seriousfic

Title: I Remember I Told You ‘I Love You’ (but it might’ve just been a dream)
Fandom: Spider-Man BND
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 3,130
Author’s Note: Betaed by

lurkslikefox
Previous Part: Chapter 4
Next Part: Chapter 6
Characters/Pairings: Peter/Felicia, Thunderbolts, Dr. Strange, references to Peter/MJ
Summary: Everything is set right in the worst possible way.

Everything was right with the world. In fact, things were so good even Peter's neuroses couldn't cancel them out. Registration? M-day? Cosmic shenanigans? He had Felicia Hardy, best girlfriend ever. He had Aunt May, happy and healthy. Front Line was kind to him, the sun was shining, Doc Ock was in jail, and Central Park was radiant as he walked with May through it.

"Kinda day that makes you forget your troubles," Peter mused, feeling the cool wind balm his face.

"Ben always preferred the kind of day where you solved your troubles. It made for hard work, but he always said it gave him a peaceful sleep and the promise of a better tomorrow."

Peter shrugged. "You can't deny it's a nice day for a walk."

"Walk too far and it's just like you've run away."

"I don't run away from my problems."

"How's MJ?"

Peter chuckled. "Happily single. But she copied that from me."

"My legs are aching, let's sit a minute."

They sat down on a bench overlooking a grove of blossom trees. Each breeze sent petals flying like sea spray. Peter breathed deeply, contentedly.

"So, have you met anyone?" May asked.

"I meet lots of people."

"Anyone special?"

"Well… you never know." Peter leaned his head back. "Ben Urich asked me to work late…"

"You're incorrigible!"

Peter smiled. "Some day I'm going to look that word up."

May's tone lost its playfulness. "Peter, I trust your judgment. If you're alone, that's fine. If you're with someone… someones, even… that's fine too. So long as you're happy, I could never be ashamed of you."

"I'm not really gay, you know."

The bat-out-of-hell roar of one of the Thunderbolts’ jets, a T-Bird, cut off any response from May. Peter automatically sheltered her, his brain supercharging. Had they come for him? Was his secret identity compromised? He thought of calling Felicia to warn her, but what if they had his phone tapped? He'd have to get to a phone booth as soon as May was safe. "Come on, I think the park's closing."

May argued as she went along with him, thankfully. "Peter, you don't have to worry. They're sanctioned by the government."

"That's what worries me." He saw a horse-drawn carriage, the passengers jumping off to get a better look at the T-Bird. Effortlessly, he hoisted Aunt May inside, threw a fifty at the driver. "Get her out of here. I'll see about getting some—"

Something burst out of the bushes, landed on the path ahead of them. Hawkeye stood in the road, bleeding. May grabbed Peter's hand tightly as Hawkeye restrung his damaged bow.

"Clint," Peter said softly, unable to tear himself away from May.

Hawkeye shot an arrow overhead, to harmlessly dent the incoming T-Bird. It dropped Thunderbolts like bombs as it strafed him, clipping the tops of trees. Swordsman, Songbird, and Venom. Peter guessed the rest were pursuing on foot.

The T-Bird's exhaust put a flurry of burning leaves into the wind. Peter shielded May from them.

"Take a picture, Peter, quickly, take a picture."

Fighting down the bile in his throat, Peter unholstered his camera from his pocket.

Swordsman unsheathed his sword with a crowd-pleasing flourish. "Time to hang up that faggy purple quiver, old man."

Hawkeye, almost as thoughtful as he was defiant, considered him. "Hey, you know what Steve would do at a time like this?" He snatched an arrow out, aimed it, and let fly. Swordsman batted it aside with a laugh that was echoed by the audience. Then he saw that his sword was still vibrating like a tuning fork.

"Just like a Von Strucker, bringing steel to a vibranium fight." Hawkeye launched an arrow into the distracted Andreas's head. The armored cowl ensured it only knocked him out.

"No grandstanding, T-bolts!" Songbird yelled. "Take him down!"

"I expected better from you, much better." Hawkeye winced as the arrow he'd launched at her gorget disintegrated. "I mean, Baron Zemo? He doesn't have a face, he has Elmer's! What was wrong with Abe?"

