A/N: Thank you to everyone who's sticking by this story despite the totally inconsistent posting times! It's nerve-wracking coming into a new fandom, so I appreciate the encouragement. Hope you enjoy this newest chapter!

The days trickle by like sand in an hourglass. Peter does his best not to count them. Tries not to notice summer sprouting from spring and wilting toward fall. Attempts to visit Aunt May's grave regularly without taking note of just how many times he's come (how long she's been gone; how little time he has left before this grave will be the only thing expecting him, waiting for him, in the entire city). Does everything he can to not give away just how desperately lonely he knows he's going to be when MJ and Ned take the boxes they've been packing, the apartment things they've been collecting, and leave him behind for good.

Instead, he focuses his every thought on appreciating the time he still has. Who cares what nightmares haunt him when he's allowed to suit up and swing over to MJ's, climb inside her room, and step into her waiting arms (or, equally as likely, blush or stutter under whatever one-liner she delivers in her signature deadpan style)? How can he care how dark, how bland, the world looks on his own when right now, he can spend evenings at Ned's, playing video games and recreating inside jokes and remembering every reason (finding new ones) that Ned is his best friend?

His world forgot him, but he somehow found happiness again. It's more than he deserves (more than Aunt May will ever be able to do), and since he can't divorce himself from it completely, he might as well enjoy this reprieve. Temporary reprieve.

That's the part he forgets (and if he ever liked irony before, he hates it since it exists all around him, filling him up with every breath). That this won't last. That he'll have to let them go again.

And of course he will. Obviously. That's the only reason he let himself get close to them again (as if they gave him much of a choice)—the assurance that one day they'd leave and he wouldn't be able to endanger them all over again.

But still. That's…well, it's still weeks away. Maybe even a month (he refuses to calculate it even as at the back of his mind, there's a countdown ticking away the seconds). It's not today.

Today, he gets to come into the diner and smile at MJ and know that when she smiles and waves back, it's not to someone behind him. It's to him. Today, he gets to lean across the counter so she can kiss him in greeting. Today, he gets to go to his usual seat, gets to sit there without feeling awkward, gets to exchange a handshake (different, but still theirs) with Ned. Today is a good day.

Until Ned sets his backpack lopsidedly on the counter while telling MJ he brought her stuff with him. Until the backpack falls and Peter (his tingle on hiatus while around the people he loves) bends too slow to catch it and the contents spill out. Until he goes on his knees to gather them all up—and sees MJ's sketchbook.

It's landed awkwardly, open and propped diagonally against another notebook. Peter's hands tingle and go numb (chilled through to the bone regardless of the scorching heat outside). His throat closes, his lungs compressing, his vision narrowing in on the page revealed to him.

It's not a sketch. Not a drawing. Only a few words, scribbled along the edges, scribed large and centered in the middle of the page, scrawled messily between. Just two words, repeated over and over until it's all Peter can see. All he can think. Black and white, spelled out there like doom come all over again (like a spell, a magic incantation to bring his life back, only it's gone wrong and instead it's going to take everything from him again).

YOU REMEMBER.

Two words. Black against white. No color. No escape. (No excuse.)

Ned saves him. Spilling out apologies, chuckling at himself under his breath, Ned grabs whatever Peter has in his hands, closes the sketchbook, scoops it into the backpack, and sets it onto a more stable perch on the counter. When Peter rises to his feet, his knees crack like they're brittle icicles about to snap and plunge into innocent passersby beneath.

"You okay?" MJ asks as she passes with a pot of coffee.

"Yeah," he says. But he's not seeing her. He's seeing those words eclipsing everything else. YOU REMEMBER.

YOU REMEMBER.

She doesn't. But she knows she should.

She knows she's forgotten. And if Ned was holding her things for her, then they've talked about this together. They both know.

They know what he's cost them. Or at least they can guess.

They know that he's come back, even after everything. They know just exactly how selfish he is.

(They know he's not a hero, but a murderer-by-proxy.)

