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Michelle didn’t really know what to think of Peter.
He seemed like a pretty cool guy all things considered; that had been her first impression of him back when they were talking at Frank’s hideout. The guy was obviously a good person – it’s not like you’d get your ass beat fighting crime for the love of it – but he was also kind. And witty. The little laughs he’d let out during their back and forth had pulled the corners of her mouth up into a smile. Likeminded without being overly similar to her.
All in all, he seemed like the type of person she could’ve fallen for.
At some point, she must have done.
But the way he looked at her sometimes, like he was seeing through skin and muscle, between her ribs, left her feeling like a stranger in her own body.
As things were, it was weird.
The history between them, simultaneously all too much and non-existent, wasn’t quite the elephant in the room it had been initially. In the few hang outs they’d shared between the three of them at her and Ned’s apartments over the past few weeks, a new norm had made itself known – and with it, a lot of the awkwardness that had coloured their earlier interactions had eased.
Still though, the thoughts would come to her after he left. Playing his laugh in her head and prompting her to ponder the things that could’ve been. That had been. And yet the bittersweet look that occasionally reflected in his eyes when he gazed at her was a consistent reminder of everything that wasn’t.
Ned, on the other hand, was a lot less conflicted about things.
“Dude, does that mean you were there for that field trip in seventh grade when Flash pulled the fire alarm?”
“Yep,” Peter answered, popping the ‘p’ while fiddling with the inner tech of his mask. “He, uh, actually blamed it on me. I was stuck in detention for like a week.”
“No way! I wondered why he didn’t get in trouble for that! He was bragging about it for like a month.”
It hadn’t taken long after the whole Jean Grey incident for Peter to decide to tell Ned the truth. It had honestly come as a relief to her – and not just because she was getting tired of Ned’s constant worrying about whether or not Spider-Man was recovering fine after everything.
Eventually she’d relented enough to show him the single ‘hes fine’ message she’d managed to pry out of Frank Castle. That had then opened up a whole other can of worms.
Spider-Man is friends with The Punisher?
How did you meet him?
Was he on the train platform too?
Can you give me his number? Can you give me Spider-Man’s number???
Safe to say she was more than happy when Ned had arrived home one day with Peter in tow, who in turn seemed more than happy to be answering his questions. Ned’s reaction to the Spider-Man stuff had been everything she’d expected.
What she hadn’t expected though, was Ned’s reaction to the Peter Parker stuff.
“It’s so crazy!” Ned had ranted, a mile a minute, “It’s not like I can remember but it feels right you know? Like it’s muscle memory or something and now everything makes total sense. Like when I look at you and think ‘Peter’ and it’s like yeah that’s Peter duh, but then I try to think of where that’s coming from, and I can’t fill the gap until you point something out. I know you without remembering you, you know?”
“I don’t,” Peter grinned, “I have no idea, dude.”
He smiled a lot, she’d noticed, when he spoke to Ned. Tight, awkward smiles from their first ‘meeting’ had given way to easy laughter and wide grins. It was easy to see why they’d apparently been best friends, and sure enough they seemed to be slipping right back into those roles like they’d never left.
Michelle was not jealous.
She couldn’t figure out why things were different for her. She knew the memories were missing. She knew who was missing. But try as she might, she couldn’t piece together the shape of the hole those memories left behind. Even when he was sitting right in front of her.
On this particular evening they were gathered around the coffee table while Ned thought up more school memories to ask Peter about. It was far from the first time they’d hung out like that recently; Peter with a tool in hand, checking his gear before going out to patrol, with Michelle and Ned (mostly the latter) content to make conversation and throw questions his way.
For the most part they’d covered mostly safe ground so far – Peter had mentioned before that she and him hadn’t really gotten close until their sophomore year. She never knew where the conversation would head with Ned at the helm though.
“Okay what about the trip in freshman year to that bioengineering company?” Ned continued with his typical giddy enthusiasm. “You know where we ended up going home early? I can’t remember them ever telling us why–”
“Yeah, that makes sense.” Peter ran a hand through his hair with a weary chuckle. “They cancelled the rest of it when I collapsed.”
