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Peter's left side started pulling before he reached the cemetery gate. It did that in the cold now - the wound and December having some kind of ongoing disagreement about healing timelines that neither side was going to win. He'd slept five hours. That was up from four, which had been the number all week, and honestly four had been generous.
The paths were shoveled and salted. A few other visitors moved between stones with flowers. Nobody made eye contact. He appreciated that.
Peter carried a bouquet of winter mums from the stand on Atlantic - white, some greenery, nothing expensive. The stems were wrapped in a plastic bag to keep the water off his jacket.
Jean was already at the entrance when he arrived.
Tan coat, hood up over the dark knit cap, scarf across the lower half of her face. She'd been standing there long enough for the cold to find her, but she hadn't moved yet. Two stems rested in her gloved hand - a white carnation and a yellow chrysanthemum.
She brought flowers.
"Hey," Peter said.
"Hey." Her voice came through the scarf, muffled and flat.
She'd asked three days ago. Regular call, nothing urgent - she'd been on the motel Wi-Fi, he'd been eating rice from a pot he hadn't washed after the last time he'd made rice, or possibly the time before that. He'd mentioned May's grave without really planning to, the way he did with most of the real stuff - didn't mention it, didn't mention it, didn't mention it, and then mentioned it.
Jean had said, "Can I come?"
"New York is still riskier for you," he'd told her. "We could meet in Jersey."
"May isn't buried in Jersey."
He hadn't had an answer for that.
So he'd texted her the entrance, the time, and the train.
They walked through the gate. Once they were past the main path, Jean lowered the scarf to her chin. The cold had put color in her face. Her breath came out white and disappeared before it got anywhere.
Peter led. Jean walked beside him without asking where they were going, which he appreciated in a way he couldn't have explained without sounding weird about it.
He counted rows without thinking. Second path, left at the oak with the split trunk, past the identical small stones. May was seven from the end. His legs knew the route better than his head did at this point.
Her stone was simple. Her name, the dates, and the words Peter knew without looking: When you help someone, you help everyone. Dead stems from his last visit lay at the base. He crouched, unwrapped the new bouquet, bundled the old ones into the plastic. He set the bundle beside his boot.
Jean stood a few steps back. Her free hand was in her coat pocket.
Peter set the mums against the base of the stone. His fingers measured the stems automatically, the same careful grip he used on glass, door handles, anything breakable - which at this point was a background process, like breathing, except breathing didn't occasionally shatter a coffee mug. The stone was cold where the letters sat. He rested his palm against her name for a second.
Hey, Aunt May.
He stood.
"You can... come closer," he said. "If you want."
Jean took one step forward. She didn't lower her eyes. Then she crouched and set the white carnation beside Peter's mums. Her gloved fingers stayed around the stem for a second before she let go.
Peter didn't say anything. Jean stood beside him.
They stayed there. The wind was lighter than on the walk in, but still cold enough that Peter's ears ached. A woman three rows over was kneeling beside a stone with a wreath. Somewhere past the fence, a car door closed.
"Sara always took the bed closest to the door," Jean said.
Peter looked at her.
"Every place we stayed. She said she slept better there."
"Did she?"
"She could sleep anywhere."
The chrysanthemum turned once between her fingers.
"The white one was for May," Jean said. "This one's for Sara."
Peter looked at the yellow flower.
"I thought I could leave it here too." Her fingers closed more tightly around the stem. "But this isn't hers."
Peter waited.
"No grave. No body. No marker. Nothing with her name on it."
He had a stone. He hated it some days and needed it others. He could drive to Brooklyn on Christmas Eve, stand beside it, leave flowers, and the flowers would still be there the next morning.
Jean didn't have that.
"I'm sorry," he said.
It wasn't enough. He knew that before the sentence was done.
Jean didn't answer. They stayed. Neither of them talked. Footsteps on gravel, wind in bare branches, something metallic from the maintenance shed. Peter's nose went numb. His left side had started pulling again. The chrysanthemum stayed in Jean's hand.
Peter picked up the bundle of dead stems and walked her back toward the entrance. At the gate, he dropped the bundle into the cemetery trash barrel. Jean pulled the scarf back over her mouth. The chrysanthemum was still in her other hand, stem bent where she'd been holding it too tight. He watched her tuck it inside her coat pocket, stem first, petals just below the edge. Keeping it.
He should say something. Something useful.
"Have you... eaten?" Peter asked.
"Not yet."
"There's, uh, a place near here. Nick's. It's not fancy."
Jean looked at him.
"Is it warm?"
"Very warm. Uncomfortably warm, probably. The kind of warm where the windows fog up and you can't see outside."
"That's fine."
Nick's was a diner on Third Avenue with a counter, eight booths, and a laminated menu that hadn't been updated since the laminating machine was purchased. The windows were fogged, as promised. The radiator under the front window was going so hard the nearest table was empty despite the morning crowd. Peter took the second booth from the door and hung his jacket on the hook beside the seat. Jean sat across from him, coat still on, hood finally down, scarf loose around her neck. She kept the knit cap. After a minute she unzipped the coat but left it on her shoulders. Not staying, not leaving. He got that.
