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Taylor Hebert | Skitter | Weaver & Peter ParkerPeter Parker/Mary Jane Watson

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Published:2026-05-07Updated:2026-07-30Words:60,582Chapters:14/?Comments:255Kudos:390Bookmarks:136Hits:13,101

Tangled in a Stranger's Web

CHPrime

Chapter 9: Interlude: Mary Jane

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

When Mary Jane was called by the exterminator, she was annoyed. She had to dip out of rehearsal early, and even though all her scenes were done, the director wanted to go over some of her lines—he was one of those high-maintenance types, his interpretation of the characters was the only correct one, even if he tried to ease you into it—and she was going to have to come back on the weekend to go over her part when she had been planning on sleeping in.

But she wasn't angry. She'd been married to Peter for years, and she'd come to accept situations like this were going to happen when your husband had to drop everything to save a school bus of children, or to stop an armed robbery gone wrong, or to pawn off a lost and confused alien who had crash-landed over to the Fantastic Four, or all of the above.

When she went to bed that night, she still wasn't worried. Peter wasn't answering his phone, but that also wasn't unusual. It could have been because he was teleported to another planet, or because a miniature EMP went off, or her husband got thrown into the ocean and was fighting his way out of some underwater Hydra base.

She was going to make him tell her about it all as punishment though. In detail. That would teach him for inconveniencing her.

When noon came, and Mary Jane still hadn't heard a word from Peter, she started to get worried.

"Mrs. Lieber, have you seen Peter around?"

The older woman who lived in the apartment next to theirs shook her head. "Not in the past few days. Why do you ask?"

"His phone is dead, and I don't think he's noticed—with his job's weird hours, he's always forgetting to charge it, and he misplaced his keys."

Mary Jane tried to put in as much pep as she could into the read, but she doubted anyone could have sold it. Mrs. Lieber was giving her a look.

"Dear, I know you don't want to hear it, but someone has to tell you—"

"I know how it sounds, but it isn't that." Mary Jane couldn't help but say it tersely. "I—look, could you keep an eye out for him?"

The older woman's lips curled, but she nodded. "Whatever you say."

Damn it. Mary Jane hated having this conversation. She was going to give Peter an earful for making her have it. Again. "Thanks."

An hour later, still without any word, Mary Jane called May, trying to keep things casual so she wouldn't worry the poor woman over nothing.

It didn't work. "He's missing?! For how long?"

"Well—I don't…"

"How. Long." The older woman demanded.

"...Since Yesterday. I didn't…this happens sometimes, but Peter always comes back." Mary Jane bit her cheek. "It shouldn't be anything to worry about—"

"Only if you make sure it isn't anything to worry about." May snipped. "Have you called all his friends?"

"I was just about to. But it's going to be fine—"

"How can you say that? Peter is missing! He—"

"Because I've been through this before!" Mary Jane snapped. "Look, I know you're worried May, and I am too, but Peter always makes it through."

She could hear the older woman settle. "I understand, but…"

"It's fine, May." Mary Jane said after a breath. "It's stressful now, but it won't do you any good to worry over nothing."

She could feel May's fingers tighten around the phone. "...Are you sure?"

"It's fine. Like I said, I'm going to call some of his friends. They'll be able to sort this out."

"...Call me when you learn anything. And any time you need to talk. Okay, dear?"

"Yeah. Thanks. Love you, May." Mary Jane said as she hung up.

God. Sometimes, she really wished she hadn't quit smoking.

It took a while to reach anyone from the superhero community. The Avengers were busy as always. Something about a guy named 'The Hood' stealing something important, given their private line's message.

Jarvis said he didn't know anything, but would bring it to Stark and Rogers' attention, when they weren't also busy dealing with Bucky Barnes' very public trial and Tony's new company (What was this, the fourth time Stark rebuilt everything from scratch?)

After that, Mary Jane tried the Law Offices of Murdock—she hadn't been paying much attention, but the man who was legally not Daredevil had been having a hell of a year between his identity being revealed, the lawsuits that followed, a prison stint, and then some nonsense involving Ninjas taking over Hell's Kitchen—

Suffice to say, his phone line was a dead end, so Mary Jane had to go to his office in person, which pissed her off even more because paparazzi were hovering as close as they legally could to his office, one of whom probably recognized her and took a photo. The three cranks in front of her in line didn't help the mood either.

The things she did for Peter. He'd better appreciate it when he stumbled back home.

"I'm telling you that I need to talk with Mister Murdock. It's important, and it's about my husband—"

"Mister Murdock and Mister Nelson are both very busy at the moment and can't be disturbed." The receptionist said. "If you'd like to leave contact information, I'll be sure they get your message—"

"Listen, I—" Mary Jane exhaled. "Can you just tell Murdock it's about Peter Parker? I—"

"I understand you're upset, ma'am, but he is preparing for a case right now. I can't just—"

The door swung open, and a redheaded man in a button-up shirt and dark glasses stepped out. "Apologies, Foggy, I need to take this." He called over his shoulder before walking over to them with his cane.