Michelle raised an eyebrow in concern. “Were you okay?”
The look Peter shot her was nothing short of enigmatic. “After a couple days, yeah. Never better actually. I had to try to explain to May why I suddenly didn’t need my glasses any more though.”
As Ned jumped onto Peter’s apparent origin story with the enthusiasm of a nerd at Comic Con, Michelle let her mind wander to May Parker. Someone she did remember. Not for the first time since Peter had brought her up several weeks ago, she tried to piece together how she’d actually known the woman, but the answer wouldn’t come. Even when she knew what it should be.
After a long detour in the conversation, Ned was finally satisfied enough to lay back against the couch with a sigh. “That’s gotta be the craziest field trip ever dude…”
She replied before thinking. “Really? Crazier than Europe?”
As soon as the words had left her mouth, she regretted them. Unfortunately, Ned rose to the question as expected.
“Oh yeah! I mean, obviously you were there for all of that, Peter, what with the Night Monkey stuff and the London attack. I guess you didn’t really have any time for normal trip stuff.”
Peter’s eyes flickered to her for a moment that was so brief she wasn’t sure if she’d imagined it.
“Yeah…” He settled on, less energetic than he’d been before. “Yeah, there wasn’t a whole lot of time for anything else.”
“That’s a shame,” Ned continued, evidently not picking up on the change in tone, “Like, nearly dying aside, it was pretty fun visiting a bunch of places. Oh! Wait a sec…”
After a few moments of foraging in his room he came back into the living room with a victorious smile and a handful of printed photos held aloft.
When they looked through them, they were just as Michelle remembered them. It had been a chaotic trip for sure, but there had still been some moments of peace. She smiled at a selfie of her and Ned, the Vltava River visible behind them and a dash of Nutella dotted on Ned’s nose from the chimney cake he’d just finished. “This one’s my favourite.”
Peter leaned across to see and seemed to inwardly cringe. He held himself awkwardly for a moment, seemingly debating something to himself before confessing: “I was actually there for that.”
“Like on the bridge with us?” Ned asked.
Peter shook his head. “No, like, I was actually there.” He pointed to the middle of the image, the slight gap between Michelle and Ned that had never registered as unusual until now. “I guess the spell took me out…”
“No way, dude!” Ned grabbed the photo out of Michelle’s hand, holding up to his face with intense scrutiny. “You’re totally right, it’s like I can basically picture it. That’s insane.” Ned paused before turning to Peter accusingly. “Dude, why didn’t you tell me I had Nutella on my nose?”
“Hey, MJ didn’t either!”
“Yeah, but I’d expect that from her!”
The two continued to bicker good naturedly. Michelle took her chance to grab the picture back out of Ned’s hand, studying it once more. She remembered that moment. She remembered standing on the Charles Bridge. She remembered Ned next to her, commenting on the sheer volume of bird poop decorating the statues. She remembered looking out across the river before posing for the camera in Ned’s hand. She remembered looking at the picture in his camera roll and laughing at Ned’s outrage as he rubbed at his nose. She remembered smiling at–
nothing.
She smiled at no one.
*
Hours later, Peter had long since left to break up a robbery, Ned was fast asleep if the snoring she could hear through the wall was any indication, and she was still stuck thinking about that stupid photo.
It wasn’t just that picture itself, either.
She sat scrolling through her camera roll, scrutinising every pre-college image like she could decode which weird empty spaces were the result of poor coordination and framing or which were hidden traces of a missing memory.
Some felt obvious in retrospect – she may not be great at taking photos, but she definitely wasn’t vain enough to have that many poorly shot selfies of just herself.
Even discounting the ones she wasn’t fully sure about; there were enough in her gallery to make her think about how that must have felt for Peter. Years of friendships, relationships, memories all gone from any physical or digital record. The only photos of his loved ones being their smiling faces oblivious to his own absence. A ghost in his own history. A spectator to his memories.
