Work Text
“Yeah, no.” Tony looked Peter dead in his mesh-covered eyes. “Not this time, kid.”Tony wasn’t even sure how Peter heard him over the hell breaking loose behind them. A building—an entire building, brick and insulation and steel—collapsed in the distance. People were screaming. Crying. That half-choked, stunned sob. It wasn’t that he didn’t recognize the horror of it. But after a while, it all became like the smell of blood, the dust clogging his ventilation, the glass shards working their way into his suit. Just part of the job. A bullet point on the job description.Peter just stared. Tony couldn’t see his expression—stupid mask—but he could feel it. The kid had eyes that could melt metal. "What?" “Listen.” Tony said, right before another building collapsed into dust behind him. More screaming. More chaos. “This one’s for the Avengers, okay? It’s a quickie.”Peter groaned and tried to web away, latching onto someone’s balcony, but Tony eviscerated the web before the kid could move. They were in a dusty alley surrounded by squat buildings, close enough to the danger to get their eyebrows singed but not quite in the blast zone. Every so often, a screaming pedestrian sprinted past and did a double take at the sight of Iron Man cornering Spider-Man, who was squirming and trying to web out of reach. Tony was just relieved none of them had the nerve to ask for an autograph.If Tony had more time and fewer eyes on him, he’d ask Peter how, exactly, he’d known the robot was coming. Tony had cut off Peter’s access to incoming alerts for the sake of his own safety, and the kid was supposed to be in Queens today, over ten miles from Midtown Manhattan. Instead, he decided to field the kid’s petulant whining,“I can’t—” Peter scoffed. “I’m an Avenger.”“No, you’re an honorary Avenger,” Tony said, barely missing a beat as he turned and fired a few repulsor blasts at the rusty robot in the distance. It looked like Ultron if he was drawn by a kindergartener. “Like… Avenger Lite. No sugar, half the calories—”Then came the thwip of webs hitting the balcony. Tony fired without hesitation. Evaporated those poor little webs.Peter flinched, moved half an inch to the side, and snapped his arms to his chest. He didn’t look scared, just uncomfortable. “I fought Thanos in space, in case you’ve forgotten.”“Forgotten?” Tony barked out a laugh. “Well, I also remember blipping you back into existence, and I’d really rather not have to do that again.” Peter stared at him some more. “Is that what this is about? You’re scared about me?”Tony had been in therapy since New York—since the Chitauri wrecked the city and left him with both a whole city to clean up and an anxiety disorder. Prozac was the only thing that got him through the mess with the Winter Soldier and the Sokovia Accords without flatlining.He’d learned a lot about himself over the years. Chief among his discoveries: he didn’t know how to relate to people. Whether it was the Stark name, his inability to be normal, or the years he spent alone, buried in his lab, it didn’t matter. His formative years had been spent as an alcoholic insomniac, and his dad hadn’t exactly helped. The jury was still out on how much of that had shaped him.But when he looked at Peter, the usual self-loathing didn’t bubble up. It was just some thinly-veiled paternal concern. He wanted to say he was scared of losing him. Because beyond the fact that Peter was just a kid, he was his kid. For some fucking reason that Tony couldn’t understand, Peter had chosen him as a mentor, even though he was probably the kindest kid in Queens and could’ve picked anyone. And he still picked Tony.And then, Thanos happened. Tony had come this close to losing Peter—not just Peter, but the whole world losing Peter. There was a moment in the middle of the fight with that monster, when Tony thought for sure he wasn’t going to make it out. He wondered, with a sick, knotting feeling in his stomach, if he’d ever get to see Peter graduate high school, and he’d puked into the abyss of space just thinking about it. Even after they’d made it back home, even after Peter started staying more nights in the Tower, sleeping in the bed Tony had made for him, it didn’t get better. If anything, it made it worse. What the hell was he thinking, putting a kid— his kid—right into the line of fire like that?“I mean, last time I left you alone for two minutes, you got dusted,” Tony said instead of all of that, firing another repulsor blast at the robot. Its arm went flying two miles in the opposite direction. “So, yeah, I guess that’s part of it. Besides, I don’t want too many cooks in the kitchen.”“If you ask me, having only three Avengers on this is too few,” Peter said.“You can think that. Unfortunately for you, your opinion doesn’t matter,” Tony said, firing another round at the robot. “And if it helps, just consider this a team-building exercise for Avengers who can, y’know, rent a car, buy a beer—”“But you told me—”“Peter,” Tony snapped, and Peter’s whole face dropped. “I don’t need you on this one. Okay?” Over the calamity—collapsing buildings, screaming civilians, the half-choked sobs Tony had long since tuned out—he still heard Peter suck in a breath. That sound stopped him cold. “Okay, wait.”“So, what?” Peter snapped, tensing like he was about to web up to the balcony again. Tony blasted the web before it even formed, leaving a hole in the apartment building. That’d go on his card. “I’m just some dumb kid who gets in the way, then?”“Wrong. You’re some smart kid who gets in the way.”“You just want me to stand here?”“You bet, kid.” Another repulsor blast. The robot groaned, metal crunching under the impact. “Stand here. Look decorative. It’s—” Boom. Another shot. “It’s a noble gig, Parker. You’re locking down the perimeter.”Peter scowled. “I can’t believe I’m being treated like an end table. Or a shoe rack.”“It’s not personal,” Tony called, ducking when a blast sailed past, missing them by a full football field. “It’s business. Strategy, actually. So do me a favor—park it. Take in the sights. New York City is beautiful in the summertime, isn’t it?”Peter’s jaw clenched. “You’re so full of yourself.” He wrapped his arms around himself, glancing around. “Am I backup, at least?”“Spidey, I have every possible outcome mapped, planned, covered.” Tony tapped the side of his head. “I am twelve steps ahead of this fight. I need a man on the edge. I don’t need a teenager improvising his way into my perfectly calculated strategy and messing up my very expensive day.”And that was true. Every Avenger had their strengths, and Peter’s was being wildly unpredictable. What he wasn’t was precise, graceful, or trained in any real, substantive way—beyond Falcon showing him how to land after free-falling and Tony making him slightly more aerodynamic. And that barely counted. The scrappy fighting style worked when they were up against a genocidal deviant from Mars or whatever, but it didn’t hold up when they were facing a junkyard come to life and needed to minimize damages.“Mr. Stark, I’m practically an adult,” Peter said. “I’m seventeen!”“True, but with that underbaked frontal lobe, you might as well be a toddler.” Peter exhaled sharply but stayed put. He stood there, the air around him thick with frustration, like Tony had taken away some God-given right just by telling him not to fight the robot. What a far cry from a regular teenager. Instead of whining to his aunt about wanting to hang out with Ned and build Legos or whatever he and his dorky friend did, Peter spent his days whining to a billionaire about wanting to fling himself in front of a sheet-metal villain.“Good. See? Look at that. The power of listening.” Tony gave him a salute. “Be back soon, kid.”And with that, he took off, shifting his focus to the actual fight ahead. The robot looked even smaller from this high up—just a glorified scrap heap. Denying Peter a piece of this guy was hardly an injustice. The real injustice here was that Tony had to come out of retirement because Fury’s midlife crisis convinced him this glorified pile of nuts and bolts was somehow the functional equivalent of Thanos. That was the really weird part. Not that Peter had shown up—the kid had freakishly good hearing, and it wasn’t entirely out of the question that he’d hear the stomping of Industrial Revolution Hulk and come running. No, the weird part was that Nick Fury, on a weekday morning, had flagged this thing as high-priority on his little tablet—urgent enough to warrant multiple Avengers. Tony hadn’t minded much. He’d sold the cabin and moved back into the Tower with Morgan and Pepper after Thanos’s revival, so at least this was convenient. And it wasn’t like his day was packed—his only plan had been dealing with some plumbing issue in the kitchen, which he’d already pawned off on Pepper.Still, it was weird.Bruce was handling the legs, taking out chunks with those fat fists of his, while Sam focused on the robot’s preceptors, the things it used to see. That left the chest for Tony. Top, middle, bottom. Simple enough.Peter was probably already swinging around somewhere given his allergy to Tony’s rules, so he kept an eye out, waiting for the inevitable moment he’d see a kid starfishing toward the ground before webbing himself up at the last second. Tony fought an eye roll and got in position. If he squinted, he could see the arm he shot off, sitting in the middle of a park like discarded junk.Fist-first, Tony rocketed toward the robot’s center—right where its heart would be if it had one. He’d never get sick of feeling metal fold under his knuckles. It was like stepping on a potato chip, ripping paper—so easy. He blasted through to the other side, borderline impressed the thing was still standing, then looped back around, ready to lobotomize the Tin Man with his fist.“Boss?” FRIDAY crackled in. “We have a problem.”Tony ducked as the robot swung. It was exposed wires galore, and he blasted it with ease. “Too slow, FRIDAY. Already dodged it.” “Not that. It’s Parker, sir.”A pulse of nuclear energy screamed from his gauntlet, and the robot’s whole abdomen lit up like fireworks. Below, Bruce finished hacking apart the legs. Above, the thing’s hot-glued eyes clunked against its shoulders. What was that, two minutes? Record time for taking down some mega-nerd’s seventh-grade science project.“Is Spidey swinging around here somewhere?” Tony flew backward, scanning for telltale signs: little kids pointing in the air, discarded webs on random apartment windows, a red figure sending himself head-first through windows. Nothing.A few beats later, FRIDAY said, “Peter’s gone.” Tony snorted. “Define gone.”“Suit telemetry lost contact two minutes ago,” FRIDAY replied. “Last known location: exactly where you left him. I have not detected any movement, signals, or distress beacons.” Tony wasn’t one to downplay the wonders of the human body. It’d proven itself time and time again—he’d survived waterboarding, captivity, literal torture, near-heart failure, fisticuffs with Captain America, and a fucking arc reactor in his chest, so he knew just how adaptable, strong, and resilient it could be. But the physiological force majeure ripping through his system like he'd been dunked in acid, his skin burning and bubbling, made him so nauseous that he had vertigo. It made him want to not have such a reactive body, actually. The robot hit the pavement and burst into a million tiny trinkets, but Tony was already gone, bolting higher, pulling up Peter’s suit feed. He was met with pure black-and-gray static. Crinkly white noise. His ears tingled, and he suddenly couldn’t catch his breath.“What in—”“There was an electromagnetic interference spike seconds before he went offline,” FRIDAY said, already pulling up charts. Stable, stable, stable— spike. “High-grade dampening tech purpose-built for extraction.”Tony stared at the graph, pulse surging with it. “So… someone took him?”“Affirmative.” FRIDAY paused. “Boss, I’m detecting that your heart rate is spiking. Your respiration is elevated. Are you experiencing any discomfort?”“Riddle me this,” Tony snapped, rocketing toward Peter’s last known location. The numbness in his chest was in his throat. “I had you monitoring the immediate perimeter, and this still happened?”“You had Peter stay outside the perimeter, sir,” FRIDAY replied, clipped. “The attack came from an unmarked vehicle beyond the designated range.”“Tony-baloney,” Sam’s voice cut into his earpiece. “You got the number for whoever cleans up after these dork-ass villains? Or, better yet, a really big magnet?”“Sam, can it,” Tony snapped back, immediately regretting it but not enough to say that.“Okay, relax. Did you lose your inhaler or something?”Tony didn’t dignify that with a response, banking hard to land in the alleyway. His eyes darted everywhere, already knowing there wouldn’t be anything to find.No suit scraps. No blood. No webbing. Not even a sign of a fight.Just a cold, empty space where some dipshit kid used to be.“Tony,” FRIDAY pressed gently, “I advise you to take a moment—”“I’m not—just… just give me something,” Tony said, but it was thin, like he was trying to hold it together with duct tape and sheer willpower. He flicked his helmet off and flicked through his HUD, which was worse than useless. Energy interference everywhere. Signals scrambled beyond recognition. The only heat signature belonged to a rat scurrying under a dumpster. “Come on, FRIDAY,” Tony mumbled, glancing around, trying to find literally anything—he’d take a dusty footprint, for fuck’s sake. Something moved, and Tony’s pulse again, but it was just a paper hot dog holder fluttering against the curb. If he needed a reminder that he was in New York City, here it was.“I have something,” FRIDAY said. Tony watched as she pulled up the grainiest CCTV footage he’d ever seen—zoomed in, enhanced to within an inch of its cinematographic limits. “Thirty seconds before we lost his signal, a black van pulled up next to him. No plates. No distinguishing marks."Tony watched. Peter stood exactly where he’d been left, pacing. Kicking up dirt and debris. Walking in circles. Then—he stilled. Stood straighter. A van pulled up. The doors slid open. Peter spun—too late. A figure lunged, something pressed against his neck. Kid went limp, and they dragged him into the van. And cut. Tony’s stomach turned. He felt it in his teeth, a raw, gut-deep revulsion, like he was about to gag. Instead, he forced out a breath, slow and shaky through clenched teeth. “What else do we have? Traffic cams? Shop security?”"I’m already on it, sir, but there are few workable details. No plates, no faces, no obvious trail."Tony swallowed, his throat raw. So that’s what the robot was for. A distraction. Keep Tony busy while someone walked right up and took the kid. Did they know he’d tell Peter to stay put? Had they counted on Tony being too self-assured that Peter was safe, to see what was happening right under his nose?Without thinking, he mumbled, “How would they know we were going to stand right here?”“You talking to yourself, Stark?”Tony barely registered the voice before looking up. Sam stood there, wings half-folded, goggles pushed up. He met Tony’s eyes, and his usual smirk faltered just slightly. Tony had nothing. No quip. No joke. No easy way to say, well, Sam, the worst-case scenario has become the scenario, and my skin feels tight, and Peter is gone.He had been so sure. So sure he was the one keeping Peter safe. That Peter was the wildcard, the unpredictable factor—the one thing that wasn’t supposed to be part of the plan. But it was. It was all part of someone’s plan.FRIDAY answered for him. "Peter has been compromised, sir."The alley was dead silent except for the distant wail of sirens. Sam stared at Tony, then at the empty space where Peter had been. “Like, taken?”“Kid got snatched right off the fucking sidewalk,” Tony said, voice flat. “Five seconds. Some mystery juice to the neck, and bam, Spidey down.”“And his suit? That’s…where’s the suit? The tracker in it.”“Turns out I’m not the only one with good tech. They jammed it. No plates, no faces, no trail.” Tony blinked a few times and looked away. He needed to figure this out before the adrenaline burned out and left him with nothing but the weight of it. “FRIDAY, start scanning for underground access points—sewer lines, maintenance tunnels, anything big enough to fit a van.”“Geez. That’s not…not optimal.”“Thanks for that, Captain Obvious. I was standing here, thinking, huh, it’s good that they took that million-dollar suit, ‘cause I’ve been trying to get rid of that shitty thing for months!” “Tony—”“If we’re really lucky, they’ll use it as kindling. Or cleaning rags.” He knew he was being an asshat, but he couldn’t help it. His mind was too locked onto the precision of it all, the way everything had unfolded so perfectly. If even FRIDAY couldn’t track their movements, couldn’t find a single trace—no faces, no plates, nothing—then it wasn’t random. It couldn’t be. They’d moved with such practiced efficiency, like they’d done this a thousand times. And they knew where Peter would be. Knew exactly where to find him, waiting in that alley. There’s no reason they should’ve known that.“C’mon, man.” Sam did a full-body eye roll. “Do you have any footage?”FRIDAY played it for him. Tony didn’t watch, mostly because once was enough, but he watched Sam. The way his arms crossed tighter, his expression shifting from focused to unsettled.Sam sighed softly at the end. “Who would even pull something like this?”“Well, by golly, let’s brainstorm. Who’s got the balls to yank my kid off the street, in my tech, under my nose?” Tony gave him a look. “Any takers?”“Gotta be someone with resources. Know-how.” Sam hesitated. “I mean, that was military precision.”Tony glanced at him. “Astute observation.”“Don’t be an asshole,” Sam muttered. “I’m trying to help. And from my perspective, this was surgical. They had contingencies. They planned for the suit. They planned for you.”That one lodged itself in Tony’s gut like a gut punch, but he ignored it. Kept moving. Kept thinking. “They knew Peter was here. They knew exactly how to cut him off. That means either they had eyes on us in real time, or—”“They planned for you to park him there,” Sam said quietly. “Do you usually deposit the kid here? Is that typical?”“No,” Tony said, throat tightening. He swallowed hard, and it felt like razor blades. “He usually…he fights with us.”“Well, the way they swept the area clean… These guys are either ghosts, or they’ve got someone really good on their side.” “All fantastic options in today’s mystery abduction roulette.”They stood in silence for a moment, and Tony forced a steadying breath. Even with all his fancy suits and high-tech gear, he couldn’t protect a child in a superhero costume from some assholes in an unmarked van. He couldn’t control the outcome. Couldn’t protect Peter. After the Chitauri, after Thanos, and after losing Peter the first time, Tony had promised himself he’d never fucking feel like this again. And yet, here it was.“Sir, Mr. Parker’s tracker just blinked back online for a fraction of a second,” FRIDAY said. “Then, it disappeared again."Tony spun so fast he kicked up dirt. “What?”"Three miles east.”“Do you…was it a hardware malfunction?"“No, sir. The interference pattern is inconsistent with standard jamming. The signal came back too cleanly—no static, no degradation. That suggests an intentional, controlled breach."Tony blinked. It had been a very long time since someone underestimated him this plainly. Sam glanced at him, moving slow, like he was trying not to startle a wild animal. Then, very calmly, Tony said, “So you’re telling me someone just dangled a breadcrumb in my face and hoped I’d bite.”Sam exhaled. "Morons."“Morons?” Tony let out a sharp, humorless laugh. “No, Sam. That was ten minutes ago, when they were just kidnapping idiots. Trying to fake out me with a conveniently faulty jammer is a new level.” “But why?” Sam mumbled. “Why would they want you to go there?”“I don’t know. Could be any number of reasons. Maybe they have something against me.”Sam nodded slowly. “They know your weaknesses. They know what they can use to get to you. The kid’s the leverage.”“They want me to see the trail.” Tony’s voice was low, the words coming out in a tight, controlled burst as he started pacing. He dragged a hand down his face. “FRIDAY, scan the area around that last known location—check for hidden infrastructure, any unusual power signatures, heat maps. I need to know where he is, not where they want me to think he is.”“Good.” Sam smiled at him. “This’ll be over before dinner.”“Per usual.” Tony’s eyes flicked to the new map, but his mind was already miles ahead, fast, maybe too fast. His ears still tingled from that blistering static. “And call in the cavalry.”“Will do,” Sam said. “Bruce is handling cleanup. I’ll find the others, but…but it might be a bit.”“Why?” “They’re in Munich for that enhancement expo, but they come back tomorrow.” Sam gave him a look. “Do you want me to flag this as high urgency? I can get them on the next plane to LaGuardia.”Tony blinked and glanced down. No, that was probably unnecessary. It would only draw attention, signaling to anyone watching that something was happening in Manhattan, and that could put Peter in even more danger. Besides, tomorrow wasn’t that far off. With any luck, they’d have this handled before Morgan got back from summer camp tonight. Peter would be in bed, snoozing at ten o’clock sharp.“No, just get Banner. We can crank this with the three of us.” He forced a smile. “Thanks, Wilson.”Meanwhile, four miles east, Beck sat in the passenger seat of the unmarked van, gaze shifting between the road and the kid in the backseat. The kid, no older than twenty, was sprawled out, slumped sideways, no seatbelt, fully horizontal across the row of seats. His face was relaxed, peaceful even.Beck sneered. What a fucking idiot.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
Somebody’s hands were on Peter.His first thought was, here we go again. Every few months, Mr. Stark would find Peter in a damp, sticky alleyway, shaking, shivering, bleeding from some body part that definitely wasn’t designed to bleed. And every time, Mr. Stark would scoop him up like an oversized ragdoll and fly him to the Tower, his metal hand pressed to Peter’s head to keep the wind from turning him into a human popsicle. If Peter had to guess, he’d gotten shanked or shot by some low-level drug lord in Brooklyn, and Karen had probably pinged Mr. Stark, which was probably the only reason he wasn’t bleeding out in a gutter somewhere. He could practically hear Karen’s voice in his head now, all like, “Peter, there’s an 82% chance you’ll enter hypovolemic shock in the next 12 minutes. Would you like me to notify Mr. Stark?” “Um, no, thank you! Please don’t tell—”
“Override unsuccessful. Calling Tony Stark.”
Peter tried blinking his eyes open, but then he got hit with a phantom neck pain that made his traps feel so sore. He winced, but it was sluggish, delayed—like he was trying to process the pain through an old TV screen covered in static.
Hands, hands, hands.
With a gentle push of his subconscious, he became acutely aware of those hands—one around his knees, the other gripping his wrists. It only took half a second for the other thought to follow, and he realized, Oh, God, I’m on someone’s shoulders right now. None of the Avengers carried people like that, because that's how you carried dead weight if you didn’t have super-strength. Well, maybe Captain America, but Captain America wasn’t much of a night patroller. Definitely not Mr. Stark.
Oh, my God, where—
Peter opened his eyes just in time to face-plant onto the floor. It took a moment to realize that even happened, mainly because he hadn’t even realized he was falling—hadn’t even braced himself. Now that he was on the floor, his bones felt like they’d turned into wet cement, and his ribs screamed in agony, like someone had run them through a pencil sharpener. Groaning, he pressed his forehead to the ground— definitely concrete, definitely not the Tower —and hoped that he didn’t just shatter his nose. “Oh, Christ,” someone’s voice said— definitely not Mr. Stark, that’s for sure —before the sound of feet skittered backwards. The voice inhaled sharply through their teeth. “Kid, back up.”“No, no, I’m good,” Peter said, pushing himself onto shaky feet. His head felt like someone had stuffed a bowling ball inside a balloon, and he took a quick glance around, falling into some kind of instinctual fighting stance. “I’m back. Sorry for the delay.”And then came the most awesome realization: he wasn’t wearing his suit. He froze, staring at his body. Shorts he didn’t recognize. A heather gray tee-shirt—Fruit of the Loom, he guessed, based on how scratchy it felt around his shoulders. He didn’t own this shirt.
Where is the suit? Where—how did they take the suit?
Honestly, that was more violating than being dragged to some random secret location without his consent. Peter had gotten pretty used to waking up in places he didn’t remember going to sleep—like the times he’d passed out on Mr. Stark’s penthouse couch in his spandex onesie, only to wake up in his own apartment with marks on his face from the pillowcase. But this was different. Someone had peeled the suit off his body, grabbed him a new outfit, and carried him like a sack of rice into some…some…He blinked and spun around. Warehouse? Maybe? It was so dark, everything bathed in a dull, bluish haze, with scaffolding everywhere, warm lights buzzing on wire lamps. It reminded him of Twilight, a movie that he watched with Aunt May just a few weeks ago. So lifeless and tired, everything washed and industrial, and geez, he was in a movie set. The concrete beneath his feet was freezing, and—wait, they took his shoes? His eyes darted around. It smelled stale, like a forgotten corner of a secondhand store, and he had no idea where he was. And no suit. Someone had taken his suit off of him, and someone— where was his suit? Someone cleared their throat. Peter glanced over. Some guy who had a face like Mr. Potato Head—seriously, that shape and those ears —and these thick, black glasses. He had this vaguely disapproving pinch to his eyes, and Peter felt his shoulders hunch, almost like he’d disappointed this random man who brought him to a secret third location.
Oh my goodness, oh my goodness, oh my—
“Kid,” the man said, and suddenly there was a woman behind him in a button-up shirt, cheeks flushed. That was the weirdest part—these folks dressed like mid-level white-collar workers, not in black leather and pokey silver necklaces like the archetypical bad guys. Peter briefly wondered if he was in a Wall Street basement. “Stay right there.”“You got it,” Peter shot back, trying his best to sound unbothered. He glanced side to side, watching them approach like he was about to get tackled. His socks felt so thin against the cold concrete. Goosebumps all over his neck. His balance wavered for a second, which was annoying, especially when the woman took the moment to lunge at him.Peter juked left, dodging her outstretched hand by a hair, but Mr. Potato Head was already on the move, reaching for his shirt. He squeaked, stumbling back and hardly missing Potato’s fingers.“Oh!” Peter said, already taking off in the opposite direction. “Just barely missed me!”“Code blue!” The woman screamed, and Peter thought, I’m a code now? “Code blue!”“That’s the one I know!” Peter yelled back, nearly tripping over his own feet as more people popped up in his periphery. He ducked under a flailing arm, a smile tugging at the corner of his lips. “Isn’t that resuscitation? That’s the code for resuscitation, right?”“Grab him!” someone yelled. “Doug, the paint!”A shelf of paint collapsed behind him with a deafening crash, and more voices started shouting. Just barely, and thanks solely to his spidey sense, he dodged a few random objects flying at him from behind—a can of paint, a rogue paintbrush, a two-by-four plank. While his spidey sense manned his body, his eyes found a door at the end of the room, conveniently marked with a neon “EXIT” sign.He grinned. This is too easy. He was maybe ten yards from the door before the coldest gust of wind slammed into his side, and suddenly, Peter wasn’t running. His feet weren’t even on the ground. His stomach flipped, mostly because he was airborne, hurtling sideways and into a metal storage rack. Head thunked against metal. Stars exploded in his vision.A while ago, Mr. Stark had told him that he wanted to take the Spider-Man suit back. Between uneven breaths, Peter had said, “ But I’m nothing without the suit. ” And, honestly, it was true. Usually, he could get thrown through multiple windows, run over by cars, take a punch from some multidimensional space warlord, and walk away. Well, not after Thanos—he was on bedrest for three days after that. Something about sleep deprivation and dehydration. But now, he was in a heap on the floor, gasping as his ribs practically choked him. He didn’t even realize that the inside of his elbow could hurt like this. “You’ve got to be kidding me,” Peter breathed, blinking rapidly as the room spun like a cheap carnival ride. He could make out heads above him—there was the woman, Potato Head, Doug. Some other random people, probably other sadistic office workers. “Really? You couldn’t have just left my helmet on?”“Tori, get over here.” The guy in glasses adjusted his cuffs, staring down at Peter with an amused, condescending look, like he was watching a baby try to escape its crib. “Kid’s still saying shit.”“I have a name, y’know,” Peter mumbled, forcing himself onto his elbows. The man pressed his shoe to Peter’s chest, and his elbows clocked out, and God, the concrete was digging into his skin, and he suddenly felt so tired. “You…”The woman didn’t respond. Instead, she crouched beside Peter, cold, fleshy hands on his neck. He grimaced before he could tell himself not to do that, and as he berated himself, something sharp pricked his neck.It hit him like boiling water—instant, searing. The sensation bloomed through his whole body, and for a moment, everything shut down. His limbs turned to lead, his breath hitched, and his fingers twitched uselessly against the cold concrete.“Nighty-night, Spider-Man,” someone muttered, just before everything went black.*****He woke up. Again.Waking up three times in eight hours was as disorienting as it could get. His body wanted to treat today like an entirely new day, but his mind knew it wasn’t—no, he was either sick, in a time loop, or bumbling in and out of consciousness in a way that couldn't be healthy. On the bright side, he wasn’t draped over someone’s shoulders like a sad marionette. That was the good news. The silver lining.The bad news was everything else. He blinked, groggy but aware enough to realize he was still on the concrete, just like before. Between his ribs screaming, temples throbbing in time with his pulse, and his elbows shaky—a weird sensation, if you were curious—he almost forgot to check where he was. By the time he remembered, his eyes were stinging, squinting against bright white light. He glanced around. Same warehouse, if he had to guess, given the same sort of exposed pipes and scratchy floor. The only real difference was that he was in a smaller room with glaring, doctor's office lights, too-short ceilings, and too-warm air. Humming white noise. A sink and toilet in the corner, a mirror above them. A door.Peter jumped to his feet. Literally jumped. “He’s awake!” someone yelled outside the door.Peter’s head snapped toward it. “Did you just tattle on me?”He bolted, hitting the door at full speed, shoulder-first. Nothing. He grabbed the knob. Yanked. Nothing. Tried again. Nothing. Again. Nothing. He punched it. Kicked it. Nothing. His arm and leg just bounced back, like he was fighting a trampoline, and— oh, God —his face drained so fast he felt it.Eyes widened. No, no, no— “Hello?” Peter called. “I’d like to be let out, please.”Swallowed hard, eyes darting around. Maybe the mirror? He ran to it, only to be met with his own reflection looking…severe, or something. The lighting wasn’t doing him any favors—the lines on his face looked harsher, his pupils were blown, his face pale. He looked insane, and he cringed at himself before grabbing the mirror.It popped right off. There was a Target price tag on the back. Not a two-way mirror. That was almost comforting, except for the part where it wasn’t, and that was two guesses at an exit that he’d gotten wrong, and—“Kid, kid!” a voice suddenly crackled in his ear, and Peter spun around so fast he nearly flung the mirror across the room. His heart pounded, sounding like water, and his shoulders practically went to his ears. “Oh, geez, relax. You’re fine.”“Who are you?” Peter snapped, spinning again, because the voice was coming from everywhere. “Where—”“How about you plant your feet firmly on the ground and try again?” the voice said. “Like, I don’t know. It wouldn’t kill you to say ‘good morning’ or something.”“Good—” Peter’s brain stuttered mid-thought. The lights suddenly felt warmer. “It’s morning?”That stupid robot—it’d shown up at, what, eleven? Twelve? Peter only knew because he could hear its clumsy footsteps all the way in Queens. They’d fought it right after lunch. He remembered that much. So if it was morning now, that meant he’d been out for…at least eighteen hours. That was… that was a lot. Too much, actually. What could’ve knocked him out for eighteen hours? “I don’t know. Just…like, relax.”“How wouldn’t you know?” Peter asked, scanning the room. There had to be cameras in here somewhere, and the fact that he couldn’t see them was worse than actually finding them. And he couldn’t find any speakers—no JBLs, no dots in the ceiling, nothing. “Can you tell me if it’s morning or night, please?” “What’s it worth to you? Wait—hold on. Are you—Spidey, is that because you’re trying to figure out how long it’s been?”“Why else would—”“You’re waiting for someone to come get you. You always are. Little damsel in distress in a very patriotic suit. And a twelve-year-old’s body, apparently.”“Okay, screw off,” Peter mumbled. He walked toward the toilet, because if he were hiding speakers or cameras, that’s exactly where he’d put them. The one place no one would want to check. He glanced at the water tank, already grossed out. “So, um, who are you? Full government name, please.”A laugh. “Yeah, no. You can call me Beck.”“Like the singer?” “Yeah, but—”“You for sure couldn’t write ‘Loser,’” Peter muttered, strained, glancing around the pipes. “Again, relax,” Beck sighed. “And hold still. You’re stressing me out, pacing around like that.”Peter flinched, breath hitching. No, no, nope. They could see him. That was confirmed. And that was so, so much worse. The watery sound in his head was promptly replaced by white static.“Okay, creep,” Peter said. “It’s really weird to spy on someone like this, you know that?”“Well, you didn’t need to flinch, kid,” Beck snapped, voice suddenly louder, and Peter’s vision flickered. His neck got so tense so quickly that a headache bloomed behind his eyes. “How many times do I have to say relax?”“Do it one more time,” Peter bit out, straining to keep his voice level. There was a shake in it, though, and he hated that. As he glanced down the sink, looking for a red, blinking light, he added, “And say please.”Beck paused at that. Then, he chuckled. “You don’t have to play a big strong man, you know.”Peter stiffened. His back hurt.“You’re just a kid, pretending you’re not scared.” Beck’s voice was so casual, like they were just chatting. “You’re waiting for Stark, right? To come and save the day.”“He will,” Peter muttered, forcing his voice to sound steady. “He’s, um. He’s the type.”“Oh, I know,” Beck said. Something in his tone changed. Peter felt it before he even registered the goosebumps up his arms. “I know Tony Stark very well. And I know that he, along with the rest of the world, thinks that he’s a real hero.” Peter backed up a step, eyes flicking to the locked door. There was a chance he could just bust it down, right? He was Spider-Man. He could knock through stone doors. He’d done it before, at least.“Let me tell you something you don’t know about Tony Stark,” Beck murmured, voice slithering through Peter’s ears like smoke. “He feels guilty. A lot. Always has.”Peter’s throat tightened. His hands were clammy. He wiped them on his pants, like that would do anything. “You—”“Yeah, I know,” Beck interrupted. “And I know how guilty he feels about you—about the things he’s dragged you into, about how he put you in a position where you could get hurt.”The door was connected to hinges. If he went for the hinges, he could kick the door down. “He probably feels terrible about your little ‘blip,’ right?” Beck hummed. “That whole snap thing.”And if they were installed as poorly as Peter suspected, he could just…pop the hinges off. His shoulders could handle that. He could be out of this shithole in two, maybe three minutes. Done and done. Spare Mr. Stark the inconvenience of a rescue. “It messed him up, kid. Made him realize just how fragile you are.” Beck laughed. Soft. Amused. Like this was just some fun little story he was telling. “You’ve been in real danger, Peter. Too much of it. And you know it’s because of Tony. Bastard had you swinging across a German airport at the ripe old age of fourteen.”Peter lunged for the door. The second he hit the hinges, it sent him flying back so hard that the ground slammed the breath right out of him. Beck honest-to-God cackled—a bent-over, wheezing kind of laugh, and he actually choked on it.“Both feet on the ground!” Beck wheezed. “That’s what I said, right? And based on how far up Tony Stark’s ass you are, I’d assume you know how to take an order.”“Why am—” Peter coughed. The concrete was harder than it looked, scratchier than it looked. “What do you want?”“A perfect segue into the next part of this monologue,” Beck said. Peter swore he heard papers flipping over the mic. “I wanted Tony Stark bait. And you—you’re the perfect weapon. Tony’s got some Island of Misfit Toys shit going on at his tower, and you’re the bumbling teenage loser from Queens.”“That’s high praise. Thanks, Beck.”“And from what we gathered, you’re both the Avengers’ weakest link and Tony’s favorite,” Beck continued. “Which feels oxymoronic, but it’s not surprising you’re the favorite. Tony has always loved charity.”“Wow.” The media loved to criticize his technique—it was scrappy, and even he knew that—but he’d never heard someone describe him as the weakest link. He couldn’t tell if it was true. “Even kinder.”“At first, I wasn’t sure how to get Tony here,” Beck went on. “I knew bait was my best bet, ‘cause you’ve seen the Tower—fortified up and down. That thing could’ve stopped nine-eleven.”Peter sat up. The lights were too hot. Too bright.“And then it hit me—oh! That obviously prepubescent Spider-Man will do the trick. Lucky for me, Janice from my team ran analytics on where Tony likes to check in on you before your cute little pre-battle arguments. She nailed this one.”“Oh.” Peter blinked. The fact that Mr. Stark had a known pre-battle lecture routine was somehow more embarrassing than terrifying. He pushed himself upright. “Well, she deserves a raise, then.” “It’s not rocket science. Tony Stark has always been predictable. Glad nothing has changed.”“Did…how do you—”“We’re old friends,” Beck said. “Former Stark employee, like half the engineers in New York. I left in 2016. Your old buddy’s got a reputation with us plebeians, you know.”Peter actually didn’t know this. Yeah, Tony had a reputation in the tight New York and Boston engineering circles, but it wasn’t anything out of the ordinary—long hours, nebulous job descriptions, airtight NDAs. His Glassdoor profile said all of that. But Tony’s engineers got paid far above market, so plenty of people sucked it up and worked there anyway.“So, do you—what, wanna talk to him?” Peter muttered. “You got some hot gossip? An email would probably work.”“No, Spidey. I want him within shooting distance.”Plenty of people had threatened Tony, but hearing it out loud made Peter’s stomach twist. The static in his head blared, his body off-kilter like he’d been drugged. He stumbled. “Yeah, okay. Can’t do that over email, I guess.”“No, it’d be hard to do it there,” Beck muttered. “But he’s the ultimate target, Spidey. You see that, right? He is the very essence of everything fucked-up and oppressive about our society.”“No, yeah,” Peter said, yanking at the doorknob. “The non-messed-up guy is the one holding someone hostage in a bright white room.”“Keep trying to deflect with humor, kid. It’s cute.”Maybe the speaker was in the knob itself. Peter tried digging his fingernail into the seam, but his hands were shaking too bad.“You make him feel things, Peter. Guilt, regret—all those little emotions he likes to bury under tech and swagger.”“This just in: real people have real emotions? More at seven.”“That’s exactly it,” Beck spat. “Tony Stark built his entire empire on one thing: control. He controls the narrative, the world, the tech. He’s the great ‘Iron Man,’ the untouchable god of the modern age. But that’s just it, isn’t it? Tony Stark is a man. And that’s where he fails.”Peter swallowed hard, scanning the room for anything—any hint of where the speakers might be. But the space was too bare, too sterile. The white walls were already making his head throb.“Did you script this monologue out beforehand?” Peter asked, voice tight. “It’s feeling a little disorganized. I recommend using headings next time.”Beck didn’t take the bait. “He hides behind his suits, his money, his clever little toys,” he went on, his voice rising. Peter felt his shoulders tense. “He pretends he’s a hero. But he’s just a man.” The words were venomous now. “He made me look small, Peter. He humiliated me.”“I don’t think—”“And I’m going to remind him of that,” Beck said, completely bulldozing him. “I’m going to remind him that no matter how much money he has, how much tech he’s built, or how many suits he wears—he’s just a man. And I’m going to bring him down. I’m going to make him feel so small. Going to remind him that he fucks up, that he has no leg to stand on.”“So, you’re gonna keep me locked up until Tony finally comes to save me, and then you get to destroy him? That’s weird. Crazy.”"You think I’m crazy?” There was no amusement in Beck’s voice this time—just something cold and sharp that curled under Peter’s skin. “You have no idea what it’s like to be underestimated. To be made to feel small by someone who thinks they can do whatever they want because they wear a shiny suit.”“I’ve been there, man,” Peter said, glancing out, searching for eyes. “It’s not—I’m sure Mr. Stark would, like, apologize for—”“Tony Stark has had everything handed to him—money, power, fame. But what happens when all of that crumbles? When he’s faced with the consequences of his actions, the people he’s hurt, the mistakes he’s made?”“Are you forgetting the guy was literally kidnapped and tortured in Afghanistan?” “And you,” Beck’s voice sharpened again. “You’re just the perfect leverage. He will come for you. He’ll come charging in, thinking he’s the hero, trying to save you—because that’s what he does, right? He fixes things. But I’m going to make him see that he can’t fix this. He’ll never fix this.”Peter could barely understand Beck’s plan. It was so vague. The goal was to humiliate Tony, but how did Peter fit into that beyond being the bait? And what happened after the big fiery confrontation? Tony shows up, and they shoot at each other until Beck evaporates into red mist? The idea of going up against Tony, especially with the Avengers involved, was beyond audacious, even with whatever team Beck had behind him.Peter ran a hand through his hair. “He’s…Beck, he’s not going—he’s not gonna give you the satisfaction of breaking him. Trust me. Meanwhile, you—”"Not finished, no," Beck cut him off, voice growing colder. "I’m not just going to leave it there. I’m going to make sure Tony feels every bit of what I felt. And that means keeping you right where you are, Peter. I’m going to keep you awake, keep you on edge, always waiting. Because the thing is, when your body and mind start to break down...you’ll crack.”Peter’s eyes darted to the ceiling, but the room remained bare, the flickering hum of the lights the only sound. “So, you’re just gonna keep me on edge until I break... and Mr. Stark thinks it’s all his fault?” His voice was barely a whisper. “You’re gonna use me... to destroy him.”“Exactly. You’re a smart boy, Spidey.”“Oh, don’t give me much credit,” Peter muttered, feeling the nausea rise again. “I couldn’t come up with a better plan if I tried. If I wanted to kneecap Tony Stark, I would also keep me in a tiny room and wallow until Stark shows up, kicks my butt, and goes back to making cool toys.”“The hero worship has reached critical capacity,” Beck muttered. “Go outside, kid. Talk to any adult other than Stark and I promise, Stark won’t sound as cool in comparison.”“Can’t go outside when I’m in here, unfortunately,” Peter said. “So, can I get a cot in here, or something?” He gestured to the concrete. “This isn’t gonna be too comfy-cozy tonight, I bet.”“Did you not listen to my—are you serious ?”“What, did you already touch on this?” Peter smirked, glancing around the room as if expecting someone to answer for him. “Sorry, got distracted. Lost the plot in your rambling monologue.”“You’re not going to bed,” Beck said flatly. “For two reasons. First, physically, I need you to be more docile. You’re a liability, and I’m not risking the feral Spider-whatever going apeshit and destroying my little hidey-hole for him.”“Oh, that’s sweet. You really think I’m all that.”“Second—” Beck’s voice took on a colder edge. “I’m not going to risk you mounting an escape or successfully resisting this.”“That’s smart.”“Unfortunately, we’re not scientists and can’t sedate you whenever we want,” Beck said. “Too expensive to produce horse tranquilizers in-house. A shame, really, because you’re so much more likeable when you aren’t awake. And I don’t want you to kill my staff, so this is what we’ve got.”“Ah,” Peter said. “Sleep deprivation is a working man’s horse tranquilizer, then.”“Second, you’re gonna be more valuable to me when you’re weak. Exhaustion makes you sloppy. Pretty soon, you’re gonna be like putty in my hands, Peter. A confused, bumbling mess, too tired to think straight, too drained to keep your mouth shut. And that’s when I’ll get what I need.”“Yeah? And what’s that?”“Get Tony to hear your bullshit rambling and blame himself. Jesus, kid, are you even listening?”But Peter was listening, as unfortunate and uncomfortable as it was. He tried to work it out in his head—he’d be sitting here, drained, unable to come up with an escape, and if-slash-when Tony found him, he’d be too out of it to…what, help escape? Peter shifted uncomfortably. It felt sadistic. “You’re really betting on me cracking that easily? Bring back the compliments from before. I preferred those.”“It’s not a bet, Peter. It’s science.” Silence for a moment. “Have you ever taken a biology class?” “I have, believe it or not.” Peter forced himself to keep breathing evenly, to keep his voice steady. “Required curriculum in the United States, actually. And university, I think.”Beck laughed. “Then you know that even Spider-Man has limits, and we’re gonna find yours. It’s just a matter of time." More silence for a beat. “And trust me, I will find them.”It took a few more hours of looking around—examining the pipes, the sink, the toilet, the water tank, the soap dispenser, the everything about the place—before Peter finally sat down in the corner, knees to his chest, arms wrapped around his ankles, chin resting on his knees. It was bright. Too bright. But Peter was a deep sleeper, the type who slept through a fire alarm in physics once, and so he pressed his forehead to his knees, using his shoulders to block out the light. It wasn’t comfortable, but it was darker than before, and that was enough for him. He could make it work.And then, the loudest, most fucked-up static sound ripped through his head.Peter flinched so violently that his head hit the wall with a dull thunk, his breath shoving out in a sharp gasp. It was so loud. So impossibly, violently loud. His whole head buzzed with it, vibrating in his teeth, his bones, his brain. Like someone had taken a serrated blade and dragged it through his skull, like his eardrums were being torn apart from the inside. He couldn’t tell whether to scramble backward or curl in on himself.“Don’t try me, Peter.” Beck’s voice came through, casual, conversational. “I’ll do that if you start getting woozy on me.”"Cool. Awesome. Love that." Peter sucked in a sharp breath, squeezing his hands over his ears even though it was already gone. His fingers trembled against his temples, but he forced his hands down, gripping his knees instead. "New ringtone. Mind sending me the link?"Beck only chuckled. “Nah, this is for internal use only.”“Oh. What I’m hearing is that you do have money for psychological warfare, just not for horse tranquilizers.” Peter stretched his legs out in front of him, trying to convey some general vibe of nonchalance. “Kinda weird budgeting choice, but okay.”“You’re awfully comfortable already, huh?”"Yeah, well, you are holding me hostage, so I figure I may as well give you a review of the accommodations.” Peter shifted his jaw and shot a glare at the ceiling. "Not a fan of the lighting. Zero stars. Too much concrete—feels a little cold. Maybe throw a rug down?”“See, this is what I meant before. You’re annoying when you’re awake.”“You could easily fix that.”Beck didn’t reply after that. The speakers cut out, leaving Peter in a silence that suddenly felt deafening. And then, Peter realized that Beck had been calling him by his name—his government name—and felt all of the blood drain from his body.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
“Are you scanning, FRIDAY?” Tony muttered, staring at the empty expanse of farmland. “Come on, girl, throw me a bone here.”“No heat signatures detected, boss.”After Peter got taken— kidnapped, Tony reminded himself, because Peter was a kid and no one kidnaps a grown adult unless they’re asking for a death wish—the Spider-Man suit’s tracker pinged. Generally, a tracker alert was enough information to track down an Avenger, so Tony’s plan was simple. It went like this:
Step one: Cross-check the tracker with local security footage to figure out where Peter had been when his tracker pinged. *Hypothesis: the entrance to Queensboro Bridge.
Step two: Locate a black, unmarked van in the footage.
Step three: Follow the van on other security footage.
Step four: Rescue Peter.
Easy peasy, simple as pie, lemon squeezy, etcetera. But despite the seemingly bulletproof plan, the one that had saved multiple Avengers in the past, Tony, Sam, and Banner hit a dead end. The tracker had pinged three miles east, near the Queensboro Bridge, but there was nothing—no van, no sign of Peter, no suit—on the security footage. Like the suit pinged the wrong location.So, Tony adjusted. Shifted priorities. The new list looked like this:
Step one: Figure out where the assholes wanted Tony to think they were holding Peter.
Step two: Find where they were actually holding him.