Hawkeye was keeping one step ahead of the Thunderbolts, letting their aggressiveness trip them up. Peter felt his inner fanboy cheer, especially when Clint shot a sonic arrow at Venom. He snapped a pic of the symbiote freaking out.

Moonstone touched down behind Clint. "Remember me, lover?"

Clint drove an elbow into her breadbasket. "You weren't that memorable."

"So you forgot I have both halves of the moonstone?" She backhanded Clint into the canopy, to much snapping of branches. Even the jaded New York crowd winced. "Venom, din-din!"

The recovering Mac looked up from his own gathering symbiote. Peter put him back down with a sly webball to the head.

"You've upgraded your tech!" Moonstone remarked.

"You'll find I'm just chockful of surprises." Clint swung down by his knees and fired an arrow at Karla. This one exploded when she blocked it, blinding her.

A blood-flecked blast from Penance uprooted the tree Clint was hanging from. He hit the ground running, but another blast from Radioactive Man scorched his armor. He was readying another arrow when Karla bulldozed into him. He broke a bench and spat blood. Clint kicked up into a brutal punch from Penance.

The next few minutes had no more teamwork or collaboration than a cow received from the butcher to the supermarket. It was a feeding frenzy, one that came to sicken even the bloodthirsty crowd. But when Songbird pulled them off Clint, the audience still booed. Swordsman noticed a family of tourists video-taping the massacre. He snatched the camera, then gave them a shit-eating grin.

"Why don't you get in there, see if you have what it takes to be in the Initiative?"

At first cowed, but quickly coming to relish the cruelty, the family started kicking the fallen Avenger. Swordsman taped it. Peter photographed it. And Aunt May strode forward to jab the torturers off with the point of her umbrella. "Shame on you! You horrid vandals! How dare you!"

Swordsman chuckled to himself. "Watch it, grams."

She slapped him. "You watch your tone with me, young man!"

Swordsman pulled back his hand to strike, but before Peter could react, Songbird grabbed his hand. "She's just a harmless old lady, Andreas. Let it go."

With a snarl, Swordsman pulled his hand free. Peter was already ushering his aunt away.

"Better find a nice home for grams. She's going senile on you.

"Yeah, you just got owned by a retiree," Peter shouted over his shoulder. "Deal with it."

The crowd's uproarious reaction helped Peter's faith in humanity a little.

***

"You need to stop taking so many risks," Peter nagged, only half-playfully, as he dropped May off at the shelter. "You're not Superman, you know."

"I'll be fine. You just need to stand up to these bullies and they'll back down. If enough people stood up, nothing could get in their way."

"It's a nice thought," Peter agreed. "I'll see you tonight," he said as he drove off.

Peter never saw Dr. Strange inside the homeless shelter, calmly serving soup as he waited.

***

The worst part of sharing an apartment with Felicia, besides the way she hogged the shower, was that there was nowhere to escape to if they had an argument.

"How are we even fighting about this?" Peter demanded, wondering why it was that emergencies always happened in the middle of dates and massages, not fights.

"We're not fighting. I said I would like to meet your aunt, who sounds like a remarkable woman, and you freaked out on me!"

"I did not freak out; I said 'Thanksgiving is coming up'."

"In six months!"

"What about that timeframe is unreasonable?"

Felicia grabbed her hair, just in case she had to tear it out. "When did Mary-Jane meet your aunt?"

"I've dated women besides her, you know."

"When?"

"Thanksgiving," Peter said, spreading his arms flat and wide.

"And when did you start dating?"

"October."

Felicia stampeded toward him. "You're so ashamed of me! Kick."

"No! And thanks for the warning—" Peter ducked under her roundhouse kick. "I'm proud of you."

Felicia didn't make a serious effort to get past his block, but she still put a lot of force into her blows. "When you want to show your boyfriends what a stud you are! But when it's someone who actually matters—"

Peter tripped her and flung her into an easy chair. He pinned her hands to the armrests so he was leaning on top of her, holding her down. "Aunt May is a very frail woman. It broke her heart when things didn't work out between Mary-Jane and I. She still thinks we could get back together. Give her a little time to accept Peter Parker – Bachelor before you spring Peter And Felicia on her."

"She's going to drop dead of a heart attack because her nephew isn't dating a redhead?"

