.

At least that’s what she told Ned. “Peter Parker’s a really weird guy,” she’d said, leaning her upper body down and forwards over the counter so that her head was level with Ned’s. He’d been sitting across from her, and she’d just finished serving the last few people in line— it’s a busy day today, for some reason. Now the edge of the counter presses into her forearms, and she presses her teeth together.

And he’d said, “Who?”

So it didn’t really matter, doesn’t— matter. Just some weird guy— MJ had clocked him as such the first time he’d walked in during her shift, the guy had introduced himself, last name and all, and that note he’d almost started reading from had completely baffled her— but it doesn’t matter. Literally just Some Guy. It’s New York, for christ’s sake.

Just some weird guy.

Her assessment holds up literally every time she interacts with him. And really, it’s not their initial meeting that cements him in her mind— there’s plenty of weird customers to go around, that’s not it— it’s the very next day after. When she’s walking home after her shift, and decides to stop at a donut shop her father really likes, get something for him maybe, ‘cause she’d done good on tips that day. The door is opened from the other side right as she pushes against it, and it results in her almost falling through the doorway— she stumbles, catching herself with one gloved hand on the doorframe, and looks up to laugh the embarrassment off.

And it’s Peter Parker, the Weird Guy from just yesterday, looking back at her, eyes a bit wide, lips parted, one hand still clutching the door where he’d opened it, other hand holding a coffee close to his chest to avoid spilling.

For some reason, in the suddenness of the whole situation, it’s the last part her brain, inexplicably, latches onto, and she hears “Ditching me, huh?” come out of her mouth before she realizes she was thinking anything even remotely close to that.

He blinks at her, eyebrows drawing together slightly, still holding the door, and says, after a moment, voice strained and thin: “What?”

“I’m—” she says, a little horrified, cause what the fuck, Michelle, where the hell had that come from? “I meant— the coffee,” she tries to explain, “from here. I’m— I work at Pe—”

“Peter Pan’s, yeah,” he finishes for her, and then looks down at his coffee. “Oh. Uh— no, I’m just— here was closer, and—”

“I was joking,” she cuts him off, smiling a little. “I’m here too, so—” Then, realizing she’s both completely blocking the doorway and letting freezing air into the building— the employee behind the counter is giving her a tired look— she sidesteps the guy— Peter— and moves further into the shop. “It would be a bit hypocritical of me to— I don’t know, shame you for going somewhere else.” God. She’s babbling. What the hell.

“Oh,” he says, turning bodily to follow her position, and he lets the door fall closed. “Right. Well, um—”

“Yeah,” she says, realizing how weird she’s made this interaction, and steps back further into the shop. “You can— sorry.”

“No—” he says, sounding weirdly sincere, “no, you’re totally fine, I’m— sorry I opened the door then, I should’ve…” he trails off, probably seeing MJ’s raised eyebrow and realizing that there isn’t really anything he could’ve done other than open the door like a normal person. “...seen you,” he finishes, and her second eyebrow joins her first. She gives the door— glass, but almost completely covered in posters and flyers— a pointed look.

He looks back at it. “Oh. Yeah. Right.” He considers it, and it’s unseablethroughness, before starting to turn back to her, "that might actually be a hazard,” he says, hand raising to jerk a thumb towards it, and she surprises herself with a bubbling laugh, light and genuine, and Peter looks back at her, mouth lifted at the corner.

“Anyways, I’m…” And then he looks at her, so hard she startles, intense like he’s trying to memorize her features for a police sketch or something, and then there’s so many layers to his gaze she almost takes another step back.

Right. Weird.

“...going,” he finishes. “With my traitorous coffee,” he says, raising the drink, and it takes her a moment to remember her stupid, random blurt of a joke.

She laughs again, a little forced, a little… sad, and nods at him. “See you…” she says, “Peter,” and the name tastes— really— something when she says it.

(Intense, maybe, like the way he looked at her. There’s an— itch, in the back of her mind.)

“Yeah,” he seems to manage, and then stills for just a moment before turning away and opening the door again— slower this time, she notes with a bit of amusement— and then he’s gone.

And he did it all so normally— movements measured and perfectly natural, but she can’t help but feel like he was tearing himself away from the spot.

So… yeah. That’s, that’s what she means. Weird.

And maybe it’s definitely the way he looks at her, too, because that wasn’t the first time. He’d done the same thing the day before, in the cafe. She hadn’t mentioned that part to Ned, ‘cause he’d immediately get protective, and call it creepy, and, well—

Yeah, sure, it’s creepy, or it would be, except—

It’s not.

Instead of being creepy, it makes something warm and quiet and almost familiar unfurl deep, deep in her gut, so deep that she barely notices it, but there enough that it makes it— not, creepy.

It almost makes it right.

But. It’s— not. Something she focuses on. Just something she sometimes lets her mind wander to, the whole Weird Customer Peter Parker thing, because after that, he becomes somewhat of a regular.

And she’s definitely not complaining about that, because, well— 

He tips pretty handsomely, and, well, what can she do.

~~~

(What was it like to feel in love?

What was it like to feel in love?)

~~~

November 13th, 2024.

? days after the spell.

After the… it. Everything. After the other Peters go home, after May dies, after he tells Strange: “do it.” After they all forget. After. After. 

Peter doesn’t really… function. 

Looking back, he thinks— he thinks that, after he got off the island, he just….

Stopped. 

For. Some amount of time. 

He thinks it might have been days. 

(A part of him wishes it was longer.)

There are… flashes. It reminds him of when… when you’ve got a childhood memory, but it’s from when you were so young that the memory itself is more of— more of an event that you know happened, and you’ve got a photo from it, in your head. A still. And that’s the whole memory. 

It’s like that. He thinks he collapsed in a warehouse. Or an abandoned office building. One of the two. As Spider-Man, he knows a lot about where to find both those things. 

A dirty gray wall is what he remembers for sure. He remembers it ‘cause he put a hand on it, and it left blood on the wall, and that had— startled him a bit, he thinks. 

He might’ve fallen asleep in there. Passed out, really, but the line between those two things had blurred to nonexistence long, long ago. 

There was also… a street. Or a few. Those concern him, both because it’s New York and he knows New York so he should be able to remember them, recognize them, but— they blur. And, because—

He doesn’t… know. If he. What he was like. Covered in blood? Beaten up? Dead eyed and unresponsive? 

Maskless?

God, he hopes not. No, he couldn’t’ve been. He would’ve— would’ve fixed that. 

His identity is what got him into this in the first place. 

Peter Parker. Peter Parker. Where Spider-Man goes, calamity follows. 

It’s been— a week, maybe two, though, and he hasn’t heard anything, so— so he’s assuming it’s fine. He’s fine. 

He’d come to— or, at least, more or less back to himself, back enough that he— remembers this part normally, knows he wasn’t far, far away from his body— behind a dumpster, in a t-shirt and pants he’d never seen before, and so, so cold. He can barely stand up, he’s so cold. He can barely move.

And it’s then that he— and he’s quite proud of this one— makes the executive decision to not think about anything but his next steps. Which he takes. Both physically, out of the alley, shaky and stumbling, and metaphorically. 

He goes home. 

~~~

His and May’s apartment is…

Well, it’s safe to say that he’s so, so, so close to being too late.

It’s obvious people have come in. It isn’t cleaned out yet, but—

He doesn’t know what the procedures are. May had family in Italy. It’s probably them.

Regardless. He’s already too late to make the most of it, but…

He slips in through his bedroom window, the whole process basically muscle memory as he keeps his focus, his mind, his being on just the task in front of him, nothing else, not thinking about anything else, fuck, he can’t lose himself again now. 

He almost breaks down crying as he drops silently into his room— very much not thinking about how it’s— fuck— the last time he’s ever gonna do that again. 

Oh god. 

Instead of curling up in a ball and sobbing, like he really really really wants to, he blindly makes his way to the closet where May liked to store a shit ton of empty boxes and bags, for whatever reason, but god is he grateful for it now. 

He goes for the cash first, whatever he knows they didn’t take with them to Happy’s place. 

(Happy insisted to pay for them during their stay there— May had to quit her hospital job ‘cause of the distance, and holy shit is Peter grateful now that he’d left his emergency cash here because Happy’s is— well— a crime scene now and he doesn’t think he can— not with May—

He stops that train of thought right there, his breathing harsh and shaking, heart feeling like it’s pounding it’s way out of his goddamn chest, hand gripping the box of money hard enough that the cardboard corner is crumpling.)

Fuck— fuck, it’s— he hates that he wishes with his whole being that he was still— gone— dissociated— just, away, where he didn’t have to— not think, and flinch at every tiny little sound from blocks and blocks away and his spider-sense won’t shut up—

He breathes out once, breathes in again, as long and drawn out as he can before he’s gasping again, but it’s enough for him to loosen his hold on the box, to blink, hard, and—

He searches May’s room, not thinking, not thinking, not thinking— and comes away with the few hundred dollars he knew she’d kept on hand— keeps— kept— fuck—

He moves onto clothing. Grabs a random box and throws: jeans— sweatpants— another pair, those are MJ’s, fuck, fuck— converse from the bottom of his closet— more jeans— a stack of boxers, socks, more socks— a shirt, another shirt, another shirt, doesn’t look at them, some are Ned’s, doesn’t look at them, just grabs them one after another and throws them into the box. Grabs another when that one fills up, grabs MJ’s hoodie— grabs another hoodie— his jacket, and Ned’s jacket— why does he have so many of their clothes, fuck, fuck— more socks, these are thicker— another shirt—

He stops, chest heaving. Then— gloves, even though he hates how they feel on his hands, but he grabs two pairs anyways because—

(It’s winter, he doesn’t thermoregulate very well (thanks spider) and he has nowhere to go.)

(It’s winter, he can’t fucking thermoregulate, not enough to be sure he won’t freeze to death, and he— fuck—)

He shoves those boxes over to the money ones, waiting for him under the window, and then—

He’s fine. He’s fine.

He takes a box. Okay. He— he takes a box, goes to the hallway, and—

Starts taking down photos. The one that had him and May and Ned at his fifteenth birthday is just— gone, like it was never there— there’s still him and May and Ben at a park with ice cream, though, and he reaches for it and almost drops it when he realizes— realizes— that he’s not there, he’s just not, it’s just— Ben and May and May and Ben, no little eleven year old boy with them. They’ve got their arms around each other— smiling—

He shoves it with a violently shaking arm into the box, forcing down whatever wounded noise was screaming its way up his throat.

He doesn’t look at the photos he takes down after that. Just takes them down, one by one by one.

He— god, he doesn’t want to know.

~~~

He feels like he’s fallen apart completely by the time he’s done with the photos.

(There were so many. And barely any. There were surprisingly little missing– just events, he guesses, that wouldn’t have taken place without him— and— it’s just a memory spell, but— god, he had no idea it would be this thorough.

It’s like he never even existed.

Does he have a birth certificate? Social security— what— how—

He has no idea how this works, and it terrifies him. He can’t just go and ask Strange. That would— snowball. Like everything always does. And—

He lets himself imagine how that conversation would go, because it’s a little funny. Up until he almost falls apart again, and then he shuts that particular mental movie down.)

But— after filling two boxes with photos and other personal items they left here— cause they were so sure they’d come back after it all blew over— and after throwing up a few times into a trash bag he fumbled out from under the sink just in time— and he had no idea he even had anything in his stomach to throw up, he must’ve… eaten something, he guesses, but he has no idea what or when— he moves on to anything and everything he can think of that’ll save him money. Kitchen utensils, tupperware, towels all go in boxes. He ransacks their bathroom, finds a spare toothbrush but no toothpaste, sweeps any medicine they have into the box as well just for the hell of it, even though, even when his metabolism is at its weakest, none of the stuff seems to work on him (and neither does he get sick) but—

He’s about to have one hell of a ride ahead of him. He’s got no idea what’s gonna happen. So, in goes all the for-normal-humans shit. 

(It’s winter, he can’t— he has nowhere to go—)

What he knows he will need is the first aid kit, though. He pulls that off the top shelf, along with another towel, and then he goes and gets the biggest box he can find, and folds his blanket up as tiny as he can get it, and manages to shove it into the box with room left over, and hey, look at that, at least some of his enhancements aren’t a constant hindrance. So he goes to the living room and gets the couch blanket as well.

After two seconds of deliberation, he grabs the pillow off his bed too, even though he never sleeps on them anyways, and when he does, he wakes up with his head shoved off of it.

But— his noise canceling headphones are at Happy’s, ‘cause of course, those were a necessity, and the good ones— the ones that actually do at least something to block things out of his hearing are— freaking expensive. Not a reality in his current situation, that’s for sure.

(He knows, knows, knows the pillow won’t do shit. He takes it anyways.)

And, and, then, when he’s— searched every corner of the apartment for anything else he thinks would be even remotely useful to him— desklamp and toilet paper and, and, and a bottle of shampoo they left here for some reason and everything he can— he looks at all the boxes, stacked next to and on top of and under each other at his bedroom window, and he doesn’t cry, doesn’t, doesn’t, doesn’t break apart as he lowers them one by one to the street below with his webs and then, fuck, fuck, climbs out of the window, and closes it, and— he—

~~~

(Oily marks appear on walls

where pleasure moments hung before:

the takeover, the sweeping insensitivity of this

still life.)

~~~

He spends a little over two weeks homeless.

It’s how long it takes him to find a place to live that doesn’t have a rent price that makes him blanch and panic, and is out of the way and shitty enough to accept him without any questions or suspicion— as long as he’s got money and doesn’t kill the other occupants in the building, he’s good.

And he does find a place. Shitty and rundown and still in Queens, but he finds one.

But, before that—

He brings all his boxes to the nearest self storage unit, pays eighty dollars for a month of a grimy 5 foot by 5 foot space, and leaves himself with cash, his phone, and as many layers of clothing as he can possibly fit onto himself at once.

And then he stays at one shelter, and then another, during those almost two weeks. It’s really not— that bad, he doesn’t die, or anything, and okay, maybe that’s a supremely low bar, but it’s what he’s got right now. 

But it's also— utter— hell. 

His spider sense is what causes most of it. That, and the cold, and if it weren’t for those two, he’d really— really, he’d be fine. Fine. But. He’s not. 

Sometimes, when he was still— well, before, when everything was normal— he’d have days like this, where every single sound for blocks around him was way too loud, when the simple act of breathing was too much, when his clothing touching his skin drove him absolutely insane, when his sixth sense that was supposed to help him, goddamnit, decided instead that pretty much everything around him was a threat. 

If it was really bad, he’d stay home from school. Curl up in his bed or, more commonly, on the floor, press noise canceling headphones into the sides of his head so hard he’d nearly break them, and spend the morning trying not to throw up.

Sometimes, by noon, it would abate, and he’d either go back to school, or go out as Spider-Man for the rest of the day. Or, a more common occurrence in his junior year, pass the fuck out.

But what all that meant was— he could manage. He did, manage.

Now?

Now, well. Now he doesn’t have his headphones, doesn’t have a bed or a corner to sit and panic in, doesn’t have a space to stay and recuperate. Doesn’t even have the opportunity to recuperate, because everything is happening so much, constantly, all around him— there’s no way to escape any of it. Rooftops and libraries are his best friends, but it’s fucking freezing up on the former, and there’s only so much time he can spend pretending to read a book in the latter.

It’s a delicate balance, he quickly learns, between hunting for apartments, staying on the streets for tips, and spending his time in a heated building in order to not die. He jumps from coffee shops to freezing street corners to looking at rent prices, and he ignores the way every day he gets less sleep, less food, slower, slower, slower. His body hurts. His head aches. He’s genuinely expecting to, at some point, simply not wake up. Just how much can his body take?

His spider-sense screams and screams and screams.

~~~

November 25th, 2024.

Two weeks after the spell.

He startles awake when something leans against his side— and the only reason he doesn’t immediately bash said thing over the head and sprint away is because his spider-sense is dead silent, for once, just the ghost of a migraine from earlier in the day— or the day before— so for a moment, all he does is bask in the quiet. He gives himself a good few seconds of it. 

(He’s terrified that as soon as he moves, the world will start spinning again, as soon as he moves, all the constant sounds and smells and movements will bowl him over, drown and bury him so deep he’ll forget what it was ever like to breathe. He didn’t mean to fall asleep, here on this sidewalk, blocks away from the shelter he’s currently frequenting. But with the cold, and hunger, and constant hyper awareness, it’s hard to keep going, he has less control, and he can’t—)

And then he looks over to his right, and barely stops himself from jerking away when he finds muddy, red-rimmed brown eyes blinking up at him.

“Oh,” is what he says, frozen lips parting, and blinks past the cold sinking into everything and everywhere, blinks and blinks and blinks until he’s focusing on the child suddenly attached to his side, and not the dull, familiar surprise he feels every time he wakes up to find himself not a frozen-over corpse.

And his first thought is— crushingly— Morgan?— and he almost says so, mouth parting to whisper her name, as he stares at eyes that are hazel, not deep brown like Morgan’s, like Tony’s, and mussed hair that’s too dark and curly to be Morgan’s, and, and—

His second thought is— oh, shit— it’s a child—

“Oh,” he says again, but it’s stronger, more alert now, and the child curls in on themself a little bit, and he puts effort into softening his tone. “Hey,” he says, forcing himself to shift so that he isn’t slumped against the brick behind him and is instead sitting, sideways, facing the kid.

“Hi,” they say in a voice so quiet and soft and small that Peter wants to pull at his hair until the whole world is gone.

He blinks again. Makes his lips part again, and fuck, they hurt. “Are you lost?” he asks, taking in with a quick glance the thin face, the two dirty hands clutching a sharpie, for some reason, the slightly too big clothing, the way the kid is shaking— and, no, actually, shivering, not shaking, still pressed into his side like he’s their personal space heater.

Which, what a shitty one he’d make.

(Peter himself has been shivering less and less, making it past shivering quicker and quicker, falling asleep (slipping away) easier and easier and taking longer and longer to wake up the longer he spends homeless and out in the cold and he doesn’t know, with his messed up biology, if that’s a good thing or a bad thing, but—

It’s most likely bad. Like, supremely bad. 

He’s gonna die out here.)

The child nods, and Peter has to wrack his brain, slow and sluggish, to figure out why—

“Mama says,” the child leans closer to Peter, voice still soft, like they’re sharing a secret with him, “if you get lost, Masha, you don’t go anywhere. You stay. She says she will find me then,” and the kid’s— Masha’s?— eyes are wide as she sits and trembles.

“Your mama’s a very smart woman,” Peter tells the kid— Masha. Masha doesn’t say anything in response, just blinks up at him from where she’s still pressed against his side, still shivering. “Did you get lost around here?” Peter prompts, and Masha nods, one pale hand snaking out to point down the street.

“Right there,” she says, and it’s only now that Peter picks up on the slight accent in her voice, which is also probably a bad thing. He’s so cold. Slow. (Dying.) “We walk past you and you look warm, so I came here.”

Peter decides against telling her that she was quite incorrect in that assumption. Instead, he pulls on his lip with his teeth, lost on what to do, and asks her, “do you not have a jacket to keep you warm?” and watches as she looks back at him and shakes her head.

“Mama says she will get money to buy me a good jacket. But for now I stay mostly at home.” She blinks a little, and shifts, shrugging, “but it’s cold at home too. I use the blankets,” she tells him, and Peter’s stomach twists, from hunger or cold or this, he doesn’t know.

“Okay, Masha,” he says, and when she doesn’t protest the name, he continues, “you did good, staying where you are. Good job.” He fumbles. His tongue feels thick in his mouth; he’s not used to talking to kids, or maybe it’s just the cold. “I’m sure your mother will come find you soon.”

Masha grins at him, teeth small and gappy and uneven. “I stay here,” she agrees, or declares, and Peter tries for a smile too. His lips are cracked and bleeding. Stiff from the cold. He hopes she doesn’t notice. 

“Okay,” he says. Masha shivers again, and presses even closer into his side, and he forces the pulsing, agonizing thoughts of Morgan, Morgan, Morgan away, shoves them down. “Here,” he instead says, and without letting himself think too much about it he shrugs out of his jacket (it was too small for him anyway, he tells himself) and drapes it around the kid. 

She blinks around with wide eyes, surprised, but after a nod from Peter she eagerly wraps herself in the fabric, snaking her little arms through the sleeves, and in reality it’s only a little too large on her— it’s good enough to do its job and keep her warm, anyways, which is more than it did for Peter. 

Well. 

He forces a grimace off his face as Mother Nature chooses that exact moment to buffet him with a gust of absolutely freezing wind, and he curls into the hoodie he had on as his second layer. Now his outer layer. It’s okay, he has another jacket, left in the self storage container. It’s Ned’s. And also big and warm. 

(And Ned’s.)

He brings his attention back to Masha, snuggled up at his side, and tries for another smile. “That’ll be good,” he offers, “until your mother can get you that other jacket. One that actually fits, maybe.” 

And his jaw and face and body are stiff and dead with cold, but Masha grins at him again, and he thinks that maybe, somewhere, something in him has to be warm. 

Then a thought occurs to him, and he shifts uncomfortably, his shoulder pressing against the wall at his side. Morgan. “You should know, though,” he says, after a moment of deliberation, “you shouldn’t just go up to any stranger when you’re lost. That could be more dangerous than not staying where you are.”

She blinks up at him again. “But you were sleeping,” she points out, matter-of-fact, like it’s the most obvious thing in the universe, eyes wide and innocent, and then his stomach twists again, violently, and this time he knows it’s ‘cause—

(He stops that thought like he stops all the thoughts about Happy and Pepper and Rhodey and Morgan, and the way she’d giggle madly at stupid things he’d say, and the way her little arms, so fragile and breakable, would wrap around his legs, and the way—)

“Just ‘cause someone’s sleeping–” he starts, but is cut off as he hears, down the street and away, away, too far for a normal person to hear, he thinks, (he can’t really remember), someone calling, a desperate edge to the voice— Maria, Maria— and then more that he can’t understand, and he’s too tired and cold right now to tell if it’s jumbled because it’s too far away and there’s too much extra input, or if it’s in another language.

He pulls an arm around the kid still on the pavement next to him, pulling her closer to his side. Smooths the jacket sleeve out on her right, rumpled from when she’d rolled the sleeves up to fit. 

“You’ve gotta be very, very careful, Masha,” he tells her, and he forces himself to meet her huge brown eyes, doesn’t, doesn’t, doesn’t look away even as his stomach twists and twists and twists. Morgan. “You’ve gotta look out for yourself. That’s one of the most important things you can do, okay?” The brown eyes blink at him, and blink and blink. ”You follow your mother and make sure you don’t get lost,” he chokes out. 

Masha nods up at him, unfurled a little from the ball she’d been in, loosely clutching the jacket closed in front of her with one hand, the sharpie still in her other. 

She’s stopped shivering, Peter realizes. 

And then—

“Maria—” comes the voice again, and this time Masha’s head snaps up, and her face scrunches, and she looks around.

“Is that your mom?” Peter asks, pointing down the street, where he can now attach the voice to a woman, bag clutched in her hand, desperately searching the sidewalk. Masha’s head turns, and Peter feels her perk up. She nods excitedly, turning back to face him, face lit up and content. 

“Okay,” Peter says, glancing down the street at the woman, who’s been making her way towards them in her search but hasn’t seemed to notice them yet. 

“Mama says stay where you get lost,” Masha tells him, and Peter lets out a small huff, refrains from rolling his eyes, tamps down the hot pain in his chest that screams Morgan, Morgan, Morgan at him, a cruel, unrelenting, stabbing reminder. He coughs a little. 

“Um— well, okay,” he tells her, and heaves himself to his feet, numb and cold and far away, surprised when they actually hold him. He puts his hand against the wall anyways, just in case. 

Masha blinks up at him, and when he motions, she stands as well, reaching out, her little hand protruding from the rolled up sleeve to grab onto his, the one that isn’t braced against the wall, and crushing pain flares in his chest as her cold little fingers wrap around the side of his palm. They fit there like Morgan’s once did, when she’d insist on holding his hand while they took a walk around the lake, and he—

He forces a smile down at her. Hopes it comes across as less of the grimace he feels it is. 

Then he looks up, locates the woman down the street, and drags his feet forward— god that hurts— calling out, voice hoarse, “Ma’am—”

To his immense relief, it only takes them a few steps down the street for the woman to look up at them, for her frantic gaze to land first on Peter, and then slide down his arm and settle on Masha, and he sees her visibly melt with relief. 

“Oh,” she breathes, rushing forward, and she sweeps the girl into her arms as she cries out, all tiny and small and bright, “mama!”, and Peter forces himself to take a step back from them. He leans against the wall, because he’s not fully certain his legs will keep holding him, and tries to not feel like an intruder. 

(They’ve separated, the mother and daughter, she’s set her down, crouching in front of her, and she’s looking at her with so much— love, and Peter has to shut his eyes because in that moment she looks just like May—)

She asks Masha something, then, something that definitely isn’t in a language Peter knows, and Masha answers in the same language, little hand that’s still clutching the sharpie pointing at Peter, but Peter doesn’t have to understand whatever language it is to realize what they’re talking about when the mother starts taking the jacket off, gentle pulls and tugs. 

“No—” he hears himself say, feels himself raise a shaking hand to wave her movements off, and yeah, that sounds about right. She shakes her head up at him, and he tries for a smile again, ignoring the way it stretches cold, numb lips. 

“It’s alright,” he assures her, and she still looks quite unconvinced, so he says it again, and hopes his voice doesn’t rasp out loud as much as it seems to in his head. 

After a moment of some kind of internal debate, she nods, albeit reluctantly, and she stands back up, her hands sliding up as she goes to grip her daughter’s shoulders. “Thank you,” she tells him, eyes earnest and still losing the edge of frantic terror they had earlier, voice deep with sincerity and shaking, accent slightly thicker than her daughter’s. Peter just nods, because he isn’t sure he can talk anymore, for numerous reasons, and then stumbles the few steps back to slump down where he’d been sitting earlier, because maybe that spot is still less cold than the rest of the pavement from his ass having shielded it from the wind for however long he’d been passed out. 

It isn’t, and he bites the inside of his cheek sharply. He’ll just sit here for another few minutes, then head to the library a few blocks away to warm up. And then— he’ll go get Ned’s jacket from the storage container. Which is fine. He’ll be fine. 

His hand scrabbles across the ground next to him to find the cardboard tip box that had somehow— miraculously— not been emptied while he slept, and that he honestly hadn’t had a thought to spare for since waking up to a child curled into his side. He thinks about it now, though, and pulls it closer to himself. It’s okay, what’s in there. The scant few bills from pitying strangers. He’ll manage, he tells himself. 

Just a few more minutes sitting here, and then the library. 

He looks up at the slapping sound of cheap shoes hitting pavement, and is met with Masha skipping up to him, her mother a few steps behind. 

Peter hadn’t realized they were still there. That’s— bad. There should be more things on his radar. His spider sense is still and silent. He—

“Thank you for the jacket,” Masha says, tugging on one of the sleeves and twisting it between her hands. Peter blinks. 

“Of course,” he manages, and tries, for what feels like the hundredth time, for a smile, tight and thin. Masha bounces back a few steps to be next to her mother, and Peter lets his gaze travel up and meet her eyes. She has her wallet out. 

He doesn’t stop her when she drops a few bills into the box next to him, and he almost hates himself for it.

