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First Impressions
Truth be told, MJ wouldn’t have minded spending the day with Peter just hanging out in his bedroom with her reading her brand new novel whilst he worked on calculations to alter his web formula like they’ve been doing as of late when they hang out sans-Ned, but bringing her to the Avengers compound seemed important to Peter so MJ was going along with it. It was surprising (sickening) how much MJ was willing to do for Peter and his stupid, adorable grin and pleading eyes and all he had to do was ask. She’d give him her entire heart if he simply asked.
Despite not really wanting to be here MJ pays attention to all the dumb anecdotes about his encounters with different members of the Avengers team as they wander through the compound that’s both sprawling in terms of size and scale but minimalist in terms of decoration- if one could even call the empty, open spaces decorations.
MJ trails after Peter, happy for him to tug her along by their adjoined hands (because that’s a thing they do now, hold hands, though they have yet to discuss that fact and what it means for them and their friendship) as he chats animatedly. MJ has no desire to be here but as she watches Peter recount each story using his free hand that’s not tightly gripping hers to gesticulate and act out parts of his stories she realises she doesn’t mind it so much. So she just walks behind Peter trying to hide the adoring grin she can feel stretching across her face because she would like to maintain part of her image of being the scary, unimpressed girl as much as possible even if Peter is annoyingly now privy to that being nothing more than a façade adopted by MJ for self-preservation.
Warmth radiates from their adjoined hands and spreads through her body, warming up her cheeks and likely causing them to become tinged with pink. She stops fighting the grin that was threatening to break out on her face, allowing herself to be more open, and enjoy and savour the moment- something she’s only starting to learn to become accustomed to doing with Peter, who seems to be the only person who can get her to let her guard down like this, to knock down some of the walls she has pain-stakingly put up brick by brick over the years to protect herself.
That feeling, the blissful joy and warmth, unfortunately fades, giving way to an unprecedented irritation as MJ puts her guard back up after having spotted the person she had unrealistically hoped they wouldn’t run into during their impromptu trip to the Avengers compound. Unrealistic because he owns, runs and basically lives here and Peter generally only comes here for the man who’s currently walking towards the two of them.
“Mr Stark!” Peter excitedly greets, letting go of her hand to jog the remaining distance towards the man in question.
MJ has to tamper down the petulant flush of what could be jealousy that surges through her at how easily Peter lets her go, his attention shifting away from her, and leaves her to go and greet his mentor but she reins it in when she realises how ridiculous she’s being.
“This is MJ,” Peter says, politely gesturing towards where she’s still stood in place as they walk back to her position. They come to stand in front of her then more quietly and shyly Peter adds, “MJ my, um, my MJ.”
MJ has to resist the overwhelming urge to smile at Peter’s bashfulness as he introduces her, maintaining her composure as Tony extends his hand out presumably to shake hers. “MJ, nice to finally meet you after all I’ve heard from Peter,” Peter’s cheeks turn an endearing hue of red at that. “You already know who I am,” he says by way of introducing himself.
MJ looks at the man’s face then down to his outstretched hand then to Peter, whose eyes nervously flit between the pair, then back Tony’s face and to his outstretched hand before she folds her arms and leaves him hanging. “Yeah, I know who you are.” A pause, “The guy who had to be kidnapped to realise the negative consequences of the weapons of mass destruction he was mass producing for the military.”
“Em-” Peter tries to jump in to stop what he knows is coming.
“Tell me, Tony, how come it took your own life being in danger for you to realise maybe producing weapons isn’t a worthwhile pursuit? Before that, did you not consider the little brown kids harmed by your weapons? Or hell, even the little white kids of countries like Sokovia?”
“Uh, MJ I don’t think that’s, um-” Peter stutters out, desperately trying to play mediator and stop things escalating.
Both MJ and Tony ignore him, maintaining eye contact with each other with neither willing to be first to back down.
A beat goes by. Then another.
Then finally, “I’ll be honest with you MJ-”
“Michelle to you, only my friends call me MJ,” she interjects, tone challenging.
Tony raises his eyebrows, partly bemused but also partly impressed by her, she can tell because it’s a facial expression she’s been on the receiving end of from many adults since she was seven years old. “Okay Michelle, as I was saying- I never considered the people at the other end of the weapons my company used to manufacture truth be told. And it is shitty that it took me being in personal danger to reconsider, but I’m a rich white guy who was brought up by another rich white guy, privilege flows through me and I never considered other people outside of myself. It’s not an excuse and I can never undo the decades of damage caused by SI weapons, but I am trying to unlearn my privileged white guy ways and have a better legacy on this world than my dad did.”
