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Although their blow-out fight occurred in an evening, looking back, Peter could admit it wasn’t one night that sealed their fate. No, his breakup to Mary Jane Watson happened over months… years, even. The same issue, arising over and over, like chiseling a slab of marble until the cracks got too big, until the entire thing shattered.
“I don’t like Fisk knowing who you are.”
“I can handle myself, Peter. Do you trust me?”
“Of course.”
(No.)
He was trying to protect her.
That’s what he told himself, until the anger cooled and the loss settled in. Until the webbing around the pot she threw dissolved and it clattered to the ground, a long-delayed echo of her tears. Until he realized Mary Jane wasn’t “coming to her senses,” and she wasn’t coming back.
“You’re not the hero here, MJ!”
“What did you say?”
“You heard me. It’s not the ‘Spectacular Ms. Watson’. You’re just a normal person, so stop pretending you’re something more!”
She wasn’t coming back.
And honestly, after what happened? Peter couldn’t blame her.
The lynchpin, the tipping point, was a cheery girl named Kylie Nu.
A native Midwesterner who worked in finance, Kylie had been anticipating this visit to New York for months. Her college friend picked her up at La Guardia, took her back to Brooklyn, entertained her for two days before they headed downtown to hit the normal tourist haunts. It was a lovely summer afternoon, one of those where the humidity wasn’t oppressive and the heat hadn’t settled over the streets—just blue skies and food trucks and happiness.
They were leaving Rockefeller Plaza when they heard MJ’s scream.
It’s a testament to Kylie’s upbringing that she ran towards the danger, even though her friend tried to pretend she didn’t hear it.
MJ would have been killed if Kylie hadn’t intervened. Peter was still two blocks out, swinging fast as he re-reread his girlfriend’s SOS text, heart pounding, head throbbing, cursing her stupid ambition. He would never have made it in time.
Kylie made it in time.
A week later, Peter watched from the underside of the air traffic control tower, trembling as they loaded her coffin on a plane to Des Moines.
It wasn’t MJ’s fault.
Logically, Peter knew that.
Mary Jane didn’t pull the trigger. She didn’t aim the gun. She wasn’t the asshole criminal on a smoke break outside the warehouse where her partners were trafficking innocent women, who just happened to catch some nosy reporter snapping pictures through the boarded windows.
Mary Jane Watson wasn’t a killer.
But when Peter swung into the alley, webbed said asshole to the wall, and spun to see his girlfriend—who swore she was done investigating Fisk’s businesses, who promised she was just working at the Bugle today, just puff pieces, nothing substantial, nothing dangerous—crouched beside this stranger’s too-still body… it was hard to make the distinction.
“You didn’t have to be there!”
“Women were being trafficked, Peter. Slavery, right there on 51st Street. What was I supposed to do?”
“Leave it! Go get some ice cream or something. Not—not track down a highly dangerous criminal organization. That’s when you call the cops! Or me. There’s always someone who can handle this.”
“Any cop responding to this would be in Fisk’s pocket, and you know it. And you were a bit preoccupied. Sorry to break it to you, but costumed heroes aren’t the only crime fighters in New York—”
“Don’t go there. Jesus, MJ, a woman died, all because you couldn’t wait for me to show up and do my goddamn job.”
“Christ, Peter. Don’t you think I feel bad enough?”
“Do you?”
He knew she felt bad.
“What do you mean, she’s gone?”
Betty crossed her arms, looking more irritated than Peter had ever seen. “She went to Des Moines for that girl’s funeral.”
“But—MJ never misses work,” Peter said, dumbly. His mind couldn’t catch up to Betty’s words, couldn’t fumble through the fact that MJ left the state and didn’t even offer him a heads-up.
“Well, it’s been a shitty week. If I were you, Parker, I’d give her some space.” Betty narrowed her eyes and strolled into the elevator, and the lobby’s security guard gruffly stopped Peter before he could follow.
A couple days later, when Peter pushed the phone across the dinner table with a pleading expression, Aunt May tsked. “Peter, leave that poor girl alone. Don’t you think this is hard enough for her without your pestering?”
Kylie’s heroic death had been all over the news. Everyone knew.
