Chapter 1:

To lose a daughter.

I rub my fingers through his silken hair. The movement causes the narrow causeway of air between my face and his hair to grow heavy with the heavenly scent of him. His scent is a perfume I've loved for the past twenty-five years. I breathe in deeply. It's comforting; sweet notes of safety and strength, love and loyalty that cause my eyelids to flutter shut as I remember all that has passed between us in these last twenty-five years.

I lean down and kiss his lips.

Ah, we have lost so much, my love.

"Gross. Can't you two get a room?"

Ah, but we have gained even more.

"Mayday Parker," My love chuckles as he reaches for the pillow in my lap, the one he had been resting his head upon, and with superhuman aim and speed, tossed it at our young daughter's head. She moves too fast for my eyes to register and all I see is a blur of movement. At a mere fourteen years old, she's faster than her father ever was.

"Too slow, ol' man." She picks the pillow up from the floor and chucks it back at him. It's a missile, slicing through the air with perfect aim and incredible speed. He catches it but it connects with his open palms with such intensity that I see him grimace. Because she's been different her entire life, her "different" seems normal to her. No, she doesn't realize yet that she's different... but we know it's only a matter of time. My love has been trying desperately to teach her to be "normal" but "normal" has never been a word in our spectacular Mayday's vocabulary.

"Alright, sport, what did I say about throwing so hard?" He sits up from my lap, his face solemn. "Just because you can, doesn't mean-"

"Doesn't mean you should." May rolls her beautiful cerulean eyes then smirks. "I heard you the first thousand times, Dad." She is a perfect combination of us both. His brains, my stubbornness; his dark chestnut hair, my sharp bone structure. When she stands beside me, everyone says she's my twin. When she opens her mouth, everyone says she's his spitting image. I've made many mistakes in my life but these two... these two perfect humans are the two things I have done undeniably right in this world.

They're play-fighting now. He has her in a bear hug and they're laughing like madmen as she struggles against him.

Thank you, God. I'm smiling from my seat on the couch. Thank you for this. For them. For everything.

I place my hand on my stomach and think of the little boy growing in there. Just four more months to go.

"Ma!" May is shrieking. She's escaped her father's grip and she's barreling towards me, her gangly arms waving wildly as she runs. She falls onto the couch and crawls into my lap. She is far too tall to fit into my lap and I laugh hard as she throws her arms around my neck and buries her face into my crimson hair. "Protect me!"

I wrap my arms around her then smile up into her father's face. He's breathless but wearing a large grin.

"I forfeit! I'm no match for Mary Jane Watson-Parker."

"That's right, Parker. And don't you ever forget it."

It's nighttime. I lay in bed reading the latest from John Grisham listening to the faint sound of my husband brushing his teeth in our adjoining bathroom. He spits into the sink and I hear the faucet turn on. The faucet turns off.

"She's getting stronger, MJ."

I knew this talk was coming – but I didn't realize it would be this soon. I set my book on the end table to my side.

"She's just a child, Peter."

He sighed heavily as he crossed the bedroom and got into bed beside me.

"I was sixteen when it happened to me. She's not too far off from that." He placed his hand on the comforter over my leg then squeezed gently. "We both knew this day would come. She needs to know that she's different and she needs to know how to handle that difference. If we keep pretending that she's "normal," others will begin to suspect and-"

I shudder at the thought of what would happen to her if anyone found out who she is.

And more importantly: Who's daughter she is.

He continued to speak, "It has to happen before she goes back to school. She's been wanting to try out for the track team. I keep telling her to hold back but you know she won't hold back at the tryouts and when that happens, when they clock her going faster than what's humanly possible..." He let his words trail off. He didn't have to fill in the blanks.

School would be starting back up again in two weeks. I wanted to keep her superhero lineage a secret for as long as possible for noble and, ashamedly, selfish reasons. I wanted our daughter to experience a normal childhood for as long as she could but I also wanted to experience a normal family life for as long as I could. I loved being a mother and wife... yes – you read that right. I, Mary Jane Watson, heart-breaker and partier extraordinaire turned doting mother and devoted wife. As soon as Peter and I had found out that I was pregnant, he gave up his life as Spider-Man. When it was just he and I, it was different. He had a lot to lose when it was just he and I but he had far too much to lose when it became the three of us. As soon as May was born, we knew she had inherited his abilities... (Imagine my surprise when I found out our fifteen month old baby girl had bent the bars of her crib to escape naptime.) Every year, her abilities grew exponentially and we knew it was only a matter of time until her strength surpassed her father's.

"Look, MJ," I had been staring off into the distance, tears welling in my eyes. Peter's hand gently cupped my chin and forced me to turn my head to face him. I blinked and two massive tears fell down my cheeks. "This doesn't mean she starts fighting crime. That will never be an option. But she needs to know who she is."

"She's May Parker. Our daughter." I snapped at him a little too viciously but he did not flinch. Oh, my steadfast and always rational husband. He was the ice to my fire and I still, to this day, don't know what I would've done without him to keep me steady.

"Yes, and nothing will ever change that."

"Tomorrow then?" I bit down on my bottom lip to quell the sob I felt bubbling at the back of my throat.

He nodded then tucked a stray piece of hair behind my ear. "Tomorrow."

Tomorrow, I would be losing my daughter.

Tomorrow, the world would be gaining another superhero.

Writer's Note: This is just a one shot to defeat writer's block. If you truly enjoyed this and would like to see more, let me know and maybe I'll add a couple more chapters. Otherwise, I'm just going to use this to defeat writer's block whenever it hits :)