“Okay,” MJ says evenly, not giving away what she thinks of his little speech.
A beat of silence.
“What’s the logic behind putting a so-called “instant kill mode” in a teenager’s suit?”
“What is this, question time?” Tony huffs, clearly amused.
MJ just levels him with a deadpan look. She’s not amused.
“Okay, I only put it there in case of emergency as an absolute last resort where Peter is all out of options. A lot of things I put in Peter’s suit I put in because I deemed them necessary based on past personal experience. I nearly froze to death when I crash landed in my suit once, so I put a heater in Peter’s suit for example. During the battle of New York there were a few situations I found myself surrounded by Loki’s army almost overwhelmed and I never want Peter to be in a similar situation so that’s why I put in the instant kill mode. I also put in…” he carries on talking, listing further examples of features he put into Peter’s suit and the reasoning behind it as him and MJ walk ahead through the facility, leaving Peter behind.
The clock ticks by, hours going past with MJ and Tony talking (mostly MJ relentlessly quizzing him on his past and all things related to Spider-Man) for all of it whilst Peter just quietly works on his suit upgrades and web formula by himself not wanting to disturb the thing the two have together.
It’s only when Peter comes to interrupt them with a timid, “Uh, MJ? It’s getting late.” that MJ realises that hours have gone past, with the sun setting outside the lab, and it’s time for them to head back to Queens.
MJ is slightly taken aback by how she managed to lose track of time talking to a man she doesn’t like all that much, but she doesn’t show her surprise, just gets up and wordlessly gathers her things so the two of them can head home.
“If you ever want to question me on every single decision I’ve ever made in my life you’re more than welcome to come back whenever, Michelle,” Tony says with a teasing smirk.
She just stares back at him, completely blank-faced and giving nothing away, then turns to start heading towards the lab door to leave without saying anything else to the man. As she’s walking across the expansive lab to the door she hears Tony mutter something about “a keeper” to Peter, followed by Peter sputtering, adorably embarrassed, followed by a “shut up, Mr Stark” and other things MJ doesn’t hear as she distances herself from the pair and stops paying attention to the words they exchange.
Once Peter has said goodbye to Tony he comes to join her by the door so the can leave together. As they’re walking out of the door, Tony waves excitedly at them.
MJ for her part just gives him a middle-fingered salute then turns to walk out, quietly slipping Peter’s hand into her own and dragging him out behind her. It’s likely rude and shows a distinct lack of manners to flip off an adult, but looking at the red tinge of Peter’s cheeks and the way his cheeks puff out, showing how mortified he is by the whole exchange, she decides it was worth it because he makes a very adorable sight.
New Perspectives
It’s a quiet and slow Saturday night, the perfect type of night for MJ to spend curled up with a blanket draped over her shoulders like a cape as she thumbs through the new novel Peter gifted her just because it sounded like something that she’d enjoy when he’d read the blurb.
The novel isn’t all that good, the pacing too slow and story a little unfocused, so MJ is having a hard time really getting into the novel but she’s determined to get through it because she’s a firm believer in finishing things once you start them; also she wants to finish it because it was a gift from Peter but that feels too embarrassing to admit so she’ll stick to the not being a quitter thing.
Though she’s trying to focus on the book, the low quality of the work means she barely pays attention to the words in front of her and when a figure quietly lands on her fire escape she’s immediately up on her feet and headed towards her window, more than happy for the interruption.
There’s only one person who it could be on the fire escape of her apartment on the fifth floor so MJ doesn’t hesitate to open her window wide so he can come in. Normally the Peter who comes to see her post-patrol falls into one of two categories: the giddy, over-excitable human puppy who practically skips into her room already telling her all the funny stories of things he’d have seen during his patrol then presses insistent kisses all over her face, interrupting her Saturday night reading, or there’s the quieter, more solemn boy who says nothing at all, just strips out of his suit then wraps himself around her in her bed.
The version of Peter that stumbles through her window tonight is not one she’s seen in the three months they’ve officially been dating; she’s heard of this version and knew to expect him given Peter’s penchant for getting injured regularly. But it’s another thing entirely to see her boyfriend weakly climb through her window, barely able to keep himself up and clutching his side from where he’s bleeding profusely.
