Note: I just want to say THANK YOU SO MUCH to all of the guests - anonymous or otherwise - who have shown me support/offered me feedback on this fic. I'd like to especially thank TexasBlue for their consistent and super encouraging feedback. I hate that I can't PM you guys directly to express my gratitude, but please know I really do appreciate it. 3

Whoever decided that a combination of genetically modified chicken "nuggets," canned corn, mashed potatoes, and a yeast roll was a nutritious meal for teenagers needed to be fired.

Michelle nudged a few stray kernels of corn back into their proper place on her tray and then sighed through her nose as she looked out across the cacophonous cafeteria of Midtown School of Science and Technology, hoping to see Ned leaving the lunch line to come and sit down. She didn't seem him yet, so she dropped her eyes once more to her blue tray of food.

Today had been thoroughly annoying so far.

Her head had been throbbing steadily (though thankfully not excruciatingly) since she'd woken up that morning, and her stomach—in a similarly annoying act of rebellion—had decided to contort itself into ever-tightening knots that made eating sound like the most unappealing thing in the world. And to top it all off, for the past week in particular, a vague, expanding brain fog had made thinking about anything—even some of her favorite subjects—seem like a pointlessly inconvenient chore. It hadn't helped that she'd been working every afternoon, even on the weekends, and was scheduled to work again today. Or that there were a ton of forms to fill out and plans to make for her move to MIT in the fall even though she still hadn't found the motivation to do so.

In fact, at this very moment, what she really wanted to do was sleep.

(But she also wanted to figure out why she was going crazy so she could fix it, and apparently that desire was a tad stronger than the desire to simply forget about everything for a few hours).

Michelle straightened up slightly when she saw Ned finally emerge from the crush of human bodies at the front of the cafeteria. He immediately made his way over to her.

Somehow, they'd managed to claim this corner table as their own at the beginning of the year and had continued to be its sole, unchallenged occupants every day since. It helped that it always sat in a pool of searing sunlight during the lunch hour and tilted heavily to one side just because it wanted to, which made doing last-minute homework assignments and eating in general a bit more challenging than it had to be. The school was apparently too cheap or busy to fix it, but she really didn't mind.

Today, and especially given the useless state of her body and brain, she appreciated the relative seclusion of their spot. And by Ned's somewhat haggard expression as he approached her, she guessed he felt the same way. Since they didn't have any classes together until after lunch and she'd overslept this morning, this was actually the first time she'd seen her friend all day, so she offered him a close-lipped smile when he came within range.

"Hey."

Ned walked to the seat across from Michelle's and set his tray down.

"'Sup," he said, nodding as he eased onto his stool. He glanced at how Michelle was slumped over her food, not even pretending like she'd eaten some of it, and frowned. "Uh, are you—"

"Growing increasingly more disillusioned with the nutritional standards of New York City's public education system? Yes. Thanks for asking," Michelle interjected dryly. She followed it up with another weak smile to let him know she intended her comment to be facetious.

Mostly.

Ned's concerned expression dissipated, and he nodded sympathetically. By now, he was accustomed to all the ways she could use her strong opinions of society to stall or otherwise hijack conversation for her own purposes. He looked down at his tray, blinked, and then shrugged.

"I mean, yeah, it's totally way too many carbs. But honestly the rolls can be pretty dope."

Michelle hummed ambiguously and leaned farther to the side, stretching out across the table with her fist pressed against her cheek. She numbly surmised that the familiar roar of hundreds of hormone-and-caffeine-fueled conversations all going on at the same time—along with the cheap mixture of greasy food smells drifting throughout the cafeteria—was probably responsible for the sudden worsening of her bizarre physical symptoms.

She stifled a yawn.

"What happened to 'eating the rainbow' anyway? This fake chicken alone was probably soaked in enough PUFA-rich oil and carcinogenic chemicals to derail your metabolism for life," she murmured to no one in particular.

