There are a lot of things Peter’s done in his life to impact others.
He hopes believing that doesn’t make him a cocky airhead. It’s not like he’s saying he’s one of that magazine company’s Top 100 Influential guys, or— or whatever it’s called. He probably doesn’t even crack 200. But as a superhero, even one who’s completely incognito and whose identity is unknown to the world, there’s no use denying he does have an impact on the city. That’s the whole point of heroism, right?
He helps people. Stop burglaries, defeat people who are trying to harm communities, fight aliens, and pass the baton on to others when necessary (or a gauntlet, in his case). It’s what has felt so undeniably right within him for as long as he’s had this suit on, and all of its versions and improvements. (“Your suits are evolving faster than most Pokémon!” Ned would always gasp in awe.) Doing what is good for his city, for the world, the galaxy, and any timeline he should come across… that’s what’s important to him.
Sometimes, he gets a little caught up in the grandeur of it all. He’ll admit that. I mean, he’s probably seen more aliens than he’s seen of humans in the past six years alone. Any normal person would geek out about that. But everything that’s happened within the past few months: Norman Osborne, the other Peters, Aunt May… it’s solidified within him the real reason he’s doing this. It’s a reason he maybe forgot along the way, muddled in the midst of wanting to be Tony Stark, to live up to his legacy, to be the one who could handle things alone. His reason for doing all this, one May reminded him of, is to do good. Things that are unequivocally, wholeheartedly good. For the city, the community, and all of its inhabitants.
Looking out for people. Real, grounded, wonderful people in the flesh. And when he thinks about that, and all of the people close to him he wishes so desperately to have made an impact on, it makes him sad. Because as much of a difference Spiderman can make, Peter Parker isn’t influential anymore.
He is forgotten.
The truth is, if he’s made any kind of impact on those he loves, it’d be gone now anyway. They don’t remember him, or his moments with them, or the things he’s said. They don’t remember the ways in which he’s changed them, and he doesn’t quite know them either. Hell, he doesn’t know if they ever even existed.
Perhaps that’s where his curiosity stems from. He’s spent so much time focusing on the sheer weight of the fact that he’s lost everything that for a moment, he’s forgotten what exactly this everything was.
Did he change their lives for the better in any way? Did he make them happy? Proud? Safe? He hopes so. Sometimes, he can’t tell. In some ways, he even thinks Ned and MJ were better off without him. Getting into their university, having lives that are peaceful and generally not chaotic or muddled with wizards and superpowers. It’s what’s best for them.
And yet he wonders. Part of him, though small and easily tuned out if he’s in the suit, will always desperately seek to know what exactly they had won in knowing him…
Ned & MJ
MJ has always liked things that were just a little bit broken.
This is partially due to the fact that she herself is a bit damaged. The other part of it, she can’t quite explain. From the little gorgeous fracture patterns to the innate puzzle in finding pieces of something bigger than itself, she’s always enjoyed her tiny, broken little trinkets.
There are plenty of examples of this throughout her bedroom. The piggy bank that she taped back together when she dropped it at the tender age of six. The small pig’s tail is still missing to this day. There’s also the case of her backpack, which has countless broken straps and zippers and yet is somehow still hanging in. Honestly, there’s an abundance of the worn down and the used infecting her room.
Yet for some reason, the only real example on her mind today is her black dahlia necklace. With the pieces loose as if they’d been smashed and pushed back into place, and one crystal petal even missing completely from the charm, it’s seen better days. In all honesty, MJ’s pretty sure she bought it like this-- the operative term there being pretty sure.
Up until a few weeks ago, she would have said she was absolutely dead sure that she bought this as it was now: a little damaged. Now, she finds that certainty fading every time she stares at it. Most of the time she’s able to brush it off as just her imagination, or stress from starting university soon taking over her, or just her memory going to shit. Only sometimes, on generally quiet days like these, her mind wanders.