“Peter!” She tries to tamper the panic rising within her as she moves to wrap an arm around his waist to help him the rest of the way into her room.
“I’m okay Em-” Peter tries to reassure her but is interrupted by a wince that escapes him when MJ accidentally brushes his wounded side. “I’m okay, I’m okay. I just need to- to lie down,” he adds a small smile meant to reassure her but the way he has to catch his breath after each syllable does nothing to reassure her; this is the guy who ran twelve blocks to an ice cream parlour and back to get MJ an ice cream sundae before they closed without getting breathless just last week.
“Okay, um,” She tries to calm her panicked thoughts, think more calmly and rationally to figure out what she should do right now. She’d expected him to come to her all banged up, it seemed like something that came part and parcel with being Spider-Man’s girlfriend (she hates that title but she digresses), but actually being faced with an injured Peter and trying to act rationally is difficult.
MJ has to take some calming breaths. In through the nose, then out through her mouth. Then she finally stops panicking and comes up with a plan of action.
She has Peter sit down on her bed over the blanket so at the very least all the blood will go onto that, instructs him to do his best to stay sat up and not fall asleep then she goes to her bathroom to grab the first aid kit her mom keeps there.
The journey from her bedroom to the main bathroom and back isn’t very long: two minutes plus the one minute for her to grab the first aid kit, so three minutes total. And yet within those three minutes she walks back into her room to find Peter no longer sat up, now passed out on her bed and her favorite blanket almost soaked through with his blood.
Immediately she drops the first aid kit, more concerned with rushing to his side. “Peter! Peter!” She tries to shake him, as carefully as she can manage, to wake him but it’s useless.
“Fuck, fuck, fuck,” she mutters to herself over and over again, willing her hands to stop shaking and her muddled panicked thoughts to stop so she can figure out what to do.
She breathes in and out slowly, then tries again. Feels for his pulse in his neck and see that’s it’s there, slightly weak but present so at least he’s not…
She takes a step back to reach for the discarded first aid kit and grabs all the gauze in it and uses to apply pressure to his wound, using some vague medical knowledge she’s picked up from popular culture. Inwardly she chastises herself for not having taken some first aid courses when she’d anticipated an injured Peter coming to her- stupid, stupid, stupid.
With the hand not pressing gauze against what she now sees is a stab wound- of course he got stabbed- she reaches into the weird pocket compartment thing of his suit and takes his phone out. She offhandedly remembers the conversation with him where she’d asked him if he kept his phone up his ass when in his suit and Peter had tackled her onto her bed and tickled her but the happy memory feels like something from another life now.
She hesitates for a moment trying to figure out his password. She keys in her birthday and like magic the phone unlocks- he’s so predictable- then she goes through his contacts, scrolling straight to the letter T in search of the one person she figures is the best to call in this situation.
He picks up on the fifth ring, MJ counted. “Underoos, what’s-”
“It’s Michelle,” MJ interjects, voice coming out as a sob. “Peter is- he’s-”
For someone usually so assured when she speaks she finds that she can’t use her words but luckily for her, Tony seems to understand almost immediately. “Are you at your apartment Michelle?”
“Yeah, yeah I am,” MJ chokes out.
“Okay, I’ll be there in five,” Tony tells her, voice oddly calming, before he hangs up without giving her the chance to tell him her address.
She puts Peter’s phone down then uses her other hand to put pressure on his wound, silently pleading him to just hang on in there. She’s glad her parents are travelling this weekend and she’s home alone because she doesn’t know how she’d even explain this to them.
Three minutes later, she hears the sound of propellers out on her fire escape and she has to resist the urge to rush to her window in a panic and instead stays in place, still applying pressure to his wound.
Tony Stark walks through her still open window and comes to place a calming hand on her shoulder. “Hey, it’s okay kid. I’m gonna take him to the compound, we have the best medical technology there and he’ll be as good as new in a couple of hours. You can let go now, okay?” His tone is gentle and coaxing, like he’s trying to calm down a wild animal.
With more coaxing words MJ finally releases her hands from where she was placing pressure on his wound and moves aside to let Tony pick Peter up. He carries him onto the fire escape then as the nanites of his suit form around him he turns back to look at MJ. “Happy will be here in two minutes with a car to drive you to the compound,” is all he says before flying away with an unmoving, rag-doll like Peter in his arms.