She cast her eyes down at the ugly linoleum tabletop as Ned began to eat and allowed herself to sink deeper into her carefully cultivated web of societal frustrations. Even as she spoke, she knew that doing so now was just a futile attempt to distract herself from the real dilemmas she was facing today—at least the quality of high school cafeteria food wouldn't really matter for her in a few months, after she graduated. The memory gaps both of them were dealing with and her own struggles with her apparently slipping sanity, though? Those things did matter.

And neither she nor Ned seemed to be getting any closer to figuring out why.

"PUFAS?" Ned asked after a moment, speaking through a bite of roll. But he didn't seem to be any more present in this conversation than she was. His entire presence today just seemed…uncharacteristically dampened. She wondered how he was doing with their increased work and stress-load lately—especially since he'd actually told her on several occasions he just didn't feel right these days—and then frowned at the table as she answered his question.

"Polyunsaturated fatty acids, remember? From that advanced bio class we took last year?" She looked up at Ned. "Think low oxidization temperatures, free radicals, and systemic inflamma—hey, Ned. Are you feeling okay?"

Ned, who had been entirely zoned out during her attempt at casual conversation, nodded with a marked lack of energy. Not only had he stopped eating halfway through her spiel, but he also seemed paler and even more tired than when he'd first sat down. Peter Parker's similarly haggard face flashed in her head as she took in Ned's appearance, but she squashed the mental image down as fast as she could.

Going insane was the worst.

But in all honesty, Ned looked well and truly sick. Michelle straightened up at the realization. She dimly hoped her initial inattentiveness and proclivity for using info-dumping as a coping mechanism hadn't made him feel any worse than before. Why hadn't he told her he felt bad today?

She was about to tell him he might want to see the school nurse if he felt sick, but Ned yawned and then purposefully set his fork to the side. He rubbed at one eye and then looked straight at Michelle. If she didn't know any better, she almost would have said he looked like he was dreading something.

She raised her eyebrows at him.

"I have a confession to make," Ned suddenly blurted, eyes wide as he looked at her, and Michelle blinked. That wasn't exactly how she'd expected the conversation to begin, but she could roll with it; it was a very Ned-like thing to say, and that was a good sign.

"Okay. Shoot."

Ned glanced sheepishly down at his lap.

"I've kind of been trying to practice my magic lately. Without that random finger thingy from the wizard guy that Spiderman gave me for some reason," he said all in a rush, and then he glanced quickly around him as if even a small part of the cafeteria would have been able to hear and understand the convoluted context of his comment.

Michelle's stomach jumped a little at his words. Ned seemed to be mostly alright—which meant he probably hadn't accidentally broken himself or the universe, at least—but why had he been messing around with magic again in the first place? After her and Ned's crazy and strangely unmemorable adventure with Spiderman and Dr. Strange a few months ago, they'd both agreed that it was probably safest for everyone if he held off on experimenting with magic until he could find the time (and bravery, he had added almost apologetically) to approach someone who could teach him how to properly use it—like Dr. Strange himself, perhaps.

She'd assumed he would stick to that plan more than ever after finding out about their weird memory gaps and unexplainable depression. Nevertheless, she maintained a carefully neutral expression when she spoke.

"Um. Is that even safe? Or possible?"

"Probably not. But I'm alive and I promise I didn't wipe out half the universe or anything, but…"

Ned's began fidgeting with the cap of the water bottle he'd carried to the table on his tray, and when he spoke again—apparently overcoming his disconcertingly out-of-character hesitation to share his thoughts—the look on his face and in his eyes was so familiar she felt like she knew where this conversation was going before it got entirely started.

Even then, however, his next question managed to catch her off-guard a little bit.

"You know that guy you mentioned a couple of months ago…the one who kept coming into the shop and giving you weird vibes?"

Michelle's heartrate picked up even though she tried to keep it calm by focusing on her confusion and not the fact that Ned might have been was definitely bringing up the enigma that was Peter Parker.

(Because she was crazy and apparently a stalker even though she didn't mean to be).

