Chapter Text
“May! Hey, sweetie. No, no, no. Your daddy’s sleeping, okay? We gotta let him rest up.” Peter hears MJ say through the door. She’s trying to keep her voice low, but insistent enough that she’ll break through their daughter’s determination.
He stirs, rubbing his eye. He hisses, flinching from the pain that shoots through him as his fingers brush against his nose. Peter frowns, trying to recall why that was even happening. There’s a tug and tension at his brow. He moves his hand up there and feels the skin swollen – stitched together.
Ah. Right.
“May. Come away from the door, please.”
Peter sits up, wincing as he does. Been at this years and the recovery never gets any easier.
“But I wanna play with my car, but daddy said he’s gotta fix it first and he hasn’t.”
Been at this years and somehow knowing he’s letting her down, even just a little, hurts so much more than any bruise or burn on his body right now.
Been at this for years and it doesn’t get easier.
“He’ll fix it once he’s awake.” MJ’s a pro. She takes it all in her stride from the last minute late night medical care to the sleepless start that Peter can’t recall even hearing. Someone has to be awake for May – she’s six and she’s brilliant, but she can’t be left unsupervised. MJ’s had just as bad a night as he has, and yet she still let him sleep.
“Why not now?” May presses. Peter’s half tempted to let her in just to offer some relief to MJ in return. He can’t do much but he can put an end to the questions.
“Because he’s sleeping, May. Just like a certain little missy should have been when I caught her trying to make lucky charms in the middle of the night.” His wife – brilliant and patient and perfect, all seeing, all knowing, all powerful, has a handle on that too.
Which is for the best, he thinks as he begins to reply categorise each of his injuries. He feels like he has intimate knowledge of what it is to be a building after its faced a demolition crew which is saying something because he’s been under a building before.
May has seen him with scrapes before. She’s seen him with cuts and bruises. Started seeing them back when she was barely a year old. She hasn’t known her dad without them.
Last night was bad though. He’s had worse. There’s always worse to be had – he’d made it back after all. Last night he had just felt his age.
Peter doesn’t want May to be scared, and when he thinks back to MJ’s scream that she’d been quick to muffle when he’d fallen into their bedroom - she’s been at this for years and there’s still moments that terrify her – Well. He knows that if he let May into the room right now then she’d be scared.
He doesn’t want her being scared.
The worst part is, she'd probably put on a brave dace for him. Shed sniffle and her bottom lip would wobble. Shed look back to MJ a few times before coming forward and wrapping her arms around him. She’s good like that. Sweet. Kind. She’s perfect.
They’ve taught her to be gentle, but her curiosity would still win put and she would gently reach a hand out to touch his face.
Her hands are still so small. She’s still so young. So, so, so young.
Peter looks down at his hands. The cuts over his knuckles slowly starting to heal. It’s probably the least of all his injuries.
Last night had been bad.
It could have been worse. He’s faced worse. Yet, he’s laying there, contemplating how much of his borrowed time he’s already used and how much he’s got left.
She’s still so young.
May is the same age he had been when he’d lost his parents. If he manages to hold out a little longer – which he wants to, he’s got so much reason to – she’ll be the same age as when he lost Ben.
A little longer and she’ll be the same age as he was when he said goodbye to her namesake.
She is still so young.
Peter leans his head back against the wall, closing his eyes and listening to the sounds of their apartment. He can hear small feet running across the floor. She’s taken her socks off. May’s smart like that and knows MJ’ll tell her to stop otherwise. She could slip. He knows that she’s regretting how she’s phrased that warning a million times now because he can hear her sighing in exasperation.
Peter can hear his wife trying to muffle a yawn, before he hears her hands flutter across a keyboard. He can hear his daughter slowing down and the quiet, careful steps that follows.
He smiles to himself, counting under his breath until he hears-
“Boo!” followed by a childish squeal as MJ undoubtedly grabs at her and tickles her in retaliation.
The apartment is so alive.
It echoes out and it calls him home. He tries and he tries to respond to it each time. His little siren spell that he can’t resist.
It is so alive, and maybe that’s what he should focus on.
His childhood, his adolescence and his adulthood have been haunted by so many ghosts. At this point, they’re more made up of his words than their own. They’re an approximation of the people he used to know. His parents are the most undefined of them all. Now with a child the same age, he wonders if that’s cruel to them.