“Are you sure you didn’t break the necklace?” Ned asks her. They’re in MJ’s bedroom and Ned sits on her bed watching peacefully as she paces back and forth, stuffing her clothes from point A into her suitcase at point B.
“I’m positive,” she insists. “We’ve had this same conversation a billion times, Ned. I bought it like this on the Europe trip. Remember?”
“I know, but that whole trip’s kind of a blur,” he replies. “Maybe you lost that one petal and just forgot. Like my LEGO Emperor Palpatine figurine.”
“What, the one that you lost?”
“I looked everywhere for it,” he insists. “In my sock drawer, under my bed, in my locker. It just mysteriously vanished-- which is pretty on-brand for a mega-powerful sith lord.”
“Do not compare my insanely nice necklace to a Star Wars figure made of plastic,” she demands lightly.
“All I’m saying is, you and I just have a track record of losing things, or-- or getting them stolen from us. We’re the outcast nerds, remember? That’s why we’re best friends.”
She smiles at that, because it’s sort of true. For… well, for as long as she can remember, she and Ned have only had each other. As begrudging as she might make her participation in this friendship seem, she knows they need each other. The people on the debate team with them, the people who sit on the sidelines during dodgeball to avoid getting ambushed, all the other geeks that gather at their tables and in their circles, they’re alright. They’re just fine, she supposes. But they’re also idiots (as evidenced by Flash Thompson’s existence) and whereas Ned is also a bit of a dumbass at times, he’s also really smart. And he and MJ have always just sort of… stuck together throughout all of high school. She’s not quite sure why, because up until a few years ago when she met him, she was a self-proclaimed loner. Having friends just meant more expectations that wouldn’t be met. Avoiding disappointment at all costs was just a smart move for her.
And then she met Ned. He wasn’t really begging to be her friend or anything, didn’t pry for answers all of the time, and knew when to let something go, but also seemed to like having her around. Plus, he would talk nonstop about the nerdiest and most mundane things, and even on the days when she didn’t listen attentively and respond with her own nerdy commentary, she still found it to be useful white noise and a peaceful reminder that she wasn’t alone. Even if just to have him procrastinate on building his LEGO Death Star next to her while she reads a book or yet another news article with updates about the mysterious Spiderman helping the city. Through some weird and indescribable miracle, they actually work pretty well together. (Although sometimes Ned likes to joke that they were probably forced together into the same groups and brought together by some mysterious master of fate, to which MJ always snorts and teasingly responds, “Is he hot?” which shuts Ned up pretty quickly.)
So, MJ fondly responds, “As if I could ever forget.”
“Maybe that’s why all of our things are either lost or broken,” Ned posits. “Maybe the defining factor of being a total nerd and social pariah in high school is that you just have really, really bad luck. Hopefully, that’ll change in college.”
“I don’t know,” she hesitates. “I think it’s got to be more than just that, y’know?”
“What do you mean?”
“Well there has to be an explanation for it bigger than just what we were like in high school. There has to be. For the same reason you can’t finish that LEGO Death Star after three years of building it, and then lost Emperor what’s-his-face, and even for the same reason I have a broken necklace.”
“Palpatine,” he says. “His name is Palpatine. And I cannot finish my LEGO Death Star for plenty of regular reasons-- one of them being that I’ve been spending all my time trying to find Palpatine.”
“Oh come on, man! You can’t finish that Death Star because you’re looking for someone to finish it with you,” she corrects. “You need to find your Palpatine. Y’know, a human one. Someone missing from your life. And I’m waiting around for this missing dahlia petal to come back to me. I mean, haven’t you felt it, man? These past few years, it’s just like we’ve…”
“Had a piece missing from our lives,” Ned finishes for her, and it comes out quiet but grave.
“Yeah. Exactly.”
“I know what you mean.” He nods. “But I don’t know what to do about it. I mean, our lives could be fulfilling. We could graduate from MIT and become super smart rich people, or do something really important with our lives, and then maybe that feeling would go away. But what if it doesn’t?”
