Chapter Text
Michelle Jones was not an artist. She did not create new and exciting things. She did not pull from the world around her and form new ideas that had never existed before. Michelle Jones was an engineer, someone who formulated and constructed using precise and specific methods and structures to form something usable and practical.
She did sketch, but the goal was never to create. She sought to build what was needed for the image to be complete.
Currently, she sat on her couch, the corner that she had claimed as her own since she and Ned moved here from MIT. They sought to find their place in the world using their degrees, to do grand and wonderful things, improving society. Ned found a job that, perhaps one day, would allow him to do so.
Michelle was working at a coffee shop, while she tried to figure out just why she refused to compromise. When her boyfriend suggested she needed to just accept an offer and decide what she truly wanted later, she simply wasn’t the person to just accept things because she should and move on. She needed understanding, clarity, and direction. It was one of many of their fights in the past seven months and was currently unresolved.
One of an increasing amount as time passed. “How do you eat an elephant?” she asked herself, carefully placing a cheekbone to give the face more definition, building laughter into the eyes and mouth. “One bite at a time.”
The front door opened without much fanfare; Ned returned with a few groceries from the bodega. “Hey MJ,” he shouted, moving into their kitchen. She didn’t bother getting up, instead focused on the next portion of her sketch.
Her current project was taking longer than her sketches of reality. Normally, she drew moments of crisis constructed from observation of those around her. Those were practice for when she needed to reconstruct something. Like the holes in her memory.
“How’s it going?” Ned leaned over her, his chin on the top of her head. Michelle had learned not to stab backwards because he never learned how to not step up behind her while she was working
“I’m about half way through,” she replied. “Just finishing what’s missing.”
Ned hummed and left her alone for the moment. He disappeared into his room, probably dropping off some drink he wasn’t supposed to have and returned, sitting down in the linen-stuffed chair that they picked up on their first night back in the city from MIT. He had his phone in hand and surfed whatever algorithm he preferred today.
“Kamal stopping by tonight?” Ned asked. He attempted casual poorly, but she wouldn’t begrudge him that. He was too friendly for Michelle to be upset with his nosy questions.
“No,” Michelle said; she picked up her graphite pencil before she ruined her sketch. “He decided that he was going out after a brief call.”
“Just him?”
“Yeah,” Michelle replied. “Something about needing to go out and relax and enjoy dancing and moving and-”
“All the things you hate?”
“I don’t hate those things.” Michelle looked up from her linework. “You know that.” She couldn’t add what she and Ned knew: she didn’t enjoy those activities with Kamal. The loudness, the closeness, the people surrounding her; it pressed down on her and the walls started to crawl in. The more people, the louder it was, the more she couldn’t breath and needed her escape
At MIT, Michelle didn’t do college parties, despite Kamal insisting that she just hadn’t attended the right ones. He was a social butterfly, able to fly from one place to another, always fitting in and being welcomed. Kamal was friendly, one of the friendliest people she ever met. That was why she agreed to his offer for a date and subsequent relationship. And she did agree with him about the parties: all the parties she had attended weren’t the right ones because something was missing.
Just like with her drawing before her. Just like it had been for the entire four years of MIT and some months afterwards. There had been this absence in her life that she couldn’t determine, some part of her that was just gone. It couldn’t be replaced, not with new friends, different activities, exciting places. Within her sat this intense, overwhelming uncertainty that something in her life was incredibly wrong and she needed to do something, anything really, about it.
It was only the past six months that she had an idea of what was missing.
The bridge of a nose added regality, despite being broken. She liked how it framed his face too.
“He wanted to go to some dance club that just opened,” Michelle continued the train of thought. “Hot new place. His friends from work talked it up, and he thought we would enjoy it.”
“You mean, he thought he’d enjoy it and you’d come along with him, as usual?” Ned asked.
“Something like that.” The argument she had with Kamal wasn’t just about her refusal to attend another club on a Saturday night. Or a house party on a Friday night. Or a lunch party for a Sunday afternoon. Or a pub crawl with some friends during the week. Or any social occasion, actually.
What did it say about Michelle, that she wanted to be right where she was with who she was with, just not with Kamal?
Mostly.
Some things were missing. Someone was missing.
“Peter stopping by?” Ned asked.
“Why should I know?” Michelle scowled at her sketch. The eye was wrong. Damn. She would need to fix that before moving forward. “Ask him. I know you two text.”
