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It is two years after the incident.
MJ and Jean are fighting.
Which is strange, because despite Ned's anxiety and Peter's deep annoyance, the two girls had become best friends. They'd been friends pretty much since the moment Jean came back- Jean had gone to Ned and MJ's apartment, taken their order from the Chinese delivery guy and then dropped it a foot from their door, and MJ had found her, on her knees and apologizing profusely, sweet and sour sauce seeping into her jeans, scooping up noodles in her bare hands, looked at the mess and the egg rolls that had rolled back down the steps and knelt there with her, took her by the hands and dragged her up, into the apartment, into Peter's life.
But now, they're fighting.
Peter is pretty sure that it had started over something stupid, days ago. A comment that MJ made that Jean hadn't liked and let simmer, and the two of them had taken swipes at each other all evening, and now they're talking about the incident, otherwise known as, the day that Jean tried to kill a large chunk of the city, MJ and Ned and Peter included.
"Don't tell me to calm down." MJ is so mad she's spitting. She's got a tight grip on a soup ladle, and Peter would give anything to be fighting a bank robber. "I'm the one it happened to, not you."
"I said I was sorry, you said you forgave me-,"
"You tried to throw me off a building, I think I can bring it up once or twice." Her tone was not MJ at all. MJ's always a little close to mean, a little cutting, but this is different. Her tone was nasty. "And that's not the worst thing you did."
"MJ, that was a long time ago." Relatively. And MJ had been the one who had been brought into it just for the crime of being loved by him, who had been violated by Jean's presence in her mind in a way that Ned and Peter were not, who yes, had been thrown off a building, but she had also been the one to forgive Jean, completely and totally. Ned had reservations, Peter had divided loyalties, but MJ was the one who embraced Jean with open arms, kept her in for dinner that first night and took her shopping and took Peter's side against Ned and agreed that it wasn't completely crazy if Jean moved in with Peter. "We agreed to let it go."
"You're right, Peter. It was a long time ago. Two years." The longer MJ talked, the more the color drained from Jean's face. "That's a long time, for me not to remember you, don't you think? When Ned's came back right away?"
"Well, the spell-," But he faltered.
"You've never thought of it? Never wondered?" She shrugged. "Just thought that your friendship with Ned was so deeply ingrained that one handshake was all it took to break through all of Strange's magic?"
"I mean-,"
"And me. You must have thought, then." Her hand was trembling. "That it was just that I didn't love you enough. That if I loved you the way you loved me, I would have remembered." She brings her hand to her mouth, presses it hard to her lips long enough for the shaking to stop. "That's what you must have thought."
And he had thought that, sometimes, when he was in the mood to be resentful. But he doesn't hold it against her.
"But it wasn't that, was it, Jean? It wasn't that Ned cared about you so much more." Though, in fairness, he probably did. If he had to pick, in some awful world, between Ned and MJ, he thinks he might pick Ned. "It was that someone gave him a nudge. Do you know how I know?"
"MJ." Jean's voice was small, her face white. "MJ, please don't."
"She gave me my memories back. Three days ago." MJ's hands were balled into fists. "She kept them from me this entire time."
He feels Jeans walls go up. The two of them spend a lot of time together, what with living together, and the way she sometimes keeps tabs on him when he's out being Spiderman, so her mind is always brushing up against his, like she's trying to keep him from getting lost in the crowd. He can feel her pull away the moment she does it, and the absence of her leaves him cold.
"Do you want to tell him why? Or should I?"
"MJ, I'm sorry." There are tears in Jean's eyes. Peter hasn't seen her cry since that day at the facility. Maybe once, when they watched a sad movie together. "You know I'm sorry, please, please don't do this."
"Why? Doesn't he deserve to know the truth?" She points at Peter. "Or are you going to make the decision for the two of us, again?"
"I wasn't making a decision, you were just-,"
"Buying yourself more time. At my expense." MJ curled her hands over the back of the chair. "Using me. Again."
"No." Jean was pleading, begging. "That's not what it was, you know that's not what it was."
"I could have had them back weeks ago." MJ's voice cracked. "Do you have any idea what I've been missing, what you kept from me?"
"Hang on." Peter's head was pounding. "You remember? You remember me? The before me?"
"I remember everything." MJ's eyes were shining. "And I could have remembered earlier. But she was afraid."
"Of what?" Peter laughed. "You gave her back to me," and in hindsight, he wishes he could take those words back, "why on earth would you be afraid?"
"Because she doesn't want to watch you choose me." MJ's voice was ugly. "Because she's in love with you." She was being mean on purpose. "Isn't that right, Jean?"
Sometimes, Peter wishes that this came with a manual.