Maybe it is, but maybe it is not.
He is alive, and through him, so they are. They haunt his home because he is there, and he keeps them with him – their faint features make him ache – more so when May’s face isn’t a clear picture in his mind but rather the words she said or just a feeling of her.
It hurts. It aches. His body feels so much older than he really is, and he still feels so small.
His daughter is so young, and he has absolutely no idea what to do with that. Except that it’s not something he has to address right now because the apartment is alive and he managed to hear it’s call even when it was silent in the early hours of the morning.
He falls back asleep eventually. The thoughts stirring in his mind, but he’s used to the consequences of his own actions plaguing him. They’re practically a lullaby at this point.
He only stirs when the bed dips next to him and a kiss pressed gently to the side of his head. Blinking his eyes open, he sees his wife settling in next to him.
Peter keeps his eyes on her. The sleep has done him some good, his body no longer crying out to him solely for existing, instead just huffing and groaning when he dares lift his hand to brush his fingers against her cheek.
“The cavalry came by.” She explains through a yawn before turning her head and kissing the inside of his palm. “Did the only justifiable thing; hopped her up on sugar before he arrived and sent them on their way. I’m expecting her to arrive back to us already asleep.”
Peter smiles. It still twinges when his stitch is moved.
“Or she’ll come back to us overtired and in tears.” He points out.
MJ doesn’t reply immediately. She yawns instead and burrows herself further into the bed. Normally she just naps out on the couch if it’s needed. She’d started learning from him shortly after May had been born just how useful it was to be able to sleep wherever whenever. This is just another sign of how much he’d spooked her the night before.
“Am I a bad parent if I tell Ned he has to keep her if she gets like that?”
The laugh that bubbles out of him lacks humour.
“You could never be a bad mom.” He says, his words catching in his throat. “Just an exhausted one.”
MJ looks up at him.
He knows the bags under her eyes are from more than just one sleepless night. He’s more than aware that it’s just the price of being a parent, especially now that May’s independence is kicking up another gear. Somehow it all still feels like his fault regardless.
“I’m sorry.” He whispers before her breathing can even out, looking down at her.
Peters drapes his arm around her and lightly scratches at her back, she presses her nose a little more into his side.
“Just don’t bleed so much. Always harder to tell what’s wrong when there’s so much blood.” She murmurs.
“Keep blood inside body. Noted.” He feels her huff of amusement more than he hears it, her breath, warming the bruised skin.
It still doesn’t feel like enough. Peter still feels like a ghost before he’s even become one and he still has no idea what to do about that because how can he make up for that? How can he make any of this okay?
He doesn’t want to scare May, but he’s terrified one day he will and he’s petrified just how much of him she’ll remember.
“I can hear you thinking from here.” She comments, not looking up or opening her eyes. It’s a testament of how well she knows him. Years of this, and she can see through it all without even looking at him. Years of this and she still decided to stay. Years of this and she still decided to have a family with him. More years of this to come. She’s still here, and they’ve built a home.
“Just tired.” He lies. Talking about his feelings has never been a strength of his, especially when it’s about this burden he has to carry and tries his best not to force on to his loved one’s, still trying to learn how to let them bear the load for even just a moment. The lump in his throat feeling infinitely heavier and the tears prickling at his eyes.
MJ knows him better than anyone. She’s seen the ugly parts of him that he can’t put words to and holds them tenderly.
“You’re here.” She reminds him. It doesn’t soothe the terrors that lurk in the depths of his head, just offering him a lifeline that he can hold on to. He’s at home with his family right now, not some future where he’s gone.
He has to remember the present otherwise he’ll lose himself in what ifs and should have beens.
“We’ve still got their number.” She continues, referring to the therapist that he’d been seeing on and off for years. He knows routine is important, but he had thought he was good. He should be good. He has a good life. “Might help to give you the words.”
Because she knows he wants to talk to her about this. They’ve gotten better at that, they’ve had to. Not just for May’s sake, but also for their own. They decided they wanted each other. MJ and Ned chased Peter down all those years ago with fury and broken promises in their hands. Angry at him for taking their choice away – then choosing to have him again. They had quickly learnt as they’d tried to reform themselves into the trio they once were that holding things back wasn’t going to work.
It had taken time, and it had taken a lot of fumbles for them to get here, but now they talked and they told each other what plagued them. It didn’t make them perfect but it made them stronger.
