Ned Leeds has had a recurring theme in his life since early winter. A faint feeling that he knows something, but can’t quite figure out how or why he knows.
It was an odd curiosity at best when it was something inconsequential - the elaborate, ritualized steps to a secret handshake but no partner he could recall ever doing it with, or a lego set he had put together seemingly in a fugue state. But it was another thing when it was something that felt much more important - the unshakeable, nagging intuition that he could do magic.
He’d never been the bravest guy but he figures that’s because he’d never been put to the test. So with graduation only weeks away, he’s set himself to testing out this ridiculous notion, even if just to put the idea to rest. Artifacts from his Lola were procured, and he set about attempting the simplest of spells he could find - a basic incantation.
The spell failed completely. But the act of casting it. . . it shook something off.
Michelle has never been the type to remember her dreams. That hasn’t changed, exactly - but lately they’ve been stronger, more jarring. It began suddenly months ago, the night after what had been an otherwise very ordinary day of working at the shop and doing some excited planning for MIT with Ned. It was the first time she realized - or least admitted out loud, after being asked directly - that was excited about getting in.
But the dreams weren’t about MIT. She couldn’t really say what they were about - the details evaporated instantly, much to her frustration. But unlike other particularly intense dreams in her past, something would stay with her afterwards, a residue she couldn’t shake. Not an altogether unpleasant one, but a distinct aura with vague textures and nebulous impressions that felt so strong and real and palpable. Comfortable even, if she could hold on to them. But she couldn’t.
She would have them irregularly after the first one, with no pattern to their occurrences that she could discern. Usually after a day working in the shop, but not every day. At one point she had for some reason been moved to ask Ned if he had them too. To her disappointment, he had experienced nothing like them and his only response had been, “Oh, dude? Like Inception? Are you being incepted?”
She drops it after that, even as the dreams and the imprints they left upon her continued. She knew Ned had his own distraction - strange bits of knowledge he couldn’t explain having - and she came to wonder if their problems may be related, but she had no reason to believe that. Until Ned comes to her at the shop, wild-eyed and astonished.
“MJ!” he exclaims. “You’re closed, right? There’s nobody coming back here tonight?”
“Yeah. But if you’re this excited about your idea to try a suicide mix of chocolate, maple and funfetti glazes to ice an old fashioned donut, I already tried it. Do not recommend.”
“No! It’s not that. But we do need to return to that idea, because I’m not ready to give up on the dream.” She’s never seen him this animated before, and Ned virtually lives his life in a state of perpetual overflowing enthusiasm.
“Sit down,” he tells her.
“Why?”
“Uh, I don’t know. This is big though. Huge. And in every single movie I’ve seen, if you’re about get news this big, this is when they would tell you to sit down.”
“I think I’ll stand.”
“Okay, okay - I have to tell you, because I don’t think I can wait. I think it’s possible I’ll literally explode if I don’t tell you.”
“Okay,” she says. “What is it?”
“I can’t tell you.”
She usually tries her best to spare Ned from her withering stare, but there are times he deserves it, and this is one of them. “What?”
“I mean, I can’t tell you all of it. Let me start with what I can though: you know how I’ve felt like I can do magic but I don’t know why I felt that?” She nods. “Okay, I finally tried it - I mean really tried it, you know? - I got out all my Lola’s casting materials, studied up on it, started from the beginning and gave it everything I have in me.”
“And? It worked?”
“No. It was an absolute failure.”
Michelle exhales in annoyance. “Is this a bit? Or some kind of test to see if I’m actually going to be able to stand sharing an apartment with you at MIT?”
“No, listen: the spell didn’t work. But just casting it. . . I don’t know, I can’t explain it, but I think it jolted something off of me. It was a different spell, but there was magic cast on me, and me casting my own spell - it shook that loose.” He pauses a moment, finally. “Does this make sense?”
“No.”
“Totally, I agree. But it’s true. And I realized - the magic, all the things I can’t figure out why I know: the memories came back. It all happened, and I can remember it all now. And, okay, I know this will sound like the coolest thing I’ve ever said, and it actually is the coolest, but it’s actually also super depressing after I remembered what happened.” He takes a deep breath. “I know Spider-Man.”
Ned’s adamancy is just enough to keep Michelle from responding sarcastically. “Okay. Okay, all right. I get it. But. . . why does that mean you can’t tell me something?”
If the look on his face or the tone of his voice wasn’t enough to convey his answer’s gravity, the way her blood ran cold involuntarily at his answer would have. “Because you know him too. And because you were right about your dreams.”
Michelle gulps and feels a dizziness overtake her. “Maybe I should sit down,” she says.
If New Yorkers have observed a decidedly less high-tech quality to Spider-Man as he swung through Queens over the past months, few have remarked upon it.