"Peter Parker?" she asked tentatively. "Brown hair and eyes, unusually muscular for someone who looks about our age, always sits against the wall in the shop?"

Ned's previous cautious expression morphed into one of suspicion as he squinted at Michelle.

"Uh…yeah," he said slowly. "I think that's right. Peter. But wait…did you just say 'unusually muscular?' What does that even—"

"I'm an artist," Michelle said defensively, though for some weird and entirely stupid reason, she felt her cheeks going hot as she blushed. "I notice things like that."

She pulled her hands into her lap and tried to assume a posture of indifference.

"Sometimes."

Ned did not seem convinced to abandon his suspicion, but he was merciful—or maybe he just still felt bad—and didn't push the issue.

(Whatever the issue was).

Instead, he took a deep breath and then leaned forward, pushing his full tray even farther out of the way so that nothing really lay between them.

"Okay, well, anyway. That guy has really been bothering me for, like, a month."

Michelle's heart began galloping then, and she curled her fingers into a fist on the table as her nausea rose in proportion to her expectation about what Ned might say next.

"Bothering you how?" she prompted.

"Well, I didn't really notice him at first, even after you told me he seemed like he was going through a tough time but also kind of freaked you out. I was too focused on trying to figure out these memories and why we both can't stop feeling so tired and sad all the time."

Ned paused to shake his head sorrowfully.

"That still hasn't gone away, by the way," he said. "If anything, it's almost like…it's gotten worse? It's kind of like when I'm working on a really complicated piece of code and there's one little piece that's off, but I can't figure out how—even though I know the answer is literally right there in front of me. Except this feeling is a gazillion times worse and I don't even know why—everything is going great. We even got into MIT together!"

Michelle sighed and popped her knuckles against the edge of the table just to give her hands something to do other than shake for absolutely no reason at all.

"I've felt the same way" she remarked quietly, and Ned's expression grew even more troubled at her admission before he shivered and made a little dismissive noise—as if that would truly dismiss the unsettling feeling he was describing—and then shifted in his seat.

"Freaky. Well, either way," he continued. "One day, I was coming into the shop, and I met that Peter guy coming in too, from the opposite way. He said hi and smiled at me and, and…actually…" Ned frowned. "Wait a second. Promise me you won't judge me or anything for what I'm about to say next."

Michelle, who was currently trying to sit stock-still as she listened to Ned's story—even though for some reason her brain was screaming at her to leave leave leave—offered him what she hoped was somewhat similar to a reassuring smile.

"I promise," she said, voice tight.

She wasn't sure she would have had the energy to judge him even if she had wanted to at this point anyway—she was too busy convincing herself to shut up and calm down because she legitimately felt seconds away from bolting right now. But she couldn't. She wouldn't—not when whatever Ned had to say was obviously so important.

Ned squirmed in his seat some more and then finally gave in to what appeared to be a hint of his usual excitable self. Once again, she got the eerie sense that she knew exactly what he was going to say next.

"Okay, so when Peter talked to me, he suddenly seemed so familiar. And also sad. And…cool, even though I knew nothing about him. I know that sounds crazy, but, like…you know how in dreams sometimes you meet someone and they have a face you don't recognize, but for some reason you just know who they are and your dream-self goes along with it even though it doesn't make any sense?"

Michelle tilted her head and drew her eyebrows together.

"Maybe?"

Ned waved his hands at her, definitely growing more excited as he continued to talk.

"Well, that's how I felt about Peter. I felt like I knew him, and we barely said more than a few words to each other! And that's not all—every day I've come into the shop since then, something's just been off. I started getting headaches and stomachaches—at first, I thought maybe it was just stress or indigestion from too many donuts or an energy drink overdose, but it was just too consistent—"

Michelle let out a little huffing breath of laughter of disbelief at this point, unable to hold it in and causing Ned to pause confusedly. But obviously she wasn't laughing because he'd been feeling bad. She was laughing because no way. No way had Ned been dealing with the same symptoms she did around Peter Parker—even if she'd been dealing with them a little longer and with a little more intensity, perhaps—and never even told her.