And when they can’t find the words, they figure out ways to make it work regardless.
“Yeah. Yeah. That might be good.” He agrees, pressing a kiss to the top of her head. “I’ll explain it when I can.”
“I know.” She whispers, resting her forehead against his arm. “You should get some rest.”
Peter feels like he’s rested enough. He’s itching to do something now that the apartment is empty and he’s no longer cooped up, but she’s right, because it is far too easy to slip back into sleep with the sound of her heart so close to his own.
The third time he wakes up that day its because of MJ’s phone, buzzing viciously from beside her pillow. She’s more tired than she’d let on, because she remains oblivious to the sound of it, soft snores escaping from her mouth that she denies adamantly in her waking hours.
Peter shifts, carefully reaching over her to grab it. He blinks at the bright screen, managing to make out a missed call from Ned and a text asking if he’s okay to bring May home. Apparently she was getting close to a tantrum, tired and filled with the frustration that comes with being six years old after a long, probably confusing day.
He extracts himself from the bed, going to the bathroom to check himself over. Most of his face has started to heal. The bruises still there but no longer so deep in their colour. If he throws a shirt on then he’s certain May will think it’s nothing out the ordinary – Peter has to push aside the thoughts that whispers to him how fucked that is.
He should have known better because she is MJ’s daughter as much as she is his and of course, she notices.
Stood in the bathroom, the both of them in their pajamas and brushing their teeth, May stops the motions that he and MJ are trying to drill into her as routine, toothbrush hanging from the corner of her mouth and dangerously close to falling out on to the floor when she speaks.
“You’re hurt.” She points out. The words muffled by the spit and toothbrush.
Peter pauses brushing his own teeth, unsure about how to go about this. She’s seen him with a bruise or a black eye before but she was younger. Didn’t understand as much or ask so many questions.
It was always brushed away with a ‘daddy’s been silly’, and used as a lesson about careful hands or asking before touching someone.
She is still so young but she understands things more. She’s getting more curious and independent with each day. Lies won't cut it for much longer as she starts to get bolder in her questions.
He sighs, gently touching the end of her dangling brush.
“Keep going. We can talk more after brushing.”
Peter’s own priorities haven’t always been in the right order, but he’ll be damned if May’s aren’t. There are things, like brushing their teeth before bed, which had to be done before they could do the things they wanted – like ask her dad about the splotches on his face.
It’s a compromise that May accepts, grabbing ahold of her toothbrush and brushing again. She follows the motions – up, down, side to side, making sure to get her back molars that are still so tiny. She forgets her inquisition for a moment when she finds a wobbly tooth, getting giddy with excitement as she nudges it proclaiming she’s going to ‘make it extra shiny for the tooth fairy’.
Once her teeth are clean and her face is dry, Peter picks her up and perches her on the edge of the sink so they’re a little more at eye level and any shadows aren’t making the bruises look worse.
“Why are you hurt?”
Peter hums. Wondering if it was now or never. “I was a little out of my depth, and made some silly mistakes.”
May’s head tilts, her lip caught between her teeth as she processes what he’s said. “What does that mean?”
He takes a breath.
“You know when we ask you to clean up your toys before dinner, but you’ve got so many that it feels like you’ll never get them cleaned up in time?”
May nods sagely.
“That’s what your daddy was like last night. I was overwhelmed. And I made some mistakes.”
“Like when I broke my castle?” She asks, and he can’t help but grin, proud of her for connecting the dots between the feelings, already so much better than he is in the fact she knows.
“Exactly.”
May nods again, going quiet as she thinks.
“Why didn’t you ask for help?”
“What?”
“You told me that when I get o-over wells to ask for help. Like with my toys. So I don’t break anymore of them trying to rush.” She explains, stumbling over the word ‘overwhelmed’ a little but it’s still a little new to her vocabulary so he’s not really too worried.
It’s kind of adorable, to be honest, reminds him that for as smart as she is, she’s still little and young and brilliant.
“That’s a very good idea, Mayday. I will try to do that next time.” He replies, reaching out and squeezing her tiny hand. He won’t make promises he can’t keep but he’ll try to remember the lessons that they’ve worked hard to teach her. “How do you feel seeing daddy like this?”
May swallows.
“Sad.” She admits, sounding quiet and a little sheepish. Peter’s heart aches, knowing he’d set himself up for that.