The first part was easy, given the tracker’s course toward Brooklyn. Whoever had taken Peter probably wanted Tony to waste time chasing him into some run-down warehouse district—Dumbo, maybe. God forbid.But the second question— where they were actually keeping Peter —proved trickier.Again, no east-side surveillance cameras had picked up any trace of a black, unmarked van after Peter was taken— kidnapped, Tony reminded himself for the hundredth time. But the tracker had pinged near Route 55, a highway running up from the far eastern side of Manhattan toward Poughkeepsie, a small city in upstate New York. It was about ninety minutes by car. Small enough that New Yorkers wouldn't think to go there, but big enough to hide a kid in some sleazy back-alley bunker or whatever. And far enough that Tony had to waste precious time getting there.He knew he was over Poughkeepsie’s downtown when his suit’s screen lit up with little orange blobs—people cleaning up bars, heading home, strolling down Main Street or whatever Hallmark-y name they’d slapped on it. Tony could pick out Peter’s heat signature in his sleep. The kid ran hot, glowing like a neon “EXIT” sign on any tracker. But there was nothing. Just a sea of cold orange-yellow blobs, the usual crowd of Poughkeepsie-ians going about their business.FRIDAY beeped. “Incoming telephone call from Sam Wilson.”Tony let out a sharp breath. At least it wasn’t May. He’d called her earlier, had to break the news that Peter wasn’t coming home tonight, and she’d bombarded him with questions—where was he, was he safe, was Tony sure? How sure, exactly? Tony had dreaded that phone call for two reasons. First, he hated—and he meant hated—the very existence of the call, the fact that he needed to say, out loud, that Peter wouldn’t be coming home. Second, he and May had a tenuous-at-best relationship. In another life, they probably had a thriving, platonic, half-flirty co-parenting arrangement with Peter. That’d probably make the most sense.But in this life, Peter was May’s baby, and Tony was the entire reason the kid went days at a time without sleeping, swinging around Queens in a Spiderman suit. The reason Peter flinched at sharp touches. That was Tony, and May, obviously, wasn’t a huge fan.To his credit, Tony didn’t lie to May. He hadn’t been forthcoming, sure, but the delicate half-truths were necessary to keep her from going ballistic, either dragging in law enforcement or killing him with her bare hands. He knew she’d been waiting for the opportunity. “He’s fine,” he’d said, cracking his back. Staring at maps of the tri-state area for hours wasn’t good for old bones. “Probably lost track of time. I’ll get him home safe.”He knew in his bones that May wasn’t buying it. She knew Peter too well—knew that if he wasn’t coming home, he would’ve called her. So, naturally, she asked the obvious. “Okay, but you have a tracker on him. Remember? That was one of our conditions.”“Yes, yes, I remember.”“So where is he?”“Technically speaking?” Tony glanced at the map. “Not where he’s supposed to be.”“Oh, that’s helpful. And yeah, no kidding. He’s not home, and it’s already eight.”“He has a curfew? Isn’t it fun-time summertime?”“No, asshole,” she snapped. “He had friends coming over tonight. From, you know, his high school. For Star Wars. Because he’s a child on summer break.”“Look, May, I just need a little time, alright? I’ve got this handled.” He listened to the silence, her sharp exhale hanging in the air, waiting for her to say something. But she just let him stew in it. He deserved that. “I don’t have all the details yet.”May was silent for a few beats longer. Then, in a sharper tone, she asked, “Do I need to call the police?”“No,” Tony said quickly. “God, no. Let them munch on their greasy doughnuts at home, please. They’re useless with this stuff.”“What stuff?”“The kind where you just need to trust me.”Another long pause. “Tony,” she whispered. Something in her tone felt so fucking sad, and his stomach dropped straight through the floor. “He’s just a kid.” No fucking kidding, he wanted to say. He knew Peter was a kid. He knew this whole situation was a disaster he should never have let happen. He knew he was the one who put Peter in these messes, whether it was through his mentorship, dragging him into superhero shit, or just being an emotionally-stunted employer who never set proper boundaries. His very existence pulled Peter into these situations over and over again. And now Peter was out there, somewhere, not sitting with his friends, not watching whatever Star Wars nostalgia-bait Disney was cranking out these days—no, he was God knows where, and Tony let it happen.The more he thought about it, the more he wondered if he could be criminally liable for negligence. It was starting to feel like he should be.He’d spent so much time thinking, reflecting, after the Blip—after he erased Peter, then sent him into a practically fatal dead-end battle against Thanos. He’d decided that he’d protect Peter, that he’d spent the rest of his life trying, begging to make up for it. And yet, somehow, Peter had found out about the robot, had shown up anyway, and Tony still didn’t fucking protect him. So Tony probably deserved a tight scolding from May.The real fun, though, would be his conversation with Pepper. After Thanos went berserk in round two, after that intergalactic fight where Peter came back from the dead, they’d sold their cabin. Pepper had been itching to return to work, Morgan was about to start kindergarten, and, frankly, the place was too quiet anyway. No hustle. No bustle. No Target within a fifteen-mile radius. And so that was all fine, and moving back into the Tower was fine, and everything was peachy, dandy, perfectly fine. Then Nick Fury called that morning, whining about some maladroit robot that seemed similar enough to Thanos to warrant an Iron Man reprise, Tony suited up. He’d been meaning to give the suit a good scrub or take it through the car wash anyway. They were supposed to have someone come look at the piping this afternoon, if he remembered correctly, which was difficult with the dense, suffocating fog of half-baked alarm and the gnawing sting of retrospective shame. So, he let Pepper handle the piping guy while he was out, and when he came back, sans-Spidey, she was, predictably, appalled. She’d asked him what the hell he was thinking, putting a kid back in the line of fire again. “We talked about this,” she’d said, following him around the compound while he tried not to drive his forehead into a wall. “You said you’d keep him out—”“I know,” he snapped. “I know. I thought—that was what I was doing.”He already knew. He already knew. He already knew. “Hey, Tones,” Sam’s voice crackled through the receiver, and Tony fought an eyeroll. “Got a quick question for you.”“No, I haven’t found him,” Tony said, pulling a U-turn and heading back toward Manhattan. Losing an Avenger for twelve hours wasn’t just unusual—it was unfathomable. They’d fought the collection of nuts and bolts around noon, maybe, and now, it was past one in the morning. A failure of this magnitude was fully unthinkable and extraordinarily embarrassing. What had Newsweek called him that one time? The de facto leader of Earth’s mightiest heroes? The big brain behind one of the century’s greatest weapons? New York City’s king of technology?What good was all that tech if he couldn’t find a teenager who’d been taken in broad daylight in one of the most surveilled cities on the planet? At least the skies were clear.But more than embarrassing, Tony was getting scared. Actually scared. The bravado back at the crime scene had been panic, but now, it was fear. Some people believed panic and fear were synonymous, but Tony disagreed. Panic was the immediate reaction, the body slamming the alarm button when something went wrong. It was that spike of adrenaline when Peter’s tracker blinked out, the lurch in his gut when FRIDAY said there was nothing—no surveillance cameras, no loose webs, no footprints—when there should’ve been something. An occasionally irrational reaction to an inflated threat.Tony was generally fine with panic, especially after his therapist had kindly prescribed him a cocktail of SSRIs, because panic gave him momentum. It lit a fire under his ass. It was the thing that turned a box of scraps into a way out of a cave. It’s what helped him survive the wreckage and take on Whiplash without a suit in that F1 race. It was what made him shove his hand into the gauntlet, his eyes burning and ribs screaming and God, where is Peter, and stop a fucking apocalypse. Panic could be solved. It could be outbuilt, outcoded, outgunned.Fear, though—fear lingered. Fear came after the dust settled, when Tony realized the problem wasn’t solved, when the immediate crisis stopped being so immediate and started morphing into something permanent. Fear was the sticky residue that remained when the bad thing didn’t just happen, but was still happening.And it was settling in the bottom of his gut like a fucking brick. Tony, in the silence of his own subconscious, wasn’t afraid to admit it: he was getting scared.“No, not that,” Sam muttered. “I just—were you expecting guests?”Tony blinked, the sharp tingle in his hands grounding him, He forced himself to think, think, think, channel that exhausted adrenaline into something useful. Maybe they’d gone further upstate? But that didn’t make sense. They couldn’t blend into the scenery as easily up there—the upstate highways were as surveilled as New York City’s streets, and there were fewer variables to hide them from passersby. They’d be way more obvious up there, right? They had to know that. They had to be smarter than that.“Tony? Hello?”“Oh, sorry,” Tony said stupidly, shaking the tension out of his neck. He blinked hard. “Sorry. What’d you say?”“Were you expecting guests?”“ Guests? ” Tony repeated. “What, like, for a tea party?”“More like a Star Wars marathon,” Sam muttered. “Couple of teenagers in…um, pajamas? Does that sound right to you? I’ve been trying to get them to leave, but—”“Put us through,” one voice whined, all nasally and impatient.Tony froze, his mind lurching. “Sorry, are they in my fucking Tower ?”He was already pulling up the security feed, his fingers moving on autopilot. There, in the middle of his kitchen, were two teenagers—one in Star Wars-themed pajama bottoms, the other wearing an oversized Midtown Tech sweatshirt—standing like they had all the time in the world, way too comfortable in his space. His home. His kitchen.“I didn’t—” Sam started, his voice strained. “I didn’t know what to do, man. They just kind of... showed up.”“Did you call Pepper?”“She’s—Tony, she’s asleep, and I didn’t want—”“No, no, no,” Tony said, fighting back a bitter laugh. His head was spinning. Peter wasn’t off in Poughkeepsie like he’d guessed, and Peter was God-knows-where, and now, there were two complete strangers—fucking teenagers, no less—in his house, while his wife and child were home. One of Pepper’s conditions for letting the Avengers shack up in the Tower was beefing up the safety measures and general structural integrity. She’d made an excellent point—housing all the Avengers at one very public government address, easily found by anyone with access to J. Jonah Jameson’s bullshit network, was terrorist bait. So, Tony threw a few million dollars at it, tinkered with some new tech, and boom—it was like wrapping the entire building in vibranium. A missile could hit his tower and bounce off like a penny hitting a window. A little plonk before hitting the ground. But apparently, two teenagers could get inside."I get it, man,” Sam said, and Tony realized his voice sounded gentle. Almost pacifying. “I do. But they're... well, they're Peter's friends, and they were worried—"“Oh, good. Peter’s friends. I’m glad we’ve transitioned from Avengers to babysitters.”“I said I was trying to get them to leave,” Sam said. “But it's not that simple—look, Tony, they’re scared. And I think they need a little more time to settle in.”“Settle—” Tony couldn’t fight the indignant scoff. “Stay with them until I get there, and don’t let them make themselves at home. How did they even get up there?”Sam hesitated for a second too long, and Tony’s jaw clenched. He wasn’t asking for the play-by-play.“Uh, the elevator?” a sharp voice came far from the receiver.“Yeah, I guessed that,” Tony shot back. “But the elevators require a badge, and random teenagers can’t—”“We’re not random!”The voice was louder this time, and when Tony cross-checked it with the security feed, he found Sam standing off to the side, munching on the cake they’d baked for Pepper’s birthday last week. Standing around the phone were those two idiot teenagers.“Tony, they’re not threats,” Sam said in that annoying fake-placating way he sometimes did.“How the fuck would you know?” Tony snapped. “Only Pepper and I can grant badges, and rest assured, we don’t hand them out at random Manhattan middle schools. So, Dumb and Dumber, who the hell are you?”“Ned,” the shorter kid said at the same time the taller one said, “MJ.”And just like that, it clicked. The conversation with May, the friends—these were those friends. The pajamas, the late-night hijinks. He thought about the guest bedroom Peter had in the tower, the photos on his desk. Yeah, this was definitely part two and part three of their Three Musketeers shtick.“Peter’s friends,” he said instead of all of that. “How did you guys get into the Tower?”“The elevator,” MJ said, “like I just told you.”“We went to his apartment and found his badge,” Ned mumbled, Tony’s eyes landing on the laminated ID gripped in his fist. “It was easy from there.”“Peter’s badge?” Tony said loudly. Some faraway part of his brain realized his hands were shaking. “You mean to tell me you broke into my tower using Peter’s access?”“Yeah. We just scanned it, and it let us in.” MJ shrugged like she wasn’t standing in Tony Stark’s kitchen at one in the morning. “You might want to replace it with a facial scanner or retinal scan. You know how to make those, right?”“Oh, my God, MJ,” Ned gasped, looking horrified. “He obviously knows how to do retinal scans!”“I wasn’t sure if his expertise was limited to weapons of mass destruction.”“I cannot—” Tony swallowed whatever he was about to say. “What was the plan? Just waltz in, make yourselves at home, wait for Peter to magically appear?”Ned shifted awkwardly, his hands gripping the badge tighter. “We just—we were just worried. I’m sorry. We just didn’t know if he was coming back and thought maybe you knew something.”He rubbed his face, a shaky frustration giving way to exhaustion. Of course these were Peter’s friends. Of course Peter would gravitate towards nerds who were equally persistent, relentless, annoying.“So you broke into my Tower?” Tony muttered. He was about twenty miles out. “That’s not how you handle things. You ask. You use the doorbell like regular people. And isn’t it, I don’t know, one in the morning? Don’t you have school tomorrow?”A beat of silence passed before Ned finally responded, “Mr. Stark, it’s summertime.”Jesus Christ. That was supposed to be his out, a way to get these kids home. But he didn’t want to call Happy on Peter’s friends, not when the kid was still missing. But he also didn’t want to host two extra bodies in the Tower tonight with the other Avengers rolling in tomorrow.When Tony had told Sam to “call in the cavalry” or whatever, he’d forgotten that the only other Avenger within a two-hundred-mile radius was Bruce Banner, who’d set up camp in Tony’s lab, running a million models and hypotheses to pinpoint Peter’s coordinates. The others were overseas, mostly in Munich for some big expo this weekend. They couldn’t fly in until tomorrow, and Tony wondered if Peter’s kidnappers had banked on that.“Well, it’s a little late, if you haven’t noticed.” Tony’s foot hit the accelerator, and the sound of the engine roared through the car, swallowing everything else up. “Probably past your bedtime.”“No, we noticed,” MJ shot back. “We noticed when it hit eight and he still hadn’t shown up for his own movie night. Then, we were two movies in, and suddenly, it was past midnight, and he still wasn’t home.”“May said he was doing something with you,” Ned added.“Yeah, so where is he?” Tony opened his mouth, then shut it. “Busy,” he said instead.MJ tilted her head. Tony couldn’t see her face in the security feed, but he could feel the stare all the same. “Try again.”“Kid, let me be crystal clear: I don’t owe you a—”“Look,” Ned interrupted, “we’re just worried. He was supposed to meet us, didn’t show, his phone’s off, and we know you’re involved, so just—tell us what’s going on.”“I’ve got it handled,” Tony said, his voice sharp. “So how about you two go home, get under a blankie, and let the adults—”“—do nothing?” MJ finished.“Do everything, actually.”“Right. Everything. Like losing him in the first place?”The words hit Tony so hard and so fast that it felt medical. He wanted to scream, I know! I fucking know! Does everyone think I’m a smooth-brained idiot? Do people think Thanos dusted the brain cells off my goddamn cranium? I know. I’ve been knowing. He let the pause stretch on, selfishly hoping MJ might take her words back. Didn’t want some seventeen-year-old to have so much control over his emotions, but there he was, feeling the sting of it anyway.“Jeez,” Tony heard Sam mumble.“Listen to me,” Tony said, forcing the waver out of his voice. Peter trusted these two—trusted them enough to tell them things Tony hadn’t even authorized him to share. He could give them a little. “This is… this is confidential, okay? It’s not even about you guys. I know Peter trusts you, but forgive me if I’m not exactly eager to let teenagers in on… you know.”“No, we don’t,” MJ muttered. “That’s the entire point of this conversation.”“Manners are cool to use, MJ. Do your parents know where you are?”Ned seemed oblivious to the tone. “Yeah, of course they do. Well, sorta. We didn’t really ask permission, but—”“Not what I meant. I’m talking about where you are now. In the middle of my kitchen.”“Do I have to remind you that we’re seventeen years old?” MJ asked. “Practically adults, Tony.”“So close, yet so far.” Tony clenched his jaw. “Sam, please escort Beavis and Butthead out. And call them a cab or something.”“Are you serious?” MJ snapped at the receiver. “No, Tony. Put yourself in our shoes for a second. Imagine showing up to your best friend’s house, and his aunt’s there, fully in tears because her son didn’t come home. Could you imagine that? It was so jarring, Tony, that we took, like, three subway lines to get here and figure out what’s going on. Do you get that?”His hands gripped the controls inside the suit. God, it was like talking to a smaller, angrier version of himself. A version of himself that had friends, he supposed.“Like, I get it,” MJ continued, her voice sharp. “We’re teenagers, we’re kids, blah blah blah. Be original. Jesus Christ. Are you forgetting we were with him through the Blip? That we were his support system through all of his near-death escapades?”“Or after the—after the...” Ned cleared his throat. “Mr. Stark, we’ve grown up. We’ve been forced to grow up because there are some really bad people out there, and they’ve—they’ve been trying over and over again to hurt Peter. We just want to help.”“And us being seventeen instead of eighteen sure doesn’t change anything. It’s just symbolic. Just an excuse to get Peter’s friends out of your dumb penthouse. And this—” She paused for a second. “We can either find Peter with you, or we can do it ourselves.”And for whatever reason, that was what got Tony. The thought of kids investigating this and getting themselves in trouble was infinitely worse than letting them go home in some skeevy cab. He could picture them rushing into some clusterfuck, heads full of idealistic certainty, thinking they could fix things like they had all the answers. That was the thing about teenagers. They didn’t know what they didn’t know. They didn’t understand how deep the hole was, nor did they care to. And he didn’t trust them to make rational decisions. He could make tough calls because that was his job. This, though? This was beyond them. Beyond Peter.“Listen,” Tony said, pulling the mic closer, “I’m sure you think you can just roll up and play detective. Probably got your own little Nancy Drew kits stashed away somewhere. But—”“Are you always such an asshole?” MJ snapped. “You know, Peter’s always talking his head off about how cool and smart and interesting this elusive Mr. Stark is. How we all need to meet him. Is that supposed to be you?”Tony clenched his jaw. God, the kid had a mouth on her. “Yeah, well, he also thinks The Empire Strikes Back is the best Star Wars movie, so clearly, his judgment is suspect.”“You just deflect when you don’t have an argument, huh?”“How about you—”“Don’t tell me what to do.”“Fine.” Tony huffed, raking a hand through his hair. He wasn’t sure what he expected out of arguing with a high schooler at one in the morning—rational conversation was never in the cards. “You want straight talk? Here it is. Peter’s in trouble, and it’s not the kind of trouble you fix with Google searches and teenage bravado. You’re out of your depth.”MJ didn’t blink. “And you aren’t?”That landed harder than it should have. Tony froze, because, yeah. He was out of his depth. Had been since the second he dragged Peter to Germany—a first mistake that spiraled into a hundreds-long list. He exhaled, the fight draining out of him just enough to make room for something else. Guilt. Desperation. Fear. He couldn’t pinpoint any of it.“I don’t want to treat you like you’re helpless,” Tony mumbled, dragging a hand over his face. “I’m not…I’m not being vague because of you guys, you know. It’s not about your age. It’s about keeping you safe.” A sharp silence. For once, MJ and Ned were quiet. Then, hesitant but firm, Ned said, "We won’t—we can stay put, Tony. Work with you. We just want to know what’s going on."“Yeah,” Tony said, his voice softer now. “Give me a second.”The suit banked into a sharp landing, and Tony barely caught himself before dissolving it back into his watch. He shook his shoulders, trying to release the bone-deep, over-exhausted nerves. And that wasn’t oxymoron—it was the kind of anxiety only over-caffeination and sleep deprivation could bring, and it was so shaky, so red, and he needed to sit down.By the time he made it inside the tower, he found Sam, MJ, and Ned in the kitchen. MJ was still gripping Sam’s phone, while Sam leaned against the counter, eyes locked on the two strangers. In person, MJ looked sharper than she had over the security feed. Tall, all edges, her gaze bordering on unsettling. There was a tension to her that Tony recognized all too well. Ned, on the other hand, looked like the opposite. His nervous smile hung loosely on his face, cheeks flushed, arms crossed in a way that felt more like self-soothing than defiance.
More like Peter.
"Ah," Tony said, giving them a once-over. "You guys look different in person than over the security feed.""You look different than you do in the ads," Ned blurted out. "And on, like, my TV. And the news and stuff. And, like, on the internet, and the…the magazines.”“Better, I hope,” Tony deadpanned. Ned and MJ exchanged a glance. Tony tried not to notice. “Sam, thanks again for letting two random children into the tower. I’m sure there are no legal implications for this decision.”“Did you find anything?” Sam asked, ignoring Tony’s comment. “Nope,” Tony mumbled. He glanced back at the kids, noting how they’d shifted a half-step closer to each other. “Poughkeepsie was nice and empty. Just me and a very sad Main Street.”Sam rubbed a hand down his face, and Tony popped the fridge open. He was sure there was an iced coffee in here somewhere. Needed something cold. Cold was supposed to wake you up, right? Another shitty part of these situations—they drained him emotionally and mentally, leaving him exhausted in a way that wasn’t just physical. A way that couldn’t be fixed with a buzzy little drink. A little ironic, considering these were the moments when staying awake was absolutely necessary.“Even the train station?” Sam asked quietly.“Look, I checked the usual spots, ran the usual scans. If Peter was there, he’s not anymore. Or he’s playing hide-and-seek at a level that’s genuinely pissing me off.” Tony found the plastic cup and turned toward the kids. "Anyway. You kids want to help? You’ll help."Ned let out a small sound, but MJ just nodded, her lips set in a thin line. She was relenting. All was right in the world again. "But?” MJ asked."But," Tony said, "I’m not about to be convicted of false imprisonment or kidnapping or whatever. I’m willing to do a lot, but keeping two kids in my lab as work mules—"MJ scoffed. “We’re not—”“Doesn’t matter. The law says so. Not exactly my rules.”MJ finally shut her mouth. Then, Ned quietly asked, “So…um, then, do you, like, want us to call our parents?”"And explain to them that you, of sound mind, decided to show up at Stark Tower at one in the morning? Yeah, actually. I do. Or at least let them know you’re here of your own free will."“But—”"I don’t care how you tell them, but I’m not keeping kids in my tower without their parents knowing. This is literally the only hoop you need to jump through to help me. One hoop. Most would find this generous."He might’ve found it funny, how reluctant they were to just tell their parents. But he got it, at least a little—the sheer, bone-deep instinct to avoid the line of parental fire. He saw MJ stiffen, saw Ned glance at her with wide-eyed, pinkened pity, and Tony just knew.Still, they sucked it up. Dealt with it. Meanwhile, Tony practically mainlined 400mg of caffeine, and by the time they were done, they’d sobered up a little. Maybe even taken a shot of humility. Eventually, they met him back in the kitchen, where Sam was still leaning against the counter, quiet.Tony looked at them. “So you’re good?”“Yeah,” MJ said tightly, arms crossed. “I, um, left the voicemail. They’ll get it in a couple of hours. Where’s the rest of the Avengers?”“Banner’s in the basement running simulations of the…” Tony waved a hand vaguely. “The thing. The others are overseas. They’ll be back in the morning.”MJ frowned. “They didn’t come back…to, like, look for Peter?”“Well, frankly, we thought it’d be handled by now,” Tony mumbled, rubbing a hand over his face. His brian felt like jelly. “I flagged it as low urgency.”MJ’s expression darkened, and Ned hesitated before asking, “And what changed?”So Tony launched into the spiel. He laid it out in clipped, matter-of-fact sentences—how a black, unmarked van pulled up next to Peter in the middle of the day. How the suit’s signal flickered three miles east of Midtown, right by the Queensboro Bridge, and then cut out. How the signal seemed too clean, too perfect, and clicked only a few minutes after the kidnapping. How the van disappeared off every East Manhattan security feed like it’d never been there.“And that,” Tony continued, rubbing his temple, “is how I started playing the world’s worst guessing game.”MJ squinted at him. “You think they wanted you to believe they were heading into Brooklyn.”“Yeah, but Brooklyn was too obvious, too convenient. So I went north, to the only city that made sense.”“Poughkeepsie,” Sam filled in.“Ding ding. But turns out, I was chasing a ghost.” He exhaled sharply. “They were never there.”The kids stood in front of him, MJ’s stare sharp, and Ned staring down at the floor. The silence stretched on for a few seconds, long enough for Tony to glance at Sam, who half-shrugged, maybe signaling Tony to give them a moment to process the reality of losing their friend. When Tony looked back at them, MJ and Ned exchanged a glance.“I think he’s in Manhattan,” Ned said slowly.MJ nodded, her lips pressed in a tight line. “Yeah. I think I agree.”That was definitely not what Tony expected. He scoffed, leaning against the counter beside Sam, who wisely took a few steps back. “Huh? What about any of that says ‘Manhattan’?”Ned shifted, looking up at Tony. “I mean, they definitely wanted you to think it was Brooklyn. They probably figured you’d send everyone in that direction, waste time, get caught up, and maybe even have law enforcement slow you down. I don’t know, it’s just... it makes sense, in a twisted way.”“But they were never over there,” MJ mumbled, her voice softer now. Tony felt the guilt swirling and coagulating in his chest again. “They were never near the Queensboro Bridge, and that’s why the van wasn’t there.”Tony shook his head. “Well, something was over there, ‘cause that’s where the suit went off.”“Did you check if the car could’ve even gotten three miles that quickly?” MJ asked. “I mean, it doesn’t sound like the suit pinged that long after Peter was taken, and the city’s packed midday. Like, could the van have even gotten to the bridge?”Tony hesitated. “It’s possible. Hard, but possible. I mean, if someone was in a rush—”“If a car was flying that quickly toward Queensboro,” Ned said, “it’d be on the security camera.”They all stared at each other in silence before Tony ushered them into the lab. They probably needed the footage, and they definitely needed Bruce, who could offer more insight than Tony’s catatonic ass. When Tony threw the door open, Bruce was standing in front of a cluster of screens, hands behind his head, screens coloring his features in shades of blue and green. He glanced up, saw the kids, and visibly tensed so quickly that Tony almost laughed. “Jesus, Tony, what are kids doing here?”“Peter’s friends,” Tony said, glancing at them briefly. “They broke in.”“We’re not even kids,” MJ mumbled, and Sam snorted.Ned's eyes were like tennis balls as he glanced around, jaw dropped. “God, it’s even cooler than Peter said.”Bruce blinked, gaping at them for a second before shaking his head, motioning toward the screens. “I’m still—did you get anything from Poughkeepsie?”“Nada. Can you pull up the security cameras from Queensboro when the suit pinged?”Bruce nodded, fingers tapping over his keyboard, and soon enough, the footage from the bridge popped up on the screens. The usual traffic—bumper-to-bumper, the way it always was around midday in the city. It was possible to get to the bridge in the few minutes between Peter’s kidnapping and the ping, but not in this traffic, and nobody in this footage was speeding. Even if they’d swapped the suit into another car between the kidnapping and the beep, there was no way that could’ve happened so quickly.“FRIDAY,” Sam said suddenly. “How much time passed between Peter’s kidnapping and the beep?”A short pause. “Twelve minutes, sir.”“Holy shit,” Tony muttered, eyes still glued to the footage. He let out a slow breath. The beep was fake. The beep was fake. The beep was fake. “ You couldn’t get to the bridge from the site within twelve minutes by car. Not in this traffic.”Bruce looked at him. “Wait, what?”Tony glanced back at MJ and Ned. “If the suit wasn’t over there, then someone fabricated the beep. And to fabricate it, they’d have to mess with the radio signals, right?”MJ nodded. “If they could do that, they could’ve made it look more realistic, but they didn’t. It’s too clean, like you said. Too perfect.”“Wait, guys, stop,” Bruce said. They all turned to him. “Can someone give me, like, the SparkNotes of what’s happening here?”“It was bumper-to-bumper traffic, Banner,” Tony said quickly, gesturing frantically at the footage. “We’ve been operating under the assumption that they could’ve—that a car could’ve gotten to the bridge. But they couldn’t get there, not with the traffic. So the signal, it had to be…be fabricated.”“Exactly,” Ned said, arms crossed tightly across his chest. “They must’ve hijacked the signal and planted the ping somewhere else to mislead you.”“But it doesn’t make sense why they wouldn’t try harder to make it believable,” Bruce said.“Unless they didn’t have to.” Tony exhaled sharply, rubbing his jaw. It felt rough under his hand. “They had the tech to manipulate the suit’s signal, but they didn’t bother covering their tracks completely. Like they knew I’d figure it out eventually.” MJ bit her lip. “Like they wanted you to waste time chasing nothing before coming to the real conclusion.” “And what do you think that is?”“That Peter’s still in Manhattan,” Ned said, voice barely above a whisper. Bruce glanced between the kids, Sam, and Tony, his eyes narrowing. Tony waited for him to read between the lines, to see what he was seeing.“Why would he—”“It's a classic misdirection,” Sam said. “The last place you’d expect him to be was somewhere you’ve already eliminated. And with how dense this city is, there’s no way we’d be able to pick up any heat signatures—too many buildings, too many damn people.”“And by keeping him close, they can better monitor you guys,” Ned mumbled, staring at the footage. Cars slowly drove, inching down the bridge, the East River folding over and onto itself in the background. “To watch you get into your Iron Man suit and head north to Poughkeepsie.”The silence after that was so heavy. For several seconds, Tony couldn’t think any word other than fuck, fuck, fuck. He couldn’t conceptualize that he’d ever heard anything other than hammering, blistering realization that he’d fallen hook, line, and sinker into some moron’s trap, tripped and fell and slammed his forehead against exactly what the dipshit had wanted. Predicted. Prayed for. He had to press his palms into his eyes, feeling the swelling cool against his skin. His palms were sweaty, and he was so tired. Too old for this.“I don’t know,” Bruce said suddenly. Tony blinked, his vision blurring as he glanced at him. “If they’re interfering with signals like this, they’ve got some serious tech. And they were clean in the video—really practiced. But are they advanced enough to pull off something like this? And who would that even be?”Ned chewed on his lip. For some reason, that’s what made Tony’s memory clink: this was the Ned Peter always went on about. Obviously, he already knew this was Peter’s friend, but the real weight of it finally hit him. He pictured Peter at his dinner table, rambling about their Academic Decathlon practices, Lego structures, and movie marathons, babbling about this so-called Ned and how incredible he was. This was that Ned. This was the Ned.“Do we know who could do something like this?” Ned asked quietly. “Too many people,” Sam muttered. Tony shot him a look, then glanced at Ned. “Any of the babbling, half-baked Redditors posting elitist garbage and conspiracy theories about him. Any of those thousands of dolts could do something like this.”“That’s a big data set, Tony.” Bruce kept his fingers above the keyboard, but his eyes never left the screen. “And it’s probably wrong. We’re talking about someone with real skill. It’s someone smart with something personal. Not just…”“Brain rot?” Ned suggested. “Yeah, that.”“If it’s personal,” Tony mumbled, “Could it be about me?”“The narcissism,” Sam muttered from somewhere behind him. The pararescueman was probably waiting his turn to make a rescue strategy, his strength. His specialty wasn’t hostage analysis. Tony hated that it was one of his.“Hey, wrong,” Tony said. “I’m just saying that…that if they wanted me running around like an idiot for hours before realizing the truth, then they knew how I’d react. The only reason someone would make some big, stupid scavenger hunt while knowing exactly how I’d behave is someone who’s getting me in particular.”It wasn’t lost on Tony how ironic it was to actually admit that he made mistakes sometimes—and that those mistakes were part of his specific, observable behavioral patterns. But anyone who’d worked with him before his civil war with America’s Asshole knew exactly how cyclical his behavior could be—overcompensating, panicking, and making mistakes.MJ shifted her weight. “So they knew you?” An even longer silence than before. Tony hated this—hated when the puzzle started to fall into a pattern he didn’t want to see. It twisted his gut, the tightening knot in his stomach like reality was something he could choke on.He ran a hand through his hair. “We need to start scanning for signal interference across the borough. If they’re manipulating my tech, there’s a good chance they’re messing with other networks too. That’ll give us a location.”Bruce nodded, already turning to his keyboard. “I’ll start running scans now.” MJ and Ned exchanged another look before turning back to Tony.“And in the meantime?” Ned asked. Tony exhaled, steeling himself. He couldn’t stop thinking about how much he hated this. Hated himself. Hated the guy who took Peter. Hated that he’d relented and let these kids stay in his dumb Tower like a dumb adult. “We wait.”As the clock ticked past two o’clock, then two-thirty, then three, Tony had to face the fact that his tech was the only one acting up—the only radio in a borough of over 1.5 million people. Everything else sat untouched, unbothered, fully functional and in the green. Just his modest collection of signals and devices flickering against the scans.His bones felt waterlogged. It wasn’t a coincidence. Too convenient to be one.Ned leaned in. "So... what does that mean? I mean, if your tech’s the only one acting up, then someone’s gotta be messing with it, right?"“Yeah.” Tony rubbed his temples, the pit in his stomach deepening. He hated this feeling. “Yeah. Someone’s got their grubby paws all over my systems.”“Whoever it is, they’re damn good at it,” Sam whispered, his eyes wide and face scrunched up. Whenever Wilson was scared, his face would collapse, like the awful thing had already happened. And right now, he looked exactly like that. “Really good.”Bruce shifted his weight, shaking his head. “We’re talking about someone who can alter signals, tamper with data, maybe even override security protocols. Who has that kind of access?”"Someone who knows my tech like the back of their dirty little hands, obviously,” Tony said, pointing wildly at the footage. Someone who knows exactly what buttons to press. Someone who’s been doing this for a minute now."MJ’s eyes darted between Tony and Bruce. When she did this, she looked younger, more like the kid she was, and Tony’s chest twisted. He hated this so bad. “It’s someone from inside the house.”Tony nodded, his fingers tapping a rapid, almost frantic rhythm on the table. “Exactly. And it’s someone who knows how to play me. Knows how I think. Knows exactly how I’ll react.”Bruce leaned forward, his gaze shifting between Tony and the kids. “But who?”“Former employee,” Sam said. Sam’s voice was low, but the certainty in it made Tony’s stomach twist. “It’s the only thing that makes sense. Someone who knew the ins and outs of your systems, someone who knew you—your habits, your weaknesses. They could slip in and out, undetected.”Tony barked out a laugh so loud that the unflappable MJ full-body flinched. “Well, that’s great! Check the hate comments on my stupid LinkedIn page. Could be any number of the corporate bro dorks with a keyboard and worm-brain.”Sam gave him a long look. “Well, if you’ve got a better idea, spit it out. But whoever it is, they’ve got access. And they know exactly how you think.”“But what am I supposed to do with that? Sit around and wait while some disgruntled ex-employee plays puppet master with my tech?”“Okay, relax,” Bruce said, his voice soft but firm. He held up a hand. “Let’s get back to the whole Find Peter thing. We’ll figure out the strategy, work backward, and go from there. Then we figure out who has the motive to pull this off.”
Hated this. Hated this. Hated this.
Two miles south, Beck shot William a sharp glance, his eyes narrowing. “He actually bought it?”“Flew all the way up to Poughkeepsie,” William muttered, his finger tracing a line on the map. “Up there. Then came straight back and hasn’t budged since.”Beck’s gaze stayed fixed on the screens and maps in front of him, the data all pointing to one shocking conclusion: Tony Stark had taken the fucking bait.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
“Sleepy beauty,” Beck’s voice suddenly said, and Peter tucked his knees a little closer to his chest. It’d been…however many hours, and he still couldn’t figure out where that stupid voice was coming from. “It’s a good day to be alive, isn’t it?”Peter couldn’t even conceptualize an answer. He’d pulled his fair share of all-nighters—maybe two dozen in his life—and there were generally three types. The first was the purposeful all-nighter. It was goal-driven. Motivated. Deliberate. The one where he was awake because he had something to do, like playing a video game, doing math problems, or sitting on Ned’s couch, giggling while watching some garbage nineties comedy. Sometimes, they were less pleasant, like when he got stuck in a vault or a warehouse in D.C. and spent the whole night cracking the exit code, but that didn’t happen often.The second type was the one he’d unlocked shortly after Uncle Ben passed. The blubbering, wailing all-nighter. It was the cheek-burning, grieving kind, when it’s eleven o’clock and he’s sobbing into his hand, and he glances at his phone and Jesus, somehow, it’s two o’clock, and he hasn’t stopped crying, so he’ll check again to be sure, and now it’s seven, and May’s calling his name, and he has to leave in five minutes, but his eyes are so puffy, and his head feels like it’s stuffed with cotton balls. Those nights. But somehow, as evidence of an unjust universe, there was a subset worse than those hiccupy, searing nights where he had to force himself to stop crying, stop crying, stop crying to keep from waking May. That was the third type, which he considered to be the insomnia all-nighter. The kind where he desperately wanted to be asleep—like, actively seeking and fully pursuing sleep—but still couldn’t figure out how to do it. Like he’d forgotten how. Those were the nights when his body felt like it’d been injected with caffeine, too aware of time’s squishy and stretchy properties, all gelatin and slime. His eyes would feel properly acidic, and his eyelashes would feel like teeth, and it was never, not even once, fun. And this was that kind of night. Because of course.“You’re awfully quiet,” Beck mused. “That’s new. Thought you liked to talk.”His pulse thudded against his temple. He hadn’t slept, which was unfortunate, considering he’d really like to do that about now. “Sorry,” he said in a voice that didn’t feel like his own. “Guess I’m just waiting for breakfast. You bring me bagels or something?”In a shocking moment of gratitude, Peter thanked God that his hostage-holder—or whatever Beck considered himself—was relatively humane. Contrary to the insane circumstances, Peter suspected that Beck didn’t actually want him dead. He just wanted him passive or subservient. He’d been given dinner last night at what he estimated to be six, maybe seven o’clock, and it’d tasted fine. Whoever made the mac ’n’ cheese clearly needed to use something other than American cheese, though. How’d they even make this with fake cheese? But whatever. It wasn’t May’s cooking, but he’d survive somehow. And it was his way to tell time. If every meal was spaced out according to a specific hour, then he could figure out the time based on the meals.The part Peter was still grappling with was how they’d actually given him the breakfast. He’d been awake when it happened, facing the wall. He felt his spidey sense burn a little, turned around, and boom , mac n’ cheese. No sound, no door opening, and definitely no person in sight. It was suspicious, but he’d eaten anyway.“Is that what you want?” Beck asked. “Like, for breakfast? That works.”“You know, I didn’t think you’d actually hold me to a bagel when I first said it. I was just, like, saying stuff. I would’ve picked something else.”“Oh? Like what?”“French toast or something. With powdered sugar and syrup, and maybe—”“Okay, hold on. I’m not gonna play waiter with you.”“That’s smart. You’d probably give me cold toast or spill coffee on my lap.”“What makes you think that?"“I mean, you haven’t exactly demonstrated much…” Peter gestured dryly around the room. “Customer service skill, or whatever.”Peter tried to relax against the wall, pressing his temple into the cold white paint, willing that weird, creeping chill out of his body. The tension in his shoulders pinched, a sharp reminder of how long he’d been like this. All night, he’d begged himself to sleep—twice, he even got as far as closing his eyes, tucking himself against the wall, and letting his shoulders go slack. Then, inevitably, the static scream would rip through the room. Every time, it sent him jolting upright, heart slamming against his ribs, shoulders shaking so badly he could barely breathe. “Oh, poor Spidey.” Beck paused, then asked, “Do you want me to get in there and do some interior decorating? Is that it?”“Just a couple of throw pillows or posters could really—” Peter swallowed. “Liven the place up.” He was getting too old for all-nighters at the ripe old age of sixteen. The cortisol, the hand trembles, the weird puffiness around his temples—a younger him, a less tired him, probably could’ve handled it. Now, his thoughts felt like watery clay, and his circadian rhythm was definitely off.At least he logically knew where he was in this weird ether called space-time, and that was… that was… Jesus, had it been a full twenty-four hours since he woke up in this stupid, too-white room? He supposed it was, because he’d woken up yesterday morning, and Beck had said, “Good morning.” And if he’d already had lunch and dinner since then, and if breakfast was coming up… then wasn’t it—wasn’t it already the next day?If he slept for eighteen hours that first day, then went a full day, breakfast-to-breakfast, that meant he’d been gone for thirty-six hours.“I’ll ask my accountant if we can find some wiggle room in the budget.”Tony hadn’t found him for thirty-six fucking hours? His first thought wasn’t whether Tony was looking for him but rather where the hell Beck was keeping him if Tony Stark, who had access to every wireless camera in New York City for some reason, couldn’t track him down.“Good,” Peter said, rubbing his arms. They were so cold, but the room was so warm only, like, twelve hours ago, right? He pressed further into the corner. “And, uh, not to be annoying, but it’d be nice to get warmer light bulbs in here instead of these, like, clinical hospital ones.”Based on his recollection, the longest he’d ever gone without sleep was thirty-nine hours—seven o’clock one morning to ten o’clock the next night. He’d been tired, obviously, but that was the extent of his symptoms—just insomnia and feverish nausea. He’d watched the edges of objects blur and felt little wisps on his neck that maybe weren’t there, but never full-blown, live-in-color hallucinations. He could always tell where reality ended and dreams began.And then, Beck appeared in front of him. No smoke or bells or whistles, nothing remarkable, just suddenly a man so real and lifelike that Peter flinched hard enough to dislodge his heart from its cavity. A real, human man just materialized, he thought. Beck was definitely talking, but his eyes hurt, the light was blinding, so bright that he could barely hear Beck at all. Oh my God. For a second, Peter wondered if his timekeeping method was off, if he was hallucinating in a way he’d never done before. One second, he was alone in some sterile, washed-out shed, and the next, a cape-wearing, fishbowl-headed dude in medieval garb was in the opposite corner.If he gave it more than two seconds of thought, he’d realize he’d seen weirder things. He’d seen Vision, a skinless man with a stone in his forehead, do way crazier things. His ex-date’s dad tried to kill him. He’d fought Thanos in space. In all of those situations, he’d been calmer, cooler, and more collected than this. "Where did you come from?" Peter asked, trying to iron out his voice. It was freaky having a grown man just appear in front of you, but he didn’t want Beck to know that. “How did—”It smelled like ozone, like the aftermath of a storm. “I don’t want that to concern you. Just focus on me right now, okay? You look like hell.”Peter blinked. For whatever reason, that snapped him back to a more clinical, colder reality. He sat up straighter. “Okay, super rude. Remember the customer service thing I mentioned earlier? This was what I was talking about.” Beck stood across the room, leaning against the wall beside the sink. Peter’s heart quickened the longer he stayed in that spot, half-expecting Beck to lunge at him. Without thinking, he jumped into a half-assed, trauma-informed fighting pose, like that would stop Beck from attacking him. He knew Tony was going to come get him, but if he could hurry it up, that’d be great. “As we were conceptualizing this,” Beck said suddenly, “someone on my team, Janice, wanted to know your identity before we executed it. Said it’d be important.”Peter swallowed hard. Somewhere in the time-lapse of his all-nighter, he’d forgotten that, yes, they were calling him Peter, and they had no real reason to do that. “That’s—and this is the data analytics lady, right?”“Yes, same Janice.”“Great. I’m getting familiar with the cast of characters.”“I just—” Beck groaned. “I’m not talking about her data analytics. I’m talking about her because, among other things, we learned this: Spider-Man’s an Avenger, but Peter Parker is a regular ass person with regular ass people in his life.”Peter’s pulse spiked. Any lingering unease he’d shoved aside about Beck watching him for what was probably (but not definitely) twenty-four hours came rushing back. It freaked him the fuck out. Tony, Natasha, Clint, Steve—they’d all signed some little contract with Stark Industries and the government to be part of the Avengers. But Ned and May hadn’t. They never consented to Avenger associations, never agreed to be collateral damage in the fallout of Peter’s decisions.He thought about May, about how sick she must be feeling right now. She’d been with Ben for… God, what was it? Fifteen years? Twenty? Thirty? He couldn’t remember right now, couldn’t clear it through the fog, but he knew it had been a long time. A few years ago, he found a scrapbook from the nineties, filled with glossy photos of May and Ben grinning on the beach, dancing at their wedding, cooking in their kitchen. They looked so young that Peter hadn’t recognized them at first, just holding the photos in his fingers. And before Ben, she’d lost her parents when she was a teenager, so she was kind of like him, kind of constantly losing people, living life at a net loss. And she must be thinking she was losing him.Instead of saying that, Peter mumbled, “So, when’s breakfast, then?”“Soon.” Beck smiled a little. “Before your…your french toast, or whatever our staff gets for you, I have a little guest.”In a sequence of events that bordered on contrived, Peter suddenly heard footsteps outside the door, a half-sobbing scream, someone grunting. Sounds of struggle. His breath hitched, every nerve snapping like rubber bands as his back hit the wall, waiting, waiting, waiting to see what Beck’s version of a “friend” looked like. Maybe he does want me dead, Peter thought, his pulse practically vibrating. Maybe it was a feral tiger. Or maybe Beck had lured some aberrant bad guy off the streets of Queens—told him to follow along, and you’ll get to drop Spider-Man on his ass. Enough people would jump at the chance.The door swung open.MJ stood in the frame, looking disoriented, her chest rising and falling in uneven bursts. The thick metal door—the same one that had refused to budge when Peter threw himself at it—sat wide like it’d never been locked at all. If he focused, he could feel a breeze from the air-conditioning. Then, of its own will, it slammed shut.She flinched at the sound, stumbling forward. For a second, Peter could only stare, feeling like someone had encased his lower half in concrete. The past five minutes had been so insane that he’d almost forgotten Beck had just appeared—too focused on the fact that MJ, real-life MJ, had just… shown up.Peter’s taste in girls was consistent: pretty, smart girls who doubled as presidents of the Academic Decathlon. But that wasn’t why he liked her. Despite everything about her, she was kind. She called herself a pessimist, but Peter thought deep down, she was an optimist. Just one who had been let down so many times she started manually telling herself pessimistic things. She was similar to Tony Stark in that way—both tried to disassemble their optimism by hand, break it down to its most basic parts, and crush it between their fingers. Both were afraid of optimism, if Peter had to guess. Afraid of the vulnerability of it. The hope of it. And both would deny it if he ever brought it up.But she was also like Peter, just rearranged, reconfigured—molded into someone more interesting, funnier, sharper. She was precise and calculating but prone to unpredictable bursts of warmth. She gave odd compliments, like, “I like the face you make when you talk about semiconductors.” He hadn’t forgotten that one. She’d said it like a throwaway line, and he wondered how often she dropped those little comments, thinking they’d go unnoticed—oblivious to how the recipient would hold onto them. Maybe it was just him who did, but he couldn’t imagine that. Not when she was MJ and everyone else was just everyone else.Something in him snapped.“Oh my God…” she whispered. Choking back something that felt like road burn, Peter practically sprinted toward her. She wrapped her arms around his neck, pressed his forehead to the space between her shoulder and her neck, and his whole body deflated. She was so warm, and he was so cold. He tried to be gentle, but he couldn’t tell if he was being like Mr. Stark, who always gave him intense, too-tight hugs after missions."MJ—" His voice cracked, muffled against her shoulder. It would’ve been embarrassing if he hadn’t completely forgotten the meaning of the word "embarrassing." He was shaking. Why is she here? Why is she here? Why is she here? “What, um, why—”“I had to,” she stammered, her voice thinner than Peter had ever heard it. Thinner than that Academic Decathlon competition, when she’d directed him toward the Washington Monument and said something about how her friends were going to die. Worse than that. “We—we were looking for you, and Ned—he said to wait, but I couldn’t just sit there and—and…”She pulled away and looked at his face. His eyes searched hers, but his vision was too blurry, too unfocused, unable to catch any small feature—her eyelashes, her eyebrows, the wisps of hair at the crown of her head.“Are you okay?” she asked.Peter barely registered the question. His mind was already spinning. Without thinking, he whirled to Beck, shoving MJ behind him, her hands on his shoulders. Tony once told him he took a love-first approach to everything—making sure civilians were okay before dealing with the bad guys, greeting enhanced people he hadn’t seen in a while mid-battle. Backseating the danger to prioritize the people. Usually, he didn’t mind that about himself, but if Beck was a worse person, Peter’s little bout of oh, my goodness, it’s MJ, would’ve gotten them both killed.“Anyway, that’s why we decided to find your identity,” Beck said, his voice flat. “Figured you could use a little play-thing.”“Don’t touch her,” Peter said quietly, his voice trembling. “I don’t—I don’t know what you think you’re doing, I swear to God—”“Oh, I won’t touch her,” Beck said, still standing by the mirror, head tilted, a smirk at his lips. “She’s all yours. It’s like getting a toddler a dog—something to play with until they’re old enough for preschool.”“What—” Peter took a step back, his eyes narrowing. “That’s a weird way to talk about women. Not exactly, uh, feminist of you.”“Relax. My team is more than forty percent women. We’re progressive.”Peter’s breath came too fast, too shallow, and he tried to steady himself, to recalibrate, to identify his situation in neutral terms. He was in a white room, sensory-deprived for who knew how long, and some asshole with a big head (literally and metaphorically) just strolled in and deposited the girl he liked, and the lights were too bright, too loud. “No.”“No? I can show you the stats. It’s true, trust me.”“Peter,” MJ said gently, like she was speaking to a spooked animal. “Just…you’re okay.”Except he wasn’t. His thoughts were so slow, like his neurons had to wade through glue to reach his consciousness. Beck just dead-stared at him.He couldn’t remember the last time he’d actually felt afraid. Relative to the other Avengers, he’d gotten pretty lucky. They handled world-shattering, nuclear threats, the types that wiped full countries clean off the map. Peter’s day-to-day had more purse thefts. Minor bar fights. Helping lost tourists navigate the subway system. A gallon of gas for stranded cab drivers a couple blocks from the station. Nothing too high-stakes in the grand scheme of things.Even when it was high-stakes, his gaggle of superheroes was always there. He could always, and would always, call for backup if he needed it. Not today. Part of him wondered if this was how Tony always felt—on edge, white-hot, flustered. It must be. Peter felt like this after one sleepless night, while Tony regularly worked on days without sleep and most of the world on the line. The thought made Peter dizzy.“Listen to your girlfriend,” Beck said. “She’s trying to be, like, girlfriendly.”“We’re—” Peter started, but the words caught in his throat. The line between fear and rage felt more like marble cake. He wanted to tear this guy apart, wanted him to disintegrate like paper in water. “Peter…” MJ said slowly. “You’re fine.”“No, no, wait.” The thought made his skin crawl, and he shook his head to push it away. He couldn’t understand why he was even thinking like this, why he was in this situation, or what he was supposed to do. “Wait, hold on. Just give me a second to think.”MJ took a slow step around him, trying to meet his eyes. When he realized she was no longer behind him, but in front of him, standing between him and Beck, he tried to use his arm—tried to nudge her back, to move her, to get her to see that a sadistic weirdo was right there. “Hey,” she said. “Listen to me.”But this close to her face, Peter could see the inconsistencies. They felt so small at first—her pupils weren’t dilating right, there were no pores on her skin, and her eyes were too wide, too vacant. There were no lines.“Listen to your girlfriend,” Beck said, his gaze flicking to MJ again. “She’s trying to help.”Peter wanted to take a step back, but his legs felt rooted to the spot. He scanned her face, trying to find something familiar, something solid to hold onto. But the longer he looked, the faker she became. Her eyes weren’t hazel enough, and her eyebrows were poorly rendered. And if the little pieces that comprised her were wrong, the entirety of her was wrong.His skin was cold, and the room was shrinking, warping around them, pulsating in some freakish half-human way. The sense.“Peter,” she repeated. Her lips barely moved, the sound coming from some faraway place.
