Disclaimer: This story contains dialogue, characters, scenes and events that belong to others (Marvel, Sony, Sam Raimi, etc.), and not to me. I'd also like to mention that the wonderfully nuanced performances of the actors in Spider-Man 2 have given me most of the inspiration for the character motivations and emotions here.

A/N: Thanks again for the many kind reviews of this story. Not too much happens in this chapter – no more kissing experiments, for instance – but I hope you like it anyway. Think of it as an important bridge to some key emotional scenes.

By the way, to those reviewers who gave me helpful constructive criticism about Part 1, I wanted you to know that I took your comments about the heaviness of the exposition to heart. I went back and added two more small flashbacks in the first chapter. If you get the chance to tell me what you think of them, I'd really appreciate it. I'd also appreciate reviews, comments, constructive criticism of this latest chapter, or all three of them together. It's fun to know what you think! Thanks for reading!

Memories and Revelations

Part III

The next few minutes passed in a blur. After picking her up, MJ's captor fully extended his metal appendages and strode out of the wrecked Deli balancing on them. For MJ, the ride was terrifying and extremely uncomfortable. One of Ock's metal claws held her sideways as though she were a doll, and the rubbery hose – or whatever it was – which had coiled around her waist was bruising her with its tightness. As her kidnapper began stepping high over traffic and screaming, running, falling people, she found herself, her hair streaming in her eyes and her stomach churning, suspended over a scene of complete pandemonium. Cars were stopped haphazardly in the street, while a horde of terrified fleeing people dispersed hastily onto the roadway in all directions trying to avoid them. In one surreal moment, MJ looked down in the midst of her blind terror into the face of another screaming woman, a blonde who'd fallen backwards over the hood of a car. The woman's face, a mask of mindless fright, might have been a mirror image of Mary Jane's own face. Then the metallic arms swept her up and away, and before she knew it, her captor was carrying her right up the side of a building and over the top. Every step was a terrible jolt and lurch, with the tentacle carrying her compounding the problem by waving and shaking her from side to side in a jarring, nauseating manner. For the first little while, MJ was not only terrified by the continual threat of falling, but she also thought that she was going to throw up any minute.

After many minutes of the pitching, rolling and swaying movement that served him for locomotion, Ock finally used his tentacle to bring MJ up close to his face. As he did, she realized belatedly that she was still screaming. "You can see that I'm not going to drop you," he said mockingly, "So you can stop the screaming now, little girl. Unless of course you prefer it – in which case, be my guest."

MJ's stomach was roiling, and it was this sickening feeling more than anything, that caused her finally to close her mouth. She'd suffered enough indignity being carried about like a rag doll, thank you very much – she didn't need to add the humiliation of being sick all over herself to that. Besides, it was starting to look like he was right; she wasn't going to die any time soon. If that was the case, she was determined to put up a bit of a braver front. After all, Peter Parker hadn't cowered when he watched this freak stomp down the street and enter the Deli. She again thought about Peter's appearance when that metal claw grabbed him by the throat. Strange as it was, even with his feet hanging off the ground, Peter, quiet, unassuming Peter Parker, had sounded almost dangerous as he warned Ock not to harm her. She knew this impression was ridiculous, especially given how easily Ock had tossed him away a second later. Still, the memory was oddly heartening. If Peter could show that much bravado in the face of this crackpot, so could she.

"You're not going to get away with this, you know," MJ retorted in a raspy voice. She realized that her throat was raw from all the screaming.

"Oh?" said Doc Ock indifferently, striding jerkily across the roof of a new building. "Who's going to stop me?"

"Spider-Man will come for me," insisted MJ boldly, striving to infuse her voice with the strong tone she'd heard in Peter's. Actually she was by no means as certain as she tried to sound that Spider-Man would come. Like the rest of the city, MJ knew that Spider-man had dumped his suit and disappeared without a trace well over a month ago. In fact, she vividly remembered her devastation on the day that his suit had been found. And now even Peter, whom she'd often thought must have some way of contacting him, hadn't seemed to know where Spider-Man was, back in the café.

"Good." Ock chuckled darkly and then added sarcastically, "Know him well, do you?"

