Chapter Text
Ben used to have an old pocket watch.
As far back as Peter could remember, it always looked like it’d seen better days. Peter thought it might have been gold once. Either way, the color had long since dulled to brown, the shine faded and flat.
Well-used, May had once called it.
Well-loved, Ben had said in return.
It was old and tired, but much like the man himself it was reliable. Despite the wear and the age, it ticked steadily on, counting the minutes away. Ben never went anywhere without it.
Sometimes, when he thought no one was looking, Ben would close his eyes, hold that old pocket watch to his ear, and listen to it. But Peter was Peter, and he was always looking at Ben.
“Why do you do that?” Peter had asked once. He was barely out of kindergarten and bold in the way that kids usually were, and he hadn’t learned the meaning of any fancy terms like subtlety or respecting someone’s privacy. But Ben was Ben, and he was always listening to Peter.
“It used to be my father’s,” Ben told him.
“Oh. Do you miss him?”
“Of course. Just like I still miss your father.”
Peter had accepted that answer, even if he still hadn’t quite understood it.
But then Ben was gone. Time marched on without him, and when winter rolled in that year, May gave Peter one of Ben’s old coats. It was too big for him, but it still smelled like Ben.
Then Peter reached into the pocket and found that old watch. Even after all that time, it was still ticking, still reliable, almost a comforting weight in his hand. Peter closed his eyes, held it to his ear, and listened. And for the first time, he understood.
Peter missed the pocket watch. All of his things had been stored at the Compound during the Blip. The watch had been lost with everything else.
And now that the Compound was gone, the Avengers were holed up in a shiny, brand new base. HQ was what Dr. Banner and the Falcon kept calling it, so maybe that was what Peter was supposed to call it, too.
HQ. Tony would’ve hated that name.
Peter opened his eyes, finally giving up on sleep. Nothing felt right here. This place was too new. Too un-lived-in. He could swear it even had that fresh car smell.
He kicked the blankets off and got out of bed. His room was still pretty bare. Peter hadn’t had the time to decorate it yet - and to be honest, he wasn’t even sure if he was allowed to. This wasn’t really his room after all. It was a guest room at HQ, and Peter didn’t even know how long he would be here.
Of course they couldn’t stay at home. Not after Jameson plastered his face all over New York.
If it hadn’t been for Pepper, they might never have made it out in the first place. She got to the apartment only minutes after Peter did. By then, the place was already surrounded by a mob - media, anti-vigilante activists, and even just normal people demanding answers. It was loud, it was chaos, and suddenly the Rescue armor came slamming down on the fire escape. Pepper Stark nee Potts easily stepped out of the suit, fixed her hair, and knocked on their window.
Peter let her in.
The battlefield was the first time they’d met, the funeral the second. This was only the third time Peter was face-to-face with Pepper, but she looked at him like she’d known him for years.
“Hello, Peter,” she said. “Mrs. Parker, it’s lovely to see you again. Happy’s waiting for you just a few miles away.”
“Okay,” May said. “How are we getting there?”
“That’s how you’re getting there, ma’am.” Pepper looked at the Rescue armor. Peter saw May’s eyes follow and knew what her answer was before she even started shaking her head.
“No.”
“May, go.” Peter shot forward, grabbing her hands. He held them close, hoping he was comforting her even if his own hands were shaking. “I’m - I’ll be okay. If things go south - uh, any souther, more southern than they are now, I know I can get myself out. But I need you safe.”
May took him by the face. She was crying. He hadn’t seen her cry since they’d found each other after the Blip. “Peter,” she said, her voice breaking, “I need you safe.”
“I’ll take good care of him,” Pepper promised.
There was a long beat of silence. Then May broke. “Okay,” she said, but she held Peter tighter. “Okay. I’m gonna hold you to that. Both of you.” She pressed a kiss into Peter’s hair and stepped back. “How do I-”
Before she could even finish the sentence, the suit dissolved into nanites and snatched her away. Peter watched her go.
“Sorry,” Pepper said. To her credit, she sounded like she meant it. “But we’re short on time as it is.”
“Is she…?” Peter couldn’t finish the sentence.
Thankfully, Pepper seemed to understand. “She’ll be safe,” she said. “Now, it’s our turn.”
“Okay. How are we getting out?”
“Through the front door.”
“What?”
If Pepper was put off by the skepticism, she didn’t show it. She pulled a compact mirror from her pocket. “We need to do damage control, and we need to do it quickly.” She fixed her collar and wiped at the corner of her lip, where her lipstick had smeared. “If we don’t get in front of this story, they’re going to shred you worse than J. Jonah Jameson ever could. But if we face this head-on, we can control the narrative.”
“Control the narrative.”
“Yes. We have to reassure the public that they can trust you before they really have the chance to stop.”
“We can do that?”
Pepper actually smiled. “Tony was a walking PR nightmare,” she said, but the fondness in her voice betrayed her. “Thanks to him, I can speak three languages - English, French, and damage control.”
Peter let out a shaky breath. He wished that was more comforting than it was. “Okay,” he said. “I walk out the front door.”
“We walk out the front door. I’m going to lead you out.”
“What?” No. Absolutely not. Unacceptable. “Miss - Mrs. Stark, it’s a mob out there.”
“Trust me, Peter.” Pepper clapped the compact mirror shut. “Leave your mask off, but keep your expression calm if you can. Don’t make eye contact with anyone. Just keep your eyes on me, okay?”
