Title: To Make It Through
Summary: "When her eyes open, she's in her room." The moments after the Decimation was undone and everyone who died five years ago was brought back. Set right after Endgame, and briefly covers Far From Home. MJ POV.
Disclaimer: I am not associated with Marvel and make no profit from any of what I am posting.
"I've Been Alone
(baby, you're not alone.)"
— Team StarKid
When her eyes open, she's in her room.
Sunlight floods in through her open windows along with the scent of freshly mown grass mingled with the warmth of the summer heat and, for a moment, everything is normal.
MJ blinks, stretches her fingers and looks down.
She swears she'd just been reading; that there had been a book in her hand.
She pinches her lips together, reaches out for her phone, but the bedside table is empty. Her lamp, her duck-shaped alarm clock and the small stack of books that litter every corner of her room — they're all gone.
MJ's up at once, eyebrows knit as her gaze sweeps across the room. It's her room, but, at the same time, it's not. Her books have been tucked into shelves haphazardly, and there's a coat of dust on the head of her bed. The lights are dimmer; her posters look faded. Maybe, she reasons, Mom cleaned up while she was in New York.
The door flies open, and MJ jumps at the sound.
There's a boy who looks like he might be her age, with dark hair and eyes that match hers. He's familiar and, yet, she's certain she's never seen him before. He looks like he knows her, though. Like he's always known her.
"You're back," he says breathlessly, and before she can process the implications of his words, he's closed the gap between them and pulled her into a bone-crushing hug.
MJ stiffens, finds her senses a moment later and slams her foot into his ankle, pushing the boy back.
"Who —" she begins to say but stops abruptly.
There's tears pooling in the boy's eyes and, suddenly, it hits her.
"Nate?" she whispers, though it can't be. He's supposed to — She's —
He nods.
This time, when he hugs her, MJ doesn't push him away.
She waits a week before she opens her phone.
There's a dozen missed calls from Liz, Cindy and Abe, and messages that span what should have been the last week but is actually a week from five years ago. Then they stop, and MJ wonders what that must have been like — knowing that they were part of the fifty per cent that survived. That some of their friends would never come back. Until now.
She scrolls down a bit more. The last text from Betty says that she reached home. Ned's sent her a half-assed excuse as to where Peter disappeared to. Peter still hasn't read the last message she sent him.
She meets Betty for brunch, spends an evening on the phone with both Cindy and Liz and, when the feeling that MJ doesn't belong in this new world persists, she calls him.
"Hey," Peter's voice says. He picked up faster than she'd been expecting.
"Hey," she says and, somehow, she can't bring herself to call him loser just yet. "Did you —?"
There's a moment's silence, then: "Yeah. I mean, no — I mean —"
"Can we meet?"
"Yeah, yeah yeah. Sure. Delmar's? At five?"
"Okay," she says and, after he ends the call, again: "Okay."
Nate's sitting on the couch, watching a show she's never heard of. He turns when she appears, eyes flickering to the stairs as though he's half-expecting Mom to come down too. It's fucked up, MJ thinks.
So goddamned fucked up.
"I'm going out," she announces.
He gives her a small, sad smile. "That's good."
He used to be loud and obnoxious. She remembers how he'd scream and argue every time he didn't get his way and how MJ would roll her eyes at him because that's what older sisters did. He used to sneak into her room when he couldn't sleep, and MJ would put on whichever Harry Potter movie she felt like watching. By about halfway through, Nate would always be asleep.
He's her kid brother.
He's not supposed to be older than her.
He's not supposed to be the responsible one.
"See you later," she says ( What else is she supposed to say? ) and she closes the door behind her before he can reply.
Peter looks the same.
Hair the same wild mess it had been when they'd been on the bus, hands stuffed into the pockets of his hoodie. (It's not his usual NASA sweatshirt, and that bothers MJ.)
"Hey," he says, tugging a hand through his hair.
"Hey," she says, "loser."
He cracks a smile and, for one perfect moment, she can pretend like nothing ever went wrong. Then he gestures for them to go to Delmar's where a woman MJ doesn't recognise is sitting at the counter, and it all comes back to her.