"Well enough to know that he'll come for me," said MJ, starting to get mad. It was angering her that just like the Green Goblin on the Queensboro Bridge, this wacko was also, for some inexplicable reason, using her to get at Spider-Man. Why was she being forced unwillingly into role of damsel-in-distress again? Hadn't she outgrown this role? It was getting more than a little redundant. Been there, done that, thought MJ in frustration, this time swallowing humiliation and nausea together.

At length, they arrived somewhere, stopping at a huge ruin of a warehouse on a pier. It had a ramshackle appearance, and its front end appeared to be collapsing sideways into the water. Figures the insane super-villain would have to have a scummy, repulsive hideout, thought MJ in disgust, how cliché can you get? Ock clambered up the side of the hulking structure, and then crawled in through a hole in the roof, dragging her after him so roughly that her skirt caught on a loose nail, which tore a new slit into it that went all the way up to her thigh. Great, thought MJ. Just great.

Setting MJ down but still keeping her immobilized with the cable from his tentacle coiled around her waist, Doc Ock then proceeded to tie her up, tethering her hands together tightly with a thick piece of rope around her wrists. As he did so, he mocked her again, "Scream all you like here – no one will hear you."

With as much dignity as she could muster, MJ said coolly, "No thanks. I've already played the helpless screaming maiden role."

"That you have," agreed her captor with another of his dry little laughs, causing MJ to flush with anger and shame. Then he used his metal monstrosities to lift her hands over her head, looping the connecting rope over and around a rusty pipe. After he was finished, he began to coil heavy chains down around her body, binding her feet together to the base of the pipe so that she couldn't even move. A moment later, she noticed that the heavy iron chain which he had just looped around her neck was tearing the shoulder out of her fawn-colored printed silk dress. First the skirt, and now this. Dammit, she liked this dress. She'd just bought it and only worn it for the first time to impress Peter. This morning she had picked it out of her closet, thinking about how she could always be herself around him. She had hoped the dress would bring out her natural beauty – not that it had done her much good in the end, of course. But even so, it was still making her madder than ever to think that if she survived this ordeal, she'd never be able to wear the dress again.

"Hey," barked MJ in irritation. "You are ruining my dress. Are these chains really necessary?"

Ock grinned at that. "Probably not. Especially since you can't get out of here, and no one knows where you are. But you have to admit that they go with the décor."

MJ was getting more and more annoyed with her kidnapper's attitude. He seemed rather like an arrested adolescent, at least in his goofball sense of humor. She threw caution to the winds. "You also ruined my favorite café" snapped MJ, "And what did you think you'd accomplish by throwing cars around, and slamming Peter into a brick wall? Not too bright. Peter can't find Spider-Man for you if he's injured or dead." As she said this, MJ closed her eyes against the picture of Peter being buried in falling debris. Somehow she suspected she would never forget that sight. Then she pushed the memory resolutely away. She refused to contemplate for a second the possibility that Peter might be unconscious, suffocating under that ruined wall ... or worse.

Ock stared at her incredulously for a moment. Then he threw his head back and began to laugh. "I like your nerve. You remind me..." He stopped abruptly. "Doesn't mean I'm going to let you go, though." With that, he turned away, crawling back up the side of the building and vanishing back through the hole in the roof.

He was gone for what seemed like hours.

MJ tried in vain to keep track of the time. She and Peter had planned to meet for lunch originally, but she had no idea how long her sickening journey with Ock had lasted. After his mysterious departure, the afternoon quietly waned. As the hours crawled slowly by, MJ grew more and more uncomfortable in her bound state. Her nausea faded, and once it did, her stomach reminded her persistently that she'd missed lunch. The feeling of her arms cramping painfully in their pinioned position over her head, and the skin of her entire body contracting into goose-bumps in the cold and damp air, did not improve her temper. Moment by moment, MJ grew even more furious at the madman who had tied her up to a nasty metal pipe, and then apparently forgotten all about her. Something else was bothering her too, something she didn't want to allow herself to feel.

Fear was beginning to grow again, the fear that she would be abandoned and lost in this deserted place.