At that, she stops packing. Not because it’s a shocking moment or because she stops in her tracks from the severity of it, but because she’s been so wound up with packing, pacing back and forth, and forcefully shoving in socks and graphic tees, that she didn’t stop to realize that she was done packing. So finally, and in a way that feels more sad than relieved, MJ lets out a deep breath. The exhale is short but heavy, and she sits down next to Ned on her bed as her breath depletes.
“I don’t know,” she confesses. “I really have no idea. But we’ll cross that bridge when we get to it. For now… well, for now, we’re just going to have to give this college thing a shot. And maybe there, we’ll be able to find something to make something in our lives click again.”
“Yeah, maybe a third friend,” he suggests jokingly, “to really balance out the two of us. That way there can be a majority when deciding on stuff.”
“Pfft, as if,” she snorts, and nudges him with her elbow. “You and I are just fine without a majority rule.”
“You only say that because you can boss me around and force me into doing what you want to do.”
“What can I say? Democracy is overrated,” she shrugs with a smile she wished had never left her lips in the first place. “Besides, it’s not my fault you’re such a pushover.”
“Whatever,” Ned pouts. “At MIT, I’m going to rid myself of all my pushover habits. You won’t be able to force me into watching those weird foreign films anymore, Jones.”
“Right. I look forward to seeing that,” she chuckles and pats him on the back. “Watch out MIT. Here. We. Come.”
“Hell yeah,” Ned adds on, though there’s no punch to his tone and he’s more in awe of it all.
They smile mildly at each other and then move on to trying to zip MJ’s insanely jam-packed suitcase shut, and everything goes back to the way it was, and always has been… or at least, she thinks it does. In the back of her mind, though, lingers that same dreaded feeling they were talking about.
It’s not like she and Ned are incomplete people. They have perfectly good lives, are probably the most intelligent kids in their graduating class (despite Flash’s wealth earning him valedictorian), and have found a pleasant friendship with each other. Technically, everything is just that: pleasant. Perfectly fine, pleasant, and just okay.
…So why does she feel like she’s waiting for someone to come along and bring wonder to their lives?
Peter 2’s Earth
Peter Parker is not old.
He’s not old, okay? He’s a little out of shape, sure. Spinally challenged, no doubt. But he will be damned before anyone, superpowers or not, calls him old.
He’s been doing this thing for a while. Twenty, thirty years maybe. Give or take a few years. Fighting crime and battling seriously superpowered people is not something that exactly relaxes the muscles so yeah, he has back pain pretty often. Sue him.
And yes, this also means that it is weird (and frankly alarming) to him when out of the blue one day, he stops having back pain.
He doesn’t know how it happens, only that the pain stops when he wakes up this morning. A part of him even thinks for a second that he’d died and gone to heaven, but MJ kisses him on the cheek and he discovers that he was not, in fact, a ghost. This leaves him with no clue as to what could be doing this, and so he generally just accepts that some miracle had been bestowed upon them. For twelve hours, in his usual wardrobe suitable for a youth pastor, he walks around with a renewed swagger, a jaunt in his walk that couldn’t have been feasible before without cracking a hip, and a fresh take on the world. That is, until twelve hours later.
Twelve hours later, he’s out in his Spidey suit and his back pain comes back. It’s at a really inconvenient time, really— he’s trying to knock out some backstreet mugger and is unsuccessful for the first ten minutes because of the reduced mobility— and yet when he’s finally disposed of the thief and gotten out of the public eye, he somehow knows how to fix it.
It’s like an instinct is awakened within him. He hurts, and then something clicks in his brain and he leans against a rounded ramp and lets his feet lift off the ground for a few moments, jiggles around until he hears a crack and the pain stops. The sensation is strange when he’s shifting around on the ramp. It’s like he’s done this before; like it’s an exercise someone’s held him through. He knows he didn’t learn this at physiotherapy— he hasn’t even been to a physiotherapist in ages after his last one kept asking questions about what was giving him so much muscle strain and he ran out of excuses.
