Chapter Text
i.
It’s usually best to approach these things scientifically.
Premise: Nothing is impossible.
Parameter: Not in a cheery way, but in a way that the world is merely a framework of unknown variables, of which there are infinite. To be conceived of requires an astounding series of interconnected understandings and sequences of enlightenment that, if you’re very lucky, may allow enough clarity for conclusion. Realistically, anything worth discovering at all is likely to be abductive at best.
In summary: The knowledge recognized as most pioneering goes to the whacko with the most compelling guess. Is it better to be right? Or is it better to tell the best story?
In application: MIT does not, as it turns out, equip you with the fortitude against crackpot theories. It actually makes you more open to them. Except when a crackpot has a crackpot theory, theirs is based in faith that it’s true. The average MIT grad’s faith in their crackpot theories is that they’re so smart they’ll find evidence of anything.
In the present: Michelle Jones is tragically open to the idea that a wizard placed a spell on the entire world of which she had approximately a 3 in 8.3 billion chance of being materially affected and…she was. Michelle Jones, Ned Leeds, and Peter Parker are 3 in 8.3 billion jackpot losers. Or at least Spider-Man says so.
In evaluation: The evidence is so embarrassingly thin. Calling it abductive is an insult to reasoning itself. It’s crackpot magic theories from a mutant in blue and red underpants.
In conclusion: Sure. Why not.
ii.
mj: ditch work. now.
ned: done
mj: i do appreciate your blind loyalty
ned: eyes wide open
mj: we’re going to the hospital
mj: now.
ned: i just got food :(
ned: wait are you okay
mj: swell. spiderman got shot. not looking awesome.
ned: do not mess with me. do not jest.
mj: are you coming or not
ned: holy shit you’re serious. is he dead?? oh my god oh my god
mj: idr is spiderman one of the immortal ones? he’ll be fine probably.
ned: but i wont be!!!
mj: i can live with that.
ned: spiderman :(
iii.
Frank bars the door with his entire body and then some. His aura feels tangibly don’t you dare. Ned babbles and gestures and holds out a bag of takeout from the Thai place around the corner and kind of lies that they’re Spiderman’s friends. It’s been alleged. Quite convincingly. The only problem is…they aren’t. Ned doesn’t even know who’s in that room and Michelle only knows the name of the person in that room.
Call her what you will, but an opportunity has presented itself. There are answers to be gleaned here. Research to be conducted. Though she’d like to dismiss Peter’s claims about them, she felt it when she saw the news. She felt affected. Dangling Ned over the fire isn’t her finest friendship moment, but if this hurts him as much as it hurts her then they’ve got an issue. A Peter Parker-sized issue.
Lo and behold, Ned starts acting suspiciously like a best friend would. She observes this breakdown sympathetically, sure, but also with keen interest. It’s logged away carefully.
Frank gives her a hard look over Ned’s shoulder. Although she’s never seen a look from him that wasn’t hard so it might just be neutral. He looks between her and Ned’s head questioningly. MJ realizes he does trust her, he just doesn’t trust Ned. And she realizes that this is her call.
She swallows. She thinks. She decides not to think. She nods.
Frank gives a little regretful tilt of his chin like, on your head be it.
And yeah, duh. Who else’s head would it be. Nobody else knows who the hell this guy is except her. Whatever happens from this point on is either Peter’s fault or hers. Can’t really come from anyone else. She super did not sign up for this.
Maybe he’ll die, her brain says for some reason. Not helpful.
Frank slides away from the door with such gravitas, she’d swear she can hear it like the grind of rock on rock as a tomb opens. Ned’s eyes light up and he reaches for the handle, but Michelle’s hand shoots out and grabs his wrist before he can fling the door open.
“Hey,” she says, but realizes she doesn’t know what else to say. Ned’s looking at her and she has no idea how to explain anything. Or if she should. Or if there’s anything to explain at all.
Super did not sign up for this.
She decides on, “His mask is gonna be off. You better not tell anyone. You take that shit to your grave, you hear me?”
Ned gives her an offended look. “What do you take me for?”
“On occasion, an overeager fanboy. Well-intentioned, but excitable.”
He must really want to go in, because he doesn’t pick a fight. “To my grave,” he says and makes some weird cross motion over his heart.
Good enough.
She pushes the door open and lets Ned rush in first. He immediately grabs the bed’s handrail and stares openly down at…some guy. And Michelle thinks, yep. That sure is that guy. The one she met like a day ago. The one Ned’s never met. And he looks super fucked up.