Ned said nothing.
Michelle refused to respond, instead attempting to salvage her mistake with the eye. It wasn’t huge, and really, it added some depth, but she had to work the shading a bit to hide the problem rather than draw attention to it. Saved her the trouble of finding her eraser.
Ned scrolled his phone and sat in silence. Michelle drew, but she kept looking up at him. Finally, her graphite pencil snapped from her pressing harder and harder with it, and she said, “We had a fight too.”
Ned probably knew about the fight already, and she really didn’t want to get into it, but he had perfected silence as a tool with her. He was the only one who could wait her out in moments like this. Except that wasn’t true. There was one more person, and he had just entered their lives six months ago after being absent for four years.
“I got mad at him and said some stupid things,” Michelle said. She had scratched a massive line through the sketch. The past four hours she’d spent were all gone: four hours rebuilding a memory that had been stolen from her, and she had been close to recementing it back in her mind, like Kintsugi with her memories. The last piece, the image of Peter Parker on the back of the gondola while on their class trip to Europe, would have shown her what had been stolen.
All that effort gone.
She put her sketch pad face down on the table. “He had stopped by after, you know-”
"The fight you had with Kamal, you mean the one from last Friday?” Ned asked.
Michelle didn’t blush, but she did look away from Ned, despite him not even turning to face her. Her black curls fell over her face as she stared at her closed pad on the table. “Yeah,” she replied. “It was Peter being Peter, you know? He asked after my necklace-”
“You didn’t have it?” Ned asked.
“I don’t want to talk about it,” Michelle glared at him. “ And, you know how he is, always trying to help. Even if it’s just listening. I could see him break again, and I just… I don’t know. This time, I was pissed at Kamal, at my unemployment, at a lot of things, and he took the brunt of it.”
“You yelled at him.”
“I didn’t yell.” Ned did turn to face her at that statement. “I didn’t raise my voice at him,” Michelle admitted.
“MJ,” Ned drew her name out with a heavy sigh. He turned from his lounging position on the chair and sat facing her directly, feet on the floor, hands tented.
“I know.” She covered her face, though her hair prevented Ned from seeing her. “I know. I just… I don’t know, I didn’t need him butting in at that moment, even if that wasn’t what he was doing. I didn’t want to deal with the guy who supposedly loved me four years ago and who may or may not love me now offering fake condolences about the shitty relationship I have with a really good guy. And I really didn’t need him trying to be Mr. Good Guy, coming into my life and picking up the pieces. Even if I look at him and I-” She growled then threw herself onto the couch.
Ned said nothing for a moment, which Michelle was thankful for. “So how long was that building?”
Michelle shrugged.
“You know he’s not doing any of that.”
“Peter’s a good guy. Of course I know that,” Michelle muttered into the couch.
“But you said that to him.”
“Not in so many words,” she replied, but quickly corrected herself. “I said a lot more and a lot worse than all of that.”
“What he say?”
“He didn’t tell you?” Michelle asked. Ned and Peter were close, much closer than she and Peter were, which probably was part of the issue. She looked up from the couch at Ned; he just looked at her, pity in his eyes. Why’d he have to have that? He only did that to her when she fucked up royally and she really didn’t need to know that anymore then she already did.
“He hasn’t talked to me since Friday night a week ago.”
“The night I told him off.”
“Ah,” Ned replied. “I checked in after patrol, and he didn’t really have much to say.”
“He didn’t check in with me,” Michelle said. She held up a hand without looking at Ned. “Don’t. Just don’t. I know why.”
“So what’d he say?” Ned asked her. Michelle pushed herself off the couch and brushed her hair out of her face.
Ned had recovered more of his memories of those stolen moments than Michelle. And the fact that Ned, her best friend since high school, was basically remembering who his real best friend was and leaving Michelle behind probably didn’t help her mindset. Granted, she was perfectly aware that the thought was crazy, because Peter refused to stop spending time with her, refused to stop helping her through the slow, arduous process of rebuilding her own experiences. He refused to stop being a friend because he had issues.
And he didn’t bring them up. Ever. She could see the hurt and the loss on his face occasionally, but he never did a damn thing about it because he wouldn’t let that define their new relationship. Their current build of their relationship.
Michelle knew that Peter loved her. That’s what started this whole issue, a damn letter that he never intended to give her. One that revealed he loved her back in high school and was the reason, in part, for her memory loss. A spell to protect the universe from collapsing. To protect her and Ned. All by erasing him from the world’s memory.
