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He gets down on one knee, staring into her eyes as he starts to speak, slowly and carefully because he can’t risk her panicking on him at this moment.
“They don’t know you’re here,” he tells her, at which her brows furrow even more. “That means they can’t come after you.”
She scrunches up her face like she doesn’t understand. “Like Hide and Seek?”
He breathes in and nods quickly, “k—kind of. Kind of, except they don’t know that you’re even hiding,” he tries to explain, and he’s running out of time. “So, if you hide, they won’t come looking for you, you understand? You can’t let them find you.”
She bites her lip and nods, and he analyses her face to make sure that she understands him completely, because everything is at stake here.
“Like when you and your Dad scare your Mom when she doesn’t know your’re home. If you stay hidden, would she come and look for you?” he asks, and he’ll admit, it’s a winded explanation, but it’s the best his racing mind can come up with.
She shakes her head, “no, because she thinks we’re not home,” she replies, and he sighs in relief that she gets it.
He praises her, “you’re the smartest girl I know,” he tells her. “Now you have to hide.”
“Where?”
He looks around the corridor, then gets to his feet, leading her into the master bedroom. The lights stay closed. He spots the dressing table. “In there.”
“But Mommy’s things are in there,” she explains.
“Come on,” he says anyway, opening one of the doors. It’s big enough, he decides, taking all the contents and lines them up on the shelf above. “Get in.”
She looks at him, trembling in his hold. “I want to go to Mommy.”
He puts his hands on her shoulders, “listen, Morgan, I know you’re scared. But some very bad people are about to come inside. Alright? If you get in, they won’t see you.”
Her face scrunches. That was the wrong thing to say to s six-year old. “Peter.”
“Morgan,” he hugs her tightly, “I’ll get you out soon. Just stay in there and don’t speak and—and I’ll get you out.”
“Why can’t you get in the other one?” she asks, and he hates how terrified she is.
He closes his eyes and listens out for sounds again, “because I don’t fit,” he tells her. “I’m too big. But I’ll get you out,” he repeats.
“But what if you don’t?”
“I will. Promise.” He’s really running out of time!
“No, but if they don’t see me, they’ll see you!”
He sighs harshly and tries again, “remember what your dad said? That you listen to me when he’s not here. You trust me, right? I won’t let them get you.”
“But if they—”
“Morgan,” he finally says, loud and clear and enough to make her flinch, and he can feel bad about that later. “Please.”
Her breath hitches, and she pulls away. “Okay,” she agrees, and he helps her fold her knees and get back into the tiny box. She’s braver than he would be.
He leans in to kiss her forehead, “I’ll be back.”
He closes the door slowly, but it instantly flings open, and she looks at him guiltily. “It’s too dark!”
Sighing, he looks around, spotting the tiny glowing gravity ball that sits on the night table. He crawls over to it, snatching it mid-air, then crawls back. “Is this okay?”
She nods.
“Don’t come out.”
The doors fling open. He stands in the middle of the living room, hands raised in the air. “Listen, guys—”
“Who are you?”
Peter steps back, “sounds like a question I should be asking the guys who broke in,” he replies, counting the heartbeats. Four men inside, two waiting outside.
“Oh, you’re a smart one, huh?” the man asks, pointing the gun at him. “Uh uh, hand in the air,” the man says when he starts to lower his arms. “Now you’re gonna stay right there while we get we came for.”
“Which is what?”
“None of your business, is what it is.”
Peter tuts, “yeah, except you’re doing it while I’m here which kinda makes it my business.”
“How old are you? Twelve?” he asks, and the others behind him snicker. “I said shut the hell up.”
They take their time, going through anything and everything in the lab downstairs.
He stares at the three who have been tasked at keeping him company, “must be tired just standing around, huh,” he jokes, clearing his throat when their frowns deepen.
“What’re you doing here alone?”
“Huh?”
“You heard me.”
