I want to thank you all for supporting this story since it first came out, and for waiting patiently all this time as I rewrote it for the enhancement of your reading pleasure. Special thanks go to Dakkaman777 (first friend on the site), aspiringactor (who delivered the challenge), patrickthenobleman, cornholio, Tweek-23 and Dokebibeats especially for their constant and unwavering support. As a firm shipper of Peter Parker and Carol Danvers, I hope that this story is satisfactory for you all. This is dedicated to you all.

On an unrelated note, now that I've gotten my associate degree, after much consideration (much in part of my newfound love of writing), I've decided to pursue a major in writing (BA in English, officially) for my bachelor. That comic company/writing career I said I wanted to start? I'm now aiming for it full on. Here's hoping.

That's enough from me, so please enjoy this remake of (hopefully) an epic of love, loss and political upheaval across the nation and even the planet.

Disclaimer: All recognized characters are patented and owned by Marvel Comics. What they do here is of my creation.


REBORN DARK PHOENIX PROUDLY PRESENTS

SPIDER-MAN & MS. MARVEL:

LOVE & WAR

(VERSION 2.0)


Chapter 1: Sanctuary


*The Boundaries of Earth and space, Sol Star System*

1335 GMT/9:35 AM EST; 23 May 2010

Space was a beautiful thing, something that not many people on the planet knew or recognized. It had a certain appeal to it that could enthrall and entice an unsuspecting passerby, and win them over with the wonders and secrets that it held. A century ago, humanity believed that all that the ever-growing vacuum of cold emptiness held was large rocks and vast oceans of stars. Now, in the early 21st Century, people across the planet knew that life wasn't just here on Earth but in every single corner, nook and cranny that was this universe.

Not as many knew that there were other universes out there besides their own, but it was a fact. Across all of existence, life thrived in the wondrous entity that was known as space. Whether of benevolent or malicious conduct, space housed an infinite and unhindered number of wonders.

The blonde woman floating in the boundaries of space and the planet Earth, clothed in a black one piece with matching gloves and mask, was living proof of this statement.

Carol Danvers had long believed in alien life, since she was a child. Her childhood was adorned with the firm belief of it, with Star Wars movies, Green Lantern comics and space explorer novels taking up most of her younger years. Space had won her over, whisking her away from the Earth into a world of fantasy…which became reality in her adulthood, when she was thrust into a world of mutants, aliens, spies, gods, heroes and villains.

She had welcomed it gladly.

And now, as a human gifted with powers few could ever hope to gain, Carol always remembered the vastness that was space that helped her enter this world, with its whispers and promises. Space, she would admit, played a fundamental part of who she had become today. And after so many years of desiring to dance among the stars in the heavens, she found she had become addicted to the feeling, to the home-away-from-home she had found.

Many didn't understand space as she did. To Carol Danvers, space was a comfort, a blissful silence…it was a sanctuary, one she sought in much of her past. A sanctuary that gave her warmth when others couldn't, and solace when the world gave her nothing but harshness and bitter words. It was a place that she could escape to when she just wanted to be away from the world for a while, to be with just her thoughts and her heart. Floating here in the boundaries of Earth and space, with just her internal thoughts to keep her company, space had grown to be almost a part of Carol, its sanctuary aiding her in many personal trials and decisions. All in all, space had become an escape from reality to her own domain, where she just collected and calmed herself.

And even though in recent years she had found comfort in a new sanctuary, space always had a warm place in her heart. Because of space and the impact of it in her life, she had become a woman she could be proud to be, despite life's obstacles.

Ms. Marvel, an Avenger and one of Earth's Mightiest Heroes.

Carol loved mornings like this, when she would fly away from her home in the Upper West Side in Manhattan, away from the hassle and stress the world offered and up into the boundaries of Earth and space, where she would just float in peace, allowing the silence and cold to warm her. This position granted her the breath-taking image of a sun enveloping the planet in its glowing warmth; no matter how many times she saw this sight, it would always render her speechless and in awe, silenced by its breath-taking beauty. This was a habit that Carol desired to share with many close to her, but few could survive in space as she could. Regardless, it was something that she enjoyed, and had done for many years now, just sitting here in the quiet and cold confines of space, letting it soothe her as she gazed upon a world she and numerous other had sworn to protect.

