Disclaimer: The characters and events of the movie Spider-Man 2 and the comics belong to Marvel, Sony, Sam Raimi, Stan Lee (and a vast number of others no doubt). I'm merely borrowing them for a little while.

A/N: I'm afraid this chapter is a fluffy, sugary confection that doesn't nearly do justice to one of my favorite scenes in the movie, but what can I say? I did my best. Reviews are always welcome.

A note on P. O. V.: This is MJ's story, so we will only be hearing from her. If you want Peter's P. O. V. you can a) watch the movie, or b) go read Scarlet's excellent novelization The Story Continues, one of my all-time favorite Spider-Man fics. I highly recommend it. If you're reading closely, you'll note her influence on this scene.

Memories and Revelations

Part IV

Startled, MJ looked around at the unexpectedly cheery sound in her ear ... right up into Spider-Man's reflective eyepieces, or what remained of them. One was scorched black and the other appeared cracked, but they were a beautiful sight. So was he. With his lighthearted comment, he seemed almost like an old, familiar friend. MJ had never greeted the sight of someone's face with as much joy as she was feeling in that moment as Spider-Man leaned over her. The joy poured into her, filling the emptiness inside and driving out the fear. In amazement, she took in her rescuer's torn red suit, which curiously resembled her own tattered brown silk dress, along with his taut, muscled body, balancing improbably above her on a metal beam and tensing with leashed power.

While she was gazing at him in relief and wonder, she could feel a warm, heartfelt smile bubble up from deep inside and spread across her face. She wanted to tell him, I knew you'd come ... but an almost overwhelming feeling of elated incredulity welled up inside of her and belied that assertion.

How was it he – a virtual stranger – always came through for her, when others seemed so ready to disappoint her?

Then MJ caught a movement from the opposite end the room in her peripheral vision, and forced herself to school her face into an expressionless stare. Reminding herself that she was an actress, a good one, she glanced back at Doc Ock, carefully rendering her face a bland mask as she did so. Luckily, he had his back to them at that moment, his extra metallic arms seemingly busy in pushing and poking at the ever-increasing small sun in front of him.

"Listen," Spider-Man was whispering, pulling her joyful gaze back to him with his urgent tone. His fingers began reaching for the knots in her wrist ropes while he continued, "as soon as you get out of here..."

A tentacle shot between their heads on its way to smash his jaw and he broke off his sentence suddenly, twisting aside from a claw at the last moment, then backflipping swiftly away. Landing lightly in a crouch on the floor just a few feet away, he faced his enraged enemy.

"Spider-Man!" Ock roared, tossing aside his goggles and stomping off the platform. "I should have known Osborn wouldn't have the spine to finish you!"

Spider-man seemed to pay no attention whatsoever to this bizarre remark, but MJ's jaw dropped. Wait a minute ... Harry is responsible for all this? she thought in disbelief. I knew he hated Spider-Man, but surely not enough to set Doc Ock on someone?

This information was so unsettling that MJ could not make heads or tails of it, and consequently became angry. That monster could have killed Peter! she thought hotly. She was beginning to feel as though she didn't know Harry Osborn at all. How could Harry send Ock after his supposed best friend, condone kidnapping me, and contemplate premeditated murder against someone he doesn't even know? she asked herself, enraged and confused. Then, as the two enemies faced off against one another, she filed this disturbing revelation away in her head for a later, less climactic time.

"Shut it down, Ock!" Spider-Man ordered in a strong voice that again seemed strangely familiar. Still crouching on the floor in a tense asana, he appeared ready to spring into action at any moment. The controlled power of his contracted muscles matched his decisive words: "You're going to hurt a lot more people this time!"

"That's a risk we're willing to take!" Ock shot back, striding rapidly toward him.

"Well, I'm not!" Spider-Man retorted in anger. MJ saw him look just behind his adversary in the direction of a thick mass of coiling black power cables, which appeared to be burrowing into a power grid like oily sea serpents. Suddenly he sprang toward them, somersaulting in mid air high over Doc Ock's head, and simultaneously casting webs on either side. As two of Ock's metal claws came up from behind to grab him, he crossed his wrists, still upside-down, binding the claws in the web.