So then what the hell did he just do to fix his back pain and how does he know how to stop it?
This keeps going on for a few days. He gets sore in his lower back, he does the— the move, the solution, whatever it’s called— and just like that, it’s fixed. He’s seen things far crazier, and yet it just… freaks him out.
Tonight’s no different. Even four days into this newly found technique, he still finds himself spending an extra twenty minutes in his bathroom mirror, old man pajamas and all, just twisting around and rotating his hips to test out his mobility.
And he doesn’t mean to worry his wife, but MJ still calls out to him from the bed and he begins to think he should tell her.
“Peter? Are you okay in there, sweetie?”
“Yep, yeah I’m alright,” he assures her from the bathroom before closing the lights and joining her in the bedroom. “Just washing up.”
“Well you should get some rest,” she tells him. “You’re not going to be of any use to the city tomorrow if your back hurts too much.”
“That’s the thing,” Peter starts. “My back… it doesn’t hurt.”
“What?”
“Yeah,” he confirms. “A few days ago, I woke up and my back wasn’t hurting. And it started having issues again after a while of being out in the streets, swinging from buildings and all that. But suddenly, it was like… like I knew exactly how to fix it. I did this thing that I— well, I didn’t even know what it was or how I knew how to do it— but it helped me. There was a crack and a snap and then bam! My back was feeling better. And every day since, when I’ve done that weird little maneuver, my back has instantly improved.”
“Wow,” she awes. “And you have no idea where you learned to do it?”
“Or even that I’d learned it at all.”
“Weird.” She clicks her tongue and thinks about it for a second. “What’s the move?”
“Well it’s sort of like this—” He interrupts himself to try pointing to his lower lumbar vertebrae while also bending backward, arching his back, “— this move, and then you just—” he backs up and finds their dresser, “— push it against something until your feet—” he leans his weight on the dresser and knocks a few pieces of jewelry off as the dresser holds his weight, “—are off the ground. And voilà!”
“T-thats interesting,” she nods, though trying to hide the wince she wants to make at her bracelets being knocked off the dresser. “Maybe you saw it on the TV when I was doing yoga.”
“Ehh, I don’t know,” he hesitates. “Something about it felt so… personal. Like, when I first did it, it was like I was being held.”
“Held?”
MJ’s voice sounds skeptical, and the tone of her question makes Peter realize how silly it all sounds, this idea that he’s learned a useful trick but he doesn’t remember learning it, and decides to just drop the whole thing.
“Ah, nevermind,” he dismisses lightly with the wave of his hand. “I probably just saw someone do it on my last visit to the chiropractor’s office.”
“If you say so,” she shrugs, thinking nothing of it and instead just rolling onto her other side underneath the covers.
He reaches over to turn the bedside lamp off, and then joins her in the blankets. It’s warm, and cozy, and when he slings his arm over her waist it feels like home. A perfect, painless sleep.
And yet he can’t help but feel like he has someone to thank for this. Someone to whom he should give credit. The feeling is only faint, never so strong as to force him to act upon it in any way or think about it more than every once and a while. This mystery memory remains just that: a mystery.
Still, he knows the feeling is there and, if he’s being honest, it probably always will be.
Peter 3’s Earth
Peter wonders if anyone knows that after more than ten years of being Spiderman, somehow he has these moments where he is nothing but an absolute. Goddamn. Klutz.
On any other day, any other mission or crime-fighting gig or errand, he would have been fine. He has swiped coffee mugs from carts, has spun Gwen Stacy into his arms smoothly, has stolen passes off of bodyguards and coordinated a sneaky infiltration to near perfection. And yet when he’s at work, about to give a lecture and running late and zooming around corners, he somehow manages to bump into someone.
It also just so happens to be that the one time he is a klutz is the one time he bumps right into one of the most naturally gorgeous girls he’s ever seen.
