“MJ?”
Michelle Jones knows there is nothing special about her name.
Are names more than merely letters jumbled together in patterns that mark you as unique? More than a tag that identifies you from your peers?
MJ never thought so.
In this beautifully cruel world she lives in, there are names with power behind them.
Iron Man.
Captain America.
Spider-Man.
But the names behind those masks of power are overlooked; the names that brought them into the world the same as everyone else, the names that have their own extraordinary qualities that made them influential in the first place.
Tony Stark and his mind.
Steve Rogers and his determination.
Peter Parker and his heart.
But for the regular people, the people you pass on the street every day and never say hello to, their names were nothing. They weren’t on tv, they weren’t posted about on social media, they weren’t talked about religiously.
No one cared about them.
No, there is nothing special about Michelle Jones’ name.
”MJ?”
There are only a small handful of people she allowed to call her MJ, a version of her name she created for herself. This list is short: her mom, May Parker, Ned Leeds, and...
It wasn’t the fact that her name was said that caused goosebumps to roll across her skin in waves, it was the voice that said it.
It was the voice that made her muscles tense as if she was waiting for a blow that wouldn’t come. It was the voice that turned the blood in her veins to ice, her heartbeat stopping in her chest as her breath slipped out between her lips.
It was the voice of someone she thought was dead.
It was his voice, the one that belonged to the boy who secretly held her heart five years ago.
MJ shot up from May Parker’s desk chair so fast, she knocked her half full mug of chamomile tea off the desk and to the carpet, but even that didn’t drown out the heightened beating of her heart. Slowly she turned, her eyes flying straight to the open door of the apartment where someone stood in a slight shadow, waiting.
He looked the same as the day she lost him. Wavy brown curls falling over his forehead. Wide, syrup colored eyes meeting her own deceiving ones from across the room. Sharp jawline, young face, although it looked older with the traumatic experience the last five years must have given him.
MJ continued to stare, her mind not believing what her eyes were seeing. There was an uncountable amount of times in the past five years where she had “seen” him as a side effect of exhaustion, and she wasn’t completely sure she wasn’t doing it again.
“Peter?” MJ whispered, her voice cracking as she said his name aloud for the first time in months.
“MJ,” Peter breathed out, his hands hanging at his sides.
The only reason that prompted MJ to believe he wasn’t another hallucination from sleep-deprivation was the Peter Parker from her nightmares didn’t say that.
Whatever trance MJ had been in snapped away as her name passed through his lips, and she immediately ran to him. Nearly tripping over a table, she reached him in a mere second and threw her arms around his neck. If he was anyone else, her momentum would have knocked him back a step, but his lean body remained straight as she collided with him.
It wasn’t her imagination.
He was real.
Peter’s strong arms wrapped around her back, pulling her into his solid frame to reassure her that he was really home, her mind wasn’t screwing with her.
“I’m back,” he whispered, his voice full of deep sadness and debilitation. “I’m back.”
Carefully she had pulled away, her wide eyes looking slightly downward to be met with his own. There was a cut on his bottom lip and a bruise blossoming on his cheekbone. Her hand came up to gently cradle his face as her gaze raked him over, and he studied her as well.
“I...I saw you leave the bus,” MJ started as her hands began to shake against his face. “and then I saw the spaceship, and then everyone started disappearing and you didn’t come back and I-“
She felt Peter’s fingers brushing her cheeks, and it was only when they came away wet that she realized she was crying.
In a normal situation, MJ would never have allowed Peter to see her lose control over her emotions. She didn’t want anyone thinking she was too weak or she couldn’t handle herself, Peter being at the top of that list.
When he was gone, the only people she trusted were Ned and May, and even in front of them she wouldn’t break down. She couldn’t.
May lost her son, Ned lost his childhood best friend, and MJ? She had known him the least amount of time, she couldn’t be the one to crack when the ones closer to Peter than she had been were staying strong.
The one day that she lost control of herself was a month after the first, when Tony Stark had knocked on the door to the apartment.
For the entire month Iron Man was gone, there were many rumors that surrounded him. Some said that he went to space with Spider-Man, others said that he got kidnapped by aliens, and even a couple said he died.
MJ never liked Tony Stark, but she didn’t want the latter to be true.