“I’m sorry.” He apologises as sincere as he can make it. The depth of the words not registering with her but something else does.
“Is that why we couldn’t play with my car today?”
“Yeah, yeah. I’m sorry, sweetie. We didn’t want you getting scared or upset. It’s okay to be disappointed about today, but we can fix your car up tomorrow after school, how about that?”
May doesn’t answer immediately which tells Peter that maybe it wasn’t the car May was focusing on. Her brows dip down. She’s puzzling something in her own head before voicing it. Peter doesn’t know which of them she’s picked it up from.
“When I’m poorly you take care of me.”
“Of course. I’m always gonna take care of you.”
“But it makes you sad when I’m poorly.”
“We don’t like seeing you poorly or in pain. It makes us a little sad, yeah, but that’s not gonna stop us looking after you.” Peter answers, his heart tripling in its size with pride and love as he starts to See where this is going.
His brave girl. His kind girl. His daughter, brilliant and loving and smart and so, so, so brave.
“So I should get to see you when you’re poorly even though it might make me sad.” She reasons and Peter lets out a quiet huff of laughter.
“It’s not your job to be so brave, little one.” He tells her. May’s chin goes a little higher as her face takes on a defiant pout.
“I can be very brave!”
“I know you can, but you shouldn’t have to be. That’s mommy and daddy’s job. But how about this. If your mom or I are ever poorly again, you’ll listen to us about letting us rest, just like you did today and then we can all have a couch day, yeah? Just like we do when you’re poorly.” Peter suggests. It’s not so much of a compromise, just an establishment of what they’re already doing so May isn’t so in the dark.
She considers it, even though she shouldn’t have to, and Peter knows that he’s going to call that number tomorrow, asking the question if being Spider-Man makes him a bad parent but in the meantime he can do this. He can try to ease the worry just a little.
“Okay.” May agrees, holding her hand out for him to shake.
Her dad has two gravestones. One is in Trinity Church Cemetery next to the graves of other heroes like Iron Man and Captain America. When it was first put up it was covered in flowers, toys and cards from people he had saved and people who looked up to him. Now, it’s a popular spot for tourists to visit and take photos of.
May and her family don’t visit that one all that often.
There’s another grave in small plot in Queens, next to Mary and Richard Parker as well as May and Ben Parker. It’s small and simple, but well cared for. There’s flowers for all the family, a small cup of coffee placed next to Peter’s headstone when her mom visits.
They go to this one more frequently, though May has missed joining her mom on the last few trips out there. Only joining this time because they’re creeping closer to the second anniversary of his death.
The first year has been hard because she’d been so unaware of how quickly it had approached them. Each day was seeming ‘normal’, she went to school, she came home, she did her homework, she watched movies with her mom and text Sarah about how she thought she’d caught Leo staring at her. The missing half of their home still hurt but they’d gotten used to the gap that was there, mended around it.
That was before the first article had come out, sending May careening off the path she felt she’d been on and into blind, aching panic. The loss of her dad was so continually present yet she had lost track of the time and date, hadn’t realised how far along they were because it felt like it was yesterday but also eons ago.
The panic turned to rage and then guilt because it hadn’t even been a year and she was already forgetting him. The worry she’d placed upon trying to recall all the little details she’d lost from her memory seeming pointless and hopeless now that she couldn’t even recall the day she’d actually lost him and his life.
May had never had any expectations for the anniversary of his death. It not being something she found herself thinking they’d ever really reach, like time would skip over it and they wouldn’t need to be reminded how much they’d lived without him. The tears she’d ended up crying and the way she’d been curled into her family felt like they were exactly what her mom had been expecting though. As did the shaking as they visited his grave, words spilling out about how much she missed him, feeling so much younger as she cried and for the first time in her life, feeling so unseen and unheard because there was no one to reply.
Her mom knew how to handle it all, holding her and talking to her. Her mom cried her tears and said her words while her uncle’s held May. At home, they made it feel like it was any other night, just with a few more stories about him too.
This year, May was all too aware about the date and how quickly it approached. Peter Parker, his life and his choices had been on her mind a lot lately that it was impossible to forget how it all ended.
