"Dude, are you sure we should talk to him today instead of waiting and thinking it over some more?"

Michelle swiped her rag over a table and side-eyed Ned, who sat across the room in his usual seat, eyebrows scrunched together.

"What else is there to 'think over?' Someone used magic on us—likely without our permission—and we deserve to know why," she replied dryly, walking back behind the counter to put her rag away. Ned shifted on his stool, seeming to struggle for a response to Michelle's logic as she turned to peer at the slate grey sky and sludgy sidewalks outside. She really wasn't sure why Ned wasn't as ready to get answers about this months-long ordeal as she was.

After managing a few more speculative conversations and a short, restless nap despite their earlier excitement—the sudden vanishing of their symptoms left them drowsy as well as relieved—Ned and Michelle had quickly decided to confront Peter Parker about his alter ego and their lost memories at the next available opportunity. Her boss hadn't been showing up regularly to micromanage and gripe at her since he'd established a second Peter Pan's Doughnuts and Pastry shop in a neighboring borough, and she hadn't called any of her coworkers about picking up her shift before her and Ned's realizations, so it was actually possible to do so that same afternoon, when she went in for work.

They were the only ones in the shop now and it was unlikely any more customers would come in during this last half hour of her shift—making it the perfect time for this confrontation to take place—but Peter still hadn't showed up. Generally, he had already come in, eaten, and left by this time of the day.

"I just…I dunno," Ned finally said, tone uncertain as Michelle forced herself to ignore her growing unease and reluctantly pull her gaze back to him. "I was thinking about how hard it was to break this spell or whatever in the first place. We had all the physical stuff and the freaky feelings and the brain fog so we couldn't put the pieces together or even think to talk with each other like we should have. And that made it seem almost like, like a self-protective antivirus program or something…"

Ned paused and scrunched his face up while Michelle frowned at him.

"Wait, never mind. That would make us the viruses, which is totally inaccurate and—" the teenager interrupted himself to shake his head rapidly, "No, whatever. The point is, what if there's a really good reason the spell was trying so hard to keep us from remembering Peter Parker is Spiderman? What if we're supposed to just…leave it alone?"

Michelle's answer came unbidden and devoid of even a hint of hesitation:

"No."

Her friend looked at her quizzically, and Michelle surprised even herself by leaning closer to explain, the conviction in her voice aligned perfectly with the strong, steady cadence of her heart.

"We deserve answers about what we've been dealing with, Ned. I don't know about you, but there's no way I would have consciously allowed anyone to use magic to mess with my head—"

Ned grimaced.

"Same," he agreed quietly.

"And something about all of this still feels off. We already broke the spell, and I think I can get Peter to answer our questions, but what if we're still missing something?"

"Maybe the spell is broken but just needs more time to…wear off completely? Like, we'll gradually keep remembering stuff and then everything will feel normal again?" Ned offered hopefully.

Michelle crossed her arms and shrugged.

"Whatever it is, Peter Parker won't leave our sight until he tells us everything he knows."

As the frequently over-dramatic universe would have it, it was at that very moment that Peter chose to walk into the shop. Michelle and Ned both froze involuntarily at the gentle chime of the bell above the door.

Here went nothing.

Michelle exchanged one last glance of solidarity with Ned and then turned to Peter. Her heart thudded as she approached the register and her jaw and stomach tightened in anticipation despite her best efforts to remain entirely calm, but—

Oh.

The first thing Michelle did when she fully faced Peter was notice a trickle of blood just beneath his nose, bright red against his pallid skin. The second thing that happened occurred in the amount of time it took for her to blink. It wasn't anything as dramatic or as unpleasant as the suffocating feelings she had been experiencing around Peter—those symptoms were still gone, thankfully.

No, this was a flash of sight and color and feeling and familiarity, like the most intense bout of déjà vu she had ever experienced—

Like an important memory, stripped of context but vivid nonetheless, settling back into place in her brain.

In less than a second, Peter's face flashed in her mind—dirtier, bloodier, but with that same trickle of blood underneath his nose. She saw damp hair plastered to his forehead, a black-and-red Spiderman suit against a background of rubble, two red-rimmed brown eyes—

And with the vision, she felt a fierce mixture of emotions bubble quickly and violently up in her chest—

Worry

Hope.

Relief.

And…protectiveness?

Just as quickly as they came, both the image and the feelings associated with it vanished, and Michelle was left staring at a cleaner but perhaps even more haggard version of Peter's face as she had just seen it in her head. He was staring up at her from the other side of the counter, wearing a borderline concerned expression, one finger poised over his phone as if he had just happened to look up and see her reaction to the intensity of what she presumed was a memory of some kind (maybe the first time she learned who Spiderman was under the mask?).

Whatever it was, it had actually seemed more real than the Peter she was looking at now.