"I…" He can't breathe. Those two words are stuck in his throat, strangling him, ice chips that refuse to melt. When he stares at MJ, all the color's been sucked away. Black hair, dark eyes, white teeth, black necklace, black and white bracelet. And Ned, he's blurring, fading, dulling into the background (into the past, separated by time and faded/erased memories).

"Peter?"

"I have to go. I just…I just remembered that I have…this thing. Uh, yeah, a thing, I have to go do. Sorry. Sorry. Sorry."

And he ducks away before he gets stuck on repeat and the endless apologies spill from his heart like blood from an open wound that will never be bandaged.

He's halfway back to his apartment when his phone rings. Nearly fumbling it, he checks the caller (sighs when it's not MJ or Ned: relief or disappointment? he's not sure) and answers.

"Hey, Mr. Jameson. What's up?"

"What's up? What's up? Is that the best you can do? What am I paying you for, kid?! Get yourself down to our offices as fast as you can! That masked menace is here and he's about to tear our building down around us fighting some other caped weirdo! If I don't have pictures on my desk—or emailed or texted or twittered or something to me—then don't expect any more paychecks!"

Peter's not sure if he hangs up on his boss or if Jameson's already forgotten him. All he knows is that he stands there for a long moment, staring around, looking down at himself (standing here a block down from MJ's diner, an island of stillness amid the constant motion of pedestrians and traffic around him), even pinching the inside of his wrist to make sure he's awake.

It hurts. A pinprick of shock that he's here and yet…Spider-Man's at the Bugle?

Spider-Man. Spider-Man that's not him.

His heart climbs into his throat, fluttering so rapidly that he half-expects to feel a spider forcing its way out of his mouth.

Another Spider-Man.

He's frozen, caught between wild elation (he's not alone!) and unhinged terror (he can't go through that again, can't lose everything a second time, can't face just how little he lives up to the other versions of himself).

Abruptly, he's jolted back to himself when someone bumps up against his shoulder, knocking him back a step. What is he doing? There's another Spider-Man and he's standing here like a mural (like he's already dead and gone and left with only artwork to memorialize his questionable attempt to save the world).

Ducking into a nearby alley, Peter climbs his way to the roof and sheds his outer Peter layer to reveal the Spider-suit beneath. Usually, it might take him ten minutes to get to the Bugle offices, but he pushes himself and arrives in just a little over half that.

Whatever he's expecting (calamity and mayhem; screams and property damage; two Spider-Men standing there waiting to wrap their arms and their experience and their encouragement around him), it isn't what greets him.

There is a Spider-Man, perched against a wall, his back to the bricks, his hands clinging to the surface while he watches Peter come.

And beneath him, staring up through an opaque, spherical helmet, his cape swooping in nonexistent wind, is Mysterio.

Peter loses his grip on his webline and falls, landing in a roll to come up like the third point in this strange triangle.

The other Spider-Man is silent.

So is Mysterio.

"You're dead," Peter whispers, once to himself, and then again, louder, to Mysterio. "Seriously, you're…I saw you die."

"Did you?" Mysterio asks. "Like this?"

And the other Spider-Man yells as he's grabbed by something invisible. He hangs in mid-air before his throat is crushed in a spurt of blood and spinal column sticking out of the suit.

"No!" Peter screams.

And the Spider-Man disappears.

"Or was it like this?" Mysterio asks.

Another Spider-Man materializes just beside Peter, hands up, head shaking back and forth, stumbling back in terror. "Please," he begs, "please, let me go. Please don't! Please!" His back hits the wall, Peter tries to reach him, tries to tell him there's nothing there, but it's Peter he's afraid of, he's shaking in terror, and then his body seizes, arcs backward, snaps in two, then four, then eight, a squashed bug left to color the black asphalt with hyper-surrealistic scarlet.

"Not real," Peter says through chattering teeth. It's him backing up now. "Not real. None of this is real."

(There are no other Spider-Men here. No one to relieve his loneliness. No one to tell him how he can be happy and keep his loved ones safe. No one to tell him what to do.)

(He wishes Ned and MJ were in his ear. He wishes Karen inhabited this suit. He wishes Tony would show up with hypocritical lectures and over-the-top anger and condescending humor. He wishes he were anywhere but here.