Granted, she'd never actually told Ned the full extent of the apparent connection between her symptoms and Peter Parker's presence either. It just seemed too weird to bring up, and…couldn't it just have been a coincidence that they started around the same time Peter started showing up at the shop? Wasn't it more likely that the symptoms were a result of or at least more connected with the gaps in their memory rather than with some random, unsettling customer showing up at the shop? Wasn't it more likely she was just going crazy?

But as she listened to Ned describe his symptoms, she realized she'd never really believed that this had been anything even remotely close to a coincidence. Perhaps, for some perverse reason, she had even preferred to sound crazy rather than to believe she could…what? Sense that there was way more to Peter Parker than met the eye? Knew something was wrong with Peter Parker even though she didn't even know him at all?

(Why would that ever be preferable to her, though? That didn't make sense either. Even now, things just weren't lining up like they should).

But if Ned thought something was up with Peter too, then maybe she wasn't crazy, and she could honestly say that would be a relief. Furthermore, if Peter was somehow related to Spiderman and their memory issues, as this conversation seemed to be hinting, then maybe this whole time they'd been closer to solving their little puzzle than they'd thought.

Wow.

Her head really was hurting now, to the point that she another dose of Tylenol was beginning to sound incredibly appealing despite how excessively she'd been taking it lately.

Michelle belatedly realized that Ned was still staring at her, his expression seeming to waver on the border between betrayal and disconcertion. She shook her head, to clear it as much as to let him know she wasn't judging him, as she'd promised.

"Sorry," she said, genuinely. "I'll tell you in a second. Keep going."

Ned once again looked skeptically at her but ultimately seemed to decide he trusted her because he began again. She did notice how much more tired his voice seemed now than even a few seconds ago, however, and the way he was slowly but surely curling in on himself in his seat.

He looked like he felt just as miserable—if not more so—than she did.

"Pretty soon," he said. "I had another symptom show up—and it began happening sometimes even minutes before Peter walked into the shop. My fingers started feeling all weird and tingly."

Ned said it like it was something profound and then paused, eyes bright as Michelle put the pieces together moments before he explicitly explained them.

"You know, just like that feeling I told you about that's supposed to be evidence magic runs in my family."

Michelle's stomach lurched again at this revelation—but it was in excitement more than anxiety this time. She definitely hadn't experienced this symptom before, and they both knew Ned was able to do magic in some form or fashion. Yeah, when he'd used it before to help Spiderman, he'd been wearing that wizard's ring thing, but what if he didn't actually need that?

She leaned forward, her head spinning in a way that was borderline welcome at this point. At least it was spinning productively right now.

"Is that why you started wanting to do magic again?" she asked.

Ned nodded vigorously—and then winced as if the action hurt him.

"Yeah."

Michelle let out a quiet breath and leaned back again. This was a lot to process all at once. She had no clue why they hadn't somehow talked about this before given how many discussions they'd been having about the odd things happening in their lives lately, but it didn't matter at this exact moment. This might help them finish unraveling the mystery plaguing them both.

"This whole thing is crazy, Ned," she breathed. "I don't blame or judge you for trying to practice magic—it's your choice and I probably would have done the same thing in your position—but I have to ask…why didn't you tell me? I might have been able to help somehow."

Ned ducked his head slightly at her question.

"Uh, you've had a lot going on lately, and my physical symptoms weren't even as bad as yours, so I didn't want to worry you or anything. Also, I looked really stupid because I have no clue what I'm doing and apparently Wikihow doesn't know how to do real magic either. And I didn't even find a Reddit thread for wizards or anything."

He paused, seeming to gather his courage even though Michelle had done nothing to indicate she found his reasoning inadequate, and then he came out with the last reason in a rush.

"And I, uh…didn't want to have to tell you that I kind of kept failing. Because if we got our hopes up that something would happen and then it didn't, that would really…suck for both of us, honestly. I know you kind of have an, uh, thing about disappointment."