Michelle scrambled to snap out of her daze and then assumed a carefully blank expression before he could comment on anything strange he might have noticed about her behavior. Rarely had she been this glad to have had so much practice acting like she was beyond caring about anything going on around her. At least high school had been good for something.

She lifted her hand and used a knuckle to tap just under her nose right as Peter opened his mouth to say something.

"Uh, hi. You have some—"

Peter's hand shot up to his own nose, and he grimaced when he touched the blood there. His eyes shot to hers, and she saw a faint stroke of color brush his cheeks even though he tried to smile weakly at her as he tipped his head back.

"Aw, gross. I'm so sorry—the cold weather sometimes," Peter gestured vaguely with one hand while he pinched his nose with the other, "Makes my nose do this. Do you have any napkins?"

Michelle's stomach jumped, and she glanced over at Ned before she could stop herself. He was staring openly at them with wide eyes, so Michelle quickly looked back at Peter. It was now or never.

"Um, yeah. No problem," she said, jerking her head over to where Ned was sitting in the corner. Her strange sense of déjà vu earlier and her ensuing slip in composure faded away as the unsettling events of the past few months—and how they all tied so clearly back to the haunting boy in front of her—flashed through her mind.

"Have a seat," she said coolly. "I'll get you some."

Peter, still pinching his nose and holding his head back, followed her finger with his eyes and then visibly swallowed when he saw Ned. Michelle noted that fact and thought that maybe his shoulders tensed up too, but it was hard to tell for sure. She grabbed several napkins from the dispenser and watched as Peter made his way over to where Ned was, walking slowly, almost warily.

Was it possible he suspected something already?

But he didn't do anything but offer Ned an awkward, close-lipped smile as he slid into the only seat beside him. Ned returned the favor about as graciously before his eyes jumped urgently back to Michelle. She pressed her lips together and then quickly reached under the counter to switch off the lights for the shop's Open sign—they didn't need any customers walking in on the upcoming conversation.

She didn't hand Peter the napkins from across the counter—instead, she walked around it and came to stand on his other side so he was sandwiched between her and Ned. Granted, she didn't think the gesture would really do that much if Peter really wanted to cut their conversation short by leaving early—she still had no doubt he was somehow Spiderman, after all—but it gave her a marginally larger amount of control in the situation. She unceremoniously extended the napkins to him.

Peter, whose posture had definitelystiffened at Michelle's sudden and presumably unexpected presence at his side, accepted them with a quiet, nasally 'thanks.' Michelle leaned her back against the counter, crossed her arms, and then took a deep breath before Peter finished dabbing at the blood coming from his nose.

And then she took a leap. Her flat expression materialized practically of its own accord—an indifferent and impersonal mask that fit her comfortably after so many years of use.

"Peter Parker," she said, deciding as the words came out of her mouth that sugarcoating it would just be a waste of time for all of them. "Ned and I know who you really are. We remembered."

And Peter flinched.

The tension in the shop ratcheted up about ten degrees, and Peter slowly lowered his wad of brown napkins to the countertop. Unless she was mistaken (she wasn't), he also stopped breathing, or at least started breathing so shallowly he couldn't see him moving at all. But, just like the first time he came into the shop months ago, it was his gaze that she found most striking.

His eyes.

Something about—

"What?" Peter squeaked when it apparently became apparent she had actually just said what she did. Michelle leveled a piercing, confident stare at him even though something in her gut flipped as she did so. She knew with a sudden clarity that she had to maintain her unruffled exterior now more than ever because if she didn't, she probably wouldn't be able to think clearly enough to ask the questions that needed to be asked. The way he looked at her—too much intensity in the emotions ghosting across his expression, too much distortion in his eyes—would only distract her.

And again, she reminded herself, she and Ned had every right to be angry at what Spiderman—Peter—had presumably done to their memories. The truth needed to come out, even if the teenager standing before them was far from comfortable sharing it.

"We remembered that you're Spiderman even though you made us forget. With magic," Ned piped up, and Peter turned his head towards him so fast that Michelle thought for a moment he was about to jump out of his seat. Ned blinked, the slight timidity that had bled through in his voice evident in his face and eyes now as well.

Michelle cleared her throat, and now Peter was looking at her again, his throat working like he was repeatedly trying and failing to come up with something to say.

(She tried not to think about the tightness in her chest as she watched him struggle with the exposure of his secret identity. It didn't make sense for her to feel this way, did it? Not after everything that had happened? She was so, so tired of things not making sense).

"What we want to know is how and why you made us forget in the first place."

"And if you knew beforehand that it would make us feel so bad and so confused," Ned added with a disappointed frown.

It was that comment that finally spurred Peter to action.