Bump is a nice word really. Crash is more applicable to what he did— like two cars on a highway that burst into flames after colliding. Yeah, he crashed. Collided. Damn near attempted cellular fusion with how hard he rammed into this poor, beautiful girl.
And that’s the word that keeps mysteriously popping into his head. Beautiful.
Jesus. He hasn’t thought that about a woman in a while.
He knows he’s been sullen since Gwen died, and that’s an understatement. He lost his way, forgot his roots, pretty much went off the rails. It’s not healthy, but he’s been living like the shell of a man for years. Grief can be a nasty, relentless thing. It consumed him wholly and without breaking a sweat. He stayed frozen in time, just… collecting dust and memories.
That is, until a few months ago, when everything in life just seemed so renewed. He remembers waking up from a sleep that felt like a blackout. He wasn’t drunk, he knows that. But he wakes up and feels like he’s forgotten something. Self-evidently, he just can’t remember what.
But it’s a nice feeling. Not overly excited or joyous, but just… a little better. A little more peaceful. The world and all of its horrible tragedies feels more bearable. Hell, the good stuff even starts to peek through more, like sunbeams in the midst of thick clouds. Peter still misses Gwen every day, but it feels nice to not be drowning that sensation for once. So he rolls with it.
He starts putting himself out there, makes some friends. Putting on the suit becomes easier. It sparks less guilt and instead makes him more eager to help his community. His independent lab starts doing research, publishing real, tangible studies and making strides big enough to get noticed by some papers. He even gets invited to some biotech conference in Manhattan, which is where he finds himself now, outside Conference Room C. He might even dare to say that Gwen would be happy that things might just be turning up in his favour.
Of course, the topic of Gwen— and his relationship to romantic prospects in general— is a whole other story.
Both women and men have passed him by and sure, he’s seen a few he thought were beautiful in an objective, standard kind of way, but he’s never felt a kind of beauty like this particular girl’s beauty in his bones. Not like this; and not in a while. Not since Gwen.
Such a shame, then, that his first impression is that he’s got two left feet that can send both of their files flying onto the ground.
“Oh my—!”
“Oh! Oh, I’m sorry,” he apologizes while wincing. “I’m so sorry. Are you okay? Are you hurt?”
“No, no, just—” The woman points to her head, “— my head got a little bumped. And my papers…”
“Sorry again,” he offers meekly, still feeling horrible about the whole thing. For some reason, he gets the urge to stick his hand out and run a thumb over her forehead but retracts his arm almost instantly; before he can even think of actually doing it. “Here, I can help you with those papers.”
They both squat down at the same time to get on their knees and start collecting the loose papers: his, hers, all mixed together.
When they finally start sorting out whose papers are whose, she offers a sweet smile and exhales, “Thanks.”
“Don’t worry about it. It’s the least I can do,” he offers. “I’m not normally this clumsy, by the way. Or at least I haven’t been. Not since high school.”
“Believe me, I know how you feel. High school wasn’t my brightest era either,” she brushes off lightly, and when she tucks a strand of lush, brown hair behind her ear, something heats up in Peter’s cheeks.
Oh hell. Is he seriously blushing?
It’s been years since he’s blushed. He tries not to read too much into that, just forces his gaze back down away from her. And the first thing he notices is a guest pass to— yep— the annual Manhattan Biotechnology Conference Weekend.
“No way,” Peter awes. “You’re attending the conference weekend too?”
“Uh, yeah,” she confirms. “There are some psychology lectures I want to check out for a paper.”
“You’re a researcher?”
“No, college student. Finally got the time and the money to get a degree.”
“Oh wow, that’s great,” he exclaims. And it’s after that when he says something back to her that he never expected, never could have seen coming, and doesn’t remotely understand. “I’m Peter, by the way. Peter 3.”
What the hell? Where did that come from?