Two years on and May felt more mature. She felt familiar with her grief and it’s shape. It made it all the more frustrating when the waves of it became too much and sent her spiralling into endless bout of tears weeks ago. Some of that frustration being the reason she hadn’t gone to see him when her mom went. Mostly, it was because while she couldn’t forget where her dad’s choices had led him, she wasn’t necessarily ready to confront that fact – especially when she was still grappling with the fact she had put herself on a very similar road.
Not that her mom knew that.
May hadn’t really intended to end up in a suit or being a hero. She’d just been walking home from school and seen something she couldn’t ignore; a man cornered in an alley as another approached him with a guy.
She did what she’d always been told to do – she called for help. She had the strength and the speed, but she was a kid. She didn’t know how to stop a mugging. She could dodge any bullet that she tried to have sent her way instead of the victim’s but in doing so what if it hit someone just walking by, unaware?
May called for help, and they said they’d send someone to investigate but that might be too late.
She didn’t have a mask or webshooters. She didn’t have anything on her except her school bag and phone, but she couldn’t walk away.
She did have her voice and she did have her bravery though. The two things that her parents had instilled in her time and time again while she’d been growing up. With a silent thought to her dad, that if there was any way, that he was watching and could keep both her and the poor man safe, May spoke up.
Just the threat of the cops was enough to send the guy running off, barrelling up a garbage can and a fire escape. The commotion brought a bit more attention to the alley and she had done it. Everyone was safe. It was anti-climatic end, giving a statement to the cops and then being held tightly by her mom when she told her the news, but it sparked a question in May.
If she could, why wasn’t she? What would have happened if things had gone differently?
May had the strength, the speed and the stickiness. She had the legacy. She had the training. She could be doing more.
She should be doing more. Really.
But. It raised a worry in her, one that crept up everytime she thought about the mantle and how it was tucked away, unused. One that she still hadn’t figured out how to talk to her mom about.
However, now that she had seen what could happen, now that she had helped, her mind couldn’t settle, she couldn’t push it away. A complicated fear about disappointing someone she knew wasn’t here to feel it and never had been while they were brewing in her mind, especially when it had felt like he’d answered a call to her – May knew he hadn’t really.
It wasn’t something she could parse through alone and it wasn’t something she was willing or ready to talk to her mom about, but May’s family had never been small. Her uncle Ned and his expertise from being her dad’s ‘guy in the chair’ making him the easier of them all to bring it up with.
Now, months later and a few trips out in the suit, monitored and supported by her uncle, still a secret from her mom despite his disapproval, May is standing in front of her dad’s grave, hoping that he was proud of her choices.
“You gonna come say hi?” Her mom asks over her shoulder. May still hovers back as she shakes her head. Coming here with her mom had been enough of a step, she’s not sure she could sit with her right now, knowing that she’s lying to her.
“In a bit.” She says, letting her mom have some alone time and stepping back to sit on one of the nearby benches. Close enough to still hear her mom, torturing herself just a little, but far enough she could rationalise why she hadn’t said anything yet.
May could admit she was still new to being Spider-Man and she didn’t want her mom to worry. She wanted to be certain in herself, her abilities and her priorities so that her mom could rest easy. She didn’t want her training days to be another burden on her mom’s already piled high plate.
“Hey, Tiger.” MJ greets, resting her hand on the tombstone. “You wouldn’t believe it, but Delmar’s has officially closed. Uhuh. The old man sold the place.” She waits, watching the ground, half expecting her husband to stir and rise from the earth at the news. He doesn’t stir. He can’t and won’t respond.
Her mom continues on with her updates.
“Flash has moved on to baking. Much better at that. His lemon and date loaf?” She groans. May has to agree. She doesn’t even like dates. They’re tacky and too sweet, but her uncle has somehow made them one of her favourite fruits. “To die for.” She glances around, “Sorry.” MJ tacks on, chuckling to herself for the joke. May snickers too, knowing that it was something he probably would have said himself.
“I’m doing good. Finally got a meeting with that script writer. You remember the one I’d been keeping an eye on after that college film festival? Mm. Hoping she might let me buy the rights to her Penelope script. Cheesy I know, but-… I suppose I still relate to her tenacity even after all this time. Takes a lot to stay that confident your husband is going to return home.”
There’s a history in that alone. The amount of love her parents shared and how much it cost her mom. Just another reminder of why she’s keeping this close to her chest for now.
“May and Ned are bit of a package deal in terms of reporting this time around. She’s in a suit. Ned updated the one you designed and she’s-...”
