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Marigolds are extinct.
They’re a recent loss tacked onto the expansive list of innocent bystanders still victimized by Old World issues. Gone forever, alongside the horses and the polar bears and California.
When Lyla had broken the news to Miguel, soft and so clucking hesitant, he tried to recreate them. Had hidden himself away in some stuffy lab and poured over thousands of research journals, tinkering with the DNA of at least 40 different species of weeds and grasses and flowers all in some desperate attempt to recreate what once was. But no amount of gene splicing and chromosome weaving could recreate the cempasúchil.
In the end, Lyla orders him faux flowers instead.
The package arrives two weeks too early.
When Miguel enters his office and spots it perched innocently on his console, he stops for a moment and stares the parcel down until it’s a yellow-white blur wavering like a mirage. It takes a while before his brain kicks into gear and he moves, staggering to his platform and getting to work.
It’s nothing, he tells himself the first day. The easiest day. You can wait.
You need to wait.
Miguel can only ignore it for three days until he can’t bear seeing it any longer and he has to open it.
His talons slice through the crinkling paper, nostrils flaring as he catches the faint, waxy scent that clings to the ribbons like decay. He dumps the contents out, and golden petals tumble onto the metal surface of the console like roiling streams lit by the sun— gilded and shimmering and so, so captivating.
But they’re plastic. Nothing like the real flowers.
Still. Miguel can’t find the strength to swipe them away.
So he leaves them scattered there, even as he receives questioning looks from the newest Spiders, the ones who don’t know and are too afraid to ask.
He leaves them there even as Miles Morales stumbles into his office, excited and bubbly, with a question teetering on the tip of his tongue until he catches sight of the flowers and pauses. Blinks. Before his expression softens with understanding.
With kinship.
He leaves them there even as he’s met with completed reports and murmured reassurances and that terrible look of pity.
“Lyla.”
Miguel’s voice echoes, ricocheting against the shell of a room that could be a bedroom. Though these days it was more of a tomb, as close to a place of rest as Miguel could prepare without digging a hole and burying himself in it.
In his hands, he clutches a homemade card. It’s a tiny thing. A Downtown kid had given it to him so many nights ago when Nueva York thought Spider-Man was nothing more than the angel-turned-hero mouthpiece of Thor. Back when his mask was a mask and not a second skin used as a shield against the world.
Thx u, Spydey! it reads, too bright and innocent. It reminds him of so much— of the things he’s sacrificed and the things he’s lost and the things he’ll never have.
“Yes, Miguel?”
His hands clench around the card. “Get me the paper.” His voice barely trembles with the words.
“Oh! Already?”
Silence.
“Well. Got it, boss.”
He sets up the papel picados next.
It’s a week before he needs to, and his office becomes alive with color. Anywhere a paper can hang, Miguel plasters the space with purplewhitegreen tissue paper, stringing them along lines of twine that dangle in the whisper of a breeze (provided graciously by the AC units tucked away in his ceiling).
Each design is hand-done. Customized flowers, skulls, hearts, crosses, sunrises; anything that Miguel could think of, they’re here.
He had spent countless precious hours huddled over the wooden table in his barely lived-in apartment; only pausing his pursuit to snarl in agony when his claws caught against the paper and they tore. He doesn’t know how many stacks of tissue paper he went through until he finally managed to get enough that deserved to be used, tiled-floor left covered in shreds that could be mistaken for celebratory confetti.
Though it doesn’t feel as if there’s anything to celebrate.
This time, when Spiders come to get their assignments, they don’t give him questioning looks. They know better by now, explanations whispered into their ears by older, more experienced members of the society.
They can’t even look him in the eye.
That same day, after Miguel has finished hanging up the papers, Peter finds him. He brings a take-out bag filled with Tupperware— spreads of bagels, meats, and cream cheeses. Some of the marker labels are smudged— English and Hebrew a runny muddle from the beads of condensation rolling across the outside of the plastic. Miguel clutches the bag, barely holding back the urge to rip.
“Take care of yourself, bud,” Peter says, a hand pressing against Miguel’s shoulder blade as he stares up at the colorful paper mosaic. “We’re thinking about you. All of us.”
Miguel wishes they wouldn’t.
Sometimes, in the dead of night, when all he has for company is the cacophony of city life and the polarized thrum of Maglev cars and his racing thoughts, Miguel wonders why he’s still here when there’s no point in his existence.