The waitress brought coffee without asking. Peter wrapped both hands around the mug. Jean held hers between her gloved hands, testing the heat through the fabric.
"What's good?" she asked.
"The eggs, I guess. The toast. Coffee's fine if you don't think about it too hard."
"That's a recommendation?"
"It's a diner."
Jean looked at the menu for about four seconds, longer than she usually gave anything that didn't involve exits or schedules. She ordered eggs, toast, and hash browns. Peter ordered the same without looking at the menu because he'd stopped pretending to read it about thirty seconds ago. The waitress took the menus like someone who had been pouring coffee on Christmas Eve since before either of them was born and fully expected to be doing it next year.
The diner was half full. Couples, a few solo regulars at the counter, a man reading a folded newspaper in the booth behind Jean. Peter's senses filed the ambient noise without processing it - silverware, the grill, a radio playing something with horns that was either jazz or Christmas music or both. His spider-sense was quiet. Had been all morning.
Jean peeled her gloves off and set them beside the napkin dispenser. Her hands were red from the cold. She turned the mug between them without drinking.
"Thank you," she said. "For letting me come."
"You asked."
That was the part that mattered. That was the whole thing, really.
"I know."
The food arrived. The eggs were fine. The toast was overcooked. The hash browns were good the way diner hash browns were always good when the cook had given up on improving them twenty years ago. Peter ate fast because his metabolism treated every meal like a suggestion and he'd stopped pretending that wasn't the case. Jean ate steadily, protecting the last quarter of her toast while she worked through the eggs.
Peter looked at her over his coffee. With her coat unzipped and her scarf loose, she looked less like a bundle of winter layers and more like Jean again. The tension across her shoulders had loosened by a fraction, which on Jean was practically lounging.
Peter realized he was still looking. Stop that. He picked up his mug.
"What are you doing tonight?" Jean asked.
Peter had not planned to do anything tonight. Tonight, to the extent that a plan existed, involved going home, checking whether the turntable motor was an original Technics part or a replacement, eating something he'd regret, and then sitting in his apartment until the quiet got bad enough to justify patrol. It wasn't a great plan. It was the plan.
It was also pretty much how he'd spent every Christmas Eve for four years. Fix something. Eat something bad. Patrol until it was technically Christmas morning. Ned and MJ probably had plans. Peter hadn't asked. He could've - that was the thing. He could've just asked, and the reason he didn't had nothing to do with them. Asking meant explaining why he was free, which meant saying he'd spent the last four Christmases alone, and there was no way to say that without making it sound like their fault. It wasn't. He just didn't know how to make the sentence come out right.
So don't.
"Nothing specific."
"There's a thing at Bryant Park," Jean said. "The holiday market. It stays open until late on Christmas Eve." She said this in the tone he'd started recognizing - the one designed to survive a no. "And Times Square does this thing at midnight where all the billboards sync up." She picked up her mug. "I looked it up."
Peter watched her wrap both hands around her mug.
"Are you asking me to go out on Christmas Eve?"
"I'm telling you a thing exists and asking if you want to go to it."
"Those are the same thing."
"They're adjacent."
"That's not how words work."
"You misspelled surveillance."
"That was one time."
Peter leaned back against the booth. The vinyl creaked. The radiator under the far window clanked.
He wanted to say yes. The yes showed up before the rest of him caught up - before the math on exposure, transit, crowds, and what it meant that Jean Grey was asking him to stand in Times Square on Christmas Eve like two people who just did that. Like that was a thing they did.
Is that what this is?
"You'd have to come back into New York," he said.
"I'm already in New York."
"You know what I mean."
"I know what you mean." She set the mug down. "I checked the trains. PATH runs all night on Christmas Eve. Last 81 from Exchange Place leaves around eleven-fifteen."
"So if we stay for midnight, you miss it."
"I miss it."
She said it the way she said a lot of things that should have been a bigger deal. Flat. Decided.
"And then?"
"Then I figure it out."
Peter looked at her.
He could've said sure. He could've said yeah, I don't have plans anyway. Something that gave him room if this turned out to be something other than what it felt like.
"Yeah," he said. "I want to go."
"Six o'clock," Jean said. "Bryant Park. The ice rink entrance on Forty-Second."
"You don't want to ice skate."
"I don't want to ice skate. But it's a specific meeting point."
"Specific meeting points. Professional-ish."
"I've been practicing."
The waitress came by with the check. Peter put down enough cash for both plates and a tip. Jean looked at the bills.
"I can pay for mine."
"I know. Next time."
He said it before thinking about it. Next time. Like there was going to be one.
She didn't fight it. She picked up her gloves.
Peter's phone buzzed. Not a text. E.V.'s priority alert. Coordinates. Contained but developing.
Not now.
"I have to go," he said.
Jean nodded.
"Six o'clock," she said. "Bryant Park."
"I'll be there." He stood and pulled his jacket off the hook. Halfway into it, he stopped and looked at her across the table. "I'll be there."
"You said that."
"I meant it both times."
He finished pulling on his jacket and walked out into the cold. Through the fogged glass, he could see Jean still sitting in the booth, pulling on her gloves.
Six o'clock.
Peter found the nearest alley, pulled the mask from his jacket, and went to work.
He had somewhere to be at six.