Michelle rolls towards the edge of her bed and reaches for her phone. The world is a shimmer of lazy dim lights and an explosive ringtone trying to dig her out of her already delayed oblivion.

"Michelle," Ned blasts even louder on the line, "you won't believe what just happened. Did I wake you?"

"What's the time?" she mumbles.

"Seven in the morning."

"No," she sniffs, sitting up. "I anyways couldn't sleep. Tell me."

"Do you remember my Lego Death Star?"

Michelle slumps back into her pillow. The phone suddenly weighs a thousand pounds in her hand and the back of her head begins a slow burn. "Seriously, Ned-"

"No, no, no," he interrupts excitedly. "That set had been missing all this time. And guess what my Lola brought in to my room today? Usually she's the one who wakes earliest. She says she found it in her cupboard."

"The Lego?"

"Yes! With the mini-figure. Emperor Palpatine. Like the one we saw at Peter Parker's place. Which is weird, because why would Lola have it with her all this time? And she uses that wooden cabinet everyday. So clearly it wasn't there till yesterday. All this on top of that letter I found that day."

"Yeah."

Michelle just lets this sail through her head, having had enough blow off the weight of everything in the past few days.

Then Ned asks: "By the way, how'd it go?"

She clears her throat. "How'd what go?"

"Don't be naive." She can almost hear the smile in his voice. "Come on! Didn't you? Didn't? You? I thought you… someone else was in your room tonight."

"What?" she whispers. "No Ned I didn't have sex. I didn't sleep-sleep with him. I mean, yeah, I slept beside him. But just only beside him."

"Dude!" Ned's disappointment yells louder than his voice. "You're either the biggest fools in the world or-"

"Or what?"

"Or you two need to sort things out."

"Ned. He's only sleeping with – beside – me because my mom's home and we got no other room to spare."

"Then why couldn't you ask her to sleep – fall asleep – with you?"

She sighs and hangs up. Taking a deep breath she turns back to take a glimpse of Alex lost in sleep right next to her and stares at his closed eyes for a complete minute, then slips out of the blanket they've been sharing. It's cold but she'll make do without it. She takes her pillow from under her head and places it between her and Alex, like a divider. She rolls back to the edge of her bed, turning away from him and curls into a ball hugging herself.

Half an hour later when he is still asleep she leaves her him there. On the bedside table are the two necklaces. She puts on the Black Dahlia, letting the other remain where it is and walks out of the room. It's eight forty-five and New York's already resumed its running, though all she hears is the tick of the grandfather clock in the living room. She's losing time.

Today might be the last day she has a chance of finding him.

"What are you thinking?" Ned asked a few days ago.

"Nothing much," she said. "Beginnings and endings."

"What about them?" Ned took a bite off his donut. MJ looked away. "You read a book or something?"

She wouldn't answer for a minute and just looked at the sky before she found the right words. "I told you Ned. This was going to stay. You assured me it wouldn't but that didn't happen. It's not letting me go, and the strange thing is, I don't know how to let it go."

A sigh. "Oh. That. You like to torture yourself, don't you?"

She shut her eyes closed. They burned from not blinking. "There's just so many things unresolved. So many things unanswered. How can I live like that?"

She heard him shift beside her. "Closure is just for movies," he began in his all wisdom voice. "Don't think you'll always get things resolved by the end. Let some things be. You've got to leave them. Heck, I don't even know what happened to my goddamn Lego Death Star. And though that's sad, it's fine. Accept it. Move on to the next thing. You won't always get a discreet ending and a discreet beginning in every story. They'll… what do you call that? They'll diffuse through, form one to the other."

She smiled. "Are you drunk?"

"I don't drink. Are you?"

She shrugged. "Some mysteries won't have answers. Live with it."

She looked down at the busy traffic below. She had to let him go.

Peter Parker had to go.

He was a shooting star who came and disappeared, but Michelle missed the chance to make her wish. She has been crying over spilled milk ever since.

The first time she saw him he flailed open the doors of her shop and sprung in like a child, a zeal in his eyes like he was probably going to read her an essay. Regardless of the unusual way he introduced himself he spoke surprisingly little.

His face screamed louder than his words. He withheld himself from whatever it was he wanted to say to her, much the same way a child might shy away from approaching his towering nursery teacher.

"I'm going back to Boston tomorrow," she tells Pater Parker's landlord. "Any way he might show up today? Anything?"

The man shakes his head. "I don't know. It'll be ten days tomorrow and he hasn't shown up. He hasn't been here since the last time you came. Even before that."