MJ had not seen Spider-man's amazing feats up close and in person for so long that she'd almost forgotten how awe-inspiring they could be. Her fascinated eyes followed him closely as he continued forward in the trajectory of his leap, still heading towards the twining power cables, and chased closely by the striking tentacles. Her heart swelled with happiness that he was truly there, that he had come for her.

But just before he could land, the pursuing tentacles broke free of his web, lashing out and snaring Spider-Man by the wrists. He gave a groan of pain as they swung him around by the arms over MJ's head in a wide circle, finally slinging him up towards the building's high ceiling so hard that his body burst through the ramshackle roof and he disappeared from her sight.

MJ cried out in shock as he vanished, but in mere seconds, before she could feel either fear or despair, Spider-Man came swinging back into the building. He broke through the huge glass window in front of her, arcing high over the fire-filled machine and swiftly casting a new web line to change his direction. She could feel a delighted smile cover her face as Spider-Man propelled himself straight down at Doc Ock like an arrow, using his two feet to pound him in the chest with such force that they both crashed through the wooden platform floor into the water of the East River below.

The battling pair were right below her, so close that the tremendous splash from their impact had drenched her in cold river water, causing her to flinch and turn aside her head. Unfortunately, though, MJ could not see them. From the sounds of splashing and the rapid succession of punches reverberating up through the hole in the floor, MJ felt fairly certain that Spider-Man had the upper hand for the moment. She was almost sorry she couldn't see it. She strained forward ...

... And then realized that she was not in fact leaning forward of her own volition. Instead, she was being drawn inexorably toward the growing inferno by means of the heavy metal chains wrapped around her body. It seemed almost as though the chains were being magnetically attracted to the surging fireball in front of her. Its dreadful pull only intensified as a wild flare broke free from the large sphere of roiling flame, breaching some kind of force field and looping up to the roof. A tremendous surge of heat scalded her face and body. Then, before she could move or even react, MJ was hanging suspended in mid-air over the seething furnace, with the ropes on her wrist acting as her only anchor. Ock had hooked them around the pipe ... but now it too was starting to warp and bend towards the fiery sun. The next thing she knew, her body was lifted farther off the ground when the top end of the metal pipe broke free from the ceiling as a result of the magnetic field being created by the huge fireball. Now MJ was sliding along the pipe, closer and closer to the flames until, at the last moment, her rope caught and held on a little metal spigot attached to the top of the pipe. She screamed for help.

She was so terrified that she almost didn't notice that someone had heard her scream. "Hang on, Mary Jane!" she heard Spider-Man shout desperately, sounding as if he were a long distance away.

The spigot on the pipe finally gave way under the immense pressure, and MJ gave yet another shriek as she started to be sucked rapidly through the air toward the burgeoning fireball. Her mind was completely engulfed by the sheer terror of the moment, her heart racing, the sultry air suffocating her, the plunging sensation of falling hollowing out her insides ...

... and then, miraculously, she felt herself stop. She came back to full awareness to realize that she was again somehow hanging suspended in mid-air. The extreme heat seared the skin on her legs, but amazingly she wasn't moving any closer to the roiling mass of fire. Sobbing in relief, she tilted her head back as far as it would go as she tried to look behind her, to see what her rope had caught on.

It wasn't the rope that was caught, but rather something, someone, who had caught her. Perched sideways on the only metallic support large enough in girth to withstand the powerful magnetic field was Spider-Man. He had shot a web into the ropes binding her wrists and was now pulling on it with all of his might. She could simultaneously feel the incredible force of the magnetism attracting the heavy metal chains around her feet, and also the agonizing pressure on her wrists from Spider-Man's web doing everything superhumanly possible to counteract the power of the attraction. It hurt badly, but through the pain she knew somehow that he'd never let her fall. Muscles contracting and straining, head thrown back, he looked as though something in his soul wouldn't allow him to let go. Though at the rate this fireball was growing, she feared it would be only a matter of time before either the ropes, Spider-Man's webs, or her own wrist bones gave way – unless she could get the chains off. God helps those who help themselves, thought MJ, and desperately began thrashing and writhing, then kicking her feet, trying to loosen the chains enough that they would slip off her.