"Matt, I didn't—" The receptionist started.

"It's fine, Deborah." He smiled and gestured behind him. "Mrs. Parker, right this way."

"T-thanks. Sorry to barge in." Mary Jane said as she walked in. A schlubby-looking man exited the office before she entered, carrying a mess of files and folders with him as he grumbled under his breath.

Then he caught Mary Jane's eyes, and must have seen something, because his expression did something complicated. She couldn't exactly say what it was, but Mary Jane knew the feeling.

When Murdock finally closed the door, he stopped bothering with the cane act and walked right to his desk, which was covered in papers and a braille reader. "Mrs. Parker, or do you prefer Ms. Watson?"

"Whichever. Look, I'll cut to it. Have you seen—" She sucked on her lip. "—My husband recently?"

Murdock studied her for a moment. Or at least Mary Jane thought he did. "About a week ago, above the Javits. Why do you ask?"

"I—he didn't come home Friday night. I thought he was—" God, were they really going to play this word game? "—busy, doing the work he does with you, but…"

Murdock frowned. "Have you called anyone else?"

"I called…" How to say…screw it. "The Avengers are all busy. And I don't really know any of the X-Men's numbers." She frowned. "Aren't they in San Francisco now?"

"Some, last I heard. I don't really talk with them often either."

"Right. Peter said…He said I could trust you." Her chair scraped closer. "I know I'm probably getting worried over nothing, given all the adventures you all like to go on, and it's only been a day and a half, but—"

"Ms. Watson. It will be alright." Murdock reached across his desk and grabbed Mary Jane's hand, giving it a reassuring squeeze. "I'll make sure the community knows. In the meantime—" He spun a pen in his fingers. "—tell me everything you remember, while it's still fresh."

An hour later, Mary Jane was walking down Ninth Avenue, trying to get a taxi. The director, the hopeless idiot, moved the schedule around after finishing a scene early, so now she had to get uptown. In the middle of peak tourist traffic hours.

It was just as well. She needed something to take her mind off everything. Something to make sure her every waking second wasn't spent worrying about Peter, when she knew he would come home in another day or two, at most.

And when she got the dumb story of why he hadn't been answering his phone out of him, it was going to have to be a good one. Peter was always going on about how thankful he was to Reed for making it for him, how much money he didn't have to spend on replacing it with a new model whenever Doc Ock or the Rhino or Hobgoblin smashed him into half a dozen walls. If he really couldn't be bothered to call—

Oh. God damn it. Reed Richards.

How the hell did Mary Jane forget? She had the phone number of the smartest man on Earth. Who probably had a dozen tracking devices installed in the phone. Why hadn't Mary Jane thought of him sooner?

Probably because of all the news about the Avengers after the invasion of Asgard, or Kansas, or whatever they were calling it, had been dominating the news, and Peter had been working with them even in the wake of the now rescinded Superhuman Registration Act. The Fantastic Four, meanwhile, had been out of the limelight, or what counted as out of the limelight in superheroics. Still, it wasn't like she couldn't—

"Holy shit!" Someone shouted, pointing up at the sky. In fact, a lot of people were. In fact, the endless honking was starting to quiet down.

That usually meant some flying battle was taking place over the skyline, so Mary Jane looked up too. It would help to know if she was going to have to start running soon to avoid debris. At least she hadn't been stupid enough to wear heels, that would have been such a pain—

And then Mary Jane stopped dead. Like everyone else in the street. Like everyone else in the city, she imagined.

There was a giant. Standing above the skyline. Dwarfing the skyscrapers. Towering above the few green trees brave enough to poke through in Central Park. Floating up in the air, right above where the Baxter Building was. Wearing purple armor and an unmistakable helmet.

Galactus. The most powerful being in the cosmos. The guy who would destroy Earth without a second thought if he felt like it, and only an act of multiple gods could have a chance at stopping him.

Mary Jane swore.

This was going to make Reed unreachable for at least a week.

Worse yet, it was going to make traffic absolute hell.

"And so why, Ms. Watson, did I have to come here to get my answer?!"

Mary Jane did her best not to sigh. God damn it, how did Jonah find out? "Look, JJ, I know you don't want to hear it, but please—"

"But nothing! Parker wanted a meeting with me, and he is damn well going to get one! I am taking more than an hour of my very valuable time to come here and get an answer out of the little brat, the least you can do is come up with a better excuse than this, young lady!" Jonah shouted.

She tried to gently nudge her apartment door closed. "And I told you, Peter really is missing. It's been a week, and—"

"Bah! You think I'm falling for that again?! Do you know how many times Parker pulled that lollygagging excuse on me? I've had it! Never again, do you hear me? Never again!"