After Ned stares at Peter’s face for a long, awkward moment, he looks slowly back at Michelle. “I have no idea who this is,” he says gravely.
She rolls her eyes and comes closer to the bed. Honestly, she doesn’t really want to. Her eyes wander to pretty much anything that isn’t Peter. Hospitals are creepy. And visiting someone who’s passed out is probably also creepy. Especially a stranger.
“What happened?” Ned asks.
Frank’s voice is like having your ears scraped along asphalt. Michelle’s pretty sure he fakes it. “Took a .308 to the chest. Then the .308 did what .308s do. Not something you want getting in your rib cage. Tend to ricochet around in there a bit.” He must mistake Ned’s look of horror for confusion or further interest. So for charm he adds, “Turns your heart and lungs to chuck.”
Michelle decides it’s rude to avoid Peter entirely and finally looks down at the bed. “Yikes,” she says out loud for some reason. She doesn’t really know what’s normal to say. Peter does kind of look like chuck, in that he looks like someone might’ve put him through a meat grinder. It’s not been a full two days yet, but somehow his bruising seems in the end stages. His eye sockets are that kind of black-green bleed that looks bad, but usually means the tail-end of it. The cuts are pinched and mending too. Superhero stuff, she guesses. Weirdos.
Whatever state his organs are in is his own business. Ned’s gaping like he can tell anyhow.
Since she can do it without returned observation, Michelle takes the moment to stare hard at Peter’s features and try and will memory by sheer force of conviction. Which is kind of embarrassing, because it means she really does believe there’s something there to dredge up. She really believes the spider-guy and his wizard theories. She really does wonder if she loved him until a magic spell zapped the world’s collective memories of him. Isn’t that messed up?
“Who is this guy?” Ned asks Frank.
Frank shrugs irritably. “How the hell should I know?”
Which is interesting. Michelle kind of assumed Spider-Man’s superfriends all traded names like baseball cards. Socially, they’re probably the only ones who could ever understand each other on a personal level. But then again, she’s not really sure how two egos could ever recognize anything as peer. She always kind of imagined you had to be a bit of a wad to have a costume and be better than everyone else.
It’s kind of hard to imagine Peter’s a wad.
“He looks like a kid,” Ned says with some degree of wonder.
“He looks like a fucking nerd,” Frank says.
Frank is easy to imagine as a wad.
Michelle realizes they’re both looking at her. And then she realizes that she’s probably the only person on this planet right now who knows that Spider-Man is Peter Parker and that there’s even a Peter Parker to exist at all. Well, it’s not that she knows it. It’s just that she was told it. The weight of their stares is more discomfort than she cares to put up with for a stranger. If Peter Parker doesn’t exist anyways, she figures it’s fine to offer it.
“He said his name’s Peter,” she says with a shrug. “Parker. Peter Parker.”
“Ooooh,” Ned says sagely and nods. Silence holds them for a minute. “I still have no idea who that is.”
“Me neither,” Michelle says and presses her lips together.
Frank is staring distrustfully at her and she figures that’s fair. Spider-Man had tried to cash in a life-saving favor just to babysit some girl for a day and now that girl’s saying she doesn’t even know the guy. Frank has a kind of violent, dog-loyalty to him. She’s a little worried she’s going to get bit.
“I don’t know him,” she enunciates slowly so Frank can dog-hear it. “He said nobody knows him. The world’s memories of Peter Parker were completely wiped out four years ago by a fucking wizard or something. I don’t know. He knew me before. I don’t know him. Either he’s lying and that’s his fault. Or he’s not lying and that’s a wizard’s fault. Neither of these scenarios is my fault.”
Frank looks like he’s having an allergic reaction when he echoes, “Wizard?”
Ned looks like he’s having one of the best days of his life when he echoes, “Wizard!”
Michelle feels like she’s having one of the most medium days of her life and says nothing.
“Wait, did I know Spider-Man? Uh, Peter. Did I know Peter?”
Michelle raises her brows and gestures widely. “Allegedly,” she says with some exasperation.
“Did I?” Frank asks but sounds more disgusted by the possibility.
“Guy, I have no idea who you even are,” Michelle says and turns to rifle through her bag. “Unless you were hanging out with high school nerds four years ago, I think you’re marked safe.” She has to dump a few things on the floor to locate the sketchbook crammed inside, but when she does, she’s able to flip to the drawing of Ned and Peter in their living room and hold it up for him. “What does that look like?” She asks.
“Me. And Spider-Man. Uh, Peter.”