She struggled to muster confidence in Peter, that he would succeed in finding Spider-Man. But how could he? Who knew where Spider-Man was at any given moment? After all, he tended to just show up when he was needed. Back in the early days of their friendship, just after Harry's father's death, she had once or twice asked Peter how he managed to get so many pictures of the masked superhero. "Are you in regular contact with Spider-Man?" she'd wondered aloud, "Or do you have some deal worked out where Spider-Man gives you advance notice of his location in exchange for good publicity?" Peter had laughed outright at the last idea. Then he had given her such a vague, roundabout answer that she'd been left with the impression that he had no idea where Spider-Man was at any given time. Like her, Peter was probably lucky to catch sight of him at all.

Since the terrifying and eye-opening night when Spider-Man had saved her from plummeting to her death off the Queensboro bridge, she had barely seen her masked hero. Apart from Peter's vivid front-page pictures and the occasional news clip of some amazing, breath-taking feat, she had only glimpsed Spider-Man once or twice high overhead, swinging swiftly by with purpose and determination, and fading far into the distance almost as soon as she'd noticed him. Each time she had blinked into the sun after him, thinking that she'd imagined him through the force of her longing to see him one more time. A few other times, she thought she heard a faint "Whoo-hoo" or the whoosh of webbing behind her in the distance, only to turn and find nothing but empty sky.

On the two occasions when she was certain she'd actually seen Spider-Man, she experienced a faint feeling of disappointment and heartache as he sailed obliviously over her. Yes, it still gave her a rare thrill to glimpse him, but after that terrifying experience on the bridge, the sight of Spider-Man was also affecting her strangely. He affected her almost in the same way that Peter did when he failed to show up for one of their infrequent dates, or when he would rush off inexplicably. Her heart ached at the impression that Spider-Man was far too busy to take notice of her, tiny and insignificant on the ground far below him.

Even if Peter did find Spider-man, she asked herself, would he come? She wondered idly how well Spider-Man remembered her. There was that phenomenal kiss, of course, but despite it she was afraid that he didn't think much about their three encounters. Spider-Man had saved literally thousands of people by now. If he knew she were in danger, he would care, of course, in an impersonal sort of way. After all, he continually helped anonymous strangers. But would he have a strong enough motivation to find her? Would he have any motivation to find her?

Suddenly, a faint, mocking voice stirred in her memory. "Let die the woman you love..." it cackled.

"Let die the woman you love..." MJ simply couldn't believe her ears. In the midst of her sheer terror, her throat already raw with screaming and her stomach churning at the heart-stopping feeling of dangling over an abyss, she thought incredulously, what is he talking about? She knew the Green Goblin was homicidal and dangerous, but apparently the freak was delusional as well.

"...or suffer the little children!" continued the Green Goblin, as he let the cable of the gondola car slide through his fingers just a little, lightly and tauntingly rocking it back and forth while children screamed.

As the full import of the Goblin's words sank in, MJ was unable to keep from shrieking again herself. The icy wind whipped her thin cotton bathrobe around her, and her slippers dropped from her uselessly kicking feet, falling for many minutes into the river far below her. Helpless, she clutched at the iron hand gripping her throat, striving futilely to gain some kind of purchase. "Make your choice, Spider-Man!" the Goblin was demanding gleefully. "And see how a hero is rewarded!"

"Don't do it, Goblin!" she heard Spider-Man cry out in a voice of terrible anguish. His desperation pierced through the fog of her terror, and, somehow, she believed. She didn't know how it could be possible, but she felt in that moment that mysteriously, inexplicably, Spider-man did love her ... that he couldn't bear the thought of her death ...

MJ blinked, frowning at a memory that she had put out of her mind since it had happened. After Peter had rejected her on the day of Norman Osborn's funeral, she'd been so shattered that she completely forgot that weird little moment in the middle of all the heartache. Not to mention that, just afterwards, she had nearly plummeted to her death -- the memory of that alone was certainly enough to drive any weird little incidents from her mind. As a matter of fact, the whole bridge experience had been a very traumatic one, which had made her unwilling to dwell on it. Now, standing hogtied and shackled to a pipe, MJ, for only the second time, puzzled over that long-ago taunt of the Goblin's. She felt as if she ought to understand its meaning. Oh well, whatever mystery it still hid, the memory of it reassured her slightly. Maybe, impossibly, Spider-Man would find her.