He wishes Mysterio were really dead.)

"Well?" Mysterio asks. The voice is the same. The one from his nightmares. The one that made him shake and fall apart on Happy's plane. The one that made him unable to sleep for weeks, convinced every time his eyes closed that everything around him was a mirage designed to betray everyone he loved to the enemy he'd thought was his friend.

"How did I die?" Mysterio asked. "Since you say you saw it. I'm curious. Every man wants to know his fate, after all."

"You were there," Peter says. "Don't you know?"

He's not stupid. He's not going to say anything that Mysterio can use to frame Spider-Man, again, for his death.

Because he is dead. Right?

(Please, let him be dead.)

"It's funny, isn't it? Just what perspective can trick us into thinking?"

Mysterio strides forward. Peter knows it doesn't matter how close the green-suited monster is. He knows that Mysterio's worst weapon comes regardless of proximity. It doesn't matter. Instinct kicks in, adrenaline ratcheting up his base impulses, and he hastily retreats.

It doesn't help.

A chasm opens up behind him. It swallows him whole, sweeps him past graveyards full of headstones (every one of them is because of him, he knows it on a visceral level), empties him out into flame that devours him. Peter screams, and screams again when he's back on the street, and nothing's black and white anymore. Colors leap for him, surging sapphires, roiling emeralds, sharp amethysts, spattering crimsons, so many that Peter grows dizzy and sick and has to swallow back bile that burns at the back of his throat.

"Perspective convinces us of some truly astonishing things."

Green Goblin screams in through the night, his helmet so bright that it reflects back Peter's own wide eyes, white against his blinding suit.

"It can convince us the right thing to do is the stupidest thing."

Fury envelops Peter. He knows, he knows, the Goblin is fake, but he can't help it. He can still feel May's head falling against his shoulder, still shivers with the cold of her body, still remembers what it was like to pound the Goblin with every bit of strength in his body (still knows that it's not enough, it will never be enough, May is gone forever).

"It can make us think that we're the heroes instead of the villains."

The Goblin laughs. A repetitive, echoing sound that falls, absorbed in the body left in the bloody crater beneath him. A body that's so familiar.

"May." The name is wrenched from deep inside Peter. He shouldn't. He won't.

(He does.)

Peter slides down the crater and tries to gather her up in his arms (maybe he can save her this time; maybe instead of letting her catch her breath, he'll get her to the hospital).

She blips out of existence, her face wicking away like dew in the sun.

"NO!" he screams.

"Perspective can alter reality itself," Mysterio says.

Peter lunges for him, a webline and his own rage arrowing him straight toward the tall green target.

He bursts right through Mysterio's smoke body.

"Why fight it?" Mysterio says from behind him.

Whirling, Peter shoots his webs. They fall limply, nothing caught within them.

Of course.

"Reality itself is shaped by our own biases. Might as well give into it."

He's being stupid. Fighting Mysterio with his muscles, with his webs, with his eyes, is a study in uselessness.

Behind his mask, Peter closes his eyes. Breathes deep (ignores the tang of copper and salt).

"You say I'm dead?" Mysterio asks (his voice echoes, nothing but a recording). "I say that's a matter of perspective. And what is a memorable death without a corresponding resurrection?"

Images play out all around him (Mysterio rising from a grave like a zombie; May's gravestone; the Goblin cackling; Dr. Octopus rushing him; a field of poppies growing over countless Spider-Men corpses). Peter ignores them all. Some of them land blows. Some trip him up. He knows that skin is tearing, blood is welling, bones are cracking.

He doesn't stop. His senses narrow, tighten, until they are a single point, tiny as a single spider. Spider-sense. That sense no human has. That sense he needs to develop and depend on absolutely.

Spidey-sense.

Peter actually smiles—and then he leaps for the real enemy.