Before Ned or Michelle could even think to react, he mumbled, "I'm sorry, excuse me please, thanks" and jumped up to step away from them, almost backing completely up against the far wall. He took a deep breath and stood with his legs slightly apart and bent at the knee. A faint crease appeared between his eyebrows as his eyes flitted back-and-forth across the ground at his feet.

"Okay, wait," he said slowly and in a significantly more controlled voice than before. He half-raised one arm—palm facing them like they were the ones who needed calming down—as he presumably continued to process what they'd just said.

His troubled gaze landed on Ned first.

"How did you—how did you remember that?"

"Dude, yes! We totally got it right. You are Spiderman!" Ned exploded triumphantly, pumping one fist in the air.

Meanwhile, Michelle found her voice again. Some part of her dimly thought he didn't deserve any answers from her when he was the one responsible for screwing with their minds. But the much bigger part of her—the part that wouldn't stop comparing Peter's face from her flashback with the battered, spooked face right in front of her now—couldn't bring itself to be anything but straightforward and honest in response to his question.

In fact, the sound of Peter's strained voice only strengthened her earlier suspicion that something about all of this was still terribly wrong. The sense that they had somehow missed the point of this whole mystery in the first place took root in her head—the sense that the secret to everything they'd experienced lately didn't really lay with Spiderman and their memories at all.

"We remembered working with Spiderman," she said. "But we compared notes, and there were a lot of almost identical gaps in our memory neither one of us could explain. We both had stomachaches and some other unpleasant physical symptoms too, especially when you came into the shop. Ned used, uh, he used magic to break the spell, and then we realized you and Spiderman were the same person."

She added a small shrug at the end just because that was a very CliffsNotes version of the past few months, and it all seemed mildly stupid and contrived when she laid it out so simply.

(Maybe there was some truth to Ned's antivirus-mental block theory after all, if it had taken them that long to make such a simple connection between events that really weren't that extraordinary when compared to things like Infinity Stones or the multiverse).

Peter blinked at her summary and then raised his eyebrows at both Ned and Michelle, something like unexpected admiration leaping quietly across his eyes. The hand not picking at his shirt curled into a fist, but this time, Michelle didn't even notice—she was too busy trying to figure out why Peter's reaction unsettled her (again) even though he'd actually admitted to being Spiderman.

"That's…wow. Okay. Thank you for telling me," Peter replied after another moment, voice quiet. He began to pace a short, sharp path in front of them. "Just to clarify, though, I've been making you uncomfortable for months now but you didn't know why, you realized your memory had holes in it, and then Ned used magic and…suddenly you remembered that Spiderman is Peter Parker? Without ever even talking about this stuff with me before now? Was that—was that all that you remembered?"

Michelle narrowed her eyes at his last question, but Ned jumped in excitedly to answer it.

"Pretty much! But I'd been practicing magic for a little bit already and there was this spinning rope-thingy made of those orange sparks, like we used together to fight those interdimensional guys, and—"

Michelle held up her hand to stop Ned and took a step toward Peter on something like instinct. Peter stopped pacing.

"Why would you ask that? Is there something else we should remember?"

Ned breathed a heavy "oh" from behind her and Peter answered quickly. Too quickly.

"No! I just—I was just wondering if you remembered all the details about casting the spell. It was, uh, kind of a crazy time, and I'm still…learning about magic myself, so I was curious."

Lie. It was a lie. She read it in the shifting of his eyes, the tilt of his stance away from them. She narrowed her eyes at him and was only somewhat gratified to see him begin to fidget with the corner of his shirt again.

"Do you care to remind us of those details?" Michelle asked warningly when he looked back at the ground (she sounded like her mom).

Somehow—perhaps because of the intrusion of that fleeting thought about her mom— Michelle missed the exact moment Peter and any more answers he might have given them during this conversation slipped away from her after he broke eye contact. She only knew that between her question and his reply, the superpowered teenager changed. He inhaled a short breath through his nose and then visibly relaxed. His shoulders slumped not like he had been defeated but like a burden had been lifted. His voice was stronger but robotic—detached—when he spoke again.

But worse than that for Michelle was the fact that when he lifted his chin, she couldn't read him anymore—

His expression was blank.

(She hadn't realized until that moment just how easily and familiarly she'd been able to read him since he came in—how much it had felt like something deep inside her knew Peter Parker as a person and not just as the vigilante who was somehow responsible for tampering with their memories).

(But now, when she looked at him, she knew he'd never been more far away from her).

(And it hurt in a way she wasn't prepared for).

"Yeah. Um. You deserve answers after everything you've been dealing with. Sorry about that, by the way," Peter said, looking between Ned and Michelle with an expression that she would have interpreted as sheepishness if his voice and eyes hadn't been so hollow. He squared his shoulders and then launched into an explanation that sounded scarily similar to a recitation, given its content.

