With great power, comes great responsibility.

I play my encounter with Selina cool until I can get Martha home, washed, fed and watered. But the thing is, it nags at me. It's not the sort of news a guy sits on, if only because...

Well, let's face it: there's not a lot of news around these parts that isn't depressing.

But this is better than good news. It's interesting news, and the only ears around to listen are Martha's, and she passes out in her doggy bed shortly after she's slobbered all over the kitchen.

So I do the only thing that makes any sense, which is tuck the dog in for the night, lock up, and follow the sound of classic rock blaring through the jungle to find Tony Stark.

I'm all nervous energy by the time I get to the Scrapyard, barking at Jarvis, "Turn down that noise, wouldja?" before I head straight to Tony and clap my hands to his shoulders, looking him right in the eye.

"You will not believe who I just met."

I got an early start this morning. Real early. A nightmare startled me awake around 2 o'clock, and after giving tossing and turning a try for a good ten minutes, I figured I might as well abandon plans of a restful night and climbed out of bed. At least this way MJ can get her forty winks. I guess I'll just settle for, I don't know, fifteen.

And to think, today was supposed to be my day off. I tinkered around in my workshop for a couple of hours, but I wasn't making much progress, far too restless to be of any good, and when I went to go brew myself a cup of my strongest coffee, I remembered I hadn't gone up to the Compound yesterday to refill our stores, because I'd been too busy -- wait for it -- tinkering.

Which is how I end up in the Compound before noon on a Sunday. There's buzz in the air about a couple patients in the clinic when I get here, and I've got half a mind to poke my nose in where it doesn't belong when I spy Tony in the kitchen. Even though him and Pepper have been living in here for months, I'm still a little surprised to see the guy. I just don't associate him with drab concrete and communal living.

"Hey," I say, giving him a wave that quickly turns into me pointing in the general direction of the clinic. "You know what's going on in there?"

It's the middle of the night and I smell like a bar. I should shower. Shave. Maybe even sleep, since I haven't done that in a couple of days, but instead I make my not-so-triumphant return to the mansion by getting ready to leave it for good.

This was never meant to be a permanent arrangement. What Tony and Pepper have done for me over these past few months goes up and beyond the call of duty, and how do I repay them? By destroying property, by running off to other dimensions, by putting lives in danger and nearly getting people killed. They'd both be better off without me.

Hell, laid out like that, they're not the only ones.

I've got an empty duffel bag open on my bed, a stack of folded shirts and pants sitting beside it, along with a half dozen pairs of balled up socks, and a few sets of clean underwear. I don't have much in the way of personal belongings, but the rest of them are already packed up in the box I used to move up here in the first place. The walls are sound-proofed, but I'm careful to keep quiet, regardless, tiptoeing back and forth across the room as I gather what's left, so lost in trying to decide if I'll leave tonight or say a proper goodbye in the morning that I don't notice Tony's standing in the doorway 'til I walk right by him. I startle.

"Jeez," I say on an exhale, clutching a sweater to my chest as my heart calms down some from the sudden jolt of surprise. "Are you in stealth mode or what?"

Truth is, though, I was so preoccupied, he could've been carrying out an entire conversation for ten minutes, and I don't know if I would've noticed.

The date hasn't escaped my notice. Even if I wasn't a New Yorker, born and raised, even if I hadn't picked my way through the rubble of the World Trade Center, today would have some meaning for me, though it's hardly comparable. Nearly getting killed by a friend on a bender isn't exactly on the same scale as flying airplanes into buildings, after all, and just putting them in the same sentence feels cheap. They share an anniversary; that's more or less where the similarities end.

Consequently, what also shares an anniversary, give or take a couple of days, is Tony's sobriety. In AA, they give out these medallions for certain milestones; they're about the size of a poker chip, nothing too conspicuous. I've made one for the occasion from a piece of scrap metal that I shaped, engraved, and painted -- red and blue, with gold detailing -- over a few weeks between working on other projects. It's on the table in front of me, in plain view so I don't forget it whenever Tony decides to grace me with his presence.

It's rare that I actually ask him for help with something, preferring to keep most of my private stuff, well, private, but one of those other projects I've been working on needs a second pair of hands.

See, I've been working on this one thing, on and off, for the better part of a year: a spider-sense that's technologically based, allowing me a facsimile of the power I relied on more than I would've ever realized if I'd never lost it to start.

