AS THE MONDAY DRONED ON AND ON, I began to regret the kiss between me and the boy more and more.

He had been avoiding me all day, and I couldn't say I was innocent in that petty crime, either; while he was still in the corner of my eye as often as possible, I had made sure to look like he wasn't even noticed and to take the back staircases when we drew even the littlest bit closer. It was unavoidable, our eventual meeting, but it was one I was willing to delay - and by the way, the Parker boy behaved, he was too.

I couldn't face him. Not after that. Not after the mistake that had begun to consume my every thought. It wasn't supposed to happen, and after rushing home, I immediately began to berate myself for I shouldn't have let it happen. This was a mission, not a 'romantic comedy' movie that Gwen would go on about, and getting attached to the boy I would eventually bring in to his death wasn't part of the plan. It was my fault, and now I was reaping the sorry rewards of my mistake.

"Hey, she's alive!"

Immediately my eyes rose from the book I had been drearily staring at to the girls' above mine, forcing a happy expression at the sight of MJ and Gwen. I wasn't eager to talk to them, and it was extremely difficult to not show that. While I did not hate them as much as I had in the beginning, the only thing I truly desired was to be alone and focus all my attention on figuring my next step. "Oh, hi?"

"We thought you were trying to fall off the face of the earth or something," the girl explained, squishing in her chair and wincing as it screeched against the tiled floor. "You've been so quiet today, what's up?"

"Nothing, just reading this book about...chemical spills?"

Mary Jane raised an eyebrow, pushing aside my outspread textbooks to make some elbow room. She had new dye in her hair now, a neon blue to mingle with the red - a combination that no one else but her would go for, and a pairing that would really only work for a girl like her. "You're being awfully evasive today. What's the big deal? Did something happen?"

"Nothing."

"Uh-huh, sure, and my mama's totally fine with my hair - plot twist, in case you didn't realise, she's not and one of these days I'm going to show up bald and pissed off with my hair in her hands." She scooted closer and rested her chin on her hands, sly eyes on mine. "What's going on with you, sweetheart?"

I shrugged and shoved the book in my bag, avoiding curious gazes. "I just wanted to catch up on assignments; I've been a bit behind due to-"

"-Peter?" Gwen guessed, putting a gentle hand on my arm. "You've been busy with him, right? Well, scratch that answer, because you have been - and it seems like every time something happens, you hide out in the library - are you seeing the pattern that I'm seeing?"

MJ nodded along, playing to Gwen's rhetorical question with a larger-than-life grin. "What happened between you two - did you have a lovers squabble? A fight? Did he kiss you? Wait, did you kiss him - because let's face it, kids, the poor boy has no game whatsoever, and you seem to be the one who has the balls to initiate something between you two."

Kiss. The word immediately made my face red, and although I hid it as I conveniently dropped my pen, I knew that they sensed something about the importance of those words. "No, we're fine, not that there is a 'we', I'm just studying."

"Studying what? The art of making love?"

The girl cackled and slapped Gwen's outstretched hand in a high-five, clearly proud of her friend's joke. "I've taught you so well, Gwennie, you've come so far. They grow up so fast, you know - okay, wait, not the time. Back to you, Em, and your boy toy troubles."

The urge to smack something had never been so hard to resist as I packed up my things, and I almost lashed out right then and there - had we been alone, the girl would be missing her front teeth for saying something like that. Her bold curiosity was annoying me, and I wanted nothing less but to escape the blooming trauma that was coming from their questions; it was bad enough having the moment immortalised in my mind, replaying like a broken record player, but for them to question me, it was too much to handle. "There are no troubles between us, and he's not 'mine'."

"Yet."

Gwen, realising how uncomfortable I was getting, leaned forward and patted my arm comfortingly. "We're sorry, we just...well, you two are just adorable together, and while Peter isn't exactly great at picking up on feelings, we think he feels the same way about you too."

I wasn't sure if I should target my anger and questioning towards the fact that she now referred to her and MJ as one single unit in regular conversation or the fact that she believed we were into each other - both were concerning, just in very different levels of context. "Look, I just...I'm just here to study."

"Right, well, okay, fine." Mary Jane seemingly resigned her teasing jokes and picked up my science textbook, scanning the page it was open to. "Here, you know what, I'll quiz you, alright? I heard you had a test today."

"Oh. Thanks."

She didn't look up, "no problem, sweetheart - okay, so, finish this sentence; the systemic system carries blood over to the..."

"...body cells."

"Great, good job! Metaphorical cookie for you." MJ looked back down, a grin growing on her face as she stared. Even before she spoke, I knew that the next question wasn't going to be one that I would particularly enjoy, but before I could bolt, she spoke again. "Hmm, what about; on a scale from one to ten, just how great of a kisser is Peter?"

Immediately, the blood drained from my face, and I stared at her, knuckles tensing into a fist. "I - what? Excuse me?"

Gwen lost the act too and got closer, dark eyes pleading for answers. "What happened between you two? How was it?"

"How the hell do you know that? Who told you this?"

MJ shrugged, "Ned isn't that great at keeping secrets, and when we saw you were being distant, we automatically assumed shit went down - turns out, we were right."