~~~

Four days later, finally, finally, he’s told— “rent is due at the end of the month, don’t be late” and handed a pair of keys, and— he—

Collapses onto the twin bed that’s already there, along with its ratty, stained mattress that, a distant part of him notes, smells really bad, and passes out.

~~~

December 29th, 2024.

Seven weeks after the— ?

“What’cha staring at?” MJ asks, leaning her elbows on the counter across from Ned, pushing his donut towards him on a napkin.

“...yeah,” Ned says distractedly, and MJ fights an amused smile. Then— “what?” he turns to her, blinking a bit, frowning.

“I said,” MJ says, still fighting the smile, “what are you staring at? And here’s your donut,” she adds, nudging said donut closer to him pointedly.

“Oh—” Ned grins, noticing the donut, and pulls it towards himself the rest of the way. “Thanks!” 

MJ resigns herself to waiting until he’s bitten into it to get an answer, and glances towards the front of the shop to make sure she hasn’t missed the bell attached to the top of the door ringing. There’s no one up front, and she lets herself look back to Ned.

“It’s just,” Ned says, chewing, “Isn’t that my jacket? I mean— at least it looks like mine. Like, exactly like mine. All old and stuff. Over there,” Ned motions with his head to the corner of the shop, at the front. “The guy in the booth in the corner. Right by the glass?” He specifies, and she squints over there, frowning when she sees who Ned’s talking about.

“That’s Peter,” she says, straightening a bit.

“...well, yeah, that explains everything, thanks,” Ned tells her. She turns her frown on him, and he rolls his eyes. “Who’s Peter?” he asks, eyebrow raised. 

“Oh—” MJ reaches across the counter and rips off a piece of Ned’s donut, just the bread part at the bottom. “Uh, just a new regular. Actually— he’s the weird guy I was telling you about… a… while ago,” she frowns to herself, shoving the bread in her mouth. “Uh, like a week or two. Ago.”

Ned blinks at her a bit, very obviously not remembering, before, “Yeah, okay. But doesn’t that look like my jacket? The one I lost a few months ago?”

MJ looks over at Peter again. He has his head tilted away from the rest of the shop, gaze focused somewhere in the middle distance beyond the glass window a foot or so away from his face, hands wrapped around the coffee he’d bought just a bit ago from MJ herself, like he’s trying to soak in the warmth of it before he goes outside again.

(He’d stopped leaving right after ordering a little bit ago. She can’t exactly pinpoint when, but a few days, maybe—

And she doesn’t, actually, know why she’s thinking about this. Okay.)

“Uh, yeah,” MJ says, finally actually focusing on his jacket— still on, even indoors, and it’s pretty warm in the shop. “That—” she frowns again, she’s gotta stop doing that so much, but— that… actually does look a lot like Ned’s jacket. Like… exactly like Ned’s jacket. Worn out in the same places, the zipper on the front pocket visibly broken.

“Huh,” is what she says.

“Right?” Ned follows her gaze over to Peter, who hasn’t moved.

“Well, go up and ask him then,” MJ says, swiping the napkin out from between Ned’s hands and funneling the last of the crumbs off of it into her mouth.

“W— What?” Ned asks, voice pitching up in surprise, and she can’t stop her laugh then, short and quick, bursting past the napkin that’s still raised to her mouth.

“Ask him,” she says, once she’s recovered. She steps to the side a bit to throw the napkin in the trash, comes back to where Ned is gaping at her like she just discovered a digit of pi or something. “Ned, literally— maybe he found the jacket somewhere. He’s a nice guy, I’m sure he’ll give it back.”

Ned stares at her. Opens his mouth, then closes it again. “Uh…” he starts, “...that’s gonna be a hard pass.”

MJ shrugs, head turning to the front of the shop as she hears the tinkle of the bell. “Guess no jacket for you, then,” she tells him, and moves up to the register, wiping her hands on the front of her apron from any stray clinging donut crumbs.

She plasters on her Customer Service Smile (Trademarked). “Welcome to Peter Pan’s, what can I get you?” she asks the couple surveying the menu hanging above her head.

They order the special, and she lets muscle memory take over from there. But—

As she’s putting their order together, she looks up, and— through the reflection in the metal wall panel above the donuts, she swears she catches a glimpse of Peter Parker looking guiltily— or, at least, there’s something pained in his expression— over to where Ned is now looking at something on his phone.

A minute later, there’s the tinkling of the bell again, but when she looks up to check, it’s only to see the retreating back of what is— almost definitely, okay, it’s got the same exact coffee stain on the back— Ned’s jacket through the glass door.

~~~

September 20th, 2017.

Seven Two years before the spell.

She thinks it’s maybe around a week before the Decathlon D.C. trip that Peter and Ned disappear. 

Disappear is dramatic. Whatever. They stop showing up to lunch, is what it is.

And MJ doesn’t really care. She doesn’t. They aren’t her friends. She’s just now suddenly deprived of up close depressed kids to draw, and that’s annoying. That’s all.

And yet when they’re gone for that entire week, and the entire week after the D.C. trip (so what if she’d been hoping it’d change things) and the entire week after that, too, she realizes it’s just a regular thing now. They aren’t coming back.

For whatever reason, those two just don’t eat in the cafeteria anymore.

It’s a few days after homecoming, a month after their initial disappearance, a month of sitting completely alone at the table, a month of being horribly deprived of drawing practice at lunch, that she heaves a sigh, gathers her stuff, and leaves to search for them.

She’s just curious. She’s got a curious nature, that’s what her father always tells her. And a protective one, and Peter and Ned are on her Decathlon team, she’s their coach, so— really it’s just her responsibility to make sure they aren’t getting high in the bathroom or anything. 

She finds them ten minutes later, halfway into the lunch period, just— sitting in the robotics hallway. For no apparent reason. What the shit.

They’re all the way down the hallway, sitting on the floor towards the end of it, lunches in front of them. Ned has a chem textbook open in his lap, Peter’s got his school issued computer opened next to him, earbuds in his ears, eyes closed.

It’s still him that opens his eyes and turns his head to look down the hallway, right at her, as she starts down it towards them, eyebrows drawing together in a frown. It takes Ned up until she’s almost reached them to notice her, and he copies Peter’s slight frown upon seeing her. 

She stops in front of them. Then, feeling weird standing while they’re all the way down there, squats down. “Why the change in venue?” She asks, looking between the two.

Peter blinks at her a bit, before looking down at his hands, which he’s pressing against each other in his lap.

“Oh,” Ned says, as Peter shifts against the wall a bit. “The cafeteria is for losers. You didn’t get the memo?”

She bites back a huff of laughter, instead raising an eyebrow and spreading her hands in a well I’m here, aren’t I gesture. She sits down from her crouch across from them, crossing her legs, and reaches across Peter’s open computer to snatch one of the less questionable looking french fries from his plate.

“Seriously though,” she says, biting off the end. “Why’re you out here? Is this really where you’ve been going the past month?”

Ned glances at Peter, who, without looking up from his hands, shakes his head, once, lips pressed together in a tight line. He shifts his gaze to her, parting his lips with what looks like effort. “Just wanted a change of scenery,” he says, shrugging one shoulder tiredly. 

She feels her eyes narrow at that, and forces her expression to smooth. “Sure,” she allows, and shrugs out of her backpack, drawing out her sketchbook. “Do you mind if I eat some of that,” she nods towards Peter’s lunch. 

Before he can answer her, Ned pushes his own plate towards her. “Have mine,” he says, glancing sideways at Peter, who is looking back at him like he wants to protest, lips parted, one hand on his own plate. Ned plows past this. “He skipped breakfast,” he tells her, and she glances between the two, watching Peter’s narrowed eyes and Ned’s pointed look, before shrugging and reaching for Ned’s plate instead.

They eat, and it’s quiet, and— kinda nice, actually. MJ didn’t really realize how loud the cafeteria was until she’s eating out here. And the robotics hallway, she reflects, is a pretty good choice of venue, actually. Everyone in these classes is at lunch right now, and most of the teachers are with them on lunch duty, so the chances of people walking down the hallway are thin. Without consciously thinking about it, she draws a pencil out of her pocket and lowers it to the paper in her lap, chewing on Ned’s food. Peter’s eyes flick up at it as she starts drawing, but he says nothing, picking up a fry and shoving it in his mouth at an absentminded nudge from Ned.

“Why are you sitting with us?” Ned asks her through a mouthful of chicken, his tone light, non-accusatory, genuinely curious. Peter looks up at her as well at Ned’s question, biting down on an apple slice Ned hands him.

She lets their gazes hang on her for a few moments, looking back down to her sketchbook and drawing out a few lines, before shrugging a shoulder. “The cafeteria is for losers,” she tells them. “And I’ve got friends now.”

~~~

The next day, she’s there before either of them are, and before they sit down, she tells them, “hold on. I’ve got a better place to eat.”

They exchange a look, before Ned shrugs and gestures for her to lead the way. They follow her down the hall, into the physics classroom, through the door at the back of the room. She starts up the ladder built into the wall there, managing to hold onto her lunch as she does so, and hears Peter underneath her telling Ned he’ll carry their food.

When she climbs out onto the roof, it’s the first time she’s ever done it with others behind her, and it almost feels like— some sort of accomplishment. 

Nice job Michelle, you’ve finally made some friends. Of course the first thing you do with them is bring them to the roof.

She rolls her eyes at her thoughts, turning back to where Ned has clambered out next to her, and where Peter is somehow successfully carrying two plates in one hand, clearing the last of the rungs. Ned looks around, eyebrows raised, taking a few steps out to see the empty street below them over the stone railing— Midtown High isn’t on a particularly busy street, which is something MJ enjoys when up here.

She looks at Peter, who is also looking at the view with an eyebrow raised— surprised, not skeptical, and she swears his mouth lifts at the corner.

“I’m not sure—” starts Ned, but Peter interrupts him.

“No— no, this is— this is good,” his gaze slides to MJ, and he’s definitely smiling now. “It’s great, actually.” He looks back to Ned, and MJ follows his gaze, turning back around.

“Well— great, then,” Ned says, and promptly swings his backpack off his shoulder and onto the ground.

~~~

(Oh my god—

I can’t remember

who I was

just last December

What have I done?

How did I get here?

What have I done?)

~~~

January 3rd, 2025.

(Almost) two months after the spell.

Peter isn’t doing great.

But he’s— managing, alright? He is. He is.

He has a roof over his head. He has some amount of money. He has some amount of food in his fridge. He has, over the past few weeks, unpacked about half the stuff he took (stole) from his and May’s apartment. The rest he hasn’t been able to look at.

But he isn’t in danger of literally freezing to death anymore, and he’s eating— not as much as a normal person should, which means barely anything to his metabolism, but it’s still more than when he was homeless. It’s just enough to keep him alive, so that he doesn’t burn through the money he’s got left.

He’s desperately searching for a job. But it’s hard when there’s no trace of him anywhere, he’s learned, when he’s less than nobody, when he can’t even provide the most simple ID when asked. 

He’ll figure it out.

He’ll be fine.

And in the meantime, he—

He’s not doing all that great.

He’s lonely, is what it is. Terribly so. And it’s really painful. Peter’s never been a social person per se, he’s never had more than two close friends at a time, and he’s been fine with that. He felt safe being able to count on his fingers the people he cared the most about.

Now he lies awake and counts, and feels scared and hollow and alone.

Ned. MJ. Morgan. Happy. Pepper. Rhodey. 

(Ben. May. Tony.)

He’s not doing great because he doesn’t know what to do. He went and got his things. He got an apartment. He’s getting a job, though that’s incredibly hard with the pathetic excuse for identity paperwork he has, but once he does he’ll probably— go and get a GED. He’s even visited May’s grave. Just once. 

Maybe he’ll even come back, as Spider-Man, in a bit.

(He hasn’t, yet, because he can’t, physically. For one, because it’s a sure-fire way to die. He’s too slow, from cold and hunger and sleep deprivation. He can barely bring himself to walk places, forget swinging, and fucking— combat. Christ.

And two, because, well, he doesn’t know if the nano-technology will respond to him anymore, hasn’t tried, hasn’t dared to, and Karen—

The spell was thorough. His phone doesn’t remember him, wiped blank like he just bought it. There’s no way she’ll respond to him.

He makes a new suit, and the fabric costs more than he should be spending, but at least it’s good fabric. He makes a new suit, and it sits on his desk and mocks him.

The guilt over it is unending— every time he lies awake and doesn’t stop himself from listening for blocks around him— but he knows he’d be useless. He can barely get out of bed some days.)

But he hasn’t kept his promise to MJ, to Ned, that he’d tell them, and that’s—

He isn’t doing great with that.

He was going to. He really was. He even wrote it all down on paper, brought the stupid thing with him like he would forget what to say.

And then he didn’t say anything— at least, not anything he promised he would, because—

Because he’s not sure he should.

He got himself into this situation. Beck. Edith. Trust. Where Spider-Man goes, calamity follows. And if he gets them to actually remember, they— he could—

It could all happen again.

MJ’s scream still echoes in his head, he can still see her face, desperate, wide-eyed, as she falls. He can still feel Ned’s hand on his shoulder, can see the genuine earnestness in his eyes as he tells him— “I promise, I won’t turn into a supervillain and try to kill you.” 

Peter isn’t sure they’d survive a second time.

So he didn’t tell them, and now he’s— fuck, now he doesn’t know what to do.

Because now that he’s chosen it, he can’t have them remember. He can’t risk killing them like he did May. It was a stupid move, going to Peter Pan’s in Ned’s goddamn jacket, but— it’s also kinda the only one he’s got left after giving away his own back on the streets, and it also just— didn’t exactly occur to him. But Ned recognized his jacket, because of course he would, and now Peter doesn’t wear it to Peter Pan’s anymore. Doesn’t wear it anywhere anymore.

He can’t.

He heard MJ suggest Ned go talk to him.

And if Ned does, if he comes up to Peter, if he says anything, Peter isn’t sure he’ll be able to stop himself, isn’t sure what he’ll say. He could fuck it all up again so easily. He can barely order coffee from MJ like a normal person. Talking to them isn’t safe because what if they remember, and then—

So he’s scared and alone and fucked up, but he goes to see them anyways. Because—

~~~

It doesn’t last.

He takes the suit off his desk, pulls it on. Drags himself out his window.

If he works himself to exhaustion through Spider-Man, (and it shouldn’t take much to do so), then maybe he’ll be able to sleep through a night.

~~~

January 10th, 2025.

(Exactly) two months after the spell.

Because the thing is—

(Ned. MJ.)

He thought seeing them would hurt. 

He expected it to hurt.

And it does— don’t get him wrong, god, please, it hurts so, so, so—

(He’d thought losing Tony had hurt, he never— fucking— imagined—)

(Losing everyone. Losing them.)

But when he’s around them. With them. God, just being in the same room as them, hearing their voices and heartbeats, hearing them breathe.

It fills him— head to toe, so utterly and completely— with such peace—

He feels settled. Content. Safe. Steps out of the cafe, away from MJ and Ned and MJ and Ned— and the rage and the anger and the pain, pain, utter agony crashes back into him, his spider-sense screaming, his heart racing, Norman Osborn laughing and laughing and laughing, but in there?

And he feels— he doesn’t— know. Get it. It’s, wrong, probably, definitely, to indulge in it. At all. Because he doesn’t deserve it, not after he fucked it all up so thoroughly the first time, and they can’t remember, he can’t have that, they don’t deserve to die. But.

Sometimes (most times) and some days (most days) nothing will quiet the screaming of his spider-sense or the echoing voices of May, and Norman, and Jameson, and Strange; no amount of swinging through the city, of twisting away a second too late from punches he’d seen coming five miles away, of guiding victims out of those dark alleys, of climbing to the highest, highest, highest point around and swaying—

(He wonders if he’d twist away too late from those punches if they were bullets or knives, headed for somewhere most definitely vital, his lungs, his heart, his neck, again and again and again. If he’d still sway up there, so high, so high, if the building were crumbling, if his strength were failing.)

(His strength is failing.)

The people she’s helped, he’d told Happy. They’ll keep it going.

Keep it going. Keep it going. He has to keep it go—

(He doesn’t want to keep— going— he— please—!)

So, you see. He goes, and goes, and goes to that stupid cafe that he knows even MJ herself hates, and orders coffee after coffee that he can’t afford, just for a few minutes, seconds, moments of reprieve. Because when he’s in there, when he’s with her, with them, it's quiet, quiet, or— at least— quieter. He feels—

He feels like himself. Before, it all. The— spell and the fighting and the screaming. Before. All of a sudden— no crushing, devastating loneliness, no self-hatred so deep and burning he thinks he’ll be falling forever, no thoughts of bullets and blood and swaying and pain, so much constant, unrelenting pain. Hell, even the hunger pains seem to lessen, slightly, but that one might just be placebo. Or the coffee. He thinks he’s getting used to them, anyway. 

So he goes, for those brief moments. The bell above the door rings. The warm air envelopes him. MJ looks up from wherever she is behind the counter. She smiles.

The world goes quiet.

