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[daretodo]

"Masked Menaces!" the headline reads. "Costumed Caperers Could be Kinapping Your Children!!!" A picture of some poor slob dressed up in a frankly terribly Spidey costume takes up a good chunk of the page. The caption? "POISONOUS INFLUENCE: This man is clearly up to no good. Look at him

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[getemtiger]

Mary Jane hadn't noticed Peter up there, but the papers, caught in the breeze, were definitely attention-grabbing. Startled, she tried at first to gather up what she could, with a reasonable amount of success. As soon as she saw what they were, though, she got the sneaking suspicion that she knew who had been the source of them, which was confirmed by her looking up at the roof of the Compound.

It just figured that she'd had to run into him, of all people.

"Peter?" she called, undeniably hesitant, one hand lifted to shield her eyes against the sun, the other holding the haphazard pile of papers by her side. "Are you, um - do you want these back?" A part of her had to hope that maybe they could make this quick, get it done without it being too awkward, but even she had to admit how unlikely that was. She remembered all too well what had happened the last time they'd really seen each other, which was exactly why it had been the last.

[daretodo]

"Mary Jane..." I start, her name getting caught in my throat. There's so many things I want to say -- no, there's so many things I need to say -- that I don't even know where to start. An apology seems warranted but somehow it's not enough. My word has never been particularly reliable. I make promises I can't keep, threats I'd never come through with. When it comes to the old adage 'actions speak louder than words,' you'll be hard-pressed to find someone who exemplifies it more.

Looking down at her now, I experience, for one of the first times in my life, a sense of vertigo. I'm Scottie and she's Judy Barton, so similar to my Mary Jane -- to my Madeleine, if you will -- except for a few key differences. She’s younger. Her eyes are blue. She doesn’t know Gwen Stacy and John Jameson was never a villain. Thing is, though, unlike Jimmy Stewart, I don't want to change her. As far as I'm concerned, Mary Jane -- any Mary Jane -- is perfect just the way she is

[getemtiger]

"Oh." Given what was on the paper she was holding, both subject material and the writing itself, Mary Jane couldn't say she was surprised, but almost despite herself, she was a little disappointed, too. She was even less sure of herself now than she'd been a moment before, and probably looked it, too, standing in the middle of the path with a torn newspaper in her hand, looking up nervously at Peter. Things had been weird between them from the beginning, but this was the worst. "Well, alright, then."

Still, she didn't move yet, lingering where she stood. Either walking away or asking if she could head up there were equally likely to make things worse, and she wasn't sure she wanted to do either.

[daretodo]

"I'm sorry."

Those two words -- those two horribly inadequate words -- hang awkwardly in the air. I find myself wishing for some sort of distraction, an emergency to dash off to or anything, really, that requires the expertise of Spider-Man and not Peter Parker. But there's no mask to hide behind. No clever joke to break the tension. There's just the both of us and the empty space between.

I crouch on the ledge, my head buried in my hands, and I pull at my hair. The thing is, for all that those two blasted words are virtually meaningless, they're a start. Maybe not a good one -- no, definitely not a good one -- but they are a start.