He opened his eyes and grimaced apologetically at Michelle, but, after a second, she just shrugged, ensuring she maintained her deadpan expression all the while. That was actually really sweet in a really Ned kind of way, and again, she might have done something similar if she had been in his shoes.

Also, magic was one of those topics she'd rather just avoid thinking about at this point in her life because the world was enough to deal without magic's seeming propensity for breaking all the rules years of scientific observation had established as supposedly being unchangeable and reliable.

But since the universe was forcing her to think about it in spite of that fact—and because Ned was telling her about his experiments now and hadn't hurt himself before telling her—she decided not to think too hard about what kind of dangerous situations he might have gotten himself into if he had kept trying to do magic unsupervised.

(She could supervise him now, if need be).

So, she said, "Fair enough."

But then she frowned, both at how quiet Ned had become and also at something she'd just realized.

Ned had said the tingling in his hands was the reason he'd starting practicing magic in the first place—that that sensation had preceded his active pursuit of magic.

"Wait," she said slowly as her brain spun its wheels in mud, and Ned looked up at her. "Are you saying that magic might be responsible for—"

Unfortunately, the bell rang midway through her sentence, signaling the end of their lunch period. The sound was way too loud and piercing for Michelle's already fried brain, and both she and Ned winced at the sudden intrusion.

There went the fragile strand of logic she had been trying to follow.

The cafeteria quickly became a chaotic swarm of bodies and backpacks as Michelle swallowed her frustration as best she could, but Ned grabbed his things and stepped close to her before she had even stood up completely. He looked as close to puking as she felt, but he leaned close to urgently whisper one last thing in her ear. Presumably, this was the reason he'd begun the conversation with his confession about practicing magic in the first place:

"MJ, I did it. I did magic again," he said, excitement coloring his tone as he scrambled to finish his explanation before they had to join the mass exodus from the cafeteria. "I was trying really hard to think about how I might know Peter Parker and about how to maybe help him because he seems like he needs it and how that feeling that I've just lost my best friend or something just wouldn't go away—and then my fingers did that weird tingle thing. When I looked down, there were orange sparks in the air."

Ned pulled away, looking earnestly into Michelle's face. Her heartbeat was a dull, hammering alarm in her chest as he smiled a tiny, tired smile—a triumphant smile, she realized dumbly.

"I think I know how to figure all this stuff out."

Neither she nor Ned were able to last the rest of the day at school.

It wasn't just the fact that Ned's confessions had sent her brain spiraling off in search of answers to all the questions she wanted to ask him or that Ned himself was no doubt still irrepressibly excited by whatever he'd done to get orange sparks to appear out of thin air.

It was the fact that she legitimately felt like she was fighting the worst case of the flu she'd ever experienced (even though she knew she wasn't), and she knew Ned did too.

Needless to say, she was not feeling differential equations today.

She texted Ned to tell him she was going to head home, and he had texted back almost immediately saying that he wanted to leave too but had an important test to take in one of his classes and would have to wait. She'd grimaced on his behalf but then told them that if he felt up to it and his mom allowed it, he could come to her house after he checked out. They needed to follow up on their conversation from lunch—if either of them could stomach it.

He never did respond to that right away, but Michelle raided the medicine cabinet after she got home anyway, pulling out all the painkillers she could find, as well as a few essential oils she figured might help to diffuse if Ned was alright with it. She set them on the coffee table in her living room.

After that, she'd downed a few Tylenol herself and then gone into her room to lie in the dark for a while before Ned arrived.

When he did show up, dragging his feet and blinking like his head was killing him, they both unceremoniously crashed in the living room—Michelle splayed out on the couch with an arm draped over her eyes and Ned in her dad's armchair, head back and mouth open.

Now, after a few stunted attempts at conversation while Ned's painkillers kicked in, Michelle tried to pick up where they'd left off at school.