And if nobody had noticed a quietly devastated quality to Peter Parker the past few months, well. . . it was probably because there was nobody to notice it.
If he were asked about the great simplicity of his costume, the shy webslinger would have to admit it’s actually been more than a little refreshing. But no one would ask him. He would talk to nobody about it, confide in no one.
That’s the point, Peter has to remind himself. That was the entire point.
Michelle pries and pokes to extract information, but to her frustration Leeds refuses to budge. She needs to know what he knows; but he won’t share it with her - he can’t, he tells her. She needs to find out for herself, to remember for herself. And given the way he found it, it seems that there is only one way for that to happen.
It turns out that enacting a purposeful, directed spell to bring back one’s memories has a very different degree of difficulty than semi-accidentally jarring free your own memories, with your own spell. She works with Ned arduously to build up his magic acumen, in whatever ways necessary for the two of them to craft this incantation to restore what she’d lost. For a time there are far, far more setbacks than advances, to their mutual frustration.
But Michelle is nothing if not determined. She realizes now: there is a world that lives in her head, a universe that exists that she can’t access. She needs him to cast this spell.
At last, they break through. Ned is thoroughly petrified that he is going to blow the roof off his Lola’s place, and Michelle doesn’t disagree with his concerns. But she steels herself, and implores him with all the confidence in the world - through gritted teeth and closed eyes - to do it.
He summons everything within him and feels energy escape his fingertips. He watches Michelle convulse, startling him and causing him to nearly stop the process until he sees her motion for him to continue.
He doesn’t stop. He finishes the spell. And he sees a look of recognition in her eyes that mirror what he felt days ago. “I remember,” she says.
Peter has never quite been able to put it in words, but there are varying degrees and different tones to his Spidey Sense. When he’s able to sense a projectile headed at him or that Green Goblin has murderous intentions on his mind? That’s one tone. This one that he’s feeling, as he lands on the Midtown High roof? A different one entirely.
For one thing it’s not exactly unpleasant, or that danger is imminent - just that something is off. He doesn’t have much time to mull it over, as it’s not long before he’s startled by a voice just out of his sight beyond the corner.
“You’re not a difficult man to figure out,” Michelle calls out. “I just want to note two things: actually getting up here, when the school is locked and you’re without the assistance of a super powered boyfriend to aid the process? Not so easy. Also, I knew you’d come here, but I guess I should’ve have figured you wouldn’t necessarily come here every day. This is the third night I’ve been waiting up here before you showed.” She steps towards him finally, swallowing hard as she truly takes him for what feels like the first time in month. “But I knew you’d come here.”
Somewhere and somehow, he knew that Michelle would figure it out again. She had even told him she would. He couldn’t and shouldn’t be surprised.
What should he be? At this moment, Peter doesn’t know. Relieved, thrilled, incredulous, amazed? He feels an electrical charge run through his veins, and it leaves a prickle he can’t get rid of, the physical overtaking any single emotion he might feel. MJ is here. MJ came to find him. He’s looking at MJ.
“Miche. . . E-Em. . . MJ. . . .,” he stammers. “Y-you remember?”
She’s too close to him now, she realizes. She can’t sequester herself away from everything she feels for him that’s about to come tumbling out. Trembling slightly, she utters what she had composed herself to utter: “Yeah, dork.” She had more here. A lot more. But her breath catches and her beat pulses and she somehow feels on the verge of collapsing.
When he moves near enough for her to touch him, she’s overcome by seeing him again - truly seeing him - for the first time after seeing him as a stranger.
Peter comes to her, takes her hands and looks in her eyes. “I love you too, MJ.”
Michelle grits her teeth, willing the tears at the corners of her eyes to keep from falling. “No.”
Peter tilts his head. “No?”
“No. You don’t get to just pick this up like everything’s back to normal.” Her brows furrow and she speaks slowly to keep her voice from quaking. “You told me you would find us. That you would come back to me. That. . . .” She extracts her hands from his and scrunches her fist, taking in a deep breath. “That you would make us remember. You promised.” Michelle takes a step back. “What happened? Didn’t you think I deserved to know? Did you. . . did you just move on? Without us? Without me?”
Peter casts his eyes downward. He’d never considered his actions this way. “No! MJ, I swear- that’s not how it was.”
“Then what?”
“I tried to tell you. I wanted to tell you, I wanted to so much. I came in with a note right after that night, ready with a speech to explain everything.”
A lump rises in her throat. “I remember.”
“And. . . I couldn’t.” Peter’s voice shakes. “When I saw you both, saw how you had gotten into MIT and were so excited about it. To know how different your life was without Peter Parker - how much better. Safer. I couldn’t. It felt like the most selfish thing in the world, to take that all away from you.”
