To All Those Brave and Lovely

Peter

His girlfriend was missing.

Not missing, exactly.  Missing implies that they had no idea where she went.  Missing refers to things like that one sock that always finds its way behind the dryer, or the piece of homework you swear you turned in but the teacher never graded.  Missing doesn't apply to a person.

It's especially not true in the case of Nora, because they knew exactly where she went.  She left enough breadcrumbs, both in her internet history and in the notes she left behind for everyone she thought she should say good bye to.  Aunt May finds one tucked in the bottom of her purse addressed to him, and he got another sent to his email a day after she went disappeared.

I had to try.

I know you don't get why I thought I had to do it alone.  And I know you wish I never tried.  But you told me yourself: when you've got the opportunity to help, and you let the bad things happen anyways, then it's like a small part of them happened because of you.

I can't take thinking that this is happening when I could try to stop it.  It's going to kill me, to have that weighing me down for the rest of my life.  And this is my fight, too, one of my battles that I have to win.

None of us are going to be safe unless we finish this, once and for all.  I'm doing this to protect myself, too, don't think I'm not.

I've got a plan.  It's not a good one, but it's the only one I've got.  Fury's in on it.  Pepper isn't.  And I had to leave you in the dark because I knew you loved me too much to let me go through with it.

But I have to go through with it, because there are people I love that in danger all the time.  Because I love you, and they know it.  Because I loved Tony, and they promised to let him go if I showed up.  

I'm hoping that's true.  I'm hoping I can come back to you.  Maybe I won't.  But I'm going to try.  that's all any of us can hope for, anymore.

Peter's read it over so many times he had it memorized.  The techs from Stark industries went through it, and said that she had it on a delayed timer.  Like, if she didn't log in within the next 48 hours, then all these instructions would be sent out.  Passwords changed, good bye notes sent.

MJ was with him when he read it for the first time.  She had her own letter, but that one had come in the post the old fashioned way.  It was all about how she was going to change the world, and that MJ was a hero, too.  Just because her battles were quieter doesn't make them any less important.

You guys are going to change the world, Nora had written, and MJ let Peter trace the indentations her letters had left, choking back tears over the curl of the g and the tilt of the t's.  I just hope I'm here to see it.

"She's going to come back."  MJ had said, in that voice she had.  She's told him a lot of things in that voice, like we're going to win the decathlon again even if I have to do it myself or she's going to say yes to prom or everyone's going to find out you're Spider-Man eventually, you might as well rip the band aid off now.  She was one of the smartest people that Peter had had the fortune to meet, and she had yet to be wrong when she told him something in that voice.  That voice meant a promise, and MJ had yet to break her promises.

"How do you know that?"  He was crying, tears slipping down his cheeks and his breath coming in ragged bursts.  It was worse that MJ got the paper letter, because he can see where Nora's pen pressed harder into the paper or where that water spot meant she was crying.  Thanks to his spidey senses, he could even smell her, just a faint trace of the perfume she always wore.