~~~

(Fault lines

tremble underneath my glass house

but I put it out of 

my mind

long enough to call it

courage)

~~~

February 5th, 2025.

(Almost) three months after the— ?

So, Peter Parker is Just Some (Weird) Guy. Some guy that maybe has somehow acquired Ned’s jacket, but MJ hasn’t seen him wear it since. 

MJ is fine with this. One of her weirder regulars. That’s what it is. 

But then—

Well. 

“Dude,” she says, phone screen tilted to the ceiling, speaker to her mouth as she sits on the edge of her bed, feet perched uncomfortably on part of the frame under her. “I had a really weird dream.”

“Yeah?” Ned says, voice a little muffled as he moves to somewhere, sounding distracted. Still, he asks, “like, how weird?”

And this is where she has to pause. ‘Cause….

It’s not. That weird. It’s just. 

Shit. Okay. 

First of all, this dream was like… a week ago. It was one of those dreams where when she woke up, she instantly forgot it, and then, days later, the whole thing randomly hit her in the middle of her trying to eat lunch, and she almost choked on her noodles.

And the dream itself… is a normal dream, as far as dreams go. It was just— Midtown, mainly— she thinks there might’ve been a part where she was at Ned’s house but it looked way different, but that’s not the part that matters— it was just a normal at-school dream. She had classes but didn’t really do anything in them, weird shit happened. Normal, as dreams go. 

But the guy— Peter— was there.

Just… there. Part of the dream. And it was so normal, like she’d been expecting him to be there, like he’s always there, like he’s supposed to be there.

He’s not. The guy doesn’t even go to Midtown. She’s never seen him before in her life, until he started frequenting the shop she works at.

And yeah, sure, dreams are like that sometimes, but this felt… different.

It almost— almost— makes her feel like she’s missing something.

“It was just weird, Ned,” she sighs, lifting a hand to rub at her forehead. “I… that guy, that regular from the shop, was in it. I guess that’s what’s weird about it. Uh— the one with— that you thought had your jacket.”

“Oh,” Ned says, and promptly goes quiet.

MJ switches the phone in her hands, so that she’s holding it normally, and frowns at the screen. “Oh?” She prompts. “Ned, you still there?”

“Uh— yeah, just. Was thinking…” comes his response, trailing off, and MJ presses the bottom of the phone against her mouth, waiting.

Then he says, quietly, like he’s admitting something he really doesn’t want to admit, “I think he’s weird too.”

MJ blanks. Her brain reboots. “Wh—”

“It’s just—” Ned continues. “MJ, I don’t know, but… okay. You remember when you told me, uh, to go talk to him about my jacket?”

MJ blinks at the screen. What does that have to do with anything? That was all a month ago. Ned hadn’t mentioned it since. She only brought it up just now so that he’d have a reference as to who she’s talking about.

Still, she says, cautiously, “yeah?”

“Well— it felt— I don’t know.” Ned heaves a sigh. “Normal.”

MJ stills. “...perfectly normal?” She asks.

Ned is quiet, before “Yeah,” he says, still quiet, still reluctant to admit it. “And you know— I’m not just gonna— I’ve got social anxiety MJ, I can’t always just go up to a stranger and demand if they stole my jacket, but there I felt like I… could. I don’t know. Like he wasn’t even a stranger.” He sighs again. “I guess.”

“It’s hard to explain,” MJ agrees, and flops backwards from where she’s sitting onto the bed, holding the phone above her face and squinting at it. It’s the middle of Sunday, but her eyes feel so tired for some reason. “Guess it’s nice to know I’m not completely insane.”

She hears Ned laugh on the other end. Then, “MJ, just because I agree with you doesn’t mean we’re not both insane,” and then they’re both laughing, MJ rolling onto her side on the bed.

“Yeah. Well.” She says after a bit. “What are you doing today? I don’t have any plans—”

“We have a Bio test tomorrow—” Ned reminds her.

“Like I said, I don’t have any plans,” she says, and she swears she can hear him roll his eyes on the other end of the line.

“Fine, fine, yeah, you should come over. I’ll be studying for Bio, maybe it’ll rub off on you,” he relents. Then, under his breath, “not that you need to study, you’re such a freak in that class—”

“I’m just a good guesser,” she promises, grinning. “I’ll be there in twenty. Hey, I can help you study!”

Ned groans, and she lets herself laugh again, and then she presses end call and rolls bodily off the bed. She sits on the floor a bit, chewing on her lip, thinking about—

The corner of a piece of paper catches her eye, sticking out from under her bookshelf on the other side of the room, only visible from where she’s sitting. She frowns, and gets up, crossing the room.

It’s a drawing of Spider-Man, she realizes as she pulls it out. Her drawing, she can tell, even though she can’t remember doing it. He’s sitting on top of a thick stone baluster that looks a lot like the one that’s on Midtown’s roof, and, actually— it is that one, it’s definitely Midtown, the roof. He’s leaning forward and laughing, MJ can tell from the way she drew the shoulders.

He’s also maskless, and that gives her pause. This must be from her sophomore-junior year phase of trying to figure out Spider-Man’s identity, then. She can’t remember why she dropped it. 

The drawing is unfinished, the pencil marks stopping around his neck. No matter how hard she squints down at it, she can’t make anything out, the lines shaping his face fading to nothing, again and again, unfinished and faceless.

~~~

(What was it like to feel in love?

What was it like to feel in love?)

~~~

Peter dreams of fire and smoke burning his eyes and his skin and his lungs, of the NYPD’s bullets burying their way into his skin and bones, of dead, bloody faces, and of laughing, laughing, laughing— loud and loud and never ending, of poor Peter, of great responsibility, of do you understand what you’re asking of me, of too weak to send me home to die, of— of—

“No—” he gasps out, cries out, and rolls off his bed, fumbling for the bucket he keeps by it, and empties his stomach, the bile burning, burning, burning as it tears its way up his throat, the stench immediately assaulting him, making his eyes sting and burn, burn like they did from the smoke, like they did when May—

He vomits again, and then slumps by the bucket, half his body held up by the bed next to him, shaking and shaking and shaking, a wretched, wounded whimper crawling its way out into the night, and he raises shaking hands up to his ears and presses, and—

~~~

February 15th, 2025

Three months after the spell.

He’s on top of a—really tall building, and it’s dark all around, not just the night sky but everything, everything, everywhere, dark and heavy, in his chest and his bones and his head. And he’s on top of a really tall building, and he’s closed his eyes and he’s swaying, swaying, swaying, barely letting his feet grip the edge.

He thinks— yeah, he thinks it’s at this point, right here, that he’s leaned forward enough that if he stops sticking he’ll—

He lets out a sob, harsh and dry beneath his mask, and he sways and sways and sways—

Blocks and blocks away, there’s a shriek, a scream, a cry.

He lets go. Tumbles forwards off the building, tall, so tall, and gives himself one, two, two and a half seconds to pretend— just pretend, that he’s allowed to just—

(they’ll keep it going, keep it going, keep it going—)

(just stop—)

It’s dead, dead autopilot when he shoots a web out, knowing before he even raises his arm to do it where it’ll land, which way it’ll pull him, and then—

He banishes his thoughts and keeps going.

(The people she helped—

they’ll keep it going—)

~~~

(Is there blood in me, am I still alive?

Is there blood in me, am I still alive?)

~~~

September 26th, 2024.

One week before the spell.

She’s laughing as they turn the corner onto an empty street, laughing hard, grabbing onto Peter’s arm because she can’t see where she’s going, that’s how hard she’s laughing. 

It wasn’t even that funny, whatever it was that made her laugh so hard— something Peter said, she thinks— but she’s just so stupidly happy right now, and it’s so easy to laugh, and she’s been going for a while now, she thinks, but every time she tries to stop she dissolves into giggles again, and it’s only goddamn worse when Peter joins her, the enabler.

But she loves him so much. God, she’s dizzy with it sometimes, and she had no idea— no idea she could be so happy, just, what— ‘cause of a person? But here she is, and god, she loves him so much, and—

This is, she’s sure, she’s so sure— this is how it’s supposed to be. She’s supposed to be— here, now. Gripping onto Peter’s arm like her life depends on it, even though currently, it doesn’t, and stumbling along the sidewalk like she’s drunk, and so, so, so, so happy.

This is what’s right.

And— god, Past MJ— MJ from just a few months ago, even, maybe, MJ from before the Blip, if she knew she’d be having thoughts as sappy as this she would– would, just. Now MJ doesn’t know, but it would be something stupid, some stupid comment, or she’d pretend to gag behind her hand, or just, just—

But Now MJ couldn’t give less of a shit about Past MJ— because right now she’s laughing and laughing and so fucking happy, good god she had no idea humans could even feel this much. 

And then—

Peter throws an arm out in front of her, sharp and fast, faster than should be possible, and when she inevitably doesn’t have enough time to stop before walking into it—

It’s like walking into a metal bar, that’s how ungodly rigid and tense it is— just like that, all the shaking laughter sucked right away, right out of it and Peter.

She stumbles back, breath escaping her in a rush, abruptly cutting off her own laughter, and she feels her lips turn down in a frown, questioning eyes turning to Peter, who’s a little in front of her now that she’s taken a few steps back, and, yep—

He’s not laughing anymore— you couldn’t even tell he was, just, what, seconds ago. He’s rigid, entire body so tense, looking forward, forward, somewhere, but she can’t follow his gaze. His lips are pressed tightly together, brow lowered just the tiniest bit in a barely there frown. 

And he’s so still— she’s never seen him so still before— so still she can’t help but wonder how he’s even breathing.

They’re about halfway down this street, and it’s getting dark around them— dark enough that she can’t fully make out the end of the street, but not dark enough for the street lights to come on. 

Regardless, she can’t see what it is that’s caught her boyfriend’s attention so suddenly. There’s no one around— no one in sight even; they went this way on purpose, because it’s normally calmer and quieter than other routes they could take, and Peter prefers it that way. 

He’s still staring, forward and nowhere, and she reaches out to tug him backwards to her, grabs onto his arm, but it doesn’t budge when she pulls, and— right, yeah, okay, she should’ve expected that.

Her touch does seem to register somewhere in Peter’s hyper focused mind though, because he finally looks at her, thrumming with— she almost wants to say anxiety, and then she remembers Peter explaining his sixth sense to her once, and remembers the way he was on the bridge in London when she’d come to find him, right— right after the fight and the drones, the closest she’s ever really come to seeing him as Spider-Man. “It’s like a constant state of anxiety,” he’d said, head tucked under her arm as they lay on Ned’s couch. “Where I can’t not focus on anything, and pretty much everything my senses are telling me is registering. But when it’s sensed something— it zones in on it, and so do all my other senses, and it’s just— like that, even if I’m not sure what the hell I’ve sensed. And it just stays like that until it’s figured out what I have to do. How to react, I guess. Then it just starts screaming at me, to— to do whatever it is it thinks will save me, and I don’t think, I just do what it says, usually so that it’ll shut up, but also because, like, hey, maybe it’s right and I am about to get hit by a bus.”

“Jesus,” she’d muttered, she remembers, and then she’d hugged him closer. Then, “Is it always right?” she’d asked, and he’d considered her question for long seconds, silent.

He’d heaved a sigh into her shirt, then, and nodded into her side. “When it goes into, like, overdrive mode like that, then— yeah, it is.”

She looks at him now, pale and wound up and— not all there, when she looks at his eyes, like half his attention is turned inward or— or everywhere else, maybe, would be more accurate. “Peter,” she says, quiet but firm, and takes a step closer to him, still holding onto his outstretched arm. “What is it?”

“Uh,” he says, eyes wide and glancing down the street, down the way they were going. “I,” he says, and she follows his gaze down the empty street, still seeing nothing, “I, don’t— we should turn around,” he says, frowns, then— “yeah. Yeah. Let’s— not go down this street,” he decides, and starts to take a step back the way they came, and she’s just about to follow, but then movement catches her eye, and she turns back to look, squinting down the quickly darkening street. “Peter,” she breathes, but he’s already turned back, has already stepped in front of her before she can even make out what the hell it is that she’s noticed.

It’s— a man, she realizes after a few seconds. He’d stumbled out of the alley they’d been approaching and onto the sidewalk, and now he’s walking towards them, gait uneven, but fast. He almost looks homeless, she thinks, or at least not very well off at the moment, and— sick, if the stuttering steps and hunched, huddled form are anything to go by. 

All in all, unfortunately not too uncommon of a sight if you’re in the right (or, more accurately, wrong) part of Queens. 

But MJ doesn’t like, suddenly, that they’re alone, and that it’s getting dark, and the single-minded intent that she isn’t sure she’s imagining in those fast uneven steps.

And if this is what Peter’s sense was warning him about—

“Come on,” Peter mutters, a step behind her. His hand is gripping her elbow, light but there. “It’s fine, let’s just go.”

She nods, because, yes, she agrees with that course of action, and starts back down the way they came, Peter a half step behind her.

They don’t make it very far. 

MJ hears the steps approaching from behind them, but she forces herself to keep walking, because Peter is still walking, and she’s fully aware that this situation is dangerously close to being his area of expertise. 

It's also why, when she suddenly feels his hand on her back, she doesn’t resist when he pushes, and she lets herself stumble a few steps forward before whirling back around. 

Her breath catches when she sees why Peter pushed her forward— or, more accurately, away—

“Gimme your wallet,” the man says, voice practically a growl, and the dangerous, underlying layer of desperation in it turns MJ’s stomach, makes her chest tight with fear. He’s caught up to them, to Peter, and grabbed him by the shoulder with one hand, shoving him roughly towards the wall. His other hand is shoved into his jacket pocket. 

Peter stays against the wall, and his body seems loose and relaxed, but MJ can see the minute flinch he makes when the guy speaks. He takes a breath. 

“Please don’t,” Peter says, his voice quiet and level. “This won’t help you.”

“Give me your wallet,” the man says again, and Peter looks pained. 

“I can’t—”

“No! I need your fucking wallet!” He surges forward and grabs Peter’s shoulder again, but this time he doesn’t let go, pressing Peter against the wall, hard, and Peter grunts a little as his back impacts, MJ sees his head just barely avoid hitting the brick behind him. 

“Hey!” She shouts, and she doesn’t think as she strides forward, covering the distance between them in two big steps. Her hand lands on the man’s shoulder— his jacket is wet, and part of her mind goes ew, gross, but she doesn’t pay attention to that— she clamps on to his shoulder tighter, and goes to pull him off Peter, but then his arm comes up— and the hand that had been in his pocket is now holding a gun, shoving it at Peter, and when he growls at her to get off, putrid breath blowing down into her face over his shoulder, she scrambles away, because Peter is many things, but bulletproof is not one of them, and fuck, fuck, this was a mistake, what was she thinking, oh, shit—

“Hey,” she hears Peter say, voice calm and quiet— how the hell is he calm and quiet right now, a part of her screams, the part of her that sometimes forgets that Peter gets— jesus fucking christ, gets guns shoved in his face all the time. At his voice, her eyes snap to him. He’s still against the wall, still pressed into the brick behind him by the man, his left arm still pinning Peter’s shoulder there. His hands are raised in a calming gesture— like he’s approaching a wild animal, and he’s looking at the man, but when MJ looks at him, his eyes slip over to meet hers, calm and quiet, like everything else about him is right now, and what she sees is quiet reassurance— or something like that. Don’t do anything, she sees, It’s alright, she sees, and fuck, she wants to scream at him that it isn’t, goddamnit, because he’s got a gun shoved in his face, right in front of her, but she doesn’t do that— instead she takes another step back, not breathing, and watches as Peter turns his attention back to the man.

“I need you to think about this,” Peter says, still in that calm, quiet tone, and MJ feels like she’s about to explode. “Just take a step back, man. You’re in the middle of the street. Anyone can step onto it at any moment and they’re gonna find you threatening me with a gun, and they’re gonna call 911—”

“No— no, no,” the man interrupts him, and shoves the gun closer, “what they’re gonna find, is your, dead body, if you don’t give me your fucking wallet!” he screams, and MJ can’t help but flinch at how loud he is, voice rasping and shaking, and oh god, oh fuck— and Peter barely reacts, except to blink a little and shift his position against the wall so that one of his feet is braced against it. Fuck, fuck, fuck, MJ thinks, this is escalating, but she can’t do anything with the gun practically right up against Peter’s head.

Then, still calm, still quiet, but also slow and firm, Peter says, “You’re making a mistake,” and he looks like he’s bracing himself for something.

“Yeah?” the man says, eyes wide, voice shaking. “Well then— will she?” he asks, still so loud, and then MJ’s heart freezes in her chest when the man moves, movements uncoordinated but still fast, desperate, and she watches the gun switch from his right to his left hand, which extends, extends towards her, the barrel shaking along with his hand, about to be pointed right at her, right at her—

It never reaches her.

Peter launches himself forward, the foot that had been braced against the wall pushing off, and he throws his entire body into the man, so fast that her brain doesn’t actually process it all until they’re down on the ground in less than a second— they’re turned around completely now, too, the gun now pointed down the empty side of the alleyway, and in the next second Peter’s rolling off the man, using his momentum to sweep a leg behind him, bringing him back down to the ground from where he’d tried to lurch up. Peter’s arm shoots out and twists the man’s arm, then wrist, that’s holding the gun, and it falls to the pavement with a dull clatter. He pushes it away from them, sending it skidding further from MJ and coming to a rest at one of the alley walls. Peter’s on his feet again before MJ has even begun registering the— anything, his eyes wide and scanning over their surroundings, the alley, the gun, the man knocked out on the ground, still tensed and radiating alertness from head to toe.

The man doesn’t move. It’s suddenly so quiet around them, and MJ can’t stop staring at the limp body on the ground, crumpled onto his back, still and unmoving and—

“Fuck,” she says— or tries to say, but it comes out like a breath, and all shaky, but Peter’s eyes snap onto her like she just shouted, and he lets a breath out, moving, moving, moving towards her. “MJ,” he says. 

She stares at him, eyes wide. “What do we— we need to call an ambulance,” she says, gasps out, eyes still wide as she looks up at him from where she’d half collapsed against the wall.

“We do,” he confirms, and then reaches her, hands coming to wrap around her forearms, around her shoulders, and she uses his support to raise herself back up to her feet. He presses his phone into her hands. “MJ. MJ,” he says, and she looks at him, tearing her eyes away from where they’d strayed back out to the body on the ground, unbidden. “He’s alive,” Peter tells her, and she lets out a breath she had no idea she’d been holding. “He’s still breathing, his heart is still beating, he’s alive. All you can do for him right now is call an ambulance. Come on,” he coaxes, and she nods, looking down at Peter’s phone in her hands.

“Okay,” she says. “Okay.”

“Okay,” he echoes, and holds her for another moment, before his gaze flicks up and over her shoulder, and he starts to move away.

“Wait—” she says, and he stops immediately, glancing back at her, eyes concerned, and she blinks a little. “What do I say?” she asks, and she feels like a child, small and scared.

“We were walking home and found him like this,” Peter says, the response almost automatic, like he barely thought about it, and MJ nods again, and clutches Peter’s phone tighter. “He was almost in the street, so we moved him into the alley. He’s breathing, but we noticed blood on the side of his head, and we haven’t touched him since.”

She snaps her eyes up to him at the mention of blood, because— she didn’t— she can’t see any— but he’s already walking away from her, across the alley, and she watches, feeling numb, as he picks up the gun and unloads it, just like that, like he’s doing something as mundane as making freaking cereal, and then she makes herself look down at his phone in her shaking hands, and unlock it, and focuses on making the call. She has to jog to the end of the street to give them a location, and by the time she’s on her way back and has told them all there is to say, Peter has the man lying along the wall of the alley, well away from the road, gun nowhere to be seen.

She doesn’t ask him about it. 

He meets her halfway down the street, and she’s internally grateful that they’re not right by the guy anymore. She hands him his phone back, and he takes it, and looks down at it, and she doesn’t say anything, just stands there by him, trying to breathe.

In the silence, the streetlamps, as one, flick on, and she looks around, down at the yellow patches they make on the still empty street, the light flooding onto the pavement like paint, or maybe something else.

Peter twitches and glances up at them, then at the sky, then down at her. “MJ,” he says, breathless, and she doesn’t say anything, doesn’t know what she’s supposed to say, doesn’t think she can say anything, but then, thank god, Peter’s there, wrapping her in his arms, and she doesn’t realize she was shaking, just a little bit, until he steadies her, doesn’t realize she was breathing a little too fast, a little too shallow, until he whispers— “breathe, please, it’s okay, you’re okay, you’re alright. I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, you’re alright, MJ, just breathe,” and she breathes, and winds her own arms around him, the jacket at his back bunching under her fingers as they grip, tight, and she holds on and she breathes and breathes.

“I’m okay— I’m okay, I’m alright,” she says, then, once she can, gasps out, because— because they both need to hear it, maybe, she thinks. “Are you?” she asks, and thinks about pulling back, pulling away to look at him, and immediately grips him tighter, closing her eyes.

She feels him nod, and she hears him suck in a breath before letting it out slow, slow, and she squeezes her eyes shut tighter before forcing herself to open them, forcing her fingers to unclench, lets the back of his jacket— actually, she’s not sure it’s his, it might be Ned’s, and she almost laughs again, then, just from the sheer— randomness of that thought, because yes, Michelle, that’s what’s important right now— but she doesn’t, instead smoothing the fabric down in the back, pressing her hands against Peter when she feels them shake.

Then— “don’t be sorry,” she says against where her head is turned into his neck, resting on his shoulder– not a place she usually is, considering she’s taller than him, but it’s working with the way she’s slumped down and into him, boneless, almost, the semi-familiar post adrenaline jellyness filling what feels like her every cell. “Don’t be sorry, please don’t,” she whispers, and then she does draw back— only a little, just enough to look at his face— “you just saved my life, we both know he might’ve, might’ve fired, he wasn’t— all there” she says, voice trembling a little, and he looks at her then, eyes still wide and alert, and— they’re eyelevel this way, and she looks and looks. “Don’t apologize for saving my life,” she tells him, as firm as she can with how shaky she feels, and he blinks—

“MJ, I— he, I should’ve—” Peter says, and MJ wants to cry a little bit right now, but instead she shakes her head at him, she shakes her head and glares, and— “Thank you,” she says, breathless again, suddenly, and—

She leans her forehead against his, presses it there, because that’s where she belongs, she thinks, and then just like that, one of them moves closer, one of them tilts their head just right, and she feels his lips against hers, strong and safe and safe.

I don’t ever want to be anywhere else, she thinks, and holds him closer.

~~~

(To live without a lifeline—

I bend the definition,

of faith—

to exonerate my blind eye

until the sirens sound, I’m safe—)

~~~

March 10th, 2025.

(Exactly) four months after the spell.

Peter wakes up late, late on a Sunday morning choking on a scream, on the floor of his apartment, with a barely closed over stab wound in his stomach, and it takes him only a few minutes to remember why, remember being slow and distracted, remember having a bad day during which the green goblin’s laughter only grew louder and louder the longer he ignored it, remember going out as Spider-Man to distract himself, remember barely making it home before passing out from blood loss in the early, early hours of the morning.

He rolls over now, onto his back, and manages to sit up on his fourth try, using his bed behind him to lean against. His suit is still on, he’d just barely taken the mask off before— well. So he gingerly peels himself out of it, gasping and gritting his teeth through the pain, ignoring the multitude of bruises that are revealed one by one littering his body, and focusing instead on not disturbing the probably-hopefully-closing stab wound up by his ribs.

