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Disclaimer: The words Peter says during his dream are taken from a post-One More Day comic book. I can't remember the title... if anyone does, please let me know!

Alone in his tiny apartment, Peter stripped off the top half of his costume, wincing as the fabric slowly peeled away from his torn and bleeding skin. Long, jagged gashes criss-crossed his chest. Gashes that were clearly the work of a savage monster. There was no way he could show up at the hospital with wounds like these. His cover would be blown instantly.

The battle had not gone well. The lizard-creature, whatever it was, was still loose, somewhere in the sewers of New York. Caught at a moment when he was unprepared, he had tried desperately to change into costume while warding off the monster, before anyone could come upon the scene. The creature posed so much of a threat that he was afraid to give himself time to find out the way it fought… its strengths and weaknesses. There were too many lives at stake. He had tried to lead it away from the university… at least get it outside where a fight would be on easier, open ground and away from vulnerable spectators, but it didn't take the bait. He ended up having to chase it instead. They had ended up in the cafeteria, still full of terrified students. He could barely even reach the monster as it threw tables and chairs wildly across the room. Students and faculty had poured out of the building in torrents, some not even taking the time to find a door but instead hurling themselves through windows.

As the cafeteria emptied, Peter found himself at advantage, in a better position for offensive attack. But his webbing was barely strong enough to hold the creature. And then the worst happened… the one thing he always feared… the lizard snatched up one of the fleeing figures to shield itself from its opponent's blows. So focused was Peter in his determination to get the monster out of the building without anyone getting hurt, that he barely realized the hostage was Carlie. To him, she was simply another innocent person caught in the crossfire of his endless bad luck. It was practically impossible to do battle with someone stuck in the middle. Peter had been able to get her away and to safety, but the delay had cost him.

Gritting his teeth in frustration at his failure, he found a washrag, a miracle that there was a clean one with the way he did laundry, and carefully wiped the blood away, grimacing with the pain. He knew he should try and stitch it all up but the task sounded monumental and he was completely exhausted. With a shrug, he twisted his wrists almost backwards, closing the wounds with webbing. It was a clumsy sort of makeshift repair job, but it would work. The webbing should last a couple of hours… long enough to stop the blood until the wounds could start to heal. Wearily, he fell back onto his bed. The best way to recover was to try and sleep it off. It had worked before, it should work again.

But his dreams again haunted him. Although they were different this time. He could feel gentle hands against his skin, wiping away the blood on his chest, closing up the wounds with careful stitches. He looked up, meeting once again those mysterious eyes. She smiled at him, whoever she was, and suddenly the pain was gone.

"Tell me what's wrong, Tiger," she said softly, her gentle voice echoing through his mind.

And suddenly he was pouring his heart out to her… this mystery woman who existed only in his dreams.

"I almost died tonight. And yeah, I get it. That happens a lot. But this felt… this felt different. And the truth is, if I'm being honest, nothing has felt right, for a long time." He clenched his hands into fists, his heart beating violently. "I think I know why. We've been through so much together. Survived so much together. And I know that on my end at least, if you hadn't been there, I wouldn't have survived it. Because, yeah, I can do a lot of things. Swing from buildings, climb walls, all that stuff. But I… I need you." He reached out, brushing his fingertips against her cheek. Her eyelids fluttered and she smiled at him. But her eyes stayed sad. Always sad. "I wish I had all the answers," Peter added, his voice dropping to a husky whisper. "I wish I knew how to make everything better and safer and easier and simpler… but I just… I just can't anymore."

She never answered a word as she finished deftly wrapping bandages around his chest. Just leaned forward and wrapped her arms around him, resting her head on his shoulder while her red hair cascaded around her, obscuring her face. He bent his head over hers, burying his face in that beautiful hair while silent tears rolled down his cheeks.

When he woke, the tears were still coming. Wiping them away with the back of his hand, he sat up gingerly, feeling at his ribs. The pain was back. It had seemed to vanish during the night with the appearance of that red-headed angel of mystery. Who was she? And why did she persist in haunting his dreams?

oOo

September 24, 2003

My life is so ridiculous, I don't know if anyone would believe me if I told them. I mean, this is stranger stuff than what you hear in the craziest books. I don't know if I believe it myself. Did I say my mind was tied up in knots? Well, now, it's worse than ever before. And yet, everything makes sense now.