“It’s not a quiz, genius. I know who’s in the drawing.” She won’t say it if Ned doesn’t see it. She won’t say that when she drew them the other day, she looked at the two of them talking and hanging out and it didn’t look like strangers. It didn’t look like polite smalltalk and entertaining company. She drew them and thought, these guys look like best friends.
Ned starts crying.
Frank scoffs.
“Why are you crying?” Michelle asks with some alarm.
“I don’t know,” Ned says, also alarmed. “What the hell?” He pats at his face, then holds his palms out to look at the way they’re wet. “I feel weird.”
“Shit,” Michelle says and looks down at Peter again. She doesn’t know him. “Shit,” she says again, because they obviously do. “Goddamnit,” she says, because now she’s responsible for this random guy’s feelings. “Fucking wizards,” she says, because fucking wizards.
“What a load of shit,” Frank says, because it really is a load of shit.
“I need a tissue,” Ned says, because he definitely needs a tissue.
“We should go,” Michelle says quickly. “Thanks for letting us in.” She reaches out and relieves Ned of the takeout bag. “Here, have some food,” she tells Frank and nearly shoves it in his hands. “Doubt he’ll be eating for a while. And doubt you’ll be leaving either.”
Frank looks like he wants to say something about how vengeance is the only sustenance he needs, so Michelle makes sure to interrupt him before that can happen.
“Here’s my number,” she says as she scribbles it in the corner of her sketchpad and tears it off. “If he asks for either of us, call.”
“What if the wizard shows up?” Frank asks wryly.
“Then please do not call.”
She’s about to put the sketchpad back into her bag, but pauses on the drawing of Peter and Ned. God, they really do like like a couple of loser best friends. She glances over at Peter and is startled by the abrupt drop of her stomach before it launches itself back up into her throat. When she swallows it feels like trying to plunge a rock down. Sudden anxiety squeezes her chest and leaves her hands shaking. There it is, she thinks warily.
Another point for Peter and the wizard.
Michelle looks at Peter and feels every physical manifestation of heartbreak. It’s really weird without the emotional ones.
The paper tears loudly in the quiet room. She places the drawing on the table next to his bed and spends too long straightening it. Her body hijacks her yet again and forces her to look at Peter one more time. He’s just some guy.
No he’s not, suffer harder, her body reels. It’s really annoying.
“Don’t die,” Michelle orders Peter Parker. She’s not through with him yet.
iv.
wad: he woke up
mj: k
wad: thats all he gets? K?
mj: k neat
wad: you gonna come kiss him or something
mj: its all you brother
wad: how are you the girl this boyscout loves
mj: could be you if you just kissed him
wad: block number
mj: are you typing commands into your texts
wad: block number
mj: reply [STOP] to block this user
wad: STOP
mj: lmao
v.
Spider-Man escapes the hospital, apparently. Not too long after Michelle had. It’s all over the news, which is the only reason she’s treated to the crowd recordings of Frank Castle wearing a Spider-Man mask, pumping his fists and hoo-rahing from Peter’s hospital window like he’s just scored a touchdown. What a tool. How a guy like Peter managed to convince a guy like Frank to take that for the team is another Peter Parker mystery. Michelle finds herself laughing anyway.
There’s a note stuck to her window sometime that night, waiting for her in the morning.
THANKS FOR VISITING.
vi.
mj: make sure you lock your windows
ned: ?
mj: dont ? me.
ned: spiderman tho…
mj: no
vii.
Michelle argues about it in her head for an hour or so. She loses the argument. She leaves a note on her window the following night before forcing herself to sleep and not look.
ned wanted to.
viii.
ned: can we have spiderman over again
mj: what am i his keeper now
ned: youre the one who knew his name. why are you being weird about him
mj: im weird? he fights crime in spandex. youre the one whos weird about him
ned: hes SPIDERMAN
ix.
Peter Parker has engineer handwriting. Neat, all caps, widely spaced and mathematic. He’s such a nerd. It’s so Midtown High of him. And he needs to stop leaving notes on her window.
NEVERMIND. NO THANKS AT ALL.
Michelle twists the smile off her face and goes back about her business.
x.
ned: were you on the fire escape last night
mj: no
ned: weird. sounded like someone was walking around
mj: maybe it was your boy
ned: my boy wouldve said hi
mj: guess it was just a pervert then
xi.
The first two skulkings were free, but the next time she hears a subtle clank on the fire escape outside her room, she whips the curtains open. They won’t be making a habit of this.