MJ doesn't realize just how much she's hoping that Peter will stop by her room that night until he doesn't. It's not that big a deal, really. He doesn't come all the time. But…it's been a few days since their last late-night rendezvous (not that she ever calls them that out loud), and he ran off from the diner in such a hurry, those apologies spilling out of him like in the early days (back when she only knew him as Peter Parker, possible weirdo, rather than…Peter Parker, mystery in all ways but somehow part of her).

She doesn't like it.

"Ned," she says as soon as he picks up his phone, "you remember how we found Peter's address and then never did anything with it?"

"Yeah. Why?" His voice perks up. "Are you there now? Did he finally invite you over?"

"No," she says slowly. "But…is Peter there with you?"

"No, of course not. Why would he be with me?"

"He's not here," she says.

Ned's quiet. For all his distractible charms, Ned Leeds isn't stupid. They both knew, the minute they saw Peter run, that that's what he was doing. (They both remember, one of the few things they can, just how many times he's tried to extricate himself from their lives, and what he looks like when he's doing it.)

"Is he answering his phone?" he asks.

"No." MJ pulls her phone away from her face as if she needs to check that she's tried (she doesn't; she called him ten times in a row, and never got a single reply). "No, and…"

"And?"

"Spider-Man was seen fighting thin air outside the Bugle offices a couple hours ago."

"Thin Air? Is that, like, a new supervillain or something?"

"No, Ned," MJ bites out, clenching her phone so hard she feels the pain of every angle. "I mean, he looked like he was fighting nothing. Like he'd gone crazy. People are saying he's lost it. That Spider-Man's been possessed or gone psycho or that it's not even him but someone else or that it was all a hoax, like a publicity stunt, or—"

"Okay, okay, I got it." Ned takes a deep breath, another, another, and MJ wants to shout at him until she realizes that she's imitating him. The dots at the edges of her vision recede. "So. You want to meet up at his place?"

"Maybe he's trying to get a handle on whatever happened to him. Poison gas or venom or…"

"Yeah. Maybe. And we can let him know we're there for him."

"I'll pick you up," MJ says. "We can go together."

"MJ?" He takes another deep breath, but this one's ragged around the edges, more for him than her. "That fight…how did it end?"

"They say Spider-Man vanished into thin air too."

Ned talks nearly nonstop from his doorstep where MJ waits for him to Peter's street, at which point he falls uncomfortably silent. For her part, MJ doesn't say a single word, and she regrets when he stops talking. As a New Yorker her whole life, MJ's no stranger to sketchy neighborhoods and dilapidated buildings. As his girlfriend, MJ's been under no illusions about Peter's wealth (or lack thereof as the case most definitely is). As the cynical person she's trained herself to be, she always goes into any situation already expecting the worst and anticipating disappointment anyway.

The reality of this street still takes her aback on every level.

"I think I know why he never invites us over," Ned says when they reach the right building.

"Great job, Sherlock," MJ says, and then is immediately struck by a sharp twinge behind her breastbone (she'd give anything to hear Peter call her Watson and laugh hysterically).

Sticking closer together, MJ and Ned slip inside the door (the lock has been broken by what she assumes was probably a brick) and plod up to Peter's floor (they don't bother to even look for an elevator and hold their breath in the stairwells; MJ hopes Peter mostly uses the window for his own exits and entries). The door to his apartment is perfectly unassuming; MJ feels a spark of electricity zing through her when her hand touches the doorknob. It rattles. At a slight jiggle, the entire door rattles on its hinges.

"We don't have a key," Ned whispers.

MJ's not used to hoping for good things (never expects a Peter Parker to come walking into her life with that little surprised smile and sad eyes) so she can't explain why she knocks. Ned tries to hide his surprise at the move by conspicuously listening for a reaction.

"Peter?" MJ calls. "It's us. Please let us in. Peter?"

Nothing. No response. (No hope granted like an unexpected kiss on a park bench.)

"Should I find the landlord?" Ned asks nervously, and ridiculously idealistically.

MJ sets her shoulder against the door and rattles the doorknob. With an unholy screech, the door shifts, slipping the flimsy lock, and MJ's able to shoe it fully open.

"Or we could do that." Ned nods like one of those dangling-head dolls. "Right. Breaking and entering's good too."

