Chapter Text
every day, iron man encounters dozens, if not hundreds, of lonely children in the zones. it's not unusual at all, given his occupation. he doesn't stop for more than a glance in their direction unless they're in direct danger. he can't afford to.
but this time, he stops. his beaten-down motorcycle skids to a halt, and he almost rips off the mask from his face.
he doesn't stop because of the kid next to the crumbling zinc home. he stops because of the twenty-seven draculoids and two SCARECROWS dead at his feet.
the boy can't be older than fifteen. he's wearing a mask, red and blue, and his blood-caked hands rest by his sides. his clothes are too big for him, his hair's just too dirty, even by killjoy standards. there's a blaster resting on the floor next to him, forgotten; the child sobs quietly and doesn't look up when iron man steps closer.
"kid," the man says, breathless. "kid, are you okay?"
the boy shakes his head. "they came for my aunt." and then he looks up, and he recognizes him. of course he does; there's not a single killjoy near new york city (what’s left of it) that doesn't know who he is. "iron man," he says.
iron man nods and puts a hand on his shoulder. "they'll come back," he says, trying his best to be comforting but failing miserably. "you need to go somewhere safe."
nevermind that the kid killed this many BL/ind agents by himself. nevermind that the blood was still fresh and that the hot air already had a coppery, rotten stench.
"i... i have nowhere to go." the boy is weeping now, desperately wiping at his face. he lifts his mask, for a moment, and iron man catches a glimpse of his brown eyes.
this is a mistake, he tells himself already. don't do it.
but he does it anyway. takes the kid with him, sitting him on the backseat and driving off into the sunset. if there's any luck, BL/ind won't track them down. iron man sure hopes they don't.
nomad's gonna be pissed. he can already hear the sermon: 'we can't afford another mouth to feed, stark. we're barely eating ourselves'. or maybe: 'this isn't a safe place for him. we're, goddammit, we're always in dangerous situations, this is no place for a kid'. but then iron man will reply, always so suave and snarky, 'we can always go out more', or 'there's no safer place than with us', and he'll be inevitably backed by widow and hawkeye, and nomad will go off and be grumpy with falcon for a while before accepting his new reality.
or at least, that's how iron man hopes it goes.
better plan than letting the kid become a draculoid himself, or getting him hooked on solar radiation, at least.
he arrives at their safehouse, a long-forgotten gas station, by sunset. the kid's exhausted. he carries him towards the store, and nomad's already scowling at him and he hasn't even entered the building.
long story short: the talk goes exactly as he'd expected. widow takes the kid into a cooler room; he's burning up. hawkeye keeps watch while the witch and vision heat up some canned soup for everyone. and, of course, nomad goes to the basement to sulk with falcon.
iron man doesn't have much to do, so he leaves again. says he left something behind and sprints off, wasting precious gas on unimportant things.
later, when the man returns to the house, he finds a woman dead on the makeshift kitchen floor, still wearing her golden mask and showing a red-stained smile. her silver hair is dyed red, too.
he takes her mask, her jacket, and closes her eyes; he leaves when he hears BL/ind coming near once more. he drops the items at the first postbox he can find, whispering a small prayer no one will ever hear.
when he returns home, widow tells him the kid had felt a bit better when he was gone, but that he'd fallen asleep again. he's almost fourteen (so awfully young), and he already has an alias, spider-man, which would make iron man snort if he didn't get where it came from.
but she tells him, in barely a whisper, his real name.
peter.
he holds it close to his heart and doesn't let it go.
once upon a time, there was a boy.
the boy was a brilliant kid. his father was a very smart man, too, and his mother was the sweetest person he'd ever meet. and although they weren't the best parents, and he was alone a lot, he wasn't lonely. he had his best friend, he had his girlfriend, he had his music and his inventions.
the boy still grew up troubled. the boy was a mess, barely an excuse of a person, but it was okay. the boy's parents died. that was okay too. it wasn't like the boy was dying inside or anything.
the boy became arrogant. to anyone who dared look directly at his blinding shine, the boy was a narcissistic prick. deep within, though, he was soft, and cracked; threatening to spill at any moment. he was not alone, not even then. he had his friend, his girl, his father figure. he did what he believed was okay; he built terrible weapons, he ended millions, all without knowing the severity of his actions.
then, his world came tumbling down.
one day, the boy was kidnapped. within his veins now thrived shrapnel from the bombs he'd designed. they asked him to make a horrific missile; they forced him to do so. but the boy wasn't a fool; he knew already what would happen to him and his fellow prisoner.
so instead of building a weapon, he made a reactor. instead of making a bomb, he made a suit of armor.