A second later, the churning inferno swelled again. The magnetic attraction from it sheared away the rest of the chains, and suddenly she was free. She went zinging wildly away from it at an incredible speed, whipping through the scalding hot air as if she were on a zip line.

Spider-Man reached out and caught her nimbly by the hand before she could go flying past him. His grasp was gentle, and he swung her in a curving arc behind him, slowing her momentum carefully with the strength of his arm, which felt as sturdy as a steel pivot, and setting her gingerly on the ground behind a post without a jolt. Just before he released her hand, he gave it a quick, light tug, breaking her confining wrist ropes apart as easily as if they were nothing but wisps of thread.

"Run!" he ordered.

Before she could move, or even turn away, however, an immense beam crashed into Spider-Man from behind, striking him so hard that he was slung sideways into a large, curving metal bracket which hung from the roof, hitting it with a painful sounding clang and finally tumbling to the floor amidst a pile of metal fragments and what looked to be straw from leftover packing crates. She shrieked and swung around to see Doc Ock looming up from behind, looking like a wacky space alien. Panicked, she watched one of Doc Ock's tentacles chuck aside the heavy wooden pier plank it had used to knock Spider-Man down and reach for his buried body. Suddenly, eerily, she was reminded of Peter's spread-eagled body being flung backwards into the brick wall of the restaurant earlier in the day, and landing hard, only to be covered in debris.

It was obvious that Doc Ock had knocked Spider-Man out cold. One of his tentacles picked up Spider-Man by the heel, suspending him upside-down in the air like a rag doll. MJ gasped in horror at Spider-Man's limp and boneless appearance. All at once, a feeling of déjà vu haunted her: a little under two years ago, she'd watched as a virtually defenceless Spider-Man, hanging weakly from a web line after he had heroically saved her life and the lives of more than a dozen helpless passengers in a tram car, was snared by a tow cable from the Green Goblin and yanked away to slam into the roof of the hulking ruins of a smallpox hospital on Roosevelt Island. She had never felt so helpless in her entire life ... until this morning when she saw Peter being buried alive in a pile of rubble before her very eyes ... and again now.

Another tentacle came spiraling toward the fallen hero, and suddenly a sharp spike extended from the center of it. "Let's see you scurry out of this one," Doc Ock taunted his unconscious enemy, with one of his gloating smiles.

MJ set her jaw, feeling her resolve hardening and her adrenalin spiking. She was not a hot-tempered woman by nature, but at the moment a burning rage was searing through her veins, stiffening her spine and sharpening her senses. She could not stand by and let that villain kill Spider-man. She would not let her hero die. Heart pounding, she looked around the floor at her feet for a moment, and then found a thick, if short, wooden plank to serve as a club. She gripped it tightly, fully intending to use it to bash in that metal-armed monster's skull.

However, as MJ stepped up behind him and prepared to swing her plank with all her might, one of the tentacles lashed out and backhanded her violently across the room. For a few seconds, she lay stunned and winded on the wooden floor, gasping in agony, feeling as though she had been hit in the stomach by a wrecking ball. When at last she managed to sit up, pressing her hands against her sore abdomen, she could scarcely make sense of the spectacle in front of her. It was only with difficulty that she, still a bit woozy, perceived Spider-Man's straining silhouette across the cavernous room. Doc Ock was directly in front of him, convulsing and emitting showers of sparks as he was jolted by a powerful electric current. She shifted her position to one side and then she could plainly see Spider-Man contorting his toned, muscular body backwards. He was using his gloved hands to tear the corpulent mass of huge round power cables – cables that were thicker than his arms and legs – right out of their sockets.