Something’s wrong. Something’s wrong. Something’s wrong.
Reality splintered into six thousand pieces. Everything blurred. “It’s gonna be fine, Peter.”She was saying his name too much. Too often. And where was the snark? Wasn’t she always toeing the line between sarcastic and scathing, sometimes with both feet planted firmly in each camp?Maybe this was like the Washington Monument incident, when she’d told him between shaky breaths, “My friends are up there!” Her snide irony had dissolved fast in the face of an existential, otherworldly threat.But she wasn’t afraid now—not like she was then. And even if she was, why did she keep saying his name over and over and over again like it was the only line in her script? Like it was the only thing she’d been programmed to do?“MJ.” His voice cracked, his breath coming in ragged gasps as panic spread like wildfire, lighting veins and skin and bones into ash. Against every single impulse he had, he said, “Please, please…don’t leave me alone. I know…I don’t get—you’re not, but please. Don’t—”She took a half-step closer, but her movement was too stiff, too controlled. "Peter..." She hesitated, her hands awkwardly falling to her sides. “I don't... I don't know what—it's okay.” Peter again? Did she have to keep saying that?Every second only reinforced that this wasn’t her, but Peter’s mind refused to process it. How was this happening? How did it work? The irregularities he noticed felt so inconsequential, so meaningless, so minor—needle-thin fractures in a field-sized window—but so important in conjunction with each other.Her hair was too neat, her lips too still, her voice borderline lifeless. Like someone took a turkey baster and sucked the life out of her expression.He needed something, anything, to confirm this feeling, so he looked down at her hands.A few days ago, Peter had invited Ned and MJ over to his apartment to play a first-person shooter. He’d cranked up a couple of box fans, stocked the fridge with drinks, and opened the windows, but the heatwave season in New York City felt like living inside a dishwasher. Despite the humid, sludge-like air, they sat on Peter’s living room floor, shoulder-to-shoulder, sweaty hands gripping the controllers, laughing loudly as Peter failed level after level.During a break, Peter grabbed a Coke from the fridge, practically rushing it over to MJ, desperate not to let his warmth transfer to the can. Something about giving his crush a sweaty Coke made him want to die, but he didn’t know how to flirt, so giving her a Coke was the least of two evils.“Here you go,” he’d said, handing it to her.She’d looked up, her smile easy and familiar. “Oh, huge.”
Here you go. Oh, huge. Here you go. Oh, huge.
The heat of the room didn’t matter anymore. For a moment, everything froze in cool relief, and Peter exhaled. He’d executed the smallest, least consequential move to ever exist, but he’d been proud of that.
Here you go. Oh, huge. Here you go. Oh, huge.
“Yeah, totally,” he’d said, feeling borderline giddy before sitting beside her. The air around her practically hummed.
Here you go. Oh, huge. Here you go. Oh, huge.
He’d watched her open the can, the tab sticking at first, but when she used her finger to pry it open, she sliced it. It happened so fast that Peter barely realized it—stuck tab, press tab, bleeding hand. Blood, too much blood, pooled fast around her fingertips, her finger, her palm. She squeaked something, but Peter barely processed the words, too focused on the blood, fumbling over himself. His mind distantly registered, in a brutal twist of irony, that MJ—this generally macabre girl who’d laugh at blood and gore in late-night horror movies—was afraid of her own.“I’m being so serious,” she’d said shakily. “I pass out every time. Just—oh, God, I can feel it !”“It? Like, the passing-out feeling?”“No, no, like—” She gagged. “Dude, the blood on my hand! Jesus—”“Wait, wait, but what about—” Peter forced a laugh, trying to remember the medical tips that Banner gave him. “You are so fine with horror movies.”“Yeah, idiot, ‘cause it’s not my own!”He didn’t understand why the blood’s owner mattered, but this felt like a dead-end argument. “Okay, that’s—alright. Just, deep breaths, okay?”“Is she going to die?” Ned asked from across the kitchen.“Yeah,” Peter said sarcastically. “It’ll have to be amputated.”MJ whined. “Shut up! ”He’d held her hand under the faucet, cool water on warm skin, and put a towel on the countertop so she could rest her forehead comfortably while she washed off. After, he gave her a washcloth—“Put your hand in this, dude!”—as he tried to open the band-aid, fingers trembling for no reason.
Here you go. Oh, huge. Here you go. Oh, huge.
But now, today, his eyes locked on her hand. Where the cut had been—nothing. No scar. No band-aid. Not a trace. It looked perfectly fine, perfectly normal, like whatever had taken MJ’s place didn’t account for the new cut on her finger. Like they were operating on an older version.“You’re not her,” he whispered.
It wasn’t her. It wasn’t her. It wasn’t her.
Here you go. Oh, huge. Here you go. Oh, huge.
MJ wasn’t standing in front of him.He couldn’t wrap his mind around how this was happening. Beck was just as unreal as this situation, if Peter had to guess. Logistically, a hologram this complex would be a nightmare to program, but Beck was a former Stark employee, and they didn’t follow the normal rules of complexity. Peter could barely breathe.“What?” MJ asked. “Peter, you need to look at me.”“Stop saying my name.” He backed away again, shaking his head. He was waiting for something, anything, that could make this feel real again. Instead, he asked, “Where’s your cut?”“What cut?”“The one... from the other day,” Peter said, his eyes frantic as they darted over her face. He was praying, begging for an answer that would clear this up. “MJ, at my place—where’s the cut?”MJ froze. She didn’t even blink.And then it hit him. He’d said the wrong thing, asked the wrong question, triggered something he shouldn’t have. In an instant, she dissolved. Not like the Blip—like dust, like a memory fading—but like pixels breaking apart, vanishing as if she had never existed at all. Even though he knew, deep down, that it wasn’t real, Peter felt it anyway. He felt the loss, the gravitational pull toward the empty space.
Here you go. Oh, huge. Here you go. Oh, huge.
“Fucking—” Beck started, then huffed. “Dammit, Doug! How did you miss that?”Beck stomped his foot, pacing like he could hear someone Peter couldn’t. Meanwhile, Peter just stood there, fists clenched, overwhelmingly confused and unbelievably sad. But above those, he felt crazy. This wasn’t how he usually felt after an all-nighter. Didn’t usually spend the day hallucinating (or whatever this was) his crush and suffering from fishbowl-man-induced heart palpitations.“Sorry, kid,” Beck finally said, turning back to him. Peter didn’t meet his eyes. “Guess we got an expired image of MJ when we tracked her last week. Kinda broke the immersion, but I liked your performance.” Since last week, Peter’s mind echoed. He felt dizzy. They found her. Followed her. Last week. “Well, guess it was fun while it lasted.” Peter’s voice was too shaky for the joke he wanted. Playing this off, playing it cool—that was the move, probably. Not letting Beck know that it was working. “You’re insane. Like, more insane than previously realized.”"Do you have a bunch of these quips saved in storage or something?" Beck asked, suddenly serious. "They’re not as good when you’re out of the suit. But even with it, you’re just a little kid playing dress-up."“Even if I am, at least I’m not some coward cosplaying as Dr. Strange.”“You like it? I had it custom-made. Janice is a real seamstress, you know that? Makes all of her daughters’ Halloween costumes.”Peter felt like he was going to throw up. “Oh, that’s nice. I’m so—she did a great job.”"God, it’s fucking relentless," Beck muttered. "Every single time you open your mouth. I swear."“Better this than being a sleazeball hiding behind illusions.” Peter coughed, doubling over for a second. He accidentally caught a glimpse of himself in the mirror, and he looked awful —all sweaty, dark circles under his eyes, about three shades too pale. He blinked hard and looked back at Beck. Thank God that wasn’t the real MJ, actually. "You haven’t swung at me once, by the way," Beck said suddenly. "I’ve been waiting patiently, but there you are, giving your dumbass stand-up special with no audience."“I have to practice my tight-ten somewhere, man.” “Yeah, well, jokes don’t win battles, Peter. They never have."Peter felt that familiar knot in his chest, so he straightened up, forcing a confidence he didn’t quite feel. “You’re right. But I do."Beck’s laugh was so low and mocking that Peter felt like an actual child all over again. Like he’d just said something dumb in front of Flash, or like he’d cracked a joke in front of Happy in Germany. Beck stepped forward, his eyes gleaming with something dangerous. Predatory. “I wish I had even half your confidence. You know that? It’s nauseating.”Peter knew, in the back of his mind, that Beck wasn’t a threat—his Spidey Sense hadn’t gone off once in the past fifteen minutes, and Beck was probably a hologram. But somehow, he forgot. He flinched at Beck’s last word, the embarrassment hitting harder now than it had in front of Fake MJ.Then, he blinked.And Beck was gone.Peter stood there, his heart pounding so hard he could feel it in his fingertips. All he could do was stare. Beck had been right there. Inches away."Beck?" His voice cracked, slipping out before he could stop it. He felt ridiculous, desperate—and it was so embarrassing—but he could physically feel his mind slow down when nobody was here with him, when they left him alone in this stupid white room. Nothing but that buzzer, primed to scream if he so much as nodded off, rattling him so bad he’d see stars. "Where…?"In a sudden flash of clarity, he remembered some conference—no, a science fair, maybe, or a Stark expo, but it didn’t matter. He was, like, eight years old, and Tony was talking about this kind of tech. It was at Binary Reality Augmentation, or something like that. Not just a projection, but a simulation. It could snap figures into existence, make someone—well, not someone, but something that felt like someone—appear. Warm skin, real movement. At the time, he’d thought it was the coolest thing in the world.What a fucking joke.Peter’s breath caught as he turned in a slow circle, scanning the room. Every inch of his surroundings felt wrong, humming with something sharp-edged and alien. Wrong. Wrong. Wrong. His fingers twitched. Instinct screamed at him to move, to get ready.He couldn’t see Beck. But he could feel him.Somehow, he knew Beck was still there.
Watching. Waiting.
Ten minutes later, he was staring at the wall, knees to his chest, when a pulse through his body, that sharp, unmistakable crackle of alarm that made the hairs on his arms stand up. He snapped toward the door and found a box of Honey Nut Cheerios. When Beck and MJ had “arrived,” he hadn’t gotten the sense. Not even a twinge. But with this, he had, and it was strong.That probably meant something, but his brain couldn’t figure out what.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
Tony didn’t really get teenagers. Didn’t understand them, didn’t like them. This was probably for two reasons.
As a middle-aged man, he had absolutely no reason to be around them.
His own teenage years had been spent chain-smoking with grad students at MIT and getting whiskey-drunk with his father’s associates—hardly the standard coming-of-age experience. Hardly a chance to figure out what being a teenager was actually like.
Now, aside from Peter (who was definitely not a normal teenager), his first real exposure to that weird in-between childhood and adulthood came in the form of MJ and Ned. And they were assholes.“Your music sucks,” MJ mumbled from beside Tony.Tony’s eyes flicked up from his tablet. “Excuse me?”She was toying with the 3D map of Manhattan that Tony had painstakingly rendered in their absence. After they decided Manhattan was the not-so-secret borough where Peter was being held, Tony reluctantly—though not really reluctantly, because he liked the sound of voices filling the space, and Peter hadn’t been around, obviously—agreed to let them stay in the Tower while they figured out what to do next. Happy drove them back home to grab sleepover essentials, like clothes, toothbrushes, phone chargers. Things they’d both adamantly refused to let Tony replace for them.Tony had no idea what they were telling their parents. Maybe that Tony Stark had recruited them as emergency interns for a top-secret project. Not exactly a lie.He wondered if they hated him. If they blamed him for Peter getting snatched off the street, for putting him in the position to be there in the first place. They still didn’t know Tony had ordered it. He’d put off that revelation for as long as humanly possible. But they knew Peter had been in Tony’s suit, under Tony’s watch, with Tony’s signature on his Avengers contract. They knew he wouldn’t have been there at all if it weren’t for Tony.If they did hate him, they were keeping it under wraps. MJ, at least, seemed like a natural dick—Tony got the sense that her one-two punch remarks and back-handed compliments weren’t crisis responses, but core to her personality. The way Ned constantly jumped in to soften her jokes like a practiced mediator only reinforced the theory. And given how often she said something blatantly rude, Ned had his work cut out for him.“Can we get something that doesn’t reek of weepy old man in here?” MJ turned to Sam, who barked out a laugh. “I feel like I’m in the world’s saddest bar, and some guy named Randy is about to tell me about his divorce.”Tony scoffed. “First of all, you’re twelve, so you’ve never been to a bar. Second, this is Springsteen. Show some respect.”“So I nailed it. The king of geriatric depression.” The map flickered under her fingertips, shifting colors as she adjusted the overlays—Greenwich Village glowed neon green, Alphabet City pulsed electric blue. Beside her, Ned watched, his eyes wide and glowing with dozens of different hues.“Oh, I’m sorry. Would you prefer whatever tragic indie garbage you listen to? What’s it called— Sad Girl on a Subway, Vol. 3 ?” “At least my music has, I don’t know, meaning.” MJ rolled her eyes and aggressively swiped at the hologram, turning Hell’s Kitchen bright red. “Not just fifty-year-old dudes whining about a factory job they never actually worked.”“She’s dragging your ass, Tony,” Sam said, typing something on his tablet. “Anyway, what’re we thinking for lunch? Mexican? Italian? Pizza?”“Pizza is Italian. And I’m just telling the truth.”Bruce snorted. “Those are the words of someone who’s never been to a Springsteen concert. You’ve never heard Spirit in the Night live. Felt the floor vibrate—”“Oh, God,” MJ groaned. “That is the weepiest old-man song title I’ve ever heard. You guys just keep proving my point.”“Then what’s your pick, MJ?” Tony asked. “Some pop-punk synthesized garbage?”Sam cleared his throat. “Are we getting lunch, or…?”“Pizza sounds great,” Ned cut in, glancing between them. Nobody objected. He exhaled. “Um, how about we compromise on the music? MJ, you get the next song, Mr. Stark gets—”Tony raised a hand. “It’s my house, Leeds.”“Right, but she’s literally helping you find Peter, so maybe we let her not suffer through another gravelly man ballad?”MJ smirked, victorious. “Thank you, Ned.”Tony sighed and flicked his fingers toward the speakers. The music cut off. “Fine. Put on whatever moody, existential nonsense you want. Something with angsty lyrics about how nobody understands you.”MJ wasted no time pulling up her phone. A moment later, a crunchy guitar and double-tracked vocals filled the room. “This is a good song, so don’t—”“It’s like if a Midwest emo band fucked a banjo,” Tony interrupted. “Never slight on Springsteen again.”“It’s called Cage the Elephant,” MJ said, zooming into Times Square. It lit up with electric orange. “You’d know that if you had taste outside of The Offspring and Creed.”“Pizza’s ordered,” Sam called from across the room.“Fantastic, Wilson,” Tony said. “Status on the Avengers?”“Should be here within the hour. Plane got held up leaving Munich. Guess Rhodey’s Tin Man leg set off a detector.”“They—what, we don’t have a PJ over there?”“God,” MJ muttered. “That’s so awful for the environment.”“Someone missed my press announcement about Stark Industries transitioning to 100% clean energy.” Tony swiveled toward her. “So maybe save the superficial enviro-activism for Exxon and Sunoco. Go protest about the baby ducks in the oil spills.”“Anyway,” Ned cut in, his hands practically vibrating against his sides, “we should probably start narrowing down Manhattan. Like, instead of just…just looking at data, and stuff.”This was a good idea. Tony had a habit of getting stuck in the organizing phase—compiling everything into neat columns, charts, and bite-sized documents with catchy acronyms—because it was easier than facing the problem head-on. A way to stall. His therapist once pointed that out. Annoying. Probably had some validity.MJ zoomed out on the map, revealing all of Manhattan in vivid detail—each neighborhood a patchwork of reds, oranges, and bright blues. The borough wasn’t huge in size, just twenty-three square miles, but it had about three bajillion buildings and even more places to stash a kidnapped teenager for safe keeping.Tony had zero clue where to start, and the lack of sleep was catching up with him, sitting heavy on his neck and shoulders. He felt old next to these kids, who probably hadn’t slept either but somehow still had energy.“Do you guys need a nap or something?” he asked suddenly.MJ scoffed, not even looking up. “What do we look like, toddlers?”“I’m just…” Tony pursed his lips. “Teenagers need to, like, sleep. That’s science, isn’t it?”“We do this all the time,” Ned said. “It’s, like, part of Midtown Tech.”Tony blinked. Something about that hit wrong, lodged under his ribs in a way he couldn’t quite place. “What do you mean?”“It’s the top STEM school in the city,” MJ said. “It’s a total social experiment. Like, they wrangled up a bunch of type-A nerds and curved them to a C. It’s insane.”“Sounds like it,” Tony said, pursing his lips. “So, you guys are… staying up all night a lot?”Ned and MJ exchanged a look. “Yes?” Ned finally answered.“Sleep is essential for—” Bruce gestured vaguely at them. “Like, your brain function, you know. You won’t perform as well if you’re not sleeping.”“We’ve already seen Captain America’s PSAs on it, thanks,” MJ muttered. “And maybe tell that to Mr. Stark.”“Wait, did Steve—”“Back to the map, please,” Ned interjected. “I’d prefer to actually find Peter.”Tony paused. That was really depressing , he decided. Was it really worth it? Trading away goofy, shithead teenage years for academia? Probably not. Maybe that’s why Peter clung to the whole Spider-Man thing with white knuckles. Something to blow off steam.And something about them normalizing insomnia just…felt bad. Really bad. Ever since he was young, really young, he’d had this self-destructive streak. He’d hate himself whenever he was around other people, always felt weird and half-baked, so it felt better to just not be around anyone. And that was only possible when the world was asleep.He’d stay up into the late, late hours—four, five, six o’clock—just tinkering and listening to music. He’d get tired, and he’d actively feel his body wanting to sleep, but he’d refuse. It wasn’t even insomnia, not really. He could fall asleep just fine—he just never wanted to.Now, it was like he’d trained his body to just not sleep against his natural instincts, and so…he didn’t. Not in real substantive ways. He didn’t need it. At least, that’s what he told himself. In hindsight, it’d probably taken literal years off his life.For a while, though, Pepper had gotten him to relax. To drop his shoulders and put his head in her lap, feel her fingers in his hair. And he’d been so much better. Six, seven, the occasional eight hours of sleep were fucking fantastic.And then this happened, and he couldn’t really remember if he slept the night prior. Or how long it’d been since Peter vanished into some black, unmarked van. His whole face ached, his head throbbed, and all he wanted was to go hang out with Pepper, Peter, and Morgan, but Pepper was convinced that he freaked Morgan out whenever he got like this, so he was down all three of them.Hanging out with Sam, Bruce, and a couple of random ass children.“Tony?”“Right, right,” Tony suddenly said, tapping a few buttons on his tablet. “Gonna add the buildings to the map so we can eventually narrow it down from full neighborhoods to actual structures.”Within a few seconds, glowing dots scattered like glitter across the map, each one representing a unique building—residential, high-rises, corporate skyscrapers. Thousands of dots. For a moment, it looked like the city itself was alive, a pulse beating across the screen.“Okay, we definitely need to narrow that down,” Sam piped up from across the room.“Thanks for that fantastic contribution,” Tony mumbled. “Maybe we start with narrowing it down to general regions. Like Midtown, Upper Manhattan, and Lower Manhattan.”MJ just stared at the map. “Do you have it with population density?”“Um, sure.” Tony overlaid a population pulse on the map, and lines burst out, glowing across the screen. The highest concentrations were in western Midtown and eastern Lower Manhattan with generally steady distribution elsewhere. “That what you mean?”“Yup.” MJ pressed her lips into a straight line. “I don’t know how I expected this to help, but…”“Well, that’s great, then.” Tony glanced over at Banner, Wilson, and Ned, who were still just staring at the map. “Anyone else have ideas?”“The Lower East Side has more people than I’d expected,” Sam said, shrugging. “Dunno if that means anything.”“Maybe they’d…” Banner trailed off, exhaling sharply. “Well, it’d make sense for them to pick somewhere really high-traffic and hard for you to navigate. You know, to add a distraction and misdirection element.”Tony, strangely, deferred to the kids, glancing at them. “What do you guys think?”“Maybe.” Ned shrugged. “But there’d have to be more reason than that. Everywhere in Manhattan is high-traffic. It’s literally Manhattan.”“Yeah, the foot traffic and navigability thing would just be part of the reason they picked, like, East Village or Alphabet City or whatever,” MJ added. “Another reason we should be figuring out who this is. If we know who it is, we know where—”“Okay, pause,” Tony interrupted. “We’ve been through this. That’ll take a lot of time and resources we don’t have. Can’t go through all of my disgruntled ex-employees without hitting a bunch of dead ends. And we still don’t know for sure that they’re an ex-Stark employee. That entire category could be a dead end.”“Well, we’ve got five people in the room.” Banner gestured around. Tony bit back some asshole remark— wow, you can count? Something like that. “Let’s divvy it up. I can go through the records with, um…” Banner pointed at the kids. “Ned, get over here.”Ned blinked. “Me?”“Yeah.” Bruce put his hands on his hips and glanced at Tony. “Let’s line up former Stark employees—maybe from before Tony got his ass humbled in his war with Steve, back when he was at his peak insufferable—and cross-reference them with their property records. Then we can overlap that with the buildings of interest that Tony and MJ find. See if any former folks own buildings of interest.”“So we’re not going based on neighborhood?” Tony asked, eyes narrow.At the same time, MJ said, “Me and him? ” Tony scoffed. “Oh, screw off. A bunch of high-school geeks would pay for this opportunity.”“It’ll be quicker to narrow by building type,” Bruce said. “Like, Manhattan’s not that big, so they probably looked at specific buildings as opposed to…like, Lower Manhattan versus Upper Manhattan.”“Dr. Banner,” Ned started, glancing between MJ and Tony, “are you sure?”“Let them kill each other over the map.” Banner turned to Sam. “Sam, pick your team.”“There’s too many cooks in the kitchen,” Sam muttered. “If either of you guys need me, let me know. Otherwise, I’ll wait for some results.” With that, Tony turned to MJ. Her strategy was more guerrilla than Tony expected, operating solely off her gut feeling—she eliminated retail stores, libraries, movie theaters, hospitals, gyms, and restaurants before Tony could get a word in, watching the dots leave the map in rapid succession. Tony’s jaw dropped.“Okay, okay, relax,” he said, reaching toward the map.“Nope.” MJ smacked his hand. “Stop.”“Hey, isn’t this, like, my technology? My map? You can’t just—”“I can,” MJ interrupted, zooming out. “And I will, if you keep second-guessing everything.”“ Second guess —kid, I’m not second-guessing anything. I’m just wondering why you’re eliminating about half the city in one swoop.”“Since Ned and I got here, you’ve done nothing but second-guess,” MJ shot back. “Second-guessing the perp’s motive, the footage, how to approach all of this.”This was probably right, but Tony wasn’t about to admit it to a teenager. He just watched her for a second as she eliminated another swath of buildings, rock climbing gyms of all places, and groaned.“No, no.” Tony put a hand on her shoulder and spun her around. This close, she looked sadder than he realized, and he tried to ignore it. “Listen, we’re a team now. You got that?”“We’re not—”“I know you’re probably used to lone-wolfing your way through Midtown Tech Hell or whatever, but you have a project partner now. You have to learn—”“Oh, my God,” MJ muttered, shaking his hand off. “You fucking Avengers and your monologues. Peter’s started doing that too, you know that? Just rambling and rambling about his intentions and hopes and dreams —”“Peter’s always been a rambler. That’s not a new development.”“Yeah, but it’s more Shakespearean now.” MJ glanced back at Tony. It was quiet for a moment except for the low voices coming from Ned and Bruce. They were so tame over there. “But do you see where I’m coming from, kid?” Tony asked, forcing his voice to soften, trying to channel more Bruce. “We’re on the same team. We both want Peter back. We just—we can’t monopolize our strategy.”MJ just stared at him. For a second, Tony’s blood felt uncomfortably warm. He was worried she might cry, and he was woefully unprepared for those situations. Peter cried, sure, but that was Peter. Watching MJ, the in-house jerk, burst into tears would be so jarring that it would make the situation about three million times more real than he wanted it to be.And this was already awful. He fundamentally, physically, literally, holistically could not stop to process the situation without risking keeling over. Some people were born to strategize about these search-and-rescue bullshit missions. People got paid to figure these things out, he realized, and here he was, doing it all for free. He couldn’t fathom going through this over and over again. Couldn’t imagine how anyone could. “Okay,” she muttered finally. “I think we should, um, get rid of all of the hotels.”
Christ.
“Veto.” Tony rubbed his eyes, trying to ease the ache creeping behind them. Stars exploded all over his vision. “You’re eliminating, like, fifteen percent of the city if you get rid of them.”“A hotel is the last place someone’s gonna hide out when they’re kidnapped! It’s easy to track, Tony. High-traffic, cameras everywhere, the staff knows everyone who walks in and out.”“Right, but what if the staff are in on it? Not so much a problem then.” “Okay, see? This is what I meant. You’re second-guessing the shit out of this, and progress doesn’t get made when we trip over—”“Fine! Jesus.” Tony gave her a look. “We’ll eliminate the luxury hotels. You could stash someone in a smaller, more isolated one. Places that don’t raise any alarms.”“Right, ‘cause there are a ton of those in swanky-ass, lofty Manhattan, with its snooty business assholes and imperious tech geniuses. It is practically overflowing with bedbug-infested motels." She scoffed indignantly. "Christ.”A few weeks ago, Peter had stayed the night. When Pepper didn’t show up to bed, Tony had quietly walked around the halls, waiting for her, until he heard Peter’s voice—low, intimate tones floating through the hallway. He’d been talking to Pepper about MJ, going on about how she was funny, how she had this zeal about her. “And she’s so gentle,” Peter said. Gentle.Now, Tony almost laughed at the thought. He had no idea what the kid had been talking about. The MJ in front of him was anything but gentle.“You know what? We’ll come back to this.” Tony pressed his lips together. “Next point. Ideas?”“I’m just saying, Peter’s not tied up in a Marriott suite with a free continental breakfast.”“Oh my—”“But it’s a good idea to get rid of the luxury ones.” MJ shifted and crossed her arms. “Same principle applies to Wall Street buildings. If they wanted you specifically, there are way easier ways to lure you there than, like, with Peter. They’d just come up with some convoluted business scenario that threatens your stock portfolio.”“Fine.” Tony swiped a few times, and thousands of buildings vanished. “Keep it coming.”“I mean, you’d know this better than me,” MJ said, and she glanced at him. “Do they need space to do this stuff? Like, if they’re an ex-employee doing all this high-grade surveillance, they’re not keeping him in a shoebox, right? They’d need somewhere to work.”“Right,” Tony muttered. “Somewhere big enough to work.”
Work. Work. Work.
He shifted awkwardly, trying to keep his cool in front of the moody toddler. If this was some disgruntled ex-Stark employee with a personal vendetta, the chances weren’t good that they were simply holding Peter hostage. They were doing something to him, or—worse—using him. And considering Peter wasn’t the type to spill trade secrets, that narrowed down the list of possibilities to some very unpleasant options.
Work. Work. Work.
He wanted to puke.
Work. Work. Work.
“Also, eliminate schools, police stations, gyms, and public transit stations.”Tony swiped his hand again. “Okay, but let’s hold onto that ‘big enough to work’ point. I think I actually like it.”MJ snorted. “Don’t sound so surprised.”“I’m just saying… if they were moving him around, sure, they might use some random apartment, but long-term? They’d need more space. More privacy. And they’ve got a whole crew, based on the video.”“That… yeah, that sounds right.” MJ nodded. “Get rid of anywhere with current occupants that doesn’t have a basement or warehouse.”“Done,” Tony breathed, and it sounded like it hurt. It felt like it hurt, too. Only about ten percent of the original map remained, but that was still hundreds of buildings. He bit his lip. “Alright.”
Work. Work. Work.
“If they’re looking long-term, then we need to focus on places where privacy’s built in,” MJ said. “Abandoned enough, but not so abandoned that people start asking questions—like, why are some disgruntled assholes suddenly setting up shop there? ”“So, high foot traffic but low security,” Tony muttered, pressing more buttons. Over half of the remaining dots vanished. Little pockets became more obvious—clusters of buildings in certain neighborhoods, certain regions. But one region stood out.MJ exhaled loudly next to him. “And look at that. It’s concentrated in Lower Manhattan.”“You got it,” Tony replied, glancing at the map. A few dots remained in Midtown and Upper Manhattan, but Lower Manhattan was practically alive with them. “But that’s still a lot of ground to cover, and I’m not in the mood for a door-to-door campaign. Not in the mood to clear that with S.H.I.E.L.D.’s engorged ass, either.”“ Engorged,” MJ repeated with thinly-veiled disgust.“We’re almost ready to cross-check it with your records, Tony,” Bruce said. “It was shockingly easy to find a list of former employees dating back to pre-2017 and their corresponding property records. Your intern’s quite the hacker.”Ned’s face turned bright pink. “It… it wasn’t that hard, Mr. Stark. It wasn’t even hidden. You just—it’s really not that hard, probably barely illegal, and I didn’t—”“Kid,” Tony interrupted, holding up a hand. “You’re fine. That’s, like, the least-worst bad thing that’s been done in this lab.”“I’m sending over the map with the property records,” Bruce said. “After a lot of cross-referencing, we’ve got records on them and their family members or friends. That way, we cover all our bases in case the former employee’s using a cousin’s or a best friend’s space, or something.”“The government keeps records of people you’re affiliated with?” MJ asked, aghast.“You barely know the half of it,” Sam called from across the room. “They know everything about you, kiddo.”“Yeah, I get that, but how? ”Tony poked at his keyboard, cross-checking... Jesus, was that over fifty thousand profiles? The property ownership of semi-recent former Stark employees plus their closest known associates? He whistled. “Big file, Banner.”“Yeah, well, you have a lot of former employees who have a lot of friends. Consider hiring less likeable people next time.”What felt like hours, but couldn’t have been more than a few minutes later, a pin popped up in the Lower East Side. It was at the corner of Delancey Street and Bowery, in a spot where a brick-and-mortar theater company used to operate, owned by the family of one Quentin Beck— a former Stark employee.“Bingo.” Tony stared at the pin for a second. The relief was palpable. The results weren’t conclusive, and it was statistically likely that someone in this fifty-thousand person zip-file owned one of the hundreds of properties on the board, but this felt like a lead. He glanced at Bruce. “You recognize the name Quentin Beck?”“Pull up his file,” Bruce mumbled. “But I think…I think this is the Binarily Augmented Retro-Framing guy.”Tony full-body groaned. “Oh, fuck, actually?”“Who?” MJ asked, glancing between them.“He’s…” Tony gestured vaguely at the screen. “He’s unstable.”“Ah. Unlike present company, then.”“He left on poor terms,” Bruce explained, glancing around. “Any inventions developed with Stark Industry funds, within the scope of Stark employment, get patented under the Stark name. This guy developed some… interesting, but insanely expensive tech. Tried to get Tony to fund it while keeping the rights. Didn’t work out too well.”“I patented it as a Stark device,” Tony muttered. “Dude was super not a fan.”Banner pulled up the Quentin Beck employee profile. A scruffy, middle-aged man with big eyes and a bigger head filled the screen. Tony would recognize the guy anywhere, even without the expensive haircut and clean-shaved jaw he’d had back in 2016.“Equally important, though, he associates with a few other employees—William Riva, Janice Cabral, Gutes Guterman. Some of them worked in our chemistry department before leaving on, um, poor terms. So they’d know how to make a serum that could overpower an enhanced person. Whatever they put in Peter’s neck.”“Janice Cabral…” Tony mumbled, running a hand through his hair. “Was she the one who worked at Oscorp previously?”“That was Victoria Wozniak. She’s also affiliated with Beck, if you’re curious.” Well , Tony realized. That was that. *****“You—” Tony scoffed, his brain struggling to catch up. He knew the impact he wanted his words to have, but the right one was just out of reach. So, he pressed his lips together and stared at the wall.“I fought to protect those rights,” Steve snapped, jabbing a finger at the door. Tony hated when Steve did this—when he reminded everyone of his 'valiant soldier' status, as though that made his ideas more sacred, more holy, more patriotic than anyone else's. At least, that’s how it felt. “And could you imagine what Fury would—”“Fury’s not here!” Tony shot a quick glance at Bruce, who stood in the corner, looking uncomfortable. “Like, do you see him? I sure as hell don’t!”Steve scoffed. “Tony, this is so childish.”“And even if he were, you think he’d give a damn about waiting for a permission slip while Peter’s God-knows-where?”“That’s not the point.”“That's exactly the point. Every second we waste arguing about warrants and probable cause and your goddamn moral high ground is another second—”“That doesn’t mean we throw the literal Constitution out the window. What if you’re wrong? What if he’s not there, and you’ve just invaded some poor family’s storefront?”“I throw a fucking checkbook at them, Steve,” Tony spat. “I’ll make a call and deal with the mess later instead of whatever this is.”“I’m just telling you to think before you act. Again.”Tony scoffed. “Sorry, am I supposed to take any advice about the rule of law from you?”“And that—” Steve faltered, looking more confused than anything else. “Sorry, what?”“I distinctly remember you not being such a law-abiding citizen when ol’ Bucko decided to go Jekyll and Hyde on your star-spangled ass,” Tony spat. “So, if you want to play the righteous soldier with red, white, and royal blue blood, go ahead. Just know that’s not who you are.”Mid-sentence, Tony tried to remember exactly what they were arguing about before he made himself focus again. Steve and his band of world-trotters had walked in right after they'd narrowed on Beck’s building, then stood by as Tony and the kids spent hours trying to find blueprints of it. They were nowhere to be found.And it was literally nowhere. Tony had access to almost every document on the planet—any server, any paywall, any country. If it existed, he could find it. He usually did. But the blueprints? Nowhere. The only explanation was that they didn’t exist, probably because the building predated the government’s record-keeping, and Beck’s family had owned it ever since.Tony hated him. Hated.It was properly nighttime now, maybe into the next day, and Tony had put the kids to bed not long ago. Set them up in the guest bedrooms after MJ started repeating herself and Ned looked like a corpse. Then, very reasonably, Tony asked the other Avengers a very simple question: would they help him raid this stupid building to find Peter? The easiest “yes” they should’ve ever given.And then Steve had to drag it out—about circumstantial evidence, conjecture, blah, blah, blah. Maybe Tony would have agreed with him, but Steve was being such a smug asshole about it that Tony couldn’t bring himself to be cool. The others, sans Bruce, had left the room, including Sam, who was the resident rescuing expert. Apparently, Steve and Tony weren’t pleasant when they got like this. From Tony’s perspective, those fuckers could blow him. This was his kid on the line, and May had started calling for updates.May. Oh, God. He needed to put Happy on that—put a Band-Aid over a bullet hole with her. They’d been dating for a while, so Happy’s word actually meant something to her. Happy would cover for him, right?“I’m just saying,” Steve mumbled, “if you get into some mess with the city before Spidey’s found, it’s just gonna drag this out more. You could save time by being more deliberate now. More certain this is where he is.”“A nice perk of being rich and famous is that I can pretty much make myself above the law.” Tony hated bringing the money into it, but it was true. He wasn’t worried about the cops. “Do you see that? If S.H.I.E.L.D. wants to fine me or something, then I don’t care. I’ll hang up the suit and go on my merry way.”If letting an Avenger go missing for twelve hours was embarrassing, then whatever feeling this was—letting a sixteen-year-old kid play hero and get kidnapped for, what, forty hours? —was mortifying. Throw in the fact that he was wasting time arguing with Steve about whether they could just enter warehouses in search of Peter and the fact that he’d enlisted other teenagers to help—it was a clusterfuck. And embarrassing as hell. The former CEO of Stark Industries couldn’t even pull off a successful rescue mission.Steve ran a hand down his face. “Tony—”“Fucking— God, Steve!” Tony threw his hands in the air. “I don’t give one shit about whatever grand moral proclamations you’re about to make. If I have to be the bad guy to bring him home, then fine. I’ll be the bad guy. I’ll take whatever fallout comes with it. At least I’ll know I did something.”“Fine, but you will not be there if you invade a bunch of buildings, and the people—the residents of those buildings—have the money and the time to kneecap you.”“None of the buildings we’re investigating will be able to outbid me. Rest assured.” Sometime over the past twelve hours, Tony had developed this recurring intrusive thought of Peter bleeding out on a cellar floor, and of course, that’s when it decided to show up. “Listen, Steve, I’m done here. Alright? You don’t need to help row the boat, but don’t drag your feet in the goddamn water.”Steve just stared at him. Tony felt so small. So fucking small. Like he was a kid again—literally—and like he was losing control of everything. And he knew it. He knew he was acting like he was losing control. He just didn’t know how to stop.“Okay, hold on,” Steve said, trying a more placating tone. “I’m not asking you to stop looking. Hell, I’m not even telling you to wait for permission to go in anywhere. I’m just saying... think a few steps ahead before you do something that might make this worse.”“Worse,” Tony repeated, incredulous. He glanced at Bruce. “This Rocket Pop thinks it’s gonna get worse.”“It’s not just about getting Peter back, Tony,” Steve said, continuing that annoying pacifying tone. “It’s about getting him back alive. We rush into this with no plan, guns a-blazing, no idea where anything is—what happens if we make things worse? What if we make it harder for him to get out?”
Worse. Worse. Worse.
He wasn’t sure if it was possible to get worse than this. Someone once told him the universe craves balance. Finding a way to balance out this day would be a hell of a challenge, that was for sure.“It’s called a gut feeling, Steve. Sometimes, I just know where—”“Forgive me for questioning your instincts right now,” Steve shot back. “I’m not gonna roll over and bow to Zombie Stark. I’m in this with you, but if you charge in half-cooked without thinking about the consequences, you’re just gonna make the whole thing worse.” Worse. Worse. Worse. God, he needed to call May back.But Steve kept going. “I don’t know if you’re forgetting, but I literally worked with your father. He did this same thing. Get all strung out and claim he had a ‘hunch,’ and it’d mess everything up.”Tony blinked for several seconds, then glanced at Steve, searching for some hardened stare, some sign of resolve. But it just wasn’t there. He’d tried getting plans of the building so they could come up with a solid escape route, but those were nowhere. He’d even thought about getting the Avengers to patrol the area, get a sense of things, but if these guys knew Tony, they’d know the Avengers and know when the Avengers were hot on their trail. Without really thinking, and without meaning to, he whispered, “I just don’t know what to do.”Tony didn’t do this. He didn’t say this kind of thing. He was supposed to have an answer, a plan, some flashy, last-minute genius move that tied everything up in a neat little bow. That was what he did. That was who he was. But now, here he was, saying out loud, I don’t know what to do. Steve froze. His face went blank, and Tony saw that rare kind of surprise, the kind that shook the foundations of Steve’s carefully maintained composure. Usually, missions with Steve were more intense than this, on a purely objective level. See: Thanos. Round two had stretched over forty-eight relentless hours—high-stakes planning, hand-to-hand and distance combat, screaming over comms. High-stress, high-energy. Adrenaline had carried him straight through until he woke up in a hospital bed, hooked up to an IV. His voice hadn’t sounded like his own for days, and the adrenaline buzz had lingered for weeks.Here, he didn’t have adrenaline so much as he had heart palpitations, and a faster heartbeat didn’t mean he was more awake. So he waited for Steve to say something. Some dumb cheesy shit. A lecture. A sermon about fate and destiny. A condescending “You see? This is why I told you—” But there was nothing. Just silence.Tony scoffed. “Okay, great. Glad I could shock Captain America into speechlessness. Want to get it out of your system so we can move on?”Steve’s face scrunched in frustration, but he exhaled, shaking his head. Then, with a calmness that struck Tony like a punch, he said, “We will find him.”Simple. Firm. Like it was an indisputable fact.“Awesome,” Tony snapped. It sounded rude, even to him. “Love the optimism. You gonna manifest him back to us? Think happy thoughts, clap your hands if you believe in Spider-Man?”“I’m serious.”“So am I, but I don’t do well with ‘we’ll find him because I believe we will,’ Steve. I do well with concrete leads, with plans, with actually doing something—” He cut himself off, running a hand over his face. God, his head was pounding. Steve took a step closer. “And that’s what we’re gonna do, Tony. We’re gonna find more definitive proof, think, and then act. But if you burn yourself out now, you won’t be any use to Peter when we get to him.”A beat of silence. Then, Banner mumbled from the corner, “Rogers is probably right.”“And if we can’t plan out the extraction,” Steve said gently, “then we need to know for near-certain that this is the right house. I’m not going to mistakenly invade some small business and traumatize a bunch of patrons, you know?”Tony clenched his jaw. His brain knew Steve had a point, even if his gut—the thing that had been screaming at him since the second Peter disappeared—wanted to tell him to go to hell. But his eyes hurt, and his head hurt, and he had to keep reminding himself what they were even fighting about.Tony exhaled sharply, the breath shaky. Then, suddenly, a stroke of genius hit him, and he almost couldn’t believe he hadn’t thought of it earlier. There were so many moving parts to this mess, so many distractions, he hadn’t even realized he could’ve just checked the footage.
Worse. Worse. Worse.
“They took Peter in a black, unmarked van,” Tony said slowly. “If I could show you footage of that van from that day going into that building, would that do it?” “Yes.” Steve looked between Bruce and Tony. “Yes, it would.” Tony grinned, a rush of relief flooding him. He was sure it was this building, absolutely certain. Now all he needed to do was dig up the security footage from that day—any footage that showed all the roads leading to Bowery. Maybe 2nd Avenue, East 41st Street, or 5th Avenue. That van had to be somewhere on video, and he was going to find it.Two hours later, he hadn’t found it. He stared at the screen, his eyes glued to the footage, willing the black, unmarked van to appear. But the second the camera footage left the scene, it practically evaporated into dust. It wasn’t even that the van hadn’t gone to this specific building. It’s that the van had vanished off the map entirely.Back to square one, then. Finding any proof that Peter was in this building when there was no conclusory blueprint, no footage, no evidence of anything.Tony felt his chest tighten. He was going to cry. In fact, he probably was crying, though he couldn’t feel anything except the searing burn of blue light behind his eyes.“Find anything, Tony?” Bruce asked a few minutes later. Tony wanted to bang his forehead against the keyboard.
Worse. Worse. Worse.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
There was a maze on the back of the Honey Nut Cheerios box, and Peter was pretty sure it wasn’t solvable.Cheerio boxes had to have easy mazes, like, legally. Right? Didn’t little kids eat these? Wasn’t that the whole point of having the maze on the box, to give the five-year-olds eating breakfast before summer camp something to do?For hours, he traced his finger along the little orange tunnels, weaving through honeycombs and cartoon bees toward the Cheerio center, waiting to connect the start and finish. But it never came. The path just... stopped. Hit one of the little brown walls meant to guide kids toward the goal.A completely unsolvable maze.
Couldn’t figure it out. Couldn’t figure it out. Couldn’t figure it out.