For four years, Peter just let Michelle and Ned think that something was wrong with them, never coming to check on them or talk to them or explain just what the fuck had happened to them. Instead, it took a crazy mind-hijacking mutant and Peter nearly dying before their memories .
Six months ago, Spider-man crashed into her life saying that she was in danger and she needed to trust him. Over the course of a few days, Michelle had her life threatened, met a dangerous and murderous vigilante named of all things Frank, had her mind controlled by said crazy mutant, found a letter that explained everything she could have ever wanted to know about why she felt so empty and shallow, and then was hijacked a second time (along with a great deal of New York). It was only after that the slow crawl from oblivion began and her memories started to remanifest themselves, out of order and incomplete.
It felt incidental, though, to the letter. To what she did to Peter. Michelle had found that letter and forced Peter, not Spider-man but the person underneath it all who had been suffering alone for so long, to reveal his darkest secret, which wasn’t that he was Spider-man but that he loved her. And what did she do? Tell him she didn’t love him, that she didn’t remember him.
Then asked him to bring her home.
Michelle told the truth, and for the first time in her life, she regretted speaking openly, directly, and truthfully. She told Peter exactly the way the world was - she had no idea who he was - and he was still kind. He took her home; when she asked him to come up with her, he didn’t act as though she were going to change her mind. If anything, he gave her distance, never coming near her.
And the fucker got himself shot saving that damn mutant who opened Michelle and Ned’s minds up. Peter was kind and protective and willing to make the sacrifice play, and she hated that about him. She also found herself admiring him for that. Because he could make that choice. It's why she wanted him in her life. It’s why, in spite of the pain of the memory loss, she knew her life was better with him in it.
Eventually, after stewing in her choices, Michelle simply answered, “Okay.”
“That’s all he said?” Ned asked.
She nodded. “I think that hurt worse than if he pushed back. Which obviously he would never do.”
“Of course not.” Ned sat back in chair. “Dude is too willing to suffer for others.”
Michelle snorted, and Ned raised an eyebrow at her. It wasn’t out of humor, she knew; it was the complete and utter despair at the harm she caused. “I called him a masochist, constantly seeking out the best way to hurt himself because clearly he didn’t want anything else.”
“Oh, MJ,” Ned replied.
“I just, God, this was just after that whole Rhino thing,” Michelle said. “When he came over with that broken arm?”
“The one he swung on.”
“Yeah, and I - I don’t know - I lost it. I started rambling and going on and on about choices, about being his friend.” The words, the real ones, refused to come out. Not that Michelle could ever say them again. Bad enough she said it first. All to hurt the one person who truly didn’t deserve it at that moment.
Maybe pushing him away was just her trying to hurt herself.
“Jeez, MJ.”
“I told him I didn’t understand how that old me could have loved someone like that. I called him a burden to everyone; so pushy and needy and-”
“Fuck, MJ.”
“I know I fucked up. Alright?!” She wiped a tear from her eye and met Ned’s eyes for the first time. “And I don’t know how to fix it.”
“Well, sending him a text apologizing would be a start.”
“I sent it after our call, asking to talk some more. In person.” Michelle pulled up her phone, checking it for the twenty-third time in the last two hours. “He left me on ‘read.’ I tried calling him, but it didn’t even go to voicemail - he doesn’t have it set up, I think.”
“Not for the personal one, no,” Ned said. “We didn’t set it up because he said he didn’t like talking on the phone.”
A way to avoid dealing with people. Michelle was the same. God she really fucked up.
She reached for her sketch pad and her ruined image. A thin black line stretched from Peter’s face, specifically across both eyes, as though she had crossed them out. The elegant features she crafted, purposely chosen for the innocence and wonder, were dismissed for the simple metaphor of killing someone. Michelle did that.
“It’s okay,” Ned said. “This isn’t the first time he’s gone silent. Remember last month.”
“He was severely injured then,” Michelle replied. “And we only found out a week after the fact, when he showed up to our window injured. Again. Even then, he told us he might be out of contact for a while. He has never done this. Never not talked to us. Not since…”
Ned picked up his phone and scrolled through it for a while, leaving her to wallow in her fuck-up. Peter Parker had no one and she had basically rubbed that in his face, pointed out every single one of his flaws in the worst possible manner, while insulting every choice that he made in the last four years.