It's been little more than a series of glorified motion sensors until recently, each one carefully threaded throughout the material of the quote-unquote 'Vespa' suit that I designed with supplies given to me by whatever forces are in charge of the mysterious presents passed out every January. A part of me thinks it's a bribe to keep us all appeased just a little bit longer, but I've long since passed the point where I'm appeased by much of anything this place has to offer. This is a petri dish of a prison -- an experiment. And even if I don't spend my every waking moment clawing at a way out of here, trying to find a way home, I never forget that one single fact. Not since MJ disappeared.

But still, bribe or not -- experiment or not -- the raw materials I received have proven useful. Sure, things would've gone a heck of a lot faster if I'd had better facilities to work with, or had been less distracted with my mess of a personal life, or had listened to my own speech about impossible problems needing time to solve, but as it stands, I've finally got something workable on my hands. Something a bit better than a bunch of glorified heat and motion sensors.

In an effort at recreating the sensation of my old ability, the current network relies on localized pulses that increase in strength depending on the threat -- basically, the bigger the pulse, the more whatever's about to run into me is gonna hurt if I don't get out of the way, fast. To make the whole process a little less subjective, though -- and to make swinging through the trees a heckuva lot easier -- I've got it connected to a HUD in the left eye piece that analyzes the surrounding environment, increasing my spatial awareness up to 100 feet in all directions so that I don't run into anything. I've even managed to repurpose most of my old spider-tracers to work on the new frequency, and though I doubt I'll have much need to track people on an island this size, you never know when technological breadcrumbs'll come in handy.

Provided it all actually works, I'd say I'm kind of a genius. I mean, it's impressive, really, even if it's not perfect. Eventually, I'd like to upgrade the HUD to something more sophisticated, something with more processing ability to analyze a greater variety of threats -- ones that don't just involve what's out there to hit me -- but I'm working with scraps salvaged from a homicidal space station and a limited power source, here, and arc reactors don't grow on trees. Still, it's functioning enough to warrant further testing, which is why I'm in the workshop decked out in full gear, sweating like a pig and waiting for Tony to show up.

Or, well, a boar, I guess. We don't have pigs here, and I like to keep my references apt. It's a thing.

Anyway, sweating like a boar and growing impatient, I've long since pulled off my mask, and am about to ask Jarvis if Tony's even in the mansion, when the guy finally strolls in.

"There you are," I say on a sigh. "I was about to send out a search party."

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?"

When midnight on my second night back home comes and goes, and I'm still swinging around New York instead of on some island in the literal middle of nowhere, I'm pretty sure the whoop of joy I let out is heard for miles. As good as the Island's treated me -- well, in some respects more so than others -- over the past couple of years, there's no denying that this is where I'd rather be. My jungle is made of concrete. The sights, the smells, the people -- and not to my mention my powers, boy, I've missed them, alright. No matter how many times I thought of giving up Spider-Man in the past, the truth of the matter of is, he's as much a part of me as anything else. Being out here, saving lives again on a regular basis? It just feels right. Like I'm meant to be here. I'm not too sold on the whole notion of destiny, but I'd be lying if I didn't say I felt more personally satisfied after a measly two nights in the real world than I have in a good long while. And with that kind of natural high, it's entirely too easy to ignore all the inherent complications that this being a permanent situation entails.

It's late by the time I make it back to the Tower, but that's nothing new; I've never been one to keep normal hours, and the definition of what's normal for someone in my line of business is pretty vague, anyway. Barring a run-in with my old pal, Rhino, it's been a quieter night than last, even if my suit's a bit worse for wear between today and yesterday. What can I say? I let a few hits in, it happens. I'm fine, at any rate, rustiness aside, and save for a few bumps and bruises that'll fade in a couple of days, I'm not hurting. Only bothering to take off my mask, I raid the kitchen for Aspirin and leftovers -- ooh, someone ordered Chinese -- before setting out to see if there isn't anyone else still awake, carton of reheated takeout in hand.

My search brings me to another floor entirely, down where Stark -- the one that belongs here -- keeps some of his fancier toys. The sounds of someone working draws me into the lab, and while it could've just as easily been either of them, I'm not too surprised to find my Tony -- which is a weird and sort of creepy association to give to a guy who's from a different universe entirely, really, but that I'm a lot closer to him than his blue-eyed counterpart goes without saying at this point, and I'm running out of clever nicknames.

"Working hard or hardly working?"