What she really loved, though, was how she returned back to Earth.

Free falling.

As she had done countless times before, Carol cut off her flight, allowing her body to be sucked into the Earth's gravitational pull. Within a minute, the heroine was being shot towards the planet surface; as she continued to fall with an ever increasing speed, Carol felt the immense heat forming around her, warming her to her core. Her lygokinetic abilities instinctively went to work as her body absorbed the heat and warmth, nipping at her, a feeling that was both tingly and pleasuring. Faster and faster she shot down, her form like that of a meteorite, the clouds passing by her and the limitless blue of the Atlantic Ocean coming to meet her head on with each passing second.

And within the last few possible moments when the ocean was ready to consume her, Carol reactivated her flight as she forced herself into a stop for the briefest of seconds before setting herself on a course for New York City. The water's rupture from the shockwaves that occurred splashed on her, making the Avenger smile and laugh aloud to herself, the feeling as refreshing as it always was.

Yes, the Ms. Marvel aspect of her life had made for some wonderful habits and times to arise and take form.

Soon, Carol arrived in American airspace and neared the shores of Manhattan, immediately cutting her flight speed to a much slower pace as she maneuvered through the concrete jungle that she called home. As such, many people gazed up to see one of their city's protectors fly above them, with children and such crying out in glee, and most older people just giving her a glance of varying length. It couldn't be helped; since mutantkind arose to the public eye back in the 1960s, superhumans and such grew to become a basic everyday occurrence. They had been around as early as then with the first generation of the X-Men, and their numbers had increased quite a bit within the last 30-40 years. As generations passed, mankind took the sights of superhumanity, mutantkind and such mostly in stride.

Of course, that never mattered much to Carol; as long as she was here and doing her duty as a heroine and an Avenger, she never cared what the public thought of her.

Distant alarms caught her attention, something she most likely never would've noticed had she not been flying at her current speed. Hell, had it been a few years ago, she never would've even thought to be flying as she was now; but as of recent, this was starting to become a new habit of hers. Carol flew off to her right and soon enough she found herself on the scene of a bank robbery, with a gang of about seven men in black face masks keeping police and SWAT at bay with gunfire and a couple of hostages. They were quickly making their way to a van that another gunman had nearby. The NYPD could do little to try and stop them; not only did the gunmen have hostages, but had some pretty good tactical coordination and some decent weaponry.

The robbers had almost reached their van…when the mighty form of Ms. Marvel slammed both her legs into the back section of the van, turning it into scrap metal. The driver, completely surprised by the sudden events, jumped out of the van with a machine gun ready to go, only to get a photon blast right to the chest. Not at usual strength, of course; just enough to hurt like hell and render him incapacitated.

Each one of the other seven robbers looked at the heroine in recognition, their faces contorting into utter shock, fear or "I'm so screwed" expressions. All seven of them, despite being quite well armed and seemingly prepared for anything that law enforcement could throw at them, were pitifully out of their league now. In their fear, the hostages that they had claimed escaped their grips and bolted for the quartet of SWAT officers rushing towards them. A couple of the criminals saw this and made a motion to do something about it, but the sudden illumination of power in Ms. Marvel's fist shut them down.

"I'm going to give you boys one chance, and that's it," the heroine called out, her voice commanding as the soldier she was trained to be. "Drop your weapons and surrender."

Had this been a few years ago, a threat of this manner by someone such as Ms. Marvel to someone such as these thugs would've been met with laughs and sexually harassing remarks. When Carol had begun taking a more "seek out"-street crime fighting role, her targets didn't take her seriously at all. Sure, they had obviously heard of her and what she could do, but they couldn't take her seriously. She just wasn't that kind of crime fighter in the eyes of the New York criminal underworld, to the city or to the world. Carol had found that extremely frustrating, which resulted in more than a few broken perps in hospitals before their official arrests.