MJ barely has time to gather her thoughts or clean up, all she has time for is to close her bedroom window, shove the now ruined blanket into a large plastic bag then she puts on a large hoodie and shoves her phone, Peter’s phone and her keys into the pockets and puts on some shoes before she runs downstairs.
When she gets there Happy is waiting at the front of her building so she immediately gets into the car then they’re off. She spends the first part of the journey on Peter’s phone texting May then Ned to update them on the situation then for the rest of it, she spends it worrying sick about Peter.
Before she knows it they’re pulling up in front of what she remembers as the medical wing of the Avengers compound. She blinks out of the panic-induced haze she’d been in for the entire car journey as she takes stock of her surroundings, willing her body to move and get out of the car.
“Um, I was gonna, um-” she struggles for words, instead pointing to the plastic bag with her ruined blanket.
Happy seems to sort of understand what she’s trying to say. “Don’t worry, I’ll take care of it. You go ahead.”
That’s all the encouragement MJ needs before she’s out of the car and running into the medical wing, frantically searching for a familiar face and some good news.
Inside she finds Tony waiting for her. He directs her through the wing to an empty waiting room, except it looks much nicer than any hospital waiting room she’s ever been in, then directs her to sit on one of the chairs. He tells her something about Peter getting a blood transfusion and how his wound is already healing but his voice sounds distant and muffled over the ringing of her ears.
At some point he must leave the room because she notices him walking back into the waiting room again. He comes to sit next to her and hands her a cup of tea which she gratefully accepts, needing an action she can focus on beyond chewing through her bottom lip with worry.
He then wraps a blanket she doesn’t recognise around her shoulders. “My laundry bot will clean the blood off your blanket, but in the meantime you can have this one. It’s Peter’s,” he adds in an attempt to provide her with some comfort.
Then after a beat, “He’s getting the transfusion now so he should be fine. And also May will be here soon.”
MJ just nods, finding that she’s unable to form actual words right now. Instead she just clutches the cup of tea between her hands and sits there in silence as Tony rubs a soothing hand over her back over the blanket draped over her. She appreciates that he resists his clear overwhelming urge to fill the silence.
They just stay like that for a while.
Waiting.
Legacy
MJ had been fully intending on spending her Saturday afternoon hanging out with Ned this weekend- he has dinner with Betty’s parents tomorrow meaning they can’t do their usual Sunday afternoon- but that’s before Peter had a Spider-Man emergency.
Usually it wouldn’t be an issue, she much prefers going out to do things and spend time with others whilst Peter is out Spider-Manning to stop herself ruminating on all the potential ways he could get hurt whilst out there and worrying herself needlessly. The main issue is that Peter had promised to look after Morgan today and with him unavailable it now falls upon MJ to look after the young girl alone because Ned decided to stay at Betty’s since MJ cancelled on him.
“I’m really sorry, I know you and Ned hadn’t hung out alone in a while and had planned this thing weeks ago,” Peter apologises for the umpteenth time as he strips out of his signature punny t-shirt.
MJ takes a moment to unabashedly watch him change from where she’s perched on the edge of his bed. “Stop apologising, Morgan and I will be fine.” Then after a beat because she can’t help herself, “I mean we might get into a bit of trouble whilst you’re gone but we’ll be fine.”
“Ha ha,” he gets out sarcastically. “If you were to get into trouble I wouldn’t take the fall for you with Pepper, just FYI.”
“You wouldn’t take the fall for me?” MJ asks with an exaggerated pout, feigning a sad tone like she’s genuinely disappointed.
And as desired, “What no, no, I was kidding Em. I’d take the fall for you even if you murdered someone.”
What an idiot.
“I’m messing with you, you dork,” MJ says, grinning widely. Over the time they’ve been together Peter has slowly but surely become accustomed to her sense of humour but occasionally, like now, she’s able to pull one over on him and it still feels good when she can so she revels in the feeling.
“I’m leaving,” Peter huffs out defeatedly.
“You’re leaving me?” MJ can’t help herself.
“Yes, yes I am,” Peter says it trying to sound assured as he heads to the bedroom window so he can leave. But he undermines himself when he does a quick 180 and comes back to the bed to press a peck to each of her cheeks then one final one to her lips like he always does before he goes out as Spider-Man, before turning back to leave.
MJ spends the next half an hour alone cleaning up the apartment a little bit in preparation for Morgan’s arrival. It’s ridiculous and unnecessary really, but she’s weirdly nervous since all the times she’s hung out with the younger girl it’s always been with Peter there as well.