Of course, Peter told Ned. That was just something he would do. The boy never knew how to hold a secret from that guy, a fact that only made me more and more furious each day.  Of course, since Ned knew it, in a matter of days it would be blown up to extreme proportions and I'd have to deal with the questions and teasing 'ship' comments - most of which still not making sense to me - and Peter's utter humiliation. I could deal with the people themselves, but every mention of that night made me queasy, and I wasn't sure I could handle hearing it all the time.

"Nothing happened," I gritted out. "It was just...something in the stupid moment."

The girl frowned. "So, nothing happened but something happened? Girlie, get your facts right!"

"I have to go."

"Really?"

I shook off Gwen's clambers and MJ's pout and shouldered my bag, ignoring curious gazes and the glare of the librarian, who was probably very upset at our volume. "I just...I have to go."

"We're just curi-"

They continued their speech, but at that point, I didn't care; I was already rushing out and down a filled hallway, getting swallowed up in the sounds of boring gossip and slams of lockers and the safety of being simply a number in a crowd.

...

This time, when Electro showed, I didn't care. I watched him corner 'Spiderman' in the alley, and I watched the boy rise and fall countless times, and I watched without batting an eye as he was left to bleed out on the empty sidewalk. He groaned and cried through the pain, and I did not move a muscle, just like I was supposed to. My eyes remained on the two figures and I stared blankly, observing the rise and fall of Peter Parker with little to no emotion.

Electro was just another ruse. He was a fabricated lie, a weapon engineered to test the boy's limits, just like every other little part of this mission. There was no point worrying about Peter anymore, as they wouldn't kill him, not without the safety of a lab and several strange machines buzzing and clicking in the background. The boy was in no danger, not long-term, anyway. Wasting my time on saving him from a petty distraction wasn't just that; a waste.

I turned away and began my slow trip back, my thin disguise not helping keep any of the bitter wind away and instead just adding to the cold more. However, I ignored it, just like I ignored the rest of it; after all, it wouldn't be around much longer, with the end getting closer and closer each and every day.

My phone buzzed in my hoodie pocket, Peter calling to ask for help, but it soon cut out, the rings fading into silence. On a normal day, I would answer, but not today. He would be fine, he'd get home, he'd go to school the next day, and follow the same routine until he couldn't. I'd call him back later.

I had made the deadly mistake of getting attached. I knew that now, all too well. If I had just listened to Inga, or the Academy, or anyone I would not be in this position, I would be almost done and my heart would still be whole and any day now, the boy would be on an operation table with tubes hooked up everywhere and it wouldn't bother me. It wouldn't make me cry, or break my heart, or make me want to hurt someone to help him.

However, it wasn't like that, and it couldn't be like that. I had fallen for the boy with the doe-like eyes and sweet, bashful smile, the boy who trusted me with his secrets and kissed back in the park like we were a part of a stupid movie. I had grown attached the boy who swung from roofs and helped me understand just what Star Wars was, the boy who wore dumb science t-shirts and got so excited over the littlest of things and who cared for me - or, rather, cared about Emily. And now, though I could pretend all I wanted, I couldn't just stop that.

I didn't want to care anymore. I didn't want to feel anything anymore; if I could cut my own heart out and throw it into the inky depths of the ocean, I would in a blink of an eye. However, it had gone on too long, and I had been too stupid, just like Inga had said. Now, I was willing to risk my own life for his, and I had become the character I had pretended to be, obsessed with a boy who would bring us both to an uncertain death.

With a sigh, I pulled out my phone and clicked the number that had become ingrained in my memory. "Hi, Peter, so sorry - I didn't mean to ignore your call! Are you okay?"

"It's okay, Em, I'm not dying - well," he paused, croaky laugh echoing through the phone, "in a matter of speaking. Are you busy?"

I sighed and pulled off my hood, gingerly stuffing the black outfit into the familiar bushes nearby. There it was; one call, one voice, one sentence, and I was right back in the thick of it and hating myself for falling back into slowly-familiar habits. "No, not at all."

"Is everything okay?"

"Everythings...great," I mumbled, though really nothing was ever great. I pulled dark hair out of its ponytail and shook it loose, fixing myself so that it looked like I had never been skulking in alleyways and watching someone getting electrocuted close to death. "Why wouldn't it be, right?"

[ special thank you to @latte-to-go who made the gorgeous graphic featured at the top; thank you so much, tis beautiful!!]

Oh, dear. Poor, Freya. I mean, on one hand, yay she actually accepted she cares for him, but on the other, poor girl. I wish I could be nice and make her happy. However, that's not where this story is going, unfortunately. You'll begin to see that a lot more now; with Freya actually sort of admitting her feelings to herself and the world, shit's gonna start going down, and not even just because I need to wrap this up. Y'all might hate it, or love it, but hell it's happening.

I know that Mary Jane in this might not be the MJ that y'all would see in, say, the original Spiderman movie series, but this is the interpretation that I'm using from the comics/universes I have seen. I know that MJ is generally seen to be much sassier then whatever Kirsten Dunce did with the character [no hate on the og spiderman movie, gotta love tobey maguire tho] and that's what I want to put in it. I feel like this is New York and with the whole personality, she's going to be a lot more vibrant like she is in certain universes that's just how the human race is, not all the same cookie-cutter people. So, please don't piss at me because the character is Latina and not officially a redhead [cue the red streaks in her hair I've mentioned so many times] like she traditionally is. Alright, that's the end of this rant, but stop pissing me off by pointing out that MJ is traditionally white. I noticed.

Anyways, that's about it. Thank you for reading!