It’s not… too bad. It obviously didn’t hit anything too vital, Peter reasons, ‘cause he’s still alive, and it’s too low for his lungs to be in trouble, and…

He got lucky, is what it is.

Great responsibility. Keep it going.

He can’t keep it going, for her, if he’s fucking dead.

Poor Peter. (To weak to send me home to d—)

Peter bites down on his tongue, sharply, trying to shut his brain up. A normal person definitely would’ve died from this, he decides, looking down at the injury, and Peter—

On Peter, it should be well on its way to scarring by now.

Instead— instead, yeah, it’s, it’s no longer a gaping hole in his side, but it’s not—

“Shit,” Peter hisses, and struggles up to his feet, taking a few steps to brace his hand on the wall. His hand which is covered in dried blood, which is so nice, and Peter resists the urge to throw up, and maybe scream a little, and instead stumbles to the bathroom, and the sink, and braces himself against that.

He looks like shit, he thinks when he gets a glimpse of himself in the mirror— pale, and there’s blood on his face, and he needs to wash his hair, and his cheekbones are— too prominent to look entirely healthy.

Because he’s not. Entirely healthy.

He derails that train of thought, because it isn’t going to lead anywhere new, and he’d rather not have a panic attack about how little food is in his fridge. Or, worse, not have a panic attack about it, because apathy about something like this could be— slightly catastrophic, he thinks.

He glances down to the gash in his side. His healing factor has gotta be down at least 50% at this point. It’s not– it should be further along. It isn’t.

Yeah. Slightly catastrophic.

(He’s started scarring a lot easier, too. Like, this gash? Definitely will. And there’s— others, and, and, he doesn’t wanna think about this.)

His hand shakes as he turns on the faucet, and then he looks down at all the blood on the rest of his body, sighs, and shuts it off. He fumbles for the first aid kit he keeps next to the sink (on the ground, so he can reach it if he can’t stand, because that’s happened and was quite inconvenient) and then switches on the shower behind him.

He ignores the prominence of his ribs and how badly the freezing water makes him shake as he takes care of the gash, and then as he washes blood off his chest and hands and stomach. 

Because Peter’s doing fine.

He’s got a job. (At the Bugle, ‘cause Jameson pays in cash and doesn’t ask questions, doesn’t even seem to care who Peter is, as long as he’s happy with what photos Peter brings him.) He helps people as Spider-Man. He’s started studying for the GED, which means he’s realized that he doesn’t really need to study for it that much. He’ll do fine. 

And he’s eating… slightly more. Now that he’s got at least some sort of an income.

Not nearly enough though, apparently.

(Not even close. Ned was good about making him eat, got really good at clocking instantly when Peter would get dizzy after forgetting a meal, started carrying snacks for the both of them. His Lola was more than happy to bake larger portions of treats, too.

It had been a tremendous help, because neither he nor May had so much time to cook, and their income— Peter never asked, but Ned knew. And it had been enough, especially once Tony—)

Now, though. 

Now it’s nowhere near enough. 

Which is why he’s been scarring, and healing slower, and why it takes effort to breathe sometimes, and why there’s a constant, relentless, empty pit in his stomach. Why the world tilts around him more often than not. Why he feels so weak. 

And also, probably, why MJ refused his tip the other day. 

He’d tipped her in twenties, back in January, and then tens, when his money had started dwindling. 

And he’d just been about to go back to twenties, because really, he’s fine, and then—

She’d put her hand over the top of the jar, and she’d looked at him with that look that said she couldn’t believe how stupid he was being, and she didn’t relent until he’d put the twenty back in his pocket. 

So that’s a thing, now, he guesses. People are noticing. But it’s not like he’s skeletal, and really, it doesn’t matter if people notice, because he doesn’t have— people. 

So. He’s fine. 

And he’s cleaning up the blood he got on the sink, and the wall, and all over the floor, and he’s fine, and—

He realizes he’s got blood on Ned's jacket, and then he’s less fine. 

But only slightly.

He’s gotten adept at getting blood out of fabric, way back years ago to stop May from figuring anything out about his new extracurricular, so it’s fine, it’s fine. He must’ve taken it off yesterday before he'd passed out, ‘cause it’s lying in a heap by the door, stained at the front. 

(He’s been wearing it, as Spider-Man. And a hat, warm and knitted, that may or may not have been May’s favorite. Because it’s so cold out there, and he doesn’t have a suit with a heater in it anymore, and it would take time he doesn’t have to build one on his own, so for now he bundles up. Because he’s already slow from lack of food and sleep, add cold into the mix, and… yeah. No.)

(Keep it going.)

He drops Ned’s jacket on top of his suit in the bathroom sink, and— it’s almost twelve, which means MJ’s working, and Ned might be there too, and he needs, he needs them, so he grabs a hoodie off his bed, his Peter Parker hat (he’s careful to keep what he wears as Spider-Man and Peter Parker separate, which kills two birds with one stone, ‘cause it means he doesn’t wear Ned’s jacket in close proximity to Ned anyways, then) and out the door he goes, stomach throbbing and spider sense relentlessly buzzing, buzzing, screaming. 

~~~

“MIT?” MJ asks as she hands Peter Parker his coffee. 

“What?” He asks, blinking at her. He looks tired— or, more tired than usual, and his usual borders on exhausted. He’s hunched over towards one side, like he’s favoring it. His hair looks a little damp, at least the bit that’s visible from under his beanie, and that can’t have been fun outside— it’s not freezing anymore, per se, but most people would double back home if they forgot their jacket, especially with today’s stiff breeze.

He’s still staring at her blankly, so she gestures to his hoodie, boldly proclaiming MIT in white. It looks older, not the same design her’s and Ned’s are.

“Oh—” he says, and looks down at himself like he had no idea what he was wearing. He gets a weird look on his face, for just a second, before it’s gone, and he looks back up at her. “Uh, no, I’m not going. It was Ton— my dad’s,” he says, and then he flinches a little, almost imperceptibly, from the words.

Now that MJ looks, the hoodie is big on him. Then again, most of the clothes he wears are. “Cool,” MJ says, dipping her head, and she ignores the quick flash of disappointment she feels, because honestly, what the fuck? She chalks it down to the way pretty much everything is weird nowadays, ‘cause in less than six months she’ll be gone, on her own (albeit with Ned, of course), and every March tenth is the last March tenth that she lives in her apartment with her father, and, and, and, it’s all just weird.

So she’ll miss Peter Parker a little. It’s stupid. He most definitely won’t miss her— she just makes coffee for him a few times a week.

“Well, uh— thanks,” Peter says as he lifts the coffee off the counter between them, and she forces a smile onto her face.

“Yeah,” she says, her fingers tapping on the side of the register absently, “enjoy your coffee.”

He lifts it towards himself, like he’s trying to absorb the warmth into all his body and not just his hands, and then tips five dollars, movements quick, like he’s afraid she’ll stop him again, and she has half a mind to, but five is better than ten; she can let herself pretend that he’ll put the five remaining towards some actual food, maybe, or clothes that actually fit. With a last glance at her, he moves away towards his usual spot in the corner booth, by the window, and he is moving a little weird, MJ thinks, almost limping, but not quite.

She blinks. Looks away, because watching him walk is weird. Christ, Michelle, get it together.

She glances up to make sure she didn’t miss the bell and there aren’t any impatient customers waiting for her to pull herself out of her thoughts, and when she finds, to her immense relief, that there aren't, she turns and goes over to Ned.

He’s looking over at Peter Parker, for some reason, frowning.

MJ can relate.

~~~

(Is there blood in me, am I still alive?

Is there—

—

—

What was it like to feel in love?)

~~~

March 21st, 2025.

Four months after the— ?

“That’s my jacket,” Ned says, and he’s frowning up at the sky.

Instead of deciding that her friend has lost his mind, she follows his gaze up, up, up, and oh.

Spider-Man swings above them, high, high up.

MJ squints against the bright-ass sky, cloud covered but there’s still what seems like ungodly amounts of sunlight lighting up the clouds a blazing white, but all she can really make out is his silhouette, a dark shape swinging over them. 

And yeah, there’s something attached to him, flapping behind him as he goes, but why the hell would it be Ned’s jacket? What, first Peter Parker picks it up, and now Spider-Man? Really. 

MJ tells him as much. 

Ned shakes his head at her words. “It most definitely is,” he says, like she hadn’t even spoken, and she honestly can’t tell if he’s joking or not.

He’s probably joking.

Regardless, she stands and waits as Ned squints after Spider-Man, staring the way he’d gone for long seconds after the hero in question has disappeared. 

It reminds her of the way he’d stared at Peter Parker the other day, and she presses her teeth together, fighting the urge to frown. 

~~~

April 30th, 2025.

Five months after the— ?

MJ has a dream about them– all three of them— not getting into MIT.

She wakes up from it when it’s still dark, early, early in the morning, and she remembers it right away this time. They were in Peter Pan’s, in the dream. She was working, but she’d taken a pause to open her letter along with—

Ned, and Peter Parker.

And they’d all—

“In light of recent controversy, we are unable to consider your application at this time,” Ned had read aloud, and they’d all known why, they’d all known—

(What?)

She can’t remember.

She wasn’t sad about it, though, in the dream. She remembers she’d said— “Expect disappointment, and you’ll never get disappointed,” and she’d looked at Peter Parker.

She doesn’t say that anymore. Hasn’t said it since—

Since Peter Parker ordered a coffee, she thinks. In December.

And then she’d said something else, something along the lines of— she can’t really remember. “You know what? I wouldn’t change a thing I did,” she thinks it was.

She can’t remember—

I wouldn’t change a thing I did.

There was more to the dream, but the rest of it is lost to her by now, and she’s left with just that snippet, her and Ned and Peter Parker, rejected from MIT due to recent controversy.

“Expect disappointment,” she breathes, staring up at the shadowed ceiling, words lost in the darkness of the night.

~~~

(I dig—

till my shovel tells a secret.

Swear to the earth that I will keep it,

brush off the dirt,

and let my change of heart occur.)

~~~

May 13th, 2025.

Six months after the spell.

Sometimes, Peter just… listens.

Preferably not when the couple three floors down is having sex. But.

When he can’t drag himself out of bed because his bones are too heavy, or he has zero (read: absolutely none, it feels like it’s somehow dipping into the negative, and it’s painful and terrifying) energy, or when there’s a weight on his chest that is insurmountably heavy, heavier than the two floors of parking garage Toomes had dropped on him. He’s not thinking about that.

He listens.

In these moments, when he’s not overwhelmed by it all and not trying to block it out, when he just lets it… come, there’s layers. Three, usually, but it can depend on how he sorts through it.

There’s the light breathing and steady heartbeats of the other occupants in the building. The low hum of various kitchen appliances, and other electronics. Footsteps, creaking furniture, running water, plumbing. TV’s. Conversations that he does his best not to invade on. The landlord doesn’t allow animals, but there's a cat in one of the apartments on the top floor, and some sort of reptile on the floor below him.

Then there’s the whistle of wind outside, down the street and against the building’s walls. The sizzling of rain or light crackling of snow, if Mother Nature is endowing the city with either of those. Leaves and trash scraping their way down the street and into alleys. Footsteps, running, walking, pounding the pavement, both animal and human; the jangle of keys and the clicking of unlocking cars, the slam of their doors and more voices, always, always voices.

And then there’s the city. Cars driving and motors running. Trucks, buses, and the subway. Music from phones, cars, shops and restaurants. Dogs barking and pigeons cooing and seagulls calling. There’s a construction project going on a few blocks away that Peter’s been steadily tracking the progress of from his bed. There’s babies crying and kids laughing, and so many voices.

And there’s, of course, the sirens.

This is always the last thing he hears. This is always what his listening ends on. Sirens, or screaming, or a cry for help, and he finds some last shred of energy, forces the crushing weight off his chest like he lifted that parking garage, slips out of his bed and then out of his window.

Because he has to keep it going. He has to keep it going, for MJ and Ned, for Tony, for May. Their sacrifices meant something, had to have meant something, so he keeps going and going and going.

You have a gift.

You have power.

And with great power, there must also come great—

(It’s just me and you, May. Just me and you, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry, please—)

Responsibility. 

He puts on his suit and he keeps it going.

~~~

May 22nd, 2025.

(Almost) seven months after the spell.

He’s mid-swing when he sees it.

He hadn’t really thought about it since the– Before. Had actively tried not to think about it, even when he’d maybe kind of needed it, those first few cold, cold weeks. He’d been on the other side of town from most of the establishments, anyways, so it wasn’t too hard, and once he’d gotten an apartment, also a bit away from any of the locations, he’d, maybe subconsciously, shut it out of his mind.

F.E.A.S.T. He’d forgotten there was one on this street. 

The people, at a lot of the locations, had known him. Not just after he’d been revealed as Spider-Man, but before. When he’d tag along with May, oftentimes to help out, sometimes to just do his homework in a corner.

It had been nice. Another way to spend time with her. Another way for them both to help people. It had always been so warm inside, and the people so kind. 

But now it punches the air out of him, all at once. He fumbles on his next swing, crashes into the brick side of a building. He sticks on, breaths suddenly harsh and ragged, the cold air tearing down his throat, and, shaking, climbs up onto the roof. He looks over the edge and there it is, directly across from him now.

The F.E.A.S.T. location. Tiny and wedged between a laundromat and some nondescript firm, but the lights inside are on, and he can see people moving around through the half-covered windows.

He bites his tongue, hard. The last time he was at F.E.A.S.T.— 

He breaks his thoughts off right there, the brick rooftop edge he’d been gripping crumbling in his clenched fists. He sighs through his teeth, and with great effort unclenches his shaking hands, letting the bits of brick and concrete fall to the rooftop in front of him.

He can only keep his thoughts away for so long. The last time he was at F.E.A.S.T., he thinks, unbidden, he was there, sitting next to May, too close and dangerous and laughing, poor Peter, poor Peter, poor Peter, and she’d told Peter to help him, to do the right thing—

Peter stands abruptly and turns away, the street and rooftop edge at his back, breathing hard, struggling to fill his lungs completely. His legs feel weak and shaky, and he thinks he sways in place a little. But that’s normal, these days. 

That hadn’t been at this location. He has been to this location, but that had happened at— a different one. It’s okay. And he’s gone, though his laugh still rings in Peter’s head every single day, and she’s gone—

With a strangled yell, Peter throws himself backwards off the rooftop, eyes clenched shut, and he keeps them shut as he swings further down and around the block, breaths still coming too hard and too fast, ears ringing with his laugh, poor Peter, poor Peter, poor Peter, too weak to send me home to die, too weak, too weak, too weak—

The people she’s helped. They’ll keep it going.

They’ll keep it going.

They’ll….

~~~

May 25th, 2025.

(Almost) seven months after the spell.

He comes back to the F.E.A.S.T. location.

It’s just a few days later. His skin is buzzing and his teeth are clenched tight together and he’s standing in front of the door, hands down at his sides curled tight into fists. He’s slept worse than usual, the past four nights in a row, and that’s really saying something, and his vision blurs badly if he moves too fast, and so he can’t go out as Spider-Man, he knows, not like this.

But he itches, always, with the need to do something, and—

F.E.A.S.T. hasn’t left his mind since he saw it, and with it memories of May, too many and too often, too painful, which is definitely what’s contributed to his even poorer quality of sleep, but.

Ignoring it, like he’s been trying, isn’t working.

So he swallows down the dryness in his throat, and, before another gust of wind—  though it’s not cold anymore, at least not for the average person, it’s May— can freeze him down to the bone, he pulls the door open and steps inside.

And oh, inside is— warm. It always was; they made it a point to keep it warm in the winter, he knew. But it’s warm now, too, and he stands still for a few moments, adjusting, letting the soft, semi-familiar sounds of the building surround him as the door behind him shuts, a barrier from all the noise of the street. 

Not that much of a barrier, of course, not for him, but still. 

He glances around, lets the motion around him filter in. It looks understaffed. Less busy than it was when he saw it a few days ago, but there’s still both volunteers and those in need inside. Only one person he vaguely recognizes, he thinks, and he blows out a small breath of relief at that. Maybe this won’t be as hard as he’d thought. He could do this. Yeah. 

Yeah. 

“Hi. Can I help you with anything?”

He’s startled out of his thoughts by a voice coming from right in front of him. ‘Cause he’s just been standing in front of the door, for a few seconds longer than whats natural probably. Right. 

The woman in front of him is looking at him expectantly, and if the slightly amused tilt to her mouth is anything to go by he wasn’t very successful in hiding his startled jump. He shakes his head slightly. 

“Uh, no,” he starts. “I—”

He’s interrupted by a shriek, and the quick repeated slap of running feet, and then a tiny little body slams into the woman’s legs and clamps on. The woman cracks a smile, and looks down at the little girl, who is blinking up at Peter. 

“Maria,” she sighs, but Peter can hear the note of adoration in her tone. “I’m helping somebody, can’t you see? Did you finish your task?”

Maria unlatches herself, frowns, and nods up at the woman, who smiles. “Good,” she says, extending a hand down and smoothing down the girl’s hair. “Then go wait for me. Alright?” 

With another determined nod, the girl turns and shoots off back across the room, disappearing down a hallway. The woman turns back to Peter, drawing a stray hair back from her face. 

“Sorry about her,” she says with a slight smile. “She is an enthusiastic one.”

Peter swallows. “Yeah,” he agrees, and hopes she can’t hear in his voice how painfully dry his throat is. He blinks, realizing he had been smiling, and tries his best not to let it drop. 

“So,” she starts again, voice warm and kind. “What did you need?”

“Oh, right, um— no,” he says. “I actually wanted to help out.” At his words, her face lights up with a brilliant smile, one that reminds him so much of May he swears he can feel his heart wrench in his chest. She’s not May. May is gone. This woman doesn’t know him. This woman didn’t know him. 

He can do this. 

She starts off on a spiel, one he’s kind of heard before, but never really been on this side of, and leads him through the building. Her daughter comes running up beside her again at some point, and Peter is introduced to little Maria. She reminds him so much of Morgan it hurts, and he grits his teeth and keeps himself rooted to the floor, because it hurts, but he will not run. He has a job to do. He has to keep it going. 

So he keeps it going.

It hurts, but he keeps it going, through the ache and the pain. He slowly meets the rest of the crew, most of them people he hadn’t known Before. They work out a schedule, and at some point, Maria runs up to him with a piece of paper flapping in her hand, the corner of it crumpled from how hard she’s clutching it. 

“I color this for you!” She declares, and shoves it towards him. Peter blinks down at it. Its a crayon drawing. There’s gray and blue scribbled in the background. A sun in the corner. And a red and blue figure in the center. 

“It’s Spider-Man,” she tells him, tiny finger pointing to the page. “Mama says he’s a hero, and that we all must be heroes like him! That’s why we help out. And you’re a hero now, too!”

There’s a deep chuckle from beside him. “It’s our little initiation ritual,” comes the gruff voice of the volunteer he’d been talking to. Max, Peter thinks. Peter looks up at him. The man is smiling, big and warm. “Welcome to the team, kid,” he tells Peter, and claps him on the shoulder just like Tony used to do. 

And it hurts. 

But his hands are clutched around Maria’s drawing. Morgan had made him a similar one once, he remembers with sudden clarity. He hadn’t had the chance to grab it from May’s apartment. It’s long gone, now. 

“Thank you,” he tells Maria, and if his voice cracks and breaks a little, neither the little girl nor Max mention it. Instead, Maria grins at him, wide and beaming, and he can’t help when the corners of his own mouth turn up. She says something else that Peter doesn’t really hear, but Max beside him lets out a loud booming laugh. 

So Peter keeps it going. 

For May, for himself, for everyone who needs it.

He hangs Maria’s drawing up on his fridge with one of MJ’s magnets that had come with him in a pocket of her zip up. He forces himself to look at it. Lets his eyes tear up. Lets himself grimace, and tries to turn it to a smile. 