Watching Spider-Man, MJ felt nearly giddy with the now-accustomed combination of awe and relief. Thanks to him, the massive machine would soon shut down: the hellish heat would cease and the intense magnetic waves, which were imploding the decrepit warehouse around them by causing its metal supports to buckle and fold, would quickly dissipate. In mere moments from now, he would have saved her life – and this time the city as well – once again.

But gradually she realized that something was wrong. Once he had sundered the thick black cables, leaving sparking, fraying wires behind, Spider-man tumbled amid a shower of sparks several feet backwards to the floor with the force of his pull, then twisted himself onto his feet as soon as he hit the ground. A couple of fragments of the cables flew after him, and MJ could also see the frayed ends of the severed cables in the grid sparking uselessly for a few seconds. Yet although the electric current had died and the lasers had stopped firing, MJ could tell by the intense heat on her face and the dull orangeish light which rested on everything that whatever that burning sun-thing was, it wouldn't be shutting down any time soon.

Spider-Man seemed to have reached the same conclusion. "Now what?" she heard him mutter in complete exasperation, extending his gloved hands, palms upward, in a gesture of helpless frustration. MJ began to crawl towards him as well as she could, still clutching her sore stomach. If they were both going to die in this livid furnace of heat and fire, which was looking more and more likely, she knew she wanted to be close beside him. But before she could reach him, Spider-Man moved swiftly across the room, landing in a crouch in front of Ock's prone body, which had been tossed into the water at the base of his reactor. He was starting to revive, eyes opening, while his tentacles began stirring in the water and making faint clicking noises. One lifted itself weakly, sparked a bit and then fell limply back into the river.

"Dr. Octavius!" she heard Spider-Man call. Yes, she remembered from the news articles that was this monster's name, before the accident ... Spider-Man was clearly reaching out to the man behind the machines, although for what possible purpose MJ could not fathom. She crawled a little nearer, sensing that their survival depended on whatever happened next and wanting to catch every word. Spider-Man was poised tensely in front of her, angled slightly off to one side so that, in the orange light, she could clearly see the profile of his mask and outline of his well-formed body. A few more inches, and she could see his lean shoulders, his hard muscles bulging through the holes in his costume, with the angular, vivid red spider that was spread over his back acting as a reminder of his heroic identity. But then, all at once, before she could draw any nearer, Spider-Man did something utterly unexpected. He lifted a gloved hand and in a smooth movement yanked the mask right off his face ...

MJ froze as her world veered and swerved and tilted crazily sideways. Her mind struggled to comprehend the unbelievable sight her eyes were seeing.

"We have to shut it down." Spider-man's strong young voice was urging the reawakening man before him. "Please tell me how ..." he pleaded intently.

Ock stared at the young man in front of him in amazement and shook his head as if trying to clear his vision. Holding her breath, MJ felt the crazy spinning sensation which was swirling her around and bewildering her slow to a halt, as everything in her life shifted to a new perspective. Nothing was the same any longer; everything she knew or thought she knew had changed.

Or had it? This incredible turn of events was unexpected, but it felt inevitable, too. On some level, hadn't she always known?

Holding her lunch tray, MJ was walking quickly toward her gang's table. Not that she was in a particular hurry to sit with Flash and Kyle and her friends Lisa and Sherry. She sat with them every day. She supposed it was better than being stuck by herself, though, like poor Peter Parker sitting over there. She registered him vaguely, out of the corner of her eye, and then smiled to herself as she thought about the consternation that would result if she were to stop for the first time ever at Peter's table and sit beside him. All her girlfriends' jaws would drop simultaneously, and they would squalk and squeal like a gaggle of geese. Even more amusingly, Flash, her boyfriend, would grow red with impotent rage ... hmm, on second thought, maybe this idea wasn't such a funny one. Flash would certainly view her defection as an attack on his male prerogative, and then poor Peter Parker would bear the brunt of his outrage. Since Flash already made Peter's life a daily misery as it was, she certainly didn't want to be responsible for adding to his trouble. She felt bad enough that she could never persuade Flash to leave Peter alone.

While she was thinking, MJ was so preoccupied that she didn't even notice she was about to step in a puddle of spilled orange juice.