It was chaos outside. Pepper could seriously get hurt.
But Pepper wasn’t just anyone. She wasn’t just Tony Stark’s wife, or the CEO of a Fortune 500 company. She was Rescue.
It struck Peter with startling clarity. She’d been on that battlefield, too.
“Okay,” Peter said. Trust her. He had to trust her. “Okay, keep my eyes on you.”
Pepper smiled. “Just follow my lead,” she said, and opened the door.
What looked like hundreds of faces filled Peter’s sight. For a terrifying moment they converged - swelling forward together, like a monster. Peter was dizzy. He couldn’t breathe. He shouldn’t have agreed to this - he needed to get Pepper out of here, he still had his web shooters, he could swing them out the window -
But all at once, the people hushed. And they weren’t looking at Peter.
Pepper stood in the doorway, chin held high. Poised and perfect as always. People melted back, like looking at her alone was too much.
She wasn’t the savior of the universe. But she was his widow. And Peter supposed that that had its own power.
The people parted like the Red Sea for her, and Peter shadowed behind her. The apartment door closed behind them. Peter knew he’d never set foot in his home again.
Less than an hour later, Pepper had given an official statement to the media, shedding light on Quentin Beck’s troubled history with Tony Stark and announcing firm support of Spiderman.
And Peter had to admit, even though the news headlines were insane that night, barely any of them tried to vilify him like Jameson had. Instead, people were clamoring about Beck, and Pepper Stark’s first public appearance since the Blip was reversed. But Peter Parker’s whole life was getting dragged all over public platforms. He was getting placed under a spotlight. The whole world knew who he was.
Despite all that, it could’ve been worse. Judging from that video Beck’s people had given to the Daily Bugle, it could’ve been so much worse.
And honestly, Peter knew he only had Pepper to thank for that. She even sheltered them for a few nights in the cabin. Even there, Peter felt...displaced. But he got to meet Morgan, the real her, who wasn’t dressed in black for reasons she didn’t fully understand. And he loved her instantly.
But she was young. She was bold, in the way that kids were.
“I’ve seen pictures of you,” she said one day, when they were coloring in the living room.
Peter raised his eyebrows. “Yeah?” he asked. “There are lots of pictures of Spiderman these days, huh?”
“No, I mean, in our house. Daddy had one.”
She reached for the green crayon Peter was holding, oblivious to his shaking hands. She colored for a moment, then paused, eyebrows furrowing. “I miss him,” she said, voice small. Big eyes turned on Peter, and he felt frozen. “Do you miss him, too?”
He did. He missed Tony so much that it hurt sometimes.
But Peter just had to look around and see the family photos of Tony, Pepper, and Morgan; he saw old family videos that Pepper would play for Morgan; he heard Tony’s voice one night when Morgan couldn’t sleep, and Pepper played a recording of Tony reading a bedtime story. And he knew that this wasn’t his home. This was Tony’s home. And the empty air of where Tony used to live became suffocating.
So Pepper set up this arrangement with the Avengers. Happy offered his home, too; but his studio apartment was meant for a bachelor, and they all knew it.
Still, Peter urged May to go with Happy, to a more cozy place. Somewhere that might have felt more like home.
But May had none of it, so the Parkers officially had their own suite in HQ. It was its own living space, separate from the main part of HQ, but it was just as cold feeling.
This was the best possible outcome Peter could have gotten after Beck ruined his life one last time. Honestly, he knew he was lucky to be here. But maybe he was being ungrateful, or he was just bitter, because he didn’t feel lucky. In one fell swoop, he managed to uproot his whole life and everyone else’s along with it.
May’s career, her passion project, her home, all of it was gone. But she never once looked back.
He couldn’t sleep well in this new place, and he didn’t think that she could, either. Sure enough, when Peter left his bedroom, he could see the kitchen light on.
Restless nights were nothing new in the Parker household. There were a lot of them like this, before...everything. Before the world ended. Before they’d lost the home they shared with Ben. Before...before.
But the kitchen table wasn’t the old wood one with chipped corners; the mug in front of her wasn’t the World’s Best Grandma one that Ben had bought from a garage sale for a quarter; the light wasn’t even the normal warm, yellow glow. Everything was white, or stainless steel. It all shined, new, untouched, unloved, and it almost hurt to look at.
But May was the same. Her long brown hair fell loosely around her shoulders, tufts falling into her face. Her glasses sat on the end of her nose, a crossword puzzle set out in front of her. The pen she was holding was decorated with teeth marks.
May looked up as Peter walked in. She smiled in that sad, understanding sort of way and patted the spot beside her. Peter flopped into the chair next to her.
I’m sorry, he wanted to say. But he’d said that enough in the past few weeks, so instead he said, “Winston.”
May blinked, then cast him a sidelong glance. “Excuse me?”
Peter tapped the crossword puzzle. “Sixteen across, Churchill and Smith. It’s Winston.”
May looked down and frowned. “But I have an L where the S would go.”
“Then I guess Los Angeles isn’t the capital of California.”
“But it’s the only city in California I know.” Peter laughed, and May jabbed him with her pen. “Okay, genius, name one other city in California.”
“California...City?”
“Are you asking me or telling me?”
Peter laughed again as May scribbled out Los Angeles and filled in Winston. He still missed that old pocket watch, but May was solid and reliable beside him. Everything around them was different now, but this was familiar. This, at least, felt like home.
