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Peter woke up with a start. Yet again. MJ had taken to leaving notes about exactly where she was after the
fourth time he rang her at work to check that she was all right and desperately tried not to mention that he was worried that
she was dead.
He was willing to admit that that was a bit much.
But he keeps having these dreams where it all
ended so differently. He's sick of waking up every second morning with the taste of tears in his mouth having the most
vivid nightmares of having MJ or Harry dead in his arms. The ones with MJ are more shocking because there's no reason
for them, sure she could have got injured, several times over the years, but she hadn't been, ever. The ones with Harry
were more real, just because of how close they were to that happening. If Mr. Osborn's formula hadn't also included
enhanced healing, then they would have buried Harry.
They're all living at the Manor now, it makes life easier.
Peter still keeps his old flat, which Harry thinks is stupid given that he's hardly ever there, but he still needs it, just
for those times when it gets too much.
It's kind of hard to listen to your best friend yelling at the father you know
died three years ago like his Dad was in the same room. But there's nothing he can say about that. Plus it's not
like they can do anything about it, even if he ever did have the guts to say anything. Harry hears his Dad, and they
can't take him to a psychiatrist - Harry was planning on getting Oscorp back, and having a history of mental health problems
is not going to help him. It was bad enough with Harry's scars.
When he decided he was fit enough to go back
to work, which was scarily soon after he was injured, Harry spent a lot of time thinking about what to do about them, locked
himself away in the study in a very worrying way. He came out, took his most smoking suit out of the closet, did his
hair up and went out like it was any other day.
MJ came to his room that morning when she found out what Harry had
done and cried on his shoulder.
Harry came back laughing, like when they used to get one over on the jocks at school.
He said that the rest of the board had taken one look at him, nearly totally freaked out and then carried on as normal.
They probably still wanted to sack him though. Peter had offered to come up with some cover story for the scars, like
Harry had helped Spiderman rescue some people and got caught by a fire, but Harry had said no, he was accepting the scars
as a punishment.
MJ burst into tears that time too, but ran out of the room before either of them could comfort her.
They just looked at each other, unsure of what to next, so they just left her to it.
MJ does love Harry, and it's
obvious that Harry loves her, and she loves Peter, and he loves her, and he loves Harry because Harry nearly died saving him
and her, and that wipes everything else off the records, and they're going to stay, stuck like this 'til one of them dies.
They
live with an almost monk-like atmosphere of silence, well if monks had a movie night every Saturday with nachos and dips.
He can see Harry watching her out of the corner of his eye, and it makes him so angry, but he's not going to yell because
then Harry will yell back and they've decided that when they argue it always seems to be MJ that gets hurt.
It's always
struck Peter that he's both very lucky, and that the world's damn unfair, because whenever he screws up it's someone else
that gets hurt and never him. It's Aunt May and Uncle Ben or Harry or Gwen or MJ. He'd give up everything if he
thought he could take any of their hurts back.
The Goblin comes out with Spiderman now, not that Harry ever wears his
mask. He says that it's not like anything could make his face worse. And he's probably right. Plus Peter's
not going to call him on that, because it doesn't matter if someone figures out that Harry is the Goblin because Peter knows
that Harry would die before talking.
So they take out criminals, rescue people, he even gets cats down from trees now.
And
they're happy, Mary Jane sings every night, Harry is slowly creeping back up the corporate ladder, and Peter might graduate
in June, all things being well. Aunt May comes round every Sunday when they all sit down for a meal, and they say Grace.
And it works.
So Peter doesn't mind that he has to ignore that MJ doesn't really speak to him anymore, except at the
weekends, and that the time she broke down and cried was the first time they'd spoken in six days.
He chooses not to
notice the way Harry's eyes light up whenever they're pounding on someone. He doesn't actually like hitting people,
but he can't say the same for Harry. He's back to being the old Harry now, mostly, but the Goblin's still there, and
Peter knows he should feel guilty about letting it loose on people who are, no matter what they've done, still ordinary people,
but ever since he met the woman in the web he really can't bring himself to. So he feels guilty over that instead.
It
was meeting her that started the dreams, he'd swear to it. Hundreds of different possible realities. But he had
this one. And they were all alive. That meant things could only get better.
Right.
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