Most days, this wouldn’t be a problem. But right now, it felt like the worst thing that’d ever happened to him. Dramatic for sure, but he couldn’t rationalize properly. Couldn’t figure out why he felt so awful staring at this thing, at hitting the same drawn wall on the same drawn maze. But one could guess. By his rough estimate—based on the number of ripped cardboard tabs tracking his meals—he’d been in this bright-white room for at least fifty hours. Maybe longer. Hard to tell. Pretty much anyone would probably be a little sad or irritable after that amount of time, Peter assumed. Or maybe not.Nothing he could do about it either way, though, so he kept running the maze, tracing , tracing , tracing , trying to map a route that didn’t exist. He restarted, restarted, restarted until his vision tunneled, his finger moving in circles, his mind blanking on which routes he’d already tried. And then he’d lose his place, forget where he was, and restart, over and over, the cycle resetting until he went catatonic with an eye-numbing tension headache or ate.The version of himself from before—before this —probably would’ve solved it in seconds. It was a stupid maze on a Honey Nut Cheerios box. A toddler could figure it out.Was he shedding brain cells in here? Was Beck sandpapering the ridges off of his brain?“Good afternoon, Parker,” a voice said.That was another thing—he never figured out where that voice was coming from. Peter blinked slowly, manually recalibrating. He was on his back, staring at the ceiling, eyes fixed on the spots without industrial LEDs. A spike of panic landed square in his chest before he realized that the box was halfway across the room, out of reach. Nothing in his memory explained how it got there, and he didn’t remember moving, but clearly, he had. Now that won the “Worst Part of This Stupid Room” award. The way time worked transcended all natural laws, stretching like guitar strings and trampolines, moving in ways that didn’t make sense. It felt like being a traveler trapped between seconds, losing whole swaths of memory while still being there, wasting time he didn’t remember spending, teleporting in and out of awareness. Some kind of bizarro depersonalization. Or is it derealization? He couldn’t remember the difference.“Afternoon,” Peter said, his voice scratchy, enough to make him wince. “Is it tea time yet?”Beck paused for half a second too long. “You have any specific lunch requests?”“SpaghettiOs,” he said, even though he was pretty sure he didn’t want those. He blinked again and realized his eyes felt like sandpaper, raw and dry. “And—uh, eyedrops, actually. That’d be nice.”“Oh, I’m on it. Maybe I’ll throw in a juice box, too. You want a little bendy straw?”“Do—” He cleared his throat, or tried to. “Do you have apple juice? That’d be great.”It was probably pathetic that the maze was still gnawing at him, but he couldn’t let it go. His brain latched onto the thought like a skipping record —maze, maze, maze. It felt like some colossal, world-tilting personal failure, like everything hinged on making it to the center, and still, he couldn’t.On the extremely limited bright side, Beck’s gaggle of bourgeoisie masochists still had some empathy. They’d caved surprisingly fast after one of them—probably Janice, if Beck’s long-winded stories were anything to go by—watched him deteriorate on the floor after a particularly awful run-in with the static. Now, the sink had a toothbrush, a tube of toothpaste, and a stick of deodorant. Luxuries, by comparison.But he still wasn’t allowed to shower, probably because Beck’s team couldn’t pick up a shower in the dollar bin at Walmart. So when he’d caught a glimpse of himself in the mirror earlier, he’d had to grip the sink just to stay upright because if he let go, he’d backwards-dive headfirst onto the concrete. He looked like absolute dogshit. Thin cheeks. The worst bags under his eyes he’d ever seen. His skin had gone borderline gray, and his hair was matted with sweat and grease.No wonder Janice had given in so fast.And for the record, his baseline appearance wasn’t awesome. He usually operated at a solid sub-optimal—his hair shoved into some half-slicked-back style with gel that smelled like wax, dark crescents permanently under his eyes. Midtown Tech plus Spider-Man was a full-time job and then some, and visual aesthetic ranked dead last in his priorities, slinking behind academics, patrolling, and whatever passed for a social life. But Jesus Christ. He usually—probably, hopefully, optimistically—looked better than this.“You’re unbelievable,” Beck muttered.“Okay, it’s not that crazy. It’s, like, the most popular canned pasta in the history of ever.” The maze , some distant part of his brain muttered. He wanted to send his forehead through the wall. Remember the maze. “I can’t believe that’s what you asked for. The team got Olive Garden this afternoon, FYI. And you, a teenager, just—”“Sorry that I like SpaghettiOs, I guess. Not really sure what to tell you.”“It’s not even just that. It’s…you know.”“I don’t, actually. Wanna give me some clues?” Peter pushed his hair off of his forehead. “I love guessing games.”“I think I’m just impressed with your audacity,” Beck said, sharper now. “You have zero manners, zero zeal. No sense of urgency or authority. Not ‘please let me go, Mister Beck, sir.’ Not ‘wow, you’re so brilliant, sir.’ Just canned pasta.”Peter coughed out a laugh. “I mean, if you want me to beg, I can, but it’s gonna sound real half-hearted.”“You know I’ll never turn down some begging.”Peter swallowed and shut his eyes against the harsh ceiling lights. But in the orange haze behind his eyelids, all he saw was the maze—the same stupid orange maze from the back of the cereal box. “Hey,” Beck snapped. “None of that. Eyes open.”Peter forced them open, blinking up at the ceiling. “Oh, wow. A warehouse ceiling. Never seen one of those before.”“Unbelievable.”“Yeah, yeah.” He tried to shift, but his limbs felt disconnected—heavy, like they weren’t really his. With God’s shakiest limbs, he threw himself against the wall, breathing hard. “You said that already.”A pause. Then, Beck’s voice again, quieter. “It’s getting worse, isn’t it?”“What, your bedside manner?”“No, idiot, your nerdy ruminations about the cereal box maze. The one that you do for, like, hours a day.”
Couldn’t figure it out. Couldn’t figure it out. Couldn’t figure it out.
Peter clenched his jaw. “Yeah, well.” His voice came out hoarse. “I’m an overthinker.”And for a second, everything went heavy. It was the weirdest thing—one second, he was awake, and the next, his eyes were closed, forehead on his knees and arms around himself. He couldn’t remember doing it, but suddenly, he was ankle-deep in pre-sleep, and everything laden, warm, slipping—And then sharp, cracking static. Peter flinched so hard he practically lurched off the floor, jerking upright like he’d been physically thrown, and fuck, his chest was heaving, heaving, heaving. His hands shot up, clamping over his ears, but it didn’t help—not when the sound was inside his head, buzzing, tearing through the fragile barriers he’d spent the last fifty hours building against this shitty noise. His chest stuttered, each inhale jagged and unsteady, like trying to breathe through sand. His fingers were in his hair, he realized distantly, and they were shaking, or the floor was shaking, or the wall was shaking— something was shaking.The sound didn’t even wake him up anymore—the pull of sleep still hung at the edges, but he couldn’t do anything about it, just rub at his eyes and try to clear the distinctly underwater blurriness that kept clinging to his vision.
Breathe, breathe, breathe, breathe.
But it was quiet now. Peter waited, breath coming in ragged bursts, chest on fire, for some half-baked remark from Big Bad Beck. But there was nothing.“Come on, B-Beck,” Peter spat, trying for flippant but landing somewhere between wrecked and flat. “You can cool it with the noise. You’re a b-big scary villain. I g-get it. What’s next, a monologue?”Beck’s voice practically roared. “Can you shut the fuck up with the stupid quips?”Peter flinched again, which took an enormous amount of energy. His hands , he realized. His hands were shaking. He tugged his knees to his chest, stuffing his fingers into his lap like he could physically stop them from trembling or at least keep Beck from noticing.Something felt wrong. He’d taken the static before, and it’d hurt, but this time, it felt like a nuclear bomb. Like it’d rearranged his DNA and put him back together in the wrong order. The only way he could describe it was like the punches he’d absorb when he was already on the ground—each hit worse because he was already bruised, arms covering his face, silently begging them to stop, stop, please, stop. This felt like that, like he was on the ground, and Beck's persistent repetition had shattered something that wasn’t supposed to break.Everything felt about six million times worse than it did five minutes ago.Beck groaned. "Just—kid, I don’t want to yell at you, but you’re making it my only real course of action."The depressive bullshit hit like a flood, fast and heavy, so intense that Peter had to tip his head back against the wall. He wasn’t usually like this. He didn’t love himself, sure, but he didn’t actively hate himself either—not like this. Not like the all-consuming ache in his ribs that made throwing himself into a meat grinder sound like a perfectly reasonable option.He wondered, maybe self-indulgently, if he could just die like this. Let sleep deprivation do its thing, let his body run itself into the dirt before Mr. Stark could even get here.
Mr. Stark. Mr. Stark. Mr. Stark.
Peter had to be underground in some secret lair, way out of state, buried deep enough that Tony couldn’t reach him—not even with a thousand pararescue guys like Mr. Wilson combing the planet. That was the only explanation. That had to be why he wasn’t here yet.Mr. Stark wouldn’t just forget about him, right? He wouldn’t let out a relieved breath and scream, "Thank fucking God," before slipping back into his HGTV life with Pepper and Morgan, living it up without Peter weighing him down. He wouldn’t hang the Iron Man suit on the little plastic hanger with a megawatt grin, grateful the universe spared him the trouble of breaking Peter off—something he’d been meaning to finish off but never had the time for. Pitied the kid, maybe. Didn’t know how to break it to him.But the last time Peter saw Mr. Stark, things had been tense. Tense and bad. He could barely remember, just flashes—an argument, Tony telling him not to move, something about a junkyard come to life? A robot? Whatever. He remembered the emotions vividly, a haze of grandstanding envy.God, it was all a blur. He couldn’t make sense of it.
Couldn’t figure it out. Couldn’t figure it out. Couldn’t figure it out.
But that was a big robot, Peter realized. What if—what if Mr. Stark got…by that robot? What if he’d never even know? What if that was why Mr. Stark wasn’t—what if that—
Couldn’t figure it out. Couldn’t figure it out. Couldn’t figure it out.
"Stop it," Peter whispered. "I d-don’t—don’t want to hear that."A few beats passed before Beck asked, “Huh?”“Mr. Stark,” Peter said, pain cutting him in waves. His body was screaming. “He’s coming.”There was a long pause. Too long. Beck didn’t say anything at first, and Peter felt an odd flutter in his chest, wondering if maybe he’d said too much, too recklessly.“It’s a shame you got caught in our crossfire,” Beck said plainly. His edge had dulled, almost regretful, but not quite. “But you understand, kid. It’s the game. Politics.”Peter couldn’t decide if Beck was taunting him or if there was something else there—a reluctant understanding, maybe. But he decided he didn’t care.“Is that it?” Peter asked. “Politics?”“Like I just said, yeah.”Peter scoffed. “Right. Whatever.”“It’s…this is wheeler-dealing. Maneuvering. Jockeying for position.” He could hear the shrug in Beck’s voice. “And you’re just—”“I’m b-bait,” Peter interrupted, his voice ragged and bitter. “I g-get that. I just—is this all to make Mr. Stark feel b-bad? That’s politics?” There was a pause. Beck exhaled slowly, like the answer was inevitable, like Peter was the idiot who couldn’t connect the dots. Four , Peter told himself, just to prove he could.But it didn’t make sense. Beck was a normal dude with a fishbowl for a helmet and some Spirit Halloween cape, and his team seemed to be regular people with normal cubicle jobs. If the Avengers rolled in here, all slick in their bajillion-dollar suits with magnum laser beams in hand, Beck’s goons would be paint on the walls before they could even blink. There was no way Beck was a threat, no way his Mr. Stark mouse trap could stack up to the Avengers. But there Beck was, throwing around thinly-veiled threats, yapping about the “game” and “politics” like this wasn’t just a glorified cosplay for a guy who probably worked in accounting before having a mid-life breakdown and deciding to torture kids. It was so stupid. This whole thing was stupid.“Yeah, in part,” Beck said, his voice softer now. “But there’s more to it than that.”Peter’s eyelids were so heavy, but he didn’t want the static to come back. “So what’s...the other part?” “We want his tech. I want his tech. Once we strip him of that and prove he’s just a fucking man—once we take control of the system again, that is—that’s where it happens.”Peter rubbed his face. He couldn’t follow Beck’s circular reasoning and broken sentence structure to save his life. “What happens?” “It’s not just about Tony, kid.” Beck’s voice softened, almost pitying, as if he was trying to make Peter see something he couldn’t quite grasp. “It’s about showing everyone that this whole system, this whole myth... it can be torn down. That the real power doesn’t lie in a suit or a name. It’s in control. In understanding the game.”Peter let out a sharp, almost desperate laugh. “So many words that mean nothing,” he shot back. “Nothing. D-Do you g-get that? You’re just... just saying things. Talking. Just b-buzzwords.”When he was much younger, Peter had this debilitating stutter that stumbled left, right, and forward over D, G, and B. It’d appeared after his parents died, and it had taken a speech therapist months to smooth them out, months of feeling like he couldn’t even get words out right.Now, it was back. That old feeling of being trapped in his own throat, unable to speak without stuttering, the words fighting to come out. Nine months of his second-grade life, wasted. Maybe the static fried him.“And... and d-do you think you’ll win?” Peter forced out, his voice shaking. "Like, d-do you think they’ll just walk in here, tails b-between their legs, and g-give you their stuff?"Beck didn’t miss a beat. “No. We’ll take it.”“How?” Peter asked, almost pleading, his hands in the air. “How the—how would you even d-do that? You ask nicely? Pretty please, Mr. Stark, g-give me your suit so I can take over the world or whatever?”“Well, I wouldn’t say it with the stutter.”Belatedly, Peter realized there were tears on his cheeks. His own, if he had to guess.Everything was so embarrassing.“I just d-don’t understand,” he said. “I’m just…just trying to understand. I can’t—how d-do you think this’ll work? How d-do you think you’ll…you’ll g-get the tech?”His vision blurred, hot and sticky, his body covered in goosebumps. The tears wouldn’t stop. He knew Beck’s team was always watching, but knowing for sure that they were witnessing this, especially after their little spat over the cleverly hidden intercom, made his whole wah-wah routine feel infinitely worse.He waited for Beck to say something mocking, something sharp and biting, but he didn’t. Like Peter was the joke. On his literal hands and knees, Peter heaved himself closer to the door, flinging himself where the door would open for lunch, or dinner, or breakfast, or whatever the fuck meal was next. His chest was tight, his breath shallow, and the tears wouldn’t stop. But crying was so exhausting, and every single sob just made the exhaustion worse, and his eyes felt so heavy. He knew the static would come back soon, the same brutal, soul-sucking noise, and some idiot on the other side of a two-way mirror that Peter couldn’t see would hit the Big Bad Button, unleashing hell on him for the sixth, maybe seventh time.But he couldn’t stop crying, couldn’t keep his eyes open without manually forcing them, scared shitless of the imminent static. A simultaneous exhaustion and nerve-fraying fear. Then his spidey-sense kicked in, sharp and sudden. His hand shot out instinctively. Usually, that meant food was close, but everything felt distorted, like he was underwater. His vision was a blur, smudged and hot, and for a moment, his finger brushed against something—no, not the door. A gap. The air on his fingers felt different. Not blisteringly cold, but...fresh. Alive. Almost.He blinked away the tears, squinting to make sense of it, but the door was still closed. His hand... his hand was outside the door. By all accounts, that shouldn’t have been possible. He should’ve felt the cold, smooth metal, but there was only the cool, unexplainable touch of the outside air.Before he could think, something tapped his hand. It wasn’t forceful, just a quick, startling tap, but it jolted him, especially since he couldn’t see anything there. He felt it, obviously, but nothing was around him. He yanked his hand back, fingers scrambling wildly for something, anything, solid. But nothing. The air was empty, and the moment was gone.But it had been there. His hand had been outside the door, outside this stupid room. He knew it, even if his brain felt like mush. But the door—the door was there now, closing off everything, closing off the breeze he’d felt a second ago.But he briefly forgot about all of that and went gung ho on the Spaghettios.Good God, he was so nauseous. People didn’t understand how many calories it took for super-healing to actually work. The immediate healing process, the mutant abilities, the sixth sense—it all required energy that he sure as fuck wasn’t getting from sleep. Some indefinite amount of time later, Peter had curled himself into a ball in the corner. He thought about the open door again, how something must've been just making it look like it was closed. It’d been open for a second there, even if it didn’t actually look like it. Maybe this involved the same tech they’d used to make Fake MJ. Maybe Beck’s team used the technology to walk into his room and drop food off, and that was why his senses went off every time—his body knew someone was there before his mind did.“Peter, sweetheart.”Peter flinched for the four-thousandth time that hour, eyes darting around the empty room. He didn’t recognize this voice. Maybe he’d heard it before, once upon a time, but he couldn't place it now. But if Peter had learned anything over the past…maybe fifty-five hours, he’d learned that the best strategy when handling a dick like Beck was to avoid feeding into it. These weirdos thrived on attention, and he didn’t want to give it to him. So, Peter curled into himself, refusing to respond, trying to ignore the strange distortion of his senses. Didn’t want to give Beck credit he didn’t earn in the vividly lifelike hologram department. “I’m Janice,” the voice said gently. Peter closed his eyes long enough for his heart rate to explode, remembering the static, static, static, and he opened them with a sharp inhale. “It’s nice to meet you.” What a fucking weird voice for Beck to choose, he thought plainly. He thought Mr. Stark, May, or Ned would be next on the roster. “Beck’s handling some things right now, dear,” Janice’s voice came again, soothing and almost too warm. Peter wrapped his arms tighter around himself. Tried to ignore it. “And, um, the team and I thought it would be a good idea to… lay off the pressure for a bit.”Peter’s throat tightened, and his eyes stung. He felt so small and helpless, like a child. Completely pathetic, and God, he just wanted to go home. He wanted to do so many things, but the principal among them was…was…something. He couldn’t pick a favorite.He wanted to rest under May’s fuzzy yellow blanket, the soft one, with his temple resting on the couch’s armrest and the coffee table cluttered with half-finished hot chocolate mugs. The radiator would click in the corner while May rambled about nothing—the office, grocery prices, the broken stove. He could smell pot roast or meatloaf in the air, feel the blanket tucked to his chin, eyes heavy with sleep and smoke from the oven.He wanted his head in MJ’s lap while they watched a movie, her fingers carding through his hair, soft against his cheekbones, tracing the curve of his eyes, his cheeks, his nose. She’d smooth out all his sharp edges, all the stress—school, Spider-Man, money—like they were nothing, folding him gently, making him feel like he could breathe again. She’d rattle off random facts about whatever movie was on—a nineties cult classic, probably, or something nightmarish with a lot of fake blood.He wanted Mr. Stark’s arms around his shoulders, pulling him close, pressing the back of his head into his neck. And Mr. Stark would say exactly what Peter needed to hear—that he wasn’t just some kid with a death wish, a project to manage. That he wasn’t the “orphaned kid from Queens,” that he was more than the sum of his parts. But most of all, Mr. Stark would still be alive, holding him close and not reduced to a pile of blood and bone because of some stupid fucking robot.Suddenly, the lights dimmed. They didn’t go out entirely, but the world seemed to swim in a hazy, lukewarm glow, the edges of everything blurring into soft oranges and browns and grays. It was comforting, almost. Like everything was slowing down into mulled cider, soothing in its emptiness.His breath hitched in his throat, and for a second, he couldn’t tell if he was dreaming or not. “Just—I don’t know how long he’ll be, um, handling things,” Janice continued, her voice soft. “So just rest, okay? I’ll disable the static.”Peter barely registered the words, all of his energy suddenly invested in staying awake. His body didn’t need sleep. On a strictly physiological level, sure, it wanted it, but Peter didn’t trust it. Didn’t people stay awake for, like, weeks sometimes? Was that something he’d read once? Mr. Stark once told him that he’d stayed awake for, like, five days while strung-out and drugged-up in the nineties. His vision was already slipping in and out, fighting the capital-T “Tired” as best he could. It was like the dimmed lights had dimmed his thoughts, putting them in a vat of warm jelly and melatonin gummies. But this was a willpower game. A test of his own self-discipline. “You’re okay,” Janice said gently. His heartbeat was so loud, and he was so fucking tired. He hadn’t felt this awful in…well, ever , and that was saying something. He’d done the multi-day fights with the Avengers, physics cram sessions until his eyes burned, climbed into bed beside May after a particularly gut-twisting patrol, letting her fingers trace up and down his back. None of that exhaustion compared to this sudden crash of fatigue.
What if this is just part of the game?
Despite himself, his instincts flared, and he shot his hand toward the door. His fingers brushed against the cool metal, but his senses weren’t lining up, and the gap wasn’t there like it was earlier. Some invisible knot of cords and intuition in his chest started unraveling, the background buzz and constant hum fading, draining, slipping out of his fingertips.
This isn’t real. It can’t be real.
“Hey,” Janice’s voice softened, too soft, like she was talking to a child. “I know this is hard. You’ve been through a lot, and we’re trying to help you. We’re trying to make it better.”His thoughts started to sputter. Only if he focused could he hear his own breathing. Distantly, he realized he was still crying. He didn’t realize it was possible to cry this long. "I d-don’t need help,” Peter forced out. “I just need...I just need it to g-go away. Please.”He didn’t even know what he meant by that. It was like his mind identified the sentiment, but before he could turn it into something coherent, it hit the "eject" button and sent it spiraling into the ether.Peter shook his head once, trying to clear it, but his thoughts weren’t working right. The loud part of his brain had forgotten about the maze, but it came back swinging.
Couldn’t figure it out. Couldn’t figure it out. Couldn’t figure it out.
“I know,” Janice said, quieter now. “But please, just rest. Let us help.”“I’m not g-going to…” he started, but his voice cracked, the words weak. The effort it took to form them felt monumental. “No...no, I’m not g-gonna just let you help. You—I d-don’t—Janice, you’re not even real. Some—some kinda trap, isn’t it?”“Beck’s gone for a little while.” Peter could feel her scrambling for the right words, the way she adjusted the tone of her voice. “It’s just... just me, you, and the rest of the team. I promise.”“Right, ‘cause I trust your…your promise a whole lot. Can’t just switch b- babysitters and expect—”“Just rest, Peter.” She was almost pleading with him, and she had to be lying, but her voice. It sounded so real, so genuine. “I know it’s hard to trust, but—”“I d-don’t trust you,” he whispered. “It’s not that it’s hard. You just—just haven’t earned it.” He was still crying, and he finally collapsed onto the cold concrete, folding an arm under his head as a makeshift pillow. The chill of the ground pressed against his cheek, but it didn’t hurt as much as it should have.“I know,” she said quietly. “Let me work for it. Beck, he’s—just…he’ll be back in a while. You have a few hours. Take advantage.”Peter’s throat tightened, but he couldn’t respond. His consciousness was slipping, the edges of his thoughts bleeding away like damp watercolor. Every part of his body felt simultaneously tight and loose, and he was still crying and crying and crying. The last thing he heard, before everything went dark, was Janice’s voice. He couldn’t make out her words, only that it wasn’t static.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
Six months ago, Peter texted MJ and Ned, saying,
come over immediately!!! I have Hulu now!!
MJ couldn’t figure out how he’d gotten it—Christmas gift from Tony Stark, some internship present, whatever—and they’d watched a minimum of fifty movies over a seven-day period. She’d crammed herself between Peter and Ned, a salad bowl with microwave popcorn sitting on her lap, the clunky heater on their necks, just laughing.
Best week of her life. Probably. At least one of the top contenders.
But when she looked back on that week, she couldn’t remember any of the specific movies. She only really remembered that it was the week Peter admitted he was Spider-Man.
It didn’t happen how she expected, though. MJ wasn’t a hopeless romantic, but she was certainly a hopeful one. She’d imagined some more dramatic confession—him saving her from certain death, his arm around her waist, yelling over explosions in the background,
“MJ, it’s Peter! I’m Spider-Man!”
Then, he’d bound toward an intergalactic demon freak or whatever while she watched, wide-eyed, jaw dropped. And then they’d kiss on the Empire State Building.
End scene. Roll credits.
She’d known about his secret identity for ages, at least since the D.C. trip when Spider-Man conveniently showed up to rescue her Academic Decathlon team from a broken elevator shaft. But she’d known for damn sure when she’d seen him after the second Blip, when everyone came back five years later, and he looked like hell. Not that he’d looked ugly—far from it, so whatever—but there was something in his eyes. That haunted look. The kind you get when you’ve seen someone die.
Now, as she thought back on his confession, she remembered it so vividly. Ned bailed early, mumbling something about Lola needing him home for dinner, and May was off doing whatever she did for work. Peter loaned her one of his old winter coats so they could walk to a corner Thai restaurant that Peter swore would change her life, and they’d brought it back to his apartment, eating while criss-crossed on his couch, facing each other.
She didn’t grow up with friends, confidants, comrades, whatever, so she hadn’t realized what was happening. Couldn’t feel the conversation gently shifting from light chatter about nonsense to secrets and confessions, stuff a little heavier than they usually talked about. At some point, she noticed him fidgeting with the hem of his hoodie, his sentences dragging, and his eyes literally anywhere but on her—the ceiling, her takeout, the coffee table.
“Okay, MJ,” he’d said quickly, “I need you to know something.”
“Shoot,” she’d said through a mouthful of noodles.
It took another thirty seconds before he said, “So, like, I’m, uh...I’ve been waiting to say this for, like, forever, so please don’t freak out.
Please
don’t. I don’t—I know it’s probably, like, a lot, and I’m sorry in advance, and please, please,
please
don’t tell anyone.”
“Jesus, dude, who am I gonna tell?”
“I’m Spider-Man,” he blurted out.
So…no. It wasn’t the grand dramatic reveal that she’d embarrassingly expected, but it was more Peter that way. She remembered gently setting her chopsticks in her noodles, tilting her head, staring at him. Peter looked so much smaller in that moment, his shoulders hunched, his hands awkwardly playing with the fabric of his hoodie.
He was scared.
"Peter," she said softly, keeping her voice light. Tried to iron out the archetypical snark in her voice, tried to make the moment a little more real. "You know you really suck at poker, right?"
"What? No, I—"
"No, seriously. Your poker face? Terrible. You’ve been giving it away for months.” She didn’t mention how the bruised, broken look he’d worn for weeks after the Reverse Blip had basically handed it to her on a silver platter. “Just promise me you won’t turn into Stark’s billionaire fanboy. Keep your distance, wear a mask, and don’t catch whatever disease makes him wear sunglasses indoors and speak in sound bites.”
He’d half-laughed and finally met her eyes. She’d missed those stupid things. “I just told you I’m Spider-Man, and that’s your response?”
“What, were you expecting flowers? A parade? A mariachi band?”
“Honestly, I don’t know. Maybe a little bit of gushing.”
"Spoken like a true Stark protege.”
“Whatever.” He groaned, sliding his half-finished takeout onto the coffee table. He sank against the cushion, his cheek on the top of the couch. "I know you’re not a fan, but he’s really—he’s a good guy, dude. I swear. Not just some arrogant corporate overlord with a God complex."
“Well, that's news to me. Last time I checked, he was daring terrorists to bomb his house and dropping buildings overseas.”
MJ noticed his cheeks were still pink from the confession, his pupils dilated. For a second, she wondered just how freaked out he’d been before spilling one of the biggest secrets a kid in Queens could possibly have. If he considered whether she’d react poorly, leaked it to the media, blackmailed him.
In reality, she’d never even think about doing that stuff. Her biggest gripe with his Spider-Manning was the danger. The risks were abundant: he was managed by Tony Stark, a guy who couldn’t go two minutes without looking like a shady financier; he was a quasi-Avenger, and the Avengers were just a glorified, privatized army masquerading as heroes; he regularly interacted with random fucks wandering around Queens with vendettas. She was just worried about him.
Peter let out a short, incredulous laugh.
“What?” she asked.
"You just—" He shook his head. "You kind of remind me of him. Like, Tony.”
"Excuse me?"
"I mean it in a good way!"
“No, no, hold on,” she said, poking his chest with the chopstick. Peter squeaked. “So, comparing me to a man-baby, libertine blockhead is a compliment now?”
“Did—were those even words?”
“I’m just pointing out—” She shoved some food in her mouth. “That the tin-man billionaire Batman wannabe isn’t a flattering comparison.”
“Do you practice these in the mirror?”
“You’re avoiding my point.”
“See? That. The way you parkour between juggle snarky one-liners with ‘I’ll destroy you in three words’ remarks. The sarcasm. Also, the freakishly cool brain-power.”
“I don’t think—”
“Oh, and let’s not forget the judging. So much judging.” He gestured to her. “I once heard Tony call someone an ‘evolutionary mistake’ and ‘what happens when God’s printer jams.’ Tell me you wouldn’t say that stuff.”
She popped another dumpling into her mouth, unimpressed. “Okay, but that doesn’t make me like him. Plenty of people are recreational assholes.”
“Oh, geez, do you want more things in your venn diagram overlap?” He leaned forward, pretending to think. “Okay, here’s one. You
also
pretend you don’t care, but you actually care a lot.”
“Hey, hey, stop psychoanalyzing me,” MJ shot back, but she liked it—just a little bit. Liked the idea that he’d noticed enough about her to come up with something like that. “I care an appropriate amount, and we should be talking about your Spider-Man gig. Not Stock Options McGee.”
“
Gig
,” he repeated with a scoff.
“If you do start comparing me to miscellaneous Avengers and Tony Stark characters, I’d like to be compared to Dr. Banner. One of the cool ones.”
“Okay, but you’re, like, not him. You’re not the gentle scientist who gets excited about vibranium. You’re the intimidating tech-genius on the cover of
Rolling Stone
who verbally eviscerates the paparazzi.”
“Whatever. I’ll also accept a Shuri or Pepper comparison.”
She poked at her food, her mind drifting. Based on what she’d gathered from the tabloids—which were 40% reliable at best, sure, but she didn’t know the guy, and this was her best option—Stark was a deep-pockets nepo-baby who viewed people as salary expenses. Regardless of his business dealings or grubby capitalist fingers, the idea of
that guy
being responsible for Peter’s suits, protection, and safety made her skin go ice cold. Asshole would probably skimp on a bulletproof suit just to avoid a $10 upcharge.
“Um, wait.” She blinked at the takeout and glanced up. “Hold on.”
Her tone must’ve sounded off, because Peter looked at her, his stupid Bambi eyes all wide. MJ didn’t know how to say it. Didn’t know how to ask if he was
really
sure he could trust Stark, if he was completely certain Stark saw him as more than just a number on his side, a personality hire who daylighted as a high-school student.
“You okay?” Peter asked, his voice softer. He’d set his food down, turned toward her. “Did—”
“You trust him, don’t you?” The words felt strange to say. “Tony?” she clarified pointlessly.
“Oh.” Peter blinked. “I mean—”
She rubbed the back of her neck. “Like, strictly from a pragmatic perspective…you know.”
“Yeah. I know what you mean.”
MJ studied him. “No doubts?”
“I mean—” He exhaled, rubbing the back of his own neck now, mirroring her. “He’s Tony Stark. I get why you’d ask. But he’s also—he’s been there for me. He built my suit. He checks in. He—I think he sees me. Not just as, like, some kid with, like, freakish…stuff. But as a person.”
MJ sighed, shifted a little closer. She ignored how Peter’s cheeks reddened. “A person who’s also a high schooler who could be easily manipulated by a dipshit billionaire with a savior complex.”
Peter groaned. “Oh my—”
“I’m just saying.”
“No, you’re just insinuating that the guy who literally pulled me out of the Hudson once is secretly running some Oliver Twist-style child hero exploitation ring.”
“If the shoe fits.”
Peter huffed a laugh, but he looked at the cushion. “Look, I know you don’t like him, but he’s not…it’s not like—I don’t know. I know what you’re thinking. I’ve seen it too—the way he can be, throwing up peace signs with—whatever. But underneath the media stuff, he really, really cares.”
In retrospect, Peter was probably right about Tony. Mr. Trust Fund had peaced out for a couple of hours for a “mid-afternoon siesta,” leaving her, Ned, and Banner alone in the lab with an empty checkbook and full permissions for…whatever the artificial intelligence was called.
Though, calling it “peacing out” was kind of generous. In reality, Sam had grabbed his elbow, said, “you old fart, it’s nap time,” and spent at least fifteen minutes arguing with him before he finally caved. Even then, he only agreed to a nap because MJ, Ned, and Banner would keep working while he was gone.
“And I’ll keep making the rescue plan,” Sam had deadpanned. “We’ve got Steve on—”
“Oh, you fucking better,” Tony had said, the half-joke barely masking something heavier. “When I wake up, he better be back, or everyone’s fired.”
Now, MJ was wading knee-deep in situational irony as she wandered the lab, surrounded by Stark’s self-indulgent little gizmos. She didn’t know exactly how Peter had gotten taken, and she wasn’t positive that even mattered. She just knew she’d been wrong about Tony, about his apathy when it came to Peter. The proof was all over the lab: the fat empty checkbook left out on the counter, his signature pre-written on every single check, and Banner’s full discretion to do whatever needed doing.
He cared about Peter, clearly. If Peter was just some employee number on payroll, Tony wouldn’t be “Zombie Stark-ing,” as Steve Rogers
—fucking Steve Rogers, Jesus—
kept saying.
But she’d wanted to be compared to Banner—because,
hello,
the guy was a genius, and insanely cool, and just everything—she hadn’t exactly pictured it happening like this.
Life comes at you fast, people say in these situations. Boy, did it ever.
“So,” Dr. Banner started, glancing between MJ and Ned, looking… nervous. He half-laughed, half-grimaced.
Definitely nervous.
“I’m Bruce.”
Ned snorted. “Uh, yeah, we’ve been hanging out with you for, like, two days now. I think we know your name.”
Banner forced another laugh and rocked back on his feet, eyes anywhere but them. “Yeah, yeah, I know. Just… I don’t know. I don’t know how to…” He gestured vaguely at them. “You know.”
MJ sighed, grabbing a Starkpad off the counter and trying very hard not to let the fact that Bruce freaking Banner had
pointed at her
do anything to her ego. “Tony keeps saying the same stuff.”
“What, about you guys?”
Next step would be meeting Pepper, which—yeah, that would knock her flat on her ass. She was pretty sure her heart would stop. “You guys have spoken to Peter before, right?”
“Well—“
“Then you know how to talk to teenagers,” MJ said. “It’s not like we’re a different species.”
“It’s not that,” Banner said quickly. “I’ve spoken to teenagers before. I do—I’m an adjunct at NYU every spring. I teach teenagers all the time.”
“Then what’s the problem?”
“I don’t know.” Banner half-shrugged, shifting uncomfortably. “Maybe it’s that we’re not here under the most pleasant circumstances. I’m not
teaching
you guys anything, I’m just…you guys are more like colleagues.”
MJ blinked.
Colleagues.
That word rattled around in her brain for a second. She begged herself to not let the satisfaction show, only barely succeeding as she typed away at the Starkpad. When they got Peter back, she’d give herself permission to blab about this. She just needed to hold it in until then.
“Well, anyway,” she said when neither Ned nor Banner filled the silence, “before Tony went AWOL, I was thinking about what his strategy was in Poughkeepsie.”
“You mean fly at two-thousand feet in pitch black to find a person?” Ned said, leaning against the counter. “No wonder he didn’t find anything good.”
Morale had improved since Steve gave them the greenlight to go poking around the Delaney property under the condition that they prove Peter was in there. “Prove” was a heavy word, though, so MJ decided “more likely than not” was the better standard. They just needed to show it was more likely than not that Peter was in that building.
Because they’d narrowed suspect properties down to one sketch-ass property in the Lower East Side, the “more likely than not” standard felt doable, albeit tricky, because what would convince her wasn’t the same as what would convince Mr. Fourth of July. Captain Sanctimonious probably worshiped at Uncle Sam’s altar, and MJ didn’t care much for the rule of law so much as she cared about efficiency. About results. She was convinced
now
, ready
now
, while Patriot Ken was still dragging his feet, wanting
proof
,
evidence
,
more proof
.
God, that was exactly the kind of thing Tony would think.
“What was the strategy?” she asked Banner.
“Uh…” Banner sighed. “Okay, when I tell you this, don’t take it to mean all of our ideas are this flimsy. We were in the preliminary stages, and we just needed something. He was—Tony, I mean—he wasn’t dealing with all of this in—um, it wasn’t healthy to keep postponing action.”
“Oh, this’ll be good.”
Banner ignored her. “So Peter’s physiology is… unique,” he started, eyes flicking between her and Ned. “In extremely basic terms, he’s almost entirely human. But his metabolism runs at a much higher rate than average, which means—”
“He runs hot,” Ned finished quickly.
“Right.” Banner gave a small smile. “Hotter than any normal person, at least. A while back, Tony and I built an augmented-reality thermographic camera and hooked it up to the Iron Man network. We just cranked up the contrast so he could see more subtle differences in body temperature and decided he’d investigate any that appeared as red-hot on screen.”
“Huh.” MJ pursed her lips. “So if Peter’s in the Delaney building, he’d show up on the heat map.”
Banner rocked on his feet again. “Yeah, maybe. Wouldn’t work if he was far underground, but—”
“But it would work if he was, say, on the first floor? A regular basement?”
“If all other conditions are steady, yeah,” Banner said, grabbing what looked like a stripped-down version of an Iron Man helmet. “Put this on. It’s, uh, the backup to the backup to the backup. Tony’s been looking to add more features, but right now, it’s just got the basics—like, you know. The thermographing.”
The more principled part of her went on red alert.
No, MJ! Don’t sacrifice your ideology! Don’t put on the stupid Iron Man hat, the symbol of a privatized military industrial complex and mass destruction!
She put it on anyway.
And just like that, she was no longer the hard-nosed activist railing against Stark Industries’ unchecked power—she was a little kid who’d looked into the sky in 2008 and seen Iron Man streak above New York City, who had dressed as him for Halloween that year, the only girl in her class to do so. She felt like that kid now, wide-eyed and breathless.
The moment the helmet clicked into place, her jaw nearly hit the floor. The display—dashboard—whatever—sprang to life, flooding her vision with tricks and features she didn’t even have the words for. It was like stepping onto an alien planet, an entire world condensed into the space behind her eyes. Way cooler than whatever she’d pulled off the Party City rack.
“Wow,” MJ mumbled. “This is…this is
sick.”
“Oh, this old thing?” Banner said, but he beamed. “I’m so glad you think so. Tony’s never impressed by anything anymore.”
“Dude, you look sick,” Ned said, grinning as he waved at her through the mask. Someone behind Ned yelled something about an Iron Man cosplay. “You’re…Iron Woman.”
She scoffed so fast that it literally hurt her throat. “God, shoot me before I ever self-reference as that,” MJ muttered, though she couldn’t quite get the awe out of her voice. “Okay, how do I do this?”
“First, we need someone to go behind a wall.” Banner pointed at Ned. “Ned, head behind the half-wall over there and hold up some fingers. Let’s get MJ to guess how many.”
Ned was behind the wall before MJ could blink. She turned, glancing between the half-wall and Banner. “Okay, how do I turn it on?”
“Should be a button that says ‘thermographing,’” Banner said, pointing at the far right corner of the mask. “Just give it a tap.”
MJ tapped it.
Nothing happened.
For a second, she wondered if she was the incompetent bozo who couldn’t work a literal button in front of the twenty-first century’s foremost expert in fucking gamma radiation. MJ tried again. And again. And again. Nothing.
It wasn’t her. It was the stupid helmet.
"It’s not working," she said, pulling it off and passing it back to Banner. "Something’s weird."
"Here, I’ll get it." Banner tugged it over his head and pressed the button. Nothing. He frowned. "Jeez, what? Here, MJ, you go behind the wall with Ned."
She did, slipping behind the half-wall with Ned and holding up a few fingers. They made eye contact, waiting for Banner to say something.
She’d known Ned and Peter for what felt like decades, though it couldn’t have been more than a few years—since Peter transferred to Midtown Tech, since those two became Thing 1 and Thing 2. She couldn’t pinpoint exactly when their little duo expanded to include her, if it ever truly had. She suspected they’d always been tighter with each other than with her, given everything about them—the Star Wars ramblings, the inherent dude-bro bond that every guy had with every other guy, the fact that Ned had known about the Spider-Man thing for so long.
And the more she thought about it, the more she realized she barely knew anything about them. Ned lived with his Lola, a sweet old woman who could bake the
hell
out of cassava cakes and coconut mochi. His mom was a nurse, and his dad was... what, in the military? A police officer? Something like that. He liked computer science and engineering, she was pretty sure, but she couldn’t be certain. Oh, and he loved really stupid video games.
As for Peter, she knew he lived with his Aunt May, but that was about it. There was a rumor from a few years ago that his parents were dead and that he’d found his uncle when he died, but MJ prayed that wasn’t true. If it was...
yeesh.
The thought alone made her stomach turn. Beyond that, he collected baseball cards for some reason, and he had a borderline medical obsession with Legos. Same for Ned, actually.
But to be fair, it’s not like she’d given them much to work with. She never talked about her parents—an absentee mom and a trying-but-misguided dad that she knew threw a strained, distant lens. They knew she liked to draw, but everyone knew that. Maybe no one could form a friendship like Ned and Peter’s without vulnerability, and maybe she needed to open up more.
Well, she was doing that now. Sacrificing days of sleep, time, and mental sanity just to rescue some bumbling dork in Spandex was as vulnerable as it got. She hoped she was proving herself—a good friend, someone who might finally be included in their little friendship bubble.
“Okay, that’s weird,” Banner said. “MJ, I can see you clear as day. You’re holding up three fingers.”
MJ faked a groan. “Got me.”
“But not Ned.” MJ and Ned exchanged glances before stepping out from the half-wall. Banner pulled off the mask, his expression pinched. "That’s… I’ve never seen that happen before."
“Is it just that mask?” Ned asked, leaning against the half-wall.
"Given that it worked for one person and not the other, I’m inclined to think it’s not…that it’s a more deliberate thing instead of a mask thing," Banner muttered, dragging a hand over his face. He suddenly looked exhausted. "This relies on Stark’s network to…to power it. Could be a network issue."
"Huh?" Ned squinted. "You guys have to connect your stuff to a network?"
"All Iron Man suits are linked to Stark Industries’ network," Banner said. "For all of Avengers’ comms and programming to sync, they need a common network.”
They stood in silence for a moment.
Then, Banner exhaled sharply. “Do you guys remember when we realized the radio signals were acting up? But only
Tony’s
radios?"
Ned’s entire face fell. “Oh, no, wait—”
“Do you think someone corrupted the Stark network?” MJ repeated, eyebrows pulled together. “How would that—isn’t Tony, like, a tech genius or something? Aren’t his networks impenetrable?”
“Something like that,” Bruce muttered. “I don’t know. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that the teenage boy, whose heat patterns, physiology, and thermographic traits are distinct from adult men and teenage girls, isn’t showing up on the screen.”
“And they programmed it specifically to Ned because…”
“No, they programmed it to
teenage boys,”
Banner said, glancing at Ned. “Because they probably didn’t know Peter’s exact body temperature or specs, they probably just did his demographic. Something to conceal him from our view. They probably knew Tony would go searching for him with his FLIR, ‘cause in retrospect, it’s so obvious.”
“How would…how would that even—”
“It might not even require getting into the Stark network,” he said quietly. “Stark’s radios and sensors all use augmented reality overlaps that…they interact with radio waves and thermal data in more complex waves. If someone deploys—someone could, theoretically, have a system that interferes only with Stark’s advanced systems but don’t get picked up by regular, non-advanced FLIR cameras.”
“Okay, wait, recap,” Ned said, shaking his head. “You think someone is interfering with Stark sensors that have AR overlays? So not the networks specifically, but…but the technology?”
“I’d eat my shoe if someone managed to hack Stark’s network,” Bruce deadpanned. “So, yeah. It’d be really weird for malicious actors to manipulate the sensors instead of the network itself, but—”
“So to see Peter, you’d need a regular thermographic camera,” Ned said.
“Something without the, um, augmented overlay,” MJ added. “Something that couldn’t be corrupted by…by…”
“Little holographic projections.” Banner groaned. “I don’t know, guys. I know it’s not an airtight idea, but I’m just spitballing here. I’ve never seen it, but if these are former Stark employees, anything is possible. Anything except the network, in my opinion.”
“Well, we can get a regular camera,” Ned said, grabbing the Stark Industries checkbook. “They have them at, like, Best Buy. And Wal-Mart too, I think.”
“I am super not inclined to make any purchases with a Stark check right now,” Banner mumbled. “I know Tony greenlighted it, but if this actor is interfering with tech, they could track transactions.”
“Aren’t checks untraceable?” MJ asked.
Banner barked out a sharp laugh but didn’t answer. "I don’t suppose you guys have access to a thermographic camera?"
MJ paused for a moment, thinking, but Ned quickly said, “No, we do, actually.”
“Huh?” MJ shot him a look. “You have a FLIR?”
“Midtown Tech, dude,” Ned said, his voice rising. He turned to Banner. “They’ve got summer camps for middle schoolers all summer, so the doors are for-sure open. We could totally, like, sneak in, grab the camera—”
“And it’s a normal one?” Banner blinked. “No augmented reality or high-tech sensors?”
“Super normal. One of the old ones, too. The kind from the early 2000s.”
“Old ones,” Banner repeated. “And you guys are allowed to just…take it?”
“No,” Ned replied, but then glanced at MJ. “She could get them to give it to her, though. She’s valedictorian, and they—like, the administration—they trust her. And they trust me, too. I could schmooze our old teachers to really seal the deal.”
“Valedictorian,” Banner repeated, smiling. “Nice. What do you think, MJ?”
MJ was already getting her shoes on.
Because they left at nearly four o’clock on a weekday, it took a full hour to get to Midtown Tech from the Avengers Tower. Happy had loaded them into the car, muttering about how he was already on his way to visit May.
“No, no, for sure,” Happy grumbled as they piled into the car. “It’s
so
cool you guys want me to drive to Queens, then drive back, and then drive to Queens again. No, this isn’t a total waste of time and gas money. Don’t worry about it.”
As he drove, Happy talked about May, how she was “blazing mad.” and how she’d have killed Tony with her bare hands by now if she had it her way. MJ didn’t blame her. If Tony hadn’t let them stay on the first night, she would’ve nuked the fucking place.
“Okay, okay, so what’s the plan?” Banner said, spinning in the passenger’s seat to face MJ and Ned in the back. “List it out. I want this to be airtight.”
“I’ll go in,” MJ said slowly, “and find a teacher who knows me. I’ll tell them I need the thermographic camera for a science project.”
“And if that doesn’t work?”
“Then I’ll improvise,” MJ replied, adjusting the strap on her backpack. They’d grabbed some old bags before leaving, anything to remind the teachers that they were mere high schoolers.
Oh, ma’am, we’re just kids who needed a FLIR camera for a little science project. Nothing nefarious is going on—certainly nothing involving a missing high-schooler and Spider-Man.
“Look, I’ve gotten away with worse at school.”
“I don’t doubt it if Peter’s your friend,” Banner sighed. “Kid’s a menace. But I still don’t love the idea of you two breaking into your high school over the summer.”
“It’s not
breaking
in,” Ned said quickly. “The summer program’s running. The doors are open.”
Banner pinched the bridge of his nose. “Just get in and out quickly. No trouble.”
MJ and Ned exchanged a glance, then slipped out of the car. Of course, the school’s front doors were unlocked, like they’d been waiting for them. Most of the lights were off, but the voices of kids, distant and faded, bounced around—laughing, joking about science nonsense. Everything smelled like industrial-strength floor cleaner, pencils, and Clorox disinfectant wipes.