Suddenly her right foot in its chic little black leather boot skidded across the slippery floor, and she lost her balance. Before she knew what was happening she was falling backward, her lunch tray flipping high into the air and scattering its contents widely as her arms flailed out ineffectually, meeting only air in their futile attempt to grab onto something, anything, so that she could halt her precipitous descent.

Almost immediately, though, she felt a strong arm encircle her waist, and a warm chest press up against her back, as Peter Parker's boyish face loomed into view. He had an intently focused look in his vivid blue eyes and, incredibly, he caught her, breaking her fall by dropping his shoulder underneath her, and by abruptly stopping her downward momentum in mid-air with his left arm. He righted her with ease, and then she watched in amazement as, like a juggler, he caught the bottom of her tray on the tips of the fingers of his right hand. Next, still wearing the same intent look, he tilted it back and forth through the air, catching the pieces of food she'd had on it before each one could hit the floor. Thump, went the apple, thump, went the sandwich on its plate, thump, the milk carton and thump, the green jello, still in its bowl.

It all happened in about two seconds or less.

MJ was amazed. "Wow!" she breathed, impressed. Peter wasn't unusually clumsy – although he did seem to trip a lot - but he'd never shown any signs of extraordinary coordination before either. "Great reflexes!" MJ marveled. "Thanks!"

"No problem." Peter was smiling modestly as he withdrew his hand from her waist and handed her the lunch tray. Taking it back from him, MJ looked at Peter's face closely, suddenly noticing that something about him seemed very different. After all, she'd lived next door to him for nearly 12 years; she'd seen his face nearly every day in her various classes all through school. But she'd never seen him look quite the way he did today. She'd always vaguely thought he was kinda cute, in a sweet, geeky sort of way, but today he looked really, really cute. He seemed somehow stronger and even somewhat burlier, too. For one thing, his arm had felt surprisingly solid as it supported her body. The expression in his eyes as he caught her, too, had been so intent. What was it about him? Finally, she managed to put her finger on the change. "Hey ... you have blue eyes," she said with a sparkling smile. "I didn't notice before with your glasses. You just get contacts?"

In response to this observation, Peter gave her a shy, eager smile, but didn't answer her question. She had long suspected that Peter Parker had a crush on her. Now, watching him stare at her with a goofy smile on his face and wondering if he would ever find his voice, she felt amused. As the silence lengthened, she laughingly raised her eyebrows. Yep, Peter was definitely crushing on her. For some reason that she couldn't understand, she wasn't at all embarrassed by this fact as she usually was by a guy's unwanted attention. No, somehow Peter's obvious interest in her felt like a real compliment. "Well, see ya," she said at last, forgetting her earlier questions about him and feeling unusually lighthearted as she headed for her table ...

Ever since that day more than two years ago, MJ had known, deep down, that there was something very unique about Peter. Now it suddenly struck her that discovering Peter's face beneath Spider-Man's mask was completely unsurprising. Who else could it be?

While MJ's world settled back into place, Doc Ock appeared to arrive at the same conclusion, the only possible conclusion, at the exact same moment that she did. "Peter Parker?" he queried sardonically, his words echoing the revelation of that name in MJ's mind. Looking almost human again, Doc Ock smiled ironically at Peter, raising his thick black eyebrows at him as though the two of them were sharing a private joke between friends. "Brilliant, but lazy," he chuckled.

Peter didn't acknowledge this odd comment. "Look at what's happening," he said insistently, using a gloved hand to gesture behind him at the engorged fireball, which was now drawing in virtually anything in the building that was metallic and not nailed down.

Octavius looked over Peter's shoulder.

"We must destroy it," Peter urged intensely.

"I can't destroy it," Ock said adamantly, as the tentacles began writhing and pulling themselves out of the water. "I won't!"

A tentacle shot out and grabbed Peter by the throat. This time, MJ found it wasn't nearly so disturbing to watch Peter be manhandled as it was the last time she'd witnessed it, back in the café. She now knew that he could, if he wanted to, take his fingers and pry those pincers apart with ease. The only reason he wasn't doing so, she suspected, was that he didn't want the situation with Doc Ock to degenerate back into a fight.