Even after a few years, a portion of the New York criminal element still didn't take her seriously, and were stupid enough to try and fight her...or try to get fresh and slick with her. THAT never ended well. But she had established amongst most now that she meant business, and that she was among the number of heroes and vigilantes in the city that fought evil at the street level.

Most of the criminals in front of her seemed to be of the latter mind set. One, however, clearly the idiotic ring leader...wasn't.

"I could...or how's about I show you my special gun?" he sneered with a flashy and toothy grin, hidden behind his mask.

His associates turned to stare at him, shock written all over their eyes.

Carol raised an eyebrow. She was not pleased.

"C'mon, babe, I betcha it's a lot better than what the Spider's givin' ya. Let me and the boys show ya-"

SCREEAAAOOWW!

"Anyone else?" the Marvelous Avenger asked as she directed her attention to the other six, her slightly icy voice almost asking them to try something. In response to the leader, she had given him a...slightly more powerful photon blast, crashing him into the ground in agonizing pain. He just challenged her Spider, after all. She couldn't him get away with that.

Her warning was well received. The other six immediately dropped their weapons and went onto their knees, hands on their heads. "Yo, Ms. Marvel, I swear," one of them quickly said, "none of us would've tried saying what Ben said; honest." The others quickly nodded their heads in agreement.

Carol just rolled her eyes as she touched down on the street, SWAT taking over as they quickly claimed the weapons and arrested the team of criminals. The commanding officer came over and offered his hand, which Carol shook as he smiled at her, to which she returned.

"Thanks for the help, Ms. Marvel."

"Please, Officer, it was nothing, no trouble," she replied. "I'm just doing my job: keeping people safe."

"You kidding?" the SWAT commander replied. "I wish more of the bigger capes like you would help us out more often. Hell, Commissioner Watannabe says you've been really big help since you started fighting crime down here with us. I don't know how Spider-Man got you roped into it, but it sure was a good thing for us all."

Before Carol could reply, the commander walked off to help his men. Carol found herself smiling in response to the commander's words, a small chuckle escaping her lips as she felt a slight bout of warmth flowing into her cheeks. He had hit home; if not for Spider-Man, Ms. Marvel would've never been seen taking on crime on levels like these.

It was just one of the impacts he had on her life since they met.

Carol blinked, suddenly finding herself jostled by a small swarm of reporters and other media personnel. Groaning internally, she tried to get this part of the process over with, answering questions as quickly and simply as she could. After a few moments, she decided to just go with the "no comment" card and quickly took off into the skies. Flight certainly had its advantages.

Free again, the Marvelous Avenger continued on her flight path to...where, exactly? The day was still quite young, not even 10am yet. In all honesty, Carol was just happy to fly around, and just enjoy it, perhaps stop another crime in progress...or better yet, find a certain Spider. Yes, that did indeed seem like something good to do at the moment; they'd hadn't seen each other in person for two days now due to a few things coming up on both sides, but what better time like now? Her mind instantly set, Carol began her new search, one that would prove to take quite a while as she flew at a pace that would allow her to catch the person she was looking for by sight, almost an hour. But there was something she always searched for besides just his physical form in Manhattan, and today was no different.

There. She heard it.

The tell-tale whoop of a man swinging through the concrete jungles of Manhattan.

With a smirk that soon turned into a grin, Carol flew towards the direction of the voice before she quickly spotted its source: a man clad in red and blue skintight spandex with black web-like designs all over the red, a red mask with white lenses hiding his face from the world. He looked carefree as he swung from building to building, jumping and plummeting with whoops and cries of excitement and joy escaping him.

The Amazing Spider-Man.