I'm wondering now how long it's going to take me to write down everything that happened yesterday. Call it the most eventful day of my life. I can't even believe I'm just calmly sitting here, writing it down. Scratch that. I'm not "calmly" anything. You just can't tell through written words on a page. I'm still slightly freaking out. And my eyes are so swollen from crying I can hardly see. And my heart rate still hasn't gone back to normal.

I'd better just start at the beginning and see if writing it all out will straighten out my poor brain.

Yesterday morning, I called Peter. I asked him to meet me for coffee. There was something I absolutely had to find out. More than one somethings, to be honest. And yet, my mind didn't even admit it to myself. I just knew, somewhere deep inside my heart, I guess. That sounds ridiculous, I know. But it was more of a feeling than an active thought.

The truth is, I just was sure I couldn't go through with it. With John, I mean. I remembered what Peter said, about being "different". And I just wanted to give him another chance. I had to. Because true love is worth waiting and working for. I'd been too afraid to trust him. But I was willing to try.

But then he successfully broke my heart again. He cut me off before I could even begin saying what I needed to. Said he rushed into things. That he thought he could be there for me… but he can't. I couldn't take it any more. I had to know once and for all. So I said, "Do you love me or not?"

And he said "I… don't."

But he said it with such little conviction and such a strange look of sorrow and pain in his eyes that it hit me in a different way than I had thought it would. So I asked him to kiss me. Because I needed to know. I needed to know if he really, truly loved me. And although words can be false… a kiss can't lie. But suddenly, his eyes got wider than half-dollars and his head snapped back and before I could figure out what on earth was wrong with him, he jumped across the table and grabbed me, and we both crashed to the ground. And the next thing I knew, there was a car… a literal car… flying over our heads and landing inside the coffee shop.

And then it got worse. If that be possible. There were these horrible thunderous crashes, like the footsteps of a giant, and people screaming and running everywhere. And then Doctor Octopus stepped inside the coffee shop and grabbed Peter by the neck with one of his horrible tentacles. He told him to find Spider-Man or he'd tear the flesh off my bones. And I heartily believed he would too. Then he threw Peter against the wall so hard that the roof literally collapsed on top of him. I was so sure he was dead. And then Doc Ock grabbed me and went climbing up a building and jumping across skyscrapers, all the way across New York.

He took me to his creepy lair… some huge, run-down old pier on the edge of the city. And then he chained me to the wall. Literally. Chained me to the wall. It was almost worse than when the Goblin got me. And I wondered, why on earth is it that these monsters always come after me? And Aunt May too, come to think of it. But seriously. I'm probably the only girl in the world who has been kidnapped by monsters. Twice. TWICE, for heaven's sake!

Doc Ock left, saying he was going to go squash a spider. And I was stuck there, all alone, chained to the wall in a creepy hideout, waiting for a monster to come back and kill me. Rather pleasant way to spend an afternoon, don't you think? When he did come back, it was dark. It was so cold out and I was shivering so hard I'm surprised I didn't just shake the chains off. He told me that Spider-Man was dead. And I didn't believe him, simply because I didn't want to. Because I knew that Spider-Man was absolutely the only way I'd ever be getting out of there alive. And, speaking of dead and alive, I was terrified about what could possibly have happened to Peter, with an entire wall collapsing into rubble on his head. He couldn't possibly have survived that. I was absolutely wild with fear. More than I've ever been in my life. And, ridiculously enough, I started worrying about the play. I wouldn't be showing up and my understudy would be taking over. And if I lost my role… I actually yelled at the guy. He just ignored me. Wouldn't let me go. Like I could do anything to hurt him.

And all of a sudden, Spider-Man was there. I've never been so glad to see anyone in my entire life. I almost cried, I was so relieved. But he didn't have a chance. Doc Ock grabbed him and the two of them had a battle royal while I freaked out in the corner. And in the meantime, this strange fireball machine the monster was working on started to grow. And it was attracting all the metal and everything was being sucked into it. And guess what. Chains are made of metal. So, naturally, I started being sucked into the fireball. I've never screamed so hard in my life. And suddenly, I stopped moving. Spider-Man had attached a webline to my hands and was pulling on it so hard that it was keeping me away from the fireball. Thought I was going to be ripped in half for a moment, but then it just sucked the chains off and I went flying. Spider-Man caught me and set me down in the corner… and then a beam fell on him and I'm not sure if he got knocked out or whatever it was that happened… Doc Ock grabbed his leg and was dangling him upside-down. I tried to sneak up behind the guy and hit him over the head, but the tentacles shoved me out of the way. But Spider-Man was more than capable and he managed to get away. They kept fighting, and the fireball kept growing, and suddenly it was sucking the building into it. The entire place was actually falling apart. Spider-Man was able to throw Doc Ock to the ground for a moment and then…

…he took his mask off.