"Jonah…" Mary Jane's voice bit into a growl. "I mean it. My husband is missing. If you can't—"

"I can and I will!" Jonah exclaimed. "Do you really expect me to—"

"I EXPECT you to have a little bit of tact, you asshole!" Mary Jane snapped.

But Jonah was never one to be deterred. "I want the facts! Not some mealy-mouthed nothing statement about how he's 'missing', given to me days afterwards! Now tell me, where is Peter Parker?!"

"And I told you—"

"Missing, I'm afraid." A new voice entered the conversation.

"I know that, you stupid—" Jonah started up again as he turned to face the intruder, ready to tear their head off, before stopping in his tracks.

Reed Richard's head was stretching up the stairs as his body slowly climbed them. "I'm sorry to say Mister Parker has been caught in an unknown dimensional phenomenon. Based on the energy readings, it was some sort of portal to another reality, possibly caused by a supervillain."

"I—you—that's—" Jonah couldn't hide discomfort with the uncanny valley of Reed's stretching, and based on the five o'clock shadow and deep bags under Reed's eyes, the superhero couldn't care less. "And I'm just now hearing about this? How many other New York citizens have been abducted by this—this whatever the hell it is?"

Reed's body finally reached the top of the stairs, and his neck collapsed back into normal human proportions. "So far, Mister Parker is the only known missing person I can connect to this particular event. Scans of the city say his last estimated location is the only known site with the radiation—"

"Spare me the technobabble." Jonah turned back to Mary Jane. "Just be sure to tell Parker when he gets back that I need to read him the riot act. Again." Then he moved to the stairwell. "Call my office if you need anything."

Mary Jane sighed. She wanted to slap the jackass, but she had to remind herself that screaming was how Jonah showed someone he cared. "I'll let him know. Thanks, JJ."

Jonah turned to look at Reed. "And you, Doctor Richards, you've got a meeting in my office over your electricity bill and all the ordinary citizens you're robbing power from, and…and…"

Reed stared back at Jonah, occasionally blinking.

Eventually, Jonah sighed and walked down the stairs. "Just get the idiot back."

"Of course, Mayor Jameson." Reed replied in a steady voice before walking over to Mary Jane's door. "Can I come in?"

"Sure. Yes. I mean—" Mary Jane broke contact with Reed's dead eyes. "Of course."

She led him into the dining room, a cozy place with a few of Mary Jane's posters hanging on the walls and some of Peter's photos of the New York skyline, taken from the top of skyscrapers. Reed sat down without fanfare, and Mary Jane followed suit.

"Thanks for coming by. You—" Look terrible. Not that Mary Jane could throw stones. "That is, I—" Know you'll find him, if you even have to try.

"...Sorry for bothering you." Mary Jane finally said. "Especially at a time like—"

"It's fine." Reed interrupted. "Peter is a close friend. I could never let him down." He exhaled slowly. "I will find him. I promise you."

"Still. It must be…hard…" Mary Jane cut herself off. "I'm sorry, I know…Johnny's…he is…"

"He wouldn't rest until we found your husband. So I won't either." Reed said. His fingers twitched. "Besides, it's good to have a fixable problem."

The news broke soon after Galactus had left. Johnny Storm, the Human Torch, was dead. Killed preventing an extradimensional alien named Annihilus from unleashing an army on New York that had wiped out a galaxy.

There were naysayers. People who pointed to the hundreds of other times heroes seemed to have died before miraculously cheating death. Dozens of instances where their bodies were buried and their last right given, before it was revealed to be a trick, or a robot, or a clone, or when they would wake up in their graves and dig their way out.

Like Peter had.

Like Johnny could. They didn't even have a body. He was apparently trapped in some place called the Negative Zone, so who knew what sort of bizarre space magic could bring Johnny back to life?

But Reed knew all that.

The city had even put up a memorial statue. Some people complained it looked too much like Jim Hammond's, the original Human Torch's. Another hero who had recently come back from the dead after being buried.

But he was an android, so it was different. You could just replace missing parts. Get the memories from a backup drive.

And the smartest man on Earth believed his brother-in-law was dead.

"You said Peter got sucked up into an alternate dimension?" Mary Jane asked.

"The background radiation says as much." Reed leaned closer. "Do you know if any of his enemies have access to technology or powers that could create something like that?"

"No. At least, I…I don't think so." Mary Jane shook her head. "I heard Peter complain about Mysterio doing weird…well, something, but I thought it was all smoke and mirrors. Maybe Norman would have the money to buy a dimension gun or something stupid like that, but he's too busy getting every book in congress thrown at him after seiging Asgard out west, right?"

"Last I heard." Reed nodded.