Knowing that his Spider-Sense wouldn't go off and ruin her surprise, Carol grinned to herself as she slowly and stealthily followed her quarry from a reasonable distance, but closing the gap as she did so. Her training from years ago coming into play, she kept herself to her target, never losing sight and always closing in on him. After about half a minute, a glass tower skyscraper began coming up ahead. The Webhead neared it, almost seemingly going to hit it before gracefully swinging to its side and webbing around the building altogether, momentarily disappearing from sight.

Deciding to make her presence known, Carol quickened her speed as she followed him, flying around the skyscraper and readying herself to zoom into him with a special greeting.

…only to find he had disappeared.

Carol blinked in surprise, her head snapping back slightly. The blonde began to turn in numerous directions, searching for her quarry. To her surprise, it was as if he literally vanished. Carol frowned to herself, confusion quickly taking over. "Where the hell did he disappear to?" she asked herself as she floated lower to the streets below and set her eyes there, her quick search ending in vain. A thought began forming in her mind, wondering if something had happened to him, but she quickly pushed that aside. Carol knew that Peter could easily take care of himself. That, however, didn't answer her previous question, and she began to scan the streets again below her, trying to see if he had hidden himself within the civilians.

It was then that Carol was shaken from her thoughts as something jumped onto her, with two hands suddenly covering her eyes. Normally, the typical routine that the Avenger would follow immediately upon this happening would be to throw this individual into the skies above, anticipating a battle. However, this was not the case as the hands that covered her eyes were all too familiar to her in texture. Or rather, the gloves that covered said hands. It was at this moment that Carol realized she had been played, but that didn't stop the smile brightening her face.

"Excuse me, but is this the ferry to Staten Island?"

The quip, music to her ears, simply made her laugh in amusement as Carol flew up to a building rooftop, allowing the man she trusted with her life to verbally guide her, being his hands still covered her eyes. Within moments, her feet touched down as her passenger jumped off her back. The smile still bright as ever, she turned and came face to face…or face to mask, with one of the people, if not the one person, she loved the most.

Peter Parker, the Amazing Spider-Man. Her Amazing Spider-Man.

Just that thought alone made her smile even brighter, and even give a small chuckle, a fact not lost on Peter. "Hey, what's so funny?" he asked with a smile, bringing his mask up to his nose.

"Nothing," Carol replied as she approached him, greeting him with a soft and tender kiss. "Just really happy to see you, is all. What, I can't be happy to see my boyfriend?"

"Oh no, of course you can. But trying to sneak up on him really doesn't seem like the best course of action to take when you are. It might send the wrong message."

"Wait, you knew that I was following you?" Peter nodded. "How? I kept-"

"A trademark secret," the arachnid smirked. "One involving quite a bit of skill if I must say." Carol then gave a stare as she placed her hands on her hips. Her expression just oozed doubt. "Ok, fine, I saw your reflection when I was swinging towards that glass building, figured you were trying to surprise me and decided to turn the tables."

"You really know how to ruin someone's fun, don't you?" Carol smirked as she hugged him.

"For the last 14 years," came the chuckling reply. "One of my non-spider related powers." He placed his forehead on hers. "Certainly won you over, I believe."

"Did it now? Are you sure you aren't just in some wonderful dream where you think you're with me, only to just wake up one day and find out it was all make believe?"

"...Peter?" Carol asked as she looked with concern at Peter.

"With my luck, that is an actual real possibility," Peter replied with a small voice. "Dear Lord, have I been living a lie all these years?" He turned to Carol, and even though his voice gave a worrisome tone, Carol could see that he was trying his hardest not to smile. "Why would you awaken me to such a harsh reality, Carol?"

"Oh no, you aren't getting rid of me that easily, Peter Parker," came the reply as the blonde playfully whacked his head. "Nice try, but you're stuck here with me for a while. Besides...I am oh so very real. Never forget that."

"Oh good," Peter replied, an exaggerated sigh escaping his lips. "My fragile ego is pretty much founded on us being together nowadays. You know that the bad guys depend on my fragile ego for the mocking I deliver while beating them senseless. The city needs my fragile ego, so you have just provided a great service, Ms. Marvel. You averted a crisis; panic in the streets and all that, you know?"