"Don't joke about that!"

Felicia pulled the chair's lever, sending the foot-rest crashing into Peter’s legs. He fell on top of Felicia and she wrapped her long legs around his waist like a wrench on a lug nut. "On behalf of all womanhood, I'm gonna have to ask you to stop babying the woman who raised you."

"Since Uncle Ben—"

Felicia had his arms bent behind his back. The isometrics kept him from breaking free as she increased the pressure on his ribs, reminding him how long ago they'd been injured. "She's over it."

"You don't even know her!"

"You can fix that." She nipped at his chin, playfully for her, painfully for him.

"And since when are you so keen to meet family, Party Hardy?"

"Since it's yours."

He sighed and rested his forehead on hers. She loosened her leg-lock on him until she was just rubbing her foot along the back of his leg. "What happened to sex, drugs, and rock and roll Felicia Hardy?"

"She got a better offer."

The phone rang. Felicia shoved Peter in the breadbasket, dropping him to the ground without that much air in his lungs.

"I'm still mad at you," Felicia said matter-of-factly as she vaulted to answer the phone. "Live from Apartment 3B, it's the Peter Parker show, special guest villain Felicia Hardy speaking." Her face froze. She walked the phone to Peter. "It's for you. I think it's your aunt."

Peter coughed a little and took the phone. "Hey Aunt May. How's the most beautiful girl in Brooklyn doing?"

"Peter." Her voice was pitted, old, ancient. "I'm calling because I have to say goodbye."

’Get the car,’ Peter mouthed to Felicia, and she was off and running. He put on his jacket. "What's this about?"

"One of your friends came by… Stephen Strange, the doctor. He told me—he can tell you himself. I don't have much time. The magic makes us forget, all of us, so long as we're not reminded…"

"Aunt May, you're not making any sense."

"I have to go now. There's another world, a better world. One where you're not so alone. But I can't be part of it."

When Felicia finally came upstairs to see what was taking Peter so long, she found the window open and the curtains shifting in the wind.

***

"Just hold on, okay? I'm almost there!"

Thoughts of masks and SHRA and satellite photography couldn't penetrate Peter's head. He was moving so fast that even if someone had looked up, all they would see would be a blur.

"There's no time. And if I saw your face, I would never be able to leave. The doctor told me you were Spider-Man… I'm so proud of you. You have to keep moving forward, that's all. That's just all there is to it. Goodbye, Peter. I'll give your love to Ben."

The phone went dead and the dial tone was like the tolling of some great bell and the last thing Peter saw was a billboard for the new DB. It read Spider-Man: Outlaw or Terrorist? Then he was lost.

***

Peter had forgotten what he'd been doing. How annoying was that? He looked around. He was on top of a building overlooking a cemetery. Then he remembered. He took the elevator down and walked into the graveyard with the feeling of a man digesting rotten meat. Its toxin kept building inside him until he found the empty burial plot. Then he felt nothing at all.

***

May Parker
Beloved Wife and Aunt
1923-2009
She Left the World a Better Place

***

Wong was Dr. Strange's last line of defense against demons, evil spirits, and practitioners of the black arts. He wouldn't regain consciousness for fifteen hours after Peter hit him.

Webbing bound Strange head to toe. "What the hell did you do!?"

"My duty."

Peter slammed him against the wall, shaking it like a small earthquake. "Be specific."

"The universe was out of balance. I offered your aunt the opportunity to restore that balance. She took it."

"You had no right!" Peter slammed Strange against the wall again, this time creating a fissure.

"I had every right. As did she."

"She's dead!"

"We all die, Peter. She chose to have her death reflect her life. This time, you should honor it."

"This time?" Peter repeated, and understanding coursed through him like an electric shock. He let go of Strange and stumbled backward. "Wait..."

Strange held up an engagement ring. "Peter, what do you recall when you think of this?"

He remembered scrounging to buy it before he could even admit who it was for. He remembered Mary-Jane's joy as he slipped it onto her finger. Its liquid coolness as her hands moved over his chest, the perfect compliment to the warmth of her fingers…

Peter shook his head, trying to keep the memories from coming. Even recalling them seemed like cheating on Felicia. "No. That never happened!"

"It did. You forgot, but it still happened."

