Disclaimer: I don't own Spiderman and I am not making money off this story.

This story is set in the movie-verse (I mean no offense to the comic lovers out there, the movies are easier for me to follow) between the second and third movies.

Free Fall

Prologue

All three of us just stare at the bookcase, realization and shock coming over us. It was a modest apartment in the Bronx, larger than some but smaller than then best. She could have had the best anywhere in the city, I was certain Harry Osborn had offered it to her, but she wanted to be here. So all three of us had come together for a short time, despite some rocky road in the past six months, we always ended up overcoming our differences because she needed us. My eyes skim over the book titles once more, as if there could possibly be another outcome, but there is not. The answer to the question I thought I had figured out was completely wrong.

Mackenzie Marshall was one of those larger than life kind of persons. She only answered to Kenzie, unless of course one of us was angry enough and used her full name. She stared death in the face every single day I had known her. I stare death in the face everyday as well but death comes in varied shapes and forms. The death she faced was unchanging and she saw it every time she looked in the mirror. If she was depressed, angry or upset at her circumstances, I never saw it. However, Harry might have seen her at her worst.

I never could quite wrap my mind around that one thing. She seemed to reach out to me first but she ended up being closest to Harry. He had been her confidant, friend and more. I still don't know what made their relationship work but it was irrefutable that it did work. And because of that, Kenzie had bridged the gap that had formed between Harry and me. I wonder if that gap will grow once more. I chance a look over to my friend and the hard lines of grief are once again etched on his face. It's odd to see that look again. It had almost disappeared over the last few months. Now it was back with a vengeance.

I opened my mouth to say something, I don't even know what, just something to break the heavy silence, when my back is thrown up against the wall. Harry's face is just centimeters away from mine, filled with hurt and rage. Oddly enough, I realize I had never seen such pain on his face, even when his father died.

"You said it was a web shortage," he snarled. "You said it was an accident!"

"I thought it was." I wish I could be mad at him, or at least feel slighted that he would take out his frustrations on me, but I can't even summon up an ounce of irritation. I deserve his anger for so many reasons. I should have known better than to let Kenzie go out web slinging with me two nights ago.

"She's dead because of you!"

Harry stepped back finally and I slid down the wall. Surprisingly enough my legs hold me up though it's the wall that's supporting me.

"Where was your 'spidey-sense' when she was falling twenty-stories, Pete?"

I shake my head minutely. I didn't have an answer for that and it was something I desperately wanted to have. I always was able to sense danger around others or me. Why didn't I sense the danger to Kenzie when she started her freefall?

"I bet you just sat there and watched her fall."

The comment seemed to wake up Mary Jane from her shock. "Harry! That's a horrible thing to say. You know Peter wouldn't have let that happen!"

"I tried to get to her," I manage feebly. And I did. By the time I realized she wasn't shooting out any webbing to slow her descent, I tried to slow her down. However, she had fallen at least fifteen stories by that time and when I finally secured the webbing to her limp body; it wasn't enough to pull her back from the top of the building she was headed for. My God, I can still hear the sound of her body hitting that roof. I'm afraid I'll never stop hearing it.

By the time I had enough courage to look at him again, Harry's furious features had smoothed out into that cold calculating mask he had become so accustomed to wearing before Kenzie waltzed into his life. He calmly walked over to one of the walls where a glass case holding four ceramic tiles with panda bears painted on them hung. He carefully removed the box and tucked it under his arm. It should have been an odd object for him to take but we all knew that was Kenzie's prize possession. Harry started for the door before turning around slowly.

"You just keep taking the people I love from me," he said coldly before leaving MJ and me alone in the apartment. MJ gave me a confused look but when I didn't give any sign of explaining the comment, she went back to quietly regarding the bookcase once again.

"I wonder how long it took her to arrange the books that way."

I pushed off the wall and stood next to her. "I don't know." It had taken us at least three days after her funeral to figure out the message that had been hidden in the titles. I had realized the books had been rearranged the night of her death but it was Harry who cracked the code based on an old, practically unheard of Scottish fairy tale, Tam Lin, which she had told him once. My eyes scanned the titles again and I re-read the message she had left us.

Had I but known

Before I left my home

I would have changed your heart of flesh

For one of hardest stone.

I had never heard of Tam Lin before in my life so I had looked up the poem on the internet one night. Apparently, it was the tale of two lovers and a jealous Queen. The Queen of Fairies had fallen in love with Tam Lin and tried to spirit him away from his lover, a common girl. But the girl held on to Tam Lin with all her strength. The Queen proceeded to change Tam Lin into every kind of creature imaginable but his lover held on tightly, never allowing him to escape. The Queen realizes then that she is unable to break the love between the two and turns Tam Lin back into a human man. The Queen has the final lines in the poem that always seemed to come across angry and vengeful to me. Now, staring at those words on the bookshelf, I realize the quiet sadness that is behind them.

"What do you think it means?" MJ asks quietly. "I don't understand what she's saying."

I sigh, trying to hold back the tears but I know in the end I will fail so I stop trying. It doesn't even take a second for the tears to fall. "I think she was telling us if she had the chance she would make sure we would never hurt. That she doesn't want us to grieve over her death."

MJ nods and slowly slips her hand into mine. I know it will only be a matter of seconds before the reality of those words sink in and she realizes what the words really mean. I still can't believe it. Suddenly, MJ stiffens beside me and her hand flies up to her mouth.

"She didn't…I mean, she couldn't have…" she looks up at me, expecting me to somehow deny the realization that perhaps the fall wasn't quite the accident it appeared to be. But I didn't know how to refute it. We were standing in front of a bookcase where the books had been rearranged to spell out a message for us. That took planning. Who's to say that the fall itself wasn't planned? But why? The cancer was being held at bay with her radiation and chemo. A surgery was about to be scheduled. There was no reason for her to take her own life.

That was thing about Kenzie. Things were never what they seemed.