Spooky.
“It’s so quiet,” Ned whispered, glancing at her.
“You can talk at normal volume,” MJ said, her voice casual as she banked a right toward the lab. She glanced around, taking in the empty bulletin boards, the last remnants of the school year wiped out by a recycling bin and some new thumbtacks. “Wanna check the lab first?”
They walked down the familiar corridors, past darkened classrooms and empty trash cans. The lab door, of course, was locked. MJ tested the handle, then handed it over to Ned, then tested it again, just to be sure. She frowned. “Figures.”
Ned glanced around. “Do you have a bobby pin?”
“That can be plan B,” MJ mumbled. “Let’s talk to Harrington first.”
“He’s here over the summer?”
“He would be,” MJ replied, picking up her pace as they entered a row of science classrooms. They passed shut and darkened doors, passed trophy cases filled with familiar science fair ribbons and robotics awards. In the open classrooms they passed, a few summer students hunched over a lab experiment, heads bent with intense concentration. A janitor wheeled a trash can down the hall.
As expected, Mr. Harrington’s door was ajar, and he looked up in mild surprise when MJ knocked once.
“My eyes deceive me!” he announced loudly, standing from his desk. About twelve kids, all in sixth grade at the absolute max, stood around in goggles and oversized lab coats, messing with bunsen burners that weren’t even turned on. “Kids, look! It’s MJ and Ned!”
Exactly zero of the kids gave even half of a shit, and MJ snorted. “Hi, Mr. Harrington.”
“Good afternoon, sir,” Ned said stiffly, and MJ elbowed him right in the ribs.
“And hello to you too!” Mr. Harrington grinned, fully oblivious. MJ suddenly felt a weird pang of guilt for the betrayal she was about to commit. “What can I do for you? Did you just wanna stop by and say hello to your favorite science teacher?”
MJ pulled out her most convincing expression of academic earnestness and squared her shoulders. “Um, we’re working on an independent research project, and I was hoping to borrow our thermographic camera for a few days.”
The air shifted immediately. Mr. Harrington blinked, pursed his lips, and leaned back against his filing cabinet. MJ couldn’t help but glance at his desk in the meantime—so many models, papers, and grading pens, even though all of his “current students” were literal children and presumably ungraded.
“The FLIR camera?” he asked slowly, eyes darting between them. “Yeah, I don’t think so, guys. That thing cost a lot of dough, you know that?”
MJ was halfway to something snarky like,
“Put it on Tony Stark’s tab,”
when Ned, bless him, cut in. “We will pay you back, like, if literally anything is on it. Any scratches, dust—”
“I’d have to check with the department head,” Harrington interrupted. “It’s not even really within my purview.”
“But that could take days,” Ned said quickly. “And the data collection window is really small.”
“Well, boo-hoo. That’s school property. If something happens to it—”
“Please, Mr. Harrington?” MJ leaned in, trying to channel Peter’s big Bambi eyes. “You know I wouldn’t ask if it weren’t important.”
“What could possibly be so—”
“We’re working with, um, Dr. Bruce Banner on a project,” Ned suddenly interjected, forcing a confidence that his body language completely failed to match. “You know him? I think he…I think—”
“Bruce
Banner?
” Harrington straightened up, eyes narrowing. “You two are working with…the foremost gamma radiation and nuclear energy expert in the
world?”
“Yep!” Ned smiled brightly. Maybe a little too brightly. “We’re collaborating on this, like, super interesting, top-secret project, and we just need the camera for a few days.”
Harrington’s eyes narrowed further. “Is this in, like, an internship context, or—”
“We’re gonna study the heat signatures associated with gamma radiation,” MJ said, the words slipping out before she could stop them. “And, um, he doesn’t… doesn’t have the funding in his grant for a FLIR camera. Like you said, they’re expensive, and…you know how, um, grants are nowadays. So rigid.”
“And he mentioned you,” Ned added. “Said that… that you might have one. Mentioned you by name, ‘cause he knows we go here, and I guess he knew you from…um…”
“He did?” Mr. Harrington’s face did an immediate one-eighty, shifting from skepticism to something excited, jaw falling open. “Oh, goodness, that’s fantastic!”
MJ blinked, her brain slamming on the brakes so quickly that she felt dizzy. “Is… is it?”
“We went to college together at Culver’s, and I always wondered if…” He waved a hand vaguely. “But anyway, just…and you're sure this is for Banner? He’d have to assume responsibility for this, and—”
“We’ll sign any forms,” Ned cut in, nodding enthusiastically. “Liability forms, responsibility agreements, whatever you need. We’ll take care of it.”
Harrington stared at him for a long beat, as if trying to figure out whether they were telling the truth or pulling some elaborate prank. After about twelve years of standing there, staring at each other, waiting for someone to do something, Harrington shook his head.
“Alright,” he muttered, visibly excited but unsure. “You want the camera, fine. But you better make sure nothing happens to it, or you’re gonna regret it. And you have to tell Bruce I said hey.”
MJ nodded solemnly. “Understood.”
“Come on, let’s get this over with.” Harrington grabbed the supply cabinet key from his desk. “These fourth graders can self-sustain for a few minutes.”
They followed him to the locked lab. As he turned the key, MJ and Ned exchanged a relieved glance. When the door swung open, MJ immediately spotted the thermographic camera on a dusty shelf. That stupid hunk of junk never looked so good. Harrington handed it to her with a warning look, and she tucked it safely into her backpack, making sure he was watching.
Once they were in the car, Banner turned to them expectantly. “Well?”
MJ pulled the camera from her bag, a shit-eating grin on her face. “Got it.”
An hour later, they were back in the lab, the FLIR camera sitting on the table while Banner tinkered with what looked like an incredibly simple drone. MJ and Ned served as tech assistants, helping him attach a recording device—something that would fit into the camera’s viewfinder and record whatever they saw.
They couldn’t get the video to stream live without attaching some of Stark’s augmented reality sensors, which would’ve made it vulnerable to whoever was fucking up the radio and Iron Man sensors. As such, they rigged it up with a regular video camera, practically duct-taping it to a battery-powered drone. Completely independent, and therefore free from any Stark-specific tampering.
As Banner covered up any lights that could blink or shine—no red LEDs, no reflective panels—he sighed. “Okay. This will probably work best at night, so we should… let’s get it ready.”
“It’s dark in fifteen minutes,” MJ said, glancing outside. “It’s already, like, quarter-past eight.”
“Then you guys get Tony.” Bruce smiled warily. “He’s gonna want to be here for this.”
They found Tony outside the lab, lying flat on the couch with his arm over his eyes. The guy looked
fucking
beat. But that was typical, given Peter’s stories—the two of them had stayed up until odd hours before, tinkering with things Peter couldn’t even talk about without risking national security. Peter always mentioned how Tony did it all the time. An engineer truly dedicated to his craft.
But now, MJ didn’t see it as dedication to science. She saw it as dedication to purpose. Tony wasn’t someone who just wanted to figure stuff out; he was someone who needed to
accomplish
something, and he wouldn’t stop until it was all tied up with a neat little ribbon. And here, that something was Peter, and he literally didn’t stop until he’d nearly collapsed in the lab.
And maybe that’s what set him apart from the other dork billionaires. Purpose-based motivation.
MJ nudged Ned, and he gasped. “I’m not gonna do it!”
“What, are you scared?”
"Of—dude, this guy is, like, worth a
billion
dollars. I’m not—"
“And what about it? You think he’s gonna sue you? What’s he gonna do, hire some high-powered lawyer to send you a cease-and-desist for mildly inconveniencing him?”
“I can hear you guys,” Tony mumbled.
“He’s just a rich dude with a guilty conscience,” MJ said a little too loudly, glancing over at Tony, who’d heaved himself up onto his elbows. “And he’s—oh, Jesus, he’s awake.”
“Yeah, obviously.” Tony rubbed his hands up and down his face. MJ glanced around, but the place was eerily quiet, and she waited for the other Avengers to start lumbering around. Nothing. “Thanks for that, by the way.”
“No, thank
you.”
MJ crossed her arms, then dropped them back to her sides. “Saved us the trouble of waking you up.”
“I’m always glad to be of assistance.” Tony dropped his feet on the ground and groaned. “Anything for Tweedledee and Tweedledum.”
MJ snorted. “That’s some bullshit, actually. I think your factory default is to act counter to assistance.”
Tony leveled her with a half-lidded gaze of amused irritation. Beside her, Ned was still frozen, like Tony had just threatened to vaporize him into red mist. MJ stared back at him, her eyebrows raised.
“What, no quirky counter about how you’re smarter than God?” MJ asked.
“I woke up, like, thirty seconds ago,” Tony defended, rubbing his eyes. “What do you little lab gremlins want? Is Bruce done with—”
“Bruce told us to come talk to you,” Ned interrupted.
“Oh, goodie. Glad Banner and I have fallen into a ‘go ask your father’ relationship with you two.”
It was a coping mechanism that got increasingly potent the more the stress built. The humor, the redirection, whatever else. MJ resisted calling him on it, but only narrowly. “No, it’s ‘cause we have something.”
Tony didn’t respond. He just stood up so quickly that he nearly tripped, then launched himself into the lab, slamming the doors against the wall. MJ and Ned caught up just in time to see him point at Bruce, who didn’t even blink.
“You,” Tony said. “Speak.”
Bruce filled him in, crediting Ned and MJ where he could. Hearing it all out at once—
someone’s messing with your sensors, which is why they can target you, Tony, so the kids broke into their nerd palace and got a new camera, and this one doesn’t have your sensors
—was exhausting. Everything about this situation was exhausting, sure, but hearing it in plain language, watching Tony’s color gradually drain from his face, seeing his hands in his hair—
God,
MJ couldn’t wait for this brief stint in living Hell to be over.
Maybe it was vulnerable for her to say that. Actually, maybe it was vulnerable to say anything. Even admitting that this situation was affecting her carried implicit vulnerability—an admission that she cared about Peter, that she cared about the people around her, that she cared about fixing this. And what was vulnerability if not admitting that she cared about something?
“That’d be enough for Steve,” Tony muttered, voice almost a whisper. “That’d—he’s aware of the kid’s... condition, and no human person could get to... the temperatures he does. That’s ‘more likely than not’ territory for sure.”
“Will he still be hotter than normal?” MJ asked, glancing around. “Or will his temperature be normal again? Like, can we be sure that it hasn’t regulated?”
“And if he’s been stuck somewhere without much movement, he’ll be cold, not hot,” Ned chimed in. MJ blinked. He’d paid more attention in biology than her, obviously. “Like, he wouldn’t be able to generate enough warmth through physical activity. And he totally can’t thermoregulate to a normal temperature if he’s just been, like, kept in a room, or whatever.”
“Right on it, kid.” Tony nodded. “I’d estimate him between—FRIDAY, would somewhere between ninety and ninety-five degrees make sense?”
“Yes, sir,” the artificial intelligence said. “I cannot access Dr. Cho’s records, but I would assume his body is behaving like a spider’s, which can adjust to external temperature extremes. Thus, his temperature might fall significantly, making him much slower and weaker, just like a spider when immobilized by cold.”
“So let’s make sure the contrast on the camera is high,” Banner muttered, fiddling with the equipment. “There. Anyone under ninety-five degrees will show up bright blue. Nobody but Peter will be in that range, not in New York City in the summer.”
And they hit deploy, watching the drone float into the Manhattan night with a little buzz. The drone’s round-trip took barely twenty-five minutes, but MJ’s nerves were shot the entire time. The silence was unbearable. When the drone finally returned, Banner dismantled it and slid the video card to Tony, who immediately popped it into a Starkpad, his eyes focused, waiting.
And sure enough, there it was— a blue human shape in the building. The figure was lying on the ground, flat on their back, staring up at the ceiling. Staring at a drone they couldn’t see.
MJ slapped her hand over her mouth. She needed a moment.
***
Tony slapped the Starkpad down onto the coffee table in front of Steve, Sam, and the other Avengers. They were gathered around the television, watching some brain-rot dumb fucking show—
relax
, Tony told himself, there’s no need to be so hostile when you could be
goddamn nice.
But it was hard to be nice when he wanted to just pull his stupid suit on, that one version not connected to his augmented reality sensors, and bust down Quentin Beck’s door with one swift kick.
“Listen up, dickwads,” Tony snapped, flicking through the Starkpad with a practiced flick of his fingers. He could feel all their eyes on him, but Steve’s—god, Steve’s were
huge,
like he was hoping that Tony found something to justify breaking into the property. As much as Tony couldn’t stand that moralizing wet-blanket sometimes, he knew Steve was on his side. Knew he wanted the kid back.
“We’re listening,” Clint prompted when Tony said nothing for twenty seconds.
Tony blinked and cleared his throat. “Remember when you assholes doubted that building was the right building?”
“Jesus, Tony,” Steve muttered, giving him a full-body eye roll. “I didn’t doubt it. I just said—”
“Let the man cook,” Sam interrupted, pointing at Tony. “Yes? What were you saying?”
“We have proof.” Tony gave them a moment to let Sam’s comment settle before he hit the button. The shaky footage flickered to life: a human figure sprawled on the ground, glowing blue. “See this? FLIR camera. Tracks heat signatures. And Peter, ever since he was bitten by a fucking spider, has some thermoregulation issues, which makes him run hot or cold depending on—I dunno, a bunch of stuff.
A la,
he’s a little more noticeable on this kind of equipment. And that? That’s him. The blue thing.”
Steve was staring at the screen, brows furrowed. “How do you know?”
“If someone turns up as dark blue, it means they’re sub-ninety two degrees,” Tony said. “That person is ninety. Humans don’t hit ninety degrees without fucking dying, Reverend.”
“Jesus,” Natasha muttered. “He gets that cold? How does he not fucking die?”
“No idea. That’s a question for the biology dorks in the lab.”
“And you’re sure that isn’t like…” Steve shifted uncomfortably. “Christ, I dunno, a body?”
“Jeez, Steve!” Sam said, jumping back. “You’re gonna insinuate—”
“I don’t know! I don’t know, okay? I don’t know how to, like, confirm that this is a living person and not…not—”
“You—” Tony exhaled sharply, trying to side-step a pang that came with that question. He’d barely considered the possibility that Peter was dead, and approaching that concept right now—nope, that was for a later date. “Dead bodies would be a hell of a lot colder than this. Capisce? That’s Peter.”
Steve blinked up at him, then glanced around the room. “Alright.”
“Well,” Sam said, clapping his hands together. “That’s that. Let’s get ready, then. Tony, grab your suit. Not the one with augmented reality, though, if Banner’s loud-ass rambling from the lab had anything to say about it.”
“Do you even have a basic Iron Man model?” Natasha asked. “Are you physically capable of making something not decked out with bells and whistles?”
Clint snorted. “Iron Man without the little Tony pizazz would just be a knight costume. One of those clunky things that knights wear at Buckingham Palace.”
“Oh, my God, those aren’t knights! Those are King’s Guards!”
Tony didn’t waste another second. With the forced swagger of a stressed-to-nausea egotist, he gave a tight nod and turned on his heel, heading straight for the lab. But at the last second, he ducked into a bathroom, closed the door quietly behind him, and dropped to the floor.
It felt incredibly stupid pressing his hands against the cold tile, trying to mainline the chill straight into his carotid artery. Something to just cool everything off, like pouring water on a hot stove. Something to turn this heat into steam.
Tony dropped to his forearms, sucking in a shallow breath. He couldn’t steady his pulse with sheer willpower, much to his dismay, so he just focused on the tile. Listened to the ruckus outside the door, listened to his friends get into gear, listened to Ned squeal incomprehensibly because,
“Oh, God, that’s the…oh, my God, Ms. Romanoff, I’m such a fan!”
He was so close. So fucking close.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
“Peter.”Peter knew his name, obviously. It had been a birthday present from his parents, one he'd been stuck with for the past seventeen-or-so years. A Greek word meaning “rock” or “stone.” The only name besides "Spider-Man" that marked him as him— the part that, when paired with “Benjamin” and “Parker,” was unmistakably him. An identity. Something that was uniquely, distinctly his.But hearing it now, it didn’t register. He knew the sound was familiar, knew it came from someone’s mouth, but it didn’t click, not really, that it was his sound. His syllables. His letters. His name.Not until it came out with real fucking venom. Then, he knew it was about him.“Peter fucking Parker,” the voice spat. “Get off the goddamn floor before I make you into a fucking carpet.”As he rolled onto his back, the concrete floor scratchy against his thin t-shirt and hard on his shoulders, Peter’s breath caught. That was his name, and that was Beck's voice. He wavered between urgency—he’d rather not be a carpet, thanks—and going back to bed. As he laid on the floor, he just wanted to go back to sleep, to keep clearing the blurriness from his vision, the sharp pins digging into his temples, the pressure behind his eyes. The nap hadn’t done much to clear the murky sludge behind his eyes, but it’d given him a new sense of resolve, of get out, get out, get out. And he’d missed that. Missed feeling something besides vague fatigue.“Wonderful! The sleeping beauty has finally decided to grace us. How was naptime, precious?”A few hours ago, Beck apologized for Peter’s involvement in this mess. He'd seemed genuinely sorry, if a little snappy or moody, just a few hours ago. Said something about how Peter was merely collateral. Any of that sympathy had long since circled the drain. “G’morning,” Peter mumbled. He didn’t know what he did wrong. “What’s—”“Get the fuck up, Peter, or I’ll rearrange your goddamn DNA and make you into a banana.” Oh, God. Reality hit like a two-ton wrecking ball. He'd just fallen asleep for... for... however long in this asylum-ass room. It was still bright white in here, still sterile and stark and blinding. For some reason, even though his mind understood this was bad, really bad, his body was dead weight.Peter blinked, shoving himself onto his elbows. He forced himself to his feet, hands trembling but steady enough to grab the wall, and slid into something half-resembling a fighting stance. Some habits never die. Some were just instinct."So if you fucking remember," Beck barked, "I told you way back that you were gonna plop your insect ass in this room and stay awake. Remember that? We had protocols and everything. The sound, for one. And so imagine my surprise when I step away for a whopping four hours—four god-fucking hours—and I come back to see you on the ground? What, did you want a night cap, too?" Four hours, Peter processed. Okay. So that put him at... sixty hours, maybe, for this whole clusterfuck of an experience? This epic train-crash of a time? “You knew this was wrong,” Beck spat. “You did it anyway. What kind of superhero is that?”The fighting stance slipped away, but the instinct to brace for impact, for a fight, stayed locked in his bones, humming in the background like an electric pulse, glowing white behind his eyes. The static was back, but not Beck’s harsh, biting sound—no, this was in the back of his head, clogging his senses, buzzing between his ribs and throat. The hum of an old television or whir of a box fan. Whatever prey animals felt—this was it.His heartbeat layered over the sound, buzzing and thumping, buzzing and thumping. Something was shaking—his hands were shaking again. He swallowed hard. His hands were shaking.“Hello? Earth to Peter. Got anything to say?” Sixty hours since Mr. Stark dropped him in that stupid alleyway. Sixty hours since he’d fallen off the face of the Earth and been logged and cataloged as a furniture piece in this 3D whitestrip of a room. Sixty hours since he'd felt fresh air, seen someone real, or breathed anything that wasn’t recycled through vents and air filters.
Hands were shaking. Hands were shaking.
Somehow, he'd avoided a full in-character anxiety attack until now, but Christ, he was so tired, and everything inside of him—the resolve, the resilience, the traits that Tony cited as reasons for making him an Avenger—felt so thin, so stretched, bound and pulled from temple-to-temple. That last static episode had snapped something in him, a safety net that kept him feeling okay. Maybe if he'd gotten eight hours of sleep and hadn’t been screamed at the moment he woke up, maybe then he’d be fine. But that wasn’t the reality of the situation.“I’m sorry,” Peter mumbled. He blinked for a long time. “I’m—I didn’t—”“Of course you’re sorry,” Beck snapped. “You have about three dialogue options, and it’s all apologies, loser quips, and Tony Stark aggrandizing. I know you’re sorry.”Peter had grown up around men. He understood them, as a man. But the men he’d known—his dad, Uncle Ben, their friends, even his older cousins—weren’t the archetypical men. They were gentle, soft-spoken, sweet guys. The first time he’d really started hearing proper yelling, the kind that rattled the air, was when he’d thrown himself into the whole Spider-Man thing. And since then, he’d learned that when red-faced, bulging-eyed screamers came, violence followed—men robbing, beating, murdering, stealing, shooting. Scary shit that made his hands tremble. One of his first anxiety panic attacks had been in Tony’s compound. Earlier that day, he’d watched someone die at the hands of a screaming man with a gun. It’d freaked him out so severely that Karen alerted Tony —sir, Peter is experiencing severe distress— which was both incredibly lame and super clutch. He’d probably have hyperventilated himself into the next dimension if Tony hadn’t picked him up.Peter remembered weird, disjointed details about the day—it was a Tuesday, and Tony tossed him a quilt that Pepper’s mom made, one made of old t-shirts too meaningful for the thrift store. Remembered one shirt had the U2 logo on it. Remembered Tony standing there, grumbling expletives about the Netflix password, all I’m typing this shit correctly, and this would be about ten thousand times more efficient with facial recognition tech, right, kid? But Peter had been borderline catatonic, running on two hours of sleep in the past thirty, trying to relax while listening to Tony’s muttering —I use the same password for everything, fuck. Then, two other men came in. Peter was pretty sure it’d been Sam and Steve. It was all a blur, a mess of half-formed vibes and disjointed voices, but he distinctly remembered tall men arguing, really arguing, voices boiling about some government thing or cease and desist or an administrative matter or whatever. Everything hit the fan at once: the too-busy quilt, the not-sleeping, watching someone die, watching the man scream before killing someone else, two of the most powerful men in the world in Peter’s space, near Tony. And that was it. He freaked the fuck out, his body shutting down, sobbing, cold sweat and burning heat, shaking like someone was doing to him, chest tight, lungs scrambling to draw air. Time skipped, and he ended up in the corner, shaking his head, crying violently. He remembered Tony crouching in front of him, eyes wide, a hand on his forehead.“Can you dense motherfuckers get out?” Tony yelled behind him, which somehow made everything so much worse. Peter flinched so violently that his head slammed into the wall. “Oh, Christ. Sorry, I—I didn’t—”It felt like he was floating, like he was untethered, literally in space with nothing to hold onto. He was drifting away from everything he loved, sinking into some cold, terrifying ether, like his little oxygen canister was blinking red, running out, and—“Peter, hey, hey, look at me,” Tony was saying, his hand hovering near Peter’s shoulder, but Peter couldn’t do anything except shake and cry. "I—I can’t... I can’t—" He choked on his own breath, unable to do anything but cry, his chest heaving so violently he could barely even cough. The sound was borderline feral. "Can’t breathe."He must’ve said something else, because Tony shook his head, eyebrows practically at his hairline. “No, no, kid, you’re not going to die. Jesus, this—you’re fine. You’re safe. I’m right here, okay?”“I’m going—” Peter half-coughed again, his throat raw. If anything, the sheer embarrassment of the whole situation would kill him. This was supposed to be a professional relationship, and here he was, sobbing in Tony Stark’s house because two Avengers had the audacity to speak in front of him. God, what a nightmare. “Please—I didn’t, I can’t—”“Can I put my hands on you, Pete?”Peter blinked, rattled, too confused to process the words. He wanted to wipe the tears from his face, but his hands were shaking so violently he couldn’t manage it. So he just nodded, coughing, choking, the cycle relentless. Again, again, again. He’d set himself on fire if it meant escaping this cycle, if it meant breathing again. Tony’s hands were gentle when they found his shoulders, thumbs rubbing soft circles over the fabric of Peter’s hoodie. Peter couldn’t meet his eyes, but he could feel the uncertainty in Tony’s movements. He hated himself for putting Tony in such an uncomfortable and intimate position in his own stupid house with his own stupid quasi-intern. "Hey, hey, look at me," Tony said, softer now. "I think...I’m pretty sure this is, like, an anxiety attack. You’re—it’s gonna be okay. Just have to ride it out."“I’m so sorry,” Peter forced out, his voice breaking. “I didn’t—this is so dumb.”“Just focus on breathing,” Tony interrupted, tone firm but not unkind. “Don’t apologize. I wish I—you know, I literally pay a doctor to give me tips to deal with these.”Peter’s face burned. If he could just stop crying, if he could just control himself for a minute, he could focus, could get his shit together. He distantly registered Tony’s hand on his forearm, the cool touch so comforting on his overheated skin, even though his vision still swam and his chest still heaved.“Nothing to be ashamed of,” Tony mumbled. “After this, remind me to tell you about when I accidentally flew to a random town in Tennessee and had a full-blown anxiety attack in front of, like, a third-grader."That wasn’t the last time Peter had an anxiety attack, but it was the last time he’d felt embarrassed and alone for having them. The last time he felt like some loser half-wit who just couldn’t handle the heat of reality or consciousness or whatever. The last time he thought they were some divine punishment or cruel reminder that he was ill-equipped for existence instead of what Tony would eventually describe as a very natural reaction to distressing stimuli, kid. It’s just science. "You fucking knew better," Beck’s voice cut through the memory. "That’s why it hurts so much, Peter—you knew this would happen. You knew this would have consequences."But the shame was back now, curling hot in his chest. In Peter’s defense, he wasn’t thinking clearly. He could feel the onset—his brain firing blanks, his body shrinking into the corner. The canister was blinking red again, and Tony wasn’t here, wasn’t anywhere.“I’m sorry.”Where was he? Did he forget about him?
Did he forget?
“I don’t give even half of a shit. You have to reap.”He wasn’t fully freaking out, not yet, but he could feel his hands shaking, getting harder to ignore, and his mind was flipping over itself, folding inside out. He squeezed his eyes shut. Could feel, could feel, could feel— And then, it was still. “Still,” Peter realized, was as much an essence as it was an adjective. It was a state of being. And before he even blinked his eyes open, before he could see the change, he felt it—a solidified moment, preserved like resin, crystallized from chaos into complete silence. Everything was still. He glanced up. Glanced around. The wind whistled in his ear, and his skin lit up with a thousand goosebumps.Somehow, he knew where he was: Chrystie Street in the Lower East Side. Two-way bike lanes. Signs for the B and D trains. Brick buildings with wiry fire escapes weaving in and out of old balconies. Graffiti next to an abandoned French restaurant with faded red awnings. He knew this place.But nobody was there. The world around him felt so real, but there was an undeserved silence hanging in the air, like he was wearing earplugs. Manhattan—it was supposed to be busy, right? The city that never sleeps, except for when it does.Peter took a tentative step, still shaking all over, and pushed his hair out of his face. God, he was so fucking tired, but he took another step, and another, and another. Papers fluttered in the air, spiraling south, whisking past his head and tumbling into the late afternoon half-sun.It was so familiar—the dust dancing in the wind, the eerie quiet that clung to the city like a second skin. It reminded him of those old disasters he used to watch on the news as a kid, the kind where some intergalactic freak or trigger-happy scientist would level buildings like they were made of paper. When the Avengers would go fully ape-shit.Silent. Still.“Are you serious?” a voice gasped behind him. “Where were you?”Peter whipped around so fast he nearly lost his footing.There stood Ned. A thin cut stretched across his cheek, his jaw slack, his eyes wide. He was wearing an older tee-shirt from Comic Con. Peter was there when he’d bought it. “Ned,” Peter breathed, forcing himself to meet Ned’s eyes. He’d known Ned for years, seen him through the emotional rollercoaster called Middle School and the masochistic hellscape called High School. He’d never looked like this. “What happened? I d-don’t… where is everyone?”“Everyone’s gone, dude,” Ned said, the warmth that used to sit under his words long gone. “I can’t believe you’re even asking that.”Peter blinked. “I d-don’t—what happened, though? Where d-did they g-go?”“You have so much nerve,” Ned spat, stepping closer. His words bounced off the cityscape just as they would in an empty auditorium, ringing in Peter’s ears. “I can’t believe—you let everyone die, Peter, and you’re asking what happened?” “Die?” A stupid sound squeaked out of him, all small and pathetic and so much less than what the moment deserved. The word rattled around in his head like a marble in a tin can.“Don’t look so surprised,” Ned snapped. “Reap, meet sow. Come on, man.”None of this was real. It was too vague, too indefinite—just some nebulous shape of his worst fear. Of everything crumbling because he hadn’t been strong enough, fast enough, good enough. Because he hadn’t used what he had when it mattered. Somewhere in the back of his head, he knew this was fake, knew it was the same machination that had spat out that hollow version of MJ in the white room.But it felt real, and he was so, so scared.“What? I was—was—”He didn’t even know what he was trying to say. I was trying. I was tired. I didn’t know. I’m so sorry, Ned.
Please forgive me.
“You weren’t here,” Ned repeated, his voice sharper. He stepped forward again, eyes blazing, and jabbed a finger into Peter’s chest, hard enough that Peter stumbled back. “We called you. We texted you. Over and over, Peter. But you were too busy—what?” “I d-don’t even know where I am now,” Peter forced out, his face flushed. He wiped at his face, feeling a cold sweat forming on his skin. “Here’s what I think. I think you were swinging around, playing hero in another city, pretending you could fix everything by yourself.” “Please, just… hold on. I need to know—”“No!” Ned’s finger flattened into an open palm, shoving Peter back again. “We needed you here. MJ needed you. I needed you. You were supposed to protect us.”“Stop, please,” Peter gasped, stumbling back again. Ned kept hitting him, hitting him, hitting him, and he wasn’t thinking straight. “Please, I d-don’t—”“You knew something was wrong,” Ned snarled. “MJ said you’d been acting weird. Said you weren’t sleeping, that you kept saying you had a bad feeling, but you didn’t do anything! You ignored it! You knew something was coming, and you still left us alone!” “Ned—please, I d-didn’t—”“You failed us all!” Ned shouted, and his open palm became a closed fist. “You left all of us to die and you weren’t even here! You knew something was coming, and you left us to deal with it alone!” Peter hit the ground, and the stillness shattered.He stared up at the sky. A few seconds ago, it’d been late afternoon—he remembered the warm orange glow backlighting Ned, the crisp bite in the air, the way lazy sunlight caught the edges of papers whisking past him. Now, it was properly nighttime, the sky stretched out above him in a blanket of deep, suffocating black. No trace of that golden haze lingered—just an endless, empty void, the warmth leeched right out of it.
Time isn’t supposed to just... jump like that.
But life was back. He could hear it—footsteps pounding sidewalks, a distant siren howling, neon signs buzzing. His palms dug into the cracked pavement as he shifted, glanced around at chipped and peeling cement walls, jagged graffiti, shattered windows with glass clinging to the frames. A street light flickered intermittently, spitting weak pools of yellow light that barely reached the alley’s edges.
No. No. No.
He knew where he was.Peter glanced down, scrambling backward when his hands hit broken glass and cigarette butts. The glass bit at his palms, but it didn’t really hurt, not when everything suddenly hurt so much more than whatever broken glass could do. He tried to inhale, to ground himself, but everything smelled like exhaust and urban decay, like oil and dirt and iron. Then, he heard it—the rustling of fabric, the soft click of shoes on broken pavement.Aunt May stood a few feet away, shadowed by the flickering street lights behind her. Even from here, Peter could see the grief carved into her face—her pale skin, the way her mouth trembled at the corners, fists clenched so tightly that her knuckles glowed white.And she was staring at him.“Peter,” she whispered. “I’ve—they just took him away. They took him in the ambulance, Peter.”He already knew. Peter stared at the ground, at broken glass in cracks in the pavement. Little flecks of light flickered across them, tiny beams catching on the glass, dancing faintly on the dirt. Easier than meeting her eyes.“You were out there,” May’s voice wavered, thin and splintering. “While he... while Ben...”Peter decided it was the polite, respectful thing to meet her eyes, even if she was just a hologram, and he immediately regretted it. He’d expected grief, but there also sat confusion, anger, disbelief.“You let him die, Peter.”It wasn’t an exaggeration to say that Peter replayed this day every single fucking day. Every day, like muscle memory, he replayed the perfectly avoidable series of events that led here: Stomping out of the apartment after an argument, Uncle Ben calling after him, footsteps trailing him down the block, ducking into some grimy alley, trying to cool off, to just breathe. A man. A gun.Screaming—his, Uncle Ben’s, the man’s, some awful chorus of panic. Sharp crack of the gunshot, louder than Peter expected, louder than it sounded in movies. Sobbing. Blood. Peter’s vision blurred just thinking about it. There’d been so much red, clinging to Uncle Ben’s shirt, to Peter’s hands, to the pavement. It smeared across Peter’s face when he wiped his eyes, ruined his hoodie sleeves, made Peter gag. Could still feel it drying on his skin. If he focused, he heard the desperate hitch in Uncle Ben’s breath, the way he tried to say something Peter couldn’t make out over the sirens, over his own panicked sobbing.He wanted to explain. He wanted to scream that it wasn’t his fault, that he hadn’t known, that he was just a kid, that everything had happened so fast, that he wasn’t thinking clearly. But that wasn’t an excuse, was it? He was Spider-Man. Wasn’t “thinking clearly,” like, a required qualification for his job?Instead, all he could manage was, “I—I tried, Aunt May. I tried…”Aunt May scoffed. “No. Don’t even—you didn’t try. You—you froze. You were right there. Why didn’t you do something?”He had tried. God, he’d tried. He was so tired.Sometimes, when he closed his eyes, when it was a Type 2 all-nighter and he couldn’t stop crying, crying, crying, he could see Uncle Ben’s eyes, the blood staining the ground. The way Uncle Ben had reached for him, fingers twitching, gasping for air. But Peter just held him. Cupped his face, whispered lies about how it was going to be okay, you can hear the ambulance, right? Hadn’t pressed his hands to the wound like he should’ve.
Why didn’t you save him?
After replaying it over and over and over again, he knew he didn’t know. He didn’t know why he didn’t do something.“I... I d-don’t know,” Peter finally forced out, his voice barely a whisper. “I—I d-didn’t know what to d-do. I couldn’t... I couldn’t move.”“You couldn’t move?” she hissed. “He was in your arms. What are you talking about?”“I... I d-didn’t mean to freeze,” Peter said, his voice cracking. “I d-didn’t...know—I d-didn’t... I was so scared. I d-didn’t—want to fail him.”When it had actually happened, a few years ago, when the police had escorted Peter home and told Aunt May what happened, she hadn’t reacted like this. She’d cried, obviously, but her priority had been him. She’d run the shower, sat outside the curtain because he’d needed to wash the blood off of him, but he’d needed someone there in case he passed out or melted down the drain. Afterward, she’d pressed his forehead to her shoulder, whispering things about how it wasn’t his fault, how he’d always have a home with her.If she blamed him even a little bit for Uncle Ben’s death, Peter never definitively knew. But still, he couldn’t imagine a world where she didn’t hold some resentment, some quiet, festering ache that whispered, this is your fault. The scene playing now felt more true to reality. Felt more deserved than the kindness she’d given him that night.“Well,” Aunt May said. “You did. You stood there and did nothing. He trusted you. He believed in you. And in that moment, when it counted most, you couldn’t even move.”She was right. On an objective, observable level, he had failed. “I was trying,” Peter whispered. He couldn’t do anything except repeat himself— I tried, I couldn’t move, I was scared, and I’m so sorry. “I couldn’t—”“I should’ve known,” Aunt May interrupted, her voice tight and brittle. “You know, your parents practically ran out the door when they dropped you off all those years ago. Like they couldn’t get away fast enough. Like they were relieved to leave you behind.” She let out a sharp, bitter breath. “I should’ve known they’d raised a coward. If they were so eager to be rid of you, what does that say about you?”“I couldn’t move,” Peter whispered, voice breaking on the edges of a sob. “May, I’m so—I was too scared, and I’m so, so sorry. Please—”“Don’t,” Aunt May snapped. “Don’t tell me you were scared. You weren’t the one bleeding out, trying to think of your last words. You—” Her voice broke, and she swallowed hard before spitting out the last words. “You were just sitting there.” Nope, nope, nope. If he kept engaging with Fake May, if he kept listening to her words, he was going to lose it. Distantly, he knew this whole dream-hologram sequence needed to climax, needed to end with Beck showing himself, with a fight. He begged his adrenaline to kick in before then. Then, crack.The ground beneath him ripped apart, and Peter was falling, faster, faster, plummeting into darkness. The air turned to gelatin—frigid, thick, and wet, suffocating like damp smoke. His chest constricted as he screamed, a sound that was sharp, desperate, panic-stricken that it didn’t even sound like his. He knew his scream, and this wasn’t it.Suddenly, a sharp thud. His body slammed against the ground, and he was breathing dirt, dirt everywhere, gritty and foul, and... grass? His hands dug into the earth, palms against the cold ground. This park—it was this park near Midtown, he somehow realized. Something about the grass was so familiar.
Where’s May? Where’s May? Where’s May?