She started at the Charles Bridge photo for a moment before reaching over to pick up a pencil.
Ned wouldn’t miss one picture, she figured. And if he did, he could always print it again.
It wasn’t until after she was finished that she realised she hadn’t once thought about needing a reference while drawing him.
*
A week passed before she was able to catch Peter alone after Ned left early for an interview. He still had an hour to spare before he needed to be there, but Ned claimed he didn’t want anything unexpected to hold him up on the way there.
He emphatically ignored her when she pointed out that the location was only a fifteen minute walk away.
With a final quick thanks for helping him prepare, Ned was out the door and just the two of them remained.
It was the first time Peter and herself had been left alone since then. If she hadn’t been waiting for a chance to talk to him, she probably would’ve been dreading it.
“Hey,” she started, cursing herself when it didn’t come out as casual as he’d wanted it to. Peter looked up at her from where he’d started packing away his things.
“So, uh. We were talking before about the Prague trip and those photos and I…” She cleared her throat. “I mean, it kinda sucks you don’t have any photos with us from back then. Even if we don’t remember you being there… it still happened and you – it’s kinda cruel that–”
Wide doe eyes were burning a hole into hers as she struggled to find her words. Eventually she gave up and handed the photo over, taking care not to smudge her additions.
“I just thought it might be nice,” She managed, “For you to have something to capture those memories. At least a bit.”
She watched his face as he took it from her. She saw him register the familiar photo, before his eyes widened at the change she’d made.
The gap that had previously existed between her and Ned was now taken up by carefully pencilled lines on a white painted silhouette. It was more detailed than her typical sketches, a level of cares taken in etching out the waves of his hair, the crease in his eyes, the lines of his smile, the checkered pattern of his shirt.
The stark white of the figure stood out against the rest of the image and a self-critical part of her cringe at the contrast. That part fell quiet, however, when the hands holding the picture started to tremble.
She looked back up with a jolt, catching sight of watery eyes before a sleeve came up to rub the evidence away. A delicate smile was painted on Peter’s face as he lowered his arm.
“Thanks, MJ.” Her heart gave a kick at the sincerity in his gaze as he met hers. “It’s perfect.”
She fiddled with the broken dahlia necklace in her pocket.
“No problem.”
*
When Peter got home that evening, he was fighting a smile that was near a mile wide.
The conversation he’d had with MJ was playing on loop in his mind. The sentiment of her gift. The soft look in her eyes when she’d given it to him.
He knew it didn’t mean what he wanted it to mean – and that was okay. He’d accepted that this was the way things were gonna be from now on. Even when Ned had told him that she’d broken up with her boyfriend, he’d tried to keep his thoughts on the matter contained.
He didn’t need her to be his girlfriend. Just having her back in his life as a friend was more than he’d ever hoped for over the past few years and he wasn’t about to take that for granted.
Sure, the pain was still there. The heartbreak was years old at that point and still freshly stinging from being ripped open anew at the words ‘I don’t love you’.
But the warmth in his heart when he hung out with her and Ned was worth the hurt.
And maybe things were slowly starting to hurt just a little less.
He rummaged through some boxes before he managed to find a frame that wasn’t in use. He’d been gutted when the photo that had been in there previously, a shot of him and Tony in the lab, had been ruined with water damage. But at least he’d learnt his lesson on keeping things away from the open window when it rained. It was probably for the better, though it hurt him to admit. Peter Parker had no business having a framed photo of Iron Man chilling in a private lab.
Shaking his head he took care to place the new photo in the frame; glad it happened to be the right size.
He tilted the end result in his hand, admiring the strokes of the pencil still visible behind the glass. The picture felt complete in a way it hadn’t when he’d seen it again the week prior, the familiarity of the scene prodding at something in the back of his mind before the thought occurred to him.
He frowned.
How had MJ known what outfit he’d worn that day in Prague?