It's not that unusual a scene, really. The nights I don't spend swinging through abandoned stretches of jungle, trying to get my skills back up to par, I spend hunched over my desk, working. Whenever it's the latter -- and those nights, it seems, have been a lot more frequent in the weeks since I learned about Johnny and Marla -- Mary Jane often wanders into my workshop, imploring me to come to bed in that way of hers that makes me feel both guilty for keeping her up, and lucky for her ever having agreed to marry me in the first place. Sometimes, I flash her a smile that's equal parts weary and sheepish, tell her not to wait up for me. Others, I let her take my hand, and lead me back into the bedroom.

Tonight, she's standing in the doorway, wearing my ESU sweatshirt -- the one she gets more use out of than I do, not that I mind in the least -- and a pair of shorts that immediately draws my attention to her legs, and when she tells me I'm done for the night, I'm compelled to agree, putting away my stuff haphazardly, so that I can get to my feet. My fingers instinctively lace through hers, and she pulls me along across the hall and towards our bed, a coy, sweet smile playing across her lips as she looks up at me all the while. I lean forward to murmur something in her ear, but it's really just an excuse to steal a kiss, my eyes fluttering shut as I step in closer, planting one knee on the mattress, so I can twist our bodies into a fall back onto the bed.

Like I said, it's really not that unusual a scene -- except for the part where the air shifts around us, that the bed we land on is one I haven't slept on in nearly two years, and that, very suddenly, keeping my eyes shut is no longer an option. The change in environment is so immediate and complete that I almost don't notice at first just how quickly it is I'm back on my feet or that my head is buzzing in mild warning. Almost. Because the thing is, I can't remember the last time I felt this alert. It's like I've downed about a gallon of espresso in the past two seconds, my whole body humming with a sort of nervous energy, and it takes me all of a moment longer to get a good look around the room. My room, technically -- the one in Stark Tower -- though I never lived here for very long before I got whisked away to a magical island in the middle of nowhere. There are paintings of Avengers adorning the walls. The carpet is plush under my bare feet. One side of the curtain is still pulled open, revealing the bright city lights of the nighttime skyline through a window that's not as unbreakable as Tony Stark once claimed it to be.

We're in New York, I realize. Wait, hold on, let me say that again, because I'm about this close to pinching myself with the proportional strength of a spider: we're in New York.

"Woah."

It's only been a handful of days since the first dose of the lithium dioxide proved to be a success, but I still make a point to check in on Stark regularly. My diligence in this is born out of a healthy distrust, to make sure he isn't violating the terms of our agreement now that he can walk in a straight line again, but mostly, I just want to make sure there aren't any adverse -- not to mention, unforeseen -- side-effects from the stopgap. Giving my regards to Jarvis as I step through the front door, I follow the by-now familiar path down to the workshop.

Now, I've found Stark doing all sorts of unusual things during my visits here, but this is the first time in recent memory that I've him do anything as remotely mundane as reading the Times. My eyebrows inching upwards, I give him a curious look as I navigate my way through his various projects, finally coming to a stop on the opposite side of his desk.

"Working hard or hardly working?"

By now I know the drill. I'm on a strict order of bed rest for the ten days proceeding my surgery, which seems about as long as an overnight trip compared to my last stay in the clinic, a fact I try to focus on as I shift once again on the cramped, uncomfortable mattress. It's not like the bed back in mine and Mary Jane's hut is all that much better, really, but its location is infinitely preferable, surrounded by warm, wooden walls, all of my personal belongings, and most importantly, natural daylight. That it easily accommodates two is another point in its favor, but that particular train of thought just threatens to depress me more -- I'm a newlywed and I can't even sleep in the same bed as my wife. While I undoubtedly have bigger concerns, that's the one I keep circling back around to in my few moments alone.

I nearly lost my life to a man who probably could care less about me, and I did it at the expense of Mary Jane's happiness -- and for what? Some sense of duty, of responsibility? We've only just started our lives together, and I swanned off to play the hero for someone who didn't even want saving, leaving my wife with the all too real possibility of becoming a widow at age twenty-two. God, I've been so selfish lately, caught up in my own personal drama with Johnny's and Sarah's disappearances and Council business and the O.R. that I haven't really been there for the one person who means everything to me. That'll have to change once I'm out of here.

For now, though, I'm left to my own devices, MJ off making lunch for us both. With nothing else to do, I've turned to a battered copy of The Time Machine for entertainment, but I pay attention only to every other sentence, my mind elsewhere entirely even as I turn another page.

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.