May snaps her head towards her mom. A sense of betrayal washing over her as she realises that her uncle has broken his promise. He’d told her mom. He’d snitched when she’d begged him not to.
“She’s giving it a go. Pretty good apparently. Just like you said she’d be.”
Her mom swallows. She can tell she’s hurt. May can tell she’s upset. But hrr mom hasn’t said anything about it though. She must have known for a while now and no words about it have been spoken.
Ned’s been gently encouraging her to tell her mom, but she isn’t ready. She needed to be better first. She needed to give assurance and promises that she could keep. He’d tried to tell her that her mom would worry regardless but May didn’t want to listen to that.
She realises her mom is just waiting for her to be ready though she can’t figure out the why.
“Why do you talk to him?” May asks once she’s crossed the cemetery and is crouching down beside her mom. It’s a question she’s always wondered. She’d done it herself a couple times, even when she decided she wanted pensive silence, she ended up murmuring a few words for him, sometimes having conversations in her head.
It helped, but often the silence she got in response hurt a whole lot more.
“Because I miss him.”
“He can’t answer though.”
“You’re right.” Her mom concedes, looking away from the grave to her. She’s smiling, not happy nor pretending to be, instead just wistful. “He’s dead, and that hurts.” That felt like an understatement. “But sometimes the quiet isn’t nice because it’s a reminder he’s not here, but...” She pauses, looking over May and gathering her words. “I talk to him and I tell him these things because I know he’d want to hear them, he’d want to hear my voice and for... just a moment. He’s a little more than just a memory because I’ve got a connection to him in the present. He’s still gone, and I still miss him, nothing changes that but I’ve spoken with him again, and that’s nice.”
“Isn’t it frustrating to not get anything back?” May asks, remembering that day in the alley and how she’d thought if she hoped hard enough that he might appear. In the end, it was her actions that stopped anything from happening.
Her mom took a sip of her coffee as she shrugged. “Sometimes.” She admits. “Sometimes I won’t think anything at all about it. I’ll fill him in and then I’ll move on. Sometimes I’ll think about how he’d react, and it makes me feel worse or I miss him more. There are times when it isn’t about him at all. Sometimes I just want to feel grounded as I puzzle through a problem, and he’s always been somewhere safe for me to do that.”
May drops her eyes to the ground. Her hands brush over the grass that’s grown there.
“A problem like me?” She asks quietly, unable to meet her mom’s eyes as she does.
“You’ve never been a problem, May.” Her mom replied without hesitation, sincere and unwavering in her love for her child.
May isn’t sure how much of it is deserved given everything she’s been doing.
“I’ve been lying to you.”
“I know.”
“I heard. When did you find out?”
“The first time you talked to Ned.” Anger and betrayal washing over her again, her fingers curling into the grass and pulling a few blades out of the soil.
“Why didn’t you say anything?”
Her mom sighs. A heavy exhale that feels weighted with so much that May doesn’t understand. She chances a glance over to her and sees her mom’s attention is caught on the grave next to her dad’s – May Parker, her grandma. They’d never been able to meet, but her parents always assured her she’d have been loved deeply by the woman.
Her dad wouldn’t be the man he was without her.
“Because you did a good thing by talking to an adult before jumping into this, and if I told you Ned had spoken to me, you might not have gone back to him, and if you’re anything like your father you would have ended up doing it anyway.” Her mom explains. It doesn’t do anything to ease the annoyance she feels towards her uncle, but does answer a few questions she had.
“And I think you are like him in a lot of ways. He did a similar thing by keeping his identity a secret from May. He didn’t want to worry her. He did it alone for good while. You’re not, and I knew-... I knew you’d come to me when you were ready, and until then, Ned was doing the right thing by filling me in.”
“I asked him not to.” She knows she sounds petulant, but she doesn’t care.
“I know, and he didn’t like going behind your back, but your safety and your wellbeing is something we’re never going to compromise on. It’s a conversation with me he had to have.”
“I’m still annoyed at him. He broke a promise.”
“He’s aware, but if you’re not ready to talk to me about it, you still have to talk to him about it.”
“You’re not mad?”
“No. I was, a little at first, but I’ve been-... expecting it. Mentally preparing since your dad started taking you out swinging. I was the one who told him to do it because I knew one day someone so brave, smart and kind was going to figure out that she could help people in more ways than one."