“Oh, I’m—I’m the housekeeper,” he nods, clearing his throat. “Yeah.”
“The housekeeper. Really. That’s what you’re going with?”
He shrugs, “I just—I have a babyface so I look younger than I am. I’m actually twenty-five. Yeah, dropped out of highschool,” he says, then instantly thinks it’s too much information.
“Wait, I’ve seen you somewhere,” someone in the back chimes in, standing straight from against the wall as he zeroes in. “I’ve seen his face somewhere.”
They all wait for the answer, and Peter’s really hoping and praying that the man doesn’t make the connection, but his face lights up.
“The news. They said you were Spider-Man,” the man says, throwing his free hand in the air.
The others observe him and start to nod, “but you weren’t. You were the intern.”
“Why the fuck is the intern here?”
One of them chuckles, “he’s here for the same reason we are, I bet,” he says, “I mean, come on, he’s the intern. Probably knows when the house is ‘posed to be empty.”
Peter laughs nervously, “man, I was hoping you guys wouldn’t say that,” he says. “I won’t tell if you don’t.”
They yell in excitement, laughing in the air and jokingly punching his arm, “smart one!”
“You’re dressed a little cosy for a robbery,” one of them says, looking him up and down.
He looks at himself, then realizes he’s not even wearing any shoes. He looks back up, “I kinda just hang out, y’know? They go out a lot, so it’s empty and they don’t realise.”
“Except the AI was enabled,” the leader, which he decides to name Baldy, says, from the top of the stairs as he comes back up. Doesn’t look like he found what he was looking for.
He doesn’t have to think too hard about that, and laughs, “come on, I’m his intern, I’m smart enough to code her to look the other way,” he says, like it’s obvious.
They seem to buy it.
“The vettin’ process sucks then,” Baldy says, heading his way. “It was great to meet you,” he says, and then lifts and points the gun right at him.
Peter stumbles back, “wait, wait a second—”
“Come on, man, he’d be in trouble if he ratted us out. We don’t gotta kill him,” his friend tries to sway.
“You dimwits really believe that bullshit? There’s a difference between him resting on a couch and us taking—” he looks to him, biting his tongue on whatever he was going to say. “Point is, he probably just made that up.”
“Hey, man, I won’t say—”
Baldy’s fingers are on the trigger.
“Leave him alone!” shrieks a delicate voice from on top of the stairs.
He instantly looks up and curses under his breath. He stares at her, eyes screaming I told you to stay inside and she might be young, but she understands him just fine because the guilt mixes with her brave features and she starts to move back up.
“Is that Stark’s kid?” Baldy asks, equally surprised, and not in the good way. “Get her.”
Peter throws a webs at the guns, and they’re clattering to the floor before the men realize what happened. He reaches for the two that are dashing to the stairs, pulling them back from their hoodies as he rushes up.
They follow, and at least Morgan disappears upstairs because he holds onto the spindles above and kicks the first one as hard as he can, sending all of them tumbling down.
He can hear the guns being picked up by the time he’s upstairs, eyes scanning for Morgan, who stands next to the door she’s climbed out of.
He shuts the door, webbing it all around as securely and quickly as he can before rushing to the window. He pushes it open. They seem to be preoccupied inside now, so he takes her in his arms.
“Hold on to me,” he tells her, and she tightens her hold around him when he bends down to pick her up.
Within seconds, just as the bullets start spraying the room, barely missing his head, he’s outside the house, sticking onto the wood as he slowly climbs down.
He doesn’t know how long he runs, but all he knows is that he can’t stop. They’re right behind him. He can hear their heartbeats fade in and out of his ears every few minutes.
Superhuman he might be but carrying a child for more than half an hour, that too running, is really taking a toll on him.
He starts to slow down, then touches the closest tree that appears, breathing heavy and uneven. He climbs up, and Morgan sticks to him like glue, not faltering for a mere second and that is equally difficult, so he has to hand it to her for being so resilient.