And Peter could see it, in a horrible, overexposed light… the pale band of skin on his finger where a ring had laid, right where he'd never noticed.

"You're lying," he said.

"I warned you against upsetting the natural order. I told you there would be consequences."

"I'm not staying here. I don't have to listen to this."

"Before the end, she wanted you to know she doesn't blame you. It wasn't your fault."

Peter was already running like he never intended to stop.

***

Web-swinging didn't help. Every step he took dragged at him like quicksand, made him sink into new memories. He'd taken Mary-Jane to dinner there, brought Mary-Jane a rose there, told Mary-Jane he loved her there. It was more than memories. It was a whole life he had with her.

He crashed through their window, the window to their apartment, his and Felicia's, where they lived. Sweat darkened his entire costume.

"Peter?" Felicia was in costume, all but her mask. "I was just about to go looking for you. I spent two hours driving between here and your aunt's place."

"Aunt May's dead." He pulled his mask off as if it were suffocating him.

Felicia nodded. "The service is on Sunday. I promised to help you write her eulogy, remember?"

"And Mary-Jane… Mary-Jane and I…"

"She called here, wanted to talk to you. She said it was impossible."

"You've been remembering things differently, haven't you? Like when Wanda changed things. Only I was with you, not Gwen. I mean Mary-Jane… what'd she want?"

"She was crying," Felicia recalled. "Talking nonsense. I've been trying not to think about what she said, cuz you're with me, aren't you? I have nightmares too, you know, where I'm all alone, and you're… we're happy, that's what matters. We love each other, that's what's real. Not…"

Peter was with her before she could finish her thought, trying to ignore how her warmth was reminding him of Mary-Jane.

"It's just a trick. A sick joke. A telepath could… or the Cosmic Cube. Just let me hold you a minute, then I'll figure this all out. I'll find where they're keeping Aunt May, I'll save everyone. I won't let anyone down."

He slumped to the couch like there were weights crushing down on him. Felicia straddled him, remembering the thousand times she'd bitterly watched the happy couple kiss, the thousand times she'd lain alone in bed wishing he was hers. She wouldn't let him go, not this time. Damnit, she was a hero now, she deserved this!

Stroking his hair, Felicia kissed his tears away, then tried to do the same for all memories of other women, all sadness and loss. "Don't think of her. Stay with me. I'm good for you." She tore her zipper down like a knife through flesh, brought his mouth to her breast. He responded as vigorously as her, and for the same reason. When denial wasn't enough, they could lose themselves in each other.

He slid inside her, as perfectly as the first time. "That's right. That's meant to be."

***

The funeral was perversely bright. Not a cloud in sight, all the mourners speckling the viridian grass with their black. Mary-Jane scanned for Peter's face in the crowd, but the closest thing she could find was Felicia. Her dress was more conservative than a nun's and her famous hair was obscured by hat and veil.

Mary-Jane stood next to her for a while, as if keeping silent could build a bridge between them. She had a bouquet of white roses, while Felicia had a sprig of bluebonnets.

Mary-Jane looked down into the grave, than over at Felicia. That sight was easier to take. "Bluebonnets. Interesting choice."

"Peter sent some to her on her birthday. I think it was a Ben thing… like she cares anymore."

"On three?" Mary-Jane soldiered.

They counted, dropped their flowers in, and walked off. Felicia whipped off her hat and ran a hand through her hair.

"I didn't know you and Aunt May were that close."

Felicia's jaw clenched, like there was something hard in her mouth and she was trying to bite clean through. "We weren't. But she had a hand in making Peter… Peter. Besides, I thought I might find him here. Terrible, I know."

Mary-Jane turned Felicia toward her. "He hasn't been with you?"

Felicia nodded. "Hasn't been taking my calls."

"Mine either."

"Okay, that space we've been giving him? Canceled on account of scariness."

"Agreed. I'll call his friends."

"I'll do the detective agency thing."

Mary-Jane frowned at being one-upped. "Meet back here at ten?"

"No, too morbid. Coffee Bean."

"Yeah, that would be less creepy."

***

At ten o'clock, Mary-Jane walked into the Coffee Bean. Felicia was sitting in the corner, quietly soaking up her tears and dropping the tissues into her purse.

"He's gone, MJ. We lost him."