Peter didn’t know he could be thrown so off-guard by his own words and yet here he stands, proven wrong. It’s a casual slip of the tongue, and he’s suffered millions of instances like this, and yet this one feels different. There was so much gusto, so much confidence behind his words. For a second, he caught himself wanting to say “Peter 3” on purpose. An instinct like that is beyond weird, and it’d be suspicious if he weren’t focusing so hard on the embarrassment.
“Peter 3?”
“Parker,” he corrects himself, trying to shyly laugh it off. “Peter Parker. My name is Peter Parker. I don’t know why I said 3.”
Miraculously, and in a sweet, melodious way, the girl giggles. “Well, it’s nice to meet you Peter Parker. I’m Mary Jane Watson. But most people call me MJ.”
Woah .
And just like that, the second wave of instinct washes over him.
He’s yanked into this tide of instinct that feels unbound by space and time and yet is found only within himself. And he’s felt it for a while now, that urge to act on a memory he can’t remember. It’s like he’s blacked out and missed a few days or something, because he swears the name MJ sounds familiar and he can’t for the life of him figure out why.
“Sorry, have I… have I met you before? Do I know you? Your name sounds familiar…”
“Mm, yeah, nice one,” she giggles. “That’s a good line.”
“Oh, no, I wasn’t trying to—” he stammers. “That— that wasn’t a line.”
She raises a skeptical brow. “Really?”
“Do I seem smooth enough to you to pull a pickup line like that?”
MJ gives him a once over, considers it for a moment, and then snorts. “Definitely not.”
“Exactly. Not a line, I promise. It’s just that your name… I don’t know, I just feel like I used to know someone with your name…”
“Huh. I didn’t realize there were many MJ Watsons in New York,” she shrugs. “Guess you’ve hit the jackpot, Tiger.”
“I agree. I mean, at least any others weren't as memorable as you,” he tries saying, then winces coyly when her eyes go wide with amused surprise. “And that was a line, I’ll admit that this time.”
“I could tell.” Though he worries for a moment that he’s crossed a line, she smiles at him and all his worries go away.
“A- an honest one, though,” he adds. “Very truthful.”
“Well, surprisingly I didn’t hate it,” she teases. “It wasn’t good… but it wasn’t bad either.”
“Yeah?” He raises an eyebrow, pleasantly surprised and slightly proud of himself. It’s that hint of pride that pushes him into his next risk, which is to say, “I-I could let you give me some tips. Like ov-over coffee, perchance.”
MJ snorts. “Perchance?”
“Yeah, I mean- I mean maybe. Maybe after the, uh, the symposium, of course.”
She gnaws at her lip for a moment— Peter’s not sure if she's truly this hesitant or if she’s just fighting back a smile— and then nods. “Ok, yeah. That sounds nice. We could skip the guest lecturer and go to the coffee cart by the west exit.”
“Ooh,” he realizes with the click of his tongue. “I don’t think I can skip the guest lecturer for today actually.”
“Why not?”
“Because it’s me,” he says simply.
To MJ, it must seem anything but simple. Her jaw practically falls to the floor and she lets out a shocked scoff. “You’re kidding. You’re the guest lecturer on spinal cellular restoration?”
“Yep,” he nods sheepishly. “My lab’s been doing some research on methods to help with restoring spinal tissue that’s endured trauma, and we joint branches with this medical program so they made me come in to say a few words.”
“Wow. That’s… incredible,” she awes. “I just hope you don’t stammer on stage as much as you stammer around me.”
“I think I should be good,” he nods. “A speech lets me have cue cards. Social interaction does not.”
She giggles at that; a warm, earthy giggle that echoes in his ears. It’s not Gwen’s laugh, and it’s not anyone else’s laugh either. It’s just… hers. Unique. He likes it.
“Ok, well then I’ll be watching you from the crowd, Dr. Peter Parker. And I will meet you at the coffee stand after the lecture. You can tell me all about which audience members were subtly trying to pick wedgies
during your speech and I can tell you what words you fumbled.”