I couldn't see his face at first, while he was trying to talk sense into the monster… but I just… I just knew. Doc Ock got up and decided he was going to throw the fireball into the water. I don't know how he managed to suddenly think enough to do something good.

And then Spider-Man turned around.

It was Peter.

Seriously, diary, I know I'm not going crazy. It was Peter. Peter. Peter Parker, the boy next door. Peter Parker, the man I love. Peter Parker… is… Spider-Man!

And suddenly everything. I mean, everything. Made sense. And it was so simple and I felt like I had always known it and yet I didn't and I almost wanted to laugh, but I was crying at the same time. I just stared at him. And he stared at me. And then he looked up and screamed NO so loud it shook the building. (Which was already shaking anyway, come to think of it.)

The wall was falling toward me. The biggest wall I've ever seen. I tried to run, but I got pinned under a falling beam. And I knew I was going to die. And suddenly, Peter was in front of me, holding the wall up. But it pressed him down until his face was only a couple feet away from mine. I can't believe how calm I felt. How safe I felt. It was utterly ridiculous. And then he said hi. I couldn't think of anything better at the moment, so I said hi back. And the wall pushed him down even farther. He was absolutely trembling all over like his heart was going to give out and his face was turning purple. I can't imagine how much that wall must've weighed. He just said, "This is really heavy." And then he added "MJ, in case we die…"

He couldn't say anymore. He was putting every ounce of strength into holding up that wall. But I knew what he was trying to say. So I said it for him.

"You do love me."

"I do."

And no two words ever made me happier in my entire life. But I didn't have long to think about it, because I couldn't believe what I was seeing. This absolutely ferocious look crossed his face and it was almost frightening. And he picked up the wall… actually picked it up… and threw it so far I couldn't see where it landed. He threw the beam off of me and picked me up and something huge was rolling towards us and suddenly we were flying… it happened so fast that my mind never had time to catch up with what my body was experiencing. My scattered thoughts didn't even begin to come together until the next thing I knew, Peter had spun a literal enormous spider-web between a building and a construction crane, and I was laying on it. And I felt so perfectly safe. It was very likely the weirdest experience I've ever had in my life, but it seemed so right and so safe… and all I felt was complete relief.

Peter came crawling across the web and laid down next to me and it was so strange, seeing his head on top of Spider-Man's body. But I still felt… that I had always known.

"You know why we can't be together," he told me and I didn't have the strength to answer. My heart is already in so many pieces that I don't think I'll ever even find them again. "Spider-Man will always have enemies," he said. "I can't let you take that risk. I will… always be Spider-Man. You and I can never be."

"You and I can never be." Did ever words hold such terrible pain? If he had driven a knife through my heart, it could hardly have hurt more. I'd almost have preferred that.

He had me hold on to one of those weblines and let me down to the ground then. I was almost relieved because… I didn't trust myself to speak. There were already dozens of cop cars and an ambulance and, of course, the press. I HATE the press.

John came running and threw his arms around me, but I couldn't hardly face him. I looked back up and Peter was still up there, crouching on the construction crane, staring at me. And then he stood up, put his mask back on, and swung away. I buried my face in John's shoulder and then the tears came. It wasn't sobs or anything like that, it was just an overflow of tears. Silent tears. And they just kept coming and coming. They put me in the ambulance and took me to the hospital to make sure I was okay. And the tears just kept falling the entire time. And John drove me home afterwards and I was still crying. The last thing I remember was falling onto my bed, without pulling the covers down or changing my clothes or anything, just curling into a ball and crying myself to sleep. My pillow was wet when I woke up this morning.

And the first thing I saw this morning was a tiny bouquet of forget-me-nots on my windowsill.