He finally steadies himself on a branch, blowing through his mouth and trying to get his heart to stop beating so damn loud. He puts one hand on the back of her hair, “Mor—Morgan,” he says, breathless.
She lifts her head up, and she’s crying, which is going to make him cry.
“Ssshh, it’s okay. It’s okay, see? We got out.”
She starts to sniffle, hiccupping on her cries as she pushes her face into his chest, almost throwing him off balance, “easy!” he says, pulling himself forwards. “We’re okay.”
“Dad says you get lost out here in the dark. Are we lost?” she asks timidly.
He looks to the path they’re heading. There’s a highway here somewhere, he can hear it. And that means there’s a petrol pump nearby. He’s seen it coming to this place all those times. It has to be this way.
“No,” he answers. Not until he makes sure there’s absolutely no way out, and even then, his phone will start working soon and he’ll be able to get them both out.
He winces suddenly, almost letting go of the log he’s holding, when the pain strikes his forehead.
He reaches for it with his other hand, over Morgan, immediately pulling back when he feels something wet and painful.
It’s blood. What the hell. He touches it again, more slowly. It feels like skin is missing and—and he’s been shot. In the head. Well, that’s dramatic, he tells himself. He’s been grazed and the panic of trying to escape murdering thieves made him miss it. Now the pain is fully manifesting.
He feels the sudden urge to throw up, and instantly shuts his eyes, breathing hard through his nose and throwing his head down. Not now.
Not now, not now, not now!
But it’s painful, and he doubts he can keep going. He reaches for his phone, one hand stuck to the tree as the other fiddles around in his pocket.
He pulls it out, pressing on the home button. It doesn’t turn on. “Shit.”
“Shit,” Morgan repeats, just as intensely.
It makes him laugh, then almost want to cry. “You can’t say that.”
“Neither can you,” she answers.
He pulls away and looks at her. She stares back with big, confident eyes. He can’t counter with that, so he nods, “yeah, alright,” he lifts his pinky finger, and she intertwines her own in his, “secret for life.”
“Secret for life,” she says.
He winces and nods, “good,” he says.
She squirms in his hold, and he quickly perks up, “Morgan!”
“I can see someone!” she says in a loud whisper, gripping onto his shirt.
He frowns, then looks back. It’s not someone. It’s a bunch of someone’s. And they’re all heading this way. “Okay, sshh, don’t talk,” he says, not that he needs to.
“Is she asleep?”
Tony looks up from his phone, “uh, sure.”
“I asked you to check.”
“And I called him, and he didn’t pick up.”
“Why not?”
He looks up at her, eyes wide, “I don’t know, Pep, because he didn’t pick up,” he says again.
“He didn’t answer my text either,” May chimes in, and he can see them both giving each other paranoid looks of worry in the corner of his eye.
Pepper grunts, “call again,” she instructs.
“You have his number, honey.”
“They’re not picking up.”
“My phone is the same as yours. It’s a mom thing? Worrying over nothing?” he jokes, indulged in the phone screen.
A pause. “Tony, the cameras are down,” she says, voice barely above a whisper.
He frowns, already opening up the app on his own phone. “They’ve been down for two hours?” he asks, putting his glasses on. “Friday, what’s happening with the house cameras?”
“You switched off them off at six-thirty-seven.”
“I—I did no such thing,” he says, “turn them back on, now.”
Friday doesn’t respond.
“Friday!” he says, louder and angrier.
“You switched them off at six-thirty-seven.”
He curses under his breath.
“Tony, what’s going on?”
“I don’t—” he gets back on his phone, trying to figure out what the hell is happening. “Friday, run a—”
“You switched them off at six-thirty-seven.”
“Okay! Alright!” he leans forwards, “Hap, drive faster. Like five times what you’re doing right now. There’re two kids in an unsupervised house possible hacked by a crazy person and I need you to—”
He jerks back when the car suddenly speeds up, “cool, could’ve warned me but great,” he mumbles, shifting in his seat.