"His daughter," Peter says, reading MJ's expression. "Someone had to keep the business going."
MJ nods. There are questions swimming around her head that she daren't ask. Questions that still hurt to think about. "Yeah. Of course."
They pick up sandwiches, and then they're out again, walking around a Queens that they no longer know.
"Ned called me," Peter says. "He, you know, disappeared in The Decimation too."
He sounds relieved, as though he doesn't know what he would have done without Ned. MJ gets that. She didn't have anyone she was as close to, but it's strange picturing Ned without Peter, or Peter without Ned.
"Betty and Flash too," MJ says. Not that Peter's ever been close to either. There's so many who she doesn't know about yet and, worse still, so many who survived and lost their families.
"I talked to Abe," Peter says. "He's in uni, you know. In another world, we might have been too."
MJ likes the way he words it: in another world . It's a nice thought. It's almost comforting to think that there's another world with an MJ whose parents are still together and whose brother is still younger than her. A world where MJ is twenty-one, just like half the people she was sixteen with. A world that's normal. One without cracks that grow deeper as each day passes.
"It's fucked up," she says, and it feels good saying it out loud.
"Yeah," Peter says. "So fucked up."
They fall silent again, and MJ figures he's trying to come up with other names, trying to remember other people who mattered to him. To her.
"My brother's older than me," she says. It comes out in a rush, her words slurred together and, for a moment, she thinks he didn't understand. (For a moment, she's scared she'll have to say it again.)
"Shit," he says, and his knuckles brush against hers like he's going to take her hand, but he reconsiders it and stuffs his fists back into his pockets. MJ tries not to dwell on it. "That sucks."
She squeezes her eyes shut and nods. It's not half as bad as what so many others have gone through, but that doesn't make it any less weird. Or scary. He has a girlfriend, she wants to say. He plays the guitar and sings and goes for debate and knows as many fancy words as she does which isn't allowed, by the way, because he's supposed to be younger and she's supposed to be smarter.
"Five years is a long time," Peter says quietly, and it's obvious she supposes, but, at the same time, it's not.
Five years didn't feel like a long time until it was stolen from them.
"Do you think it was worth it?"
They're back in the park for the third day in a row, Peter rocking himself back and forth on the balls of his heels and MJ sitting still, but gripping the chains of her swing for support anyway.
She shrugs, kicking at the grass. "I wouldn't know," she whispers. She's wondered the same more than once, and MJ wishes she had an answer, but she doesn't. Nobody does.
Peter pinches his lips together, and she can tell there's something else on his mind. Something he's not yet ready to share.
"The world population has doubled in a few decades before. It would have happened again," she says, and he nods rapidly; he's thought of that too.
"Was popping back into existence five years after their disappearance a good thing? Probably not. It's fucked with the economy more than anyone would dare to admit. Was killing half the world's population worth it though? Probably not either. It only delayed the inevitable. We'd need a more permanent solution to fix the mess that is our planet."
She kicks harder this time and swings back. For a moment, MJ is weightless, then her feet hit the grass again, and she comes to an unsteady stop.
"People died for our second chance though," Peter says, and he doesn't need to explain for her to guess who he's talking about. She's suspected that Peter has secrets he doesn't share with the others for a while now, and the little things always seem to add up. "Sometimes," he continues, "I feel like their sacrifice wasn't worth it."
She thinks about her family. About her Dad, who moved on and remarried, and her Mom, who doesn't know how she's supposed to feel about it. She thinks about the people who got displaced. The parents who missed five years of their kid's lives. The kids who spent five years alone.
The world had moved on, MJ thinks. In coming back, they've only added to the problem. They've become a burden.
"Maybe it wasn't," she whispers. "But they did it, and that means our second chance mattered enough for them to try."
Peter doesn't argue with that.
There's an invisible line at school when they go back. One side for the people who used to be five years younger than them, and one side for everyone who should have been five years older. It's not that they don't get along. It's just that all of them used to be kids a few weeks ago, and now, they're five years older.