May presses her lips into a thin line. The praise doesn’t feel right. It’s strange to feel so seen by her mom, stranger to think that her dad had been involved in this moment even if it had started years ago before it was even in May’s mind. “I’m sorry that you felt you couldn’t speak to me about it, but I will never be mad that you spoke to someone. You asked for help.”
“I didn’t know where to start. I-... I’m not ready to be him. I can’t be him, I can’t-...” She chokes on the words a little. She still isn’t ready for everything and that feels like a failure to some extent but she knows better than to let those thoughts consume her. There was always another day for that, and until then – she can always ask for help. “Fight monsters or save the whole city, but-“
“He wouldn’t want you to be him. And I don’t either. You’re Mayday Parker. You are going to do great things because you have a good head on your shoulders and your father’s heart.” Her mom interrupts. “No one is expecting you to take on whatever the Avengers are facing. If you all did in that suit is help someone with their shopping or have a chat with someone when they’re lonely then we’d both be proud of you.”
“But I can do more.” May urges, trying to get her mom to understand where her head had been when she’d approached Ned.
“You don’t have to though. You’re a kid, you’re allowed to take your time Figuring out what that all means to you, including how you want to help other people.”
Her mom is getting at the same thing Ned had. It was the same thing May already knew. She didn’t need to be Spidey to help people. She’d done it before without the mask, she could do it again. Her grandma had the words ‘when you help one person, you help everybody’ on her grave, and from what she’d heard she’d embodied it in life too.
“I want to do it like this though, because I can because there’s times where May Parker isn’t enough but Spider-Man is.” She holds her chin up a little higher. There’s a tears trying to push themselves free. Memories about choices her dad had made and why he’d made them becoming a whole lot clearer now. “I know I can’t save everyone. I’m just a kid. I’ve got-... school to worry about,” Her mom let’s out a watery laugh. “But I can help out. Even if it’s just one person, they matter, and I gotta try.” It won’t always be as easy as it was last time, she knew that, that’s why she was doing this but she couldn’t keep letting fear stop her when people were hurting. Not when she felt ready for this step, as small as it was.
Her mom goes quiet. Her eyes close. May wonders if she’s talking to her dad again. The silent communication they’d developed in looks across the lounge now transcending life and death so that he can offer her but a pearl of wisdom.
May wonders if it’s more her mom asking for forgiveness rather than permission, knowing her dad had been so strict on the rules around training.
Looking over her shoulder, she spots her namesake’s grave again, and finally thinks that maybe if she’s reaching out to anyone, her mom is probably talking to her. It sounds as though she’d understand most of all.
“Mayday and school still remain top priority.” She says, sounding more like an order and one she’s already heard. Knowing Ned had been conspiring with her, May suspects it had come straight from her mom that time too. “You tell me or Ned or Flash everything, and you don’t complain about whatever safety features are in your suit. You listen when we tell you to come home or get out of there, and most importantly, you don’t decide when I get to worry about you, because that’s always happening. You’re my little girl. I’ve been worrying about you since you were born. It’s called being a mom.”
The tears finally slip free. May ping at her face to get rid of them. She might have admitted she was only a child, but she was also trying to earn her mom’s approval, show she was mature enough to do this – crying because her mom loved her didn’t feel very mature.
“You kept stuff from me because you were worried about my reaction.” May points out.
“Touché.” Her mom concedes. “How about this then; mutual worrying, but this time with talking.”
“So just saying how we feel?”
“Exactly. Think we can do it?”
May nods, looking over to her dad’s grave.
The wind doesn’t shift, the temperature doesn’t fluctuate and there is no sign that he’s heard a single word at all. May knows he hasn’t- not really. He’s present though, not through any worldly intervention that they can see or feel, but through the love she and her mom have for each other – forged stronger in the absence of him, through the love he had with her mom, the home they return to that’s missing a piece but is still there.
He’s there in her choices and the lessons she’s learnt, and while she can’t be certain if he picked her up from dance class or if he’d worn a dumb Christmas jumper to her recital in the middle of June or if that had only been a joke. Which hurts so badly. It might have been years ago, and had he still been alive she might have forgot it anyway, but she wanted those memories now more than ever. However, she can say with full confidence that he’d be proud of her and there wasn’t a single moment he she didn’t feel loved.