"So, let me recap," she began tiredly. "You started feeling weird around Peter Parker, so you tried doing magic. When you tried doing magic, some orange sparks showed up. After the orange sparks showed up, all your symptoms got ten times worse?"

Ned groaned loudly.

"Yeah, dude—I seriously think I'm dying right now. And I haven't even written a will yet."

Michelle snorted and instantly regretted it because Tylenol didn't really do much for the pre-puking stage. She hated puking.

"What happened after the orange sparks appeared?"

"Nothing. They got all crackly in the air and then they were just gone. And then I passed out right after."

Michelle pulled her arm off her eyes, letting it drop beside the couch, and then looked sharply over at Ned.

"What?"

His eyes slitted open.

"Not actually passed out," he hastened to explain. "I mean I just got super tired and got a headache, so I went to bed."

"Oh."

That was good—or at least not as bad as randomly falling unconscious on the floor. Michelle closed her eyes, fighting off an intense bout of sleepiness herself even though she knew closing her eyes was the first step to losing that battle. It was weird how earlier she had really wanted to go to sleep, but now that she was so close to getting her wish, all she really wanted to do was figure out the connection between Peter Parker and Ned's magic.

In fact, the more she thought about what Ned had said earlier, the more she realized how weird all of this was—how it felt simultaneously so wrong and so right even thinking about these things. There was a serious disconnect going on between her head and her body, and she was beyond sick of it.

Nothing made sense in her head.

Nothing felt right.

And this new development with Ned's magic just seemed like more of a complication than a step in the right direction.

She sighed again and then once more glanced over at Ned, who now had his eyes open and was staring intently—eyebrows creased—at the midafternoon sunlight pooling on her dad's beige carpet.

"Before we left, you said you thought you knew how we could figure out what's going on. Did you mean by using magic again?" Michelle asked.

Ned's gaze swung slowly over to her, though it remained unfocused.

"Um, yeah. I think."

Michelle grunted as she forced herself into a fully sitting position.

"Just by looking at you, I'm going to guess you feel like your thoughts keep crashing headfirst into a brick wall too," she said dryly, and Ned's eyes cleared for a moment as he smirked—albeit, weakly smirked.

"Exactly. But…"

His smirk disappeared.

"I also feel like we're so close to figuring this out. Like, I think we can agree that Peter Parker is super not-normal and that we shouldn't be feeling this depressed and that Spiderman is acting kind of weird, but how does all of that even fit together?"

Michelle shook her head and then leaned back against the couch, mirroring Ned's previous position. Meanwhile, he sat up straighter, his excitement visibly ramping up again.

"Have you ever seen the Matrix?" he asked.

Michelle's eyes slipped closed again, and in the warm greyness that followed she could almost pretend that she didn't feel like a piece of her heart or her brain or whatever had been taken out, grossly misshapen, and then shoved haphazardly back into her body as if it was still meant to fit there.

But, in answer to Ned's question, she merely said, "Uh-huh."

"Do you…do you feel kind of like you're in the Matrix right now too?" he asked, and his voice was much quieter now. Sad, even, unless she was just misinterpreting his tone.

She cracked her eyes open and lifted her head up from the back of the couch.

"What?"

Ned looked up at her then, and she was caught off guard by his red-rimmed eyes and the open, broken expression he wore. It was a look that didn't belong on Ned's face, and seeing it just made the wrongness of all of this that much more palpable.

She dropped her eyes to the assortment of medicines on the coffee table.

"Something is wrong, MJ. Something big, and we keep missing it," he said quietly.

And even though he was just stating the obvious, the way he said it made Michelle want to hold her breath, as if whatever he said next would somehow reveal exactly what it was that was so wrong and why. She swallowed.

If only.

"I think something must be wrong with us," she responded. The conviction in her voice was weak even to her, and she'd genuinely believed that about herself up until this point. Now, she wasn't so sure.

Ned shook his head and leaned forward with his hands on his knees.