Eventually the sun began to sink in the sky, the golden late afternoon light fading to grey and then to black, and she was left alone in the dark, with only the tiny dim lights of various consoles and monitors for company. Her stomach clenching at the drawn-out suspense, MJ felt like a beginner actress waiting for her cue to go onstage in the first performance of her life. Time seemed to drag and stretch out interminably.

A severe thunderstorm blew up out of nowhere, and before long the rain was dripping in through the holes in the roof, a steady stream of ice-cold water trickling down the rusty pipe she was attached to, gradually soaking her hair and dress. MJ shivered in the cold and the dark, and began to feel hopelessly that she would never leave the pier warehouse alive.

Then, out of nowhere, Doc Ock reappeared, cradling something round and gleaming in one of his metal claws as if it were fragile glass. Stretching out another of his freaky metal arms, he turned on all the overhead lights, throwing a hard white glare over some parts of the cavernous room, and casting others into deep shadow. MJ was full of burning questions – where was Spider-Man? Had he come to the clock tower at three? If he hadn't shown up, was that why she was still being kept here? Where had Doc Ock gone, and what had he returned with?

But her captor did not speak to her or even look in her direction. Instead he went over to a huge apparatus of curving greenish metal arms which oddly resembled his own tentacles. It was surrounded by computers, consoles and monitors, and directly below it a wide portion of the East River was visible through the broken floor of the pier. Just now noticing this huge contraption, she felt bewildered and out of her depth as she tried to puzzle out what it was for and what its creator was doing with it. At the moment, she could only see that Doc Ock had his back to her and was busy with various metal toys on the other side of the cluttered warehouse. Then she saw him raise the spherical object towards the light with one of his tentacles. Still holding it carefully, he began rapidly punching buttons on a console in front of him.

MJ tried to calm her racing thoughts so that she could make out what Ock was doing over there, but she couldn't interpret his actions. She supposed Peter would know and wished distractedly that he could be there to explain to her exactly what that infernal-looking machine was for. She sighed and twisted her hands helplessly in the heavy ropes binding them around the wrists. They were digging into her skin, and the ache in her tired arms was becoming excruciating. She couldn't even shift her weight on her feet, because they were shackled together with the heavy iron chains.

All at once, MJ decided she'd had enough of hanging around like some pathetic trussed chicken.

"Hey!" she called out sharply. When her captor ignored her, she shouted "Hey!" even louder. Then she emitted a shrill taxi whistle to get Doc Ock's attention. When he still didn't respond, she cried angrily, "I'm talkin' to you!"

Ock finally turned, removing his dark glass welder's goggles. He stared at her as if only just remembering that she was there.

"You got what you needed for your little science project," MJ continued defiantly, her slow burning anger at being held hostage – no, at the preposterous events of the whole day – stiffening her spine and making her voice sound as strong in her ears as Peter's had back in the café, "Now let me go!"

"I can't let you go," Ock explained matter-of-factly, fixing her with his compelling – and unnerving – gaze, eyes cold beneath thick black eyebrows which were drawing together in a line on his brow. "You'll bring the police." Then he smirked at her, and added in a self-satisfied tone, "Not that anyone can stop me now that Spider-Man is dead."

MJ paused, feeling her breath hitch in her chest and her heart stop for a second. No. That wasn't possible. She knew that Spider-Man had been gone for over a month, and she'd even seen the picture of his costume on display in the office of John's loud-mouthed dad at The Daily Bugle. Yet even when the papers and the news outlets had all declared, day after day, that Spider-Man was no more, she had still refused to accept it. In fact, she had balked at believing it from the first time the extraordinary claim appeared in the news.

"Just a minute, John," said MJ. John was driving her home to her apartment late after the evening's performance of her play. She had been looking out the car window at the dark street surfaces, still slick with water and glistening under the street lights after the recent rain shower. Then her eyes fastened on something extraordinary on the curbside as they waited at a light. "Stop the car, I want to buy a newspaper," she urged.

"What? Why?" said John, who was nevertheless obligingly slowing down his car and pulling over to the side of the road directly opposite the intersection they'd just crossed. When he saw her looking over at a row of boxes of the Daily Bugle, he added good-naturedly, "I don't think I've ever seen you buy a copy of my Dad's paper. Didn't you once call it a ‛rag of a tabloid' ?"