At least she knew it wasn’t.
After a short argument in hushed tones that she couldn’t make out, May reluctantly let him into the living room, and MJ saw for herself instantly how frail and sickly the Iron Man had become. His jacket was flapping off his arms whenever he moved them, and when his pants brushed against the couch as he went to sit, she noticed how the fabric wasn’t even touching his legs.
Nobody spoke for a long moment before he sighed.
“I told him to go back,” Stark said, his voice scratchy with exhaustion. “but he didn’t listen and begged me to let him stay.”
“So you let him?” May asked, ice in her tone.
“We were in space, on an alien spaceship I couldn’t control that was headed for a planet in another galaxy. I couldn’t send him back.”
“So what happened?” MJ asked before she could think about it, and all eyes were on her. She kept her gaze on Stark, and he looked away dejectedly.
“We lost.”
Suddenly the room was too cold, and she shivered.
“The crazy bastard—the one behind the attack on New York—he had a plan to wipe out half of all life in the universe, and we had one of the things he needed to do it,” he said, looking up with sunken eyes.
“We fought him on his home planet, but he was too strong, and he got what he came for. Then, everyone was gone.”
There was a second of complete and utter silence as they waited for the truth that was almost too heavy for MJ to bear.
“The kid was dust.”
May let out a sob, her hands flying to her mouth as she started to weep. Ned was silent beside her, but she knew there were quiet tears on his cheeks. MJ’s throat burned, but even though she knew, she knew, what he was going to say, she was too stunned to cry.
Tony sniffed, and he started again.
“The kid...Peter was always optimistic—maybe even too optimistic—and he tried to see the good in every situation we were in, even when there wasn’t any to be seen. He fought Thanos head to head and used strategies he saw in old movies and those...those stupid one liners he always uses.”
Stark closed his eyes and sighed. “Everyone’s afraid of death, and I won’t lie and say he faced it fearlessly. Peter was a kid, and he wanted more time, just like any of the rest of us. He was strong and his heart was full, and he did things for people that he didn’t even get recognition for. He was better than all of us.”
The next part he whispered so quietly MJ almost didn’t hear him over the sound of her own sobbing.
“He deserved to live.”
MJ didn’t stay to hear more.
The walls were closing in on her, making it hard to breathe, and it was a miracle she didn’t trip over her shaking legs as she ran to the front door and threw it open. With Tony Stark’s eyes on her back, she closed the door and ran down the hallway.
She didn’t know how, but MJ ended up on the roof of the apartment building, wind whipping her hair and the many colors of the sunset straining her burning eyes.
The last thing MJ wanted to do was break down like that. What she had an overwhelming need to do was be a shoulder to lean on for May and Ned, but it was just too much, hearing the truth.
It was like hope had taken over her system, and all that hoping made her believe that he was still out there somewhere, looking for them.
She was alone on the roof, with no one to watch her fall apart, so she cried. She cried for the lost hero Spider-Man. She cried for the genius nerd behind the confident superhero who got flustered when she looked at him for too long. She cried for Peter Parker, the boy she was pretty sure she loved, and whom she would never be able to tell.
That was the last time she broke down in front of the people that needed to see her standing firm.
Until the boy she cried for came back.
“MJ,” Peter said, his voice instantly calming her. “It’s okay. I’m okay. I’m alive.”
MJ smiled a watery smile, and she wrapped her arms around his neck again, grasping him like if she let go, he would disappear again.
He didn’t.
———
The next day had been Tony Stark’s funeral.
It affected Peter more than he would admit to Michelle, but she could plainly see he wasn’t coping well.
The world was trying to make things go back to how they were before, and MJ knew Peter was really, honestly trying to get past everything that happened and live normally.
He has every reason to not be one-hundred percent himself. He died. But now, two months after he came back, he still isn’t doing any better.
Every day, she sees his red, puffy eyes and the purple circles of exhaustion under them, and the slow, morose way he walks. She sees how he’s barely tuned into whatever’s going on around him, his head always somewhere else. She sees how his smile doesn’t reach his eyes, and how his laugh is hollow and lifeless, not joyful and innocent like it had been.
Michelle can’t do much, but any time he asks for her she’s there, and she’s still there even when he doesn’t.