Holding himself in place with one hand pressed to the ground, Peter kept his other hand upraised placatingly at his side. "You once spoke to me about intelligence," he said hoarsely, speaking with a little difficulty through the clamping pressure of the claw, "that it was a gift to be used for the good of mankind."

"A privilege," Octavius assented eagerly, giving a little nod, and MJ could see that his eyes had cleared for a moment. She remembered suddenly that he had been a scientist, a brilliant scientist, according to Peter and Harry. She thought she could understand how for a brief second as a keen, alert intelligence peered out of the man's weathered face.

"These things have made you something you're not," Peter was insisting. He was trying to encourage Octavius to remain in control of those mad, mechanical arms, MJ realized, and hoped desperately that he would succeed in getting through to him. "Don't listen to them," he pressed.

While Peter was speaking these last words, the beams in the ceiling creaked loudly, attracting her attention momentarily. MJ saw the metal framing from the broken windows flying over their heads toward the reaction. She could even hear, out in the streets, the distant screeching of tires from nearby vehicles which were now being drawn by the magnetic pull of this rapidly-growing mini-nova. Then MJ returned her attention to the important conversation happening just a few feet away from her.

"Sometimes, to do the right thing," Peter was saying in a rough voice, "we have to be steady and give up the thing we want the most." The conviction in his tone gave MJ a strong feeling that he was speaking from bitter personal experience.

He continued earnestly, "Even our dreams." Again, she thought he spoke with grave authority, as though he knew precisely what it felt like to surrender a dream. In the back of her mind, she wondered exactly how much Peter had sacrificed "to do the right thing," but she was too distracted, too overwhelmed to think much more about it at that moment.

"You're right," Octavius mumbled at last, his voice sounding sad and lost. MJ started as suddenly the huge, rusting metal shell of a truck cab beside him was picked right up and sucked towards the fusion inferno, breaking apart into three large fragments as it went.

Then, in one of the strangest sights she had ever seen in her short young life, Octavius' metallic tentacles drew up around him like enormous serpents, opening and closing their sharp pincers and claws exactly like mouths. MJ could have sworn they were hissing. They were certainly emitting a strange assortment of whines, squeals and clicks as they apparently argued with their host.

"He's right," Octavius asserted in response to the limbs' furious protestations.

The tentacles snapped at him dangerously.

"Listen to me now," Octavius said angrily, gritting his teeth. Glaring at each one in turn, he then repeated harshly, "Listen... to... me... now!" For a moment he looked as deranged as he had when he'd first confronted them in the Village Deli.

Then the tentacle holding Peter's neck snapped its claws open, dropping away, and Dr. Octavius's face relaxed back into a melancholy expression.

Abruptly released, Peter could only gasp for a second. Then he fixed his eyes on Octavius again. "Now – tell me how to stop it!" he demanded quietly.

Octavius looked at the expanding fusion furnace that he had created. "It can't be stopped," he said bleakly, his voice filled with finality. "It's self-sustaining now."

Peter refused to accept this. "Think!" he urged the older man determinedly. To MJ, they sounded for all the world like two lab partners arguing about an experiment in science class, or like a student with skilled tutor, a tutor who was encouraging him to find the answer to a problem for himself.

"Unless..." Octavius face lit up, and he looked at the reactor, then at the gaping hole in the floor below it. Then he returned his eyes to Peter's face, declaring, "The river ... drown it!"

MJ's stomach plummeted and her heart stopped as, without a second's hesitation, Peter turned to go do so, not even pausing to send so much as a farewell glance in her direction – but, thankfully, before he could move, a metallic tentacle clamped around his arm, preventing him from carrying out his appalling intention. MJ had just managed to get to her feet at last, the ache in her midriff having receded somewhat. Now, reeling with horror after that unexpected close call, she had to put a hand out to a broken post in front of her to steady herself.

"I'll do it," Octavius was saying quietly.