Their table at lunch no longer consists of just MJ, Ned, and Peter. Flash and Betty, and all their old classmates sit together now, looking as out of place as MJ feels. They still talk about shows from five years ago, reference memes from five years ago. Try to pretend like they didn't just disappear for five whole years.
And yet, there are moments when Betty will turn without thinking, Cindy's name on her lips. Or when Flash talks about his family trip last month, but what he really means is last month five years ago.
MJ feels like her Grandmom— stuck in an age that has long gone and struggling to accept the present. She tries to catch up on five years of history, and five years of music, cinema, and culture, but so much has changed. There's so much that she's missed out on. So much that she doesn't think she'll ever be able to catch up on. And most days, just the thought of it is terrifying.
"I appreciate the gesture," she tells Peter when they're back in the park after school. "Of saving us. But I don't know if I want to live like this. It doesn't feel right."
"It doesn't feel like we belong," he says in a quiet voice, and MJ wonders what got to him— what pushed him to the same realisation she's been dwelling on for days now.
MJ doesn't know what bothers her the most either— her family, school, the fact that Abe visited last weekend and was five years older than her. Or maybe it's the little things, like the way the sapling outside her window is now a looming tree or the new building that's come up in place of her favourite bookshop. The way, things she'd taken for granted just a few weeks ago, haven't been around for years now.
"Flash thinks we should buy alcohol," Peter says suddenly. "Or, well, at least try. Something about taking advantage of a broken system."
MJ frowns, pulling her swing to a stop. "I told him that," she says.
Peter's swing jerks to a halt. "What?"
"I wanted to see if I could register to vote," she says, and Peter looks instantly relieved— like he'd been convinced, for a moment, that she's been trying to buy alcohol.
"Did it work?" he asks, and MJ swears his eyes are smiling even though he's frowning at her.
"Nah. But it was worth a shot."
"I think Flash's alcohol plan might work," Peter says after a moment's pause. "Especially if he takes his Dad's car."
And MJ doesn't know why, but the thought makes her laugh.
The school plans a trip to Europe.
There's talk about how it's to give them a break after what's definitely been a hectic year, but MJ suspects that it's an attempt at erasing the line that sits between the two sides of their class. She talks to Hania sometimes and swaps book recommendations with Sarah, but they're not friends. Her brain still instinctively wants to treat them like they're younger.
It's the same at home with Nate.
She can't talk to him without seeing the kid she grew up with. It scares her when he helps her, and it scares her more to think of how wrong everything feels. There's a constant knot in her stomach and this sense of overwhelming emptiness that she can feel in her bones. It keeps her up most nights.
She often wakes up in the middle of the night, shaking all over for reasons MJ doesn't understand. On nights like these, she goes wandering around the house, rediscovering things that have changed in the last five years. She counts the books in her bookshelf, tracing her thumb over her things, trying to convince herself that this is real. That it isn't just a twisted dream that her brain came up with. Sometimes, she stops to look at the new pictures hung above the stairs: a faded one with MJ, her Mum, Nate, and their Dad. A newer one of her Dad and Lydia, his new wife. Pictures of Nate growing up. Pictures that she should have witnessed in person.
And it's all too much for some reason. The abruptness of her return. The scale of all the changes. It's wrong. It's so wrong.
Nate finds her sitting on the staircase at 3 am and, in a tone that MJ swears sounds like an imitation of her own, says: "Can't sleep?"
"No," she admits.
He makes two packets of ramen. Chopping vegetables with a swiftness MJ did not know he was capable of and handing her a bowl that smells better than anything she's ever made for him. And it feels good, for some reason, to have him helping her out. To have someone else take charge.
"Harry Potter?" he asks, and MJ has to resist the urge to roll her eyes. That used to be her go-to on days when Nate couldn't sleep, and she's not entirely sure if he's mocking her right now or trying to make up for five years of not having watched Harry Potter together.
"Isn't Rowling problematic now?" MJ asks, following Nate upstairs.
"Extremely. We can diss the movies together."