That’s why she is staying at his apartment tonight. Because he asked her too.
MJ got so used to sleeping in Peter’s bunk bed when he was gone, that she misses it the nights she goes back home with her mom. So when he asks her to stay with him after a long day, what is she going to do, tell him no?
May answers the door when Michelle knocks, and a thankful sigh escapes the woman’s lips as their eyes connect.
“He’s trying,” May whispers as she walks in, and MJ nods.
“I know he is.”
“He’s in his room,” May tells her, handing MJ a mug of hot tea she already had prepared for her. “Thank you so much for this.”
“You don’t need to thank me,” MJ replies before turning toward the room with the boy inside.
MJ had helped May through the time when she had lost her son, and now May watches from the kitchen as Michelle enters the room with Peter, a heavy breath releasing through her nose. If anyone can help him recover, she thinks, it’s MJ.
Michelle closes the door before she looks to Peter, and as she meets his eyes she realizes that he’s been staring at her the whole time.
“Hey, MJ,” Peter says as she drops her book bag on the floor and slides off her shoes.
“Hey, dork,” she attempts, trying for a smile.
He gives her a small one, and she sees the small sparkle in his eye and decides she’ll take it.
MJ grins back at him before reaching into her book bag and grabbing her old and worn copy of To Kill a Mockingbird. With his brown eyed-gaze on her, she makes her way over to the open spot next to him on the bed.
Settling down and glancing to her left, Michelle tucks a strand of hair behind her ear as she meets his warm look with warm cheeks. She takes a sip of her tea and sets it on his nightstand, her other hand opening the book to the last marked page.
“Ready?” she asks, peeking at him from under her eyelashes.
“Ready,” he replies, scooting in a little closer to her side.
MJ breathes lightly to steady herself before starting.
“‘Don’t do that, Scout. Set him on the back steps.’
‘Jem, are you crazy?...’
‘I said set him out on the back steps.’
“Sighing, I scooped up the small creature, placed him in the bottom step and went back to my cot. September had come, but not a trace of cool weather with it, and we were still sleeping on the back screen porch. Lightning bugs were still about, the night crawlers and flying insects that beat against the screen the summer long had not gone wherever they go when autumn comes.
“A roly-poly had found his way inside the house; I reasoned that the tiny varmint had crawled up the steps and under the door. I was putting my book on the floor beside my cot when I saw him. The creatures are no more than an inch long, and when you touch them they roll themselves into a tight gray ball.
“I lay on my stomach, reached down and poked him. He rolled up. Then, feeling safe, I suppose, he slowly unrolled. He traveled a few inches on his hundred legs and I touched him again. He rolled up. Feeling sleepy, I decided to end things. My hand was going down on him when Jem spoke.
“Jem was scowling. It was probably a part of the stage he was going through, and I wished he would hurry up and get through it. He was certainly never cruel to animals, but I had never known his charity to embrace the insect world.
‘Why couldn’t I mash him?’ I asked.
‘Because they don’t bother you,’ Jem answered in the darkness. He had turned out his reading light.
‘Reckon you’re at the stage now where you don’t kill flies and mosquitos now, I reckon,’ I said. ‘Lemme know when you change your mind. Tell you one thing, though, I ain’t gonna sit around and not scratch a redbug.’
‘Aw dry up,’ he answered drowsily.”
Michelle pauses after one page, hearing the light sound of steady breathing, and she turns to see Peter asleep. Laughing softly, she pulls the blanket up to his shoulders and brushes a small curl of golden brown hair out of his face.
MJ could count on her fingers the amount of hours Peter has slept this month. In fact, the quiet moments he finally allows himself to rest are usually when Michelle is here reading to him.
She loves watching Peter, how his face settles into a smooth picture of complete bliss, the opposite of the pained and tired look of when he’s awake. It gives her hope to see him peaceful, hope that he’ll eventually get back to the way he used to be.
Michelle must have fallen asleep staring at him—in what was most likely a creepy way—because her eyes snap open to a dark room and a blanket pulled over the open book on her chest. As her vision adjusts, she realizes that she’s the only one in the bed, and she sighs as she checks the time on her phone. Three a.m.