He gasped, his chest heaving and mind in freefall. He scrambled to his feet, disoriented, vision blurry, adjusting to mid-morning sunlight. The city around him was fully intact, no borderline apocalyptic destruction or buried trauma or abandonment, just people bustling past him like normal, talking on phones, running to the subway. The skyline stood tall, undisturbed, unscarred.“Peter!” His heart stopped. MJ stood beside him, hands covered in blood. His blood? No, not his. But it didn’t matter because the red just kept spilling, staining her hoodie—her favorite one. She’d told him once it was for “special occasions,” and now it was soaked in blood, and he couldn’t—that was hers? That was her blood? Why was nobody else reacting?“Oh, God,” MJ whispered. “Peter, please, help me.”“Whoa, whoa.” His legs trembled beneath him, but he forced himself to his feet. His breath was shallow, too fast as he spoke. "It’s—what happened? Hold—I’m here, hold on.”He blinked hard, desperate to clear the swirling darkness in his vision, to make sense of this—because surely, this couldn’t all be hers, could it? "What happened?” he asked again, his voice stupid and strained. His hands were shaking, just like they had when he fumbled with a stupid band-aid earlier. “I—we can sit d-down, MJ, it’s—”“Someone had a gun,” she whispered, voice shaking hard. “I don’t know what happened, I just—I t-tried calling your name, and—Peter, I’m going to die.”"No, no...d-don’t—please.” Was this how Tony felt during his panic attack? Was he seriously so selfish as to put Tony in that position over something as stupid as anxiety? “We'll g-get you help, okay? We’re g-going to fix this.”But his palms were slick, and his body was starting to betray him. He hated that his voice was shaking—hated that he couldn’t keep it together right now. Where is the adrenaline? Where is Spider-Man? “I’m so scared,” MJ whimpered, shaking her head. “I’m so—I don’t know what to do, and—help me, please, Peter, I can’t—” "I’m here," Peter forced out, trying to take her hand again, but the blood was everywhere, all over him, all over her, and it was too much, too much. He couldn’t think. "I’m not g-going anywhere. EMS—I’ll fix this. I swear, I’ll—"But just like that, she was gone. The blood, the park, the air itself—everything vanished in a rush, a gust of wind, melted like candle wax. A void swallowed everything, and he stood in the middle of it, his heart hammering. The world itself was dissolving. This wasn’t real. This wasn’t real.The sensation of falling came next—shuddering through him, his body plummeting with no warning. A sharp thud. The impact rattled his teeth, knocked the wind out of him, sending a wave of cold through his limbs. His senses were short-circuiting, spinning, untangling in every direction at once.“This is exactly what I was talking about,” a low voice said, and Christ, Peter was dizzy. “Goddamn idiot. You’d be better as a bar stool or accent chair than an Avenger.”“Tony?” Peter had no idea how his body knew that before his mind did. His eyelids fluttered, trying to focus, but his vision was too blurry.“Yeah, obviously. Jesus, kid, how hard did you bang your cranium?”“What? Am I—d-do I have a—” “Okay, relax. You can drop the, oh, I’m just poor baby, I’m so confused act.” Tony was suddenly in front of Peter. Red-rimmed eyes, flushed cheeks, hair sticking up in every direction. “You’re really starting to piss me off, you know that?" It didn’t take long to realize where he was—he was in a Stark Industries manufacturing facility, every surface bathed in low light, the walls screaming Tony’s brand. Stark Industries logos plastered on the machinery, the tables, the linoleum tiles, everything gleaming under dim lights. It was all polished floors and beeping machines, industrial cleaner and whiskey, flickering red lights. His oxygen canister. Peter blinked. “What?”“You know—every time you’re out there, Peter, it’s just a clusterfuck of screwups and missteps. I'm getting so sick and tired of watching you crash and burn. And what, now you don't even know what I'm talking about? You're gonna sit there and play dumb?"“I don’t know—” Peter inhaled sharply, and whoops, those were tears. A predictable byproduct of everything going on. “I’ve been out there, fighting, helping people. I—I’m d-doing my b-best.”"Right. Well, your best isn't even close to good enough, kid." Tony held a highball glass, swirling with amber liquid. The smell ripped through Peter’s sinuses. "If this is your best…yeesh! How many times have you let the team down? How many times have you put everyone at risk because you couldn’t get your head straight?"“This isn’t real.” Peter’s hands trembled as he reached up to wipe his face. His hand wasn’t cooperating. “Tony wouldn’t say this.”Tony barked out a laugh, slamming the glass hard on the table. "But I would, and I am. I told you to look decorative for a reason. I didn’t want to deal with your inevitable million-dollar mess."“That was a—h-he just d-didn’t want me in the…" Ironing out the stutter after all of this would be so annoying. He shook his head. "I know h-he d-didn’t want too many—I’m trying—”“I cannot believe I enlisted some hormonal, C-grade kid in a suit barely able to handle his own feelings, let alone save anyone. You think wearing some expensive, fancy-pants Stark tech makes you an Avenger? Does risking your life over and over make you special?”“Please—”“No. It makes you stupid. And it makes the rest of us pay the price for your immaturity."For the past four scenes, Peter had regurgitated the same points: I’m so sorry, I tried, I couldn’t do anything, I didn’t know, I’m scared. He didn’t know how to think of something else. “Tony, please, what—”“That’s Mister-goddamn-Stark to you, kid.” “I… I’ve been trying so hard,” Peter whispered. “I just—I just wanted to prove I can d-do this."“I never wanted you to prove anything to me.”“Mr. Stark—”“Every time you step out there, you risk everything—and for what? To feel like you matter? You put us all in danger so that you can feel like you’re not invisible.”Peter gaped. “Like I matter?” "You’re a symbol," Tony snapped. Peter physically recoiled. "You represent something. That’s your use case, okay? You aren’t substantive. You aren’t important. You’re good for city morale, and that’s the extent of your utility."This wasn’t Tony, and Peter knew that. But he was on the ground, and Tony was towering over him, and the floor was so cold, and he was crying, and everything felt so real. For just a moment, he thought about Tony’s hands during that one anxiety attack forever ago. This version of Tony could never and would never do that, would never hold Peter as he freaked about nothing. Peter wanted it anyway. An embarrassing thought, but it was true. He just wanted someone to hold him. "You’re just a kid with a mask," Tony spat. It was all broken glass and whiskey and burning, burning, burning. All exhausted fumes, blurry vision, wanting to press his forehead to someone’s shoulder. “You’re important for optics. Nothing more.”“Please,” Peter whispered, his voice breaking and blubbery. “I d-didn’t—don’t say that.”“Some focus groups found that the Avengers came off better with some scrappy kid from Queens by their side. That’s it. You’re marketing, not a hero. You’re a face for a fucking billboard."“A b-billboard," Peter repeated stupidly.“A fucking liability,” he spat. "You’re more trouble than you’re worth, kid. Every single mission, every fight, you’ve proven time and again that I can’t trust you to do what needs to be done."The fake Tony’s face twisted and flickered, the illusion wearing thin.“You aren’t an equal,” Fake Tony snapped. “You’re a puppet. A burden. A tactic. A disappointment. A means to a glorious, glorious end, kid. And when the strings are cut, you’ll just fall.”“You—” Peter gasped, his voice breaking on the word. “Christ, B-Beck, what—this is just projection porn. This isn’t—it’s not real.”“You want to believe that, don’t you?” Tony leaned in. “But it’s true, Peter. You’re nothing.”With a snap, the world around him shifted, and Peter was back in the white, sterile hellhole.Talk about disorienting. One moment, he was three insults away from throwing up, and the next, he was on the floor, staring at the ceiling, tear tracks down his face and pulse rattling. With a few jerky movements, he pushed himself to his feet, falling that instinctual fighting stance, scanning the room like a fucking wild animal. The same featureless, cold walls. The same suffocating silence. The same white room.And then everything flooded red. Red, red, red. Silent, flickering alarms, the strobe lights making his eyes burn as he staggered, nearly falling. Peter’s mind reeled, momentarily overwhelmed by the sick, cold feeling of seeing Ned, the city decimated, cast in post-apocalyptic orange and abandoned. Jesus. Only he could get flashbacks to memories that didn’t exist.A crash echoed from down the hallway“You goddamn bastard!” “Whoa, whoa, watch out! Two o’clock!”Another crash. The unmistakable sound of something heavy hitting the floor. Silence. Distantly, he knew he could still be in some twisted dreamscape, hallucinating, or whatever Beck was making him do. But in case this was real, he had to do something.And then he saw it. The door.It was ajar, opening to a corridor.He stared at it for half a second, eyes wide. Peter’s body reacted before his brain could catch up. Without a second thought, he bolted for the door. Outside the white hellhole, the hallway stretched endlessly in both directions. He didn’t stop to think—he took off to the left, the same direction MJ’s illusion had come from, the fake footsteps echoing in his mind. Maybe the sickos programming knew the exit was that way. His feet barely touched the ground as he sprinted, his legs pumping hard, each step feeling like it could send him careening out of control. The red lights still flashed, bathing the entire hallway in a sickening, unnatural glow. Red, red, red. He trusted his gut, choosing his paths on instinct, praying they were the right paths, the right halls, the right direction. He had no clue where he was going, only knew he needed to move. He wasn’t going to be trapped here, not again. He needed to get out of here before he had an anxiety attack, because if he started full-fledged panicking in here, because he’d get found, and he’d never—“Peter, wait!” The words grabbed him. “Hold on, kid, wait—”Peter flinched so hard that his legs stuttered. Against every instinct, he realized he knew that voice, and he spun on his heel. There, standing in front of him, was Steve Rogers, Captain America, decked out in his red, white, and blue, his shield in hand. He pretty much never fought alongside Steve, so even though he knew the guy from quasi-friendly interactions at Tony’s house, it was weird seeing him in his gear, the stuff he wore in Nickelodeon commercials and insurance advertisements.“You’re going the wrong way, son,” Steve said. His eyes flicked across Peter’s face. “Follow me. Let me get you out of here.”Peter couldn’t form a coherent thought. All he managed was a weak, “What?”For a split second, something in him screamed to turn toward Steve, to run to the face of wholesome Americana: campy gym videos, Got Milk? commercials, posters in every pediatric dentist’s office. Even if Tony had his issues with him, even if he called him things like “a goody-goody flag-waving sermon in spandex” and “the poster child for self-righteous baloney,” Peter trusted him. And for just a fleeting moment, he wanted to believe that if he just followed Steve, if he let him lead him out of this, everything would snap back into place. Everything would be okay again.“I’m going to protect you,” Steve said, his voice low. He put his hands out slowly, carefully, like he didn’t want to spook Peter. “It’s okay.”“Can…” Peter sniffed so sharply that it gave him a half-headache. “Captain.”“Come on, kid.” Steve pointed back down the hall. Peter stumbled back a half-step, eyes darting all over him. “We need to go. Tony—he’s right down there, okay? Just follow me.”Peter wasn’t sure what Captain America knew about him, but Tony had to’ve said something at some point, and he needed to know this wasn’t a hallucination or hologram or otherwise sick trick. So, without thinking, he blurted, “Please, tell me something only—only you or Tony knows about me.”Steve stared at him, brows furrowing. “What?”“Please.” Peter’s breath was starting to hitch, and his chest felt tight. “Please, anything.”“Um…” Steve blinked, momentarily confused, then gave a half-chuckle. “You’re Spider-Man?”Peter wasn’t sure if he’d ever talked to Steve one-on-one except for that bizarro stint in Germany. The guy probably didn’t know much about him. Hell, he probably barely noticed him outside of a few polite exchanges—passing Peter the potatoes at dinner, asking Peter which movie he wanted, trying (and failing) to help Peter with chemistry homework.But he would know something from those exchanges. He could cite to any number of them, and Peter would run out of this labyrinthian hellscape with him. At the very least, the real Steve Rogers would’ve tried harder to find something, would’ve thrown everything at the wall if it meant proving to Peter that he was who he said he was. This one didn’t.Peter spun around and kept running.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
“God—Tony, Jesus, what—”Sam’s voice barely registered. All of Tony’s senses focused on the guy crumpled against the wall, dazed and groaning. “Oh man,” Tony muttered, breath ragged. He grabbed the guy’s collar, hauling him upright. “Bet that’s not gonna buff out. Y’know, you could’ve just told me where he was and saved yourself a ten-thousand-dollar nose job.” Boom, another gauntlet to the face. Blood splattered across the floor, across the wall, up and down the titanium suit. Good.“This—we’re under a time crunch, okay?” Sam mumbled, gripping his elbow. He glanced at the loser on the floor, winced, and looked away. “Like, this is a textbook search-and-rescue. In and out. Stick to the plan, and—”“Sorry, Sam, but this fucking weasel won’t—”“We need bodies on the south side,” Sam interrupted, tugging harder. Tony kicked the man’s hip, and he half-jolted, half-gasped against the concrete, blood starting to pool like expired syrup. “Christ, man, that’s enough!”“Enough? Oh, sure. Let me just check the ol' ‘tortured kid’ meter—oh wait—he’s still missing!” He barked out a sharp laugh. Kicked the bloody-faced varlet again. It was more satisfying than it had any right to be. “So yeah, I think I’ve got room for more!”Sam’s handcrafted rescue plan, titled Operation Water Spout ala “Itsy Bitsy Spider,” had been solid—Tony knew that. Nat and Clint took the perimeter while Steve, Sam, and Tony handled the interior, working the northeast, northwest, and south sides, respectively. Wanda was around somewhere, probably creeping people out with her witchy magic, and Bucky was nearby, probably being just as freaky. And they’d gone over it about three times before landing here. Tony knew what to do, how to do it, when to do it. He knew which comms channel to use, knew which entrance to use, knew to avoid going scorched-earth because this was the first floor of a massive skyscraper, and real, innocent people lived in the apartments above it.It was a good plan. A smart plan. One that Sam cooked up without any blueprints or inside knowledge, just understanding of common city architecture and effective escapes. But all of that careful planning evaporated the second Tony saw Gutes Guterman.Guterman, a post-recession hire from Stark Industries’ hardware department, had left after some mess Tony couldn’t quite remember. Something about too many missed days, or embezzling funds. Maybe both. Whatever it was didn’t matter now. Seeing his stupid, piggish face broke something in him, and fucking— this ogre-looking, fat-lipped, borderline inhuman degenerate kept a kid locked up for sixty goddamn hours and probably knew exactly where that kid was right now. Excuse Tony for being a little peeved about it. If he could speed this whole operation up by asking some questions and sending some hardware through the bastard’s front teeth, so be it.Now, Guterman’s face glistened with spit and blood, glowing red beneath the silent alarm in this bizarre half-warehouse, half-theater set. He hadn’t given up Peter’s coordinates. What a fucking dipshit.“Get it out of your system?” Sam deadpanned, grabbing Tony’s shoulder again. Tony stared at Guterman, locked eyes with that stupid, pathetic face. “Think for a second. What’s Peter gonna think if you show up to rescue him with a blood-splattered suit? Is that gonna be soothing to him?”That sobered Tony up fast. As far as he knew, he'd only properly scared the kid once. It was a couple of years ago, right after he found Peter in some grimy alleyway and deposited him on the compound’s couch. The kid had been spiraling, locked in a shaky, wide-eyed stillness just shy of catatonic. Karen quietly informed Tony that Peter watched some lunatic gun down a woman in that alleyway a few moments before. That would do it. Then, Steve and Sam showed up, bickering about one of SHIELD’s dumb corporate emails—something about a holiday party. Tony remembered it because of how absurd it was. As if the Avengers had literally any interest in playing white elephant or truth-or-drink at a “holiday party.” But Sam wanted to go, wanted to enter the stupid ugly sweater contest, and Steve, God’s favorite killjoy, refused.They walked in, and Peter, who’d been practically braindead, just broke—full-body bawling, all trembling and tears and gasping for air. Tony hadn’t recognized the reaction at first, but he knew the fear. The same raw, post-New York terror that had haunted him back in the early 2010s. He put two and two together.Anxiety attack. And Tony, freaked out by Peter freaking out, had spun around, shot Steve and Sam the nastiest glare he could muster, and barked, “Would you dense motherfuckers take a hint and pound sand?” or something like that. Peter had flinched so hard he smacked against the drywall, eyes wide, pupils blown, momentarily so startled by Tony’s outburst that he stopped crying and just tried to melt into the wall.And no. He would never give that kid any fucking reason to fear him again. “Actually, I’m done,” Tony said abruptly, giving Guterman’s leg one more kick for good measure. He glanced at Sam. “South side, right?”“Scan for him,” Sam said, breaking toward the north. “Don’t use your dorky AR, remember.”Spinning on his heel, Tony banked in the opposite direction, down the tunnelish hallway. Even through the suit, he could tell it was suffocating and cold, boots scuffing against the concrete as he moved faster, then faster still. Sam had estimated this labyrinthine warehouse, a weird mix of winding corridors and wide-open theater-kid spaces, was about fifteen thousand square feet. That was roughly fourteen thousand square feet too goddamn big.It was all very haunted house, very McDonald’s play place, an endless maze that felt like it stretched into both nothing and everything. It reminded him of the elaborate, absurdly expensive Halloween parties his mom used to throw for the kids in his tutoring group, when she’d line mirrors against the walls, turning every room into something longer, tighter, more suffocating and more expansive than it really was.Back then, it was fun. Now, Tony just wanted to scream, to bang his head against the wall. To launch a beam of pure nuclear energy at Beck and paint the walls with his head.“Not finding anything in the northeast,” Steve muttered over channel five. “Just keep running into Wanda. Any chance we can make her less creepy?”“No, that’s part of her power,” Sam mumbled. “We’ve gotta balance out your chummy Americana with something super unsettling.”“Actually, wait.” Some muffled grunting from Steve’s end. “Okay, never mind. I just found a closet filled with…what are these, drones? All are Stark-branded.”So it was the binary retrograde avante-garde thing, or whatever it was called. “Permission to eliminate,” Tony said quickly. “All of them.”“You sure? There’s gotta be—oh, man, about three dozen of these little suckers. Can’t we harvest their lithium or something?”“Nope. Incinerate them.”“On it, boss.”He rounded another corner, banked right, rounded another corner, banked left. Kept spinning and spinning until he wasn’t sure where he was, whether on the south side, northwest side, northeast side, or dead center. All he knew was that he hated everyone who bought apartments above this stupid warehouse and that he’d buy them all out of their predatory leases if it meant he could plow through these walls and find Peter faster.And then he heard it. Shaky, thin breathing. A ragged little gasp. “Please,” Peter’s voice whispered. “Stay exactly where you are.”“But... but kid,” a voice that sounded suspiciously like Tony’s own said. “What do — what do you want?”Rounding the corner, he saw him. Peter pressed against the far wall, pale and sweaty under the flickering red light. The kid looked awful. Bags under his eyes like he’d just come off a three-day bender, eyes red-rimmed and glassy. His chest heaved, fingers twitching uselessly against the wall like he couldn’t make them stop. “Peter,” Tony breathed. Clunked toward him, practically stumbled over his own two feet. Bada-bing, bada-bam, asset acquired. “Hold on, kiddo. Let me buzz the others.”But Peter just stared, shaking his head, eyes flicking to someone else. Tony followed his gaze. There was another goddamn Tony in here, standing a couple of feet away from Peter. Tony’s stomach turned. He knew this tech. Binary augmented… retrograding… something. Weird, freakish stuff. And this other Tony looked exactly like him, right down to the dark circles, the bloodshot eyes, the helmet-less Iron Man suit. It made him want to puke. Six hundred and eleven million dollars wasted on this creepy uncanny valley nightmare.“Stay back.” Peter’s voice was shredded, barely a whisper. “I—I can’t—I d-don’t—”“Hey, hey, it’s okay,” Fake Tony said, stepping forward with a false calm. He glanced at Tony like he was the threat. “It’s me, kid. I’m right here.”Tony made a half-squeaky, strangling sound. “Pete, no, stop—don’t listen to him. That’s Beck. That’s not me.” If his goal was to seem as suspicious as possible, he was killing it. “It’s a trick, okay? He’s messing with your head.”“I—I d-don’t know,” Peter mumbled. His fingers dug into his arms, knuckles pale. “Just…just b-back up, okay? One second, please.”“Totally,” Real Tony said quickly, voice shaking with the force of it. “Of course. Take a second.”“You’re gonna be alright, kid,” Fake Tony added, smooth as ever. If it wouldn’t scare this kid from the inside out, Tony would blast this corny motherfucker into the neighboring dimension. “Pete, look at me—you know I wouldn’t leave you. I’ve been looking for you for so long. This imposter—” “Imposter?” Tony repeated, losing all pretense of calm. “You smelt it, you dealt it, asshole. Way to point fingers first thing.”“Wow, the programming on that thing is flawless,” Fake Tony muttered. “Two seconds in, and he’s already slinging middle-school insults. So on-brand.” “Programming?” Tony repeated again. He knew how dumb he sounded, but he was truly incredulous. “I can’t believe the shit-tech I funded is trying to pass me off as artificial intelligence.”“It’s just that you’re just so predictable, it’s practically algorithmic,” Fake Tony shot back. “What’s next? Gonna prance around in some oil-stained jeans from the nineties? Do a Brian Johnson impression?”“Oh, I’ll give you an impression,” Tony spat, stepping forward. “Handsome bastard.”Fake Tony rolled his eyes. “Again on the programming. Only me distilled down to my most basic parts would hit on my carbon copy. What, you gonna try to fuck me, too?” Tony almost laughed at that one. He had to admit—Beck had some skills. The fucker could code.“I have questions!” Peter said louder. His eyes flicked between them, tracing over them, like he was looking for inconsistencies, variables. “Just…let me ask my questions, okay? Please. I need to figure—you guys need to answer some stuff.”“Absolutely, kid,” Tony said, glaring at his doppelganger. “Ask away.”“I’ll answer whatever you need,” Fake Tony added. Peter ran a hand through his messy hair, pushing it out of his face. The kid looked rough. Tony wanted to curl up and die out of sheer guilt, but he forced himself to stay standing in his ridiculous Iron Man costume. In a rare moment of self-awareness, he felt like a total dork.“My middle name,” Peter rasped. “What is it?”“Benjamin,” both said in unison.“What’s my favorite food?”“Thai,” Tony said, while Fake Tony mumbled, “Subs from that tiny place—the rinky-dink one at the corner. What’s it? Delmar’s?”Peter blinked, eyes darting back and forth between them. “I guess… b-both of those are right,” he mumbled. He shook his head, breath coming in shallow, desperate gasps. “I—I can’t tell. I can’t tell.”“Pete,” Fake Tony cooed, voice soft, warm. Tony almost laughed again. He’d literally never sounded like that. “Take your time. Just keep asking us stuff.”Peter shook his head, and Tony saw the tears in his eyes. His chest tightened, and he hoped and prayed that Sam and Steve had blown Beck into three bajillion square inches of blood and skin. “What was the first g-gift you ever gave me?” Peter asked quietly. “Not the suit for G-Germany. A real g-gift.”“New web fluid cartridges,” Tony said quickly. “The ones I made with the 3D printer.”“Nope,” Fake Tony countered with a smirk. “It was a new Cuisinart. The spinny—for the kitchen. Remember?”Tony wanted to scream. How the hell did someone know that? How long would someone have to keep tabs on Peter to know something that personal?Peter’s breath caught. He glanced at Tony, the real Tony. “You... you forgot that?”“I didn’t forget,” Tony accidentally snapped. “I just didn’t think it counted when it was for your unbelievably hot aunt.”Peter muttered, “Yeah, okay. That’s fair.”“More questions, kid,” Tony said, his voice betraying his uncertainty. “We need to keep this moving. I don’t—your friend’s in the car, okay? She’s worried, and MJ is—she’s feral, I think, and I’m seriously worried she’ll claw up the seats.”“MJ is here?”“Yeah,” Tony said. “Ned’s—he fell asleep, uh, at the Tower. Got way too excited after meeting Widow, I think.”“Okay, okay.” Peter’s eyes flickered with something Tony vaguely recognized: amusement. That was a point for Real Tony. He was getting somewhere. “What movie d-did you make me watch b-because you said it was ‘m-mandatory Stark culture?’” “Back to the Future,” both answered, because dammit, every ex-Stark employee knew this nonsense was a requirement, and all of the people likely operating this machine were ex-Stark employees. “The Terminator can also count,” Fake Tony added smugly.Peter gave him a quick glance, nodding, then turned back to Tony. His voice dropped, barely audible. “I d-don’t know. Just—please, please tell me a m-memory that only you could have with m-me. Please.”Fake Tony snapped his fingers. “In April. The hoodie. You had to go to class after staying the night, right? And it was cold, but you didn’t have a coat, so you wore that shitty MIT hoodie, the one from the lab with the frayed cuffs, for, like, a week. Crusty as hell.”Tony’s stomach twisted. That was real. And he wanted to crawl under a rock and die. That was a point for Fake Tony.“After that fight with Cap,” Tony said, his voice starting to waver. Beck’s knowledge was honest-to-God freaking him out. “I… I forced you to watch Top Gun in some sleazy hotel room while I cleaned up that gash on your shoulder. Remember? We got mediocre ready-made means from…Kaufland, I think.”Peter narrowed his eyes. “Sleazy hotel?”“Fine,” Tony snapped. “It was a Best Western. Below my usual standards, okay?”“Okay,” Peter said quietly, glancing at Fake Tony. That definitely deducted a point from Real Tony. “Keep g-going.”Fake Tony grinned. “You dressed up as Han Solo for Halloween.”“Even though you’re way more of a Luke Skywalker type. I’m clearly more Han Solo than you, kid.” Tony bit his lip. “And that was something anyone with your Instagram handle would know.”“You once called me at two in the morning because your suit wasn’t working,” Fake Tony said before Peter could absorb that last part. Point for Fake Tony. “I was about three blinks from passing out, but something was wrong with your suit, so I had to walk you through it. The suit’s not supposed to spark.”Tony could feel it—he was losing. This was the kind of shit that made him feel like a kid again, when someone would ask him for his favorite color or some random, meaningless preference, and he’d blank out, not even able to remember the most basic stuff about himself. Oh, my favorite color? I’ve never seen a color before. It was happening now, and this was way more important than shitty icebreakers.And then, without thinking, Tony blurted, “You think MJ is gentle.”Both Fake Tony and Peter froze, turning to stare at him. “What?” Peter asked.“A few weeks ago,” Tony said, his voice louder now. “You stayed the night, and when Pepper—well, I couldn’t find her, but I found her in your room. And you called MJ ‘gentle.’”The amusement crossed Peter’s face again. “She is, sometimes.”“Kid, you are so fucking wrong,” Tony said. “She’s anything but. She and Ned broke into my lab when you were gone, and she bullied me for hours at a time. Called Springsteen ‘the king of geriatric depression.’”“That…” Peter’s eyes got wider. “Yeah, that sounds like her. She’s pretty ruthless.”“Yeah, I deduced that.” Keep chasing the amusement, Tony told himself. Make the kid laugh. “After Dumb and Dumber stormed the tower at one in the morning, she practically called me a sleazeball fascist, drank all of my chocolate milk, and tried to seize the means of Stark Industries production.”“She…she would.” Peter’s lip trembled. Tony resisted a fist pump. Another point for Real Tony. “Okay. Last question.”“Go for it, Peter,” Fake Tony said gently.“Okay...” His breath slowed. “On the d-day you m-met her, what food did Aunt May g-give you?”Real Tony’s chest tightened. He knew the answer. He knew this one. He looked over at Fake Tony, who visibly faltered. Tony held his breath, waiting for the wrong answer.“Um…” Fake Tony hesitated. “Pumpkin…bread.”Peter turned to Tony. The same look crossed his face again, and Tony recognized it for what it actually was: hope. The kid knew it was him. He just needed confirmation.“Tony?” Peter whispered.Real Tony’s fingers twitched. He cleared his throat. “Walnut date loaf. And it was pretty okay, as far as walnut date loaves go.”Peter’s eyes widened just slightly, and his shoulders dropped. He nodded. Tony would goddamn kill it on a Peter Parker version of Jeopardy. But before Tony could take a victory lap, Fake Tony lunged.“Pete!” Real Tony shouted. “Jesus—”Peter barely twisted away in time, and Tony reacted on pure instinct. He fired a line of nuclear energy so fast it nearly startled him. Usually, he wasn’t so trigger-happy, especially not with tenants above him, but there was something so satisfying about seeing Fake Tony slam backward into a wall. The fake Tony’s face flickered, distorted, glitching like a bad video feed, before peeling away in a puff of smoke. The illusion shattered, revealing one of Beck’s drones crushed beneath the wreckage.Peter staggered back, his breath coming too fast. Any relief on his face had evacuated at first sight of danger, and Tony couldn’t figure out how to approach him.“Hey, hey,” Tony said, stepping forward slowly this time. Peter stared at the drone, eyes all big and scared and Bambi-like. The air smelled like scorched circuits. “It’s over, okay? It’s just me. You with me, kid?”“Yeah,” he whispered. He wrapped his arms around his torso. “Yeah, I... I’m g-good.” He was visibly not good. Tony could see that with painful clarity. There were fingernail scratches on Peter’s arms—superficial, but bleeding—and Tony couldn’t tell if they were from Peter or someone else.“Okay,” Tony muttered, taking another slow step forward. “Let’s get you out of here before I have to… have a conversation with our super cool mutual friend, Quentin.”“Quentin?” Peter was moving too slowly, and Tony had to resist the urge to scoop him up and launch him like a javelin out of this funhouse of horrors. “He’s, um, B-Beck.”“That’s his last name, so close enough.” They rounded the corner, and Tony blinked hard, trying to steady his vision. The sight that greeted them was enough to make his stomach drop.A massive warehouse sprawled out before them, filled with too much— too much technology. Half the walls were lined with glowing projectors, all sleek, complicated devices tangled in cables and blinking lights. Drones. Hundreds of them. But beyond that, it was an overwhelming sea of Stark Industries tech: an Iron Man prototype, random holographic interfaces from the early 2000s, a few stand-alone repulsor rays, failed suitcase armors, small hovercrafts, surveillance fleets. A control panel with cameras monitoring a stark white room.A goddamn Spider-Man suit on a plastic hanger. Like a trophy.Peter stepped closer to Tony, grabbed his arm. “What…”“Jeez,” Tony breathed. He had no fucking idea what to do about this. He glanced around, looking for Steve, Sam, literally anybody. “Well, someone’s been stealing, I guess.”“What are—”“I have so much to explain to you, kid,” Tony said, his tone attempting to remain steady. “And not nearly enough time. Let me just—”Something crashed in the far corner, followed by a squeak of alarm. Tony spun around, shoving Peter behind him, just in time to spot two former employees—Victoria what’s-her-face and Doug whatever-his-name-was. Watching them trip over each other in their pressed khakis and expensive loafers would’ve been comical if it wasn’t for the fact they’d been complicit in capturing Peter. For that, Tony would blast them straight into Dante’s Inferno.“Hey!” Tony barked, stepping forward. “Yeah, you two! Put the toys down.”They froze, but only for a second. Doug bolted for the side door, which was close enough to Peter that Tony’s heart fell through his suit, while Victoria made a break for the control panel along the far wall, her hands flying over the green and blue buttons.“Nope,” Tony spat. He fired a repulsor blast straight at Victoria. The shot slammed into the metal panel, sending sparks skittering across the floor. “If you so much as move your pinky, I’ll blast the skin off your bones. Understood?”Tony quickly glanced to his left. Doug was at the door, pulling a stun baton from his belt and swinging it wide. Peter ducked fast, just barely avoiding a crackling arc of electricity that scraped the wall.“Peter!” Tony shouted, mortified, getting the repulsors ready.“Got it!” Peter blurted out, ducking another swing. Tony didn’t trust it, but Peter moved fast, landing a one-two uppercut that left Doug crumpled on the floor. “Nice,” Tony muttered. “Alright, two down. That’s—yeah, that’s enough for now.”Peter didn’t respond. He just pressed closer to Tony, his eyes wide like golf balls. Tony would deal with the whole theft situation later—call a lawyer, seize the building, liquidate all this stolen tech, and donate the proceeds to a good cause. Something like that.“Hold up, big man,” a voice rang out. “You forgot literally the best part.”In all his cinematic, bullshit glory, Beck waltzed into the warehouse. One hand held a control pad, the other a modified drone. With the new beard and see-through fishbowl helmet, he barely resembled the fresh-faced, sparky University of Buffalo grad Tony had hired back in the early 2000s. He just stared at Tony, barely even acknowledging Peter, who looked ready to collapse.“Oh, come on,” Tony muttered. “Haven’t you embarrassed yourself enough?”Beck scoffed. “What? No ‘hello?’ No ‘how are you?’”“I am being so goddamn serious, you hairy asshole, I will blast your eyeballs out of their sockets if you don’t pack your shit and follow me out the door,” Tony spat. He reached behind him, just to confirm Peter was still there.“But dad, I’ve still got a few tricks left,” Beck whined, flicking a switch on the pad. “That, or you can leave the suit with me. Tricks or suit. Your call.”“I’ll be dead before you get your grubby little paws on the suit,” Tony shot back. “Got that?”“That’s fine,” Beck said breezily, his eyes finally drifting to Peter. Tony pushed Peter further behind him. “I can accomplish my goals with just my tech. Oh, and the tech I borrowed from you.”“I’m so proud of you.”Beck’s grin faltered. “Well, I’m not. Your bozo partners wiped out my other storage closet. Did you know that? A real shame. I invested so much time and money into those drones.”“Higher or lower than six-hundred-eleven million?” Tony asked dryly.“Lower, for sure. Theft is free, you bag of wasted skin.”And suddenly, the world around Tony began to twist—like he was staring into a funhouse mirror. The edges warped and stretched, as if everything was made of paper, the edges of his vision all cloudy and dreamlike. He reached out, but Peter was gone.“Peter?” Tony called, his voice sounding like it was coming from miles away. He wanted to start firing, wanted to unload a round on Beck’s slimy ass, but he’d never forgive himself if he hit the kid. “Kid? Where’d you go?”No response. Tony’s heart sped up, a knot twisting in his stomach. He spun in place, expecting to see Peter standing just behind him, but the space was empty. Actually, the whole room was empty, now just a nondescript warehouse with low lighting and cable shelves, the air damp and heavy. None of his technology in sight.“Peter!” Tony shouted again, his voice cracking a little. It echoed, bounced across the hundreds and hundreds of feet of expansive nothingness. “Look at that,” someone said behind him. “The big, bad Tony Stark, the great inventor. The genius who can save the world but couldn’t save one lousy spider-teen.”Tony’s blood ran cold. He froze in place, breath caught in his throat.
Nope, nope, nope.
Slowly, painfully, Tony turned. And there he was.
Howard “Bitchass” Stark.
It didn’t feel like the first time in... Christ, twenty years that he’d seen Howard? Thirty years? He'd seen him a couple years ago, back when he was prepping for Round Two of the Epic Thanos Battle, and in the occasional nightmare that left him drenched in sweat, stumbling to the bathroom, shoving his face under the sink, and sitting on the cold tile floor until the dark hallway didn’t look so scary anymore.So no, this didn’t feel new. It felt wrong. Weird. Terribly wrong.Tony’s jaw clenched, and his fists shook, but he didn’t move. He couldn’t.“Where’s the boy?” Howard’s voice oozed mockery. “The great hero who saved the world. Can’t even keep his little sidekick safe, huh?” “You know, this technology’s less impressive when you know it’s just that—technology,” Tony muttered. “I know this isn’t real, Beck. You can save the charge on your stupid drone and face me like a big boy.”“Literally doesn’t matter,” Howard said, taking a slow step forward. Tony knew that sound — remembered it from childhood, sitting at his desk, homework across the counter, heart racing, praying his father wouldn’t stop at his door. “Seeing is always believing, Tony.” “Well, rest assured, I’m not believing.”"Fine. Be that way." Howard’s lips twisted. "I’m proud of you, you know."Tony stared at the counterfeit version of his dirtbag father, nearly flinching when something like pride flickered inside him. He knew Howard wasn’t real, but here he was, walking, talking, existing. Maybe it was okay to feel real, human emotions when seemingly real, human people stood in front of you, telling you things you always wanted to hear. “What?” Tony asked."You convinced the world you’ve changed," Howard said. "PR rebrand of the century. Seriously, your team deserves a raise. They could make Lockheed Martin look like a Girl Scout bake sale.""I have changed," Tony muttered, stepping backward. So much for pride. "Turns out getting tortured in a cave by terrorists does something to a guy. Put life in perspective or whatever.""You can tell yourself that." Howard pursed his lips, leaning against a table Tony hadn’t even noticed. "But I don’t think much has changed. No matter how many gadgets, suits, or flashy rescues you pile on, you’re still that scared little kid trying to prove something. Still chasing approval from a ghost that doesn’t care." Whoops. That one actually hurt a little. Tony forced a laugh. “Thanks a lot, Beck. Cool psychoanalysis.” “Look, I know what you’ve been through.” Despite the whole hologram thing, Howard’s presence was suffocating, and Tony could feel it like it was a real, tangible thing. “The same thing I went through, over and over. You think the industry change, new marriage, a child, the world-saving business—” he waved a dismissive hand, “—all of it is progress, but it’s just another round of the same circus.”“Okay, wow, hold on,” Tony said, pointing a finger at him. “That’s a little reductive. I’d like to remind you that I literally—have you not seen anything about the gauntlet? And what circus?”"The Stark circus," Howard said simply. "You’re a Stark, Tony. Always have been, always will be. Can’t outrun the thick layer of bullshit that comes with the name.""You mean being a literal defense manufacturer? Not sure if you’ve checked the news lately, but I’m in the same business as Nvidia and Apple now. Better than both, actually—I run on 100% clean energy.""No, no." Howard took another step forward. Embarrassingly, Tony took two steps back. "I’m not talking about business, kid. I’m talking about you." Tony…had nothing for that one. His brain fired blanks, reaching for something clever, something deflective—anything that might erase the way that comment hit him square in the chest."You’re just fixing your own broken reflection," Howard said, almost amused. "Same thing I did. Trying to prove you’re worth something. Trying to convince yourself you’re not the same screwed-up, shit-faced, fratty loser you’ve always been."Tony scoffed. “Okay, ouch.”“And now you’ve got this kid—what’s it, Peter?—following you around like some lost puppy, thinking you’re some kind of—”Tony’s breath hitched. "Alright, that’s enough. Keep it in the family. Don’t bring Peter into this."“Am I wrong?” Howard threw his hands in the air. “Tell me I’m wrong, Anthony. Go ahead, tell me you’re not just cosplaying as a father figure, trying to treat him better than I treated you.”“First off, I am treating him better,” Tony muttered. "For one, I actually talk to him. You never got the memo on…on, I don’t know, talking to children. You never once told me that you were proud of me."“I didn’t say it because I never was,” Howard deadpanned. Tony’s mouth went dry. “I know I didn’t hear that right.”“Are parents supposed to be proud of their kids for doing what’s expected?” Howard shrugged. “I expected you to be great. To be phenomenal. To be on the goddamn cover of Rolling Stone in custom Indochino. I’m not proud of you for being exactly who I designed you to be.”Christ, Tony needed to get out of here. He glanced around, heart thundering, maybe two thinly-veiled insults away from losing his shit inside of this forsaken warehouse. “Anyway,” Howard continued. “Regardless, you’ve done exactly what I did, kid. Made the same mistakes, stepped on the same mines, blew up the same buildings. Treated Peter like he’s just another project, just like I treated you. Cycle continues. The circus has packed up and moved to another city.”“A project?” Tony repeated, voice rising, scoffing. “That’s bullshit. I’m not—”“No bullshit,” Howard said, his smile twisting. "The fact that you’re even pushing back—thinking you’ve cracked the code on how to be a good father, a good mentor—makes it worse. You’re not, Tony. Not even close.”He wanted to argue, to shut him down, but it was always hard with Howard. "I’m not you."“No. You’re worse. I knew what I was doing. You’re oblivious.” Tony blinked a few times, his gaze glued to the floor as the room seemed to spin, feeling himself get dizzy. If someone could obliterate Beck's little fleet of drones right now, that’d be fan-fucking-tastic. “Right.”Shortly before his father died, they had a massive, red-faced argument, one where Howard actually spat in his face. Tony couldn’t remember all the specifics now—something about his work, his hobbies, a girl he’d been sleeping with, some trivial thing like that. He’d called his dad a control freak, and Howard had laughed, doubled over, and said, “One day, kid, you’ll look in the mirror and just see fucking me. You’re the same as me.”The memory always made Tony shudder. He always wondered what his dad meant by that—if Tony was just part of the Stark machine, if he was no better than his dad. He supposed now was the time to find out.“Put your thinking cap on.” Howard took another step forward. Tony didn’t budge. Just stared at the ground. “You recruited the kid at fourteen. Dragged him to Germany. Got him a new suit, made him fight, nearly got him killed. Then you sent him back home like it was nothing, abandoned him, ghosted his calls.”He had no idea how Beck knew that piece. “I didn’t—”“Yeah, I’m not done,” Howard snapped, his voice sharp enough to make Tony flinch. “Then, as you’re moving into your shiny new place, you watch him almost get torn apart by a freak in a robot bird suit. Almost got killed. So you bring him back, give him a place with your fancy Avengers, more suits, pay off his aunt’s rent—whatever. You make him think he’s special.”“That’s such an oversimplification,” Tony mumbled.“You send him into space to fight Grimace from McDonald’s on steroids. And this time, you actually get the kid killed—dusted from the very fabric of reality. Then you rip time and space apart to bring him back. And when you finally get a call about some robo-whatever, you sideline him.”“And?”“Are you not seeing a pattern here?” Howard gaped at him. “Are you really that dense? First of all, it’s always push-and-pull with you. You’ve always been like that—manic obsession with your work, then depressive emptiness you fill with booze and crack. You get that?”“Okay.” Tony ran both hands over his face, but they felt unsteady, light as if he hadn’t eaten all day. Static prickled through his skin. “Thanks for that.”“It’s so goddamn Stark of you,” Howard spat. “The control-complex, the push-and-pull. You drag people from the benches, then throw them back once you've done. You’re all or nothing. Black or white. Forward or back, up or down, left or fucking right. But it always has to be on your terms. You’re so willing to jerk everything around, to play puppet-master, if it means you have control.”“Hold—”“You think you’re saving him, protecting him from the danger you put him in. But you’re not. You’re dragging him through the fucking muck and making him feel like he owes you for it.”Tony’s face burned. The suit felt like it was suffocating him, too tight, too hot, too sticky. Everything was suffocating—too much. And he needed to get out. “But one day,” Howard continued, his voice low, “Peter’s going to figure it out. He’s going to see you for what you are: a control freak who doesn’t give a shit about anything, just about making sure everything’s on his terms, at his command, under his strings. And he’s going to hate you for it, Tony. He’ll resent you.”“I’m not you,” Tony said, his voice quieter than he wanted it to be. It sounded small, like a child’s, fragile and cracked. He could almost feel himself ducking behind the kitchen counter again, weaving through hallways, trying to avoid Howard’s eyes. “I—I just—it’s about his safety. I want to protect him. You wanted to keep me docile. Under your—it’s... it’s different.”Howard rolled his eyes. “You’re looking at this the wrong way.” “Oh, right,” Tony muttered, his words sharp but resolve faltering. “Then please—correct me. How should I be looking at this?”“You’re looking at it through the myopic lens of your own experience,” he said flatly. “You think this is just about me and you. But it’s never just been about us, Tony. It’s the Stark goddamn legacy. This is how it was with me and your grandfather, and him and your great-grandfather—all the way up.”Tony’s hands trembled, his knees suddenly weak beneath him. The room seemed to tilt. He couldn’t look up, couldn’t look up, had to stay staring at the ground. “And let me tell you,” Howard said, stepping closer. Tony had always been a little shorter than his dad, but right now, the height difference felt huge. “It’ll go on for generations. Spiraling, cycling, repeating over and over. You know why? Because you’re doomed to repeat it. Doomed to the rigamarole of father-son bullshit, the repressed and the resentful, the kid who’s so goddamn determined to be anything but his father that he ends up back at the starting line.”“Please—”“The kid who wants to control everything so that he can avoid being like his father, jerking everything left and right to fit some half-baked idea of what should be, only to realize that control is what made his father so fucking awful.”In a moment of unbelievably ill-timed weakness, Tony slowly lowered himself to the floor. Felt the concrete under his hand, the static in his ears, the way his brain latched onto doomed to repeat it, doomed to repeat it, swirling it down the drain, washing over him.He’d wanted so desperately to be better.“Starks are control freaks,” Howard said. “It’s what we do. We control, and we control, and we control. We white-knuckle the steering wheel, even when we’re in the driveway. And it’s so baked into your DNA, Tony, that you didn’t even realize you were doing it—pushing and pulling, pushing and pulling, wanting everything in our little fingers all the time. And then when something goes wrong, we only have ourselves to blame, don’t we? We controlled all of the variables.”A hand pressed under his chin, lifting his head, forcing him to meet Howard’s eyes. The image of his father—this hologrammed, stone-faced dad who died multiple decades ago—stood over him, his fingernails in Tony’s skin. God, he’d never felt smaller than in this moment, never felt weaker, never felt like such a child.“You’ll push him away, Tony,” Howard whispered, voice low, venomous. “And when that happens, when you’re sitting alone in your empty fucking mansion, surrounded by nothing but your money and regret, you’ll realize you’re just like me.” It was honestly impressive how quickly the mere image of his father reduced him to his knees, forcing him to question how he’d been mentoring this kid. He grew up knowing Starks had some generational sludge they’d needed to work through—cyclical trauma, or inherited bullshit, or whatever it was called. But he thought he’d broken from it. He’d thought he was doing the right thing, but now, he wasn’t so sure. Did a "right" thing even exist? Could it, when he was looking through the smudged and warped lens of Stark legacy, a lens that inherently distorted everything around him? And if that lens was so distorted, could he even trust himself to know what was truly right?“I didn’t mean this,” Tony forced out, staring at his father. But maybe that wasn’t true. Maybe he had meant it, in a way—he had done everything intentionally, every step with his eyes wide open, knowing the risks, the consequences. Maybe he had meant to perpetuate the cyclical Stark bullshit.Still, he wanted to believe that something different had motivated him. It wasn’t something admirable—no, it was vermillion fear, overwhelming fear—but that was probably a better motivator than what he suspected motivated his father—wealth, reputational gain.Peter had his aunt, sure, but she wasn’t equipped to deal with a mutant nephew. No disrespect to her—that was just the harsh truth.So, Tony had stepped up. Got involved. Tried to control the kid’s life, his future, because he couldn’t bear the idea of Peter being Tony 2.0. Didn’t want to see the kid in an early grave—wanted him to graduate from college, to have a funny spouse who loved him, to have kids, if that was what he wanted. But at its core, wasn’t that the exact same shit Howard had done to him? Putting Tony in a stupid tailored suit, forcing him into MIT, throwing Tony into the shadows when the tabloids found out a little too much, rinse, repeat. Pushing and pulling, pushing and pulling, always in control, always sitting in the cockpit. Howard always knew best, didn’t he? Making Tony step up when it suited him, throwing Tony backward when it didn’t. And Tony was doing that.
Doomed to repeat it.
“You never do, do you?” Howard stared down at him, his expression unreadable. He paused for a few beats, then said, "You’ll keep trying to fix it. And you’ll fail. Just like I did. Just like every Stark before you."The world around Tony wavered. The ground beneath him felt unstable, as if the very foundation of his reality was crumbling. He couldn’t get his bearings, couldn’t breathe, as the weight of Howard’s presence—just his being in the same plane of existence—suffocated him. He caught a flicker in his peripheral vision. A shadow—something out of place. A shift in the air, like the world had just bent in a way that didn’t belong.And then, again—this time, to his other side. A dash of red and blue.“Tony!” Peter’s voice shouted. Tony felt like he was about two seconds from dropping dead. The torture session with his old man wasn’t exactly good for the soul. He listened again, hoping that was Peter, not just something stupid Beck had concocted. "Focus, Stark!” a voice that sounded suspiciously like Steve yelled. “This isn’t real!"Tony’s eyes snapped back to Howard. The figure before him flickered, his face distorting like a broken television screen, twisting in and out of focus.His fingers tightened on Tony’s jaw. It hurt a cosmic fuckton, nails biting into soft skin, leaving behind crescent-shaped welts that stung with every breath.“You’ll always be stuck in this cycle,” Howard murmured, his voice distorted, overlapping with Beck’s nasally drawl, both sounding like ghosts in his ears. “You and him both.”The world tilted again, and suddenly, the ground fell away beneath him. A sharp, sickening twist in the air, like something, someone, was tearing through reality itself. There was a voice, someone shouting from a place far outside of him, but it was all distorted, like everything was submerged in saltwater, eyes burning, everything burning. His vision blurred, colors and shapes sliding around like liquid, impossible to focus.And then, reality exploded back into place. His senses slammed into him, each one a freight train, first smell, then sight, sounds, touch, taste. The warehouse, the sterile hum of Stark tech, the heat of bodies, people, people, people— everything hit him at once, too much, too fast. “Tony,” Peter said, his voice breaking through the chaos. He was crouched in front of him now, a hand on Tony’s shoulder. The sight of Peter, all wide-eyed and frantic, freaked him out in a way he couldn’t explain. Christ, the kid wouldn’t be looking this shitty if Tony had stayed out of his damn life. If he hadn’t roped some high-potential, bright-eyed kid into the magic world of loss, destruction, and crippling trauma. “Hey, hey, are—you’re okay, right? Are you okay?”His words were a little slurred, a little dragging. This was entirely Tony’s fault. He couldn’t even look at Peter properly. I’m the reason you’re here. I am so, so sorry, Peter. I’m so sorry. Tony wanted to give himself a reactor blast directly to the fucking face.“I’m—” Tony stared at Peter for a second, his eyes skimming over the kid’s face, landing on the small cut that hadn't been there before. Then, he glanced at Steve, who stood like a fucking monument to smug superiority, arms crossed, looking like the God of self-righteous dorks. “Are—where’s—”“Apprehended,” Steve said. “Phoned in Bucky and Wanda. They have him in, um, in custody, along with the rest of his…goons. After that, it was about dismantling the drones, and—”“Just kept coming,” Peter said quietly. “I was worried—you were in there for a long time.”Tony’s eyes snapped back to Peter. What the hell did that even mean? “How long?” Tony asked, his voice betraying a hint of panic. “Was it…like, a long time?”“Fifteen minutes,” Steve answered, his words blunt. “Maybe twenty. Not a lot of time, but enough to make you... well, out of it.”“Can we g-go?” Peter asked, pulling Tony’s attention back to him. Peter was looking at him now, not Steve. His hand was still on Tony’s shoulder, fingers trembling just slightly. “I’m—sorry, I need, like, to g-get out of this…um…”“Oh, shit.” Tony didn’t need to be told twice. His head was spinning, confusion substituting for an overwhelming need to get out. He shot up so fast that the whole room flipped upside-down. Without thinking, he yanked Peter up with him, steadying him when the kid swayed on his feet. “Yeah, I’m—sorry, I didn’t... I forgot about the, uh, exit.”“Well, aren’t you two just so graceful at reunions.” Steve’s voice was laced with sarcasm, but there was something warmer underneath it, something teasing. “Let’s get you two in Happy’s car. Sam mapped out the exit from here, and we’ll handle some of the… you know, clean-up. Bruce, May, and the one kid are back at the Tower, obviously.”“Ned,” Peter said quietly as they started toward the exit.When they reached the car, a black van with tinted windows, MJ was leaning against it, arms crossed, foot propped against the door, typing something on her phone. Tony suppressed a full-body eye roll. She looked like she’d been cast as the apathetic indie douchebag who wore aviator sunglasses and played the guitar in some nineties rom-com. But he could almost see the exact moment she realized they were back. The clock had long since ticked past midnight, probably nearing one or two, and the streetlights were a little too dim to see anything from far away. But when she saw them, she straightened, running her hands through her hair like she needed to reset herself before facing them. Her eyes locked onto Peter.“One Peter Parker for delivery,” Tony said as he walked toward her, deliberately casual, trying to mask the tension in his shoulders. MJ stared at Peter for a beat, her mouth open like she hadn’t expected to see him standing there in one piece.“Peter,” she said. Peter glanced at Tony, then at MJ, then back to Tony. It took a second, but suddenly, he realized what was going on. What Peter was subliminally begging him to ask so he didn’t have to.“MJ, could you…” Tony hesitated, gesturing around vaguely. “Could you tell us something only Peter and you would know?”MJ blinked, her eyes darting between Peter and Tony. She looked back at Peter for a moment, studying his face like she was trying to read him. “Like, what? A memory?”“Yeah,” Peter said quietly. “Huh. Okay.” MJ pursed her lips and tapped her chin. “Okay, here’s one. January. Man-baby, libertine blockhead. Thai food on your couch.”Tony narrowed his eyes. He glanced at Peter, who just barely smiled. “Tin-man billionaire Batman wannabe,” Peter said.“Why do I feel like these are just nicknames for me?” Tony grumbled, guiding Peter toward the backseat. He slid next to MJ while Tony took the front passenger seat. Happy was already behind the wheel. “Creative, sure, but…”“She has a lot of those,” Peter mumbled, voice raspier than it’d been a few seconds ago. MJ snorted. “Yeah, he knows. I was about three seconds away from calling him a sycophantic ego-fascist, like, literally yesterday.”Peter hummed, and Tony glanced at Happy. Happy gave him a small, almost imperceptible smile before shoving the van into drive. The tires hummed against the asphalt as they pulled out of the lot. Happy drove like the steering wheel might slip out of his hands if he didn’t grip it tight enough.
Doomed to repeat it. Doomed to repeat it. Doomed to repeat it.
Tony’s eyes were closed, but he wasn’t sleeping. His mind kept spinning, still stuck in that awful, distorted space with Howard’s voice and the empty warehouse.
Doomed to repeat it. Doomed to repeat it. Doomed to repeat it.
His therapist was gonna have a field day with this one.Every thirty seconds, he’d force himself to open his eyes, to glance in the rearview mirror, just to confirm that Peter was alive and okay. He was, on a purely physiological level—he was alive, and after some water, food, and rest, he’d probably be okay. But he didn’t look alive or okay right now. He was slumped in the corner of the backseat, his head resting against the window. His eyes were half-lidded, circles like bruises under his eyes, his skin about three shades too pale. Passing streetlights illuminated the bruise on his neck, the cut on his jaw. Probably from fighting the drones. Another situation that Tony caused. Suddenly, in a quiet voice barely audible over the hum of the van, MJ mumbled, “You can lay down. Only if you want, but the offer’s there.”A few beats of silence. “M’fine,” Peter said. His voice was rough.“You’re not fine,” MJ said, no bite in her tone—just an observation. “Seriously. Just… relax. We probably have, like, fifteen minutes left, and you’re looking pretty corpse-y.”Peter exhaled. “I d-don’t wanna...y’know. Take up your personal space.”“Dude, you’ve been missing in action for, what, two days? You’ve earned a little space.”There was fabric rustling. Tony glanced in the rearview mirror. Peter shifted slowly, his body stiff, like every muscle ached. MJ moved over, tucking herself closer to the door.“Just—here,” MJ whispered, tugging gently on his sleeve. “C’mon.”Peter blinked at her. Then, after a long moment, he eased down, resting his head on her lap. His back was to her, shoulders hunched tight, as if trying to take up as little space as possible. One hand rested lightly around her calf.“You good?” MJ asked quietly. “Yeah,” Peter mumbled. His voice wobbled a little. “I’m…yeah.”MJ’s fingers gently carded through his hair, brushing against his cheekbones, tracing the curve of his eyes, his cheeks, his nose. Tony realized then —so that’s the gentle side of MJ. Peter clearly knew it before he did.“There,” MJ muttered. “That wasn’t so hard, was it?”Peter’s voice came muffled, half-buried against her lap. “You’re bossy.”“You’re stubborn.” Neither said anything else. Tony thought Peter had finally passed out when MJ spoke again, quiet and low. “You’re allowed to sleep, you know.”“I know. Just... didn’t wanna.”“Well, you need to, so, just… I dunno. Chill out for a sec.”“I just need to shower when we g-get b-back. And I won’t if I fall asleep now,” he added so quietly that Tony could barely hear it. Then, almost like an afterthought, “Are you staying the night?”A beat passed. “I’d like to. If you’d have me.”“Always would like to have you.” “Yeah, okay,” she said quietly. “I’ll…I’ll be there.”
