A/N: This story takes place sometime after Spider-Man: The Last Adventure. Peter has lost his powers and is living in Portland, working as a scientist, and happily married to a pregnant Mary Jane Watson. References abound to Spectacular Spider-Man 219.

It was getting late at Poet's Beach. The setting sun, a ripe red fruit, was cut in half by the Willamette River. Peter Parker looked out at it, imagining he could walk on that fiery path across the water. The river's current swept the sand with a quietly bubbling rush, high tide smoothing away the footprints of the crowd. With the sun setting and a cold front coming in, he and Mary Jane had the petite expanse of sand to themselves.

"I think I just made myself feel sad about the Vulture," Mary Jane said.

Before, Peter had rubbed suntan lotion onto Mary Jane's back, and greatly enjoyed himself. With the sunset, there was no need for that, so he just rubbed MJ's shoulders, trying to draw away some of the discomfort of having a small life growing inside her. "That's okay. We can chalk it up to the hormones."

"I'm serious."

Mary Jane was sitting on a towel while Peter sat in a beach chair behind her. She leaned back now, resting her head on his knee. Peter shifted to petting his fingers through her long red hair. He knew pregnant women were supposed to have a glow, but honestly, he was so used to Mary Jane's vibrancy that he couldn't detect much of a difference. Her hair, and the rest of her, seemed as luminous as it had ever been.

MJ reached up to take Peter's hand, thumbing the wedding band on his finger. "Here we are, starting a new life. You have a great job, a beautiful wife, and you're frontrunner to win Father of the Year in my book…"

"Well, yeah, I'm sleeping with the judge—"

"And what's the Vulture doing? Still trying to rob banks, still getting his ass kicked by Ben… And if Ben quits, it's just going to be Daredevil or the New Warriors or one of those new teams of X-Men catching him. I don't think he'll actually live long enough to pull himself out of—you know—being a total tool."

"Yeah, what are you going to do?" Peter asked her. "He's gotten plenty of chances. A lot more than he's given other people. All he has to do is serve his time, get an honest job, and stay out of trouble."

"That easy, huh?" Mary Jane asked wryly.

"Yeah, yeah, he's not exactly stealing bread from the corner store to feed his family. The guy builds a multimillion dollar suit just so he can go out and be a black hat. That's pathological. But if he wanted to reform, yeah, I'd go to his parole hearing, say the quality of mercy be not strangozzi…"

"I know, I know." Mary Jane patted his kneecap. "But how many of your villains ever really… get over themselves? Prowler, yeah, but he was never much of a bad egg."

"Sandman," Peter reasoned. He thought of bringing up Venom, who had gotten 'better' if not really 'good,' but that name probably held too many bad memories for MJ. "Black Cat…"

"Let's not get into how much of a bad girl Felicia was," Mary Jane, jokingly straining her voice. "Unless you rehabilitated Sandman the same way."

"No, just Prowler. I had really wondered if it's true what they say about black guys."

"It's one of those 'there's a hint of truth in every myth' things."

Peter yanked on one of her crimson locks. "Even the one about the Munchkin who hung himself on the set of The Wizard of Oz?"

Mary Jane smirked. "This is why you shouldn't bring up Felicia. I can always top you."

"Well, yeah, MJ, but I'm easy."

She rubbed her arms. "I'm getting cold." She stood up, Peter steadying her against the awkward weight of her baby bump. "How many trimesters do you think that chair can take?"

"You really think I'd get my pregnant wife a beach chair that couldn't hold Wilson Fisk?"

Smiling as only a properly pampered wife could, Mary Jane laid down in Peter's lap, letting him wrap his arms around her and stroke heat back into her chilly limbs.

"You know," Peter said, "my spider-sense isn't too on the ball these days, but I think I'm getting a tingle that all this talk of supervillains and rehabilitation might come with an ulterior motive as a side dish."

"Rats," Mary Jane cursed unconvincingly. "Usually I'd soften you up with some fooling around, but now that you've lost your powers, I want to go easy on you."

"Uh-huh." Peter gave her a squeeze. "Come on. Out with it. We can't leave until we've hashed this out, because I don't trust myself to drive when we're having a bunch of drama. I have a one-track mind, I can't drive stick and process new information at the same time."

Mary Jane patted her pregnant belly. "I have noticed the one-track mind. And I'm very thankful for it."