But only Aunt May knew about the fight that happened after.
“I just… I have to tell her I’m sorry,” Peter mumbled, dropping the phone next to the mashed potatoes.
May sighed. “Apologies only matter if they’re sincere. Are you actually sorry?”
He wanted to be. God, he wanted to be. He’d rehearsed his apology over and over in the mirror, ironing out the sarcasm, masking the anger, twisting it into something pleading and heartfelt.
To be fair, he really was sorry for the way his words pierced her, drenched her in scorn. Sorry for the tears that dripped down her cheeks as he yelled. Sorry for the impact he so clearly had on her, for the temper he so obviously lost that night.
But he wasn’t sorry for what he said.
Aunt May saw it written all over his face. “You’ve been hurt, and you’ve lost too much. But honey, you can’t take your past out on Mary Jane. You can’t stop her from being the person she wants to be.”
“The person she wants to be is going to kill her someday,” Peter said, almost viciously. When Aunt May raised an eyebrow, challenging his tone, he sunk lower in his chair. “Sorry. Can’t you just find out when she’s landing? She’s not answering my calls.”
“Sounds like there’s a good reason for that,” Aunt May said, taking another delicate bite of her pot roast.
“I didn’t mean to yell at her, Aunt May. I was just so angry.” So scared.
May looked across the table at him, lips pursed. “There are many ways to have a conversation with MJ, but yelling isn’t one of them. You, of all people, should understand that.” And she went back to eating.
Peter felt sick.
Peter usually paid attention to his actions, his words, especially around Mary Jane. He usually kept himself tightly controlled, never letting irritation simmer to a boil like it was tonight. He tried to calm himself, but someone died, an innocent woman gunned down for protecting her.
MJ didn’t even seem sorry about it.
Peter usually paid attention, but tonight, he was angry.
Tonight, he forgot.
“This isn’t about Kylie, and it isn’t about Fisk, and it isn’t about your job. This is about you and me.” And then he took a step forward, getting in MJ’s space. Raised a hand for emphasis.
He would never hurt her.
But MJ flinched anyway, eyes widening in childlike terror.
And Peter was pulled, immediately, back to the moment when her father slammed her head against their kitchen counter, screaming something as she crumpled to the ground in a barely-conscious heap.
(He hadn’t been fast enough then, either.)
Peter dropped his hand, scurried to the far side of the apartment. The pot she’d thrown at him hung from the ceiling, webbing swaying in his pathetic excuse for air conditioning. He realized, too late, that he was inadvertently blocking the door.
Her father used to block the door, too.
Peter pressed a fist to his lips to stifle the strangled sound in his throat. “I’m sorry. M-Mary Jane—I wasn’t going to—”
“I know,” MJ said, but her shoulders trembled. No, wait. Her whole body trembled, and her eyes kept flicking to his hands. He couldn’t blame her for what she said next: “Peter, we need a break.”
“Wait—”
“I have to go. For once in your life, please don’t follow me.” And she vanished.
Out the door. Out of sight.
“She isn’t calling me back, but she’s just mad. It’s fair. I mean, I’m not gonna lie; I’m mad too. Like, how could she be so reckless? She just stole Fisk’s files—stole the Kingpin’s files—and found this smuggling ring. I mean, they saved those women, but if she hadn’t, Kylie would be—” Peter choked, pinched the bridge of his nose hard enough to hurt. He bowed his head even lower, hunched against the chattering tourists that always swarmed Central Park in the summertime.
Had Kylie Nu made it to Central Park, before—
Peter clenched his eyes shut, but a tear slid down his cheek. He wasn’t sure if it was devastation or fury. How could she? How could she put him in this position, sitting here wrestling with how he felt about what happened?
Because in the end, it was MJ or Kylie, and Peter was a selfish person when it came to Mary Jane. He’d let Kylie get shot over and over and over again if it meant MJ might have another day, another breath.
There was something horrifying about that. He had great power, real power to choose who lived and who died. How could he bear that responsibility if MJ always came first? What if next time, it didn’t happen before he arrived?
What if next time, he was making that choice?
There’d be no contest about who he’d pick.