"What about his stuff?"

He shrugs. "I wanted to empty the room but Miss Bishop has paid for them for the rest of the week."

"Kate was here?"

"Yes. Two days ago. She's paying on his behalf. Even agreed to pay the rent for a few months for him."

The room has had a human touch since she was last here.

The bed is made now with a pillow in a yellow cover. It clearly hasn't been slept in. The desk by the window is tidier with a thick GED manual lying next to the photo frame of the lonely lady.

Michelle picks up the photograph. The familiar thought returns to her that the picture does look odd, as if someone or something has been cropped out of it, from the way the woman smiling at her isn't in a proper position within the frames.

She turns to ask the landlord if he knows who she is but finds she's alone in the room.

She's seen this lady. Could she have been the mother? Maybe it's just déjà vu. Some voice even suggests she's dead. No one else apparently lived here the last time the room had its single occupant.

But Kate Bishop was here. The room smells a lot of Kate Bishop, though there's also another scent. An all too familiar scent.

The first time she met Peter Parker he looked like he was out for a date. Clean shaven, he was reeking of perfume and aftershave. However, the smell that stood out was probably the slight touch of hair oil.

When Michelle was five her mother cut her hair so short she looked like a boy. It was during one of those days the two of them would visit her grandparents every twice a year. Out of her desperate pleas to grow her hair back the way it was before her grandpa stepped in with his proud bottle of jasmine oil. Michelle asked him to do the impossible: if he could not grow her hair back, he had to style what was left of it so she looked unrecognizable. Just the way nobody could tell Clark Kent was Superman himself. By the end of the hour she might not have had a plastic surgery but she was more than content with how different she looked. Which wasn't much.

Three years later granddad left forever and after all these years she might not be able to outline his face in her head but there is no mistaking the smell of jasmine oil that lodged itself into her brain like a nail buries itself into wood.

Yes. Somehow she knows Peter Parker has been here too. In the last ten days, despite what his landlord claims. He has been here.

She looks at the bed. Even if the pillow has no depression the bed is lined with creases. She imagines him lying atop it, bare-chested, unbeknownst to anyone else in the world, except Kate who's lying atop him. Under the covers.

She looks away. She can't entertain the thought for a second longer. Somewhere in her bones she feels an irrational hostility taking shape against Kate, and that is absolutely, totally ridiculous. Kate had been nothing but extremely dear.

There's a small trunk at a corner of the room upon which the sewing machine rests. Attached to it at the top is a spool of red thread. She walks over to it.

There are pieces of blue yarn around the needle.

However, what grabs her attention is the lidless trash can beside it. It's empty apart from the plastic coffee cup, apparently the same she had seen the last time she was here, maybe even the same one in which she had served him coffee all those years ago.

It's right there. In the trash can. After standing two years on the desk.

Whoever was here must have gotten rid of it. She debates whether she should pick it back up, clean it by the sink.

These days she's been dreaming even more of him, and it's mostly the same dream where she hands him his coffee and customarily asks if there's anything else he would like.

"No," he smiles in the same way every dream and Michelle's begun to realize it's actually quite disappointing. He pockets something at the back of his trousers. Something he had fished out for her. She doesn't know what it is; the two dollar notes are in her hand.

Then one day she asks him: "Why?"

His eyes are enlarged, and the brown in them look happy all of a sudden to hear her question, unlike the rest of his face which looks merely alive. "What do you mean 'why'?"

"Why would you not like anything else?"

He betrays his sight and looks away. The cup of coffee has stopped steaming. Before he can even say anything Michelle feels the heat rising up her cheeks and the battle within her chest to hold itself together.

She knows the answer. She knew it ever since she burst out at him so inhumanely what feels like just yesterday. All the years that passed in between then and now are mere seconds speeding away from her grasp.

But his answer is worlds apart.

"Because you're not a part of my story anymore."

His reply does make sense, in a way. He'd seen and asked about the cut on her forehead. When she told him it didn't bother her anymore he looked glad but he had been shattered, and pieces of him littered the floor. Somehow he bent down, took a dustpan and brushed the shards onto it, smiled and left. For a new chapter. Into another story.

What's uncertain in reality is that she has no idea when the last time she sees him would be. Up and until now it's already in the past where she'd turned his smile upside down. Where he'd left the bakery without his coffee. Maybe even without half his pride. And although there's no way she can do anything to restore his image amongst the little population that witnessed the humiliating debacle that fateful day, the least she can do is apologize.