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
Peter was being a terrible guest.His parents, Uncle Ben, and Aunt May had raised him better than this. There were rules for entering someone else's house, no matter how comfortable you felt. Shoes off at the door, don’t touch anything, follow their lead, clean up after yourself, and, above all, be polite and respectful.Peter did maybe one of those things—and he still wasn’t sure how he’d managed to take his shoes off, let alone locate Tony’s ridiculously expensive wooden shoe rack. But that was a whopping one task accomplished, and he’d log that as a win.Everything was just…a lot. And he was trying to be cognizant of the fact that this was Tony’s tower, but geez, he was just so tired, and all etiquette was out the window . He was leaning on coat racks and end tables just to stay vertical, awkwardly stumbling ahead of the group toward the couch, touching everything, including and especially the glass and polished brass. Fingerprints everywhere. Worst, he could feel that he was being impolite and disrespectful, which really rounded out the shitty guest thing. The first few seconds were a blur: Aunt May calling his name, Ned’s hands on his shoulders, a swarm of unfamiliar faces, all talking at once. So many questions, all like, “Do you want something to eat? It’s late—did you have dinner?” and “Hey, are you feeling okay? Wanna go to the medbay?” and “Whoa, whoa—do you wanna sit down?” If he responded to a single question, he didn’t remember. His brain just couldn’t mix the right chemicals or neurotransmitters, or whatever—he hadn’t exactly paid attention in chemistry, so he had no clue—needed to form real, coherent words. There could’ve been a few reasons for that. For one, something about lying down in the car had made his brain hit a wall, and he couldn’t conceptualize sentences. He also had this lingering feeling of are you who you say you are? when he looked at these people—people he knew, people he loved. Couldn’t they be illusions too?But Tony and MJ seemed fine with them, so he tried to be. And he tried to express gratitude, love, affection—any number of synonyms for thank you, and I’m so sorry, and I’m such an idiot —by giving everyone hugs. He wrapped his arms around May’s neck, buried his face in her shoulder, and squeezed, only to realize too late that it sent shockwaves of pain down his back. He repeated the same with Ned—wrapped his arms around him for a hug, but his neck screamed bloody murder.So he couldn’t speak, could barely move, and had the utility of a coffee table book. He was being a really shitty guest. “You aren’t substantive,” Fake Tony echoed between his temples. Peter closed his eyes. “You aren’t important. You’re good for city morale, and that’s the extent of your utility." Next thing he knew, he was on the couch, and everyone was everywhere—so many people, so many bodies pressing in on him, their hands on him, all talking at once.“Here, kid, just…just sit down, okay? Whoa, you’re okay. You’re okay.”Maybe the adrenaline had been there earlier, but now, MJ’s fingers had squeezed it all out of him like some kind of human go-gurt. What replaced it was this half-asleep, half-wired purgatory, where every single part of him wanted to be in a bed somewhere, but his body was wound so tightly that even closing his eyes for two seconds made his literal eyelids ache.And he was sitting down, standing up, the world spinning, spinning— mumbling something to MJ, her saying something about “procedure” and “the law” and “hey, Tony’s handling it, alright?” Ned handed him water, but Peter couldn’t remember how to drink, so it sat on Tony’s overpriced coffee table, untouched, with no coaster, leaving rings on the wood. MJ said something else, and then Tony—where was Tony?
“You’re more trouble than you’re worth, kid. Every single mission, every fight, you’ve proven time and again that I can’t trust you to do what needs to be done."
Time didn’t make sense anymore—one moment he was sitting on the couch, blinking long, heavy blinks, the next, he was falling, falling, jerking himself awake to find his head on someone’s shoulder. Tony, he thought distantly. Someone was yelling— Tony, he thought again—and then there was a man in an exceptionally well-tailored suit, holding a notepad, asking, “Peter, do you want to talk to us?”“Excuse me!” someone snapped. “Didn’t I just fucking say—”“Last time I checked, Mr. Stark, you’re not his legal guardian. You’re his employer.”“Fucking—May! Do you want these tire-biting fucks questioning your child right now?”Somewhere far away, May scoffed. “Tony, any dirt-shoveling, boot-licking, donut-munching, gum-shoe pricks can walk straight out and come back in a few days.”At least any doubts about whether or not that was the real May were gone. May was a career activist, and she’d never let him talk to… talk to… who was there again? Police?And then Dr. Banner and Dr. Cho were asking him questions, probing. “Did Beck’s team give you anything, Peter? Any injections,medications, drugs, liquids, gases?”“No, no,” he mumbled, his hand gripping someone else’s. He leaned his head back against the couch cushion, trying to steady himself. “Just—they… they d-did the first, um, first d-day, the thing they g-gave me to, um, b-but…”“Right, okay,” Banner muttered, scribbling something on a legal pad. “Do you remember everything that happened during the time you were gone? Any gaps in your memory?”“Seriously?” Tony appeared out of nowhere. “You’re gonna grill him about this, like, an hour after he gets home?”
Tony. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry, Tony.
Please believe me. I’m such an idiot, and I didn’t mean any of this. Please believe me.
“There are things we need to know,” Banner shot back, tone sharp enough to make Peter flinch. “And what, you can’t wait till tomorrow?” Tony retorted. “Like, sorry, let’s do a time check. Am I on glue, or is it literally three in the morning?”"For the record, Tony, if this were up to me, I'd be running tests. If there's any sedation or stimulants or whatever still floating around in his system, we need to flush it out. Asking, like, four questions is the least invasive—and FYI, the most effective—way of handling this."Tony’s gaze flickered between him and Peter, his lips pressed into a tight line. His knuckles were white as he gripped his elbows. "Are you okay, Peter?"“Tired,” Peter whispered. “Just a few more questions,” Banner said, throwing Tony a pointed look. “I want him in his room right after this. We just need to make sure he's okay.” Make sure they didn’t pump you full of drugs that’ll kill you in the middle of the night, his mind unhelpfully quipped.But he continued fielding Banner and Cho’s questions: “Did you eat anything? Were you given clean, clear water? Any pain?”Yes, yes, and an overwhelming yes. Peter wanted to say more, to explain everything in detail, but responding in a way that even vaguely resembled helpful felt like trying to run a mile through knee-deep peanut butter. Eventually, Banner squeezed his knee, recoiling when Peter flinched, and followed Dr. Cho into the kitchen.“Hey, kiddo,” someone whispered softly, their hand brushing his cheek. “You feeling okay?”“M’good,” Peter mumbled, staring at the coffee table, watching water trickle in little rivulets down the glass Ned had given him. “Mhm…”"Right." May didn’t sound convinced, but she turned away, to someone else. Peter couldn’t keep track of who was standing where, not when there were so many people, so many voices, so much moving. "You guys wanna head upstairs?"“Ned’s asleep,” MJ said quietly. “But yeah, I’ll head up.”“Sounds good. Did Tony give you a room?”“Yeah, yeah. I’ve been, um, around, like, a bit. Can—sorry, where’s Tony?”“In the kitchen,” May mumbled, barely glancing at him. “Doing something—I don’t know. Taking a victory lap, I bet.”Peter knew May didn’t exactly have a fondness for Tony, but that comment felt downright venomous. A victory lap, he repeated in his head, but he couldn’t quite piece together what she meant by that. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw MJ glance at him, hum softly, and head toward the kitchen.“Peter,” May whispered suddenly. He looked at her, trying to hold her gaze. “I’m not gonna force you to do anything, but…but you’ve been through a lot. Maybe a shower would help, like, reset you.”God, a shower would hit right now. He’d wanted one in the car, but after MJ siphoned all of his energy with her mind-numbingly awesome touch, he'd completely forgotten about it. He could barely remember what it felt like to be perfectly clean, smelling like citrus breeze or ocean mist or whatever, slipping into fresh clothes, climbing under the covers —Christ, it would be borderline religious.“Especially since it could be a couple more hours before you’re able to sleep,” May added quietly, as if she expected him to argue. “I don’t know, it might be good to… get the layer of gross off you.”“Why—” he started, before a cough wracked his body. He could feel every muscle scream. “Why can’t—why can’t I just g-go to bed?”May blinked, her hand moving to his forearm. Her eyes looked so big, so watery for a second, and Peter just wanted to seep through the floorboards. “Geez, kiddo—didn’t you hear them, like, two minutes ago?”“No, I—they said something?”“Yeah, yeah. They said… they said your body just might not feel safe yet,” May said gently. He needed to get out these clothes, clothes that weren’t even his. And burn them, hopefully. “It’s a psychological thing. But we can make everything right for when you do go to bed, okay?”He hummed in response, his eyes growing heavier with every passing second, while his heart still buzzed with frantic energy. A static, buzzing glow pulsed through him, making his fingers tremble, his blood feel thin, and his skin like aluminum foil. He wasn’t even sure he could stand.“I’m so tired,” he whispered, his voice barely carrying. For a moment, he wasn’t sure if the words were thoughts or spoken out loud. “Just want—let’s, um, g-go to b-bed, please. Shower.”May stared at him for a long second. Even through the haze, he could feel her gaze, and he knew—she knew. She knew something was wrong with the stutter. That something bad had happened in that white room, bad enough to pull up a long-dormant episode from elementary school.That was for tomorrow. Nobody asked Peter specific questions about what happened during his captivity tonight, and for that, he was grateful. They were all thinking it, but he appreciated how they were politely trying to ignore it, pretending that he wasn’t practically comatose.But he didn’t want to answer them tomorrow. He really, really didn’t want to answer anything about the white room, the buzzing lights, the constant surveillance, the eyes burning, the static —no, no, not the static. The “God, Peter, what happened to you?” was already suffocating him, and he didn’t need to add that sound to the mix, his hands on his ears, eyes squeezed shut, shoulders hiking. He had to bargain with himself to get his hands off his face—he didn’t even know when they’d gotten there—and leaned against May. She gently held his hand to her shoulder as she guided him down the hall, respectfully ignoring every time he half-tripped over folded carpet or his own feet. He couldn’t help but notice how quickly she walked past the kitchen, where Tony and MJ were pointedly arguing with men in suits, their voices blended into some loud, muffled lecture that warped and stretched in Peter’s ears.MJ poked one in the chest.
“You weren’t here.” Ned jabbed a finger into Peter’s chest, hard enough that Peter stumbled back. “We called you. We texted you. Over and over, Peter.”
Peter swayed slightly, and May squeaked, catching him in her arms.When they finished the quarter-mile trek to the bathroom, she gently deposited Peter on the edge of the bathtub, grabbed a stack of clothes from his bedroom, and sprinted back. She looked like she’d feared Peter would topple off the side, worried she’d come back to find him shattered into a million pieces on the cold tile. Peter was proud to report that he still had a center of gravity.But she didn’t say any of that. Instead, she tinkered with the shower handle, mumbling under her breath about how the Starks had somehow overcomplicated a simple bathtub. As Peter’s hands gripped the ledge, the cold porcelain cutting through the thin fabric of his sweatpants, he realized that sitting there, just focusing on not falling, was waking him up, keeping him alert. If he didn’t stay present, he’d crack his head open on Tony’s tub, and did he really want to make another mess for Tony to clean up?Soon, the water was running. May cupped his face gently, kissed his forehead, held him against her shoulder, and kissed him again. I’m so sorry, he wanted to say. I’m such a mess, and I’m so sorry. I’m grateful for you. “I’m gonna wait outside the door, okay?”
I’m sorry that I didn’t do enough for Ben. I’m so sorry that you’re stuck with me.
He nodded tightly.Once she shut the door, Peter realized that Tony’s entire tower was a modernist nightmare. He remembered the first time he'd been here, when Tony had given him the tour, tossing around words like sleek, functional, and minimalist. He’d been so proud of it, if Peter remembered correctly. Said he went to two whole architects to nail down a vision, and did you see the marble sinks? Back then, Peter didn’t mind all the clean lines, the industrial vibes—hell, he probably thought it was cool. But now it felt too much like the white room, just too bright, too cold, too fucking clinical. Standing in this stupid bathroom alone was physically painful, the cold floor biting into bare feet, the ivory countertops, the borderline blue light—so sterile. He stumbled, leaning his back against the sink and bending over just enough to steady himself before pushing up again.God, he was so dizzy.But he had a goal, and he needed to just…tunnel-vision on it. He had a room here at the Tower, one with a soft comforter and signed posters and little trinkets on a wooden bookshelf. It wasn’t that he stayed here often—it was usually by necessity—but even if he’d never stayed here before, he knew Tony would ensure he had a room, just in case. The last time had been after that conversation with Pepper. One of those nights when May was working late, and he was going through one of those months. A shitty mental health month, if he was being honest. Staying here felt escapist. It felt like somewhere isolated from the real world. He hoped it would feel that way tonight.Not to mention, his bed here was a queen, not that tiny, lumpy twin he had at home.He just needed to get through this. He started at the hem of his shirt, fingers brushing over the stitching, the bumps rough under his touch. But fucking— he couldn’t move, couldn’t get his arms to lift, couldn’t convince himself to take this scratchy, thin-ass tee-shirt off. His body had changed in weird ways since Wednesday morning. Half was because of the nature of captivity—no sun, no fresh air, twelve steps a day. The other half was because of the escape, when he’d fought, like, a few hundred drones with Steve fucking Rogers (“I can’t believe I’m fighting kinda-sentient Stark Industries tech with Captain-flippin-America!”). They’d carved lines and beat color into his chest, across his collarbones, down over his back. “Peter?” May’s voice came through the door, sudden enough to startle him. “You upright and okay in there?”“I’m g-good,” Peter said quickly. He looked back down at his hands, pressing his fingers together again. Being physically scared to look at himself felt so embarrassing and so new. He wasn’t exactly a fan of his body, but he could usually manage to take his shirt off without spiraling. If he couldn’t, he’d just wait fifteen minutes for his healing factor to kick in, to clean up the lacerations and bruises.But right now, his healing factor was on vacation. Part of him just wanted to turn off the lights—can’t hate himself if he can’t see himself, checkmate!— but he’d fall asleep standing up. Anyway, the only thing between him and the deepest sleep of his life was this stupid shower. Dealing with it was the only option.Slowly, he took a breath, his body physiologically identical to a wet paper towel, and pulled the hem up from his hips. The motion sent a throat-closing, eye-watering, nerve-severing shock through his shoulders, infinitely sharper than it had any right to be. He supposed he couldn’t lie on concrete for two days without paying for it later. The shirt felt like it was gripping him, stuck with salt, sweat, and dried blood, pulling with a wet rip before it finally dropped to the floor.By the time it was off, his breathing was ragged, air dragging like gravel through his chest. Even worse, he felt disgusting, so he kept his back to the mirror, eyes fixed on the shower. He couldn’t look at himself.It was time for phase two. Earlier that day—yesterday, technically—he’d double-knotted his pants because they’d started feeling bigger, sitting too low on his hips, and he didn’t want to risk anything. Massive mistake. His hands were trembling so badly that he couldn’t untie the knotted, stiff strings. Much to his simultaneous surprise and mortification, it was this stupid, tiny thing that brought a stinging film to his eyes, that made his cheeks flush, that forced him to take a break, staring at the wall to recalibrate. It was so fucking dumb—this dumb thing, this stupid little thing, was going to be the thing that made him cry for the first time since leaving Beck’s hellhole. So, he just focused on holding it together. On not losing it.“Are you in the shower yet?” May’s voice called through the door. “Do you need anything?”Something in her tone added more pressure behind his eyes. He made a half-strangled, desperate noise and grabbed the sink basin behind him, praying it would hold his weight.“I—” Deep breaths, deep breaths. “Um, no, M-May, I’m okay.” “Do you... want me to come in?” May’s voice was careful, soft. She was giving him an out. “I just—no pressure. I just thought I’d ask.”Peter exhaled sharply through his nose, trying the drawstrings again. No progress. Still fumbling, still slipping. His fingers failed him again, and he was either going to cry or fling himself straight into the wall if this stupid knot didn’t give. He was usually so patient, so calm, but right now, he had this wild fantasy of grabbing Tony’s gauntlet and obliterating the goddamn strings, of blasting them to ash just to free himself, get himself out, out, out of these pants that weren’t even his.“Yeah,” he said finally, his voice breathy and thin. “Yeah, okay.”The door creaked open a few inches, and May stepped inside, careful to keep her back close to the wall. She held a white, fluffy towel, probably from the hallway closet, smelling like rosemary and lavender. On top of it sat folded sweatpants, an older hoodie with floppy sleeves, and new socks.“Are you okay?” she asked.“You keep asking that,” he mumbled, staring at the ceiling, trying to duct-tape himself together before the dam broke. If he started crying, he wouldn’t be able to stop. He realized she wasn’t moving. When he glanced over at her, she was staring at him, one hand pressed over her mouth, eyes fixed on his chest. Without thinking, Peter looked down.Nothing can prepare someone for seeing their skin in a million different shades of gray, blue, and red. But Peter wished he’d at least tried to brace himself. It looked like someone had spilled paint water down his ribs. Deep bruises covered his collarbones, dark and inky in the center, while angry scrapes, crusted with dried blood, sliced down his sternum.The only time he’d ever looked this wrecked was after Thanos: Part Two, when he’d practically crawled home alongside Tony. He remembered lying on Dr. Cho’s exam table, crying silently as she pressed cotton balls and ice packs—or whatever—against his chest, whispering that his healing factor should kick in soon. But he’d been malnourished, severely dehydrated, and so tired, and his body had taken its sweet time. Nearly five days until he was back at capacity.He couldn’t dwell on this any longer, though, or else he’d start processing everything and lose his mind. So his fingers returned to the knot, all clumsy, stiff, and useless. He felt like a little kid trying to tie his shoes for the first time.“Here,” May said softly, setting the towel and clothes on the closed toilet seat. “Can I?”Peter hesitated, then let out a shaky breath and dropped his hands. “Yeah.”May moved slowly, like she was afraid of spooking him. She bent down, her nail hooking into the knot, and with just a few careful tugs, it came loose. When she straightened up, she didn’t say anything. Just quietly retreated to her spot on the toilet lid like nothing had happened.But because everything seemed capable of making him cry right now, he was on the brink of tears again, and God, he probably freaked her out so badly, and yet here she was, still untying knots he couldn’t manage. It was the literal last thing he deserved.“Thank you,” Peter said shakily.“Anytime,” May replied, turning her back to him. “Don’t mind me. Just... just let me know when you’re in the shower, okay? I’m not looking. I just want—I just want to make sure everything’s okay.”The curtain was still pulled back, and hot water pounded steadily against the tile. Steam curled into the air, soft and swirling, and Peter stared at it, unblinking, letting it burn in his eyes for a second. His mind buzzed with everything and nothing, tangled with that crimson, persistent thought that he was just the bumbling dork from Queens who messed everything up—got himself kidnapped, scared everybody, took up so much of everyone’s time, invited a bunch of scary agents into Tony’s house to question him when everything. And it was his fault.“You’ll feel better,” May said quietly. “I know it’s hard, baby, but you’ll feel better once you’re in there.” Baby. Someone should just Old Yeller him already. He didn’t deserve this.The longer he stood there, the worse he felt, so he cleared his throat and mumbled, “I’m... I’m g-getting in.” He wasn’t sure why he said it.“Okay,” May said. “That’s good, sweetheart.”He forced himself to move, stepping into the tub with a half-breath. The heat was immediately too much, an unmovable wall of warmth crashing against cold, aching skin. He sucked in a sharp breath, his palm flattening against the wall as his eyes shot to the ceiling, legs trembling. For a second, he considered just... sinking down right there in the tub, letting the water pour over him until he fell asleep or drowned or…or whatever.“You okay?” May’s voice drifted in from the other side of the curtain.Peter forced in a breath, the rivulets trailing down his face reminding him of MJ’s fingers in the car, chasing the edge of his nose, his cheekbones, his chin. He coughed, swiping roughly at his eyes.“M’okay.” His forehead pressed against the cool tile. Eyes closed. He wanted her hands again, wanted them on his face. “I just... I’m just gonna stay here for a minute.”“Okay.” A pause. “I’m right here.”By the time Peter turned off the water, it had gone lukewarm, leaving his skin pink and raw. He wasn’t sure how long he’d been standing there—twenty minutes, thirty, sixty—but his body still ached, like every muscle had been wrung out. But even with the water off, he stood there, dripping, shivering despite the warmth, staring at the drain like he could disappear with the water. Then he remembered May was still outside. “Aunt May?” Her answer was immediate. “Yeah?” “I... I think I’m done.” He felt ridiculous for even saying it out loud, like he needed permission to step out of the tub, but he wanted someone to be on alert in case.“Okay. I’ve got a towel for you.” There was a quiet rustle. “I’ll just...hand it over the curtain, okay? Like, over the top?”“Um... could you, like, reach around it instead? I d-don’t want to, um, reach up, if that’s okay.”“Completely okay,” she said. “Just—here, get ready.”The curtain shifted slightly, and Peter reached out. His fingers found the towel. Before he could pull it away, May’s hand lingered just a second longer. She squeezed his fingers.
“Your parents practically ran out the door when they dropped you off all those years ago.”
Peter full-body flinched at the thought, choking on his own breath, but he quickly stifled the sound with the towel. Once he was sure that thought was done, he dragged the towel over his face, over his hair, and slowly wrapped the towel around himself. Bracing one hand against the wall, he stepped out of the tub, the outside hitting him like the ice bucket challenge from a few years ago.
“They couldn’t get away fast enough. They were relieved to leave you behind.”
For a second, his knees buckled. He barely caught himself on the sink.“Hey, hey, you’re good.” May’s voice again, warm hands steadying him. Then, she placed the stack of clothes on the sink. “I’ve got some clothes for you, okay? He—Tony, he had some extra stuff in your closet.”
“I should’ve known they’d raised a coward. If they were so eager to be rid of you, what does that say about you?”
“Thank you,” Peter said quietly. His words felt hollow—just thank you, thank you, thank you, when really, he should’ve been explaining how badly he’d messed up. He should’ve been apologizing on his knees, begging for forgiveness. But right now, he just reached for the sweats.“Take your time,” May said softly. “I’m gonna face the wall now.”Peter dried off and dressed slowly, each motion stiff and clumsy. Bending over, reaching up, pulling on—every movement made his chest scream, like someone had tossed it through a blender, every ache sharpening into something worse, worse, worse. Worst of all, his clothes didn’t fit like clothes should. His hoodie felt too big, hanging loose and heavy around his shoulders. He fumbled at the sleeves, tugging them over his hands, and the cuffs bunched awkwardly at his wrists.“Okay, he mumbled. “I think—I think I’m—”“Can I turn around?”“Yeah.”When May turned around, Peter noticed she was holding a white, fluffy towel—not the one now crumpled on the floor. She must’ve had another tucked away somewhere.“C’mere,” she said, stepping closer to the side of the tub. She patted the ledge. “Sit.”Peter hesitated, then shuffled forward, legs shaky but obedient. He sank onto the edge of the tub, barely steady enough to keep from swaying, and grabbed the ledge. May stepped closer, unfolding the towel.“Head down,” she murmured.Peter obeyed without thinking, bowing his head until it rested in her hands. His damp hair clung to his forehead, chilling the tips of his ears and the corners of his eyes, sending little bolts of cold through his fingers, down his arms. In small, circular motions, May pressed the towel against his scalp, gently scrunching and blotting away the water with soft, steady pressure. Soon, she alternated between the towel and her fingers, combing carefully through the tangles.“You scared me,” May said softly. Her fingers never stopped moving. “I didn’t know where you were, or—um, if...” She paused, drawing in a shaky breath. “I’m glad you’re home.”Peter’s throat tightened, like someone had hooked a fist behind his ribs and squeezed. He closed his eyes, willing the stupid sting to stay behind his eyes. He’d already turned the last few days into such a mess, and he wasn’t going to oblige his aunt to even more emotional labor. “You don’t have to talk about it,” she said softly. “Not until you’re ready.”Peter exhaled, thin and shaky. “B-but…the cops?”“Downstairs?” she asked. Peter nodded, and May sighed. “Tony—he’ll talk to you about it. You might have to give a statement, but that’s... he’ll be in the room if you talk to SHIELD, okay?”“Have…have to talk—I have to talk to SHIELD?”“We don’t know yet, sweetheart,” she whispered. The towel shifted as May smoothed his hair down again, slower this time. “We’re gonna figure it out.”Peter swallowed hard, his eyes fixed on the floor. “I’m just... I’m so tired,” he whispered, his voice breaking on the last word.“I know, baby. I know.”She leaned down, pressing a kiss to his damp hair, then wrapped her arms around his shoulders. Peter just sagged forward, his head dropping against her shoulder. Cold hands on his neck, warm person beside him, her fingers still moving gently through his hair.“You’re okay,” she murmured again. “You’re home now. You’re okay.”***With his palm against the wall, Peter shuffled down the hallway toward his room. Everything felt extremely super-duper bad. He’d told May he could manage brushing his teeth solo, so she’d kissed his forehead again and reminded him to either hit the security button or just call her name if he needed anything. He’d sat on the floor to brush his teeth, then literally hoisted himself up via the slippery countertop to spit in the sink. Now, it was bedtime. Eventually, he found his room. Hand on the brass knob. Turned. When he opened the door, he froze. MJ glanced up, blinking like she hadn’t expected him either. Peter just stared at her—her black sweatpants with white stripes, the thrifted Binghamton University hoodie, the bright orange socks. She looked so soft.“Hey,” she said, sliding a small card into her book before closing it. “Hi,” Peter mumbled. He lingered in the doorway a bit too long. “Did I… m-miss book club?”“No, I just found this on your shelf,” MJ replied, holding The Last Olympian. “May said you were gonna crash soon, so…I dunno. Figured I’d wait up and see if you wanted company.” God, yes. He absolutely did. Sixty hours spent alone except for some disembodied voice and poorly-rendered illusion of his crush had messed with his head, and he needed—well, he wasn’t exactly sure what he needed. But he knew he couldn’t be alone. Not in a dark, empty room after spending so long in a white, empty one.“You okay?”“Yeah,” Peter lied automatically, then realized how dumb that sounded. “Well, um, y’know. Fine.”MJ gave him a look, the knowing one that made him feel like she could see straight through him. He leaned against the doorway, white-knuckling the frame. Literally everything was embarrassing—leaning against a doorway just to stay upright, for one, and having MJ see him like this, for another. His face burned.“You should sit down,” MJ said after a second, shifting to her side of the bed. Peter silently thanked Tony for splurging on a queen mattress. “I’ll stay over here, I promise. You won’t—the cooties aren’t contagious, or whatever.”Peter hesitated. He probably should’ve been polite, said something about how she could take the bed and he could take the floor, but his legs felt like they might give out. So he nodded tightly and crossed the room, a hand on the wall, then desk, then nightstand. Thankfully, the room was dim, illuminated solely by the lamp beside MJ, so he doubted she could see how badly each step hurt.When he dropped onto the far side of the bed, the mattress barely dipped. It took some awkward maneuvering, but eventually, his head found the pillow. He stayed on top of the comforter, eyes fixed on the warm glow against the ceiling, mind flickering with that too-tired dizziness that made everything feel just a little unreal, half-dreamy and fully hazy around the edges.“You look like you got hit by a truck,” MJ said.Peter let out a breathy laugh, dragging a hand down his face. “Thanks. Feels like it, too.”“You, uh...want to talk about it?”“Not really.”“Didn’t think so,” she said. A pause. “Would you... like, do you want me to, um, to stay here?”Did he want her to stay? Was that even a question? He didn’t know what he needed right now, but he knew being alone in this room wasn’t it. And geez, was there any person he wanted to sleep beside more than he wanted to sleep beside MJ?But she probably didn’t want to stick around, he realized. Someone had to draw the short stick and be on babysitting duty all day, making sure Peter didn’t quietly die in his sleep. She probably wanted out, to tap May or Ned from the bench.“I mean... if you want to,” he mumbled, fingers twitching at the blanket. He didn’t turn to look at her, didn’t want to see the look of diplomatic relief she probably had. “You don’t have to.”“Yeah, because I’m here out of some deep sense of obligation.” MJ snorted. “I’m definitely known for doing things that I don’t want to do. Christ, Parker, do you even know me?”Peter swallowed hard, unsure how to answer that. It was a good point that his smoothed-over brain hadn’t considered. She wasn’t exactly famous for doing things out of politeness. If she wanted to leave, she'd be halfway to the door by now. “Yeah,” he said finally, voice quieter now. “I... I’d like it if you stayed.”“Okay,” MJ said, like it was easy. She scooted back a little, giving him space again. “I’ll just... sit here.” She tapped the book beside her. “Be quiet. Invisible. Totally unobtrusive.”Peter huffed through his nose. “Yeah, sure,” he said, voice still a little wobbly. “Because you’re always so low-key.”“Oh, absolutely. Blending into crowds, never stirring up trouble.”“That’s what you’re known for. You’re very subtle.”“The most subtle,” she said. “Seriously, though, if you need anything, just tell me. Got that?”He hummed, pressing his palms into his eyes. It came out more like a tired exhale than an answer. But for a second, he focused on his hands, the pressure on his eyes, how his skin felt so tight and thin. He probably should’ve had more water downstairs.After that, they just sat there in that weird half-silence, punctuated only by the soft rustle of MJ’s pages turning. Peter tried to remember The Last Olympian ’s plot—he’d loved that book to literal pieces as a kid, reading it so many times the spine split in half. Right now, though, he couldn’t remember a single plot point.“You should sleep,” MJ whispered.“Yeah,” Peter mumbled. He didn’t move. His head felt too heavy, his body buzzing with that dizzy, too-tired sensation that made everything feel high-definition and hazy all at once. Everything in him wanted to relax, but it was like his body couldn’t pick a lane—pushing and pulling, half-asleep one second, wired to hell the next. He just needed someone to sedate him. Industrial-grade Benadryl.“You look uncomfortable.”“My b-body hurts,” Peter mumbled through his hands. “Everything hurts.”He glanced at her. She was still sitting a few feet away, arms loosely wrapped around her knees. It took every ounce of willpower he had not to move closer, to wrap himself around her, to beg her to forgive him for being such a time and energy drain. Surely, Midtown’s valedictorian had better things to do over the past two days than stress about him. And even if she didn’t, she deserved better.“I had the worst body aches when I had the flu a few years ago,” she said. “Do you have a weighted blanket? That helped a lot, and... geez, Tony’s place is just an altar to excess. I’m sure he’s got one in one of his three million rooms.”“I dunno. I’ve never—I haven’t used one, I d-don’t think.”“Do you want me to go ask Tony? He’s just downstairs, and—”“No,” Peter interrupted, his voice sharper than he meant. The knee-jerk panic blinded him, and before he could even process it, he was saying, “Um, no, please—please stay here. Please d-don’t go.”She stared at him for a moment, her eyes softening. “Okay. Okay, yeah.”
"What happened? I—we can sit d-down, MJ, it’s—”
“Someone had a gun. I don’t know what happened—Peter, I’m going to die.”
“Hey, hey, it’s okay,” her voice said, and he felt the mattress dipping. Peter swallowed hard, the leftover panic still static under his skin. Static, static, static. “You’re okay.”“I’m sorry,” he whispered, pushing his hair off his forehead. She climbed closer to him, too close, even though she probably knew he was dangerous, right? Everyone who got too close to him ended up in danger, culminating in terrible, unnecessary, premature deaths. Didn’t she know that? “I d-don’t—I’m so sorry.”For a second, Peter wanted to pull all his hair out, vision flicking back to the Beck illusions, when he saw all the carnage he’d inflicted over the past few years—both as himself, as Peter Parker, and as Spider-Man. A bumbling, clumsy, useless fucking kid who drained budgets and made everything worse, worse, worse. A wrecking ball of spider webs and poor impulse control. And everyone here—May, MJ, Ned, Tony—they all knew it, and if they didn’t, they’d figure it out soon enough, especially when this whole Beck mess blew up.“Jesus, Peter, you’re—hey, hey, it’s okay,” MJ said, voice pitching up. “Okay, you know what? Roll onto your shoulder.”For some reason, he did. Maybe he felt like he owed her for all the trouble he’d put her through, for all the trouble he was putting her through now. Part of him wished he’d never told her about Spider-Man, so she wouldn’t be involved in any of this. So she could be home, enjoying her Friday night turning into Saturday morning. He brought his knees to his chest.“Okay,” she mumbled. She placed a hand on his shoulder. His whole body responded, and as cheesy as it sounded, it literally felt like electricity, like flickers of light running up and down his forearm. “Can I…is this okay?”“Yeah,” he whispered.“Good. Good. Just…trying to mimic a weighted blanket, or something.” She shifted closer, slow and careful, until she was right behind him. “Just… how about this? Are you still okay?”He nodded, his eyes stinging. Her presence felt alive, almost tangible, something he could reach out and hold. It was like hot chai and warm jelly, rich with cinnamon and clove. “I’m gonna need an affirmative.”“Yeah,” he whispered, the word slurring a little. “Yeah, I’m good.”One arm slipped around his waist, the other slipping beneath his neck, pulling him gently back. He felt her press against him. Peter froze, his breath hitching, mind swirling and spinning and tripping over itself. “If this gets to be too much, just tell me, okay?”“I…” He exhaled, long and shaky, and slowly let himself lean back. Not much—just enough to feel her there. “Um.”“That okay?” MJ asked quietly.“Yeah,” Peter said, voice small. “Yeah, it’s...g-good.”She didn’t say anything at first. He felt her press her forehead between his shoulder blades, her fingers brushing gently against his arm, her thumb tracing soft circles over his sleeve. Peter bit his lip, willing himself to stop shaking, but everything felt so tender, and warmth spilled across his chest and over his collarbones. He needed this so bad.“Are you cold? You’re shaking.”Peter shook his head. “No. Just—d-don’t know.”“That’s okay. Just making sure.” Her finger traced over his hand. “You’re okay. I’m here.”Something in the way she said it made Peter buckle. His breath hitched, and before he could stop it, tears spilled, hot and fast, sliding down his face. Despite the full-body shudder she must’ve felt, MJ said nothing—just tightened her hold, her forehead resting against the back of his neck, legs folding gently around his body.So much for not burdening his family with more emotional weight. The shame physically burned. Thank God his back was to her, or he would’ve had to acknowledge how pathetic he probably looked, all trembling and sniffling, face flushed and red with tears. But then, she took his hands in hers, pulling them to his chest. Something about that cracked him open like a fucking geode. It unlocked real, wet sobbing, an infinitely more embarrassing level-up from the controlled whimpering he’d been doing. “I’m sorry,” he whispered, his voice breaking. He choked on air, shook his head, tried to keep everything somewhere under his ribs. “I’m so—please, I’m so, so sorry.”“Christ,” she mumbled. “Your shame complex is unmatched, dude. What do you even have to apologize for?”“Like… everything,” he forced out in that pathetic, shaky voice, still crying because, of course, he couldn’t stop. “I just—I’m so sorry. Disappeared, and then... then I d-dragged you into this, all of it. So m-much of your time, and now I’m... I’m m-making you—like, do all this.”MJ didn’t reply immediately. For a few beats, the only sound was Peter sniffling, choking back red-hot sobs, and fabric rustling as he tried to cover his face with his sleeve. Trying to get a hold on himself was like trying to put an ocean in a paper cup.Generally, Peter was an unapologetic crier. Both sets of parents raised him well in that department—he’d never felt ashamed of crying, whether as a guy or as a human being. But right now, with all his self-confidence obliterated and everything feeling so stupid and irrational, he was regressing to a point that he didn’t even know was on his map. “I do things because I want to,” MJ suddenly said, voice low. “I helped Tony’s shitty search efforts because I wanted to find you, nerd. I’m here now because I want to be with you.”“I d-don’t want to—I’m g-gonna have to talk to…”“You don’t wanna talk to who?” “SHIELD,” Peter whispered. “Talk about—I really, really d-don’t want to talk to them.”He was just as surprised by the topic change as she was, but everything was crashing down, and he couldn’t find a way to avoid jumping from one thought to the next. He was so tired. “What’s scaring you?” MJ asked, shifting slightly. “If it’s…they won’t do anything crazy, if that’s what you’re worried about.”“I want—um, are they, like, pressing charges? Like, against B-Beck?”“Last I heard, they had the whole gang of smarmy weirdos in custody, so…yeah, I think so.”“Oh.” Somehow, he already knew that. “I didn’t…d-didn’t think SHIELD was involved until—um, my aunt said something. I wonder if any others are, um, g-gonna b-be around.”“Bunch of agencies have jurisdiction. NYPD, FBI, SHIELD…I think DHS might throw their hat in the ring, just to say that they’re involved. Make this whole thing into a thumb-twiddling bureaucrat's wet dream.”She hadn’t meant to, but the thought of all these agencies having jurisdiction and wanting to get involved made him want to shrink into himself. Too many tall people in stupid suits and dumb acronyms.“Nothing bad will happen to you again,” MJ whispered. “I was just down there with Tony, and he literally threatened to send a bunch of SHIELD agents through a meat grinder if…if they cross certain lines.”“No, no, not that,” Peter said, his voice trembling. “I d-don’t—I’m gonna have to…to…”He couldn’t even finish the thought. The words got stuck in his throat. I’m gonna have to talk about it to a bunch of strangers, and I’m gonna have to keep talking about it. MJ just held him for a moment. “I know. I know it’s probably…a lot.”He nodded tightly. Cleared his throat.“But you have a lot of people in your corner, you know. And like I said, Tony will…I know he will make sure you’re good, alright? And I’m gonna be here.”“I d-don’t—” He sniffed and forced a joke. “I can’t afford your hourly, MJ.”She barked out a laugh. “No, I know. But for you, Peter, I’ll waive my regular rate.”So many people in suits. There are gonna be so many people in suits.“And he’s—Tony, I mean, he’s gonna get an attorney to make sure it’s... you know, handled—”“Shit, a lawyer?” Peter cried, unsure why that was the thing that got him. He coughed so loudly that MJ winced behind him. “From where? One of the—one of the Stark Industries ones?”“No, no,” MJ said, her voice still steady despite the tiny meltdown in front of her. “I can—here. The big, sweaty dude gave me and Tony his card. It’s in the book.”In one fluid motion, she released him from her arms, rolling toward the book on the nightstand. The sudden cold reminded him of stepping out of the shower, and he pushed himself onto his other shoulder to watch her, waiting for her to come back. Any disorienting shame about crying had fluttered out the window, and he just looked at her, eyes tracing her nose, lips, and cheekbones.“You’re allowed to move closer to me,” she deadpanned. “I don’t have the plague.”“I…” Peter blinked. “I wasn’t worried about that. I just d-didn’t—I didn’t want—”She patted the shoulder closest to him with her opposite hand. Peter glanced down at it, then back at her, and she nodded. With a quiet squeak of discomfort, Peter moved closer, his muscles on fire. But he endured, gradually melting into her side, his cheek on her shoulder and arm draped across her waist. Gently, she tucked him under her arm, pulling him closer.If the circumstances weren’t already so exhausting, he’d be diving into the “so, what does this mean?” conversation. But even if he had the capacity and wasn’t three blinks away from passing out, his face a blotchy mess because proximity was enough to make him cry, he'd still be hesitant. MJ was a lone wolf archetype. He could predict their conversation—maybe she'd say she didn’t like him like that, that it had been a mistake, that it was purely platonic, that she just felt sorry for how sad and small he looked. And yikes. He really didn’t need that right now.“Matthew M. Murdock,” MJ said, holding the card up to him. She squinted at it. “Attorney at law at... um, Nelson, Murdock & Page. West 44th Street.”He groaned for some reason, like that was even worse, somehow. “I d-don’t…”“Well, the sweaty guy recommended him,” MJ said softly, resting her cheek on his head. He was warm again, and he was terrified he might cry for the millionth time that night. “So that’s… a thing. But it’s a thing you don’t need to worry about right now.”“Who…”“Tony’s PA. The guy who drove us back.”“And…why—um, why did he g-give you the card?”“I demanded it.”Peter blinked slowly. "D-Demanded it?" "I’m nothing if not persuasive." MJ shrugged. "And tomorrow, I'll conduct a thorough background check. Just to make sure you're in good hands."“Uh-huh…” Peter’s voice trailed off. He tried to focus, but his brain suddenly felt like sludge, thoughts slipping in and out before he could grab them. Her fingers were back in his hair, her cheek resting against his head, his forehead was tucked into her neck, and it seemed like he’d exhausted his embarrassing crying quota for the night.His eyelids fluttered. The last thing he heard, just before the world dissolved, was MJ's voice, whispering something about how everything was going to be fine, how she’d be there when he woke up, how they’d talk more in the morning. And just like that, he was out, falling into sleep that wasn’t really sleep at all. Just a blanketing nothingness.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