And MJ snorts. "Sure," she says. There's not a lot that MJ isn't capable of dissing.
She doesn't mind the new Nate, MJ realises. He's a lot like the Nate she's always known, to be honest. He still turns to her for approval when he cracks a particularly bad joke, and he still asks her when there's a plot point he doesn't understand. (He's never known Harry Potter as well as MJ has.)
He isn't used to this either too, MJ realises.
All at once she's trying to picture Nate — still twelve years old and tiny — realising that she was gone. That he'd lost his sister and mother in a matter of seconds. She's been so lost in how weird it's been for her, that MJ didn't stop to think how the others were feeling. How the others had felt. And suddenly it hits MJ. She doesn't need to think of Nate as an older sibling, because he doesn't think of her as a younger sibling. It's not weird that she's treating her peers as kids, because they probably still think of her as their senior. It's fucked with people both ways.
The realisation makes everything suddenly easier. All at once, she's not second-guessing every moment she spends with Nate, nor is she terrified of being herself in front of Sarah or Hania when they ask her for help.
When, two days later, they're asked to sign up for the Europe trip, MJ puts her name down because maybe it is time she accepted their new classmates, and the new world they've landed themselves in. After all, she doesn't want to be like her Grandmom: she doesn't want to be stuck in the past, especially because the present isn't all bad.
(It definitely helps that Peter Parker puts his name down too, though MJ wouldn't dare to admit that out loud.)
The rest is a mess.
Element-monster-hybrid-drone-projection-things follow their class across Europe. She deduces that Peter Parker is Spider-Man, though if she's honest with herself, MJ's suspected it for a while now. She attempts to fight the drones, finds herself a mace and, somehow, kisses Peter in between all the chaos.
MJ also concludes that Brad is a dick, discovers that Betty is trying to keep up her friendship with Cindy even if things are weird, she calls Liz about Peter and, amongst other things, makes sure that Flash doesn't succeed at buying alcohol, even though he tries. Multiple times.
The Europe trip has its lows, but some good comes out of it too— and top on the list of good, is Peter Parker.
They go on dates when they get back to Queens and hold hands on their way to class. It's nice. Really nice. He tries to take her on a swing around town, kisses her on top of buildings where they're far away from the rest of the world, and falls asleep on her shoulder on more than one occasion. They still meet in the park most days— Peter on his swing, and MJ on hers.
"I'd choose swinging in the park over swinging above Queens any day," she tells Peter one evening when they've just gotten back from a spin around Queens. For a moment, Peter stares at her dumbfounded. Then MJ cracks a smile, and Peter starts to laugh too. Her sides aching, and tears of laughter blurring her vision, MJ feels like she's never been happier. Like it can't get better than this. Not after everything that's gone wrong.
Peter's with her when MJ's Mom gets a job in San Francisco and decides to move away. He tells her about the first time he meets Tony Stark's daughter, and MJ's with him the second, third, and fourth time he visits. They're with Flash the first time he successfully buys alcohol, and two years down the line MJ does manage to vote, though she'd like to think it would have been more exciting if she'd registered illegally.
Peter saves the day sometimes. He fights supervillains that MJ can't keep track of, and name drops all her favourite Avengers every time he comes back from a team-up. MJ helps him study when he gets back, helping him catch up with History and Geography; all the stuff that doesn't come to Peter naturally.
School ends, the world moves on and, eventually, she does get used to the new world.
And, of course, there are days when it still sucks that they missed out on five years of the universe without missing out on five years of their lives, but most days they're okay.
And most days, okay is enough.
(Especially because, most days, MJ's got Peter at her side.)
It's been over a year since Endgame, and I still hate that MCU didn't acknowledge the post-Snap trauma that everyone would have gone through? The first few paragraphs are stuff I'd written right when Endgame had come out, and upon rediscovering the draft, I realised that this was a story I still wanted to tell.
In other news, I've started a new Tumble for fanfics because a) my current is a secondary blog and b) I shit-post A Lot, so do follow me on: FanfictioningFanigrl on Tumblr. (Link in bio)
As always, thanks for reading!