"Can't you…" Mary Jane bit her cheek. "Reed, I don't mean to be rude, but you said this was simple, right? Why can't you just point a scanner at where he was and find what dimension Peter went to? You've done that before, haven't you?"

"Unfortunately, due to my…delay in receiving your message, the radiation decayed to the point where I cannot easily locate the dimension Peter was sent to." Reed's lips pressed together. "My dimensional transponders are also not responding."

Ice crept up Mary Jane's spine. "Does that—"

"It can mean a thousand different things." Reed said quickly. "From simple technical problems to some interference present in the dimension he landed in. Prognosticating the worst possible event won't do anything for us."

"I know. It's not like he hasn't gotten out of something like this before. That's what happened to all of you when he got…" Mary Jane swallowed. "When Venom hitched a ride on him." Luckily, that monster's latest host was in jail, so she wouldn't have to worry about an alien symbiote getting involved in this mess.

"It's simpler than that. I have algorithms reconstructing the radiation. It's a needle in a haystack, but I'm narrowing it down, even if other disasters are taking up time, and even though I am running into some technical..."

Reed stopped himself and quietly cleared his throat. "I promise you, Mary Jane. I will find Peter. No matter what."

The bags under his eyes seemed even deeper now.

Mary Jane nodded. "Okay. Thanks." She stood up. "Can you call me when you find—" His body. "—anything?"

"Of course." Reed stood up. "Call me if you remember any details."

"Reed, can you—" actually promise anything? "—I mean, what if—" This really is the last time? "—what are the chances—" That the planet he's on even has oxygen?

Mary Jane exhaled with a shudder. Reed was staring at her with that same awful blank stare.

"I really should have…" She swallowed. "I'm sorry, I should have…I've been so worried about Peter, I didn't even say anything to you about Johnny—"

"No. You don't have anything to apologize about." Reed quickly said. "Like I said, Johnny would have already stolen a Time-Sled to go looking for Peter."

Mary Jane shifted on her feet. "...How are you all doing?"

Reed paused, and then his eyes drifted over to the kitchen window. It overlooked ordinary city streets. Brownstones. A grocery store that had been getting worse for a year. Simple things.

"...We're all grieving." Reed finally said. "Susan is…keeping to herself. Ben as well." His expression hardened. "Franklen is in his room, reading books. And Valeria is plotting ways to kill Annihilus." He looked back at her. "Thank you for your concern."

Mary Jane wasn't sure what to say to that. So she spoke from the heart. "…you can call anytime. If you need to talk about…anything."

A fraction of a smile tugged at Reed's unshaved face. "I appreciate that."

More days passed. Mary Jane continued rehearsing for her part. She continued to make social calls and gave her little excuses whenever someone asked for Peter.

Flash and Liz called. They actually managed to have a normal conversation instead of bombarding her with questions about Peter, which was nice. The Norse god of fear or some nonsense attacked, and there was the usual carnage, but the heroes repelled him like they always did.

And Mary Jane found herself spending her nights sitting on their couch, dialing Peter's number now and then. It always came back with a disconnected message.

But Mary Jane kept dialing it. That would change soon. It always did. Peter would return. Reed promised. Tony finally called her back and said the same thing.

"We're sorry. The number you're trying to reach—"

Mary Jane ended the call. Again.

She didn't want to look at her call history and see how many times she had dialed Peter's number. Tonight. But she also didn't want to hear that same god damned message again either. Or listen to someone else try to comfort her about something that wasn't even a problem. Peter would be back. He always came back.

"...Hey, Peter. Today was fine." Mary Jane began. "Beckett, you know him. He's the director. Because, of course, the director is named Beckett. Well, he decided my reading needed more zest—his words. Zest. So I gave him some, but he said that it was nutmeg. I honestly have no idea what is going through his head…"

She'd started pretending to leave him voicemails. She didn't quite know why. She just did.

"—said the F.E.A.S.T. Center is doing good. Donations are picking up, and she found some volunteers who can actually work more than an hour before giving up—"

It was just like Peter to make her act crazy in one of his ridiculous adventures. He never did appreciate how much effort she put into these stunts.

"...So come back already, you big lug. I'm getting tired of all this." Mary Jane sighed.

She'd started eyeing cigarettes in the check-out aisle. It had been a few years since she smoked, but occasionally she would get a craving. It probably meant Peter had been right to get her to quit when he did.

He would come back. Any day now. Mary Jane had been here before. She would be here again.

"I love you."

She just had to wait a little longer.

Notes:

As I said, this takes place in ~2011 616 continuity. I stretched things around a bit between separate titles, but that's a sliding timescale for you. If you're as obsessive-compulsive as me, I hope you got all the references.

Otherwise, we'll be returning to Brockton Bay and Armsmaster next chapter. See you next time, true believers.

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Chapter 1366 - 9