With great power, comes great responsibility.

Used to be that if I was in a bar on a Friday night, it was to rough up some mook into giving me enough information so I could figure out who the mook I caught earlier in the night was really working for. There was a natural order to things. A purpose.

Not so much, anymore. This is the second time this month that I've found myself at the Catscratch Club, though this time -- fortunately -- Tony is nowhere to be seen. Good. For a number of reasons, really, though somewhere on the less important spectrum of things is the fact that I didn't come here to see him, anyway.

I spot Wolverine sitting on what I'm guessing must be his usual stool and I am, suddenly, acutely aware that I left Mary Jane's company to come to talk to him. I am similarly aware that she's the reason I'm here in the first place, through absolutely no fault of her own.

I drop down beside him, holding on tight to the edge of the bar so I can lean back, my arms stretched out in front of me.

"We have got to stop meeting like this."

It's been a long couple of days. I probably should've tried to sleep, but I couldn't. No surprises, there, I guess. Really, the biggest -- and only -- surprise is that I'm still invited to stay under this roof. After all the dumb things I've pulled in the last 48 hours, I thought Tony would've been glad to get rid of me...

But he wasn't. And I don't really know what to make of that, except that maybe he wants to keep an eye on me. Or maybe he really isn't angry, but I find that hard to believe. Once the rush of having been to another dimension wears off, I doubt he'll be so affable.

Either way, though, I'm alone, now, sitting at the dining room table with nothing save a cold cup of coffee for company. The sun's come up in the time I've been sitting here, but I can't bring myself to go to bed, It's a Sunday -- I don't even classes to rush off to. There's no reason to stay awake except to keep away from the nightmares I'm sure are waiting for me if I dare close my eyes.

I should shower, at least. Make myself look a little more presentable before Pepper wakes up, but when I catch movement in the corner of my eye, I realize it's too late. My fingers curl around the mug, as though to steel myself for the inevitable lecture.

"...hi."

This is the last place anyone would ever think to look for me. The lower-level of the local strip joint-- and on a theme night, no less? Not exactly one of my usual haunts. I can't even remember the last time I've been inside the Catscratch Club. Years ago, I think, back when--

Back when MJ used to work as a singer, here, in the jazz club. I'd watch her perform sometimes, before she stopped. Before Osborn showed up and turned our lives upside down and sideways. I never liked it, honestly, her working here -- not that I said as much. Happy as I was that she was doing something that made her happy, the venue... Leaves a little something to be desired.

Which begs the question: why the heck am I here?

The same reason I ripped a hole through reality and nearly gotten eaten by the Big Bad Wolf, I guess. I pulled a fast fade after we got back, left the scene before anyone could talk to me. There was enough going on that it was easy to slip away, and I've been laying low ever since, mulling over what happened and everything I saw. I haven't even gone back to the mansion. The clothes I'm wearing now, I got from my house.

It was the first time I'd been in that bedroom since May. The only place I never checked after she disappeared, my own version of Schrödinger's Cat. As long as I never opened that door, she could still be behind it. Doesn't matter that I knew she wasn't, I could still cling to that false hope. But false hope's just another way of saying denial, and after yesterday, I'm a long way's away from either.

Pulling my baseball cap down low over my eyes, I sit down next to Wolverine at the bar, knowing I'd find him here. Not that we hang out much, this is just his kind of place. Even when the staff are dressed up like cowboys and Indians, apparently.

I couldn't be anymore uncomfortable in this stool. Maybe I should get out of here, only, nope, here comes the bartender, doing their job. Not looking up when they approach, my gaze fixed pointedly on the wood, I clear my throat a little, and say, "I'll, uh... Have whatever he's having."

"Forty-eight... Forty-nine... Fifty... Fifty-one," I count steadily under my breath, a push-up accompanying each number. This isn't something I'd have to do at home, my patrols of the city enough to keep me in shape without even trying, but I can't say the same for here. My sessions with Cap are ramping up -- not to mention a heckuva lot more challenging than I'd ever let on -- but he told me on the very first day that I can do the sit-ups and push-ups on my own time. If improving my balance is his initial focus, then strengthening my core seems like one of the brighter ideas I've had lately.

"Fifty-two... Fifty-three... Fifty-four... Fifty-five..."

I'm out on the terrace, wanting the fresh air from having been cooped in the workshop for the better part of the morning, and not having gotten very far in much of anything. It's easier to think when I'm not trying, sometimes, when I can get lost in something physical. I'm not a computer. I can't work in a vacuum, and hope to pull an answer to an impossible question out of nowhere. So I take my distractions where I can get them, push myself in a more productive way than enforced insomnia, and hope to draw my attention away from the constant gnawing pain that Mary Jane's left in her absence, at least for a little while.

"Fifty-six... Fifty-seven... Fifty-eight... Fifty-nine... Sixty..."

Mary Jane's the one who nominated me for council last May. Seems like a lifetime's passed since then. I remember thinking she was crazy. That there was no way I'd ever possibly win. With great power might come great responsibility, but my powers weren't something I actively sought out. Fate tapped me on the shoulder all those years ago, and I've lived with the consequences ever since. I never expected to get elected the first time, and I was equally as surprised by the second, even if the odds were, unbelievably, in my favor. After all, there were more seats to win than there were people to beat. The math was on my side.

There's a better turnout this year, even if half of the nominees either declined or didn't bother getting all the signatures required to move along in the process. I'd be interested in hearing their excuses if I cared what any of these people thought anymore. I'm not sure I ever did. Because let's be honest... How flawed does a system have to be that a guy like me can win not once, but twice?