She keeps imagining him standing next to her so she can tell him she's sorry. Sometimes her imagination gets so real that it's almost as if he's really there. Watching her. Two years ago when she felt she was being stalked it had grown to creep her before it stopped. It's begun again lately but now she takes her chance. She steps into the light so they can see her better. Look at me. I'm here. Right here. Just show yourself, whoever you are.

Someone's watching her.

She turns around, suspecting it's the landlord. Maybe she's spent a minute too long here. Maybe he's come to ask her to leave.

He's not here. She's totally alone inside. But there's that uneasy prickle, the warmth in her back every time she turns away from the window. Two holes burning through the fabric and into her skin.

A blur of red and blue flashes outside.

Michelle hurries over to the window, slides up the glass pane and sticks her head out.

"Wait, please," she calls looking up. Almost cries. "Please wait! Just stay there. Please."

"How do you know the Wall Crawler anyway?" Kate Bishop asked. "Personally, I mean."

"He saved us a couple of times," Betty answered.

"First in Washington," Ned added. "Then on our trip to Europe. Then again during that Statue of Liberty fiasco-"

"You never told me about that," Alex complained. "Every time we talked about him it was always that Washington Monument and your so-called Europe class trip."

"Well it wasn't that significant so we naturally omitted it," Michelle said. She tried as best she could to keep her voice down.

"You could have still told me."

"Let's just calm down," Kate said, putting a hand on Alex's shoulder and gently pushing him down onto the couch. "Lots of surprises today I know. Let's deal with them systematically."

They were back at her apartment from the cemetery. Michelle wanted nowhere else to go. There were simply too many things she had to think about all by herself and right now she needed every ounce of brain at work.

She walked up to the window. The clock was ticking into the afternoon and the contents of the street never seemed to have moved around faster.

"What exactly happened in the Statue of Liberty?" Betty asked. "I remember there was a huge sandstorm right in the middle of the winter and the entire city was on the brink of a thunderstorm and a blackout. But nobody knows the details."

"That's what," Ned said. "We can't remember. It's more like things happened to you. Like when you did things when you were a child but you can't remember all of them."

"How can you not remember?" Alex asked. "It involved Spider-Man after all. How do you forget that huh? After he gave you a freaking necklace."

"Well he never gave me any necklace," Ned answered defensively.

"Also was that important?" Kate asked. "The gravestone I mean. May Parker."

Alex smirked. "There can be a lot of Parkers. It's not that uncommon a name. Maybe this Happy Hogan had some family. A girlfriends perhaps. Or a dead wife."

"No," Ned said. Almost screamed, prompting Michelle to turn around from the window. "No," he repeated. "Not family. He was in love with her. I think May Parker is the woman. Was the woman."

"Oh babe you're right," Betty gasped. "Remember? At the tower. In London. We were all in a confessing game. Because we thought we were gonna die. MJ admitted she was obsessed with telling the truth. I confessed about having an unused fake ID. Ned confessed about wasting his life playing video games. Flash confessed about posting videos of himself online." She paused to catch her breath. Her eyes were wide from excitement. "And Happy confessed that-"

"He was in love with Spider-Man's aunt," MJ finished it for her.

"But how do we know for sure that this is the same woman?" Alex asked. "Spider-Man's aunt and May Parker."

"We don't," Ned replied. "Assuming this was the only woman he loved since then up till now."

"It makes sense though," Michelle said. "Because before all the Statue of Liberty stuff the news rang wide about an incident in a building involving Spider-Man and a dinosaur. With a couple other creeps. There were multiple explosions. And a woman died. It was all over the news. It was the same woman. May Parker. I remember now."

"I know," Betty added. "I remember because I was there. In the offices. My boss J. Jonah Jameson threw it all on Spider-Man."

"And if you check that apartment it belonged to Happy Hogan. Still does I think. I remember from when Kate was tracking him."

"Wow," Alex said, standing up from the couch. "Suddenly you seem to remember a lot. Try recalling why he gave you the fucking necklace. Maybe the two of you dated. Who knows."

He walked out of the corridor after that.

Kate was about to go after him when Michelle grasped at her hand. "Let him go," she said. "I think we should leave him alone."

Kate seemed to debate for a while but eventually obliged.

"It still doesn't prove she is related to Peter Parker," Alex called from outside.

The snow falls aslant and most of the terrace is buried under it. Standing by the water reservoir is a clever and familiar amalgamation of red and blue, the huge curved eyes of his mask trained on her every move. It's a ridiculous thought but it seems as if the Web-Slinger is himself a little weary of Michelle.