Once, he had found a purpose in preserving the Canon. That— That was something tangible, something he could sink his claws into and defend until blood poured down the sides of his mouth and his heart wasn’t a million bite-sized pieces. Because if he was protecting the Canon, he was still protecting some part of her. If all the Spiders in all the universes were interwoven in some grand web of pain and tragedy— then he wasn’t alone.
But the Canon doesn’t exist. He had spent years on a flawed, agonizing lie. And all he has to show for it is a bundle of grief with the lives of billions weighing on his shoulders.
Though, despite this, he still somehow has a Society of all the best Spider-folk sworn and ready to defend the multiverse. He still has Jess— capable, brilliant, worthy Jess— his second in command. If he left Lyla in her hands, he knows that she would skyrocket the Society into a new era of glory that he couldn’t even begin to imagine.
Then it wouldn’t be hard to disappear for a while.
It is four days too soon and he's laying out candles. They cast looming shadows across the console and the platform; the golden shine from the screens allow them to stretch upupup, and they become alabaster pillars instead of the stubby little disappointments he had scrounged up from some forgotten part of his cluttered kitchen cabinet.
“Lyla, they’re in space spots, right?”
“Yep,” Lyla chirps as she materializes at his side, “all good here.” She’s not wearing her heart sunglasses as she scans the area, eyes skipping over the lighter nestled near the candles. “No chance of fire in sight.”
Good to know.
He’s not going to light all the candles just yet. It would be a hazard, and they’ve lost enough wax as it is, used and reused too many times to count.
But it is four days too soon.
So, with shaking hands, Miguel grabs the rusted, years-old lighter that he only keeps for moments like these. With a flick of his thumb, it sparks, and he presses it to the center-most candle’s wick. When it’s lit, he stands there and watches the flames dance a waltz.
He sighs, heavy and weary. He slumps forward, hands curling around the lip of the console as the fire dancedancedances. Shock— some days were harder than others, but today decided to be extraordinarily difficult. He brings his trembling palms to his eyes and presses, greedily gulping down the pain it brings him.
There’s a lull in the air before Lyla whispers, “Want me to redirect any backup requests?”
Another sigh.
“Please.”
The worst nights are when he dreams about her.
Not nightmares. Dreams. All the possibilities play out blearily behind his eyelids, haunting him more than the ghost of his sins ever could.
He lives countless different lives in these dreams: national soccer tournaments and quinceañeras and weddings. Sometimes he's there when she passes the bar with flying colors or when she welcomes a family into the world. Sometimes, she's an influential artist or an award-winning scientist or a world-class professor.
Sometimes she's five years old again, and Miguel is cooking pancakes while Selena plays in the background of their apartment— her shrieks of laughter echo through the kitchen, and the scent of strawberry shampoo lingers in the air, and everything is okay.
Everything is okay.
There is only one day left and suddenly it's not enough time.
The majority of it is spent growling at anyone who dares breach the threshold of the office as he places pan de muertos and oranges and strawberry shampoo across his console. Arranging basins of water nearby and hoping that she won't mind it’ll be stale.
He moves with a franticness he had forgotten he possessed, driven by days-long exhaustion and the writhing snake in the pit of his stomach twisting his organs so tightly he swears he’ll burst. With wobbly knees and barely held-back whines, he rummages through a box he had unearthed some time ago, adding mini soccer balls and velvet scrunchies and all the things that weren't hers, but still reminded him of her, to the decorations.
When he's finished, and most of the day is lost to the blur, he takes a step back.
He blinks as he roves over the ofrenda. It’s single-tiered, and most of it is supported by the console. The quilt holding the items is tattered and frayed; the fake marigold petals are scattered haphazardly, brushing dangerously close to the pitifully small candles. Some of the papel picados threaten to slip off their string. The recent touches aren't as bad, but they were added too feverishly to look nice.
The screens above the platform buzz, humming sympathetically as silent recordings of Gabriella play. It isn't enough to distract from the absolute mess of an altar he’s created.
It's pathetic.
Shame wells up inside of him, choking and all-consuming; he can’t help the unshed tears that prick at the corners of his eyes.
Gabi didn't deserve this— this mockery of her memory.
She deserved something so much better than this: an ofrenda that was massive and beautiful and had things that were hers. The soccer ball, the shampoo, the marigolds— none of it was right.
Why couldn't it be right?
It’ll never be. The thought comes to him, unbidden and tortured, stumbling on shaky legs as Miguel lights the rest of the candles, skin crawling as he drifts out of the office. Children are not meant to go before their parents.