She saw the two men look at each other for an instant with full comprehension on their faces; then the tentacle released Peter's arm, and the remaining three arms lifted Dr. Octavius up high out of the water. Dripping, he stepped widely over Peter, who tilted his head back and gravely watched his one-time mentor go towards the exponentially expanding fusion reaction.

At the edge of the furnace, Octavius turned around to face Peter one last time, and Peter stood as though to honor him. The two men exchanged a look of farewell, and an instant later, Peter was watching his former combatant and newly restored friend stride down to his death. Then he turned his head slowly and deliberately around toward her ... and, for the first time ever, MJ found herself staring openly into the unmasked face of the man who was both her hero and her love. Her breath caught in a tiny sob of happiness as they shared a profound moment of mutual recognition. To MJ, Peter's face above Spider-Man's suit seemed well-known and strange at the same time. But the look on his face – the same deep, tender, loving look he was always giving her – was not strange at all. Gazing across the room into those dear, familiar blue eyes, she emitted another little sob of gladness. Her vision swam with tears of wonder. Peter's expression revealed to her searching eyes his acceptance of and even his relief at her newfound knowledge. Despite the apocalyptic scenario they were caught up in, she too felt a strong sense of peace – no, a sense of absolute bliss – now that there were no longer any more secrets between them.

And then she saw his eyes widen in horror.

"No!"

The scream of anguish seemed to be torn out of his throat as Peter sprang into action, leaping toward her in a blur of speed.

MJ hadn't perceived what was happening at first, but, as Dr. Octavius tore out the metal restraints holding up the reactor behind them, a sudden shift in the magnetic force surging through the room was buckling the metal roof supports and causing the wall behind her to topple heavily towards her. She heard the creaking and groaning of the collapsing wall without registering its meaning. Then she felt some tiny bits of debris, little shards of glass and metal, raining down on her. She turned around ... and shrieked. Trying to retreat too hastily, she tripped and fell backwards. Then a large piece of debris, a heavy wooden post, toppled across her abdomen and pinned her to the ground. As the wall continued descending, she covered her head with both hands in a vain effort to protect herself from the rest of it...

... when she suddenly realized the wall was no longer falling. She opened her eyes...

... and once more found herself staring into Peter's beloved face, now poised just a foot or two above her own as he literally held the entire weight of the crumbling warehouse wall on his shoulders and back. He was bending over her at an angle of nearly 90 degrees, bracing himself on powerful legs while holding the wall with one hand over his head. Then, keeping his eyes on her the whole time, he shifted himself around until the whole weight of the wall was resting on his upper back. His muscles straining and contracting vigorously as he labored with all his might, Peter cautiously brought a second hand down behind him to push against it for additional support. She could see from his clenched face that he was putting forth an immense effort.

"Hi," he said gently, giving her a pained and trembling smile. It was a surreal moment. And yet, looking into his round, young, familiar face, MJ felt anchored.

"Hi," she replied tremulously. She tried, and failed, to contain the awe and relief that she was feeling at the sight of him looming so near over her, miraculously saving her once again.

"This is ... really ... heavy ..." Peter admitted breathlessly, another adorably boyish and self-deprecating smile gracing his expressive face as he shook with his exertion. For an instant, MJ wanted to laugh out loud at the discrepancy between Peter's cute look and the astounding, mind-boggling way that he was balancing such a massively heavy weight on his shoulders. He was just such an incredible contradiction ... such an amazing fusion of two seemingly very different people.

But instead of laughing, she returned the earnestly seeking look on his endearing face warmly, letting all the love in her heart show in her shining eyes.

Suddenly Peter's eyes widened in fear as the wall sank further towards her, the weakening metal frame grating and scraping with an ominous groan. The space between them was inexorably narrowing, but somehow MJ wasn't afraid any longer. With her rational mind, MJ knew that this latest bizarre circumstance of Peter holding up a warehouse wall by himself was almost too incredible for belief, but she trusted in Peter's strength and will with her whole heart. She believed that Peter would be able to keep holding the wall off of them for hours, if necessary.

