With great power, comes great responsibility.

The kitchen table's been overturned and the splintered remnants of a chair are scattered across the floor, along with broken plates and glasses, silverware. In the living room, a bookshelf's collapsed in on itself, the end table responsible for its destruction still hanging through the slats of one of the shelves. One of the couches has been torn apart, the other bearing the distinct look of having been slept on, though I wouldn't call what I've been doing sleeping. I haven't stepped foot inside the bedroom since she disappeared. I haven't stepped foot outside the house since I accepted she was gone.

(How many times did I save her? And still she left me, in the end. Gone back to a world with another Peter Parker, and maybe she won't love him as much, but he'll still love her. If I go back, where will it be? To a world where I betray everything I thought I valued, to a marriage that doesn't last.)

There are cuts on my hands I can't account for. A bruise blossoming along the line of my jaw. If I looked in a mirror, I'd see that I've been crying, my eyes red-rimmed. I can't remember the last time I shaved, let alone showered. I'm not sure it matters. My focus is elsewhere as I stand in my workshop, one of the few rooms I haven't trashed in my rage, though it didn't escape entirely unscathed. Even here the contents of my desk have been cleared off onto the ground, months of research tossed aside for a new project. Something I should've been working on more industriously since I first showed up two years ago, and was told I'd never leave this place -- at least not of my own will.

We'll see about that.

I'm not Reed Richards or Tony Stark. Doesn't mean I'm not a genius in my own right. Doesn't mean I can't figure this out with all the data I've collected over the years, and in the absence of something to hit, without an outlet for my anger, I turn inwards, climb into my own mind for an escape, because what use is there in being this smart without being able to do something with it? Equations written with a shaky hand in black ink cover a good part of the wall, my grip around the marker so tight my knuckles turn white. My whole body is trembling, my vision gone blurry from tears. In a sharp, swift gesture, I drag the back of my arm along my face, sucking in a breath that sounds harsh even to my own ears.

There are responsibilities I'm ignoring beyond these four walls, but the only power I have is within them. The marker poised over a stretch of unmarked wood, I get to work.

In the end, sheer determination to see this day through as it was meant to back in July does away with any of the last second, nervous jitters I felt the first time around. Which doesn't mean I don't fidget in my tux or think, for five excruciating minutes, that I've gone and lost the rings, but whatever niggling doubts there might've been looming in the back of my mind disappeared when I woke up this morning in a bed and not six feet under the ground with mere hours to live. Even having waited a month to disassociate the two events, it's hard to shake the memory, though seeing Mary Jane walk down the aisle, perfectly pristine, does work a few miracles.

She's a vision in white lace, her dress simple, but elegant and undeniably her, with a champagne colored sash tied around her waist. Her hair's been pinned loosely away from her neck, though a few red curls frame the sides of her face. I feel downright ordinary next to her -- or I would, that is, if I was thinking about myself in this moment. As it stands, my eyes and thoughts are locked on her. Distantly, I'm aware of the other people in the room, but they're indistinct, shapeless. Madrox's voice pulls me back into the real world, prompting me to say my vows, but I'm lost for a few seconds, stumbling over my first couple of words until I find my footing. I'm in my twenties, and a pretty girl still has the power to make me tongue-tied.

Not just any pretty girl, though, oh no, but Mary Jane Parker -- my wife. After all we've been through together, all the fights and near-death experiences and unfortunate circumstances, the simple fact that we made it here, of all places, in one piece is cause for celebration, and when I'm finally allowed to kiss her, I lift her straight off the ground, a relieved, giddy laugh bubbling its way out from my throat and against her lips, as I spin us around just the once.

Our happiness is a fragile thing, I know. There's still the future to worry about, with all its promise of tragedy, but if there's one thing this life has taught me, it's to live for the moment and enjoy it to the fullest. Tomorrow may be a brand new day, but today, right here, right now, we're safe and we're whole, and, most importantly, we're together.