Rubbing her eyes, MJ walks drowsily to the door, thinking he went to get a drink. As she opens it, though, she’s rudely awakened with a pitch black kitchen and living room, no sign of Peter anywhere.
“Peter?” Michelle whispers into the inky darkness. Getting no reply, she flips the light switch to see if he’s on the couch, and Peter isn’t there.
Quietly, she looks throughout the apartment, but she doesn’t find him. Nothing’s changed from the night before, and there’s no sign that he’s anywhere other than his room, sleeping.
Suddenly, the pieces click in her mind, and she knows exactly where he went.
Of course, Michelle thinks.
The trip is short, and when MJ steps onto the loose gravel of the roof with her sloppily tied converse, his hunched back straightens, going as rigid as the edges of each stone.
“It’s okay, Peter,” MJ says, and Peter instantly and visibly relaxes at her words carried to him by the slight breeze.
Peter doesn’t say anything more, and Michelle walks the short distance to the ledge he’s sitting on. Carefully, she climbs up the low wall to sit next to him, allowing a couple inches of space between their legs. With her feet dangling freely over the edge of the building, she turns her gaze to the boy next to her.
The first thing she notices is how red his eyes are. Not necessarily puffy and swollen like he had been crying before she came up, but strained, like he refused to close his eyes because of the horrors he would see behind his eyelids.
They stare out over the quiet city, not speaking, but soaking in the silence. After several minutes, though, Michelle breaks it.
“Was it the dreams again?”
Peter exhales a deep breath, almost as if he was holding it in the whole time she’s been up here. Slowly, he begins to nod, and she turns her full attention back to him.
“Yeah,” he gulps, eyes trained on something in the distance. “Yeah, it was.”
“Do you want to talk about it?”
Yes, Peter thinks as he stares at the graffiti covered wall a little ways away. “No,” he says instead, not wanting to bother Michelle with another nightmare.
MJ follows his line of sight to a shorter brick building with a spray-painted Iron Man mural on it’s side.
Peter looks away, his eyes now resting on his clasped hands sitting in his lap. MJ waits patiently, her fingers on the edge of the wall next to her knees as she glances at him with affectionate eyes.
“It was just the same as normal,” Peter says abruptly, not able to contain himself.
Michelle nods, turning back toward the twinkling city. That’s usually what he tells her and leaves it at that, and MJ never forces him to tell her anything he’s not comfortable with.
But now, for some reason, he decides to tell her more.
“I...I was back on Titan,” he starts, and it takes all the force in MJ’s body to not whip her head at him in surprise. Calmly turning to face him, she meets his eyes, and taking that as a sign to go on, he continues.
“Titan is...was Thanos’ home planet. Thanos was the guy who...did all of...this.” Peter inhales deeply.
“Titan was where I died.”
MJ’s breath gets caught in her throat; Peter’s never admitted, at least to her, that he was dead, or anything other than simply gone.
“I was there with Mr. Stark and Doctor Strange and these four alien guys we had met when Thanos showed up. He was looking for six Infinity Stones—these stones that have different powers—and we had one of them.”
All MJ knew about the events that everyone was calling the “Infinity War” was a big spaceship came to Earth, took Spider-Man and Iron Man, and a day later half of the population was gone. Then, five years later, everyone that turned to dust came back because Iron Man had saved them by sacrificing himself.
Stark had explained some of what happened the day he came to the apartment, but all of what Peter is telling her is new to her ears.
“We fought Thanos, and we almost won. He was in a trance from the bug lady, and I pulled the gauntlet—how he was using the stones—off of his hand. But then, he woke up and grabbed it back. We fought him again, and I don’t know exactly how, but he got the stone and left.”
There’s no emotion in Peter’s voice as he speaks, and Michelle doesn’t think he’s explaining the dream anymore.
“Then three of the aliens disappeared. And then Doctor Strange.”
The hair on Michelle’s skin sticks up with the shiver that rolls down her body.
“There was a moment where I thought I was safe, that it wasn’t going to be me.” He swallows. “And then I felt it.”
His hands shake violently in his lap, and he slides them into his sweatshirt pocket to conceal it before sniffing dryly.
