Spideychelle one-shots

After: Part Seven

There was nothing there. 

Peter stood in that field for a good half hour, unwilling to accept the truth - it was empty. No fortress, no building, not even so much as a shed or copse of trees to hide anyone in. 

"I don't understand." His voice was broken. Small. There was no one else there - he was speaking to the air, demanding answers from the ground.  "I mean - the data doesn't lie. It shouldn't lie.  Right?" 

If he kept this up, he'd be pacing a path into the ground. 

The completely empty, useless ground. 

The empty ground. 

The - oh.

"Of course," he muttered to himself, pacing quicker.  "Of course." 

He'd forgotten one very important factor - the coordinates he'd gotten didn't care about whether or not the phone was laying on the ground, or up in an airplane. 

Since he couldn't find her phone here, and - he hoped - there wasn't some creepy invisible lair floating above his head, there was really only one outcome. 

MJ was underground. 

"Stupid," he muttered to himself, turning on his suit's sensors. 

Part of him still couldn't believe he was right back here, after so many years. With the people he loved getting hurt, because of him. 

With MJ, gone.  With the world against them. 

He'd tried to get out, tried to do things differently, and look how that had gone. 

And the part that hurt the most? The stupid, most inconsequential thing that still made his heart sting? 

He'd undoubtedly lost MJ now. 

It'd only be days since she'd seen him again, and she'd already been kidnapped, probably injured, probably worse - 

He cut that train of thought off. He couldn't think like that. 

Please, he thought desperately. Please let her be okay.

His suit's diagnostics beeped. His vision was overlaid with lines, the grid scrolling away in front of him. 

He took one step back. Two. 

The words ANOMALY DETECTED flashed across his vision. 

Bingo. 

"I'm coming, MJ," he whispered, scanning the ground slowly, searching for an opening. "I swear." 

MJ

Eventually, there was movement. The earth groaned and shifted around her, the dust choking her vision and lungs growing only worse.

For a while, some blissfully blank period of time, she'd been unconscious. She almost wished she was now. 

Something was coming, and she was in far too much pain to even think of fighting back. 

She curled herself up against the rocks at her back as best she could, tightening her hands into fists and ignoring the way pain pulsed through her with every movement. 

Instead of growing lighter as the rocks and earth were moved away, it only seemed to grow darker, and MJ realized her fuzzy vision and tight chest weren't just from the dust. 

Gas. It must be. Whoever - whatever - was coming, it must have released some sort of... some sort of sleeping gas or - or - 

She realized her head was drooping back and forced her eyes open, bit her lip and willed the sharp pain to keep her awake.