It’s not Spider-Man. Just some guy in a hoodie who’s not looking too good. He’s pale and chewed up and soul-voidingly weary. He looks like he had to take a breather halfway through whatever no-good he was up to. He’s sat, leaning against the support next to her window, one hand limp on his knee and the other holding his head up. When he realizes he’s been caught, he doesn’t even have the energy to scram. He gives her a guilty smile.
Michelle doesn’t open her window. She gives Peter an unimpressed look.
He holds up a sticky note and reaches out slowly, pasting it with care in the middle of her window.
ARE YOU OKAY?
Michelle turns and leaves the room. For a moment she stands in the kitchen, hands on her hips, stumped. She should fetch the home intruder bat. Instead she fetches a pad of notes from the odds and ends drawer. She needs to be perfectly clear with him. The thing about bugs is procrastination leads to infestation.
When she returns to her room, Peter’s where she left him. He’s given up on trying to hold his head up and he’s resting it on the railing spokes instead. His eyes track her lazily.
She writes neatly and pastes it with great care next to his.
no.
Peter looks as though he suspected as much. He nods and blinks his bruised eyes and heaves a sigh so deep that she doesn’t even need to hear it. It rolls his shoulders and pushes his ribs out. He has to hold a hand against them until the brief spasm it causes to crack his tired expression passes.
Michelle writes another note and sticks it neatly under her first.
you?
Peter can barely lift his hand to give her the least enthusiastic thumbs up she’s ever seen.
He’s weird to look at. He’s some disturbing mix of young and ancient, harmless and violently intimidating, bright and dark, simple and not. She wonders if she used to see him like that or if it’s only because she doesn’t know him now. Or maybe it wouldn’t matter because he’s not who he was four years ago. How could he be? How could she be?
And it’s not the Spider-Man of it all, because she’s never had a single complicated thought about the guy in the suit with the jokes and the invincible do-goodedness.
It’s unfortunately the Peter Parker of it all.
He looks like he’s falling asleep. Inviting him inside would be a monumentally bad idea. She writes another note, then knocks loud enough on the glass to startle him.
why are you here
Peter looks bemused and honestly a little high. At least they gave him something good at the hospital. He points to his note again and she rolls her eyes.
She scribbles more than she wanted to - engages him despite her best judgment - and presses it more insistently into the glass.
what would i not be okay about.
telepath hijacking?
wiped memory?
peter parker?
wizards?
seeing you mostly die?
frank in general?
Peter gestures limply at the entirety of the note. Then unenthusiastically at the general world and himself. He gives a little sarcastic flip of his wrist and a tired smile. It is a long list, she supposes. His question is fair, even if it ought to be coming from someone whose answer should be the priority. Peter should mind himself before anyone else. He’s a bit of a savior busybody.
She points irritably at him. Not the general everythingness. He’s the problem, not everything. Hers and his, both. They’re going to have to figure that out, probably.
He seems like he’s laughing. He points questioningly at himself, mock disbelieving of her accusation. These charades make him look like a sad little clown. Maybe that’s what’s up with the mask. Spider-Man wouldn’t be very fun that way.
She’s not entirely heartless, even if she doesn’t know Peter Parker. She can pretend for just a moment. She can give him something. It won’t cost her anything at all, really, but even Spider-Man deserves to be thrown a bone once in a while. He does take a lot of bludgeoning on everyone’s collective behalf.
She tries not to seem any type of way about it when she reaches out and puts a single finger against the glass. Just one.
He stares at it for a long time and tips his head to the side like he doesn’t understand. It was dumb anyways. She’s about to pull away when he reaches out and puts one finger against hers through the glass. He stares openly at her, jaw shifting back and forth like he’s biting down on something painful caught between his teeth.
Whatever he was biting back, he manages to swallow. His expression goes slack, then reforms into another smile. He uses his free hand to display a thumbs-down for her. Then slowly, he turns it rightside-up into a thumbs-up. His eyebrows raise in question.
Unfortunately it does make her laugh a little. She gives him a sarcastic thumbs-up in return and she knows he’s trying to encourage a wider smile by demonstrating his own. He’s dreaming.
It feels rude to remove her finger from the glass, but he seems to have no plans to do it first. So she drops her hand, but she feels a little bad. His finger stays a little longer, then slips from the glass.
It really is late. And it’s best not to encourage any of this too much. She forces discipline and gestures behind her like, I’m gonna go.
His eyes slip half-closed and he nods lazily. He even makes some soft shooing motion. Before she’s even walked away, he turns and lets his head rest against the wall again. His eyes fully close. He doesn’t budge.
