By Starlight

1. Way Down We Go

Peter stood on one of New York City's many dark streets, listening to the train rumble overhead as it traveled on the tracks positioned over the drive. Snowflakes floated down from the sky although he hardly noticed the chill in the air. He stared at a wall with sullen eyes, dimly lit by a pale street lamp, hands in his jacket pockets as his gaze bounced from one face to the next. The building wall was covered in missing persons posters, all still MIA even after "The Blip" was reversed by his mentor, Iron Man, a heroic move that had cost the man his life. Peter's eyes scanned the faces, some he knew but more that he didn't, wondering where they had ended up after they came back.

His eyes landed on Gwen Stacy's face, an old picture she obviously hadn't consented to. Her disappearance before The Blip was perhaps more mysterious, for after quitting the superhero life when Jack was captured, she avoided Peter at all costs during the rest of the year. The only person she talked to was Ned and that was just to ask how MJ was recovering. However, after summer break, she didn't return to school and there was a rumor that she had gotten herself expelled again, though nobody could find out a reason why. And now apparently they couldn't get in contact with her and she'd been missing for over a year. Peter hadn't seen her since that last day of school literal years ago, and had genuinely no idea where she could have ended up.

He had had a similar thought for himself when he came back on a foreign planet. He couldn't even ask that question because he was thrown headfirst into the biggest battle of his life minutes later, joining some of the greatest heroes in the world, maybe even the universe.

Little did he know that five years had passed.

What followed was an even more tumultuous time. He faced treachery, betrayal, manipulation and the threat of world domination by the hands of Quentin Beck, who had once proclaimed himself to be from another dimension. But he was nothing more than a fraud, someone who used special effects to portray himself as a hero to the unsuspecting public, and even Peter himself. He hadn't been able to see the crook's game until it was almost too late.

Looking back on it now, he wondered if Jack would've been able to tell.

He sighed and lowered his head. His long-gone friend was just a memory now, along with the likes of his late Uncle Ben and now Tony Stark. His throat started to hurt when he thought of them and he forced himself to turn away from the wall.

"You know, you can actually come inside." MJ's voice broke through his morbid thoughts and he looked up to see her approaching with a tupperware of spaghetti and a metal fork. "My parents know you're innocent, so it's not like my dad is gonna arrest you."

"I don't want to endanger them like that." He gratefully took the tupperware, and after prying off the lid, sat down against the wall to eat.

"I mean, waiting on the corner down the street isn't exactly keeping a low profile," she replied, crouching down next to him.

"And you sure no one knows that was you with me?"

"You may have swung me out of Times Square but we were moving too fast for anyone to get my face clearly. All the photos on Twitter and on the news are blurry and you can't really see my face anyway, so I think I'm good," she replied.

"We thought that with Moon Knight too..." he said drearily, sinking back against the wall.

MJ's hand moved to her stomach at the mention of the name. The bullet scar was still faint on her skin and it had taken her a while to become fully rehabilitated. Tony had put every resource into her care as well as into finding Jack, but it was like the lycan had disappeared off the face of the Earth. Marc Spector was never heard from again after the kidnapping and Tony couldn't find him despite his efforts. The Life Foundation offered no answers to his whereabouts and, to Tony, they didn't even seem concerned that their CEO was missing.