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MJ sits in the tanker alone, looking around.
This was less than ideal, to put it mildly. She has no idea why Spider-Man could possibly want to keep her safe but she’s grateful, nonetheless. Some supervillain is out to get her for whatever reason and while she wants to text Adel and let him know that she’s okay, she’s also kind of glad that he isn’t around.
There’s a wave of shame that hits her at that, wincing despite no one being around her to see it. Adel was a good guy, great even. It’s not his fault that she’s “hard to know” or “guarded” or whatever else that they each threw around to explain why and how she didn’t let people in.
She wishes there was some big explanation or reason, something to help her understand why she kept everyone– save for Ned– at an arm’s length away. She shakes her head, remembering what her grandmother taught her as she stands.
Expect disappointment.
It was a motto, a mantra, a long line of Watson women learning the hard way time and time again what happened when you allowed yourself to get too close, too comfortable, too soon.
Adel might not understand but it sounds like Spider-Man might, another rush of empathy towards him and the clear hurt he still seems to carry from the person that he had let go.
He still had someone at least, glad that Frank had left when he did. She half-expected him to argue about it with her but that he left so quickly tells her that maybe there was a little more soft underneath that shell than he’d admit.
MJ could relate.
She walks around the tanker again, mindful of his privacy because she can at least give him that– wondering if there was some way to make herself useful. For all the times she’s been saved by Spider-Man in her life, there’s not much she’s really done to help– not in the way that would make any kind of sense, thinking back to that bridge in London and her ill-fated attempt at wielding a mace.
She sees some trash on the floor, bending down to pick it up. As she does, she catches sight of the scribbles– some formulas, some schematics of prior versions of the inhibitor he’d made– looking around for a trash when she sees another paper half crumpled.
She goes to grab it only to stop– seeing MJ on one edge.
Trash forgotten, MJ sets it down and grabs the paper– a letter– opening it up and reading words that cause her stomach to drop.
Hi, my name is Peter Parker, and you don’t remember me but I have something to tell you…
MJ reads the letter. Once. Twice, and again.
She finally sits, holding the letter still in her hands with a mix of emotions flooding through her before landing on one.
What the fuck?
“I don’t love you. I’m sorry. But I don’t even know you.”
MJ says nothing at first, as they go back and forth with the Lego. Ned, she knows, is over the moon. He’s doing a great job trying to keep it together, all things considered. She knows he’s going to freak the fuck out when Spider-Man finally leaves– all the years of hearing chatter about the Spidey Tracker and all his theories thinking Flash or Mr. Harrington were actually behind the mask being that much more funny– and also, upsetting.
There’s an anger there that if she allowed it, could take root– eyes looking up to see Spider-Man– Peter Parker– laughing while still in the mask.
She feels the anger, holds it, then breathes through it– thinking of the ways that she’s held back and held off from people over the years. She meant it when she said she didn’t love him, that she doesn’t know him– anger at someone thinking they could make that choice for her with still an understanding of the why. She doesn’t have to accept it, nor does she feel like she has to punish him for it– sketching one of his curls on her notepad as if he was sitting here with the three of them, unmasked and fully comfortable.
There’s a part of her that wonders if they ever did this, before– if the laughter and ease between the three of them was because of some remnant that was leftover or maybe just because of who Ned is. MJ thinks of all the different things that Ned used to describe, of his insistence on chronicling their lives in colleges to send out into the internet ether without a clear reason for why. MJ might not remember Peter Parker but she wonders if Ned does– looking between the two of them with a smile on her face.
“You should tell him.”
“What the fuck was that?” Ned asks, forehead sweating as MJ shakes– looking around at their apartment. Everything’s the same, nothing’s changed but it was terrifying– like she was being frozen in place and completely out of control, fully aware. It was different from before, the blackness and total emptiness of being controlled versus this– being fully aware and unable to do a thing about it.
She breathes, phone buzzing as she reaches for it.
“Hello?”
“Are you okay? Did you feel that?” She hears Adel say on the other line, blowing air out of her mouth as she nods– Ned already getting his phone out to no doubt check the Spidey Tracker and see what was going on.
“Yeah, I’m fine. We’re fine, are you?”
“Yeah, I am I just– shit. That was fucked.”
“Yeah it was,” she says shakily, sitting down on the couch.
“I’m coming over.”
“Okay,” she says, though not really paying attention.
“Don’t go anywhere, okay?”
“Okay,” she repeats but she feels a thousand miles away, looking out the window and despite everything, wondering.
Is he okay?
MJ taps her fingers against the sketch pad, standing at the foot of the hospital bed.
She only has a few seconds before someone has their say and kicks her out. The entire wing is under guard– if it hadn’t been for Frank cursing up a storm, she knows she wouldn’t have had the chance to be here.
“I brought you something,” she says, looking on. He’s hooked up to a machine to help him breathe and looks like shit– though considering the alternative, MJ can be glad for this.
She’s conflicted in a way she can’t explain, thinking back to her conversation with Adel when he finally made it over– not quite guilty, but more certain– seeing the hurt expression on his face.
“But why? Why now?”
“I just… I have some things I have to figure out.”
It hadn’t been satisfying for him and if she was honest, it wasn’t for her. She still felt it– the anger, the annoyance, but also the lack– she doesn’t remember Peter Parker nor what he used to mean to her, the girl that he used to know. Maybe that MJ would have had a different response. Maybe that MJ would know more of what this means, what he means.
All MJ knows is how she feels now– having lived her life trusting in herself, in her gut, following what feels right, even if it doesn’t make sense.
She doesn’t see something between them– at least not what he clearly still seemed to. But she knows it’s unfair to Adel, to herself, to pretend like she’s not a little curious to figure it out.
She taps her finger against the notepad, ripping off the sketch and laying it beside the cards.
“You better wake up,” she says softly, stepping back.
“We need to talk.”
MJ fiddles with the necklace, looking out over the sunset.
Peter’s out of the hospital– or so she guesses, laughing at the footage that she’d seen of “Spider-Man” waving out the hospital.
She hasn’t heard from him, but she doesn’t expect to. If she’s honest with herself, she’s not sure if she wants to.
The cool feel of the necklace against her fingers sits with her, the sun’s rays casting shadows over the city as she smiles– thinking not just of the past, but of the future.
It would be easy, she thinks, to imagine that this– that he– was the reason she could never let anyone get close but even that feels incomplete.
Knowing that he knew her, that there was a whole version of herself who had lived and loved and known things that are unreachable to her now– it should fill her with more anger or hurt, frustration. She won’t pretend that’s still not there, but it’s superseded with something different and far more powerful.
Hope.
For herself, for her future, for knowing more of who she is in a way she hadn’t thought possible.
She hopes that Peter Parker reaches out to Ned. He deserves the truth.
Whatever he does with it, that’s up to him.
Fingers wrapped around her necklace, eyes out to the horizon–
MJ’s thankful beyond words that now- finally– she gets that choice too.