Peter kissed the back of her neck. "And if you don't hurry up, I'll start huddling us together to conserve body heat."

"I thought we were huddling."

"Oh, I can huddle a lot more than this…"

Mary Jane canted her head to hide her grin. "Okay, don't get excited. You remember Phil Watson?"

Peter gave her another kiss on the neck, not so much passionate or affectionate this time as comforting. Sharing in her suffering. "Yeah. Father of the Year at Curran-Fromhold Correctional Facility."

"He's gotten out and he's gone straight and… he wants to come see us. Catch up. Help with the baby—"

Peter went rigid. "Absolutely not."

"Peter," Mary Jane said in a plaintive tone.

"He's a monster."

"He was a lousy father—"

"He hurt you."

Mary Jane let out a long sigh. "Before we go any further, can we please acknowledge that this is my father, my life, and I may give you a say in it, but you aren't the final word."

"When it comes to the safety of our baby—"

"What?" Mary Jane challenged him. "You care more than me? You think for one minute that I would let someone come within a mile of this kid if I thought they could pose a threat?"

Peter sighed and leaned back in the chair, face cast upward at the dusk sky. "No. Of course not. Just that he's your father. You might not be the most objective person there…"

"And you might not be the most well-informed," Mary Jane retorted. "I lived with him for years. You met him once, at his lowest point."

"He has a highest point?" Peter pinched his lips together. "Okay, will you at least tell me why you want him in our lives? Me, I just want to protect you. You have more reason to hate him than I ever could."

"And he's still my father. And he's changed, or he's trying to change, and—" Mary Jane hugged herself. "I don't know if I want to be the kind of person who won't help someone that's trying to change. Obviously, the kid comes first. I would never jeopardize the little guy for anything. But I'd like him or her to have a grandfather, not some—angry, bitter space taking the place of what a normal family would have."

Peter reached down to feel her belly, putting the warm pressure of his hand on the bulge, like maybe the baby would kick and give an opinion. "I know you, MJ. You're kind of a cynic. You wouldn't just let him into our lives on his say-so."

"I went to see him a little while ago. I should've told you, but I was scared. I thought—I don't know—that if I told you, you'd talk me out of it, and I'd give in and use you as an excuse to avoid facing him."

Peter nuzzled his nose against the back of her head. When he spoke, MJ knew that he wasn't judging her, because it was an effort for him to be neutral enough to hold back all the love and affection he wanted to shower her with. "Why did you want to face him?"

Mary Jane bit her lip. "I suppose after I patched things up with Gayle, I started thinking how good it would be to have something there where there was this gaping hole in my life, my family. For the longest time, I thought that even if I reached out, there was no there there. He'd just… be Phil Watson." Mary Jane twisted her head to the side, watching the last rays of light as the horizon ate up the sun. "Peter, you know how I treated Gayle. I was horrible to her. She forgave me. You forgave me, and I didn't always deserve it…"

"MJ, come on," Peter cooed, but Mary Jane stroked his forearm in a gesture for him to stop, not to comfort her when that wasn't what she needed.

"Yeah, and you've done your share of sins too. We all have. But the more I sat in judgment of him, like I was some saint just because of how well my life had worked out, the more I felt like a hypocrite. I had to at least try, you see. I couldn't really be forgiven unless I gave up my anger over how he'd wronged me. And it worked. I ended up feeling so alive, like there was this weight off my shoulders." Mary Jane chuckled at the cliché. She'd say the writerly gene had skipped a generation in the Watsons, but she didn't know if Phil had it either. "Peter, you've always made me happy, but he let me be at peace. And I want our baby to have that. Not inherit some simmering resentment that I couldn't be a big enough person to let go of."

Peter cupped her chin, turning her head enough to kiss her cheek. "You know, sometimes you astonish me."

Mary Jane quickly wiped away some moisture that had gathered in the orbits of her eyes. "Only sometimes, tiger?"

"If you can forgive the guy, then I'd be a real ass to second-guess your decision. But I don't know if I'm ever going to be able to like someone who hurt you so badly."

"I get that, Pete. And I can't very well vent my emotions like that and tell you to ignore yours. Just… try and play nice? No webshooter whoopee cushions when he sits down to dinner?"

"MJ, please." Peter put an abashed hand to his chest. "That trick is all Jameson's, I would never use it on someone else and make light of what we have."