It’s not like Morgan is an infant that needs constant attention and can’t do things for herself, she’s six years old and can do most things for herself but MJ can’t help but still be so nervous. Peter is definitely the one that’s good with kids in their relationship. MJ offhandedly wonders about how they’d fare if they were to have kids of their own but immediately dismisses the thought because her main priority right now should be her masters not…kids.
She’s saved from her thoughts by Peter’s doorbell ringing, signalling that Happy is here with Morgan so MJ is more than happy to go downstairs.
“Hey Morgan,” she greets the younger girl with a happy smile. “Harold,” she says to Happy in greeting.
Happy only nods his head in acknowledgement at her before turning to Morgan. “Okay kiddo, have fun and be safe. Your mom will come and pick you up later when she’s done with her meeting, okay?”
“Bye uncle Happy!” Morgan happily bids him farewell, already walking ahead into the apartment building.
MJ and Happy nod at each other in lieu of saying anything then MJ turns to follow after Morgan who’s already running up the stairs to Peter’s apartment.
“Wait, wait Morgan-” MJ tries to slow the little girl down but she’s already run up a whole flight, leaving MJ in the dust to try and catch up to her.
By the time MJ gets up to the fourth floor apartment she’s embarrassingly out of breath but does her best to disguise it at the sight of a giddy Morgan waiting by the apartment’s front door.
“Hey Morgan, you know that Peter had an emergency, right? So it’s just gonna be you and me for a while…” MJ says as she unlocks the front door, trying to tamper the little girl’s obvious excitement at getting to spend time with Peter whom she views as an older brother.
“I know, I’m excited to spend time with you,” is all Morgan says, stating it so simply and so matter-of-factly before walking through the now open door.
All MJ can do is stare after the girl, frozen in place and dumbfounded. She stays rooted in place until Morgan calls back to see if she’s coming and only then does MJ finally move, locking the door behind her as she goes into the apartment.
They spend what’s left of the morning making pancakes, though it mostly consists of them making a mess all over the kitchen that they both conspiringly agree Peter can clean up when he gets back.
After carbo-loading with pancakes they then have sufficient energy for a day of activities, mainly consisting of playing video games, braiding each other’s hair then MJ helps Morgan with her reading (Morgan in turn offers to help MJ with her homework and MJ has to explain to her that she has no homework since she’s kind of in between education and is waiting to start grad school and it’s, a whole thing).
Peter’s gone for basically the whole day meaning MJ ends up spending hours with the younger girl and MJ worries that Morgan is getting bored and is just waiting for Peter to come back so she keeps reassuring her that Peter will likely be back very soon.
And as with each time MJ tries to reassure her, Morgan just brushes her off, “It’s okay MJ.” Then the matter is put to rest and she just gets back to what she was doing.
Closer to the evening, MJ suggests they watch a film seeing as she’s fast running out of ideas on how to entertain the other girl and Morgan happily obliges, immediately moving to go and connect the laptop.
MJ is in awe of how she’s able to make sense of the millions of cables and gadgets Peter and Ned have by the TV and tells her as such. “How do you know which cable is which and what to connect to what?”
“Well, you can work it out. This green cable…” Morgan starts to explain the cable system, something which both Peter and Ned have tried to explain to her at multiple points, but now with Morgan explaining it to her it actually kind of makes sense surprisingly. Though she intends to keep playing dumb so she can tease Ned and Peter about being tech nerds.
As she listens to Morgan explain the cables MJ is hit with the sudden realisation of how she truly is her father’s daughter. Which is dumb, because of course she is- it’s literally biology- but MJ has never really given it much thought. There are all the (positive) aspects of Tony she sees in Morgan, her genius level intellect and intellectual curiosity, her perceptiveness and her calming presence.
MJ wasn’t entirely fond of the man, it’s no secret, but his legacy and the stamp of him on the world he left behind after sacrificing himself is pretty apparent. Especially now as she looks at the girl in front of her, who has hooked up the laptop to the TV and is now going through Peter’s film catalogue to choose something for them to watch.
“What do you wanna watch MJ?” Morgan asks, bringing MJ out of her bittersweet musings.
“You choose,” MJ says with a happy smile.
Big News
For someone so on it and observant, MJ is surprised by how long it takes her to notice. The sickness, the late period and so, so much more. Nearly two months of signs that she’d just dismissed or brushed off, happily residing in the land of denial.