"We met not long before the Blip and because I thought I needed some help tracking criminals and stuff, I asked you two to help me out—as Spiderman, of course. You agreed to try, which is why you have some memories working with me. It seemed to work for a while, and then…you found out I was Peter Parker. We tried to keep working up anyway, but then…things got messy. More dangerous—you probably have a few memories of that from, uh, a trip we took to Europe and then a few months ago."

Peter paused and tucked his hands into his jean pockets.

"But anyway. After that, I used magic to cast a spell to make you forget who I was. I couldn't have anyone know my identity anymore because it had the potential to hurt not just you, but all the people I cared about."

"You…can do magic too?" Ned asked at the slightest break in the flow of Peter's explanation. His voice had taken on that awe-stricken, fanboy tone he usually reserved for his nerdiest conversations.

Peter nodded without any change in expression.

"Listen, I know you're probably both upset at me, and you have every right to be because I never should have pulled you into my vigilantism in the first place. I'm also sorry I had to erase your memories. I didn't know the spell would make you feel bad (again, sorry), and I—I shouldn't have kept coming into the shop after it took effect anyway. So…sorry."

He shrugged lightly. The tiny, apologetic smile that briefly broke through his composure ached inside Michelle like a weary goodbye when saw it.

His profuse apologies were the only thing that really stuck in her head for some reason, rattling loudly around in her head all throughout his explanation until her heartrate jumped, a nervous pattern of knocks on the inside of her ribs.

(Because the words "I'm sorry" were more than familiar coming from his lips, weren't they? They were yet another piece of this puzzle).

"I came in here over and over because I wanted to make sure the spell held," Peter continued with finality in his tone. "But I was wrong to do it, and I promise I won't ever come here again. I've done enough damage as it is and…you two deserved better."

Michelle honestly wasn't sure what she had been expecting him to say or in what way she had expected him to go about it, but she knew at that moment it wasn't this. That it shouldn't be this.

What Peter said made a kind of sense according to the theory she and Ned had developed earlier, even if there were several glaring holes she really needed to ask him about—and it answered the biggest questions she had, albeit with a marked lack of detail. And yet it didn't matter because for some reason, she knew Peter was lying, trying to conceal some crucial part of their situation.

Not only that, but her thoughts about the many apologies he included in his spiel helped her pinpoint exactly what it was that made his gaze so much more unnerving than it had been even when he came into the shop that first time—

There was neither light nor darkness behind his eyes—no hint of hope or defeat or remorse even as he'd apologized to them over and over for his actions.

There was just a dull, solemn hardness.

A wall.

And that scared her more than anything else that had happened so far because now she thought she was beginning to understand something about everything the breaking of the spell hadn't yet revealed to them about Peter. It had to do with his identity, but it was more than just the fact that he was Spiderman—more and different than even the story he had just fed them.

It was a theory her brain was only just beginning to spin.

(But she already knew she hated where it was going because it made her understand why Peter might be lying to them).

"Um—" Ned began after a heavy silence, but Peter shook his head and took several quick steps toward the door.

"I've got to go now, guys. I'm sorry. But…just please don't tell anyone who I am, alright? I know you probably never want to see me or do anything for me like that at all, but—"

Peter paused, and the solemn, unreadable mask he'd donned earlier to match his eyes wavered before he looked up. Straight at Michelle.

"I really did make you forget to protect the people I loved."

Then he opened the door and left; the city outside swallowed him up.

Michelle knew in that moment—as a faint shadow of snow swirled in from outside and cold air slapped against her cheeks—that the theory she'd been uneasily stitching together in the back of her head ever since Ned broke the spell wasn't really a theory at all. It was an understanding—the centerpiece of their puzzle, without which the picture would have never been completed or made sense at all:

All the struggles of the past few months had never been about her and Ned's memories or finding the truth in a painful and intriguing mystery or even just Spiderman. They had always been about the very person of Peter Parker himself.

She couldn't see the whole picture yet—how all the remaining gaps in her memory were supposed to be filled or even which parts of Peter's story were true in regards to their shared past—but she knew he needed their help.

Somehow—perhaps by the same intuition that had driven both her and Ned to break a spell they hadn't even known existed—she realized that Peter Parker was lost.

And she and Ned were the only ones who could find him again.

~+~+~+~ "This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another." 1 John 4:10-11 ~+~+~+~

A/N: *facepalms* Why else do we write and read if not for cheesily dramatic chapter endings and weirdly detailed conversations that span a healthy 8 Word doc pages? :D Anyway, thanks so much for reading and/or leaving feedback! I have seriously been blown away by the support you guys have shown and immensely appreciate not only your feedback but also your patience as far as plot goes. That being said *SPOILER ALERT* the next chapter will feature the moment we've all been waiting for: some serious memory recovery! Stay safe, God bless, and know you are loved, dear readers. 3