“Sounds fantastic,” he chuckles, and surprises himself with how light and carefree and genuine his laugh is. “I can’t wait.”
This girl-- MJ-- nods sweetly, and then continues on her way with her papers now in hand, leaving Peter there in awe. Hell, he even turns around to watch her walk away. It’s strange.
Strange doesn’t mean bad, in this case. In his world, it normally does, but not now. Now it just means wonderful. Admittedly, he hasn’t laughed like that, or blushed like that, or even felt like that, in a long time. It’s like he was watching his life pass by him through a foggy window and now, because of that ineffable tug he feels towards this stranger, the fog is gone. The window is crystal clear. Peter doesn’t know what that means, or why this feeling is there, or even why he referred to himself by a number, but knows that he will be grateful to whatever put it there in him, tucked neatly in his heart.
He goes to visit Gwen that night. Her grave is sad, and solitary, and he tells her about everything that happened. He knows it's not a goodbye, but it feels like one. In this matter, he thinks Gwen would be happy for him. So incredibly happy. So Peter places fresh flowers at her grave, blows her a kiss after an hour or two of talking, and walks home feeling lighter on his feet than he has in a while. He thinks back, on his long walk back to his apartment, not only of the memories he and Gwen have shared but of the conference. Or, rather, of his way towards his speech, only half paying attention to the words on his cue cards all the while completely distracted by the kind girl with brown hair who passed him, and the strange feeling like he was urged into meeting her by a person or feeling of fate that he doesn’t quite know...
Somewhere in Hell’s Kitchen…
Matt Murdock doesn’t really believe in déjà vu.
He’s a sensible man. If something happened, he remembers it. And if he doesn’t remember it at first, he simply thinks long and hard until he does. Sure, he can’t always force his memories back into his consciousness, but he’s never bought the whole “remembering things from past lives” crap. You live, you die, and you go to heaven. There should be nothing else to forget or remember. Easy, right?
Except maybe it’s not so easy.
He’s sitting on the couch listening to the TV run garbage programming and slight static, to Foggy and Karen chatting, to the crunching of chips against incisors. It’s one of those nights where he feels at ease, taking a night off of fighting crime (and even of drafting summations) just to relax. They’re not doing anything specific, not maintaining a particularly thrilling conversation between the three of them. The company’s more than enough, and so they just create a sort of calm yet blissful buzz in the nothingness of the room.
“You know,” Karen starts, getting her word in before Foggy starts spewing stories about his eccentric relatives (which normally starts to happen when he gets bored), “I brought in more clients than both of you this month. Not to brag, but I’m getting pretty good at this lawyer thing, huh?”
“The lawyer thing? Absolutely,” he smirks. “The modesty thing? Not so much.”
“Modesty is for people who are in last place. If you don’t catch up, I might just have to bump my name to the top, boys,” she sighs, and leans back all cool and confident on the couch, and comfortable with the leather and the proximity to both of them that reminds Matt solidly and fiercely of what it’s like to have a family.
“Foggy and I still have more than you when we combine ours. And democracy rules, Miss Page, which means we out-vote you 2 to 1.”
“Argh,” she huffs, though still playing along and having fun with it. “I’ll overthrow you two one day. Just you wait.”
Foggy clicks his tongue in mock disapproval. “You keep going like that and Matt and I might just lock you out of the firm.”
“You wouldn’t dare,” she gasps amusedly.
“Never threaten a blind man, Miss Page,” Matt teases. “It’s undignified.”
At that, Karen laughs so hard that she almost spits out her beer. “You’re unbelievable,” she chuckles.
Matt chuckles back, and so does Foggy, and that steady electricity of conversation holds steady for just a moment until the static of the TV twitches ever so slightly.
The news channel is switching segments.
His ears, suddenly and without even meaning to, focus on the TV as an anchor on the local news station speaks next to compiled pictures and videos from an old apartment complex that exploded a few weeks ago now.