And he keeps it going.

~~~

June 18th, 2025.

Seven months after the— ?

“So— I googled him,” Ned says through a mouthful of ramen.

“That’s wonderful,” MJ tells him, not pausing in her typing.

She sees Ned roll his eyes over the top of her open laptop, and he shifts, his metal chair scraping against the cement as it moves. It’s the third time he’s done so in the past fifteen minutes, trying to escape the sun baking down on them, and she sighs through her nose. “You know, if you want to be out of the sun without having to move every two minutes, you can just sit on this side,” she gestures to the chair next to her, sitting fully in the shade created by the table umbrella of the outdoor cafe they’re at. It turns the light filtering through it red, and that coupled with the shade means she can, for once, actually see the screen of her laptop while outside.

She’s got no idea how Ned’s managing, half in the sun on the other side of the table.

“But all my stuff’s already over here,” he whines, and she shrugs at him.

“Well, I tried. If you get heatstroke, or if your computer shuts down again ‘cause it’s in the sun” —Ned shifts his laptop further into the shade— “don’t blame me.” She takes a bite of her chicken. “Who did you google?”

“Huh? Oh—” Ned says, thrown for a second by the abrupt change in subject, but he’s known her long enough that he recovers from it fairly quick. “Uh, Peter Parker. The guy who stole my jacket.”

MJ swallows her mouthful. “Yeah, I know who Peter Parker is, he’s my customer, you don’t have to—”

“Okay, weirdo—”

“Shut up.” She kicks out under the table, and her foot successfully connects with Ned’s shin. “And I’m not the one who decided to stalk him—”

“Googling someone is not stalking!”

“Sure,” she agrees, and slurps her drink.

“You’re the worst,” Ned tells her. “But, actually, that kinda brings me to my point. Or, to what I found, I guess. Or— to what I didn’t find—”

“Ned,” MJ says.

“Right, right, sorry. Okay. This guy basically doesn’t exist, online at least.”

MJ sets her drink down, and frowns at Ned.

“Yeah, that gets your attention. Finally,” Ned complains.

She ignores it. “When did you google him?” She asks, leaning forward a little.

“Uh.” Ned stops. “Like, ten minutes ago.”

“There can’t be nothing,” MJ says. “Show me.”

“But there really is nothing.” He slides his computer across the table, and MJ pulls it to herself. She’s met with a shit ton of search results, most of them having already been visited by Ned. “MJ, I got to like page ten of the google search. Nothing that popped up matched up to him, no socials, no awards or teams or schools or whatever. The only thing I found was—” and now he stands up to round the table, sitting down in the chair next to her, the one she’d offered him earlier. He unceremoniously shoves her hand off the touchpad to switch tabs, “—this.”

MJ blinks at the screen. “The Daily Bugle?” she asks, even though that’s quite obviously what’s up on the screen.

“No, it’s the New York Times,” Ned says, and then ducks on reflex as she swats at his head. “Yeah. But look.”

She looks. It’s opened to a generic Daily Bugle Spider-Man article, and Ned points to the top of the screen, under the— admittedly kinda good— photo of Spider-Man swinging down a random street.

Her eyes follow his finger, and she feels them widen.

“Photos taken by Peter Parker,” Ned reads aloud unnecessarily, and MJ nods absently.

“That doesn’t—” she starts.

“I know— I know what you’re gonna say,” Ned cuts her off, “there’s probably other Peter Parkers in the world. But—” he turns the computer towards him, scrolls to the bottom of the page, follows a link too quick for MJ to see at the angle she’s at, and then scrolls halfway down that page too. He turns the screen back to MJ.

“That’s definitely him,” Ned says, “and that’s the staff page.”

“He…” MJ trails off. Because that’s— yeah. That’s, that’s Peter Parker. Her Peter Parker. 

“How is that the only thing you could find?” She says, instead of the multitude of other thoughts bubbling in the back of her mind. 

“Well, it’s not the only thing,” Ned says, and swipes to an entirely new window where there’s— at least ten tabs, and he motions for her to go through them. She does, and it’s all— pictures. Photos of Spider-Man. Pretty decent, too. 

“There’s fifteen articles that his photos are in,” Ned continues as she clicks through them. “The first one I could find dates back to February.” He shrugs. “And past that, that’s pretty much it.”

“That’s… how?” she asks. She gets to the last tab, and sure enough, the article there is from February. She looks up at Ned. “How can that literally be the only thing?

Ned shrugs, pulling the computer back to face him. “Maybe he’s a shut-in,” he offers, but MJ can tell it’s half hearted. 

“Mhm,” she says, reaching across the table to grab Ned’s food out of the sun. 

“I don’t know,” Ned says. “I only googled him to see if he's a convicted felon or something. Then I could get my jacket back.” 

MJ barks out a laugh. “Right,” she says. 

“What? I want it back!” Ned protests. 

“And there’s other ways,” she says, still laughing.

“Yeah, yeah,” Ned says. He sighs, his hand picking at a sticker on the table, old and dirty. MJ reaches over to bat it away, because that’s disgusting. “I didn’t google him to see if he’s a felon,” Ned admits, and she was expecting it, so MJ just nods, waiting for Ned to continue.

He does. “I just wanted to know— something. Anything. I don’t know, MJ,” he says, and turns his eyes, wide and desperate, onto her.

She shrugs. “Hey,” she says through her chicken, “I know as much as you, here.”

“Yeah,” Ned says, and goes back to picking at the sticker again.

MJ sighs, pulling Ned’s food the rest of the way across the table so that it’s in front of him. “I get it,” she says. “It’s weird.”

‘Cause— neither of them have any reason to think about this guy as much as they are. Even if— even if he’s got Ned’s jacket.

She can’t seem to stop.

And apparently neither can Ned.

She shifts in her seat, trying to turn her attention back to whatever she’d been doing on her own laptop. She can’t even remember anymore. She can’t remember—

(I wouldn’t change a thing I did.)

“He’s probably just a shut-in,” she agrees, and forces herself back to her work.

~~~

June 29th, 2025.

Seven months after the spell.

“Do you support the Bugle, Peter Parker?” MJ asks him as she puts in his order. 

“Wh-what?” Peter asks. He blinks. He’s slow, today. Tired. Cold, too, even under the rays of bright summer sun beating down on him through the glass windows. It’s the malnourishment, he knows. He’s so tired. 

“The Daily Bugle,” MJ repeats, or clarifies, Peter isn’t sure, but it’s helpful either way. 

The Bugle. Does he support it? Is that what she asked? He… he works there. Photos. Paid in cash. All he’d had to do to land that job was walk in and slap a stack of photos on JJJ’s desk, no ID, no recommenders or references, nothing past that required. The dude’s weird, but Peter’s not complaining. “Uh,” he says, a weird taste in his mouth, and it makes the words feel large and awkward, or maybe it’s the other way around. “No,” he manages. 

He doesn’t know why she’s asking. 

He doesn’t…

(He couldn’t save someone yesterday. 

It happens. Has happened. But, but, more often now that he’s cold and slow and slipping. He curses himself for it every day, but he can’t—)

“Okay,” MJ says, apparently believing him. Well. It’s not like he’s lying. “Me neither,” she tells him. “Mostly his views on Spider-Man, but he’s also just an ass.” She shrugs. 

Peter listens to MJ’s voice. He listens to her voice and it helps a little to wipe away the man’s eyes, from yesterday, dead and unseeing, drowns out the sound of the gunshot and the spilling blood and his faltering, failing heartbeat that Peter can still hear. 

(Poor Peter. 

To weak to send me— too weak to— too weak—

Keep it going.)

From what the small part of Peter that is aware of what’s going on around him can register, MJ doesn’t seem too put out by his lack of an answer. She’s finishing up his coffee, and he wants her to go slower, he doesn’t want her to give it to him, he wants to stand here in her warmth and quiet forever. 

“Your coffee,” she says, setting it down on the counter between them. Peter can feel the vibrations of it in his bones. 

He opens his mouth. He says—

He almost says. 

He’s cold. He’s slow. He’s falling and breaking apart and he’s lonely and he misses them and he’s so sorry—

“Thanks,” he says, and tries for a smile that he thinks MJ can see right through. At least, she could, before. The coffee is a burning warmth in his hands when he takes it. 

“Of course,” MJ says, and she’s looking at him, and he almost stays there. Almost lets himself—

He tips five dollars. 

~~~

(May I clear your slate and wipe your conscience? Lay it on another shelf?

I’ll be anything you ever ask

I’ll take your memories upon myself.)

~~~

November 9th, 2024.

Seven hours before the spell.

Her feet pound the pavement, footsteps more forceful than necessary as she rounds their school building, Ned and the other two Peters close behind her. 

Uh, this might sound kinda weird, but… I’ve been trying to find your friend ever since I got here. I just have this sense that… that he needs my help. 

Her breath is harsh in her throat from the jog to the school. They’re lucky Ned’s Lola lives within walking distance. 

Our help. 

She spots the back door set into the brick. It’s the door to the robotics and manufacturing lab, often left unlocked. And if it isn’t, well…

…He does. 

One of the Peters— the younger one— steps forward and gives it one sharp hit, just above the lock. 

We don’t know where he is. 

The door pops open, the lock very much broken, and they file in, MJ’s feet immediately starting down the hallways towards the nearest roof access point. 

And um… honestly, right now, we’re all he really has left. 

The physics room, the ladder. They climb, and MJ’s legs are trembling. 

Right now, we’re all he really has.

It echoes in her head, unrelenting. It’s terrifying. She doesn’t want to believe it, let alone think about it.

We’re all he has.

Because May Parker is dead— dead, dead, dead. She’s dead and—

MJ can’t breathe. She isn’t sure Ned’s doing much better, below her on the ladder. Ned knew May Parker— a lot better than MJ ever did. And now MJ never will, because she’s dead. 

The hatch is right above her and she’s frozen. 

We are all he has. 

She reaches up and pushes it open. And for a moment, before she moves to climb out, she lets herself panic and tremble and think: Fuck.

~~~

They find him, exactly where MJ had expected, and there’s just enough light filtering up to the roof from the street below that she can see him, small and huddled and alone, looking like he’d collapsed there and hasn’t moved since, and she almost trips over her own feet as she’s filled with the mindless need to get to him, because he doesn’t usually look so small, he’s not supposed to look so small, there’s something wrong, so wrong, and—

He doesn’t react to her dropping to her knees next to him, but there is a minute, full body flinch as she brings her arms around him– she feels him tense up, and then she feels him melt into her, but only just, like he’s still trying— still trying to hold himself together, somehow. 

She’s dimly aware of Ned doing the same thing on Peter’s other side, she can feel his arm as it lands next to hers, gripping Peter just as tight as she is, and it’s only then, when they’re both there, enveloping him from either side, that Peter does melt, boneless into their embrace, and Peter—

Peter breaks.

And all MJ can think, as she wraps her whole body around him, feeling blood underneath her fingers and soaking into her clothes, feeling the way he shakes bodily as he cries harder than she’s ever seen, feeling each heartbroken, devastated sob he lets out tear her heart apart again and again and again—

Is that thank god— or whatever, whoever is up there— that Peter still has them to hold him together.

~~~

(I will never go backwards, I will never be free,

I will never run faster, will you sink down to me?)

~~~

“Here,” MJ says, when the other two Peters are off across the lab to work on their cures and her Peter looks so so lost. “Peter,” and she lays a hand on his arm. 

He hasn’t started working on Marko’s or Dillon’s cures yet. He’s just… sitting there. Staring. Just thinking, he’d probably say if she asked, but…

May Parker is dead.

We’re all he has left.

Peter jerks a little when her hand lands on his shoulder, and his breath hitches, but at least it’s some sort of response, MJ supposes. He looks up at her, gaze raw and vulnerable before he catches himself, probably, and it shutters a little.

MJ sighs.

“I’m alright,” Peter murmurs as she slides onto the stool next to him. The words are almost too quiet for MJ to hear, she has to strain a little.

“Bullshit,” she tells him, just as quiet, ‘cause it won’t be a problem for him to hear her, at least. “Here,” she says again, and lifts up a (warm) wet cloth, motioning at him. “Give me your face. You look like someone nuked you.”

Peter flinches a little at her words, and MJ’s stomach twists. Still, he tilts his face towards her, his eyes fluttering shut as she brings up the cloth to start cleaning away the copious amounts of soot and dirt and residual salt from tears and, of course, mostly dried blood that paints his face like a goddamn picasso. 

The bruises and cuts and burns she knows she can’t wipe off, and her teeth grit a little, but she sits back when she’s done and tosses the cloth into a trash bin behind her, offering Peter another cloth to dry his face.

MJ lets her eyes linger over his face, cataloging all the little injuries scattered about. She thins her lips. “Are you hurt anywhere else?” she asks, and Peter inhales through his nose, shoulders dropping slightly on the exhale.

“Uh,” he says, blinks. “Got shot.”

MJ can feel her heart stutter. She forces herself to take a breath. Says, “you what?” 

His eyes find hers, apologetic. “The NYPD,” he tells her, quiet. “I called for an ambulance, they shot at me instead. When May—” he cuts himself off abruptly, his wrist flicking. Gestures at his right shoulder, the one he’s been favoring, MJ had noticed. “It’s fine.”

“It’s not fine, you’ve got a bullet in you,” MJ says, trying to tamp down her sudden flare of anger. At her words, one of the Peter’s— the younger one, across the room– sets a beaker down too hard, and Peter— her Peter— flinches at the noise, a tiny thing, but MJ notices. When MJ looks across the room to the source of the noise, she just catches his eyes flicking away from them. 

If their senses are even half of her Peter’s, she thinks, unbidden, then they can easily hear their every word, and she bites the inside of her lip against the discomfort that brings her. 

“Yeah, and that’s fine for now,” Peter retorts, sounding annoyed, and she brings her attention back to him. 

She raises an eyebrow. “What, you’re just gonna let yourself heal around it? Never go through another metal detector again? Or were you gonna cut it out later?” she asks, not fully serious, but his eyes flick down at her words, and she realizes that Peter having planned to actually cut it out of himself later isn’t entirely out of the realm of possibilities, and her stomach twists sharply. 

“Peter,” she says, and reaches for his shoulder, but he brings a hand up and catches her forearm before she’s even halfway there. 

He meets her eyes, and his are so incredibly earnest and pleading. “No, MJ,” he says, “we don’t have the time, or the supplies, and it really is fine. I just— please.”

MJ doesn’t know what to say to that, except that she knows she’s not backing down, and she gnashes her teeth. Peter’s still looking at her, like that’s gonna change her mind or something, and she glares right back. 

Then— “here, let me,” she hears, and Ned quietly slides past her so that he’s directly in front of Peter. Peter looks up at him and MJ readies a sarcastic comment for when Peter inevitably refuses his help, too—

But after a moment of them staring at each other, Ned— not even really glaring, just, kinda, waiting— and Peter wide eyed and still pleading, Peter shuts his eyes and slumps, nodding, very obviously reluctant and resigned but nonetheless turning his shoulder towards Ned, and MJ feels her eyebrows raise slightly in surprise. 

“Ok, come on,” Ned says, and pulls up a stool, positioning himself between Peter’s knees, shifting so that he’s closer to Peter’s shoulder. His movements look confident and practiced, and MJ’s stomach churns uncomfortably.

“You’ve dug a bullet out before,” MJ says, and it’s a question, but she’s not sure it sounds that way with how hollow her voice is. Her stomach gives another detached twist. 

“Twice,” Ned shrugs a shoulder. “Peter’s still alive, so I must’ve been doing something right. God knows how many times he’s done it,” Ned gestures at Peter with his chin. Peter doesn’t say anything. “Harrington has a first aid kit in his desk,” Ned says then, and she blinks. “Bottom drawer on the left. Can you grab it?”

“Uh—” MJ says, “yeah.”

The kit is exactly where Ned said it would be, and by the time MJ is back with it Ned has gotten Peter’s arm out of his suit, and MJ has to physically stop herself from turning around and hurling what little food Ned’s lola managed to shove down her throat all over the floor behind her at the sight of the wound, because that’s gotta be so fucking painful, and there’s quite a bit of blood around it, and Peter’s just sitting there with a bullet in his shoulder and all he’s done so far to signify discomfort is make a small grunt, and favor that side.

MJ takes a breath, and hands Ned the first aid kit.

“Thanks,” he mutters, already opening it and reaching for— something. A wipe, MJ thinks, but she’s still a little busy trying not to vomit. 

Ned grabs a few packets, rips one open, and Peter immediately shifts his head away from it, blinking, probably ‘cause the smell hits him, because even MJ can smell it from where she’s standing once Ned’s taken it out of its packet, shaking it open. He puts one hand on the back of Peter’s injured shoulder, and then glances at Peter, for what looks like permission, before wiping at the blood around the wound.

And MJ hates— suddenly, and sickeningly, and angrily— how practiced and familiar their motions are right now, have been since Ned corralled Peter into getting taken care of. Because they are, practiced and familiar, that is. Not a beat missed. Not an ounce of hesitation. Neither of them even looks like they’re fully there, Ned’s lips pressed into a thin line and Peter’s stare near vacant, somewhere over Ned’s shoulder. 

It speaks of years of practice— and that’s because it is, has been, probably, MJ realizes with a cold, sinking feeling. Ned’s known about Spider-Man for years. 

He didn’t realize I was there, she can remember Ned telling her, giggling, tipsy with sleep deprivation and shitty alcohol after midterms and college applications. 

I didn’t— Peter had tried to interject. Ned had cut him off, either oblivious or far past caring. 

Crawled across, another giggle, the wholeass ceiling. Of his room, and then dropped down, and I dropped the whole lego set that I’d worked so hard on! All by myself! And then, only then does he realize—

I was tired! Peter had exclaimed, and MJ had laughed, because he’d looked equal parts pathetic and cute, lying on his back on the floor of Ned’s room, his legs stretching up one of the walls, unable (and probably unwilling, too) to stop Ned’s little Spider-Man highlight reel. And you, he’d flopped an arm lazily in Ned’s direction, the other one splayed over his face to block out the lights directly over him, though they’re a low warm yellow, in MJ’s room, you asked me if I layed eggs. 

I asked him if he layed eggs! Ned had repeated, turning to MJ. Then, what?! It was a valid—

No, it wasn’t!

It totally was. And then you got naked. 

I— Peter had made a noise, then, halfway between indignant and mournful, and MJ had choked on her drink, burning in her throat and up her nose. She’d started coughing, and Ned had thumped her back absentmindedly as Peter spluttered from the floor, I was getting out of the suit, and it was the first logical thing my brain jumped to, and you’d nearly given me fucking heart attack Ned, I swear I almost died, you almost killed Spider-Man. It would’ve been your villain origin story. 

MJ pulls herself out of her head at a light hiss from Peter as Ned dabs a little too close to the wound. Ned mumbles a distracted “sorry”, and they both resume their tasks of sitting there and staring vacantly and wiping blood away, respectively. 

We’re all still kids, MJ thinks, the thought quiet, subdued, beaten down. But it’s true; none of them are even eighteen yet. Ned will be soon. Then MJ, close behind. Then Peter, in August. 

Fucking kids. 

MJ breathes out of her nose, harsh, and Peter’s gaze finds its way onto her. It’s apologetic, she thinks. She tries for a smile, and hopes it doesn’t look as much of a grimace as it feels. 

“Okay,” Ned says, then, and MJ realizes he’s finished wiping about five layers of blood away and has a pair or freaking forceps in his hand. How extensive is Harrington’s kit that Ned found forceps? Peter doesn’t even blink at the sight, and MJ quietly hopes it’s the blood loss, knowing it very likely isn’t. In Ned’s other hand is one of their lab flashlights. 

“Here,” Ned tells Peter, handing him the flashlight, and Peter doesn’t even look at it, just takes it with a lightly trembling hand, clicks it on, and points the beam at his shoulder. Ned reaches onto the table beside him and grabs tweezers, and he has gloves on, too, and MJ realizes she can’t remember when he put them on. She presses her teeth into her bottom lip, blinking twice, resisting the urge to shake her head, because she has a bit of a headache, and this night only seems to be getting longer.

Ned moves forward, then, towards Peter’s shoulder, and Peter makes a tamped down, strangled sort of noise in the back of his throat, and MJ can’t stop herself from looking away. She feels like she shouldn’t be watching; at the same time, she feels like she needs to do something. Her eyes latch onto the other two Peters, who she’d honestly forgotten about, and it just makes her feel even worse. The younger of the Peters had been looking at them again, his eyes flicking away barely a second before hers reached them, but she can tell from his body language. They’re at the same table on the far side of the lab, not necessarily huddled together, but it’s a close thing. They’re talking, though the conversation seems halfhearted and weak.

She wonders for whose sake it is. If they’re trying not to intrude, not to hear what else is going on, or if it’s something for her Peter to focus on. Latch onto. It helps him, she knows, and maybe they’d know that, too, and—

And oh, shit, Ned is currently taking a bullet out of her boyfriend, and Peter’s breathing is shaky, and when she looks back she can see that the hand that isn’t holding the flashlight surprisingly steady is clenched around the edge of the lab table next to him, and the situation hits her, right then. Her legs feel weak, and she takes an involuntary step closer to the same table on instinct. Her breath hitches. She’s scared. Has been scared. They’re on their own, here, utterly and completely, and May is dead, May Parker is dead and any one of them could be next. Any one. Peter, Ned, herself, the other Peters. She can’t do anything, none of them can do anything, there isn’t any way out but through and she can’t—

There’s a loud crack, then, and MJ nearly jumps three feet, dimly registering a solid flinch from the other two Peters from her peripheral at the sound, and she blinks her eyes until she can see what’s in front of her again.

It’s the table. The part of the table Peter had been clutching is no longer attached to the rest of it, the black stone of the tabletop lying in crumbled pieces on the ground. Peter’s hand scrabbles for purchase onto a different section of the tabletop, one that’s still intact, and he mumbles a quick, breathless “sorry” to Ned, who barely acknowledges it, just waits for Peter to still again and then gets back to work. 

“Almost done,” Ned murmurs quietly after a few seconds. “I’ve found it. Hold tight.”

Peter’s face screws up in obvious pain, but he hums something that sounds like affirmation. He doesn’t grab the table again, instead fisting his hand on top of it, and MJ can see the skin over his knuckles stretch white and thin from where she stands.

He’s going to shred his palm, with his strength and lack of current control, MJ decides. She glances down at what once was part of the lab table, chewing at the inside of her mouth. Winces, frowns, and breathes a thin sigh. 

Well. The flashlight, still gripped tight in Peter’s other hand, isn’t broken, she reasons, isn’t crushed to pieces like the table, and maybe the correct line of reasoning is that it isn’t broken yet, but that’s not the path MJ takes. So she steps around Ned and grabs Peter’s other hand, the one that’s still trembling, now both from pain and how hard he’s clenching the thing. She forces his fingers apart, mildly surprised that she’s able, because she probably shouldn’t be, so either Peter’s too distracted to stop her or he’s letting her, and she wrestles her own hand into his grip, intertwining their fingers and praying, distantly, that her hand isn’t about to experience the same fate as the table.

She hates herself immediately for the thought and shoves it to the back of her mind, but it’s there nonetheless, and her teeth grit, stomach twisting uncomfortably. 

Ned barely glances at her throughout the whole process, but Peter, eyes still squeezed shut, moves his head, turning his face closer to her, so she takes that as confirmation that she did the right thing. 

Probably. 

It’s still another agonizing minute or two of waiting, Peter’s grip on her hand tightening and loosening, tightening and loosening, like each time he’s remembering that he’s gripping her hand, not a table, at the last second. It tightens to the point of pain a few times, usually accompanied by barely bitten back whimpers from Peter that she still catches, every one of them etching itself hopefully not but most likely permanently into her memory, but it’s fine, she has a higher pain tolerance than most (present company clearly excluded), and all in all, the ensuing bruise is worth it if she gives Peter even a modicum of comfort right now. 

Because May Parker is dead, MJ still wants to throw up, scream, cry, and they’re all—

Just children. 

“There,” Ned finally sighs, deep and heavy, slumping down into his seat, impeccable posture gone in a blink. He turns and tosses the bloody forceps, tweezers, and, MJ assumes, because she decidedly does not look, bullet into a trash bin somewhere behind him, which makes a dull clunk, and then peels off his gloves and does the same with them, too. Peter slumps as well, down to the side, half leaning on the table. His grip on her hand loosens, but just barely. His eyes, having opened to look at Ned when he spoke, flutter shut, and he looks like he’d be perfectly content to stay there for the next few days if he were able to.

MJ can relate, sorta. She’d most definitely join him in slumping onto the table if she wasn’t still strung tight with anxiety at their current situation. And if Peter’s shoulder weren’t still leaking blood, maybe. Which—

“Can you put the kit away, please, MJ?” Comes Ned’s tired voice from behind her, and she turns to see him gesturing at it. In his lap is a roll of bandages and tape, and she blinks for a few seconds. 

“Yeah,” she manages when her mouth decides to start working again, and she gets to her feet. When she goes to pull her hand away, she finds she can’t, for a few seconds, before Peter’s grip loosens a bit more, and she’s able to slip her hand out and away from his. Peter makes a sad noise of protest— almost an honest to god whine, and she turns to find him blinking up at her tiredly, pouting. MJ lets out an exasperated sigh, not able to tamp down on the fondness that floods her as he ragdolls over the lab stool and table. His hair is smushed into his face from the way his face is smushed into the table, and there’s still a little soot and blood that MJ missed earlier up at his temple. 

The smile that slipped onto her face without her notice drops, though, when she remembers where that soot and blood came from, and why exactly he’s draped over the table, looking half dead. 

This isn’t one of their stupid, lazy nights in where two of them get a little bit drunk (MJ and Ned) and one of them has the time of his life irresponsibly suggesting stupid ass shit for them to do and egging them on as they do said stupid ass shit (Peter). This is Peter getting shot at by the NYPD and MJ (not) watching Ned take the bullet out of him and an entire slew of multiversal super villains gunning for their asses as they make cures for them. This is three Peter Parkers in one room. This is a world without May Parker. This is—

Right now, we’re all he really has. 

She makes the executive decision to stop thinking. It’s useless. She’ll only spiral. She— fuck. 

“I’ll be right back, babe,” MJ murmurs, barely loud enough for even herself to hear, voice thin and cracking, and brushes a thumb over his knuckles. His hand flaps after hers weakly, and she makes herself turn and grab the kit and calmly make the walk to Harrington’s desk, all without her legs giving out on her. The other two Peters eye her subtly as she passes, but they don’t say anything, though they both look like they want to. 

When she gets back Peter is sitting back up and Ned is winding a bandage around his shoulder. Ned glances at her, and then over at the table Peter took a chunk out of, where the trash bag from the bin Ned threw everything in is sitting, tied off at the top. 

“Uh,” Ned says, going back to his task, “we usually got rid of any of the blood, in case of, y’know, identity reasons. But I guess you can just throw it away now, since, well…”

He trails off, and MJ nods. Since everyone knows anyway, she finishes to herself, and turns on her heel to grab the bag and throw it in the bigger bin they have in the corner of the room. Ned finishes wrapping, and MJ slides back onto her stool, still feeling weak and shaky.

Ned murmurs something to Peter, then, too low for MJ to catch, and steps back and away towards another table, opening a laptop. MJ uses the distraction to subtly (she hopes) sweep the crumbled pieces of lab tabletop under said lab table and out of Peter’s view.

Neither of them says anything. Peter looks dully at the missing chunk of table, black stone sharp and jagged and broken, and MJ’s breath trembles in the silence. The other Peters’ conversation has dwindled to nothing in the last few minutes. She wishes it hadn’t; the silence is pressing, uncomfortable. Her eyes sting. Peter’s look empty. She doesn’t know how to fix this.

May Parker is dead.

Peter heaves a sigh. “I guess I’ll…” he trails off, clearing his throat, and shifts his gaze away from the broken table, gesturing instead at the broken, half-made cures strewn about on the other side of it. Marko’s and Dillon’s, MJ thinks. 

“Right,” MJ says, for lack of anything better. “Well. I’m, uh— gonna make a food run.”

It’s almost comical the way the other two Peters’ heads snap up at the mention of food. It’s less comical the way her Peter shrugs his good shoulder listlessly and nods. 

“Yeah,” Ned says from behind her, pausing in his typing, “that’s a good idea. We’re probably gonna be here for a while.” Then, to Peter, “I’m making your web fluid by the way.”

Peter looks up at him. “Oh,” he says. “Thanks.” And then he meets her eyes, and she wants to cry a little bit, but instead she slides one of her arms around his shoulders and lets him lean his head against her side. She waits, and it’s nearly a full minute before he sighs and reluctantly pulls away. 

“Thanks,” he says again, this time looking up at her, and she nods, trying again for a smile.

If the weak, wobbly one he returns is anything to go by, she’s at least semi-successful.