He is distracted, briefly, by Ned dropping the glass he had in his hands, just a second where he snags it with a web. It's enough for Jean to turn and run out of the apartment -leaves everything behind, her phone, her jacket, her keys to the apartment, he's not even sure she has her wallet- footsteps thundering down the stairs and into the night.
And he knows whichever way he turns, back to the kitchen table or out into the cold, he will be hurting someone, will be making the wrong decision, somehow.
He sits down in the chair. He's not sure this was a choice, he more feels like his knees have been kicked out from underneath him.
"You remember me?"
His voice is faint.
"Yeah." So is MJ's. "Yeah, Peter, I remember you."
"And?"
"I remember how much I loved you," and Ned gives a gasp, drops his glass for the second time, and this time, Peter considers letting it fall to the ground, but stops it again. It does break the tension, a bit, makes MJ's mouth quirk up in a smile. "Back then." She laughed, a choked sound. "You made me so happy."
Though it had also been complicated and scary and she was put under a microscope that she didn't want. He remembers the bad things as much as he does the good things, and her, ducking her shoulders against camera flashes and holding tight to his hand, walking beside him everywhere not because she wanted to but because it was the right thing to do and then finding herself being used as tabloid fodder, her looks torn apart by random strangers on the internet, it had worn on her. And he thinks, because there had always been a slight hesitation, a skip in heart, when she had agreed to his and Ned's versions of the future, that she had been planning a second version, one that did not include Spiderman, and therefore could not include Peter Parker. Does not think that he would have been given this, her, nights with her and Ned in this apartment, this painless joy of the way his friends love him, if she had remembered him back then. She would melted away from his life, eventually, if his webs had not tied her to it.
"But now?"
"I love you so much. And I know you love me. But we're not in love." She sounded unsure. "Right? You stopped being in love with me a long time ago." The incident long. Seventy-seven lego nights ago long. He fell out of it, softly, a gentle departure. "Maybe longer than you think."
Maybe. Probably. Probably he had been holding on to the way he loved her because it was the only thing he had to hold on to. He doesn't feel that way now.
"I'm not." Another gasp from Ned. This time, Peter pre-emptively takes the glass from his hand. "I'm sorry."
"Don't be sorry." Another choked laugh. She wipes at her eyes. "God. I don't know why I'm crying. I just-," She shrugs helplessly. "All the pieces came back together. And I can't believe we ever forgot you."
"It's okay." He wants to reach out to her but also- Jean. Keys, wallet, jacket. Out into the night. "It all ended up okay."
"Your aunt-,"
"It's okay."
"But Peter-,"
"It is. It's okay." He stands from the chair and goes to hug her, rocks her back and forth, meets Ned's eyes over her shoulder, and he is crying, too. Peter does not cry. There are plenty of things worth crying over, and this is not one of them. "I've got you back. Things are good. Things are really, really good."
She chokes out a sob. "I was mean to her."
"You were."
"I was mad at her."
"I see that."
"Probably shouldn't have been. Or maybe I should have." She put her head in her hands. "It's really hard to tell right now."
"I think you can be mad a little. Maybe it's delayed." MJ skipped right over the being angry part. She does that, sometimes, with her emotions. Just goes to what she thinks should be true and forgets to deal with what actually is. It's very convenient, except when her ability to compartmentalize breaks down and she's sobbing over spilled soup, or something. "She'll forgive you."
"She did wait. But not super long. Just a few weeks." MJ looks up at him. "She was just scared, you know?"
And Peter is scared.
Because MJ could be wrong, though MJ is rarely wrong, and also, if she was wrong, Jean probably wouldn't have fled into the cold night and stood her ground instead.
But.
Stranger things have happened.
Though that's not the point, at the moment. The point is Jean, alone, in the dark. And even though she's safe, safer even then Peter, things can still happen, when you're upset and distracted, and at best, unless she tricked someone into giving her their coat, which she doesn't do, she would be very, very cold.
It takes Evie three seconds to track her down, because Jean is standing right at the edge of Peter's home security system, her arms pulled tight across her chest, tears on her face.
It takes Peter another fifteen minutes to get to her. Lands in the alley as Spiderman, comes out as himself, out of breath.
She startles when she senses him. Had been hunched over, and now straightens, wipes her face frantically before turning to face him. Her breath was shuddering.
"Peter." If he was just hearing her voice, she almost could have fooled him. But he can hear the shaky way she draws breath in, the rapid pulse of her heart. Can see the tears on her face. "I, uh-,"
"You left all your things." He wraps her in her coat, and she tries to take her keys with clumsy fingers, but drops them. "Aren't you cold?"