"I meant something is wrong with the world, not us. Remember the Matrix. We're like Neo, kind of. We know things aren't like they're supposed to be and something—magic or God or the universe—is trying to show us that, but we…we haven't got all of the pieces yet. Or something. Even though I think we have the power to—I dunno—fix whatever is going on."

Ned paused briefly and then followed up with a lament that might have been amusing to her in any other context.

"And we don't even get some of the cool stuff that came with the Matrix, like Hugo Weaving and dodging bullets or cool background music."

Michelle blinked. The tension and exasperation in Ned's explanation was a perfect mirror for her own feelings (excepting his comparison of real life with the Matrix, of course). She wasn't entirely sure she agreed with what he was saying yet, but…maybe it made more sense than the fact that she and Ned were going crazy in the exact same way and at pretty much the exact same time.

There seemed to be three main parts to this mystery they were fighting so hard to unravel—three parts that didn't quite line up even though both she and Ned knew, apparently so deeply that the knowledge was making them physically ill, that they should line up: Peter Parker, Spiderman, and their own inexplainable and irrepressible thoughts and feelings.

The latter of which were undoubtedly tied to Peter Parker in some way.

But that still didn't explain Spiderman and the memory gaps…or did it?

Michelle sat up and frowned.

Wait a second.

Michelle's ears began abruptly ringing and her heart began pounding, but—

"The question is, what is our red and blue pill?" Ned muttered suddenly, his voice floaty in the way that meant he was really speaking just to speak.

Michelle's train of thought wavered violently at the sound of his voice, but she didn't bother trying to ask him to be quiet because she knew if she spoke, whatever ghostlike connections her brain was working so hard to make right now would immediately slip right out of her gasp.

Because she was almost there—she knew it.

She had almost figured out how the three pieces fit together based on what Ned had said and what she had been experiencing lately.

Barely breathing now, Michelle closed her eyes, willed herself to just think.

(To fight whatever this was that seemed to want her to remain ignorant of the truth).

Her hands curled into fists with just the effort of maintaining concentration through her pounding head and that thick, sticky feeling rising in her chest—

And then it all fell apart as Ned jumped to his feet with a gasp.

Her eyes shot open right as he turned to look fully at her.

"MJ. I think I know what's going on," he whispered reverently.

Michelle still wasn't breathing—half-stunned as she was by how abruptly her concentration had shattered—but the second her wide eyes met Ned's, she knew everything was about to change. She just didn't know how, and that scared her…but she didn't care. Not really, because Ned was right.

They were meant to figure this out.

(And even if she was wrong and they weren't meant to figure it out, Michelle was determined to do so anyway).

"What if," Ned continued, his voice almost strangled. "What if Peter Parker is Spiderman?"

As soon as the question was out of his mouth, three things happened: first, Michelle finally let air rush into her lungs because that's what she had been so close to realizing, and it was like the mental walls she had been pushing up against only a few seconds before crumbled. Secondly, a thin, hissing rope of orange appeared in the air between Ned and Michelle, spinning and spitting tiny sparks that fell harmlessly to the carpet. And as soon as it appeared, they both jerked back into their respective seats with matching yelps because that familiar pain in their heads swelled rapidly—turning white-hot for the briefest of seconds—and then winked out completely.

Just like that, it was gone.

Her nausea, her headache, the tension that had overwhelmed her entire body—it was just gone.

They were left staring at each other, hearts thumping loudly in their ears and their chests aching like something just behind their ribcages had been severed—or maybe like something had been pounded back into place.

Like they'd just remembered something they'd known all along, something that should have been obvious from the very beginning.

"Dude," Ned breathed after a few seconds. "Did that just come out of me?"

A genuine—if a little hysterical—laugh bubbled up in Michelle's chest.

(Relief. She was relieved).

"I have no clue," she said. "But I think you asked the right question."

Peter Parker was Spiderman, and Spiderman was Peter Parker.

Of course.

They'd known that all along, hadn't they?