~~~

Spider-Man lands beside MJ on the sidewalk, and MJ doesn’t scream.

It’s more of a shriek. Very short and very small. She doesn’t scream.

“Sorry,” he tells her, sounding genuinely apologetic, and it’s only then that MJ realizes that it’s not her Peter that must’ve followed her out of the school. It’s the older one, the youth-pastor looking one, and MJ swallows, raising her hand absentmindedly to brush her hair out of her eyes. 

“You’re— you’re good,” she manages, letting a breath out.

She’d just been taking a moment. She’d needed to breathe. Her offer for a food run was as much for her own benefit as it was for the Peters’. She’d walked about a block and a half— the bodega she was heading to was just another away– and then she’d stopped, and sunk down on the stone steps to someone’s— something, and had taken large, gasping breaths, trying not to cry and hoping, very very much, that she’d gone far enough for Peter— her Peter— to not hear her. Or at least not notice. She just—

Fuck.

“I wanted to, uh, talk to you,” the older Peter says, and she can see him chewing on his lip a bit. “About, uh. Your Peter.”

MJ blinks. “Oh,” she says intelligently. She clears her throat and forces her posture straighter. “So…?”

A brief smile crosses Peter’s face, like she’s reminded him of something, and he sinks down on the step beside her. “So,” he echoes. “Yeah. Um.”

He’s silent for a moment, and MJ takes a second to discreetly (hopefully) wipe at the corner of her right eye, on the other side from Peter, because maybe she hadn’t been crying, but it had been a close thing. A car drives down the street, speeding, and Peter shifts beside her.

“He’s…” he starts, and stops again. She hears him sigh, thin and brittle. “He’s on a, ledge.” He says finally, choosing his words in the way MJ has come to notice he does, and he holds out his arm in front of himself. He shifts it, so that it’s tilting one way. “And I think he’s tipping to the wrong side.”

“The wrong side?” MJ repeats.

Peter nods, his eyes leaving his arm as he drops it and finding hers. “Revenge,” he says, his gaze solemn and knowing.

“Oh,” MJ says again, and her voice is as hollow as she suddenly feels.

“And I, uh— I know it’s…” he trails off, looking forward, frowning. “I know it’s scary.” He says after some time. He looks back at her and sighs again, inaudibly, but his shoulders betray the action, drooping on the exhale. “For you. And unfair to put this on you. It’s unfair to everybody. I sometimes wonder—”

He cuts himself off. He’s silent again for a few seconds, and MJ’s fingers, out of his view, find the stone step below her and grip it, hard, the uneven stone hurting and digging into her skin. It doesn’t help her feel any more anchored. 

“I still sometimes wonder if I’m doing the right thing at home, on my—” he waves a hand vaguely, “—world, or whatever. With uh, people close to me. But, regardless, I think you should know, if you don’t already. I noticed ‘cause I recognize it. It’s a dangerous and slippery slope, and it can take more than one person down alongside. Just…” he holds his hand out again, then drops it, making a vague “fwish” sound.

“I was, uh,” MJ says, startling herself a little, distantly, because she hadn’t been planning on saying anything. At least not anything like this. “The button on the box. It sends everyone home,” she tells him, because she isn’t sure if anyone has. After some deliberation, she’d left the box next to Ned in the lab, but— her hand still has grooves from how hard she’d been clutching it throughout most of the day. “To their deaths, in most of these guys’ cases.”

“And you took it upon yourself to press it if anything goes wrong?” Peter guesses from beside her, and she looks at him, a little surprised.

“Yeah,” she breathes, quiet.

He nods. He looks down at his hands in his lap, twists them a little. “But you didn’t let Peter press it, on the roof.”

She shakes her head, closing her eyes. “He wanted to. He was going to. I don’t know if he would’ve actually, but—”

“The thought was there,” Peter offers, and she nods. “He needs about ten days of sleep and at least a few hours let loose in an all-you-can-eat,” he says, tone morbid, and laughs emptily. “Instead we’re gonna go find the people that want to kill us, and—”

He sighs again, heavily. “I’ve been at this a long time, and it still hasn’t gotten easier from when I was a kid. I mean, a little, maybe. I’ve got better coping mechanisms. But not by much.” He shifts. “I just wanted to make sure you knew, I guess, because it’s scary and dangerous and if you’re gonna be in this, and gonna stay with him, you need to know. Things can go very very wrong later tonight. Very.” His eyes drop from hers, gaze wandering back forward into the street. “From what I’ve heard it sounds like they already have. I can’t imagine—” he coughs a little, cutting himself off, and shrugs sheepishly. “My aunt May is still alive, is all. Sorry. I like to think I usually have a little more tact.”

MJ shrugs a shoulder. “S’fine,” she says, her voice hoarse. “I didn’t really know her.”

Peter blinks, nodding. “Sure,” he agrees. “My point is, uh.” MJ watches him swallow, shifting, her stomach cold and hollow and twisting. This isn’t making her feel better. But maybe it isn’t supposed to. 

She supposes if nothing else, it’s interesting. This is another Peter, same powers, same-ish life. But he’s older and more experienced and he’s Peter, and that, maybe, is what takes interesting and turns it outright terrifying. 

“My point is that I don’t know what’s gonna happen, but I know that all we’ve told him hasn’t entirely helped, ah, pull him off that ledge. Or right it. Whatever the metaphor. So…”

“So he might try to kill him,” MJ finishes when he doesn’t, and he looks at her, and he nods. 

“He might, yeah. And while it might be deserved— sometimes it is— Peter doesn’t deserve it. He doesn’t deserve to do that and the people with him, you, Ned, you two don’t deserve it either. That’s what’s most important to remember. In my experience, at least,” he tacks on, almost an afterthought. “I’m sorry—”

“No,” MJ cuts him off. “No.” She doesn’t want him to apologize. She doesn’t want—

“Okay,” Peter says. He sighs again, and the silence is weighted, but MJ feels better. It’s probably just the distraction, a mood swing, the whiplash of the day catching up to her, but she can breathe right now, which is more than she could’ve said a few minutes earlier, and the night air is cold and a little biting, but— good. Clear, at least. 

She stands up. Her legs feel shaky, still, but she ignores it. She looks down at Peter, and he looks— regretful, and apprehensive, and older than he is, with the way the streetlights shadow his face. “I should go,” she says. 

He smiles, then brings his gaze up from the pavement he’d been staring through to meet hers. He offers her a smile, and it isn’t as strained as she’d expected. “Yeah.” He says. “Me too. I asked them where the nearest bathroom was, back at the–” he waves in the direction of the school. He laughs a little, a huff of breath. He rises to his feet too. 

“Thank you,” they say at the same time— blurting, really, and MJ smiles, Peter’s own contagious, before she steps down the two steps to the sidewalk, and Peter steps up towards the wall of the building. 

It’s not good. None of this is. But MJ finds she can at least breathe in now without it catching in her throat and freezing in her lungs, and she can walk without feeling like she’s about to collapse, and maybe—

Well. This Peter is, well, Peter Parker, after all. Same powers, same-ish life. And if he’s still here, after having been at it for so long, then maybe. Maybe. Maybe it can be okay, eventually. 

Eventually. 

We’re all he has left. 

She’ll make sure it’s okay. 

~~~

(I will never go backwards, I will never be seen,

in the wake of disaster, will you sink down to me?)

~~~

July 3rd, 2025.

(Almost) eight months after the— ?

“Is that—“ Ned grabs her arm and brings them both to a stop halfway down the block. Someone immediately bumps into MJ from behind, sidestepping her and throwing her a glare— she ignores them, and turns to Ned ready to demand why the hell he decided to stop them so suddenly in the middle of quite a busy sidewalk. 

Ned isn’t paying attention to her, however. He’s also not paying attention to the dirty looks he’s also been getting, from a few people who’ve clearly had to sidestep him. He’s instead looking forward and across the street, and she bites back her annoyed complaint and instead follows his gaze— and arm, which is pointing at someone. She slaps it down, first. “Pointing is rude,” she tells him, before her eyes finally land on what he’s looking at, and then she’s staring too. 

Because it’s Peter Parker. Naturally. After months of him being a regular at Peter Pan’s, it's weird seeing him in any other setting– the only other time she’d ever seen him outside of it anyway had been that time at the donut shop, the second time they met. But it’s definitely him, wearing Ned’s jacket, a beanie and gloves, even though it’s July, a bit ahead of them and across the street, loading a F.E.A.S.T. truck with sealed boxes. 

He turns then, and, absurdly, she thinks he’s about to look at them, wave, maybe— it feels so natural, so normal, though there’s no way he should be able to just randomly single them out on their crowded side of the street— but he doesn’t look towards them, instead he reaches his arms out and someone else, who had just exited the F.E.A.S.T. building next to him, hands him another box. The other man says something, and Peter Parker says something back with a slight smile, and the other man laughs, claps Peter Parker on the shoulder, then heads back inside. 

“…Staring like this is weird,” Ned then says, his voice shaking her out of her slight daze. She turns to him then, glaring. 

“And rude,” she tells him pointedly, like she wasn’t just doing it alongside him. 

He rolls his eyes, but still doesn’t turn away from watching Peter Parker. They stand there as he loads up the rest of the boxes around his feet, and then says something into a radio he’d pulled out of his pocket. He jumps up onto the truck bed, stands, and pulls the door down shut behind himself. She can see it rattle a bit as he presumably locks it from the inside, and then he’s leaning out of a normal sized side door, dropping back down onto the pavement, closing it behind himself and saluting someone at the front, out of their view— the driver, must be. 

MJ feels like she’s locked in some sort of trance. All his movements, they— her brain itches— they remind her of something, she’s sure of it. Or someone. But whatever or whoever it is escapes her, and she’s left staring across the street as Peter Parker goes back inside the building, the door swinging shut behind him. 

She thinks, then, for some reason, of the drawing she’d found— months ago now, back in the winter, when she’d had that dream. 

The drawing of Spider-Man, crouched comfortably on the baluster, on the roof of their school. Their— hers and Ned’s, school. Midtown. Though they’ve graduated now. 

She shakes her head to clear the thoughts. Enough is enough, she decides, when the door to F.E.A.S.T. stays closed, and the truck has driven away, and they’re left staring at the building like a couple of idiots. She fists her hand in the back of Ned’s shirt and shoves him forward, rather unceremoniously, forcing them both to start walking again. He barely reacts, though, but for a slight shake of his head, mirroring hers from just a few seconds ago. 

“Well, at least now we know he does something other than take pictures of Spider-Man. And get coffee,” Ned mumbles after they’ve walked for a few minutes in silence, but he sounds distracted. MJ can relate. She huffs a laugh, but it’s halfhearted. 

Spider-Man had been laughing, in her drawing. 

She doesn’t think she’s seen Peter Parker laugh. Not genuinely, at least. Politely, maybe. Strained smiles. 

And yet, she thinks, absurdly, that she knows what it sounds like. That it sounds just like hers and Ned’s. That it’s missing, every time she laughs with Ned about something stupid, echoing in the back of her head, some part of her brain itching to realize it, to realize—

Something. 

Ned is silent beside her, and she tries to focus back on where they’re going. They needed to buy earplugs for her niece— fourth of July is tomorrow, and she’s too young to not get scared from the loud fireworks. 

She wonders who she watched the fireworks with, last year. She doesn’t remember doing it. In fact, for some reason, she thinks she wasn’t even in the city. She has vague memories of her and Ned and— her and Ned, out in the country. Were they camping? They’d just gotten back from their disastrous trip to Europe. Maybe they’d needed to get away from it all. But that thought doesn’t feel fully right in the back of her mind. 

It had been a good night, though, from what she remembers. There’d been laughter. She’d felt light and happy. But something stops her, now, from bringing it up with Ned. From suggesting that they do it again. 

Because something will be missing, she knows. Something that sounds like her laugh, like Ned’s. Something that itches at her consciousness and echoes in the back of her mind. 

Ned bumps her shoulder, then, and she looks over. He points upward. It’s Spider-Man, high above them and across the street, running along a rooftop. He jumps off, flips mid-air, and shoots off around a corner. She sees him in her mind again, in her drawing, leaning forward and laughing. 

They stare up at the corner he disappeared behind for a while, and something echoes in the back of her mind. The itch she hasn’t been able to shake, that’s been with her for months and months now. 

She wonders if she’ll ever see Peter Parker laugh.

If it’ll sound like the echo in her mind.  

If it’ll quiet the itch in her brain. 

~~~

August 10th, 2025.

(Exactly) nine months after the spell.

“I miss you,” Peter says to Tony Stark’s grave. 

That’s not what he was planning to say. He doesn’t know what he wanted to— he didn’t have a plan. He didn’t know he’d be here. 

Today. This morning. When he woke up. 

He wanted— in all honesty— to visit May. He should’ve. Should be. Visiting her. 

Since he was six and an orphan, he’d never had a single birthday without her. 

He’s only had three birthdays with Tony in his life— only two of which he actually celebrated with him. 

So maybe that’s why it’s easier. 

(It’s not easier.)

“I really really miss you,” Peter says, and sinks down to his knees. The grass feels cold and hard, even though the lawn is perfectly manicured and looks amazing to lie down on. Peter’s thin now, though. Thinner than before. Too thin, and the grass feels cold and hard. 

“It’s my birthday,” he whispers. 

He doesn’t know what he’s hoping for. Maybe nothing. He used to not believe in ghosts, but that was before Norse Gods became part of the highschool curriculum, so who knows. Tony would’ve loved to debate this with him. 

A sob hitches its way up and out of his throat before he even realizes it was building. 

He misses Tony and he misses May. And Ned and MJ and fucking Flash Thompson and— everyone. 

He doesn’t know how he thought he could do this. 

“So a part of me is glad,” Peter confesses, and he thinks he needs to say this. Put it out there. Make it real. Something to deal with, so he doesn’t have to deal with everything else. His voice cracks. “Part of me is glad that you— uh. That you weren’t around for when the spell— yeah. ‘Cause then you would forget me too.”

He sighs, and it's deep and heavy. He can’t get enough air. “May, too. I mean—”

He hates himself. A lot. 

“I think you’d know what I mean.”

The stone is at his back now. His knees are pulled up to his chest. The graveyard is silent and cold, the sun beating down on him uselessly. It’s not usually this cold in August, he thinks. He’s not sure. He can’t remember much these days. But— Ben and May would take him to get ice cream on his birthday. They did that until Ben died. So it’s not usually this cold in August. 

“I don’t know what to do, Tony,” he says, and his hand shakes as he brings it up to his head. He tugs at his hair. “I don’t know what to do.”

Another sob. Everything around him is still quiet, silent, cold. It’s a private graveyard— Tony is buried next to his mother. His father is on the other side. Her grave is a barrier between them, Peter thinks. He wonders if Tony specifically asked for it to be that way, or if Pepper just knew. 

Abruptly, he lets his head fall back. It hits the stone with a soft, hollow thunk that Peter barely feels. 

Why do you get out of that bed? Tony’d said. 

Responsibility. 

Even then, that’s what it had boiled down to, for Peter. Not those exact words, but the root of it. And now—

Responsibility. 

You have a gift—

He lets one of his hands drop down from pulling uselessly at his hair. It immediately fists in the grass, pulling some of the blades up, and then dirt, dirt, dirt. He can smell it, he can taste it.

The stone at his back is cold, cold, cold, so unlike Tony. Tony was warm and soft and safe, and Peter hasn’t felt that in months, and doesn’t know—

“I don’t know what to do,” he says brokenly. Tony doesn’t answer. Tony can’t answer.

What do you do when you don’t know where you are, and you don’t know how you got there in the first place, Bruce had asked once, Peter remembers, lounging back idly in one of Tony’s lab chairs, playing with a pen, a book splayed open downwards on his stomach.

You grab a spider-kid, Tony’d said without missing a beat, reaching over and clapping Peter on the shoulder, and Peter had only been half paying attention, but had still huffed a laugh. You grab a spider-kid, Tony’d said, and you have him spider you up to the tallest point around you. That way, you’ll see where you are, and there’s the answer to your first question.

Bruce had raised an indulging eyebrow at Tony, smirking fondly. And how do you know how you got there, then? He asks, and Tony pulls away from Peter, rolling his chair back to his own project.

Psh, he’d said, already back to fiddling at a joint in his armor. Doesn’t matter how you got there. What matters is how you’re gonna get out.

“I can’t get out,” Peter says hollowly. The words sink down into the ground around him, and he wonders, distantly, if they reach Tony. “I don’t know how to get out,” he whispers, and there’s something cracked and broken deep in his chest. Maybe it’s his ribs, from that kick he took during patrol. Maybe it’s something else. Regardless, it’s hard to breathe. 

Everything Spider-Man touches, comes to ruin.

“I need help,” Peter tells the empty graveyard. Graveyard. Tony’s stone is the only thing holding him up, and it’s his fault, his fault, his fault— it must be.

Everything Spider-Man touches, comes to ruin.

Ruin.

(We won, Mr. Stark.)

Ruin. 

(Stay with me, May, stay with me. It’s just me and you, just me and you—)

Ruin.

(Too weak to send me home to die, poor Peter, poor Peter, poor Peter—)

Ruin.

“Fuck,” Peter breathes. “I don’t deserve it, do I? I’m not gonna get it. I have to do it myself and I can’t, I don’t— I’m not— I thought I could do it, I thought I could keep it going but—”

His hands come up to grab at his face. It’s a little wet with tears, but he doesn’t remember crying, and he doesn’t feel like he’s crying. He registers, dimly, that his fingers are dirty with the graveyard dirt, and that it’s getting smeared onto his face, but he can’t, he can’t, he can’t—

“I miss you,” he says again— gasps out, really, he’s on the verge of a panic attack, he thinks hazily— “please, Tony, please. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

His hands fall from his face, limp. He blinks down at them and thinks— they look dead. They’re too pale, knuckles too visible, and the dirt on them looks, through his faulty vision, gray. Ash gray.

There’d been ash everywhere. In Tony’s hair, when he’d died. In May’s hair, when she’d died. On their faces. On Peter’s hands.

(It’s just me and you, May. Just me and you, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry, please—)

(Mr. Stark— Mr. Stark, can you hear me? We won, sir, we did it, you did it— we won. I’m sorry— I’m so sorry— Tony—)

Ruin, ruin, ruin.

Poor Peter. His fault. May, Tony. MJ and Ned, to an extent. His fault.

The green goblin laughs, and laughs, and laughs.

Peter sits with Tony’s gravestone at his back, the cold, silent cemetery around him, tears on his face and dirt on his hands, and he remembers, hollowly—

It’s his birthday.

He’s eighteen.

And he doesn’t know what to do.

~~~

August 22nd, 2025.

Nine months after the— ?

“Oh,” Ned says from behind her, and MJ pauses in the folding of her sweatshirt.

“Oh?” she echoes, and turns to look at Ned. He’s standing at her desk, looking down at something; she thinks it’s paper.

(They’re helping each other pack, for MIT. ‘Cause they’ll be moving in soon. To their dorms.

It doesn’t feel real.)