Whoever Peter Parker is, she’s not really concerned if he stays. Spider-Man could tear the window open, even the wall off if he really wanted. There’s nothing that she could realistically do to stop him. But Peter seems fairly harmless. When she tries to dredge up trepidation about sleeping while he lurks nearby, she comes up empty-handed. It’s not a latent memory or feeling. It’s a current one. She doesn’t know him, but she’s seen enough.
She closes her curtain on him and gets back into bed and is so sure it’s going to take her ages to get to sleep. But it doesn’t.
xii.
ned: answer your phone right freaking now
ned: if you ever loved me
ned: mj dont make me come make a scene at your work
ned: its a PETER EMERGENCY. I know you CARE.
ned: im going to pull the fire alarm at your work
xiii.
Ned calls her 27 times while she’s at work, as though if he called enough times, she’d psychically link to her phone’s Do Not Disturb setting. She doesn’t like being available. He knows that.
When she’s exited work, per her boundaries, and opens her phone, she sees a vignette of despair, disbelief, jubilation, devastation, panic, ect. She skips most of the plot and calls.
Ned doesn’t even let her say, What the hell, man.
“MJ!”
“Speaking.”
“Holy shit, Peter Parker!”
“We’ve been over this.”
“I was at the bodega and some dude was trying to get my attention and I wasn’t really paying attention because it’s always just some weirdo and if you even make eye contact they’re going to try and ask for money or get mad at you or tell you their tinfoil hat theories and I was really just trying to mind my own business and have a snack and not be bothered so I didn’t look up but the guy wouldn’t leave and I finally looked up at him and he looked really familiar and I’m sure I was acting like a total dick because I was just sort of grimacing at him and hoping he’d leave, but then he was all, I’m Peter, and I was all kind of, good for you dude, I don’t care, but then I’m looking harder and I’m like why the hell do I feel like I know this guy from somewhere and I’m a total idiot because I realize that it’s Peter Parker, it’s fucking Spider-Man, MJ, it was goddamn Spider-Man coming up to me in a bodega and I’m like shit should I play it cool, would he fight me if he knew that I knew, are we friends, are we cool, should I play it off, is he gonna tell me he’s Spider-Man, should I ask if he’s okay, I’m like freaking out in my head-
-but then! Then he kind of reaches out toward me like he’s gonna shake my hand and you know I’m like, doormat levels of polite, like I’ll go along with anything to keep things not awkward so I’m like shit, sure, guess I’m gonna shake Spider-Man’s hand for some reason and I reach out, but then he does something weird and starts initiating this super cool, elaborate friendship handshake thing that I’ve never done in my life, but suddenly I’m doing it and I totally know how to do it, it’s so weird, I feel like someone’s making me do the handshake with their mind powers and I’m like, does Spider-Man have mind powers? No he totally doesn’t, not that he’s ever shown on TV, but whatever, I’m having a super awesome handshake with Spider-Man, uh, Peter, and then BAM -
MJ it hits me, it hits me so hard, I can’t explain it but my brain fucking explodes because suddenly he’s there. Just - he’s there in my brain. Like someone pushed a bunch of missing memories right into the spots in my brain that they belonged and I realized that I was only ever looking at a half-finished puzzle, like I didn’t even know what I was missing until it was there, and the thing I was missing was Peter, because Peter Parker totally went to school with us and he was totally Spider-Man and he was my best friend in the entire world and so were you and you guys were super in love and I was so happy and you were both so happy and we were all going to go to MIT together and then we didn’t, because the world found out that Peter Parker was Spider-Man and it ruined all of our lives and Peter was desperate to make the world forget that Spider-Man was Peter Parker, and there was totally a wizard - a goddamn wizard, MJ - and the spell got all messed up and the multiverse was collapsing and there were three Peters and there were so many bad guys in the wrong universe and Peter wanted to help them and it got so messed up and he was doing his best and then the only way to save the world was for Peter to ask the wizard to make it so everyone in the entire world forgot about Peter Parker and then he said goodbye to us and promised to find us and make us remember and then WHAM -
MJ, Peter Parker was our best friend in the entire world and we forgot about him.”
Something awful happens in the heaving, panting silence after Ned abruptly ends his rant. Something embarrassing and involuntary and explainable only if they’re both telling the truth. Something Michelle wishes she could undo.
What happens is that Michelle’s immediate, horrible reaction is intense, all-consuming, nauseating jealousy.
>xiv.