Ned looked down at his hands, turned them over and inspected him like he couldn't believe they were actually his. Michelle, meanwhile, simply reviewed all the memories she remembered that they'd written down, all the discussions they'd had about Spiderman, and all the strange things she'd noticed about Peter—including his consistent injuries.

It all made so much sense, or at the very least it just felt right in a way that was frustratingly difficult to explain but true nonetheless.

How had she missed it before? How could she never have even suspected the truth about Peter Parker when the signs had literally been staring her right in the face? Had Ned's magic somehow been the key to this breakthrough, and if so…how, exactly?

Apparently, she and Ned reached the same shaky conclusion in answer to those question—and at the same time, no less.

"Um," Ned said right as the pieces clicked in Michelle's head and her expression hardened accordingly.

"Does this mean…I mean, if we apparently had leftover memories or whatever of Spiderman and the gaps in our memory were there because we used to know Peter Parker was Spiderman but we just…forgot, and this magic stuff is involved—"

"Does that mean he used magic on us to make us forget?" Michelle finished quietly.

Ned sank down into his chair, mouth open as he considered this new—and admittedly disturbing—possibility.

"Dude. What even. I thought he was supposed to be a good guy."

Michelle looked down at her trembling hands. The theory really did make a sickening kind of sense given their memories and how they'd been feeling over the past few months, as well as Ned's experiences with magic.

Her loose, evolving theory—which her brain spat out with a thrilling ease—ran something like this: sometime in the past, Ned and Michelle, for whatever reason, had gotten involved with Spiderman, hence why they had so many memories of working with him. But apparently, they had also learned his secret identity at some point, and Spiderman (Peter) himself had either used magic himself or gotten someone else to—Dr. Strange, perhaps, given that he was the only real wizard Michelle knew and they had both met him somewhat recently—in order to make Ned and Michelle forget who his alter ego was. That's why they could remember Spiderman but not Peter Parker—Peter was supposed to fill in the gaps in their memories somehow.

But for some reason, then—maybe because Ned could use magic himself—the forgetting spell hadn't kept them from figuring out that huge chunks of their memory were missing or that something in general was just off, and Ned had somehow managed to break the spell's hold just by asking the right question.

Basically, they just broke a spell and figured out what was wrong with them.

They remembered.

But why had Peter made them forget in the first place? And why did he keep showing up at the shop where they worked like a creep if he didn't want them to figure out who he was? How did Ned manage to break the spell—if that's what it was—without the help of any kind of magical relic or guidance?

Those were the things that still didn't make sense.

Goosebumps rippled along Michelle's skin, but she ignored them in favor of the warm anger that blossomed in her chest as she thought of how close she'd come to convincing herself she was crazy—and, worse, how much they'd both physically suffered physically in just the past few hours alone? Hadn't Peter or the sorcerer who did this on his behalf realized how making them forget Spiderman's identity might affect the rest of their lives? How it might knock them off-balance? Messing with people's heads without their permission just wasn't right.

She wrapped her arms around herself and took a deep, steadying breath that chased away the last of the strange giddy relief she'd experienced right after the magic string showed up. She saw Ned do something similar and then gave him a short nod.

He looked quizzically at her, but she had no doubt he was thinking through the same things she was and feeling much the same way. She could see it in his eyes.

This wasn't over yet—they knew what was wrong now, apparently, but they still needed answers.

Her voice was hard and controlled when she spoke.

"I think it's time we have a talk with Peter Parker."

A/N: Yes, I know this chapter was insanely long (sorry). Yes, PUFAS are real (please take care of yourselves). Yes, this chapter is very conversation-heavy and also kind of got reincarnated and frankenstein-ed several times because it was being ornery, but I hope it made sense and you managed to enjoy it nonetheless! You have all been a wonderful audience, and I just want you to know that every single kudo, bookmark/subscription, and comment means so much more than you know. Merry (belated) Christmas to all of you, and thanks so, so much for supporting my work :)

"Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves receive from God." ~2 Corinthians 1:2-4