Perhaps she felt so certain of him because the determination in his expression had never been stronger. He was refusing to let go, refusing to give in. And at last, after months of puzzling over his expressions, she could read his face plainly. She could see for herself the reason why he would never yield. In the ambient golden glow of the huge furnace behind them, she looked down into the bottomless well of Peter's eyes and there in the depths she could see his desperation, his resolve ... and the unconcealed love for her that was fuelling his strength. There was no way he could hide it from her now, even though he'd denied it to her many times over the past two years. Her soul expanded exultantly as the barriers caused by two years of lies dissolved into nothingness.

The wall sank again, and although he was bent almost completely double now, Peter shifted his legs, turning his feet and angling his torso so that, incredibly, he was taking more and more of the wall's weight entirely on his back. At the same time, even while he was shaking with the strain of his herculean effort, he kept looking deeply in her eyes, as if he couldn't tear himself away, and his gaze affected her almost like a physical caress. He was close enough to her now that, trapped as she was, she could have reached up and kissed him, if she had wanted to do such a thing in so dire a moment.

At length, he spoke again. "MJ," Peter said in a husky voice, which seemed as though it were cracking under the incredible strain of the massively heavy weight he was bearing, "in case we die..."

MJ glowed in confidence. She had never been more sure about anything in her life as she was about the words she knew Peter was going to tell her. His eyes were already eloquently and ardently broadcasting the message. She was so certain that she didn't even need to hear him say it himself. "You do love me," she finished for him, a shy smile of wonder beaming from her face.

"I do," he agreed in a shaky voice, his speaking face and eloquent gaze full to the brim with that very love. They were now mere inches apart, so close that MJ could see twin tiny, sparkling images of herself reflected in his enchanting blue eyes.

She couldn't resist. "Even though you said you didn't ..." she teased him softly. As she did so, she felt the debilitating poison of all his denials being drawn out of her by the naked honesty and tenderness in his gaze.

He could only nod, but his face still spoke volumes.

MJ's own face shone and her whole being overflowed with a joy that she didn't know she could feel.

Then the platform beneath them creaked, and the wall shifted again. This is it, thought MJ, bracing herself inwardly for a crushing impact. There was a terrible groan of metal and a discordant jangling of glass, as the wall pushed Peter's straining body right next to hers, until he was barely an inch away from her, so close that she could feel the puffs of his panting breaths, pleasantly cool on her skin in the midst of the sweltering heat of the surrounding air.

All at once, she saw Peter's face twist in angry determination. Her eyes widened in disbelief as he simultaneously lifted the massive structure with just his shoulders and then pushed it over his head with both of his hands, letting out a fierce, primal groan as he did so. Then he shoved the whole thing up into the air and hurled it forward toward the boiling, bubbling whirlpool that the fusion ball had created as it was swamped with water. The sinking magnetic field finished the job of pulling the remains of the wall away from them. He'd used himself as a kind of lever, she realized, dimly recalling some basic science.

Finally rid of his crushing, oversized burden, Peter immediately lifted the heavy beam off of her, tossing it aside as if it were a tree branch and scooping her into his arms like a child. Her arms reflexively encircled his strong shoulders when he picked her up. He turned around, still cradling her, and she shrieked again as she saw the fresh horror that was bearing down on them.

A rusted-out framework from a nearby silo was rolling rapidly along the pier toward them, drawn by the still-strong magnetism of the collapsing fusion furnace, now a glowing incendiary whirlpool.

With a powerful spring, Peter leapt straight up into the air, quickly shifting her to his right side and tucking her securely under one arm while firing a web line at a far-off crane with the other. As they swung swiftly upwards in a wide arc, she clung to his solid chest, resting her head on his collarbone. And for the first time during that night's incredible ordeal, MJ felt completely, utterly, safe.

End of Part IV

A/N: I don't know if I'll be continuing with this. I've read lots of fanfiction in different fandoms, some of it heavily based on dialogue from books, movies and t.v. shows, so it didn't occur to me that people would see it as plagiaristic. Apologies all, and for those who reviewed, thank you.