“It was this tingling feeling that started in my stomach, and watching them turn to dust, I just knew that was going to happen to me. The feeling turned from tickling to stabbing pain, and I was scared, so I ran to Mr. Stark.
“My legs gave out, and we fell to the ground. I could feel my body drifting away, and I was begging him to keep me there, to not let me go.”
Michelle struggles to keep her hands still against the smooth concrete underneath her. She watches from the corner of her eye as Peter’s shoulders cave, his face painfully blank.
“Then I was just...gone.”
Peter looks up, the light of the city illuminating the dark circles on his pale face. He turns to Michelle then, and she looks back at him with soft and open eyes, urging him to go on.
With his eyes on hers, he sighs and begins again.
“I don’t know where I was. It felt like I was sleeping; it was black all around me and I couldn’t do anything. I could barely think. I was all alone.”
Michelle’s eyes sting with the thought of Peter having to do anything alone.
“Then, I was back on Titan. Just like that. It took me a second to remember where I was when Doctor Strange came up to me and told me ‘it’s been five years, The Avengers need our help,’ and made a portal to Earth.
“When I came out of the portal, we were on the ruins of the Avengers headquarters. There were thousands of soldiers and superheroes coming out of portals all around me, and we were facing Thanos’ army of millions.
“It was like a movie; Captain America said ‘Avengers Assemble’ and then everyone started running to fight the army of monsters. There was a new gauntlet, and I had it at one point—I even rode a Pegasus—and then I gave it up to this woman that destroyed Thanos’ ship with her bare hands.”
As Peter tells her about the battle, a sparkle in his eye grows and shines. Michelle doesn’t know much about fighting evil super villains, but she imagines that the thrill comes natural to him.
“Then the alien I was fighting turned to dust. Then the entire army.”
Peter’s face drops, almost imperceptibly.
“The feeling of euphoria, seeing the enemy turn to dust, was indescribable. All the other heroes were looking around, taking it all in, and that’s when I saw him.”
Michelle’s breath stops.
The light in Peter’s eyes dims.
“It’s like no one noticed him sitting there, his eyes wide and his arm blighted with the infinity stones still on his knuckles. I swung over, and somehow, he was still fighting. He was still alive.”
A tear falls quietly down his cheek.
“He didn’t reply when I talked to him, and Pepper had to pull me away. She told him we were gonna be okay. She told him...he could rest.”
The last sentence he murmurs through a rush of soft tears.
“Then the light faded from his eyes, and he was gone.”
Peter breathes out roughly, and Michelle finally decides to close the inches of distance between their bodies. His eyes squeeze shut and his fingers clench in his grey sweatpants, and MJ gingerly reaches out her hands to cover his.
His grip softens under her touch, and his eyelids lift open. Their faces are close, closer than they’ve ever been, but MJ knows this isn’t the time to get nervous about it.
“That’s the thing about life,” she says, voice gentle as a whisper. “You can’t save everybody.”
He meets her eyes, skin so pale he looks almost ghostly—which MJ really doesn’t want to think about. With their eyes mere inches apart, she starts again.
“You have a big heart, Peter. When someone gets hurt, you don’t hesitate to blame yourself, even if there’s nothing you could have done. What Mr. Stark did, he chose to do. It was either let this Thanos guy win again, or do anything he could to beat him. In no way is his sacrifice your fault.”
Michelle pauses, and they both breathe slowly. In. Out. In. Out.
Her eyes flick between each of his, and he glances away, down at their hands on his legs. The slight wind blows wisps of their hair, and cars honk on the streets below them. It’s almost serene when Peter’s lips part to speak.
“You know what Pepper told me after the funeral?” he asks. “She told me that the night Tony figured out how to save us and went to help the rest of The Avengers, she found a framed picture of him and I she had never seen before under a towel on the counter.”
Michelle blinks at the correlations behind the discovery.
“MJ, what if our picture was the reason for all of this? What if I’m the reason Tony Stark is dead?”
Peter’s voice is desperate as he looks to her with wide eyes, and she can see in them that he honestly thinks he’s the reason for his mentor’s death.
Michelle ponders over her answer for a moment.
“If what Pepper said is true, and Tony found that picture somehow and decided to fight for you, then that means everyone that disappeared is alive because of you.”