Her hands return to his, and she laces their fingers together. She feels his warmth. “The only thing you could ever take away that matters to me is you.”
Peter chokes away a tear and tries to steady himself. “The first time I came to you I wanted to tell you. The other times, all the other days I came into the shop. . . it was just for me. I needed to see you. It was so painful and selfish, but I just needed to.”
Michelle wraps an arm around Peter’s head, threading her fingers through his hair. “My dreams were stronger on the days when you came into the shop. More vivid and persistent. Like you were trying to reach me in them.”
Peter traces the line of her chin and feels her breath jump. “I’m sorry.”
She presses her nose to his, grazing it slowly as she moves near enough to feel his rising heartbeat. “Tell me again.”
“I’m sor-”
“No,” she says. “Not that.”
He pauses a moment, before realizing what she means. “I love you too, MJ.”
Her lips meet his the moment he finishes speaking. He returns the kiss breathlessly, his arm encircling her and pulling her close, so close. The sensation so wonderfully familiar, the billowing gale of a dream willed into existence, of a civilization burnt to ashes and rebuilt. Peter feels the weight of lost time dissipate into the sweet, soft peppermint of the intimate, inviting taste and texture of her tongue sliding lightly against his. Michelle catches her breath and extends the kiss, afraid to break its spell, shivering faintly at the the memories unlocked by breathing in his dusky sandalwood scent again.
Peter’s apartment feels even more shabby and cramped than it had before when he brings Michelle back to it, but it’s nearby and serves the purpose of having a warm bed where they can hide away from the world.
Her skin is still tingling everywhere at his touch when they lay down together. There’s more they want to do - much more - but right now, to fall asleep together, next to one another, is enough. “I don’t know how it’s possible that I missed you when I didn’t even know you,” she says. “But I missed you.”
Peter turns on his side to face her. “I’m scared, Em” he breaths.
“Why?”
“I’m scared to sleep and find out when I wake up that this was just some incredible dream.”
She strokes his cheek and nuzzles his ankle with her toes. “So am I. But we’ll fall asleep in each others arms, a little bit nervous, and then we’ll wake up together tomorrow, relieved that this is real. And then we’ll fall asleep again tomorrow, a little less nervous, and wake up together, a little less relieved. And we’ll do it again. And again, and again. Until we’re just falling asleep in each others arms, and waking up next to each other.”
And so they do. Each evening’s rest a bit calmer, until the creeping anxiety no longer regularly jars either awake in fear. She reintroduces him to her family, an introduction that - this time around - is considerably more nerve-wracking for Peter, fearing how her parents will react to their daughter choosing not a promising Midtown student but a broke and seemingly rudderless boy. But if there was any skepticism on their part it’s negated by seeing the undeniable bond and devotion they share.
Each occasionally apologizes needlessly to the other. “I’m so sorry you had to do this on your own,” she whispers to Peter with a squeeze of her hand when they visit May’s grave together for the first time. “I’m so sorry I couldn’t catch you when you fell,” Peter utters when they talk about that night (“It’s okay,” she replies, “it seemed like the other guy really needed it.”) Each knows their partner doesn’t need to hear the apology, but it makes them feel better to voice the atonement, and they’re brought closer together by the mutual acknowledgment.
They debate having Ned attempt the spell on Happy, so that he would not remain unaware that May’s last moments were full of heroism. They decide against it ultimately, hesitant to tempt fate by tampering memories with magic again, instead settling for having Spider-Man visit Happy to inform him of her sacrifice.
He’ll not hear his name called, but Michelle is unpersuadably insistent that Peter sits alongside her at graduation and that he relishes the ceremony as his own; she viciously side-eyes anyone who questions why this stranger is seated with the graduating class. In the brief pause in the moment between when the last names ‘Palmer’ and ‘Parrish’ are called, Ned and Michelle applaud uproariously.
MIT’s dorms are open to enrolled Engineers only, but off-campus housing is cheaper if you know where to look. They find a two-bedroom unit in their price range with a rooftop high enough to swing halfway across Cambridge. Ned teases Peter and Michelle every week or so by reminding them to put a sock on their bedroom doorknob, and each time they roll their eyes at him they can’t help but smile.
Every now and then when Michelle has trouble sleeping, she’ll ask Peter to tell her a story about a moment the two of them will share after they’ve grown old together. Sometimes he’ll make up something silly, other times something meaningful or something romantic but in any case she’ll have drifted easily into slumber by the end. More often than not, parts of the story will permeate her dreams and make the night’s rest even more peaceful. If any of the conjured accounts also end up being a dream willed into reality, Michelle would have no problem with that. But she is entirely content to wait and find out for herself.