To All Those Brave and Lovely

Peter

"She's Nora, remember?  She's the girl who walked away, and kept walking."  MJ had both her hands on the sides of Peter's face, forcing her to look at him.  "The one who saved that little girl as she was falling through the sky, and just kept saving people- you, me, those kids at Disney, and now she's going to save her father.  She's stronger than any of us give her credit for."

"But what if she's not strong enough?"

MJ wasn't there, the first time.  She didn't see Margot, the stiffness that seemed to turn every bone in her body to steel, who was incapable of compromise.  She hadn't met those guards, who always wore brass knuckles when they hit them and had tobacco stained skin, the ones who were there because they were paid and liked pain.  She hadn't seen the money and the power that dripped from every inch of that place, how even when they tried to burn it all to the ground it had stayed standing, the foundations strong.

And those foundations rebuilt, better and even more unbreakable than the first time, and they came for Nora.

"Because she has to be."  MJ was crying now, too.  It hurt Peter to see that, because in a different world, the one that he had been heading towards, it would have been the two of them that loved each other and no superheroes to care about and only normal people pain, the kind that comes when your girlfriend's parents never come home and the kids at school make fun of you.  He can still see that life in his head, but it wasn't the one they were given.  

In this one, he's a superhero who doesn't know how to save the people he cares about and his girlfriend goes missing, and this time there's no guarantee he's going to be able to find her, even though he and Ned and MJ haven't stopped trying.

"Because she loves you, and you love her."  MJ reached over to grab his phone, closed the tab so Nora's words disappeared.  "And she's not going to walk away from that."

Nora's famous again, and by extension so is Peter.

People are always talking about them, because she's Tony's daughter and he's Spider-Man, but it hadn't been at this level in a while.  Now, her face was painted across every magazine and newspaper and every news channel was reporting the nonexistent updates on her story, making little details sound like improvements when everyone knew that they were no closer to finding her or Mr. Stark than they were in the beginning.

"Maybe you shouldn't watch this."  Aunt May said, when Peter had traded doing his homework for searching the web for any story that has had to do with Nora.  He's collecting information, stockpiling useless facts that he's convinced himself might help later. Pictures, locations, family ties, people of interest.  They're taking up all the folders in his filing cabinet, and the back wall of his closet has been transformed into a map of leads that take him no where.  "It can't be good for you to listen to all this."

Aunt May didn't know how to help.  Peter had been used to being able to turn to her for anything, to fix any problem, but it seems they have finally reached a place where he would have to do it on his own.  "I have to."  He spins around in his chair, from her to the keyboard and back again, not sure what to do but knowing his has to do something. "I'm going to find her."

"Honey."  Aunt May had that sad smile on her face, and he knew what she was going to do.  He's been sad enough times around her that he knows the routine, how she's going to come and smooth down his hair and tell him everything he's going to be okay, and normally he would feel better, but not this time, because now things are not going to be okay unless he makes them that way.  this time, it is up to him and him alone.  "Have you started thinking that maybe this time, she's not going to come back?"  Aunt May sat down on his bed, preparing for one of their talks, where she is the adult who knows better and he is only a kid who has to listen.