Peter’s mouth opens in surprise at Michelle’s statement, and his brain struggles for a self-depreciating comment. She bites her lip slightly as she thinks, and under any other circumstances, Peter would blush as he realizes he’s staring at her lips.
“None of this is your fault,” Michelle says, eyes boring into his, needing him to understand how important that is.
“But I-“ Peter tries, but Michelle isn’t having it. In a soft voice, she cuts him off.
“I know you have this need to keep others safe, even if it means sacrificing yourself in the process. You’d do anything to help the little guy, even if it costs you everything. Sometimes, though, even you can’t save everyone. And that’s not on you.
“Everything that’s happened shows that we have no idea about anything outside of our own lives, and we can’t stop bad things from coming. It’s not possible.”
“It has to be,” Peter says quietly, and he meets Michelle’s eyes again.
“You're not meant to bear the weight of the world, Peter.”
He sighs, rubbing his clammy hands against his pants, and Michelle lifts her fingers off of his and pulls her arms back. Keeping her face close, she searches Peter’s eyes for any signs that he’s taking in her words.
“I think...I think you forget that you’re not the only one who can protect people,” says MJ. “You don’t have to do it all by yourself.”
One heartbeat. Two.
“People need Spider-Man. People depend on him. If I didn’t do my best to save everyone, then the bad things that do happen are because of me.”
“Even Spider-Man can’t control every circumstance.”
“I can try.”
There’s a moment of silence as Michelle chooses her words.
“You may be Spider-Man, but you’re also Peter Parker,” MJ states, and Peter’s eyebrows furrow slightly.
“Spider-Man carries the weight of the world on his shoulders, and all that pressure is falling onto Peter Parker, too. You’re a kid, Peter. This isn’t supposed to be on your shoulders.”
“Ben told me once: ‘With great power comes great responsibility’. MJ, I was bitten by that spider for a reason. I have the power, so who would I be if I didn’t use that power to do all the good I could?”
“It’s not that you’re helping people that’s the problem. It’s that you care so much about other people that you don’t care for yourself.”
Peter sighs and doesn’t reply.
Michelle shivers in the cool breeze that passes over them. A siren sounds from the winding paths of streets stories below their feet, and Peter makes no move to leave.
“I care for you too much to let you do this to yourself, Peter. I-” she catches herself “-we love you, and we’re here to help you through this. You’re not alone.”
Michelle’s cheeks are pink when he turns to her, his eyes no longer wet and his face less pale than she’s seen in weeks. Michelle adjusts her body so they’re facing each other, her left knee resting on the wall below her. She lifts her hand to touch his shoulder, and it slides up to his cheek.
Five years ago, she was too awkward to even think of holding him like she is, of showing real emotion plain on her face for him to see. Luckily, he doesn’t seem put off by the confidence he didn’t get to see her grow into, but he seems, almost like he likes it on her.
As Peter sits in her presence, with her hand on his cheek, for the first time since he came back from the dead, his thoughts are clear. MJ’s gaze is heavy, full of something unspoken, and she gently pulls his head into her shoulder. He lets her with no resistance, his nose turning to brush her collarbone.
Michelle smooths over Peter’s hair with her hand before leaning her mouth down to his ear. “God, I care about you, Peter,” she whispers, her low voice sending a shudder down his body. “You don’t have to do this alone.”
She feels him nod into her neck, then she turns and presses a kiss to his temple. His skin is hot under her lips, and when she pulls away, she wishes she could kiss his lips instead.
They sit like that for a long while, the sounds of the city and their breathing the only noise between them.
In MJ’s world, there are many well known, powerful names.
Iron Man.
Captain America.
Spider-Man.
But it’s not the names that make someone great. It’s the people behind the masks, the normal people with a spark of something special that made them who they are.
Tony Stark.
Steve Rogers.
Peter Parker.
Underneath all the layers, the boy behind the Web-Slinging Spider is a just normal kid. Though he may have a constant strain and an obligation to the people, if Peter Parker is anything, it’s worthy of his name.
And there is something special about it.
And as they go back into the apartment and lie down in the bottom bunk of the bed, his head on her chest, MJ reminds Peter that he doesn’t have to go through it alone.
Because if Peter Parker has anything at all, it’s Michelle Jones.