Finding him still there sends a freezing blast of breath out of her. She really has to feel the floor as she walks up to him, not to keep balance but rather to keep her toes dipped into reality.

It really is him standing before her.

She notices the tears in his costume and the messy odd stitches it took to mend them. There had been three across his chest and some on both the arms. Just a plain look at him and she already knows how the fabric of his attire feels to the touch. She can almost feel the muscles in his arms; it's not an imagination but more like a recall.

She pictures herself holding on to him while he swings through the high rise of New York. It's not something she's really thrilled of doing. The air is already rushing past and hitting her hard. Michelle knows she doesn't ever want to swing around the city the way he does again. She thinks of the sewers. The underground railway tracks through which they swing by. Running, somehow. From an entire crowd.

"You're still here," her mouth speaks of its own accord.

Time seems to have frozen under the snow. Spider-Man stands stiff as a statue. At this point Michelle can't tell if he's even breathing. Does he even need to breath?

"Uh, yeah," he answers softly. "You asked me to. How can I help you?"

"How can you help me," Michelle repeats unknowingly. "No wait. Don't I know you?"

He shrugs. "I guess at this point, everybody knows me. Do I know you?"

"Of course," Michelle replies. The question jolts her back into a conscious mind. She reaches for her necklace and pulls it out from underneath her jacket. "You know me. You gave me this."

The vigilante stars at her hand. She imagines wide eyes and an agape mouth under that mask. A gasp, perhaps.

"Why did you give me this?" she presses. "How do we know each other? What were you even doing in Europe?"

~#~#~

"What I mean is," Kate said, "What was he doing everywhere you went? I mean, Washington isn't actually very close to New York. Europe? Pfft. That's on another continent. So how was he in the same places as your class and at the same time?"

"What, are you suggesting Spider-Man's secretly someone from our class?" Betty asked.

Kate shrugged. "I don't know. Just saying."

Ned cleared his throat. "What about Venice? And Prague? Where those Elementals showed up."

"You mean where Beck shows up with his hologram show," Michelle corrected.

"Right. There was no Spider-Man there. It was Night Monkey wasn't it? It was all over the news"

"Oh please," Betty said with an exasperated sigh rolling her eyes. "It was Night Monkey because you said it was Night Monkey, a European Spider-Man ripoff. Just check the internet, there was no Night Monkey before that day." She turned to look at Kate. "I think it was Spider-Man with a different costume."

"But why would he dress up in a different costume?" Ned asked. "He was of course in his signature suit when he arrived in London."

"Why would he dress up differently?" Kate said. "Isn't it obvious? To hide the fact that he was there with you. In your class. Because a similar incident had already happened in Washington and he figured if he did the same thing again – show up as Spider-Man – outside of New York, where the rest of the class went, someone among you would put two and two together and figure out he was one of you."

"And he gave MJ a necklace," Betty said. "A glass necklace. And although a glass necklace can be found everywhere, remember she got it in the Europe tour. In London. But we were in Venice earlier. And the place is super famous for making stuff out of glass. So…"

"Okay," Kate said taking in a deep excited breath. "Michelle? Anyone in love with with during that trip?"

"Brad Davis."

"But that can't be," Ned said.

"Yeah," Betty agreed. "He was with us when the attacks happened."

"Anyway Brad is too tall to be Spider-Man," Michelle said.

"I agree," Ned said.

"Wait but how are you so sure about Spider-Man's height?" Betty asked.

"I just know," Ned and Michelle replied in unison.

"Okay okay," Kate interrupted with a sigh. "Anyone else?"

"Flash Thompson?" Betty suggested. "He's obsessed with Spider-Man. Perhaps it's self-advertising?"

"Never," Ned and Michelle answered again in unison.

"Yuck," Ned added. "No way he can be Spider-Man. He was with us the entire time."

"Then the entire class was with us the entire time," Michelle said.

"Maybe it's someone from the Decathlon team who hadn't blipped?" Betty asked.

"Could be," Ned said.

Betty smiled mischievously. "Do you think it's Mr. Harrington?"

"Impossible," Ned said.

"Julius Dell?"

"He didn't blip? Nah."

"Anyways," Betty said. "We have a get-together. Mr. Harrington's organizing. We had it last year too and this year a few days ago. But not many people showed up. But MJ he found out you're home and he really wants to see the head of the Decathlon team again. So we're organizing a meet-up again."

"No thanks," Michelle replied with a defeated voice. "Please pass it on."