All because she was pissy that Kamal picked a fight over fucking dinner.
“MJ?” Ned asked.
She had royally fucked up and now she didn’t even know if she knew how to fix it. If it could be fixed at all. Peter had returned to their lives, and while the full details weren’t there, little bits and pieces - like the gondola ride, him watching her with such puppy-dog love it hurt Michelle’s heart - were returning. The memories weren’t all back, but she knew why she loved him.
You don’t do this to a person you-
“MJ!”
“What?” Michelle snapped back. Ned was staring at his phone.
“Turn on the news.”
“We don’t-”
“Or any streaming service. My nan’s Hulu. It’ll have it.”
“Have what?”
“Just fucking do it, Michelle.”
Ned never yelled. Ned never cursed. Ned never used her full name anymore. For him to do all three… Michelle grabbed the remote and quickly pulled up the Hulu account, which thankfully hadn’t been logged out because of the damn crackdown on password sharing.
It was easy to figure out what Ned wanted. The banner had the “STREAMING LIVE” news report. It had an image of Spider-man fighting someone. Looked like it was in front of the Met, but the resolution on the image they used sucked.
Michelle clicked it, then dropped the remote.
Spider-man was currently battling four of the Avengers: Black Widow, Red Star, U.S. Agent, and Ghost. Though not as strong as the previous generation, they were still the Avengers, powerhouses in their own right, and Spider-man was holding his own.
Peter Parker was holding his own.
(*(*(*(*(*
“Ummph.” Spider-man crashed into the concrete and immediately handsprang away before the U.S. Agent could hit him. “I did not vote for you, asshole!”
Four Avengers. Four enhanced individuals with a variety, well not really, three had very similar abilities and frankly that’s kinda boring and - Spider-man bent at the waist, going nearly ninety degrees, then twisted a backflip and aerialed up, avoiding being hit by two pieces of concrete.
Instead of letting the blocks of rebar and cement crash behind him, he shot two webs out and yanked back, sending them to Red Star. But he didn’t wait, as his Spider-sense screamed in his mind. Two shots and he dropped into a split only to kip up as high as he could; the bullets missed, probably fired by Yelena, and Ghost ran right where he stood, her hands blazing with that electric molecular attack. She’d phased a car for the U.S. Agent to run through and as cool as that was, Spider-man did not want to get hit by it.
He didn’t recognize it. That’s what worried him. Spider-man avoided working with the new Avengers. He only contacted Yelena previously to help with a “big potato” problem with Jean Grey, but other than Bucky, who thankfully wasn’t here, he did not like these people.
In the air, he shot a web towards a lightpole, but rather than yank himself forward, he used his momentum to continue upward, full-twisting as he went. A shield sailed past him. Before he hit the apex, he shot another web, yanked, and released. Yelena had gotten really good at shooting out his webbing, and he couldn’t afford to make a mistake like that again.
Spider-man’s left shoulder dislocated when Red Star landed a punch that he chose to take over a gunshot to the head. The bullet that tore through his calf: that was on him. He tried to get fancy with some webwork and clearly was as clumsy as Michelle called him out to be.
He landed on a wall of a nearby building and started running along it. Five shots in front of him - probably Yelena trying to gauge his path - but his Spider-sense allowed just enough movement to avoid it. He dove forward, twisting so that he landed on his feet, and rolled into a cat-leap then a two-legged kick that knocked Red Star back twenty feet into a parked SUV.
“That’s sixteen! You’re-” Spider-man shouted, but ducked when another bullet whizzed by his head. Right. Reloading. Multiple guns. Idiot. The shield crashed into his side, and Spider-man let his momentum take him with the hit. A rib cracked, but didn’t break. He gripped the shield with a hand and flipped over it, swinging it in a full arc and releasing back to the U.S. Agent before his feet even hit the ground.
Spider-man dropped into a split, then windmilled his feet as Ghost popped up out of nowhere - like a ghost, ha! - dodging two of her wild swings. But Yelena’s accuracy was as good as her sister’s. He heard the crack between two punches, the bullet threading between Ghost's side and her arm to slam into his.