It's a stupid question. She does not dignify it with an answer.
"Let's go inside." He doesn't put his arm around her, but steers her, gently. "Get you warmed up."
They do not talk on the elevator ride up. It is still just the sound of her shaky breathing, the slight chatter to her teeth. He keeps his hands on her arms, moving up and down, trying to help, but she just stands stiff at his side. When the door opens, she walks to the apartment like she's marching towards a firing squad.
"Do you want a shower?" He closes the door, locks it. "Hot chocolate? Tea?"
"No." Her voice is still faint. "I don't want anything."
"You have to get warmed up."
She ignores this. Lets the coat drop from her fingers.
"It was just a month. If it matters at all, it hasn't been the whole time. It wasn't as easy, as it was with Neds. Neds was-" The words were spilling. "I can't explain it, but you guys, you grew up together, it was all over him, the memory of you, I pulled on one thread and like another thirty came forward, and he-," Her hands twitched, went to her temples, she squeezed her eyes shut. "Different people have different minds, some are more susceptible to it than others, and he's so open, so trusting, I barely even had to push, but MJ, MJ's-,"
"Withholding."
"She's wary. Her defenses are up, with everyone, her mind is this little of stack of boxes that I had to sort through, and that spell took you from her, she had this loss that she didn't know what it was and she didn't know how to feel about it so she pushed it away, just buried it, and I couldn't find you in time for her before I left, and then we were friends and it was wrong of me to go poking around in her head without permission, right?"
She has wild, desperate eyes. Eyes that were looking for forgiveness. He'd give it to her. He keeps giving it to her.
"And I didn't. I haven't. Not with anyone. Only-," She reaches for him, and then draws back. "Only you, only when you let me. But then she did ask, and I found you, and I just wanted more time."
"It was wrong. She was right." Jean sat down on the couch, heavy. "It was wrong of me, not to give them back right away."
Peter walked to her, slowly, like he was approaching a cat he doesn't want to startle. "You weren't the one who took them."
"It was still wrong. Selfish." She sniffed, stared up at the ceiling. "Did you tell her?"
"Did I tell her what?"
"God, this is mortifying." Jean scrubbed at her face again, at the tears still escaping. "That you love her?"
"I-," Peter's voice cracked. Not because he was about to cry, but because he was so startled. "No."
"Because you were looking for me?" Jean's voice crept up a couple octaves. "Peter, I'm fine, you need to go back to her."
"I needed to find you. And make sure you're okay."
"Well, I'm okay." She gestured towards the door, and it flipped open, banged into the wall so hard the doorknob left an imprint. "Mission accomplished. Go confess your love."
Peter shot a web and slammed it shut.
"I'm not confessing my love to her!"
"Why not?"
"Because I'm in love with you!" He threw himself down onto the couch beside her. "Obviously."
She sat for a moment, then two, before speaking again. "You're not."
"I am."
"You love MJ."
"I loved MJ. In high school. Seven years ago."
"I would know. If you loved me." Jean's voice cracked. "I'm a telepath. I would know."
"Jean." Her name, helpless. Because would she know? Has anyone other than her sister loved her well enough to be able to tell what it feels like? "Have you looked?"
"No." Her voice was a whisper.
"Because you can." He catches her hand, brings it his cheek, lets her cradle the line of his jaw. She had told him once that contact helps. That there is no reaching for the other person, then, just a merging, as easy as reaching out to put your hand on the shoulder of a friend. "Look, I mean."
"I don't want to. I can't separate-," She shook her head. "If I do that. All it would be is an echo."
"It's not an echo." And it works both ways, because he can reach out, he thinks, is so used to the presence of her that he can find it, can tell by the little hitching gasp she makes that she feels him, and he is trying to say- I love you. Those six months you were gone were long months, I could feel it, when you would reach out to me and check on me, a friend saying hello across a bad connection, I would get flashes of what you were doing and it was like you were sending me post cards, little snippets of your days, and they were always so picture perfect that I thought it was intentional, was it intentional the way that it was for me, when I would sit and watch the sun rise over the city skyline and think of you and hope you heard it? I love you. I never want you to leave. Coming home to you is my favorite part. It's selfish but you're the only one I can breathe around. "It's just loud." You melt my head aches. I want to do the same for you. Please let me. "Can't you hear it?"
"Yes," and she is crying, and he wants to hold her, wants to kiss her, and he's never been brave about these things but maybe she hears it, because she's in his space now arms around him and he is holding her, and she is saying it back, loudly, out loud and in his mind, and if its an echo its one he wouldn't mind hearing for the rest of his life, repeated and repeated and repeated, and it rings clear, like he's finally found his way back home.