Betty leaned forward. "What if he's there? Spider-Man. It'll be a good opportunity to find out. Carry on the investigation."

Michelle looked up from the floor to find the three faces of Ned, Betty and Kate looking expectantly at her. "Okay," she said at last. "Sounds like a plan."

~#~#~

"How do you know me?" Michelle asks. "Because I can't remember anything."

"I'm sorry you're going through all that," Spider-Man says. "I really am."

"No. You tell me. Do I know you?"

"In a way," he replies after a pause. "Yes. We helped each other in a couple of occasions."

"Like Europe? Washington?"

"Something like that."

"But I don't get it," Michelle says, taking off the necklace. "How were you in the same places we all were? My fiends, I mean. At the same time? How did you know we were in trouble?"

"I-" he catches his breath. "I uh-"

"Do I know you?" Michelle presses on. "Not as you show yourself to the world. Not as Spider-Man. But do I know you otherwise? Who are you?"

He shakes his head frantically. "I'm afraid we're not familiar personally. I can't know anybody personally."

"Why?"

There's a sigh from underneath the mask. She can see the slight freezing of his breath.

"It's just not safe," he says. "Not for any of you."

"Then why'd you give me this?" she asks shoving her hand with the broken Black Dahlia pendant towards his face. "There must be a reason."

"I don't know. I just thought you would like it."

Michelle shakes her head. "No. You're lying. Why me? And why a Black Dahlia? How'd you know I would like it? I just don't like any flower like that. Or for that matter, things such as this."

"You don't like it?"

"I love it," Michelle cries and her voice starts to waver. "But just tell me why'd you give me this? How'd you know I'd love it so much? You could have given any other flower. A rose. Roses are nice flowers. Lotus. But why a Dahlia? You knew I wasn't much into all this stuff. You knew controversial topics intrigued me. But how did you know?"

She's glad it's snowing because she hopes he can't see the tears welling in her eyes.

"And what were you doing here anyway?" she asks. "Outside Peter Parker's house? Do you know him?"

"I don't know who Peter Parker is."

"Oh come on," she snarls. "Stop with the bullshit already. He takes your pictures for the Bugle. You obviously pose for him. Because no one else has been able to take your photographs. You move that fast. And I've seen the front page news of the Bugle. It's full of your pictures taken from angles and heights no can take without diving off the top of a building. And dying."

He stands silent.

"Where is he?" Michelle asks. "I've been searching for him. Do you know where he is? I've been looking for him for a very long time now. Can you please help me?"

Right then the terrace door scraps open from behind.

She turns around and finds Alex standing by it.

"MJ," he begins and then his gaze shifts past right past her towards the Wall-Crawler. "What the…"

"Alex," Michelle says, wiping at her eyes with the back of her sleeves. They're cold. "This is him. This is Spider-Man. You always wanted to meet him right?"

Alex steps forward like he's somehow managing to contain his balance.

"Is that…" Spider-Man says looking at Michelle. "Are you-"

"Dating, yes," Alex completes. He walks up to him. "Who are you really? Were you two close?"

"Alex," Michelle begins, "Please-"

"No MJ," Alex interrupts her. "Do not come in between. I'm asking him something. Are you two close? Show us who you are, and maybe then she'll remember what she can't remember. By the way she's mine right now, and you've traumatized her in every way possible. Who the hell are you?"

"Alex!" Michelle yells. "Why are you being so like this?"

"What?" Alex counters. His voice is absolutely shaky and heightened in pitch. "Why am I being unlike myself? Or you mean, why am I being so unlike Peter Parker? Yes, I know. I've been hearing it from Betty ever since I came here. That I am like Peter Parker ain't I? That I speak like him. I talk like him. I walk like him. I eat like him. I behave like him. Is that what bothers you right now? That I'm being so unlike that goddamn Peter Parker all of a sudden? You want me to be like him?"

"Please! Stop shouting." Face hot and streaked with tears she turns to look at the Web-Slinger who is watching them intently. Although his face is behind a mask she can find a certain sadness in those lenses.

He turns around and hops onto the parapet.

"I'm sorry you're going through all this," he says and dives off.

Michelle hurries towards the edge of the terrace and looks down but he's not there anymore.

Spider-Man is gone.

To be continued... (Nice words, right?)

A/N: Originally this was supposed to be the last chapter but I haven't posted in a while (since I hadn't sat down to write for a few days owing to other important work) and around 30% is still left to write. So I posted this and will continue and most probably will end the story in the next update. I hope you've enjoyed it thus far.