<<Today marks the one-month anniversary of the building explosion that tragically took the life of local community leader May Parker. The incident, caused by unknown assailants with powers, also injured several others and caused roughly $1.5 million in damages. May leaves behind no immediate relatives but there is, as I understand it, a group of members from the community center where she worked who have a message for the city of New York. Let’s have a look…>>
May Parker. Why does that name sound familiar?
“Hang on, hang on. I know that name.”
“Oh God, please tell me that wasn’t yet another hot woman you stole from the potential hands of Franklin Nelson,” Foggy groans.
Matt chuckles. “Again, Foggy, how would I know she’s hot?”
“Don’t bullshit me, man! You gave me that whole ‘I see the world on fire’ schtick and you can’t undo it. I know you can tell when they’re hot.”
“I did not sleep with her, I swear,” Matt insists once his laughter dies out.
Karen, back from the fridge with two beers in hand, passes Matt one as she sits next to him on the couch and joins in on the conversation. “Huh. Were you there in the building when it exploded, maybe? Was she someone you tried to save?”
“No, no, I would remember her name if it were, I remember most of them,” he dismisses instantly and casually and only lingers on the sensation of Karen’s small smile in the air for a moment before continuing. “I think we represented her.”
“I don’t remember representing her,” Karen tells them while squinting at May Parker’s picture on the television.
“I definitely would have remembered,” Foggy scoffs. “She’s got hot cougar material written all over her. Foggy Nelson does not forget a cougar. Especially not one with great hair and a sweet ass apartment complex.”
“It couldn’t have been that sweet if it exploded,” Karen argues. “But we could check at the office tomorrow, see if her name pops up in our files.”
“I think it was someone she knew. Like her son… or… or her nephew…”
“Dude, did you hear the reporter? She left no immediate relatives behind. She was totally alone,” Foggy points out.
Matt’s instinct, for some reason, is to insist that no, no, that’s wrong. That’s completely wrong. She was not alone and did in fact have somebody. But the instinct, as strong as it is, fades seconds later and is replaced by Matt chastising himself. What the fuck does he know about this random woman’s life anyway?
“Huh, yeah,” Matt finally says. “Nevermind.”
“That’s sad though,” Karen laments. “She was doing a lot of good work in Queen’s. One of Ellison’s writers at the paper was supposed to write a spotlight on all of her community work. Having a good heart like that, and then dying all alone… that’s just wrong.”
“True that,” Foggy agrees, and though the term “true that” is undeniably ridiculous and would seem ingenuine coming from anyone else, it’s earnest from Foggy. (And still very funny.) “It makes me glad to have you two freaks beside me tonight.”
“Yeah, let’s just hope your building doesn’t explode,” Karen laughs.
“Hey, with the cost of living these days, a little explosion might help with lowering the rent on this place.”
“Cheers to that,” Matt declares, hoisting his beer in the air. “To saving Hell’s Kitchen one explosion at a time. And to not dying alone.”
“Hear, hear!” Foggy cheers, and collides his beer bottle with Matt’s a little too aggressively, sending beer sloshing around in the air and splashing onto them.
The three of them erupt into a fit of giggles, and the conversation moves to Foggy’s tendency to get clumsy when he’s drunk (clumsier than he is while sober, which is saying something), and then on to a million other silly and stupid things. But Matt’s eyes linger on the television for one moment before that all.
The picture of May Parker and the strange familiarity her face ignites within him is the last thing he thinks of before zoning out completely to the sounds of gentle static and an elusive memory.
Back in Peter 1’s dorm…
Peter supposes he’ll never know any of the ways he’s changed people.
The curiosity about it lingers, and he supposes that’s alright. He’s made peace with it. After all, does any average person ever truly know the ways they’ve changed the ones they love? He doesn’t think it’s possible.
Maybe that’s the universal truth he’s learning here. Maybe the ways you’ve set the course of someone’s life are ineffable; beyond full and total understanding.
Yet still, always and forever, he hopes he has changed them for good.