“Yeah, uh— nothing. Just found one of your drawings of Spider-Man,” Ned says, and he’s still looking down, and now she knows exactly at what, a cold, itching certainty creeping its way up her spine.

She rolls her eyes, trying to play it off like she didn’t keep the drawing because— because—

“From when I was obsessed, yeah, I’m aware,” she says. Ned doesn’t answer, still frowning down at the paper. 

“Is he—” Ned says, and moves a hand to hover over the paper, finger tracing some of the lines. 

MJ comes over to stand next to him, because she wants to look at the drawing and because she wants to pretend like she doesn’t already know exactly what he’s tracing, exactly what he was going to ask. 

Ned’s fingers are hovering over the baluster the hero is sitting on, just as she knew they would be. Still, she prompts, “is he…?”

“I just, this is— uh,” Ned falters. 

“Yeah, it’s the roof,” MJ lets her fingers join Ned’s in hovering over the paper. “Midtown. That’s why it looks familiar.”

Ned nods absently. “Thought so,” he mutters, and he’s still staring at it.

MJ looks at it too. Her eyes immediately go to the one part left unfinished, the pencil lines moving boldly up, up, up, stopping just before they reached his face. Empty. Incomplete. She can’t remember—

“You can have it if you want,” she snorts, forcing herself to move away from her desk and back to the pile of clothing on her bed. Ned had been sorting through all the shit on her desk. She’d kept the drawing because—

“Nah,” Ned says, blinking a little, and he too steps away from it, moves it to the corner of her desk he designated as junk. “It’s good though.”

MJ hides a smile, even though neither of them are even facing each other. “Thanks,” she says.

Later, when Ned takes the pile of desk junk out to the recycling, she thinks she sees him slip one of the papers, carefully folded, into his pocket.

She doesn’t comment on it.

I wouldn’t change a thing I did. I wouldn’t change a thing—

She can’t remember.

~~~

(Just stay—

with the sunlight on your coat

and a smile I’ll always know

no I don’t want time

to take the sun

but I’ll never have control

and the dark will always

fall.)

~~~

September 2nd, 2025.

(Almost) ten months after the spell.

Ned and MJ go to MIT.

Peter still goes to Peter Pan’s.

The bell above the door rings. The warm air inside envelopes him. The tired employee behind the counter looks up. They pull up a smile.

In his mind, he hears laughing.

Poor Peter. Poor Peter. Poor Peter. Too weak to– Too weak—

His spider-sense screams.

~~~

October 15th, 2025.

Eleven months after the spell.

It’s dark everywhere. It’s two am. Who the hell robs people at two am?

This guy, apparently. 

The girl screams— good job, but Peter had already happened to be there, anyway, high up on the wall of one of the buildings that made up the alleyway. He’d been resting. How is it that a mugging happened to happen right underneath where he’d been taking a breather? 

He hasn’t been doing all that great since MJ and Ned went to school. Sleeping and eating and dragging himself out of bed were all their own mountain to climb, and Peter’s been scrabbling on the rocky slopes, slipping down, down. This night is just a testament to it all— he’s taken way too many hits than he normally would, and not just this night, but all week long. The universe seems to be real close to reaching its goal of making his body just one giant perpetual bruise. His ribs ache. His head aches. His left shin aches so bad that he can’t help but limp when he walks. 

So when he drops down from the wall and onto the ground it’s not as silent as he’d meant to make it. He wants to get this done as quickly and easily as possible, knock out the mugger with one blow and make sure the girl gets home okay, but that immediately flies out the window when he stumbles on his landing, and his foot kicks an empty soda can, and the mugger whirls around to face him. He snarls. 

Peter sighs, and shoots a web to immobilize the gun’s trigger. The guy jerks back from it, looks from the now useless firearm to Peter, then back. He seems affronted. Behind him, the girl makes a little squeak, and takes a few steps back like she’s about to run. The mugger’s head snaps towards her, and with a yell he chucks his useless gun to the ground and takes out another one. 

Great. 

So now there is a gun pointed at him. This is normal. Probably the third of the night, and he’s about to dodge and web it, when suddenly, suddenly—

The gun is not pointed at him. 

This is— less normal. 

For a mugging, at least. Muggers want money. Muggers don't want a murder or manslaughter charge. Muggers point their guns at him when he shows up, but this one isn’t, this one is pointing his gun at the woman who has frozen, has stopped backing up, whose eyes are wide in fear and whose hair is frazzled and who is breathing in sharp, panicked bursts, and all Peter can see, suddenly, is MJ. 

(August 6th, 2018.

Six One year before the spell.)

(“Hey, man! Are you sure that purse is yours? I mean, I’m not judging, but pink and glittery doesn’t seem exactly your style, what with all the–” Peter gestures at the mugger, encompassing his entirely black look, and in the same motion sends a web out, plastering all around the trigger so the guy can’t pull it, and then yanking the gun out of the guy’s hand, letting it skid across the ground and come to a rest somewhere behind Peter, against the alley wall.

Without missing a beat, the guy pulls out another gun. And— really? Two?! Two guns for a mugging? Peter may still be somewhat new to this, but that’s gotta be overkill. He tells the guy as much.

The guy makes a noise, angry-sounding, and takes a step. “You stupid little—” he practically spits, and he makes a grab for the guy he was mugging— wait, guy? Guy with a pink glittery purse. Okay, who is Peter to judge— and he manages to grab the other man’s arm and haul him over to himself. And, who does this guy think he is, an actual villain? He’s taking hostages during a mugging? Its a mugging, bro. What are you doing? 

Peter asks him that. 

“You—” the mugger immediately gets worked up. Not that he hadn’t already been. “What I’m doing is my own business, you freak,” he manages to get out through his visible seething. “And you should mind your own. Or do I gotta teach ya?”

Peter doesn’t roll his eyes. He doesn’t. “Look, hey, sure, man, whatever you want,” he keeps his voice light. Just let go of— oh, dear.” 

The man the mugger had been holding suddenly goes limp. The mugger staggers under the unexpected dead weight, and after a moment and with a grunt unceremoniously drops the unconscious man to the ground. “That’s awfully rude, man,” Peter says, and uses the whole thing as a distraction to web away the man’s second gun. 

The man stares at him for a moment. His fist clenches. His hands are shaking. He looks near apoplectic, and Peter kinda wants to back away from him, just on principle, but he needs to at least web him up for the cops. 

“You,” the man says, and his voice is shaking in rage. “You know what, yeah, sure,” he says and starts to approach Peter. “Somebody needs to get rid of you. You fuck with everyone’s business, lately. And it looks like it’s gonna be me. I’m gonna kill you, freak,” his hand starts reaching for something behind him, and surely, Peter thinks, surely he doesn’t have a third gun, but then Peter stops thinking, stops breathing, because the man’s next words hit him like a train, teleport him to the back of a car, outside Midtown High, and Liz has just gotten out and left him with, with—

“I’m gonna kill you dead.”)

MJ is not here, of course. MJ is at MIT, with Ned. Peter knowing that, however, doesn’t stop the flash of MJ’s wide eyes, or the sound of her pounding heart, her startled gasp, and— it’s not MJ there, he knows, but she has a gun pointed right at her again and Peter can’t—

He doesn’t think, doesn’t plan, doesn’t consider; he lunges forward, shoots a web that wraps around the muggers wrist, and yanks. The gun goes off, MJ screams, and the bullet lodges itself safely into the dumpster that’s halfway between Peter and— the woman. 

Peter’s desperate tug had pulled the man bodily into him, however, which forced Peter to lean back and suddenly his left leg gives out behind him and down they both go, the mugger heavy on top of him, and Peter’s skull impacts the hard ground so hard his vision whites out and all he can do is gasp in desperate breaths. His hair and the back of his neck feel warm, suddenly, and he is not looking forward to having to clean all that blood away, it’s gotta be quite a bit, judging by the pain and all the wetness and the fact that he can’t seem to get his vision, or hearing, working quite right. 

There’s scrambling on top of him and oh, yeah, right, the mugger. Peter blinks and struggles to see and hear, and is able to make out running footsteps that make it out of the alleyway and turn to continue down the street. It must be the woman getting away, ‘cause the mugger is still scrambling to disentangle himself from Peter. Oh, good. Great. Fantastic. Finally something goes his way. He hopes she gets home alright. Safe. 

Safe, like MJ is at MIT, far away from here and Peter. Like MJ, whose wide eyes he can still see, whose scared, trembling breaths he can still hear. 

He remembers too well when MJ had a gun pointed at her. Not in a fight, not running from Mysterio’s drones, not stumbling across a battlefield, but— the gun hadn’t even reached her, then. Peter hadn’t let it get that far, and she’d been fine, they’d been fine, except she’d been shaky and jumpy all night after that, and Peter hadn’t known how to help her. 

She always knew how to help him. She always had, and so had Ned. But he never had any practice helping someone else like that. 

A knee is placed directly on Peter’s ribs, then, and Peter suddenly remembers that he was in the middle of a fight. The knee was the guy finally getting his bearings— or, really, Peter thinks it’s only been a few seconds since they went down— and using Peter to get to his feet. Real nice. 

Peter shoves the knee to the side and rolls backwards into a crouch. He looks up. The mugger staggers to his feet, snarls at Peter, and aims a kick at his face. 

(He’s looking at the Vulture. 

He’s in the back of a car and Liz just left him with the Vulture. He’s standing in an alley way and he’s looking at the Vulture and the Vulture is raising a gun and pointing it at him, and he’s had guns pointed at him but he zeroes in on the barrel and knows that he defeated the Vulture. He did. He did. 

But the air feels like it’s full of dust, for some reason, full of dust that fills up his lungs and coats his throat and halts his breathing just like it did when that parking garage had collapsed, shoving Peter down with it, crushing him into all the rubble. That doesn’t make sense to him, because the air is clear, at least as clear as a New York alleyway can get, but he still hears the Vulture and he’s still staring at the gun and he’s frozen, he realizes dimly, and his body feels just as weak and trembling as it had trapped under all that concrete and rubble. 

The Vulture pulls the trigger. The gun goes off. Peter dives to the side— or maybe he did that before the gun even fired, he doesn’t know, all he knows is that his spider sense pulled and then his arm lit up in pain, but— manageable, he can immediately tell. Just a scratch, really. Probably. Yeah. The bullet just scratched him. 

He wants to laugh, but his lungs are still filled with smoke and sand. Because— that’s right. The Vulture. No, the mugger. Peter had been stopping a mugging, and he looks wildly around, scrambles along the ground, until his eyes land on the mugger, and he prepares to duck away again, except—

The mugger is not looking at Peter anymore. He’s looking up into the sky, above and behind Peter, instead. “Oh,” Peter hears him mutter, emphatically, “shit.”

Then there’s the sound of a repulsor charging, and a familiar voice coming from behind and above. “This is the shooting kids police,” Tony Stark announces, “you’re not allowed to do that. Put the gun down, and maybe I won’t show you how it feels.”

The guy puts the gun down next to himself, carefully. Then he straightens back up, and pulls out a knife. 

“What?” Says Tony. Then, “you know what, nevermind. You shot the kid. Don’t know why I even bothered,” he says, and then he blasts him. 

Peter finally manages to unstick himself from the ground where he’d been crouched. He turns around, and the world wobbles only a little as he does so. “Mr. Stark?” Peter— doesn’t squeak. His voice just sounds thin in his ringing ears. “What are you doing here?”

Tony lowers himself, stepping down to the ground, and turns to look at Peter. “What am I doing here?” Tony’s voice pitches up, and his faceplate flips open, and, yep— there are the eyebrows, all the way up. “What are you doing here? Today’s not a patrol day. You’re almost an hour late now, and you’re out, what? Getting shot? By a mugger?” Tony leans to one side and crosses his arms, keeping one eyebrow raised. Great. He’s employing the Stance (Trademarked). “I’ve trained you better than this. Right? Yes, I have.”

“Ohhhh…” Peter says. He ignores most of what Tony said (he’s pretty good at this, it’s a skill). “Is it… Thursday?” He winces, because it’s then he realizes that yeah, it is, and Thursdays he goes to the tower for the actually real yes Ned it’s not just all patrol time internship, and yes he’ll get him into the tower one of these days, he promises, and Tony rolls his eyes. 

“Yeah, kiddo, it is.” He throws an annoyed glance over his shoulder at a pained groan coming from behind him— the mugger is lifting his head, blinking confusedly, and Peter shoots a few webs at him to keep him in place. The other guy, the muggee, is… gone, and Peter has no idea when that happened. Probably a good thing, though. 

Tony looks back to Peter. “Alright, come on— are you hurt? Put pressure on that,” Tony directs, and Peter looks down to his arm, which is stinging a little. Oh, yeah, the bullet grazed him a bit, he remembers belatedly. 

“Oh,” he says. “Don’t worry, that’s just a scratch—” he’s cut off by his own yelp as Tony unceremoniously grabs him with the suit, shoves him under an arm, and takes off into the air. It all happened pretty fast, the yelp was justified. The wind suddenly buffeting his face shocks him further into silence, and he obediently clamps his hand over the gash on his arm, resting the side of his head against the armor around him.)

Peter is not having a good time. Peter has not gotten enough sleep or food this week, that is apparent, he knows now, okay, he gets it, and now he’s getting a front row seat to why thats not good. 

Peter dodges the first kick, but he isn’t expecting the man to immediately spin and go for a second one. Seriously, who has this much energy at two am? Someone hopped up on adrenaline, Peter guesses, which Peter… decidedly isn’t. Peter is tired. He’s hopped up on sleepy. 

So the man’s boot connects head on with Peter’s jaw, crushing his lips into his teeth. His teeth wouldn’t break from that amount of force, but his lips don't stand a chance against them, and blood fills his mouth. Peter himself flies back— lets himself fly back, or the dude’s leg would’ve shattered on impact there— and his back hits the brick behind him. He’d braced for it— barely— so it doesn’t knock the wind out of him as much as it could’ve, but it’s still not great. His headache springs back to life in full force immediately, and he grits his teeth against a groan. What is this. What is he doing. Peter just wants to go home. 

Teeth still clenched, head pounding, mouth full of blood, Peter stands up. And comes face to barrel with a third gun. 

And Peter is just— he’s had enough. 

He grabs the gun out of the man’s hands. Just brute Spider-Man force wrestles it out of his grip, barrel pointed at the sky the entire time. He wrenches it away, expels the mag, ejects the loaded round, and then he turns to the man, looks him dead in the eyes, and he breaks it. 

The man stares at the two pieces of gun in Peter’s hands. His jaw is hanging open. Peter’s jaw hurts, from where the guy kicked him, and he tries not to grind his teeth in anger. His hands are gripping the pieces of the gun so tight that he can feel it deforming even further. With a sharp breath, he lets them fall to the ground. 

With a hysterical scream, the man lunges at him. 

(“Three guns,” Peter laments as Tony flies them over the city, tucked securely— if a bit uncomfortably— under his arm. “The guy had three guns, Mr. Stark, and a knife, what kind of freaky—”

“Hey,” Tony interrupts him, “stop getting distracted. Keep—”

“Yeah, yeah, I’m doing it,” Peter grumbles, and readjusts his grip on his arm, fingers clamped tight. It really is superficial, though, he knows Tony just freaks out about every little thing sometimes. It’s nice, that he cares. Peter likes it. 

And besides, he doesn’t think much can hurt worse than that parking garage Toomes had dropped on him. Or when he’d crashed along with the plane, into the fire and the sand. Sand was supposed to be soft, not hard as concrete. Or when Toomes had then kicked him around and slammed him into the ground, repeatedly. 

He grimaces. Yeah, that hadn’t been a good evening. Compared to that, he’s having the time of his life right now. He tells this to Tony, mumbling, and Tony replies with “oh, shit, whoops, that’s too high for you kid,” and Peter’s ears pop as they quickly lose altitude. He giggles, and hears Tony sigh, though he knows that was definitely something Tony thought he couldn’t hear. He doesn’t think Tony realizes how good his hearing is. That’s alright, it’s Peter’s own fault, he never really told him. Hasn’t told anyone except Ned, and now they eat lunch in the quiet robotics hallway instead of the cafeteria, which is really nice. 

Everything jolts, suddenly, and he makes a small noise, surprised. They’ve landed. Tony sets him down gently, and Peter only wobbles a little on his feet. 

Tony’s faceplate lifts, the rest of the suit disassembling as well, and Peter is greeted with a raised eyebrow. “You okay there, bambi?” Tony checks, before moving towards the door. They’re on the roof of the tower. Stark tower. Ex-avengers tower? Peter hasn’t really asked about that yet. “C’mon, kid,” Tony puts a gentle hand on his back like Peter will fall over if he doesn’t, and Peter doesn’t need that, definitely, but he also doesn’t tell Tony that, and instead lets the man steer him towards and through the doors. A few blinks, and he’s sat down on a stool in the kitchen. 

“Alright, lemme see how big of a band-aid you need.” Peter opens his mouth. “No, I don’t care if it’s just a scratch if it was made by a bullet. Stay put,” Tony effectively silences him, placing a grounding hand on his other shoulder as he passes by, and Peter sits while he rummages around and lets him look at his arm. “Healing’s freaky fast,” Tony mutters around the band-aid wrapper that’s in his mouth, for some reason. Peter doesn’t say that or it really was just a scratch, like Peter’d said, because he knows that wouldn’t go anywhere, and instead thinks about the mugging. Specifically the muggee. When had he disappeared? Had he actually passed out? Why had he even had a pink glittery purse? He hadn’t actually seemed the type for it, either. His girlfriend’s, maybe?

“Do you think that guy was mugging a mugger?” Peter asks. 

Tony frowns at him for a few moments. Inspects his face. Then— “How much sleep did you get? Have you been eating? How is it that you thought it was Tuesday, anyway?” And Peter tries to tamp down his smile, but he knows he’s unsuccessful from the way Tony’s own lips quirk up after a moment. “You better not blow anything up today, kid. I don’t know if I should trust you. But also, I’d be a massive hypocrite if I didn’t let you into the lab just ‘cause you’re a bit sleepy. Go grab a snack and we can go down there.” And with a gentle pat to the bandage he just applied (definitely excessive, Peter thinks as he glances down at it) he straightens up and starts wandering in the direction of the elevator. Peter slides off his stool, shoots a web at a pack of mnm’s lying across the counter, and makes his way after him. 

The lab is always warm, and he feels it flood through him as he thinks of Tony’s fretting and care that he isn’t quite as good at disguising from Peter as Peter thinks he thinks. Peter always leaves the tower with snacks crammed into every pocket Tony can manage, and, apparently, Tony will personally come find him and carry him home if he’s AWOL for even thirty minutes. (He shies away from the fact that he also pretty much saved Peter today. Peter would’ve been fine, really. He would’ve pulled himself together and been fine. He thinks. 

But he’s glad he didn’t have to find that out for certain, today. Because Tony was there, just like he’s here now, humming along to the (quiet, and Tony’s never blasted the music with Peter in the lab, not since Peter got a headache from it the very first time and didn’t even get the chance to say anything before Tony figured it out himself) music and laying down wires at Peter’s elbow.)

And if Peter falls asleep to Tony’s humming with his head in the guts of a malfunctioning IronMan suit, screwdriver in one hand and soldering iron in another, and wakes up later under three separate blankets on a couch with some sort of spider documentary playing on a TV in the background, well, it only makes him feel warmer.)

“Guns are expensive, you fucker,” The guy seethes as Peter’s head connects with the wall. Wow, he needs to get more sleep. This is embarrassing. He hadn’t expected the guy to keep going after Peter disarmed him for a third time. A third time! But also—

“Are you—” his head is slammed again, “the guy—” slam, “that tried to mug someone—” slam, “with three guns,” another slam, and now the guy lets go of his head and aims a kick at his face. Ha, mistake, idiot. Peter leans a hair away from it so that it misses completely and the guys toes connect with the brick with a crack that has even Peter wincing, then reaches a hand above his head and flips himself over to be fully on the wall, upside down. The guy stares up at him, panting and cursing, clutching his foot. “And still failed?” He finally finishes, his voice breathy and almost a laugh. He doesn’t laugh, though, because that would hurt his head. And his ribs. And he’s still— angry. At least the other guy— victim, muggee, haha, seems to have done the sensible thing and fled. Maybe he’s called the cops. Peter hopes not, because then he needs to get out of here before they show up. They’re not really on speaking terms right now, him and the cops. They started it, when they shot him so many times. When May—

The guy swipes at him with a knife, and Peter dodges by flipping forward off the wall and over the guy to land behind him. Is it really the same guy, then? He had a knife last time too. It’d been funny, actually, Peter remembers, because for some reason he’d pulled it out right before—

Somehow, the guy recovers and whips around much faster than Peter expected, and he absolutely eats the guys fist straight to his face, unsticking his feet from the ground at the last second and letting himself fly backwards from the hit, otherwise this guy’s entire arm would shatter, and Peter isn’t a fan of all the anguished screaming that normally causes. 

Peter really needs to web him up and leave. This is getting ridiculous, to the point that he thinks he’s actually going to try his best to sleep tonight, as much as he can. It hasn’t been working out very well the past few months, year, his dreams full of smoke and cries and dead, dead eyes, but he’ll try. 

His tired body slams into a fire escape. The impact is painful, but at this point he barely feels it. The paint on the metal is chipping, he notices, but enough is left for him to see the red, red like—

“Yeah, it is me, you annoying little twerp,” he hears as the guy approaches— spurred on seemingly by the confidence he gained from sending Peter flying. That won’t work out very well for him. “What,” the guy barks a laugh, loud and mean, “no Iron Man to save you this time?”

And, oh. 

That wasn’t very nice, Peter thinks. 

Because the fire escape, inches from his nose, is red like Tony’s armor, and Tony is gone, Tony Stark is dead, just like May, and it’s his fault, his fault, May, obviously, but also Tony—

Because Pepper had told him. She’d been trying to make him feel better, he thinks. When he’d stayed at their lake house, spent time with tiny little Morgan. She’d told him.

He did it for you. He brought everyone back for you. 

The guy rears back again for another punch, Peter sees it from the corner of his eye, feels it in the back of his mind. He rears back, and this time, Peter doesn’t move. Peter tenses his neck, his body, feeling angry, hollow, alone, vindictive, and he lets this poor sap punch Spider-Man.

The fist connects with the side of his head. Peter doesn’t move an inch. And, yeah, there’s the screaming. 

Slowly, he untenses his body. His ears are ringing, whether from the man crumpled on the ground clutching his wrist, rolling and wailing, or all the hits his head has taken in the past ten minutes, or maybe because he’s still stuck staring at the red, peeling paint in front of him. 

Instead of peeling, he imagines it scuffed, just like the suit had been on that battlefield, the red ruthlessly torn off to show the metal underneath. Streaks of it just gone, gone like Tony, gone like May, leaving Peter alone. Alone, to stand and tremble and stare at the peeling paint of the fire escape. 

Feeling numb, he tears his gaze away from it. He blinks at the crumpled, shaking form on the ground for a few seconds, then, mechanically, raises an arm up, up, and shoots out a web. 

The air that buffets his face does nothing to ease the ringing in his head. But it does, suddenly, harshly, remind him of a metal arm wrapped around his middle, the hold safe and secure, of a kind, caring voice that sometimes only his hearing could pick up, quiet, comforting words meant only for him, once he’d told Tony how well he could really hear. It reminds him of a dead man, and how much he’d loved, how much he’d cared. 

It reminds him that he is alone now. 

There is no Tony, just like there is no May. There is no Ned who can help patch him up, even though Peter hated it when Ned knew he was hurt, and no MJ who can grab his hand to hold even though he could crush her fingers with a single flinch, who can always offer up exactly what he needs even though she thinks she’s terrible at comforting people. 

And it’s a good thing, he reminds himself as he swings, flinging his body around a corner, from one building to the next and to the next. It’s a good thing that Ned and MJ aren’t here, can’t be here, they’re safe, far away from him. Because it’s Peter’s own fault that he’s alone now, it’s his own fault that Tony Stark is dead, that May is dead— because everything Spider-Man touches comes to ruin, and he knows this, it means Ned and MJ are safe, they’re far away and that’s a good thing. 

But he wishes it wasn’t. 

In the bitter, lonely, crumbling part of his mind— the part that let him stand there and take the punch that he knew would break the mugger’s arm, the part that screams and cries while everything else goes so, so quiet in the presence of them— he foolishly, selfishly, childishly wishes it wasn’t. 

In about ten minutes, when he reaches his shitty, cold, empty apartment, when he falls in through the window, when he patches himself up and crawls atop the mattress he calls his bed, he’ll banish these thoughts from his mind, because he knows it’s his own fault, he knows they’re far away and safe for it, he knows this is good. 

But it doesn’t feel good. The wind is cold and bitter and stinging against his face as he hurtles through the air, through the darkness of the night, up high where the light from the streets can’t fully reach, and his ears still ring, and he’s bitter and lonely and tired and all he sees is red, peeling, scratched and scuffed and red red paint, and all he feels is broken ribs where a strong, safe metal arm used to hold him, and all he hears is ringing and screaming and laughing—

And he lets himself hurt. 