MJ didn't answer, because she had already jumped out of the car and darted across the street to the first in the row of boxes. She fumbled for some coins, then yanked the glass door of the box open, grabbing the last copy of the paper with the unbelievable headline. "SPIDER-MAN NO MORE," it proclaimed loudly in bold black letters. Had he been killed? she wondered apprehensively. Then MJ saw a little box beside the headline and its accompanying photograph (not one of Peter's, she noted, looking at the byline), reading "Trademark Threads Dumped by Webslinger, Full Story Page 3." What could it mean? Her heart in her mouth, MJ climbed back into her fiancé's car, studying the strange picture of the flattened red and blue suit and gloves, which were flanked forlornly by a sightless, empty mask.

"I thought you didn't like the Bugle because of the editor's attitude to Spider-Man," John remarked conversationally, pulling away from the curb again as soon as she'd shut the car door. MJ ignored him, flipping the paper open and avidly beginning to read the story inside.

Daily Bugle Staff Editorial.

New York City woke today to the long-awaited good news that the reckless vigilante known as Spider-Man has retired from his notorious one-man crusade for personal fame and glory. No longer will he endanger the ordinary citizens of this city with his dangerous highwire antics and egocentric interference in delicate matters best left to the police and other trained professionals. As of this morning, The Daily Bugle is in possession of incontrovertible evidence, in the form of his distinctive red and blue body suit, red gloves and red face mask (pictured left), that the renegade wall crawler has scrapped his reprehensible quest for media attention. The costume itself was authenticated by The Bugle's very own Editor-in-Chief, J. Jonah Jameson. Having personally braved a firebombing attack by the webslinger and his alleged accomplice, the Green Goblin, in November 2002, our editor got a close look at the trademark suit while on its wearer at that time. He was therefore able confidently to make an immediate identification of the abandoned suit on the spot. Bruno Orson, 54, worker with the NYC Department of Sanitation, attests that he spotted the suit hanging out of a trash container while on his early morning collection rounds this week. "You couldn't miss it," said Mr. Orson. "It was creepy the way those eye lenses seemed to be watching you from a distance." It is the conclusion of The Daily Bugle that the public opinion of the good citizens of New York, marshalled by this paper, has driven the attention-seeking, high-flying webslinger to abandon his pitiful masquerade – a happy testament to the power of the Press.

Response to this encouraging news has been one of widespread relief on the part of the citizens of New York City, who will no longer have to fear vigilantism from above and the resulting escalation of violence in the streets. It is worth remembering that during the two years in which he was active in this city, Spider-Man has been linked to innumerable crimes and disasters. Furthermore, his involvement in several high profile murders and attacks is still under investigation. He was allegedly involved in the mysterious grisly murder of business magnate and scientist Norman Osborn, C.E.O. of Oscorp Industries. Osborn's impaled corpse, pierced deeply in the lower torso in two places, was found by his son Harry Osborn supposedly in the presence of Spider-Man. Spider-Man was also allegedly involved in the Green Goblin's murderous terrorist attack on the Oscorp board at the World Unity Festival sponsored by Oscorp in 2002, although no definitive connection has ever been proven. Recently it was suspected that he had found a new accomplice, the former Dr. Otto Octavius, now the dangerously violent sesquipedal Dr. Octopus, after the heist of a sizable number of rare Saint Gaudens golden coins from the National Savings Bank, Queens, where they were being stored temporarily. The questions around his connection to these malfeasances, along with his role in the aforementioned terrorist attack on The Daily Bugle building in 2002, have often caused the citizens of NYC to deplore the webspinner's uncontrolled rampages throughout this city. Having first shown leadership in calling for this lawbreaker's arrest, The Daily Bugle welcomes the highly gratifying news that Spider-man will trouble New York no more.

When she had finished reading the news article, MJ's throat was tight, and gathering tears were starting to sting her eyes.

"Honey?" said John anxiously, looking over and noticing her silence. "Is everything okay?"

She pinched the corners of her eyes with her thumb and forefinger to stem the tears, and mumbled, "It's nothing, just this awful story in the Daily Bugle." Her voice caught. "It says that Spider-man is no more."

"Wow," said John slowly.

"I don't believe it."

"Why not?" asked John curiously, glancing down at the paper she held on her lap. "There's a picture, isn't there? Looks to me like his suit."