If these stupid lawyers could get this stupid case out of his hair, Tony decided he’d buy them a brand-new office. This derelict little thing had not one, not two, but three broken floorboards and a bone-deep mold smell that he suspected no amount of Febreze could cover up. It was a far cry from the sleek law offices he was used to, where the floors gleamed like they’d been buffed by angels and bathroom sinks that spat out artisanal spring water."Christ, the door isn’t gonna bite you," Happy muttered, stepping forward to knock.“It’s dirty,” Tony said, pulling a face. “Like, seriously, does this firm even own a fucking Lysol wipe? Can’t they—” He mimed wiping the door up and down with exaggerated disgust.“God, just…manners, please.”“I’m just saying. Where’s the caution tape? This place is a biohazard.”“I mean this with every ounce of sincerity I have, Tony,” Happy said under his breath. “You’re insufferable.”“Oh, thank you, pookie. You’re a gem.”Talk about a long, stupid-as-shit night. Around sunset, he’d woken up to MJ and Ned, the wonder twins, muttering cryptic bullshit about Bruce finding the magic proof of Peter’s absence. Then, miraculously, they’d actually snagged the kid. A win. Police also arrested Beck and his blowhards. Another win.But of course, the worst part of any mission was what came next. The clean-up. Tying up loose ends, dodging nosy authorities, initialing paperwork, running blood tests. The never-ending, post-mission rigamarole. Somewhere in his lab, he had an actual checklist for dealing with clean-up.This was different, though. He wasn’t dumping the guy on the NYPD and washing his hands of it. No, he was personally invested in Beck’s misery, and he’d sign whatever dotted lines it took to make sure the bastard rotted. Tony wanted Beck and his pathetic little band of losers locked behind vibranium bars until the heat death of the universe. Unfortunately, the justice system was more complicated than that, providing “procedural safeguards” that prevent a billionaire from throwing his enemies in jail. But what if the enemy sucked really bad? Hadn’t they considered that?Regardless, if the criminal charges against Beck and his circus of morons were going to stick, the district attorney said she needed a witness to talk to her, to give an on-the-record statement. She couldn’t hold him indefinitely without pressing charges. Peter was one of those witnesses—the sole witness, actually. Ergo, Peter needed a lawyer.But last night had been way too soon for an on-the-record statement. A bunch of government dweebs in wired earpieces and sunglasses—at night, for fuck’s sake—rolled up to Stark Tower last night, practically beating them back to the house, Tony realized, yeah, Peter needs a damn good lawyer. Representatives from what felt like every single agency in existence—NYPD, NYSP, FBI, DHS, SHIELD, and even the FCC (which had absolutely no business being here, but whatever)—flooded the place, practically salivating at the chance to grill Peter.So for a solid half-hour, Tony and MJ clashed with these idiots."Come on, man, it’s called an initial statement," some smug jackass in a suit that looked two sizes too tight said. "And it’s—it's three in the morning. Just let me get my—"“Respectfully, Jared, you can take your procedural bullshit, set it on fire, and shove it up your ass,” Tony replied, his tone casual. “Now get out before I sue you for civil trespassing.”"He’s in the shower," MJ snapped at a woman with a greasy half-bun a second later. "Also, I’m pretty sure his doctors would have some very pointed things to say about harassing him while he’s in this... state.""Great point," Tony said, pointing at Dr. Cho. "Helen. Can you confirm? As Peter’s primary care physician, is it in Peter’s best interest to do a preliminary interview right now?"The doctor glanced up from her tablet. "I cannot think of a worse idea."Tony and MJ had fended them off for now, but he knew they’d be back. Until then, priority one was making sure Peter was in one piece, physically speaking. According to FRIDAY’s sneaky full-body scan, Peter wasn’t exactly winning any wellness awards. Severe sleep deprivation, moderate malnutrition, and dehydration had taken their toll. A blood test and preliminary statement could definitely wait. But, hey, at least there was no internal bleeding or lacerations. Silver lining.But priority two was getting that lawyer. Happy found a business card from a lawyer he’d used before—“Masters of discretion,” he’d claimed, and Tony was immediately sold. Happy then proceeded to call the lawyer’s personal cell about six hundred times before the lazy bugger finally picked up, mumbled something about how it was way too early, and ditched the tired pretense when he realized Tony Stark’s personal assistant was on the other end, and can you be available tomorrow around eight o’clock? And yes, the lawyer confirmed, he could certainly be available—and he’d make sure his entire office— a grand total of three people, by golly! —would be there. So here they were. Inside Happy’s briefcase was a file packed with everything they’d gathered about Beck and his goblins, including all the intel they’d handed off to the police, the district attorney, or whoever else had some use case for it.Now, these lawyers just needed to convince Tony that they could be trusted with it. That he could trust them to smooth out this mess without stirring too many pots or hurting Peter.The brass knob on the office door, which proudly displayed a cheap sign reading "Nelson, Murdock & Page," twisted. A guy with dark hair, sunglasses, and a ridiculously well-fitted white shirt stood there. "Good morning,” the lawyer said. “You must—"“Morning,” Tony cut him off, sidestepping the douchebag who apparently thought wearing sunglasses indoors made him look cool. He was getting really tired of that shit. “Good God, is that a fax machine? Donate this hunk of junk to a museum already.”“It is, Mr. Stark,” the man said, clicking the front door shut. “I’m Matt Murdock. It’s a pleasure.”“Gathered that from your printer-paper business card. Vistaprint is running a BOGO, by the way. Might want to invest in something that doesn’t immediately dissolve in water.”“Ignore him,” Happy muttered to Matt. “Hey, really appreciate you doing this on such short notice. I know getting the call must’ve been…um, unpleasant.”“Oh, don’t worry about it,” Matt replied quietly. “I was glad you thought of us.”“I cannot believe this building hasn’t been condemned yet,” Tony called over his shoulder. Poking around this bygone shithole was almost enough to distract Tony from the fact that he was in a law office. He hated lawyers the same way some people hated doctors—he only saw them when things went to shit, when he was vulnerable, when he was ripe for exploitation. It reminded him of dealing with his father’s estate after his parents died. The mess that’d been.“I’m also surprised,” Matt called back. “We’ve been looking for an interior designer, if you have any suggestions.”“It’d be a lipstick-on-a-pig situation,” Tony said loudly, staring at the peeling wallpaper. “Who are your neighbors, Walter and Jesse?”“Something like that.” Matt clasped his hands in front of him. “Um, Mr. Stark, can I get you anything to drink?”“Coffee,” Tony said flatly, making an exaggerated drinking motion with his hands. “Black. And powdered caffeine, if you have any. Please administer straight into my carotid.”“He also gets rude when he’s stressed,” Happy mumbled. “Tony, c’mon. They have a special room where we can, like, talk about all of this.”“I know how law firms work,” Tony said, spinning on his heel. He followed Happy and Sunglasses McGee into a new room with cracked crowning and yellowed ceilings, where a blonde woman and a blonde man were already sitting. Both stood up as Tony walked in—like he was the Pope or something—and gave him the stiffest handshakes he’d ever had. “Mr. Stark,” one said, visibly suppressing his enthusiasm. For a moment, his face reminded Tony of Peter. He had that sweet, squishy, Pillsbury Doughboy vibe going on. “I’m Foggy. It’s an absolute pleasure.”The other one, a wide-eyed woman, said, “Karen. We’re thrilled you’re considering representation with us.”Tony could’ve sworn he felt something—some invisible thing between the three lawyers. Belatedly, his mind clocked it— oh, that’s pure, unfiltered sexual tension, baby. He’d had enough threeways in the nineties to know this vibe. He glanced at Happy and bounced his eyebrows, but Happy was stone-faced. No fun. Tony flopped back into his chair, fielding small-talk while Matt grabbed his coffee —parking was fine, but the traffic was a nightmare. Eventually, Matt came back in with a chipped mug and—oh, fuck, he was using a cane. Tony went so hot so quickly that his eyes blurred. Matt was wearing sunglasses because he couldn’t fucking see. He grabbed the busted mug and took a sip before he could wallow in his own stupidity, nearly spitting the awful coffee across the table.“Right. So let’s get down to it,” Tony started, running a hand down his face. He wanted to get this over with. “This is a sensitive case. Discretion is non-negotiable. If I’m going to trust you with it, I need to know you can handle a big, complicated, highly classified mess.”“I…” Floppy started, glancing at Karen and Matt. “That’s not a problem at all. Under the New York Rules of Professional Conduct, sir, everything you tell us will be kept strictly confidential. It’s our understanding—”“Okay, nerd alert,” Tony interrupted. “And the professional code of whatever-the-hell hasn’t stopped lawyers from spilling my personal business to the media before. I’m willing to pay for discretion, but you’re gonna have to provide it.”For a few moments, the three just stared at him. Tony started wondering if this whole meeting was some elaborate scheme to leak his personal life to the tabloids, to cash a check from TMZ or Daily Mail and retire early. Maybe he’d just caught them. But then, Karen said, “Mr. Stark, any lawyer who went to the media about things you told them in the scope of their employment should be disbarred. That’s, like, Legal Ethics 101. We’re not allowed to do that, ever.” He groaned. “I don’t—”“When you start discussing your situation with a lawyer,” Karen said, “you’re entitled to certain… confidentiality protections.”Foggy cleared his throat. “And even if you don’t, like, retain us, you’re still discussing your legal situation with us within the scope of our employment. Everything here has to stay confidential anyway. Whatever you say from this point forward is under lock and key.”“Well, not to brag, but whatever I say next is also worth a pretty penny,” Tony muttered, glancing at Happy, then the table, and then his hands. He could feel himself stalling, but the idea of this making the front cover of some supermarket tabloid made his stomach churn. Those piles of wasted paper were indiscriminate—they didn’t care about age, connections, decorum. One of them ran a story about Tony’s sex life when he was fifteen years old. They were beyond fucked. “We’re motivated by more than money,” Matt said simply.“Oh?” Tony laughed bitterly. “And what would that be?”“Justice,” Matt replied, just as simply. “And doing the right thing.”“So you’ll have discretion because… you want justice?” He couldn’t iron the skepticism out of his voice.“Because discretion is the best way to ensure a fair trial, and it’s the right thing to do.”“And if we do go to the media, you’ll have all of the proper ammunition to disbar us,” Foggy interrupted, forcing an awkward laugh. Tony swallowed hard. It was a bitter relief to know his suspicions had been right. When his father died, Tony retained a few lawyers to “execute his succession plan” and “distribute his estate according to his will.” But then his other family—some random aunts and uncles, a cousin, whoever the hell else—contested the will, claiming Tony wasn’t fit for the responsibility. He was young. He practiced chronic narcissism. Before proceedings, Tony reluctantly admitted his coke problem to his lawyer. Asked if it would affect the succession planning. No more than a day later, The National Enquirer’s cover read, "TONY STARK'S DARK DESPAIR: COKE CRISIS AFTER DADDY’S DEATH! Kid Genius Spirals as Family Legacy Crumbles!" And that was it. No more lawyers for Tony.And this was different. This was so different. Whichever lawyers he picked would have to know that Peter Parker, the victim, was Spider-Man. Peter had only been taken because he was Spider-Man, working in an official Spider-Man capacity. The wrong lawyer, the wrong person, could easily take that little nugget of info to the press and leak his identity. The last thing Tony needed was some scumbag blowing the lid off the whole thing for a headline.“We don’t break confidentiality, Mr. Stark,” Matt suddenly said. “That’s a promise. Everything here stays here.”“It’s just…” Tony clicked his tongue. It’s just that I wouldn’t touch a lawyer with a hundred-foot pole, but I need to trust you slimy fucks with my kid’s biggest secret. “How much—Happy, what did you tell them?”“A child was hurt by a man with a grudge,” Karen said. “I think that was verbatim.”“Which is in our wheelhouse,” Floppy said, looking more serious than he had before. “Especially if the defendant tries to plead not guilty. We’re well-versed in criminal trial proceedings.” Is that a possibility? God, he hadn’t even considered that Beck might turn this into a full-on, claws-out, bitey cat-fight. And how would that change Peter’s role? Would he have to get up on the stand and testify? Would he have to sit in the same room as Beck? Take a lie-detector test? Speak to a jury? Tony didn’t want to be doing this. He sat in silence for a minute, just staring at the table. The only reason Peter needed a lawyer, as far as Tony could tell, was to make the next part of the process as easy as possible. Get as few people in the interview room as possible, talk to as few authorities as possible, and give them the bare minimum needed to lock Beck’s ass up and never have to hear from him again. He hated that he needed an attorney from Hell’s Armpit, or whatever this neighborhood was called.But this seemed like the least-awful option. These three weren’t victim’s rights attorneys, but they were close. Same ballpark. These were criminal defense attorneys, the kind who defended the little guy, who often turned out to be a victim themselves. They dabbled in civil rights, in keeping people from using protected parts of their identity against them in court. That’d probably be helpful.“If you took this client,” Tony started slowly, “if you found out something that could blow their whole world apart, would you keep it secret? Something that could... um, put you potentially in danger?”Karen exhaled slowly. “Put us in—”“We already do that, like, a lot,” Flippy said, eyes flicking between Karen and Tony. “Our clients—we get a lot of folks who are wrongfully accused, but they’re being accused for a reason. That reason is usually because they have the wrong secret, and people want to exploit it.”“There’s a lot of organized violence in this city,” Matt muttered. “I’m sure you understand.”“Organized violence with resources. Tons of them. Resources that can…you know, blackmail and silence victims.”“And they try to use those resources to…” Karen gestured vaguely. “Keep us at bay. Any criminal enterprise’s biggest nightmare is an effective attorney, and here, there are three.”Tony stared at them, not really seeing them. His hand was shaking, and he had no idea why—couldn’t tell if he was just cold in this breezy shitbox of an office, the tension in his shoulders, or low blood sugar. He’d last eaten before stepping into the Beck House of Horrors, and that was, what, eight hours ago? Maybe the correct answer was D, all of the above.“Okay,” he muttered, rubbing his face. “Fuck it. Happy, do you have—”Before he could finish, Happy was already pulling the manila folder from his briefcase and flopping it onto the table. Papers spilled everywhere—payroll records, termination notices, nondisclosure agreements.And Tony dove in.Only as he was saying it out loud—and only his piece, for the record, because he had no idea what Beck actually did inside of that forsaken facility—did he realize just how intensely fucked it all was. A seventeen-year-old child had been injected with some industry-grade tranquilizer by a disgruntled former employee, then held captive as…bait, it seemed. And that wasn’t even touching the loads of Stark technology, the surveillance system, and the whole Two Tonys episode.By the time he finished, all three attorneys had gone sheet white. The blond guy— Froggy, Tony’s brain unhelpfully supplied—abruptly stood, shot up like someone had stuck a cattle prod in his back. “Does anyone want coffee?” he asked, already halfway to the door.“Loads,” Tony called back. “I take it black.”“Okay,” Karen said, tapping her pen on the yellow legal pad. She stared at her notes for a moment, then looked at Tony. To his surprise, she looked angry, her face flushed and eyebrows drawn. “I’m…I don’t even—I’m so sorry this happened to you. To Peter.”“I cannot even imagine how it felt in the thick of it,” Matt muttered, pushing his hair back. “The DA will definitely prosecute this, so retaining an attorney for Peter is a good idea. I mean—”“I’m not really worried about the charges they’ll press against Beck,” Tony interjected quickly. “I’m more concerned about what they’re gonna—like, about Peter’s role in prosecuting… in, um…”“You don’t want him to have to relive this through testimony,” Karen said, her voice softening. “There’ll be ways to, um, mitigate how this trial affects him. Protective orders, for one—making sure as few people as possible are in the courtroom. We could also try for closed-circuit testimony, and—”“What’s the timeline?” Tony asked, his voice clipped. It was one of his tells—interrupting people when he got freaked out, wanting efficiency, needing quick, bite-sized answers so he could absorb the information and keep moving. Happy gave him a look. “Like, for that first…formal interview.”“Did they conduct a preliminary?” Matt asked. “The initial questioning?”“No. I would’ve nuked them into a red mist.”Matt stared at him for a second, then chuckled awkwardly. “Well, okay. Within thirty-six hours of rescue, the NYPD is gonna want to talk to him. They usually do a preliminary interview to get some baseline facts so that they can charge the suspect—someone can only be held without charges for forty-eight hours, and thirty-six gives them enough time to evaluate the charges, so if they didn’t…they’ll want to move quickly on this.”“As your attorneys, we’d be able to schedule it,” Karen added. “And we can push it off as long as possible, if that’s what you want. But we shouldn’t wait too long. We can do it at—”“Right.” Tony nodded tightly, but the piercing buzz in his temples didn’t leave. “Could—do you think I could be in the room? I mean, could I be there with him?”Matt and Karen exchanged a glance, and Floppy reappeared with a tray of five coffee cups. He plucked one off and handed it to Tony. “One black coffee for the fine patron.”“Mhm, gracias,” Tony muttered, taking a sip of the coffee and immediately wishing he hadn’t. He nearly spat it out right onto the table. “Jesus. Was this brewed in a landfill?”“So here’s what I think,” Matt said, “You’d have to get consent for sure from his legal guardian—that’s May Parker?”“Yup, that’s right.”“Great. SHIELD and the FBI would probably need to sign off on it too, but we should be okay. I’m assuming you’ve got...connections we could leverage?”“Something like that. Is this, like, a testimony? And would both of those agencies be in the room? Like, for the formal interview?” “Not a testimony,” Karen said. “This is a structured, official questioning, not…a testimony is under oath. I would expect there to be at least two FBI agents leading the interview, paired with NYPD officers and SHIELD agents. There’d also be lead and secondary—”Tony scoffed, leaning back. “Jesus, what is this? An executive agency family reunion?”“These are... extraordinary circumstances,” Karen said softly. “I mean, we’re talking about so many federal charges alone—wire fraud, computer fraud, possibly domestic terrorism. And on the state level, it’s even worse. First-degree kidnapping for sure, unlawful imprisonment, criminal possession of a weapon, destruction of evidence, assault, menacing, reckless endangerment—”“Not to mention child endangerment,” Matt muttered. “Conspiracy to commit kidnapping. Conspiracy to commit terrorism. Probably racketeering.”“Identity theft, given the—what was it, ‘Two Tony episode?’” Flip-dip said. “Human trafficking. Definitely theft of trade secrets if the DA wants to get real creative and throw the kitchen sink at him.”“So yeah,” Karen said, giving him a long look. “Those are the potential charges based on your account alone, without even knowing Peter’s side of the story. There are a lot of people who need his insight before they can begin properly investigating.” “What?” Tony forced out, voice tight. His fingers were going numb. “There could be more?”“Depending on the circumstances,” she said quietly. “We’ll have to talk to Peter whenever he’s ready, but…Beck could be looking at an attempted murder charge, aggravated harassment, something like that.”Tony just stared at her. Attempted murder? Little black circles clouded his vision, and his head spun, spun, spun, both unable and unwilling to process that. It wasn’t even nine in the morning, but God, he needed a drink. Or maybe just a bullet to the skull. It blew his goddamn mind that he’d dropped the ball this hard. That if his awful judgment hadn’t kicked in, he wouldn’t be sitting in this hellhole office, learning that he’d put his kid in what could be an attempted murder trial. It was his fault.He barely managed, “And can we do anything about that?”“The…charges?”“No. Getting fewer people in the room.”“No, sir,” Matt said. “We cannot.”“Would you say your goal is similar to that of a victim advocate?” Karen asked, pen tapping lightly against her legal pad. “Ensuring Peter’s rights as a victim are respected, advising him through the trial process, and representing his interests if he chooses to make a statement?”“That’s exactly right,” Tony said, relieved someone could actually articulate what he wanted. “Would you guys handle setting up the…what was it, formal interview?”“Yes, sir,” Karen said in a tone that suggested she’d just said that. “We’ll coordinate with law enforcement. If he got back around two-thirty or three last night, he’ll probably sleep until…we could schedule it for tonight around seven or eight, just to get it over with.”“Obviously, we can try to make them budge,” Matt added, “but it might be worth getting it over with so he can actually start a constructive recovery process. But this is within your discretion.”Tony grabbed the table. “I…yeah, okay. Let’s—you guys will be in the room? And is there any way we could do something more like…like nine? I don’t want to push it.”“We’ll be there, and that’s fine,” Karen replied, her pen tapping rhythmically on the pad. “You just need to make sure he’s awake, okay? If—you said he didn’t get a full check-up last night. Before the interview tonight, make sure he has a medical check-in, and have the records ready. And—”“Can we seize the building, by chance?”Floppy blinked, and Tony could feel the confusion. “Um,” he said slowly, clearly trying to keep up. “The one Beck used? Like, a civil asset forfeiture situation? That’s where the government seizes property used in criminal activity and resells it?”“No. Can I get the building and sell it?” Tony asked, already regretting even asking.“You’d have to sue him,” Matt said slowly. “And if he couldn’t pay you, the government would have to start liquidating his assets. If one of those assets is the building, then you might be able to possess the building instead of strictly its value, um, and sell it yourself.”“Right, okay. Do you do that stuff? Like, suing?”“That’s civil law, and we’re criminal lawyers, so…no.”“Can’t I just pay you more to handle that?” Tony grumbled.“If you’d want a shitty job done, sure.”Tony smacked the table, more out of frustration than anything else. “Actually, fantastic pivot. How much do I have to pay you guys to stay on 24/7 call until the trial ends?”They all paused, exchanging those annoying looks that made Tony want to flip the table over. They’re totally all fucking. He couldn’t resist a glance at Happy, who just rolled his eyes.Matt finally broke the silence. “Are you looking for a retainer?”“Huh?”“A retainer’s an upfront payment. You can do a general retainer, which—”“Just give me a number,” Tony interrupted. “How long is a criminal trial?”“Um, twelve weeks or so.”“Spectacular. How much do you guys usually charge per attorney for that?”“In a victim advocate role?” Karen asked, and Tony nodded. She scribbled a number on her legal pad, showed it to Flappy, and he nodded. Turning back to Tony, she said, “Usually fifteen per attorney. That covers case prep, trial attendance, consultations… and the ability to charge more if things—”“Get complicated,” Floppy filled in, catching Tony’s expression. “Longer duration, shifts in responsibility—like if we had to pivot to a defense or civil rights role.”Tony wasn’t even processing the details about the retainer anymore. His brain was still stuck on the price. “Fifteen?” Foggy nodded. “Per lawyer. Since there are three of us, that’s forty-five upfront.”“Jeez, guys.” Tony let out a low whistle. “What coupon code did you apply?”“Excuse me?”“I just wasn’t expecting you to lowball me so hard. Thought you’d at least try to squeeze six figures out of me.”Karen frowned, her pen tapping on the legal pad. “We’re being reasonable.”“Reasonable for people with a net worth of, like, four pennies and belly-button lint. Try again.”“Mr. Stark, we don’t take advantage—”“Please. If I thought you were trying to fleece me, I’d respect you more.” “But—”“You’re putting your names—and possibly your necks—on the line to make sure this kid doesn’t get steamrolled,” Tony said, his voice taking an edge. “This isn’t just filing paperwork and showing up in court. You’re making sure Peter doesn’t get chewed up and spat out by a system that doesn’t give a damn about him. Charge me like it.”Foggy ran a hand through his hair. “Is… twenty more reasonable?”“Okay, you know what? This is unfair. Let me clarify what I want. You’re protecting a kid—not just any kid, but the one I care about more than I probably should. The kid who just got kidnapped by sadists who knew exactly who he was.” His tone turned sharp, his voice low. “I don’t want you taking other cases. I don’t want you squeezing this in between landlord disputes and bar fights. I want you all-in. So how much to keep you all-in until the trial ends—assuming it wraps in twelve weeks?”“Oh,” Karen murmured. “Yeah, okay. That’s more… more intensive than we expected.”“Forty,” Flappy blurted out, eyes wide. Matt whipped toward him, and Karen’s cheeks flushed crimson. “Each.”Tony exhaled slowly, as if they were really making him do the math. He hadn’t gotten to peacock about his wealth in a while. Let me have some fun. “No. Let’s do four hundred.”“Like, an hour?” Foggy looked pale. “Mr. Stark, that’s too—”“Total.” He dragged a hand down his face. “Also, Jesus, call me Tony. Mr. Stark was my father.”The silence that followed was deafening.“That’s a lot of money,” Foggy said stupidly.“Look at you, math whiz.” Tony deadpanned. “But this also means Peter gets the best legal defense possible, and I get peace of mind knowing you’re not half-assing it because some guy in Hell’s Bathroom needs help fighting a parking violation. You want to keep charging your usual ‘neighborhood-friendly’ rates? Go nuts. But these are high retainers for high performance, okay?”Karen regained her composure first. “That’s… extremely generous.”Tony rolled his eyes. “It’s not generosity, sweetheart, it’s insurance. This money makes sure I don’t wake up one day to a news alert that my kid is rotting in some government facility because his attorneys were too busy with other cases to shut it down before it started.”The three just stared.“Do we have a deal?”They clamored to shake his hand. The drive home was long. Not in minutes or miles—no, it was the mental kind of distance, where time felt like expired milk, all gelatinous and clumpy. Tony gripped the manila folder so hard his knuckles were white, eyes fixed out the window, glazed over but somehow hyper-focused. If he focused hard enough, he was pretty sure his eyes could’ve drilled a hole through the windshield. Beside him, Happy fumbled with the radio, flicking through stations to dodge the endless elegies and warbly slow songs in favor of something a little less… depressing. Upbeat, even. Maybe MJ had been right about his gravelly old-man ballads. But nothing felt right. The Top 40, classic rock—no dice. Before he left the shitty law office, Karen assigned him homework. First, he needed to get May to agree to some Consent to Presence of Support Person form. It was a formality, a legal technicality that allowed him to be present in the interview room with Peter—if that’s what Peter wanted. Karen said she’d bring it with her later, when it was time for the formal interview. Second, assuming the world didn’t collapse on itself in the meantime, Tony had to figure out if Peter wanted just him in the room or both of them. Peter had been through hell already. Wouldn’t surprise him if the kid preferred to have someone, anyone, familiar with him in that bureaucratic wasteland. Especially because it would be at the NYPD’s concrete hellhole down the street.Third, he needed to tell the buffoons at the NYPD, FBI, and SHIELD that if they thought for even one second they could bar him from that room, they were going to find themselves out of a job.It didn’t escape Tony that most of those bullet points first required talking to May. They hadn’t talked much since Peter got back. She’d been too busy helping Peter with the shower, while Tony was drafted alongside MJ into the war against the blood-sucking losers in his kitchen. She’d gone to bed after that, and she was still asleep when he left this morning. She wouldn’t be asleep forever, though.Same deal with Pepper. He’d barely seen her between the agent assault and him storming off this morning. A rushed “everything’s fine, we’re getting it under control,” after her five o’clock alarm had gone off, a kiss, some words meant to reassure her even though he didn’t feel the least bit reassured himself. And at six o’clock, he’d hugged Morgan for the first time in too long, nodding as she muttered about the agents in the tower, the weirdness of it all, and Daddy, what’d they want? She’d forgotten to turn on her room’s noise-cancelling last night, so she’d heard the agents, the yelling.But Tony wasn’t really sure how to answer that. He couldn’t tell what Pepper told her about the situation, why she hadn’t seen her dad in a couple of days, and Morgan wasn’t Peter’s biggest fan. No, at first, she really, really didn’t like the kid. Not when he showed up at Tony’s hospital bedside after the whole Thanos ordeal, crying loudly into his hand while doctors poked and prodded Tony with IVs or...whatever doctors do. Not when he started hanging around, taking up her old man’s time in ways she didn’t understand—closed-door conversations, Avengers nonsense, fixing things in the lab. Not when he would get things over which Morgan once had a monopoly, like hair ruffling and hugs.To Morgan’s credit, there were no tantrums, no dramatic outbursts, no screaming matches. Just silence. Just a cold, deliberate avoidance every time Peter was in the room. Tony remembered one moment in particular, back when they still had the lake house, when he watched it play out firsthand. Morgan sat on the dock, tossing pebbles into the water, small shoulders hunched. And then Peter approached.“Hey, Morgan,” he said softly, stepping onto the dock. “Whatcha doing?”Morgan didn’t look up. “Throwing rocks.”“Cool, cool.” Peter lowered himself beside her, picking up a smooth, oval-shaped stone. “Mind if I join you?”No answer. Peter hesitated but didn’t leave. “I bet I can make one skip. You ever tried that?”Still nothing.Tony remembered watching Peter’s posture tighten—his shoulders hiking up, his knees drawing closer to his chest. And then, tentatively, he tried one more time. “You want me to show you?”Morgan finally turned to him. From where he sat, Tony couldn’t see her expression, but he remembered her tone. “You’re always here.”And this was a fair observation. In the months after Thanos, Peter had spent a lot of time at the cabin. Partly because he was still recovering, partly because Tony had wanted him there—away from the city, the chaos, the messy, retrogressive efforts to rebuild what’d been lost before the next school year started. He’d taken up in the guest room, just down the hall from Morgan’s dollhouses and Lego cars.And she hadn’t loved it.Peter blinked. “Yeah, I…I have.”“You weren’t here before,” she said, tossing a sharp-edged rock into the water. It plunked and splashed. She angled herself in a way that let Tony see her face. “It was just me and Daddy and Mommy. But now you’re always here.”Tony remembered this moment too vividly—the space between Morgan’s words and Peter’s response stretched out in his memory like slow-motion footage. He remembered the way Peter fidgeted, flipping the smooth stone between his fingers, remembered Morgan staring at him with all the righteous fury a five-year-old could muster. Remembered the way her jaw set in a scowl that was all Pepper.And he remembered, most of all, the way it felt like he had failed them both.“I mean,” Peter started, his voice small. “I’m…Morgan, I’m sorry that—I don’t have to be—”“Why do you have to be here?” Morgan snapped. “Why?” “Oh, geez. I mean…um—”“You’re stealing him.”Peter suddenly looked horrified, all wide eyes and flushed cheeks. “What?”“You stole my daddy,” she accused, turning on him fully now, little hands clenched into even littler fists. “He’s always with you. He’s always talking to you, and teaching you stuff, and hugging you.” Her voice wobbled on that last part. “And now he doesn’t have time for me anymore.”That—okay. That objectively wasn’t true.Tony had always made sure to set aside time for Morgan. He spent hours every day painting her nails, baking little desserts, sitting through pretend tea parties, playing with blonde Barbie dolls, watercoloring with her despite the fact that he sucked at it. But he did everything his own father hadn’t done—he made time, made sure she knew she was loved, made sure she never felt like an afterthought.At the same time, of course things weren’t perfectly balanced. Morgan was five. Peter was a teenager. Their roles in Tony’s life, their needs, their interests—none of it overlapped naturally. And he wasn’t about to drag Peter along on tea parties or Build-a-Bear excursions with Morgan when he knew she’d spend the entire time glaring at him. But try explaining that to a then-five-year-old.Peter looked like he’d been kicked in the ribs. He fumbled with the rock some more. “Morgan, I swear, I—I didn’t mean to—”“I don’t care,” Morgan cut in, flicking one last rock into the lake with a sharp, angry toss. “I don’t like you.”Tony had seen a lot of things in his life. Cities falling. Aliens invading. Entire populations snapping out of existence. But watching Peter Parker get absolutely wrecked by his furious kindergartener ranked high on the list of things that made his stomach turn.It’d gotten less toxic since then. Less hostile. If anything proved that, it was this morning—when Morgan had actually asked about Peter. Whatever Pepper told her was enough to quell the one-sided, Cold-War-level standoff she’d been holding against him.But now, sitting in Happy’s car, listening to the wrong song with a sweaty manilla folder in his fists, Tony found himself spiraling. Was this just another Stark cycle? Howard never gave him what he needed—no warmth, no I love yous, no pats on the back, no reminders that he was worth something. No real effort to make sure his kid didn’t feel like an afterthought. And Tony worried, a lot, that he was breeding the same resentment in Morgan. Not the exact same, but close enough—a slightly different brand of neglect, one that didn’t come from a lack of affection, but from imbalance.And maybe that wasn’t fair. Maybe he was overthinking it.But she was a Stark, born to a Stark, raised by a Stark. Maybe it was inevitable. Fuck. He realized, with the urgency of a train slamming into his chest, that he needed to fucking eat something. He’d been practically injecting caffeine into himself all night, and caffeine was just an anxiogenic when it didn’t have food to burn through—or whatever the nerdy explanation was. Bruce told him once, and he couldn’t remember. So, as soon as he got back to the Tower, he made a beeline for the fridge, rounding a corner. And there, sitting at the little table tucked against the wall, was May.“Good morning,” she muttered. A white mug sat in front of her, the words CHAOS COORDINATOR stamped across it in bold black font. Pepper had given it to him last Christmas. “Oh, Jesus.” Tony flinched so hard he actually stumbled back a step, slapping a hand over his chest. Once he found his footing, he forced a laugh. “I guess I see where Peter gets that from.”“Huh?” May barely looked up, her fingers tracing the lip of the mug.“Peter,” Tony said, reaching for the fridge handle. “He does this thing where he sneaks up on me—just appears out of nowhere, says something, and scares me so bad I jump out of my skin.”May’s lips twitched into a brief smile, but it didn’t reach her eyes. Instead, she glanced down at the table, quiet for a long beat. “Yeah. He does that with me, too.”“Might be the spider thing.”The levity lasted all of two seconds before May's expression shifted, gaze steady over the rim of her mug, brow drawn.
Here we go.
“So,” she said, gently setting it down. “Did you want to…I don’t know, debrief?”“Absolutely,” he said quickly, snatching a yogurt and shutting the fridge door. “Um, did you want to talk about—about last night?”“Nope. All of it, actually.” She exhaled, something sharp and restrained in her voice. “I don’t know if you’ve realized, but you’ve been deliberately evasive with me this whole time, and I’m getting pretty tired of it.”Tony felt the color vanish from his face. He blinked at her, instantly aware that she was right. Knowing he’d have killed him if their positions were reversed. Knowing, with bone-deep certainty, that he had no idea how to fix it.And he’d gone into this conversation knowing he was in the wrong. Knowing he should’ve done more to protect Peter, to keep May informed, to get him back sooner. Every single thing that went wrong was on him. He could do something right and let May, a good person, get it out on him.He was a lot of things, but a coward wasn’t one of them.“I’m sorry,” he started. It felt like a good start. An honest start. “I don’t… I’m sorry. I thought—um, with regard to, like, the search part of this—”“No,” she interrupted with a sharp wave of her hand. “Let me remind you of what you promised me when Peter decided to do this whole Avengers thing—you promised that you’d keep me in the loop and keep him safe. Got that? Somehow, you failed on both.”Tony blinked. Then, slowly, he set the yogurt on the counter. “That’s…right.”“I want to know how this happened,” she muttered, tracing the rim of her mug again, slow and deliberate. “Somehow, for the past few days, you’ve managed to loop in Peter’s friends while keeping me out of it. Thanks for that, by the way.”“That—”“And for the record, Tony, I want to kill you,” she said plainly. Like it was just a fact. Like she understood that there would be no consequences for saying it. There wouldn’t be. “I want to grab you and rip you apart, piece by piece. I want to dismantle you for what you’ve done here. I want to sue you ten ways from Saturday and make you bleed. You get that?”Tony nodded weakly. Yeah, he got that.“But the only thing stronger than my desire to kill you with my bare fucking hands is my love for Peter,” she said, pointing at him. “And unfortunately, he’d be destroyed if I did anything to hurt you. And because I love him, I’ll…I’ll give you a chance to explain what the fuck went wrong here. Consider it due process, or whatever the hell.”Tony nodded again, staring at the floor. He barely knew how to start. Barely knew how to get his mind out of the loop—that everything that’s happened before is happening again. Peter suffering. Adding precautions.Peter suffering again. Adding more precautions.And now, Peter was down the hall, suffering. What other precautions existed?Tony could never keep him safe. Never keep him from suffering. Never be trusted with the kid’s well-being and safety, because somehow, he always fucked it up.Everything was a cycle. "I—" He paused, rubbing the back of his neck. "After the whole Thanos thing, I cut off Peter’s comms to Nick Fury, who—he’s the director of SHIELD. He’s the one who usually flags high-stakes missions. It wasn’t just a precaution, it was—” He shook his head. "I wanted him to stay a friendly neighborhood… whatever."“Well, that worked really well.”"I told him to stay out of it," Tony mumbled. He couldn’t look up. "We got notice of a… thing in Manhattan. Some big robot. Big enough that Fury called me out of retirement. Peter turned up, and I think— I think Beck’s team must’ve interfered with his comms, because, again, he was never supposed to be there. Never supposed to receive notice. I told him to stay on the sidelines, because I didn’t want him going— didn’t want to involve him in another high-stakes, um… catastrophe."Everything really was a push-and-pull with him. Everything was a pendulum. Everything was a rubber band, snapping in opposite and reactive directions, pinching and slicing and biting at him. "Thanos—" Tony started before his voice hitched. He shook his head hard, cleared his throat. "After all of that, I’ve been… I’ve been trying to keep him safe. Please believe that. I know it didn’t work, and I know that’s my fault—I should’ve been better—but I had so many precautions. I limited his access. I explicitly benched him. I had my own software tracking him during the fight so I’d know if he got involved—I have trackers everywhere on his suit. They took him anyway, but I tried.”The last word didn’t feel like an assertion. It felt like a desperate reassurance, like he was trying to convince himself that any of it—any of those measures, those limits—had actually done anything. He couldn’t be objective about it. Couldn’t tell if this would’ve happened without the precautions or if it had happened because of them.“He’s not some fragile thing you can lock away when it gets tough,” May mumbled. “He’s not your weapon.”He couldn’t look up. Couldn’t breathe past the simulated Howard in his head —you drag people from the benches, then throw them back once you’re done. And God, Beck absolutely nailed that one. Bastard should’ve pursued psychoanalysis instead of computer science. Tony was so willing to shape the terms, to design the environment, to dictate all of the conditions if it meant putting himself in the driver’s seat. And maybe some of that came down to trust. He trusted Peter, obviously—he wouldn’t give a million-dollar suit to some random kid. But maybe there was a gap between what was and what should’ve been. Between where Tony’s trust ended and his fear began. Tony was always willing to usurp control, to seize fate by the throat, to manufacture an artificial outcome so he wouldn’t have to trust the people around him to do the thing he wanted them to do. He’d shoulder the entire burden if it meant never worrying about when or if he should’ve intervened. It wasn’t arrogance. But he would always choose predictable outcomes over leaving things to chance or trusting others completely. He would always step in, especially if Peter was on the line, rather than risk failure. He’d burn himself to ash before he let the kid go.“I know,” Tony mumbled. “Maybe in your mind, but not in anything else that matters. Definitely not in your heart.”Tony exhaled a half-laugh despite himself."Something I’ve learned, Tony," May said, "is that at some point, you have to trust that you’ve raised them correctly. That you’ve given them the resources, the brain, the heart required to be a good, functioning person in society."“I didn’t—” Tony shook his head again. “I didn’t bench him as an indictment of your parenting. I trust that—” "No," she interrupted, "but it’s an indictment of your mentorship. You don’t trust him to do well because you don’t trust that you mentored him correctly. And it seems like every time something goes wrong, you self-isolate and freak out."Tony’s hands gripped the countertop behind him. The floor felt like it was sinking, everything blurring in his peripherals, his stomach practically in his knees. He wondered how common it was for employers to cry in front of their employee’s aunt. Not too common, he guessed."You can’t keep doing this," May said, her voice a touch softer now. “You—”“Doing what?”"Whatever this self-destructive bullshit is,” she said. “I mean…Christ, Tony. You’ve taught him how to think, how to assess situations, how to choose his battles. He knows how to be Spider-Man. You can’t think you’re helping by benching him whenever things get tricky.”“It’s not that I think—” Tony cleared his throat. “It just…it’s not that. I don’t think I’m—”“No, that’s literally what it is,” May cut in. “I’m not saying you don’t trust Peter. I’m saying you don’t trust yourself—you don’t trust that you’ve done a good job teaching him.”He shook his head again. Of course, she was right. It wasn’t that he didn’t trust Peter, it was just… he didn’t trust his own ability to prepare him. And if he got hurt because Tony didn’t teach him something, show him something, or prepare him in the right way, he would never forgive himself. “I mean… didn’t that happen? Am I misremembering Thanos?”“Sorry?” May snapped. “Wasn’t that an intergalactic, genocidal, warmongering space demon? Are you seriously blaming yourself for Peter disappearing when literally none of that was in your hands?”“Okay,” Tony said quietly. His heart was burning, he realized distantly. “It’s just—I’m not… I’m not a good mentor, May. I don’t know what I’m doing. I… I never had—hell, I don’t even know what a good role model looks like. You’re right about that.”He finally lifted his chin, meeting her eyes. It physically hurt. May stared back, fingers laced under her chin, like she’d been waiting for him to admit this.“I didn’t have…a good mentor,” Tony said, a little breathless. “It’s a long story. My father wasn’t… wasn’t exactly the ‘model’ type. He wasn’t a good guy. Not a good mentor. After he died, I picked—um, Obadiah Stane. I don’t remember how much made it to the news, but he helped a terrorist group kidnap and kill me—fun fact—and when they failed, he tried to kill me himself. So, no. I never had a good mentor. I trust Peter, I really do, but I don’t trust myself to have done… a good job with him. I don’t know what a good mentor is.”May didn’t respond right away. She just sat there, eyes wide, taking him in. Tony realized with a sickening clarity that he was trauma-dumping on a woman whose child had just been missing for over sixty hours —her child, the one Tony was supposed to be keeping safe. The sheer arrogance of his own outpouring made him want to swan-dive into a paper shredder.He couldn’t trust himself to be a good person.“I’ll never say this again, so savor it, but you’re a damn good role model for him,” May said decisively. She put up a finger, sipped her drink, and added, “I don’t like you, but it’s true. You’ve done a good job. You just don’t see it because you’re so caught up in trying to protect him.”“It’s—” Tony dragged a hand down his face. “I’m glad you think that.”May lowered her mug slowly, her eyes never leaving him. “You don’t believe me?” Tony avoided her gaze again. His eyes stung. "It's just...I'm the one who got him into all of this. He was fine before... before all of this—before I—""Stop," May interrupted, scoffing. “What the hell is in the water here? Why does every damn Avenger have a three-story shame complex?”“I—”“Stop blaming yourself,” she said. “Peter’s an agent of free will, just like you and me. He chose this. He chose you, Tony. He trusts you. At some point, you can’t…we can have all the precautions in the world—the tracker, whatever—but you can’t physically manipulate everything and rob him of the chance to exercise what you’ve taught him. And trust me, it’s a lot.”“I can’t just let him put himself in danger,” Tony said, his voice tight, the words trembling as they left his mouth. “It’s like... it’s my responsibility. I did literally nothing for him to pick me as a mentor. I mean that—I did literally nothing to deserve it. The least I could do is protect him.”“As a parent, you understand that we cannot protect our children,” May said. The words hit Tony like a closed-fist punch to the sternum. “It’s just a fact. We try, and we try so damn hard, but we can’t. Not only do we fail, but sometimes, our efforts only make things worse. It’s the same for mentorship.”“Maybe that’s true,” Tony muttered, a bitter laugh escaping him as he ran a hand through his hair. He needed to eat something. “But am I just supposed to... supposed to accept that? Just throw my hands in the air and give up?”“I’m not saying you should just accept it. You can’t. But you have to acknowledge it. You can’t protect him from everything. Hell, you can’t protect any of them from everything. You’ve done your part—your best. But you don’t control the outcome.”Tony rubbed his face, pressing his fingers hard against his temples as if it could push the pressure in his chest away. It was ironic, he realized, that he could be one of the wealthiest, most powerful men in the state, and still not have the means to protect Peter. He was literally Iron Man, and still, that wasn’t enough. What a tragedy.“I should be able to,” he whispered. “I should be able to make sure nothing happens to him.”“That’s what makes you a good mentor,” she said. Something about how she said it just sounded like Peter—sounded round at the edges, warm in the center. “You want to protect him. That’s enough. But Jesus, Tony, you have to have some self-compassion. Be nicer to yourself. You don’t bear the responsibility for every shortcoming or failure. You’ve done your part.”“I don’t know that,” Tony said. He swallowed hard, the words chalky and bitter. “I don’t know if I’ve... I’ve done my part. I don’t know that I’ve done enough for him.”“That’s what trust is, isn’t it?” May shrugged and sipped her mug. “Trust is just faith. Lacking all the answers and believing anyway. You engineers struggle with that, but…if people could only act on data, then nobody would become a parent. Or a mentor.”“I’ve never been too good at that,” he muttered. “Not sure if you noticed.”“Well, it’s never too late to learn.” May smiled slightly. “Seriously. You need to be nicer to yourself. Self-destruction is acidic, Tony. It’ll eat its way out of you and spill onto everyone around you. I’m telling you—practice some self-love and compassion before your repressed bullshit leaks onto Peter.”Tony stood there, frozen for a second, staring at the floor. Part of him wondered if she’d say anything else, but nope—he heard fabric rustling, the faint tap-tap-tap of her fingers scrolling on her phone. End of conversation. He kept his eyes shut. He hated how she’d called his ass out. Honestly, it would’ve hurt less if she just punched him, kicked him in the ribs, or smashed his face into the counter. But she was a Parker. While Starks were stuck in a goddamn hamster wheel, Parkers were kind, gentle souls. Forgiving. He couldn’t wrap his head around how two completely different kinds of people could come from the same place, cross paths, and yet, how the kinder one didn’t just walk away. How they would still choose to stick around people like Tony. He sometimes worried he was infectious. Fuck. He needed to ask about that form.***For about ten seconds after she woke up, MJ had no idea where she was. The first red flag was that she was on her side, holding something that sure as hell didn’t feel like her spare pillow—and hey, hey, she barely hugged that thing anymore. Sunlight peeked through the gap in the curtains, half-blinding her, and she squinted. Wait —what the hell? Is that a fucking The Empire Strikes Back poster on the wall? After a few seconds of disorienting confusion, she realized she was in Peter’s room in Tony Stark’s tower. She couldn’t imagine telling her week-ago self, hey, you’re gonna wake up in Peter’s boujee suite in Tony Stark’s tower, and instead of freaking out, you’re going to be totally normal about it. Her week-ago self was a totally different person.She glanced down. The distinctly non-pillow thing in her arms was his head tucked under her chin, his breath warm against her neck. His shoulders rose and fell in a steady rhythm. Then, confusion hit again because, seriously—what the fuck? Wasn’t she supposed to be a grade-A bitch who nobody ever felt at ease around? Most of that characterization was her fault, given the jokes she made, the jabs she threw around, the wall she’d deliberately erected to keep her from ever having to say or do anything real.But no. He seemed... comfortable. One of his arms was wrapped around her waist, and his legs were tangled in hers. He’d seen that wall of hers and scaled it.Typical of a spider, she supposed. She swallowed hard, suddenly realizing she needed water—desperately. A quick glance at the bedroom clock told her it was well past noon, which explained why her throat felt like sandpaper. The kitchen was just down the hall, and Tony for sure had one of those fancy fridges with the good ice and filtered water, so she’d grab that, bolt back to Peter’s room, and resume…this.He was so warm.Gently, and painfully slowly, she eased out of his grasp, nearly shuddering when he let out a soft, almost involuntary whimper. On quiet feet, she crept around the bed and out the door, stepping over The Last Olympian, which had fallen front-first to the hardwood during the night. Before leaving, she glanced back at Peter, watching his shoulders rise and fall.She opened the door.Gently, quietly, she stepped outside.Slowly, she clicked the door shut behind her. God, she hoped he didn’t wake up.Then, she spun around, full-body flinching as a little girl suddenly appeared in front of her. The kid had huge brown eyes and messy brown hair, but those eyes were narrowed with something close to a pout. She had no clue who this little gremlin was.MJ just stared at her for a beat. She’d never had any reason to talk to kids—no siblings, no younger cousins, no reason to step within fifty feet of an elementary school—so she had no idea how to handle this. No idea what to do. Do kids do handshakes? Should she just dap the kid up?“Can I help you?” MJ asked tentatively. She kept her voice low to signal, hey, kid, maybe don’t blast your voice outside this door. To her credit, she picked up on MJ’s tone. “Who are you?” "I could ask the same of you," MJ replied slowly, angling herself in front of the door. She had no idea who this child was or what she was up to, but the last thing she needed was for her to storm into Peter’s room and wake him up. No chances. None.“I’m Morgan,” the girl said, as if that should’ve explained everything. “What’s your name?”“MJ. And you’re… sorry, who are you again?” MJ squinted at her. Last fall, she’d overheard Peter ranting to Ned about how Tony Stark’s kid didn’t like him, how she’d made him cry or something at a lake. She wasn’t sure on the details. Now, she was trying to piece that memory together, trying to remember Tony’s kid’s name. “Like, your relationship to someone in the Tower. Are you Tony’s kid?”Morgan’s eyes narrowed, clearly not a fan of that question. MJ didn’t give a fuck. She wasn’t about to let some snot-nosed first-grader barge into Peter’s room and wake him up.“Mom told me something happened to Peter.” Morgan pointed at the door. “Is he okay?”“Who’s your mom?” “Is he good or not? This is yes or no.” “Jeez,” MJ muttered. She glanced over her shoulder at Peter’s door, then back at Morgan. "Peter’s fine. He’s sleeping. Nothing to worry about."Morgan stepped forward, hands on her hips, looking very much like a miniature adult who knew exactly what she was doing. MJ glanced down the hall, waiting for someone to come collect their tiny person. “You’re just saying that so I don’t make a big deal about it.”MJ’s mouth pressed into a thin line. “I resent the implication that I’m a liar.”“I don’t know what that means,” Morgan deadpanned. MJ couldn’t help but appreciate the honesty. “Are you just telling me he’s okay to make me feel better?”“I’m not here to make you feel better. I don’t even know you.” MJ sighed. “He’s just...he’s asleep right now, you know? Just resting. You don’t need to be here worrying about him.”“I do need to worry about him.” Morgan crossed her arms, then uncrossed them. She bit her lip, gaze shifting to the doorknob. “He’s my friend.”MJ softened a little at that. It all but confirmed that this was Tony’s daughter, the only one who could make sense in this situation. MJ wasn’t surprised he’d eventually won her over. “Well, he’s my friend, too. And I can guarantee you he’s just sleeping off a rough day. Trust me.”“You’re not his friend,” the little goblin child grumbled. “You’re his girlfriend.”MJ felt heat rise to her face. Smart kid. Too perceptive of social dynamics. “Whoa, whoa—”“Boys and girls don’t sleep in the same room unless they have crushes on each other.”“You have no evidence that I was sleeping,” MJ hissed, and Morgan cracked a smile. It mirrored the shit-eating grin Tony would flash on supermarket tabloid covers back when MJ still went grocery shopping with her mom. “None.”“I’m just saying.” Morgan shrugged, already grabbing for the doorknob. “Can I see him now?”“No, no, no,” MJ said, gently grabbing her wrist. “Dude, what part of ‘he’s asleep’ do you not get?” “You’re lying to me,” Morgan whined, looking up at MJ with those big eyes again. “I know he’s not fine. I heard Dad and Miss May talking earlier in the kitchen, and—and they were saying—they... Dad said Peter was gonna have to talk to the police.”“Excellent investigative work, kid,” MJ muttered, realizing a little too late that a snarky tone wasn’t the best choice right now. “But seriously. What’d your mom tell you?”Morgan looked down, fiddling with the hem of her shirt. “That someone hurt Peter,” she mumbled, glancing at the door again. “They couldn’t find him, but then, they did. That’s why there were so many people in the tower last night—you know, I woke up ‘cause I could hear everyone.”MJ winced at the thought of this kid hearing her yell at random federal agents at four in the morning. She’d spouted off at least two hundred expletives. “Oh, I’m sorry. I didn’t realize you were on this floor.”“It’s okay,” Morgan said. She shifted uncomfortably, biting her lip. “I dunno. I didn’t think it was gonna be that bad, and I…I dunno.”MJ nodded. “You just wanna make sure your friend’s okay.”“I used to be mean to him,” Morgan whispered. “But I don’t—I didn’t want...”In that moment, MJ saw a little bit of herself in this pint-sized jerk. She saw a kid who’d been scared, acted tough, and pushed people away, just like she’d done when Peter and Ned first tried to be nice to her. Back then, she’d kept them at arm’s length, bone-scared that they’d get to know her and run in the opposite direction. But after the homecoming incident, when Peter showed up to school with two black eyes and that look in his eyes—like he’d seen too much—when she could hear him having a panic attack in the bathroom, she freaked. She was terrified he thought she didn’t like him, even though the whole homecoming mess had nothing to do with her. In retrospect, she just wanted him to know that he could come to her if he needed, and she’d been so worried that she’d burned that bridge.This was different, yeah, but the core of it was the same. Morgan had probably been scared when she first met Peter. Here was this teenager, just yanked back from the dead, probably sitting in the corner of her dad’s hospital room, bruised and battered from Thanos. And then, he never left. That had to be a lot to take in—someone came back to life, practically moved in with her, and started taking up more and more of her dad’s time. That was scary. And Morgan wasn’t some clueless kid. She knew that Peter had been through something bad. She was probably terrified, wondering if Peter thought she hated him while he was suffering. The same way MJ had once feared Peter thought she hated him.Yeah. She could relate to that.“How about…” MJ bit her lip. “When he wakes up, I’ll come grab you. And we can all hang out. I think our other friend is around here somewhere, too, so he can join. It’ll be fun.”Morgan’s eyes locked on her, those big, familiar eyes that reminded MJ of Pepper. “Promise?”“Of course, kid.” MJ smiled gently. “Wanna accompany me to the kitchen now? I need some water.”“Okay. We have a water fountain in our fridge.” Morgan nodded tightly. “The water is really cold, and it has crunchy ice. What’s your name again?”“I’m so glad that your dad invests in the good stuff,” MJ mumbled, starting down the hall. She ran a hand down her face. “And I’m MJ.”Morgan scoffed. “That’s not a real name.”Despite everything, and for no reason at all, that made MJ burst out laughing.