~~~

(I’m the escape to something that’s worse

I am the shadow driving the hearse

What was it like to feel in love?

What was it like to feel in love?)

~~~

November 10th, 2025.

One year after the— ?

She’s missing something. 

She’s missing something really important. 

Like— possibly, life or death. 

But she doesn’t know what. 

The feeling, inexplicable, terrifying, follows and follows and follows her. She wakes up and it's there, laughing in her face, dropping its weight onto her shoulders, breathing down her spine, the cold, cold, cold spreading through her bones and piercing into her nervous system, lodging like a spear in her heart. She can’t handle it, she realizes early on in the day, her heart racing and entire body itching to scream, terror and pain and pure unadultered panic thrumming through her entire being. 

Something is happening— or was happening, or will happen, or maybe everything already has happened, the sky broken in pieces, but she doesn’t know what. 

She calls Ned, suddenly so, so glad he’d also come back to New York for fall break. She leaves her house, not even glancing at the breakfast her father put together (she’ll apologize later, but right now she can’t breathe) and autopilots her way onto his doorstep, the door opening in her face before she’s even knocked twice. 

If the phone call hadn’t, one look at her friend’s wide eyes, pale face and trembling hands tells her everything. 

(And absolutely nothing at all.)

~~~

(What was it like to feel in love?

What was it like to feel in love?)

~~~

The entire rest of the day is like that. It doesn’t abate. She’s glad she didn’t have anything planned that day, because she honestly thinks she wouldn’t have been able to stomach it. 

She feels like the slightest flick of a finger would send her into a sobbing, shaking mess. She can’t do this. She can’t. It’s going to— she needs to— it— she can’t—

And yet neither she nor Ned know what's going to what. Or what it is they need to do. What’s happening, what’s happened. They don’t— 

She sits there, on the floor of Ned's bedroom, hugging her knees, arms wound tight to try and stop the trembling. Ned isn’t much better. They don’t talk. They don’t eat. They don’t move. MJ doesn’t think they can, the eternal, all consuming fear coursing through her rooting her, tight and trembling, to the spot. 

(A quiet, quiet, distant part of her wonders when she’d gotten this close to Ned, that she’d run right here when faced with such absolute terror, let him see her like this, trembling and scared and near crying. How they even became friends in the first place.)

Something is missing. Something that echoes in the back of her mind. Something that sounds like laughter and something that she knows. 

I wouldn’t change a thing I did. 

She wants to scream. 

~~~

(What was it like to feel in love?

What was it like to feel—)

~~~

November 10th, 2025.

One year after the spell.

He’s at May’s gravestone.

It’s the only coherent thought he has, the only thing he knows. Everything else is— well—

It’s dark all around him. Past midnight. It’s snowing. The wind is blowing, hard, cold, buffeting his left side, and god, it’s probably really really really bad that he’s stopped shivering, he doesn’t have enough layers on, its too cold, he knows he can’t thermoregulate anymore—

He can’t remember coming here. He can’t remember most of anything from the past week, the week leading up to—

Shit.

He thinks he— he—

He remembers stumbling into the graveyard, the sky above him darkening, darkening, darkening into night, the night that’ll lead to the sunrise that’ll mark a year since the sky tore itself to pieces, a year since—

—since everyone—

—everyone—

—forgot.

He remembers finding May’s grave, overflowing with flowers and notes and gifts for her anniversary— he remembers collapsing behind it, back to the stone, shaking, shaking, shaking. The dam breaking, and he’d been sobbing, and sobbing, harsh and painful, deep in his chest, hurting his stomach, hurting his lungs, doubling over so low that his forehead pressed into the cold, wet grass. He couldn’t hear the cries tearing out of his throat through the roiling agony in his mind, but he knows he started begging at some point, after he’d run out of tears, once his sobs turned into harsh, shivering coughs. Weak, wavering words spilling from his lips and into the earth below him. Sinking down to where she lay, gone, six feet underneath him. 

“Please come back” and “I’m sorry” and “May, please, please, please, ple—” and “I’m so so so sorry.”

Eventually all that came out was silence. Eventually he stopped mouthing the pleas and apologies. Eventually his lips pressed back together, thin and cold and cracked and bleeding. Eventually, all he could do was breathe through his nose, hard, each breath like ice in his nostrils and flooding his lungs, a stab deep in his chest. 

He didn’t know how many more he could take. 

Slowly, he sits back up. Leans his head against the stone. Parts his mouth. 

He feels, suddenly— quiet. Everything around him has gone still. The sky above him is breaking apart. 

“May,” he says, not even feeling the breath blow past his lips. He’s so cold.

He’s so cold.

He closes his eyes. Feels the stone at his back. So cold.

“I— tried.” He tells her. His voice breaks. Suddenly, he isn’t cold anymore. He can’t feel his body. He curls sideways into the gravestone, reaches out a hand, settles it against the stone, and even though his eyes stay closed, even though he can’t feel a thing anymore, he knows his fingertips have settled just upon the carving of her name. 

He lets out a breath. 

and

he

falls.

~~~

(I have been here before 

to these cemetery doors

with my hands almost bleeding

my heart barely beating

Alone.

Is there room for me here?

Is there room in this place?

I can hear 

your breathing

softly, you’re screaming

to me.)

~~~

She’s looking at her drawing of Spider-Man. He’s sitting on the roof of Midtown High. On the baluster. He’s leaning forward. He’s laughing. 

Ned. Ned had moved, at some point, had reached inside his jacket and taken it out, had carefully unfolded it. He’d looked up at her, then gotten up from his bed and moved to sit next to her, their arms pressing together, and had laid the drawing out in front of them. 

And suddenly, like a stone settling deep within her gut, she knows. 

She says into the silence: “We have to find him.” 

Her voice is quiet, but it’s still jarring, a disruption to the stillness they’ve shared the past hours. Ned, beside her, blinks. 

“Spider-Man?” He asks. 

She looks at him then. Now that she knows, now that she understands, it’s easier to move through the molasses. Easier to breathe. Easier to be. 

“No,” she says. “Peter Parker.”

Ned blinks again. “Oh, well, great,” he says. “Yeah, that’s just perfect. Let’s track down the guy who we know has exactly one online trace. What, do we go sit on the Daily Bugle’s doorstep until he drops by?”

“No, Ned, that’s a terrible idea,” MJ rolls her eyes, even though she knows he was being sarcastic. “Besides, we need to find him, like… now.” 

“Right.” Ned swallows, and looks over to his school bag, against which leans his laptop. MJ follows his gaze. He doesn’t question her urgency, doesn’t question the whole— thing they’re doing here, tracking down some random guy that they don’t even know, and that more than anything else tells her that this is exactly what they’re meant to be doing. “Maybe we should search online again. It’s been months since I last checked, maybe there’s something new that could help us.”

MJ sighs. “I guess that’s as good a place to start as any,” she says, and pulls her own backpack towards her. 

There is nothing new. There are no records, no trace of Peter Parker online other than his name underneath the photos in the Bugle articles. Online, Peter Parker doesn’t exist. 

She tries to tamp down on the angry, burbling frustration. She clenches her hands into fists to stop them from trembling. Maybe she should drink some water. When was the last time she did that? It’s been hours of them sitting, and now nearly thirty minutes of them fruitlessly searching the web for what might as well be a ghost. 

Except even ghosts leave behind obituaries. 

And there are obituaries that they’ve found, with the names of Parker. Spanning from years and years ago to very recently. Some stood out to her— some scientists, a nurse, a few others. But none of the information is useful. 

She’s just about to open her mouth (it feels dry, she really probably should have some water) and suggest, jokingly, that maybe the Bugle idea wasn’t so bad, when Ned breaks the silence first with a slight gasp. 

“F.E.A.S.T.,” Ned breathes. MJ snaps her head up. 

“What?”

“F.E.A.S.T.,” Ned says again, and slaps his forehead. MJ reaches forward and pulls his hand off his face. “He volunteers there,” Ned continues, “god, we’re idiots! We know two things about him! We know he volunteers at F.E.A.S.T.!” He pulls his computer closer to himself— somehow— and rapidly types something into the search. MJ abandons her own google pages and shifts over to see Ned’s screen better. He’s on F.E.A.S.T.’s webpage, navigating to the staff directory. MJ watches as he scrolls through. 

They reach the end without finding anything. Ned sighs. Something fragile in MJ’s chest falters. She doesn’t know why, but she knows—

They’re running out of time. 

It’s what she’s been feeling all day. She knows now, she’s sure of it. A timer, a countdown. To what, she doesn’t know. Her eyes flick down to the time on Ned’s screen. It’s four in the morning, so it clearly wasn’t midnight. 

“Look again,” she says. There has to be something. 

Diligently, Ned starts to scroll back up, both of them searching for one name anxiously and with desperate concentration. 

MJ’s breath catches. She grabs Ned’s hand on the touchpad. “Wait— stop.”

Ned pauses, and MJ blinks at the name on the screen. It’s familiar. Why is it familiar? Not all of them have photos attached, but this one does. The woman in it seems relatively young, an incredibly bright smile on her face. 

She looks kind. 

And below her photo: May Parker. 

Silently, Ned opens a new search. 

This time, they get results. A few social media pages. A hospital. More volunteering and humanitarian positions. Even a mention in a Bugle article— apparently, she was an avid supporter of Spider-Man. 

An obituary. 

An obituary, and suddenly MJ knows. 

Ned clicks on it. 

Looking at the page, the page she’d seen before in her own search, MJ feels hollow, and like the floor has dropped out from under her. She didn’t think much of it the first time around, but now it snaps into place with such surety, such meaning— “Ned,” she breathes. “Look.” And she stretches out her hand, shaking faintly, to point at a date on the screen. 

Ned stills beside her. 

“She died a year ago,” he says, slowly. 

“Exactly a year ago. It’s the anniversary,” MJ stresses, and turns wide eyes to Ned. His widen in return. 

“We need to find out where she’s buried,” he says with sudden urgency, and pulls the computer back onto his lap. MJ lets him, and sits back against the desk behind her. She feels like she needs to catch her breath, though all she’s done all day is sit on Ned’s floor. She needs to think. 

Peter Parker. May Parker. They both volunteered at F.E.A.S.T. There must be a familial relation, though why there’s no online link between them, she can’t fathom. 

Her eyes drift down to the floor, and settle on her drawing. 

Peter Parker takes photos of Spider-Man. May Parker partnered with Spider-Man in a few humanitarian initiatives. There’s that connection, again. 

They’re so close, now. She can feel it. The itch in the back of her mind screams, and her breath stutters out of her chest with each exhale, and everything is so close to coming together, so close to finally, finally, making sense. 

With a snap, Ned shuts his laptop. 

“Come on,” he says, getting to his feet. “We can get there in, like, thirty minutes if we hurry.”

They hurry. Neither of them voices the fact that Peter Parker might not be there, that he could be at any other location meaningful to him and they’d never have a way of finding it out. That there might not even be any connection between the two Parkers. This is their best lead. And for some reason that she has never questioned, just like she hasn’t questioned anything else she normally would have over this past year, they need to find this guy. 

She remembers, suddenly, their first conversation. Remembers: expect disappointment, and you’ll never be disappointed. 

Her heart pounds against her ribs at the thought. She knows. Disappointment, now, is not an option. 

The subways are near empty. The streets, for New York at least, are quiet. The cemetery fence is climbable, though the metal bars are sharp and freezing under her fingers. The cemetery itself is fairly big, though, and they share a glance. They know what plot May Parker is buried in, but they don’t know their current relation to it, so with a shrug, they set off in search of a map. 

They do not end up needing the map, however, as only a few minutes into their search Ned trips over Peter Parker’s leg. 

Ned yelps and falls down face first to the ground. MJ laughs at him, all the way up until she shines her flashlight down at what he tripped over, which turns out to be a person, and then she. Doesn’t yelp. But only just. 

Instead her laugh dies in her throat, as quick as it came, leaving behind sick, cloying dread, and she drops to her knees, heedless of the wet grass and cold ground, reaches out a numb hand to tug at Ned, whose grumbles and complaints halt abruptly once he turns around. 

“Is that…” Ned breathes from beside her. MJ can’t answer. Her throat is locked tight, and all she can do is scramble forward, to where the person’s head should be, shining her light and digging past layers of clothes to get to his pulse. As she does so, the light illuminates his face, and her heart drops, though she doesn’t know why. She already knew. 

It’s Peter Parker, lying still and so, so cold on the ground. His eyes are closed. He hasn’t reacted to either of them at all. He’s lying half curled against a grave stone, and MJ studiously doesn’t look at the name carved into the rock. Instead, she looks at Peter Parker’s face. 

His face looks awful. He looks so much worse than the last time she saw him. When she’d served him coffee, and he’d tipped her five dollars. He’d never exactly looked the example of good health, but now…

This all registers in the few seconds it takes for MJ’s shaking fingers to reach his neck. The skin there is cooler than her fingers, and her stomach doesn’t unclench until she finally, finally, feels a pulse. 

It feels weak. But it’s there. 

She turns to Ned, who is looking at her with wide eyes. He has one hand wrapped around Peter Parker’s ankle. His face, in the harsh light of her flashlight, looks pale and frightened. She’s sure her expression matches his perfectly. She clenches her jaw. 

“Is he…” Ned asks, and MJ realizes she’s just been staring at him, breath coming quick, like she’d just been running. Her hand tightens around her flashlight. She struggles for a moment. 

“Alive,” she finally gets past the tightness of her throat. They need to—

They need to get him to a hospital. 

MJ stops. For some reason, that thought feels wrong. Why is that wrong? That’s what they need to do. Peter Parker could die. 

She recoils from that thought, too, and finds herself looking back at Ned. Ned, who is frowning like he’s trying to solve a puzzle. Their eyes meet again. 

“We can’t take him to a hospital,” Ned says. “Why can’t we take him to a hospital?” 

“I don’t…” she clenches her eyes shut. There’s something wrong. Something screams at her from the back of her mind. Something that’s been itching, itching, itching for months. “I don’t know,” she says, and her voice sounds scared to her own ears, thin and shaking. She needs to get herself together. Her other hand, that’s still on Peter Parker’s shoulder, fists in his jacket. 

They should take him to a hospital. 

Except she knows that they… can’t. 

“Your place is closer,” Ned says into the cold, dark silence. 

And that’s that. 

For some reason, no one stops two young adults lugging an unconscious third through a cemetery, then the streets, then the subway, then the streets again and up the stairs of MJ’s apartment complex. She’s suddenly so grateful that her father isn’t home— he leaves for work around four am, and it’s well after five now. Peter Parker is frighteningly light, and with both MJ and Ned taking the weight, they manage the journey and finally, finally, deposit him onto her bed. 

Which is an awful choice, because Peter Parker is covered in mud and dirt and grass, but it’s only a fleeting thought in the back of MJ’s mind as she drags out her space heater from the closet and sets it up on her desk, pointed at the bed. Ned hasn’t moved, hands hovering. Silently, slowly, he drops one down to touch the jacket Peter Parker is wearing. 

It’s Ned’s. 

Quietly, MJ sits down onto the rug on her floor. Her bed is low, so this puts her at eye level with Peter Parker’s thin, grimy, exhausted face. She watches his chest rise and fall, the movement almost imperceptible, and yet so, so familiar. She feels like she’s done this before. Echoing through her mind, there’s a light, joyful laugh. It belongs to Peter Parker. 

She’s never heard Peter Parker laugh. 

After a while, Ned releases the jacket, and steps back. He sits down next to her. Breathes out a quiet sigh, and settles his gaze on the unconscious form before them. 

And they wait. 

~~~

(Morning comes quick

Bringing tragic goodbyes

But nothing ever really dies

-

-

-

Right?)

~~~

“MJ,” is what Peter Parker says upon waking up. Not– really says, per se, more like a breath, an exhale, subconscious, and when she looks over he hasn’t even opened his eyes. 

As she watches, they blink open, and settle on her ceiling. Immediately, his brows pull together into a frown, and even that small motion, MJ thinks, looks exhausted and pained. But her heart thrums, because, because—

Peter Parker moves, then, his frown deepening, his fingers splaying out at his side and then curling into her bed, gripping the blanket. He blinks around, taking in the room he’s in, and somehow, impossibly, frowns even harder. 

Then, suddenly, he stiffens, and that’s all the warning they get before he lurches up into a sitting position, and then scrambles to put the wall at his back. He winces, then, almost as an afterthought, and his hand drifts to hug his midsection loosely as he blinks and frowns and blinks some more. It only takes a few seconds for recognition to wash over his features, and then, inevitably, his gaze drifts down to them. 

He stares at them. He looks exhausted and confused, and considering they did technically kidnap him, and waking up in some strangers room with no idea how you got there and finding said strangers sitting criss cross on the floor and watching you has got to be all kinds of unsettling, MJ stays silent and gives him the time he needs, even though her breaths tremble, and she feels like she’s going to come apart at the seams if she doesn’t get answers now. But, finally, brow furrowed, eyes still a little hazy and confused, (they should probably get some food into him), he blinks a final time and asks, incredulously: “Ned?”

Then his eyes drift over to hers. 

MJ looks at Peter Parker. She looks and looks and looks, and she hears Ned’s breath catch beside her.

“Expect disappointment” rings in her head, dull and hollow, and she blinks.

I wouldn’t change a thing I did.

“Who the hell are you,” she says, and it comes out as a whisper, barely a breath, but for some reason, she’s sure he’ll hear her.

He blinks down at her. He looks pained, from more than just whatever injuries she now suspects he has. MJ bites her lip.

“I can’t tell you,” he says, then, matching her volume, but there’s a desperate, terrified edge to his voice. “I can’t—”

“Wrong answer,” she says, her voice only a bit stronger. She tries to keep it from shaking, and doesn’t know if she succeeds. “Peter Parker,” she swallows, still looking at him. He isn’t returning the favor anymore, eyes squeezed shut so tight it looks painful, head bowed. His fists are clenched in her blanket. “Who—”

She breaks off, her chest tight, arms trembling. The room is filled with nothing but their breathing, her’s shaking, Peter’s shallow, and Ned’s—

“He’s Spider-Man,” Ned says. His voice rings hollow and sure. 

MJ starts to bite out a reply, because she is tired of all this, goddamnit, when Ned’s words actually register.

“What?” She says, hand scrabbling behind her to find purchase on the floor. The world feels like it’s tilting, and she doesn’t know if it’s from the whiplash of Ned’s words, or because her brain says it’s true. Her chest feels tight, and something buzzes along her skin. She shakes her head sharply. 

“You’re Spider-Man,” Ned says again, this time directed at Peter, and MJ forces her gaze back to him from where it had snapped disbelievingly to Ned. “Aren’t you?” Ned prods, and Peter seems frozen in place, eyes bruised and wide and weary, flitting between Ned and MJ. His body is taut, ready to bolt. MJ tenses, prepared to go after him if he does, but instead, after an excruciatingly long moment of hard, ringing silence—

Peter Parker nods. 

And Ned is immediately saying something, and so is Peter, but MJ closes her eyes against the violently spinning world and breathes in through her nose, long, and holds it, holds it. She’s never felt more lost in her life, nothing is making sense, the world around her is tilting, the sky above tearing into pieces, she just wants everything to stop, goddamnit, and she still can’t remember—

But she thinks she— or some part of her— understands.

Because there’s an unfinished drawing of Spider-Man still in her room and she doesn’t expect disappointment anymore and she’s going to MIT, and there’s a laugh in the back of her mind, light, joyfull, always echoing—

She opens her eyes, and looks at Peter. They’re both quiet now, Ned and Peter, and they’re looking back at her, and she doesn’t know how long they have been, but she breathes in, and looks at Peter Parker.

In a single moment, the itch in her brain quiets. The tension and uncertainty in her body dissipates, almost like a physical thing, whisked away into the universe. The world around her clicks back into place, and she says, words quiet, a whisper, but still as sure as they’ve ever been—

“I wouldn’t change a thing I did.”

Outside, the sun rises. 

~~~

(So we sing of the moon, and the face that it hides

shining just half of its truth to our skies

but bring me the sun that gives it all its light

I don’t want to just 

wait

to

die

-

-

-

Alright?)