"It can't be," MJ argued hotly, "Because that's not something he would do, just give up like that – it's not the kind of person he is."

"Maybe he had to retire," said John reasonably. "Maybe he was seriously injured and couldn't continue."

"John, I saw Spider-Man run faster than machine-gun bullets and hold up a cable car full of kids," argued MJ even more passionately. "There's not much that could hurt him."

"Well, maybe he gave up for some other reason; maybe, as you like to worry, he got tired of always being slammed in my Dad's newspaper." As he said this, John turned his car onto MJ's street in Greenwich Village.

"Why would that bother him now?" MJ contended. She could hear tears in her voice, and swallowed convulsively. "Your dad's been on his case since he first appeared."

John parked the car at a meter in front of MJ's building, and climbed out to open the door for her. "Maybe he's taken up a new line of work," he joked. "Or found himself a girlfriend."

MJ found herself starting to get unreasonably angry. "It's not true" she said, in a clipped voice, her eyes sparking, "because Spider-Man is a hero. He constantly sacrifices himself for all the people who need him, and he wouldn't just stop doing that ever, for the simple reason that people are always going to need him."

After she unlocked the front door to her building, John held it open for her. Then, as they rode the elevator up to her apartment, he said calmly, "Honey, you know I don't agree with Dad that Spider-Man's a criminal. But maybe he's some kind of thrill-seeker. Maybe the novelty wore off, or maybe he discovered that he just couldn't stand all the attention after all. There are lots of reasons why he could have quit. After all, he must have some other kind of life, something else he'd rather be doing."

They'd arrived at her door, and John bent to give her the usual good night kiss. But suddenly she couldn't abide it, and at the last minute she turned her head to the side, causing his kiss to graze her ear faintly.

"Goodnight, John," MJ said quietly. "I'll talk to you tomorrow." Without waiting for an answer, she shut the door between them with a pointed click. Then she leaned heavily against it, resting her forehead in her hand as hot tears began to fall from her eyes.

She was certain that John was wrong, both in his interpretation of Spider-Man's motivations and in his disengaged, dismissive attitude to the whole situation. There was no way Spider-man would ever give up like that, she thought. There was no way that he'd quit, after working so tirelessly to protect the city, and caring so passionately about each individual life he saved -- as she knew he did from her own experience of his rescues. She also admitted to herself that she didn't want him to stop, because she always hoped to see him one more time. If he were walking around somewhere in the city with his suit off, she would never recognize him for who he was, never know if she bumped into him. She couldn't stand the thought that she might not see him again. Turning the deadbolt on her door, she decided that she would never accept the stupid claim that Spider-Man was no more.

Well, she didn't need to accept a snide comment from the smug jerk in front of her now, either. Doc Ock was obviously trying to frighten her, trying to get a rise out of her.

"He's not dead. I don't believe you," MJ said to him quietly, less defiant than she'd been a moment ago, but determined not to entertain the fears that her tormentor was trying to foster in her for even a moment.

"Believe it," Doc Ock snapped, losing patience with the conversation. He turned away from her again, lowered his goggles, and once again began rapidly typing commands on the keyboard.

Something started happening. MJ blinked and watched in astonishment as eight lasers erupted into life, shooting their dazzling beams into a small glowing, metallic sphere, which was now floating in the much larger containment field generated by the huge, curving multi-story arms of what had to be some kind of reactor.

The small sphere began to spinning, slowly at first, and then rapidly, its golden colour brightening dramatically with each speedy revolution.

And then, suddenly, it burst into what looked like a small sun. It was so bright, though, that MJ couldn't bear to gaze at it directly. The temperature shifted subtly also, and she felt an immediate lessening of the cold clamminess of the air. Gradually it started to feel positively warm, then tropically hot. MJ's insides hollowed out as she wondered again what was happening here. It was as if some apocalyptic drama, in which she had only an insignificant, unimportant bit part, were playing out before her eyes, with Doc Ock as the director and author of the play. But just as she realized abruptly that the hollow feeling inside of her was fear, a bone-chilling, mind-numbing fear more terrible than any she'd yet experienced –

"Surprise!" whispered a familiar voice, directly above her.

End of Part III

A/N: Next up, lots of action, lots of romance, and some more revelations.