“don’t waste your life.”
and he escaped.
the boy, somehow, made it home to his friend, to his girl. he stopped making weapons instantly, only to discover he'd been used. by his father figure. who left him for dead after stealing the reactor from his chest. the reactor that kept the shrapnel from killing him.
of course, he lived to tell the tale.
and so life went. the boy was unstable, broken, and yet still kept going forward.
one day, the boy was called by an old friend of his father's.
the man wanted to make a group of people that could defend earth if needed. the boy was certainly one; his armor, long since improved from the original design, was even capable of flight. not only that, but there already was a threat coming.
the man asked him if he wanted to be a part of it.
the boy said yes.
that was his first mistake in what would become a long, long list of poor decisions.
the boy then met the rest of the group. a man from another time. two spies. a fellow scientist. a god? two gods.
they got along well enough.
not at all, actually, but then they were attacked by an actual alien army, and they had no other choice.
they somehow became a family. even with the stabby god and his thunder brother, even with the giant green rage monster and the super soldier from world war two. and the boy loved every single one of them.
they were the avengers. they were earth's defenders.
and then new york got nuked in the middle of an alien invasion.
2012 was a crazy year. it was the rise of Better Living Industries. it was the start of the wars. it was the end of life as they knew it.
BL/ind took everything from the boy. it took away his suits, his ai, his inventions, even his people; all he had was the light inside his chest and the blaster between his hands.
the avengers fought till the very end. they didn't stop, not until their armors had broken down and their guns had gone empty. and even then, they kept going. against BL/ind, shielding themselves and others from the radiation and the pain. their numbers grew, but it was never enough. they lost so many, too.
but the boy, staring at the stars, still dreams of the day they'll save the world again.
spider-man takes with him a bag from his home. inside there's the gun his aunt gave him, a plastic folder filled with old photos and drawings, an old instant camera, and a change of clothes. these clothes are too big for him as well. but kid insists on wearing them. "they are my uncle's," he says. "it's all i have from him."
(the brown leather jacket is, quite frankly, just ugly. and the wooly sweater isn't appropriate for long desert days.)
iron man doesn't have the heart to take them from him, even if they could benefit someone else in the team, so he lets him be. besides, he's still got time to grow into them. instead he focuses on the camera. it's ancient, even by his standards. "my aunt taught me how to fix it, and we found film for it sometimes."
so, two weeks into his stay, they decide to put it to the test. they head out, take a photo of the gas station. the sun's starting to vanish behind the horizon. wasp has just arrived from a supply run; she's dropping bags of canned food into the floor when she hears the click of the camera.
"that's a nice one," iron man says. spider-man shakes the film; iron man doesn't tell him that doing that doesn't really help.
"what are you two up to?" wasp takes off her mask. she does that often, even when it might be dangerous, but iron man appreciates it.
"taking pictures! look!" spider-man rushes forward to show her, and while the film hasn't completely developed, she still smiles.
"oh, that's very nice! i really like that." she pauses. "when cassie comes back, you have to show it to her. she'll love that."
"uh," spider-man pauses, "okay."
later, he asks iron man,
who's cassie?
, and iron man tells him she's the sweetest little girl in the world, and that they have been looking for her since the bombs. the conversation dies there.
and the days go by. they work on his style; what he likes to do, what he doesn't. once, hawkeye tells a story about SCARECROWs ambushing them in the night; spider-man stands up and runs out of the gas station. iron man doesn't ask him why, not after seeing the look on his face; they drop the subject and decide to work on it in the future.
one morning, before anyone else is even up, iron man returns from a supply run, a grin on his face. he wakes spider-man up; the boy stares at him, still half asleep.
"do you want pancakes?," iron man says. peter processes it for a while before grinning.
it's the first decent meal they've had in a while. and spider-man smiles like it's a non-denominational holiday.
maybe spider-man would like waffles next, he thinks. he’s got enough flour for tomorrow too.
he doesn’t know why yet, but the thought brings a smile to his face, too.