“Fucking Frank!” Spider-man was pushed back five feet, and his side immediately began to burn. Meta-bullets. These were fucking meta-bullets. Frank built them to use against the enhanced, to shut them down quickly and efficiently. He hadn’t taken the time to study them but-
Spider-man blocked the U.S. Agent’s punch then returned with his own, directed as the shield. The thing wasn’t vibranium, but it was pretty durable, so he didn’t hold back. The man flew back, sailing through the air, straight into the Met's stairs and fifteen more feet into the solid stone beyond them.
The world fuzzed for a second before Spider-man jumped up, flipping over more masonry thrown by Red Star. He used them as stepping stones to launch himself at the Russian expat, who seemed surprised to see Spider-Man right in front of him.
Wasting no time, Spider-man grabbed the man’s head and drove his knee into Red Star’s face. He let go when he made contact, shooting him up in the air. A bit harder than necessary, but he needed to move fast. That fuzz returned; blood dripped down his side, and the other bullet wounds had opened back up again. The meta-bullet was fucking with his healing.
Spider-sense sang electric, and he bent backwards as a roundhouse kick tried to hit him from behind. He followed his own motion into a handspring, pushing off the ground to give his overhead kick that extra oomph. Only his aim was off; he missed entirely.
The world spun for a second, that fuzz growing heavier. His healing was ramping up, or dying down - he couldn’t tell - and he didn't have much time. He twisted with the kick and used his other leg to collide with Ghost’s head, sending her flat into the ground. He could hear her breathing, barely, and didn’t bother to web her up.
Three down. One left, and -
Spider-man’s leg buckled, and he dropped to a knee. His Spider-sense wouldn’t shut up now, constantly pinging all around him that danger was coming; part of him wanted to scream no shit. He pushed himself up only to see Red Star charging him.
Spider-man watched the man and thought of only one thing: no one spoke. Not a single word or response to his questions.
Peter had tried to run away. He was very good at it, because frankly he needed to live if he wanted to do good as Spider-man. Usually he could take down the bad guy prior to running away, but sometimes needs must, right? That wasn’t an option. Yelena had shot down every single web he fired, removing any quick avenue of escape. He didn’t fling himself; that would have left him open for even more bullet fire.
Fighting was the only option. Peter knew it was dumb. He was skilled, but all four were trained soldiers, combat experts who lived on battlefields their whole lives. He was just some hoodrat punk that no one wanted around. He’d been a burden before, and he was a burden now.
Maybe he did enjoy the pain? It was weird to think about as he watched Red Star run at him. Was that why he did it? He wanted to be hurt? Michelle had been right about so many things - the pain he caused to her and Ned, the impossibility of a normal life, the loneliness he chose. Was this just another one?
Peter didn’t bother blocking the punch as the world turned fuzzier and fuzzier, black edges gathering in his vision. He let the fist collide with his chest, cracking his sternum and throwing him into a police car. The sirens went off.
He thought of Michelle, of her words and her tone, and how much he had hurt her. He just wanted to do right by her, to make up for the pain he caused her all these years. Her words hurt him worse than the meta-bullet in his side, but he needed to earn her forgiveness. She might say she didn't mean it, but there was some truth in anger, right? He intended to call her later today, to accept her request to talk.
Peter wouldn’t be able to do that now, would he?
As everything went dark, he heard four sets of boots approach. He pointed a hand in the air, his strength nearly gone beneath the fuzz and the pain, and said, “You guys are in for it when I get my second wind.”
Darkness took Peter’s hand.
(*(*(*(*
Michelle watched in horror, her chipped finger nails digging into her cheeks, as Spider-man was thrown into the parked police car. The siren wailed for a second before dying in spurts. The Avengers marched over to the unconscious hero.
Three of them looked like they were barely standing. It looked like Peter had gone all out at the end, a desperate attempt to win, but it wasn’t enough. The bullet to the side - helpfully shown in a replay, thanks MSNBC - was the turning point.
Michelle stared as black SUVs pulled up, each bearing the logo of the Department of Damage Control. Five in total. One van. Fuck, they were going to arrest Peter? For what? The news cast cut to the silent studio.
Michelle shut it off before she could hear any of their dumb analysis or fake sympathy. Ned hadn’t moved from his chair; she wasn’t certain he was breathing at all. She didn’t know if she was. “What was that?” Ned finally asked.
“The world ending,” Michelle replied. Six months ago, hell, last night, Spider-man was New York’s baby. He was their favorite son, a kind hero who willingly helped people in the smallest of ways, not just punched poor people - looking at you Iron Fist.
“What… what can we do?”
“I have no fucking clue.”