It’s as she’s at work, fact checking her own story before she hands it into the editor- they have people to do that but she likes doing her own checks before submitting a story- that the realisation hits her. All the ignored signs finally coming together in her mind.
As soon as she figures it out she’s excusing herself from work, feigning a family emergency to her boss, then she’s out of the Bugle building and headed to buy as many different brands of pregnancy test as the pharmacy opposite the office sells.
After she buys likely more tests than she needs, she goes to the nearby café where she usually has her lunch when Peter’s too busy to make her a packed lunch to bring with her to work. She politely smiles at the staff who know her well as she makes a beeline for the bathroom.
She pees on five separate tests then places them all in a line on the closed toilet lid faced down, puts the timer on her phone on then paces the length of the small bathroom as she waits.
As she paces she thinks through the situation at hand, or attempts to think it through. On one hand her and Peter are both well settled into their careers and could probably afford to move out of their tiny one bed…probably. But then on the other hand, when her and Peter have talked about kids it’s always been as an abstract future idea not as a current thing, happening now; they both want kids in some undefined future but could they actually cope with having a kid now?
God, Peter. What would his reaction to all this be? She’s sure he wants kids, has always expressed a desire to build a family with her given how little remaining family he has himself. But an idealised need to have a family is quite different to actually knowing your wife is pregnant, isn’t it?
She decides to stop her spiralling thoughts. She doesn’t even know for sure that she’s pregnant, all the pregnancy tests could say she’s not pregnant and her period is just late because of stress- her phone timer going off interrupts her train of thought.
She turns her phone off, takes a deep breath then turns over each test in turn. All positive.
Well, fuck.
Part of MJ wants to go back to work, act like nothing happened and just go about her workday as normal. Another part wants to call Peter and excitedly tell him the news then get him to take the day off and meet her at home so they can celebrate. But most of all, she just needs space and time to think.
Before she knows it she’s walking back to her work building though she heads to the parking garage rather than going up to the office and gets in her car and drives away.
She drives around with no particular destination in mind, just needing the calming ritual of driving as she sorts through all her thoughts. However, she must have subconsciously had a destination in mind because she finds herself pulling up outside the private upstate cemetery sometime later- the fact that she didn’t even realise where she was driving to should worry her, who knows how safe her driving was getting here, but she can’t really find it in her to care.
She gets out of the car and walks towards the gates then inputs the password she’s seen Peter put in the handful of times she’s come here with him then walks through the gates.
MJ settles on a bench that faces his tombstone, first taking a moment to take off her suit jacket and unbutton some of the buttons on her shirt before facing the engraved letters on the stone.
“Hey, it’s Michelle. I- I don’t know why I’m here,” she huffs out with a mirthless laugh. She truly doesn’t know why she’s here; she just needed a place to think and sort through all her panicked thoughts, fears and insecurities first before she went home to face Peter and she’d somehow ended up here, at Tony Stark’s grave. She was never even that close with the man so it doesn’t really make sense.
She exhales audibly. “Well, I suppose I should let you know- I’m pregnant. I know you’re one of the people Peter tells all the major news in his life so I’m telling it to you on his behalf, I guess.” She grips the edge of the bench tightly then sits there in silence momentarily.
“How do you think I should tell him?” She asks, voice barely above a whisper. Then after a beat she catches herself, “Why the fuck am I asking a corpse that can’t respond? Oh my God.”
She sits there absentmindedly looking at the letters engraved into the stone, revelling in the peace and quiet that she’s never able to have in the city. It allows her to finally gather her thoughts and make some important decisions, or at least gather the courage to break the news to Peter then figure out what happens next together with him.
After some time passes she finally puts her suit jacket back on and gets up off the bench but she just stands facing the tombstone instead of immediately turning to leave for a while. “Peter misses you so much,” she breathes out. “I’m looking after him like I promised I would though,” she adds with a sad up quirk of her lips in a pathetic attempt of a smile to bring some levity to the situation.
Finally she walks out of the cemetery plot and heads to her car feeling calmer and more clear-headed than she had when she’d unintentionally drove here in an almost haze-like state. Some peace and quiet goes a long way, and it’s funny how even in death peace and quiet from Tony Stark always proves to be very helpful when it comes to her warring thoughts.
Her and the man may not have been particularly close, and she wasn’t entirely fond of him but his presence both literal and figurative is surprisingly calming for her so maybe he is- or sadly, more accurately, wasn’t- all that bad.
Maybe.