When he was a kid, Dia de Muertos was a vibrant celebration of life filled with chortled stories of the dead over stashed away calaveras. And sure, he didn't have the best relationship with his jefa, but she made sure to knock the importance of the tradition into his head.
“To remember your dead is to remember yourself,” she used to say to him and Gabriel as she straightened out the generations-old quilt supporting their hidden ofrenda. It had been their family’s little secret, tucked away into a corner of the house George never happened upon. “Carry their memories. Let them live in you.”
Those were some of the only times he saw her truly happy. When she crafted the altar— for her amá and her mamita and her tíos and all the other family that Miguel didn't recognize but knew— she lit up like a sunset, impossibly golden and bright, cempasúchil in her hands and candles flickering in the brown of her eyes.
In those moments, Miguel swore that he would.
Then he got older. More cynical. And shipped off to Alchemax as some sort of backward prodigal son. Altar building and visiting his ancestors’ grave sights fell to the wayside, replaced by “intellectual pursuits”.
Miguel wishes he could go back in time. Back to when he was a skinny, snot-nosed, selfish brat.
He’d make sure that Kron Stone drowned him then.
It is an hour before Gabriella is meant to return.
Miguel didn't have the strength to go back to that soulless apartment. He just— he couldn't leave the ofrenda in the state it was in— couldn't let that be what greeted Gabriella when she came for her yearly visit.
So. He’s back in his office, and he has things— things he was missing— things that he hopes she’ll like.
But first, he wants to tidy up what he's already laid out. His franticness has quelled now, the tidal wave of emotions lulled to a somber creek. He’s still struggling with the trickle of sorrow, but he remembers now what the ofrenda is meant to represent.
Not grief, though it is still an ever-looming presence that he can't ignore. Not agony, though it festers in the structure of his bones like wood and termites.
No. This was meant to be about life.
Gabriella, with the time that they had together, filled his days with so much love. Mornings with blueberry pancakes and afternoons in the blazing sun and nights of cheesy telenovela reruns. Before her, life was…cold. Empty. But when he was her dad? It brought him a warmth he had never had, motivated him with a purpose he never possessed— he wanted to be good.
She's gone, though, and life is cold again.
Now, it’s his job to honor the life she lived and memories she left behind because, well, he’s the only one left to do so.
With that, he begins.
First, he straightens out the ragged quilt, brushes the plastic petals into neat piles, and gives the basins fresh water and salt. It would be nice to burn copal, but the Copal tree has been gone longer than Miguel has been alive.
Moving to the papel picados, he aligns them so they're not at risk of being set ablaze. The candles are still roaring and, though they are small, their flames dance, cutting smoothly through the dimness of the room and rising to meet the rays of light glimmering down from the holograms floating above. It’s ethereal.
He adds to the ofrenda next. Candy and calaveras. Toys that he knows Gabriella would have adored playing with. They make sweet homes next to the shampoo and scrunchies and soccer balls— and though it isn't right and never will be— he thinks it's the thought that counts.
When it feels like he's finished, he takes a step back and observes the ofrenda with a set of fresh but exhausted eyes.
It’s… a lot. Bright. Colorful. But Gabriella smiles down from the screens above, and he can't help but imagine that she's smiling down at what he's created. There are a lot of things he wants to add, and even more that he wants to do, but time has, unfortunately, run out for him.
Before he leaves, he takes a moment to just…look.
He gazes at the food— the oranges, bread, and sweets— and he hopes that it’ll fuel her journey to and fro…wherever; then, he turns his attention to the basins of water, and he hopes it’ll quench her thirst; he hopes that the salt and candles will protect her from earthly temptations and the dark; hopes the toys will give her entertainment; hopes the soccer balls and the scrunchies and shampoo will remind her of the life she once had; hopes the videos are the ones she’d want displayed; hopes the flowers—
Miguel, struck suddenly by the thought, sucks in a deep breath. It tastes like plastic and wax, and it burns as he swallows it down.
He hopes these faux flowers are enough to guide her to him.
Miguel chokes a little as he exhales.
Shock. There are a lot of hopes he has left untouched. A lot of wishes left unfilled. A lot of words left unsaid.
Despite everything, he can say this, though:
“I love you, mija,” he whispers. Gazing at the ofrenda, a lump forms at the base of his throat. He squeezes out his words around it. “See you soon.”