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Stephen was giving Peter a tour of the sanctum for the third time now. It seemed a bit excessive, but Peter insisted that he should see the whole sanctum and well, Peter’s puppy dog eyes were notoriously hard to resist, so here Stephen was, showing Peter around yet another hidden library. Peter hopped around excitedly studying each artefact with fascination until his eyes fell onto a glass box on one of the tables.
“What does this do?” He asked, giving Stephen a hopeful smile. Stephen looked at the object encased in the glass. It was a golden cup with a leaf pattern spreading all over it and amongst those leaves was some sort of animal – a badger, Stephen guessed. He frowned. He definitely hadn’t seen this cup before, and he was sure he’d explored every inch of the sanctum right now. He looked carefully at the cup. It didn’t have any kind of obvious magical aura, but Stephen knew it wasn’t all that hard to disguise an object’s powers. After a little more time carefully looking over the cup he decided that it must have somehow appeared here since he last visited. After all, a lot of strange things happened in the sanctum. He was about to tell Peter that he had no idea what the cup was for and that he’d have to research it, but then he made the mistake of looking at Peter’s face. It was so full of fascination, admiration. He couldn’t let him down.
“Please tell me.” There was a sense of desperation in Peter’s voice, and Stephen swore to himself internally.
“Umm, yes. Well this is uh… Medea’s goblet.”
“Medea? Like from Greek mythology?” Peter asked, his eyes widening. Stephen had hoped Peter wouldn’t recognised the name.
“Yes, do you know much about her?” Peter shrugged.
“Not really, she was magic and had something to do with Jason and the Argonauts.” Stephen nodded along as Peter spoke. He didn’t really know any more than Peter did.
“Well this goblet is said to have healing abilities for those who drink from it.” Healing abilities, how original.
“Woah that’s awesome? Does it work?”
“It might do, but it’s not advisable to drink from it,” Stephen said, anticipating Peter’s next question.
“Why not?”
“It only works for those who it deems worthy, otherwise it would have the opposite effect, and it’s standards for worthiness a quite unclear.”
“So like Thor’s hammer?”
“Yes, like Thor’s hammer.”
“So why does it have a badger on?” Did he ever stop asking questions? Stephen was now in too deep to stop.
“In some culture’s, badgers can be a symbol of duality, both healing and harming. Their gentle nature can quickly turn sour if you don’t treat them the right way.” Stephen honestly knew very little about badgers and desperately hoped that Peter didn’t either.
“That’s awesome!” Stephen took a moment to thank whatever deities existed. “So, is Greek mythology actually real then?” Peter asked, a smile forming on his face. It looked like Stephen had relaxed too soon. At least this was something he knew a little about.
“Magic has always been present in this world, and across time there have been many different interpretations of it by many different cultures. Greek mythology is one such interpretation. The Greeks saw things they couldn’t understand and came up with many fantastical stories to explain them.” Peter nodded along as he spoke.
“So, some elements of the stories may be true, but there’s a lot of stuff made up around them?”
“Yes, exactly,” Stephen replied, satisfied with his own explanation.
“What’s the myth about this cup then?” Stephen’s eyes widened with panic. Coming up with some bullshit power for the cup was hard enough, there was no way he’d be able to make up a whole story on the spot.
Suddenly there was a loud crashing from behind and Stephen sun around quickly, conjuring his shields in case it was an intruder. Instead he was faced with Tony Stark, who was lying on the floor in a pile of books making a noise that seemed to be a cross between laughter and whimpering in pain. He heard Peter clearly trying and failing to hold back a laugh behind him. Then it dawned on him. He hadn’t seen that cup before because it wasn’t a real relic. Tony was pranking him, and Peter was in on it too. He rolled his eyes and turned to Peter, refusing to offer Tony a hand getting up.
“I’m guessing this cup is some sort of prop.” Peter smirked but had a slightly apologetic look.
“Yeah, it’s Helga Hufflepuff’s cup from Harry Potter,” Peter explained. The badger, he should have realised.
“And I suppose this was all your idea?” he said, turning back to Tony.
“Yes, and it’s my best idea yet.” Tony had pushed himself into a seated position and was rubbing a part of his head which Stephen was sure would be turning purple tomorrow.
“May I remind you that you just fell off a bookshelf and by the looks of it was hit on the head by multiple books.”
“Yeah, but you should have seen your face when Peter asked that last question, it was gold.” Tony burst out into laughter again.
“How did you even know about this part of the sanctum? I haven’t shown you yet… Ah you got Wong in on this.” The realisation dawned on him. The only four people he spoke to on a regular basis were all teaming up against him, great.
“He thought it would be hilarious.” Stephen’s eyes flickered up to the other bookshelf. Surely Wong wasn’t there too. “He’s not up there. Apparently, he’s too dignified to hide on top of a bookshelf.” Stephen snorted. “However, I have filmed this all, so he and many others can now enjoy it’s magnificence.” Tony waved his phone gleefully in front of Stephen. Stephen, noticing the opportunity, grabbed the phone out of Tony’s hand and found to his delight that it was unlocked and open on the video Tony had just taken. He smirked as his finger hovered over the delete button, but before he had a chance to press it the phone flew out of his hand.
“Got it Mr Stark.” Peter smiled proudly, holding up the phone with webs still dangling from it.
“Good job kid. Now let’s head back to my place and get this up on the big screen.” Peter nodded excitedly and moved quickly over to Tony, whispering a quick sorry to Stephen as he passed. The two were about to leave when Tony turned back to him.
“Want to come along? We’re going to order some pizza afterwards.” Stephen’s head moved in a way somewhere between an exasperated shake and a nod, which Tony seemed to take as a yes as he smiled and followed Peter out of the room. It was only a moment more until Stephen followed. He really did love this weird little family.