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At dawn, whole fields of sunflowers stand at attention, all facing east, and begin their romance with the rising sun.
The first time he notices her - Really notices her – is when she’s staring at him across the table asking him “What are you hiding, Peter”. It is such a startlingly contrast to Liz's quiet but firm leadership, direct and straight to the point. Any lie he comes up with will be torn apart in an instant with facts and evidence, but the very next second she’s giving him whiplash and brushing it off.
He chances a glance over his shoulder and spots her watching him, no judgement or anger but concern, worry. He can’t figure out why.
He turns down the avengers and he’s trying to re-prioritise his life again. Find the Peter in Spider-Man. Find the Spider-Man in the city. He is no longer trying to fit into a pre-prepared slot but make his own. It gives him a lot of time to think, and strangely, he spends it thinking of Michelle and her concerned gaze.
Michelle had once said she was observant so Peter thinks that to understand her best, he should take a leaf out of her book. He spends time watching her, watching how she interacts with the rest of the team, watching how that firmness is used with them, watching how she spends time alone and watching how she watches him.
He sees how the questions and comments he’d ignored, the ‘ Can’t believe you guys are at this lame party’ and the ‘ He’s already quit marching band and robotics’ , the ones he had brushed under the rug – he sees them for what they are.
She had been worried for him. Michelle had been trying to tell him, in her own strange way, that the party would have no bearing on her opinion of him, whether Spider-Man turned up or not. It was a high school party. There would be more, that particular one would be forgotten. She had been trying to point out her concerns, trying to get a teacher’s attention about how strange it was that a student was abandoning so many pursuits at once.
She is reserved and tentative with how she deals out her care. He watches and can’t figure out why from watching alone, but even from behind those walls that she has built up, he can see all her good shining through the cracks.
He may still be searching for himself, and maybe he always will, but he thinks he’s got some pretty good examples of good people to look to when he’s figuring out who he might like to be.
As that special star appears to move across the sky, young flowers follow its light, looking up, then over and westward, catching one final glance as the sun disappears over the horizon.
Peter stands there for far too long. He watches her, his decision made, but he wants to get a last look in before he says goodbye.
MJ will hate him for this choice, but her future is bright and burning and there within her grasp. She is excited and there is hope in her eyes as she talks about it. This time it is different and she isn’t expecting disappointment.
He knows now why she built her walls so high. From feeling as out of place as the rest of them at the start of High School, from dying and coming back simultaneously five years and five seconds later, to learning the same fate had met her father but not her younger now older sister or her mother, to learning they had found a new family in the time they’d been gone, to her first relationship being televised to the public. Michelle had built a castle to protect herself, allowing few people past the gates, but even after all that, even after everything that dreadful night, she had lowered them. She had found a way to see past her own cynicism and guided them into the fight with what remained. She had found hope and let him turn to her when he so desperately needed it.
Here she stood wrapped up in her own future, so eager and excited that she’d share with a stranger something she’d normally keep to her chest. He watches her, smiling tightly and trying not to let the tears fall. She has changed and she has grown and still has so much more growing to do. He looks to Ned and sees the same awaiting him.
As he’s walking away, desperate to turn back and read off that letter, Peter reminds himself of who she is, what she’s done so far and what she could do. Michelle was so smart, empathetic and sure of herself. She didn’t need any clouds darkening that.
He thinks that if she can come away from this year, or what she remembers of it, feeling hopeful about the future then maybe he can find some version of it too.
Even though it aches to think about and hurts even more to do, he starts getting himself a new suit. He is determined to take what May had taught him and continue her legacy. The first time he manages to put the suit on again, it doesn’t gut him the way he thought it might have. It feels freeing, it feels-... hopeful.
He wants to go thank MJ for her part in that. For reminding him that barriers aren’t ends and are simply obstacles, even without her saying a word. He shouldn’t though, it is too dark now.
The stems of young sunflowers grow more at night — but only on their west side, which is what allows their heads to bend eastward.
Even with them gone, the lessons each of them – May, Ned and MJ – had taught him, continue to stay with him. They shape him.
Sometimes, on bad nights, it helps knowing that MJ and Ned are still put there. The shadows that hang over his head don't feel so dark when he thinks of their mega-watt smiles and who might be blinded by them.
At night, in its absence, the sunflowers face east again, anticipating the sun’s return.
Sometimes, at night, he indulges himself and thinks of her. Thinks of what her future might be like. They had talked at length about the possibilities their future had presented.
MJ had been contemplating majoring in some form of civil engineering, determined to find a way to give people spaces that help them rather than more luxury apartments or skyscrapers that drive up the rent and drive them out. The beauty of the city had always been the people for her, she wanted to make the city beautiful for them.
Sometimes when he’s swinging, especially when he’s faced off against Fisk, he wonders what the city might look like under her guidance.
Sometimes when he’s passing a construction site, especially when its for new housing or a new rec centre, he wonders if they’re building towards something she’s had a part in.
During the day, the stems’ east side grows, and they bend west with the sun.
If she had been certain of herself before, then Peter has no idea how to describe her now.
Long gone is the hesitancy and tentativeness. She cares readily and openly, unafraid of what she might get back so long as someone is being helped. MJ is bold and decisive, still unafraid to speak her mind but she uses it less like barbed wire to keep people away now. There are still thick walls around her own vulnerabilities but more people are allowed in behind them.
He sits outside of them for a long while. It is the very least of what he deserves, but he takes the opportunity to watch once more.
He watches how protective she is of Flash now, but how readily she will call him out when he crosses the line. He watches how strong her relationship is with Ned, how they move with a familiarity and ease, reading each other so quickly and so well, that he can’t even bring himself to be jealous because it is pure and filled with love.
He watches as she turns down job after job because while she needs the cash, there are lines she won’t cross. He watches as she waits, sure of her skill and sure of herself that right one will come along.
It does.
He watches as she walks into her new job after a fight they’d had multiple times since she’d applied. He watches as she comes back out, struggling not to sing the praises of a name he had never wanted to hear again.
Peter stifles his own paranoia and looks into it all. He wants to do this for her because it is the least of what he can do. She continues to magnificent things and he will try to grow past this barrier that blocks him. He learns that Harry Osborn came back to nothing after the blip. His mother had died and any funds had been surrender with no living heir to take them. He saw what he’d been missing during the years he’d spent in penthouses and wanted to make a change. Nothing Peter reads make his reservations waver, so he looks to her.
He watches MJ and her trust and faith in this man, her excitement over this company, her joy in her work and decides that he can trust in that.
This is the woman who has figured him out twice, the woman who stood by him during four months of hell, the woman who saw the very name she’d wanted to shed herself of everyday in the papers but did not shake. She was the woman who had had so many memories ripped away from her but had gone on to make so many more. MJ was the woman who had graced him with her heart even though he definitely did not deserve it, content to have her in his life again but eagerly soaking up any thing more she was willing to give. She was the woman who knew what she wanted and took it, the woman who called pointed out when people’s defences started hurting others because she had lived behind her own for so long. Simply put, she was MJ Watson.
He can trust in her.
He always will.
They do this until they get old, when they stop moving. Then, always facing east, the old flowers await visits from insects that will spread their pollen and make new sunflowers. Those flowers too, will follow the sun.