Inside, MJ finds such a perfect picture of the state of Peter's mind that it takes her breath away.

Emptiness, she notices first, with only the scarcest hints of the void that accompanies Peter in even what should be (but clearly isn't) his home.

A few packages of Ramen noodles on a shelf. GED textbooks stacked haphazardly alongside the bed. A threadbare blanket rumpled on the bed, looking so thin in the chill this building exudes despite the summer heat outside. A couple pieces of trash left behind on the end table next to the head of the bed. And a line of old coffee (hot chocolate) cups lined up on the windowsill, carefully arranged so that the stupid phrase about being happy to help is visible on every cup (each on, MJ's somehow sure, given to him by her).

Emptiness, spattered with just a few dribbles of hope, cherished and prized, but so ephemeral that MJ's afraid to move lest even the wind of her passing causes them all to evaporate.

"Uh, MJ…"

MJ drifts forward, as if she's in a dream (as if, faced with Peter's involuntary minimalism, she has no choice but to try to fill that void with her own self). She lets a finger run along the (dusty) GED books, the (not-dusty) cups; she sets her hand over his blanket, imagines she smells Peter (like when he falls asleep with his head on her shoulder while she sketches late into the night).

"MJ?"

Her eyes fall on the little bit of food he has, and she regrets every doughnut, every piece of pie, every bagel, she's wasted out at the end of her shifts, all the contains of leftovers she and her dad have had to toss through the years.

"MJ. I really think you should see this."

It's impossible, here, not to think about the nights he came to her bedroom (she wishes, wildly and desperately, that he'd come every night). The times she sat close and leaned into him (wishes she'd wrapped her arms around him and held on). The times he'd fallen asleep on her, tension easing from his bones until his hands would finally lose their cold clamminess and warm against hers (she wishes she'd tugged him to her bed and laid atop him to prevent him from ever leaving her to return to this). She thinks of Peter (and wishes he were here, right now, with her, even if poisoned or ill or wounded, just here so she can remind him that he is loved, he is cared for, he is remembered).

"MJ!" The rarity of hearing Ned shout finally jerks MJ from her daze. When she turns, she finds him holding something small and blocky in his hand, poised on the tips of his fingers as if he's afraid to smudge the least hint of Peter's fingertips.

"Is that from his end table?" she asks. What she took for trash looks like a couple Lego pieces, placed so Peter can see them as he falls to sleep.

"It's Emperor Palpatine." Ned stares at MJ. There's something in his eyes she's never seen there before (or has she?), a grim resolution. A purposed solemnity.

"Ned, what—"

"You know how you said we'd forgotten things? And I said it was strange but better than the Blip?"

"I'm not crazy—"

"I've been having this dream. A lot. A golden ring hanging in the air, like a portal. And Spider-Man on the other side, just standing there, waiting for something. Something bad. And every time I wake up, I feel so sad because I know he needs me and I can't get to him."

"Is this more of your magic thing?"

Ned cups the tiny figure in his palm so he can peer down at it with unwavering concentration. "It's Palpatine," he repeats. "I have the Death Star Lego set. It's completely finished, the biggest set I've ever completed. Except I can't remember doing it. And it's missing it's Emperor Palpatine piece."

The world recedes. This tiny, dingy apartment might as well be the roof of the school, or the top of the Statue of Liberty, or the diner. All that matters, all that keeps moving with MJ, the only thing left in her private world, is Ned.

"We loved Peter before," she says.

Ned nods.

"He's how we met. Why we became friends."

Another nod.

"We helped him be Spider-Man."

"I was his guy in the chair. You were his strength."

"And we forgot him."

A third nod.

"He needs us."

Ned takes a deep breath. "I think I can find him."

"Magic?" she asks, trying not to sound too dubious (after her recent spiraling, she really doesn't have any room for skepticism, after all).

"Yeah."

"Have you done it before?"

"No. Except in dreams. But then…" Ned looks at her. "I forgot I had a reason to make it work. A reason to keep trying."

"Peter." (Peter Parker. There's a reason that name stuck in her heart like a fishhook.)

"Peter."