Still, I had every intention of getting up here today, and delivering my piece straight. Maybe because I thought the distraction would do me some good. Maybe because I thought it's what Mary Jane would've liked, and I wanted to honor her memory with something better than just carving her name into a wall with the hundreds of others who've vanished from this place as suddenly as they arrived. Whatever the reason, it became completely and entirely irrelevant the second Fred Burkle had a nervous breakdown on stage before she was even two lines into her speech, paralyzed with fear because the Island saw fit to give her a reminder of the home she left behind.

My heart hasn't stopped racing from the earlier excitement, though it could just as well be the caffeine at this point. I've had more cups of coffee than hours of sleep this month. My skin's humming. By some strange stroke of luck, I'm the last person left to speak, but I can barely remember any of the points the other candidates have made -- not that it matters. It's all just variations on a theme, anyway, the same old rhetoric -- if can even be called that, none of us are politicians -- recycled from the last time, and the ones before that. The only thing that's new are some of the faces, but the words all the stay the same. Static. Unchanging. It's maddening. My usual nerves from public speaking are nonexistent, replaced with a white hot anger that's threatening to boil over... And probably will.

"My name is Peter Parker," I say, voice loud and much more confident than it's ever been at these things, and unable to stand still, I begin to pace. "Some of you are probably itching to leave, and really, who could blame you after what just happened to Miss Burkle, right? I mean, jeez, I'm supposed to be, what? Telling you to vote for me, like any of us are actually in charge of this slice of paradise? We all know -- we all know -- that someone or something else is calling the shots. At any moment, you can suddenly find yourself buried alive or in someone else's body... Mind-controlled or reliving the worst hours of your life, over and over again! Today's exercise in democracy is a joke. My God, we shouldn't be dreaming up ways to make our lives more palatable, we should be figuring out how to leave... To put this prison firmly in our rear-view mirrors, because subjecting ourselves to this kind of torture day after day, month after month, year after year—

"Breakthroughs don't happen overnight! Progress -- real progress -- takes work. Time. But how many people get told there's no way to leave of their own free will, and just accept that as fact? How many people actively try to get the hell out of here after the first couple of months instead of just waiting to vanish like everyone else? So, the records go back just over five years. So, what? Five years is nothing. You blink, and it's gone. Yet how many of you have given up hope, huh? How many of you have—"

I'm not looking for him, but Tony catches my eye from the crowd, and I come up short, snapping my fingers together as I change tack on a dime. It's not like I'm following a script; my cue cards are still tucked into my back pocket.

"Tony!" I call, waving him over. "Tony, come up here, pal. Tony Stark, everybody!"

He leaps up on stage, clearly not needing much prompting to put himself in the center of attention, flashing the crowd a peace sign held above his head.

"This is novel," Tony says, "I like it. No, you were on a roll, what can I do for you?"

"Palladium poisoning," I reply. "Tell the fine people of Tabula Rasa how long it took for you to find the cure."

"Two years," he declares, "and we had to stop a crashing space station." He turns to the crowd and adds a smirking, "You're welcome."

"And all of that research was conducted here, on the Island?" A beat. "Or, well, above the Island?"

"I had a couple of incomplete supplementary materials," says Tony, with a slight shrug. "But when don't we? All the practical work was done here. And— " he points upwards, "there."

"How would you say that time span ranks compared to, oh, I dunno... Let's say the eradication of smallpox?"

"It's— " Tony holds his fingers out less than an inch apart, "a bit smaller. It was declared eradicated in 1979 -- two hundred years after the vaccine for it was discovered -- and the earliest evidence we have of it is, oh... Three thousand years ago, so call it an even three thousand. If not ten. Took a while. They didn't have me."

Nodding, I clasp my hands together, and say, "Now, I teach math, among other things, so I already know the answer to this, but, uh... Just so everyone's on the same page... Three thousand years, that's longer than five, right?"

"Six hundred times longer," Tony says. "You could compare it to the difference between the lifetime of a human and an ant."

"Six hundred times longer!" I crow, with affected surprise. "Didja hear that, folks? Yet the majority of you seem prepared to give up after less than a fraction of that time. Hey, Tony, why don'tcha tell me how long it took to the find the cure for canc—" Cutting myself off, I shake my head a little, and suck in a sharp breath. "Oh, wait! We don't actually have a cure for that one yet, but hey, it's been over five years, so let's just stop trying to cure cancer.

"This island will eat away at your life -- your friends, your family, everyone and everything you hold dear. And you can fool yourselves into thinking it won't happen to you... That a promise and some blind hope will keep the worst losses at bay... That maybe you won't be subject to some new horror tomorrow... But this affects all of us. We're puppets. Playthings. And instead of wasting our time, fooling around with ultimately trivial concerns, we should be figuring out a way to stop this insanity, and take back control of our own lives!

"You want to put me on your council? That's your call. Win or lose, I'll be working with Tony Stark to get those of us who want to leave off this hunk of rock. And I don't know about you, but I like our odds. Know why? Look us up."

Breathless from what can best be described as righteous exhilaration, I look out at the crowd for all of a moment before jumping right into it, pushing my way through the throng with no mind or care.

"Peter Parker, everyone," says Tony, still on the stage, with his showman's flair. "Give the man a hand. And your vote! And we'll give you a way home. Any questions?"

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.