"I'm sure," Carol smirked before she simply gave herself into Peter's arms, cherishing their intimate moments together. Sure, she was one of the most powerful superhumans on the planet, and was much more powerful than Peter could ever hope to be in terms of physical strength, even with how he restrained himself. But there was nowhere she could feel better or safer than in his arms. It was a beautiful moment for the two of them, one where the unconditional love for each other was communicated silently between the two. A moment that that they would've wanted to last just a tiny bit longer, but alas...

BEEP BEEP

"Noooo…" came the false whine from Peter as the couple separated. The blonde smirked at him as she took out her Avengers ID Card. The alert didn't just come from her card, however, as Peter also took out his own Avengers ID Card. Both were greeted with the face of Steve Rogers, cowl and all, on the miniature screen the card held. The two Avengers could only assume that this call was out for all other Avengers as well, and they were right.

"This is Captain America, calling all active Avengers to base for an emergency mandatory meeting," the First Avenger said, the voice as clear as it would be if he were standing there with them. "All members of the Avengers are hereby called to attend. I expect no one to be missing or late." With that, the small screen faded back into black.

"Looks like duty calls," Carol said as she placed her ID Card back into its pocket, concealed beneath her sash. "I guess it's off to the Mansion, then."

"All work and no play," Peter teased as he mirrored her action.

"Careful, Spider. I'm your ride over to the Mansion, remember?"

"Oh, I was talking about Cap. Trust me, I got loads of other quips for you, babe."

"I feel so special," Carol replied in mock sarcasm, her smile back. "C'mon, let's head on over there. Cap made it sound pretty important."

"He can make going to the bathroom sound important," Peter quipped as he took Carol's hand. "Seriously, he can literally make a speech out of it and make it seem like we're going to war." He jumped onto Carol's back, thrusting his fist into the air dramatically. "Onward, men! Into battle with the forces of Charmin! Today we claim victory over Scott!"

"I cannot believe we are together half the time," Carol said as she failed to contain her laughter.

"No time for chat, soldier! The bears advance with their TP rolls ready for conquest! Let us join them head on! Charge!"

It was moments like these, Carol laughing as she and Peter flew off toward their team headquarters, that Carol found herself longing for and wanting to experience each day now. Had this been between five and eight years ago, she surely would've been trying to throttle the Webhead, laughter far from her mind. But that was then, when she was a mess inside, trying to hold it together with a war-forged steel wall, a front that few people were aware of. When she was trying to protect herself from being vulnerable, lashing out at anything she thought could do that with her iron will and attitude, in an attempt to protect herself.

But now, long after he saw her real and raw self and simply...understood her, an action that eventually led to so much more, she had grown to appreciate and love his wit and humor, his one liners, and most any word that came out of his mouth. It was his presence, his warmth and comfort, his wit and everything about him that she loved. He helped her fix herself as she did for him. And the rewards had been far better than what she could've ever thought or hoped for.

Space was her getaway, her home away from home, her comfort and bliss. It was her sanctuary. All this was true, and yet, she had found all that and so much more in Peter Parker. Peter was her new sanctuary, her new comfort and where he and she were was the home she grew to love and cherish.

And she could never bear to imagine what life would be like without him.


XXX-A/N-XXX

And there we go, the first new chapter of Love & War. I hope you were all pleased with it. Chapter 2 V2 is being completed as we speak & should be out soon, so hang in there everyone. Please tell me what you all thought of this chapter, leave your reviews and critiques in the usual place. ACTUAL REVIEWS, PLEASE, PEOPLE! Show the love!

Notes here:

1) This is still an AU. Elements of mainstream Marvel Universe continuity and elements of the Marvel Multiverse will be incorporated.

2) Peter is 29, while Carol is 32.

That's all for now, so until next time, readers.

(PS: EMH has been edited and adjusted, with new details added in most chapters. Please check it out!)