Peter shuddered, collected himself, pressed his phone harder against his ear. “S-Sorry. I wish you were here, man. Not sure where you are in Europe that doesn’t have cell service, but—I need you, Harry. Call me when you get this.”
He hung up, staring sullenly at the grimy concrete while the sun shone brightly overhead.
It took three days of tracking every possible route from Des Moines into La Guardia. Three days of holding his breath and limp flowers, perched outside security, scanning the passengers for a flash of red hair.
It’d be easier if someone would tell him when she was landing, but he wasn’t broaching that conversation with Aunt May again, and something told him Betty Brant and everyone else at the Bugle weren’t his biggest fans right now.
Of course, when she finally arrived on the third day, their eyes locked, and Peter knew he’d fucked up.
She looked horrible. Dark bags beneath her bloodshot eyes, clothing rumpled and unkempt, hair pulled into a slick ponytail. For the first time, he wished he didn’t have such amazing vision—because all he could focus on now was the obvious tear-tracks down her cheeks. She was devastation personified, and he was the asshole who’d pushed her too far.
He waved halfheartedly, stomach churning.
MJ clenched her eyes shut, turned in the opposite direction, and trudged towards the taxis.
And for the second time in a week, he didn’t follow.
He swung by her place that night, perched outside her window and peeked through the half-pulled drapes. MJ was sitting on her couch, staring at her computer, chin buried in a familiar yellow pillow—the Pikachu pillow they traded off during injuries, the one he claimed had “healing powers” when she was laid up in the hospital after appendicitis surgery. For some reason, seeing it made him flinch. She must really feel awful if she pulled that thing out.
Whatever was on her computer must be captivating. With careful movement, he managed to align the bright display with the mirror behind her couch. Just for research, he told himself, just to know what she was looking at, get a glimpse of where her head was. He was concerned. Concerned for her shuddering breaths, her red-rimmed eyes, her tense muscles.
But she was staring at a picture of Kylie.
Someone might as well have sucker-punched him, for how his lungs emptied in a whoosh. God, he had no right to imply she didn’t care about this girl. No right to accuse Mary Jane of endangering innocents, when all she ever tried to do was protect them.
But all he ever wanted to do was protect her.
Somehow, in that moment, it wasn’t enough. Maybe it never was.
MJ drew another, ragged breath, rubbed her face with her oversized sweatshirt’s sleeve, closed the laptop. When her eyes flicked to the window, Peter ducked out of sight.
But a second later, a text pinged on his mask.
Leave me alone.
He texted back, shakily: please, MJ, let’s talk
You’ve talked enough.
She turned the lights off in the living room, and Peter took the hint.
If he’d known “taking a break” meant “breaking up,” he would have begged her not to leave.
Months later, Peter accepted it. He was wrong.
He always thought he was protective, but that wasn’t the right word. It was closer to oppressive, an unexplained desperation to limit her potential… especially if that meant she lived a safe life in a tiny cubicle.
He thought he was considerate. But no, that was selfishness: leaping into her problems so she’d recognize who the true hero was, so she’d never feel the need to step outside the lines he’d so carefully drawn for her.
And he wasn’t a genius. He was stupid, blind to the way she withered under his shadow, the way her light dimmed and nearly vanished until she got wise enough to fan the dying flames, face the sun even though it burned.
He always thought he acted like this because he wanted to keep her safe, alive and breathing in a way most of his family wasn't. But what if it was more? What if he'd been so unspectacular his whole life that he didn't want to entertain someone without powers being just as fantastic now?
After all, where would that leave him? Just some stupid kid with enhanced abilities. And he couldn't go back to being useless. Not again. Especially not in Mary Jane's eyes.
So he inadvertently set a precedent the night they went to senior prom, the night he ditched her on the steps to hunt Fisk. She went along with it that night, and several times since, because that was just “how things were”: the hero left to save the day, and his loved ones stayed behind, anxiously awaiting his return. He was always the hero, and MJ was supposed to be the one at home.
Jesus. If she told Peter to live like that, he’d have laughed, long and loud, until he realized she wasn’t joking.
He would never have stood for it.
So how could he expect her to?
Short answer: he couldn’t.