They’re checking the trees, because they’re not stupid and they’ve probably put two and two together with what he pulled at the house.
“Okay, listen to me,” he says, as quiet as he can, “you’re staying here, and I’m going down to distract them.”
Her hold on him tightens in an expression of ‘no’, and he puts his hand on the back of her head. “Morgan, I’ll—I’ll come back for you.”
“No.”
“Hey. I did last time, right? Except this time, you don’t try and get down yourself or you’ll fall and hurt yourself.”
“I’m scared. And it’s cold,” she shivers.
“I know, but you’re like—you’re mini Iron Man, right?” he asks.
She shakes her head against his chest, “no, I’m like mom so I’m like Rescue,” she says.
“Yeah, yeah, sure. And mom wouldn’t be scared, right? Just like you won’t.”
He webs around himself, creating a small hammock between the branches. He moves her onto it, “does it hurt?”
“No.”
“Okay. You stay here and keep holding this branch. I’ll be back,” he tells her, kissing her forehead before he sighs softly and slowly climbs down.
He looks back up, just to make sure she’ll stay. The height seems to have scared her enough to sit still, for now, so he nods and starts to walk to his left to make sure they won’t come her way.
He waits until they’re too close, and then whistles. “Looking for me?”
They don’t shoot, just instantly start running like they’re about to go to war. He runs, looking back only to make sure that it worked, and they haven’t figured out his dumb plan.
It is a dumb plan, if he can even call it that. He only thought so far as to distract them away from her, but he doesn’t know what to do next.
And as he runs, his head pounds from the hit, he doesn’t know what he’s doing or where he’s going, or what he’ll do if he gets caught because he knows for sure he can’t fight.
He starts to slow down, unintentionally, and they catch up in a matter of seconds.
Someone grabs his hood, dragging him back so hard he feels his breath cut short for a good few seconds as he slips face first onto the ground.
He tries to get back up, but there’s a hand keeping him down and still around the back of his neck as he squirms. He hits back blindly, and they take his arms, tying them by the wrists behind his back.
“Where’s the little one?” the leader asks, and then he’s being hauled up onto his knees. “Where is she?”
He breathes heavy and loud, shaking his head, “I don’t—”
The punch comes out of nowhere. A fist hits his cheek, and he falls to the side so hard he swears he blacks out for a minute.
When he opens his eyes again, his right eye is throbbing, showing him glimpses of bright white as they get him up straight again, only to throw him back down with another hit.
“I say we get rid of him. She’s too young to describe faces,” someone says, and he squeezes his eyes shut, clenching his fists as he starts to pull.
The man from the house bends down in front of him, “you hid her here somewhere, right?” and he leans in, placing his hand on the back of his head.
“No, she got away. She was running back to the house. That’s why I was distracting you,” he lies, licking his teeth and grimacing at the salty taste that’s seem to come out of nowhere. “Look, I won’t—I won’t tell them I saw your face,” he says, admittedly in an attempt to live another day.
The man snickers, “the house,” he looks up, past him, “check it out,” he says, then looks back down. “And you. I wish I could believe you.”
His heart is racing, skin on fire. “I swear I won’t tell them,” he says in a whispers. How’d he let this happen?
Baldy gets up, like he’s done or he’s had enough.. “Take him to the river. Then shoot him.”
“The lights are on,” Happy observes as they pull up. “Oh, shit.”
“What?” Tony asks, leaping forwards between the seats to see. The door is what they’re looking at, left wide open and a little bent out of shape. The lights are definitely on, and both of the kids know better than to leave it like that.
Pepper and him are getting out of the car before it even stops, with Happy following them closely behind.
Pepper gets in first, gasping at the blood on the floor. “Oh my God,” she cries, “Morgan!”
“Morgan!” Tony yells just as fast, racing up the stairs quicker than he has ever before. “Peter!”
They all end up upstairs, calling for names in vain that won’t answer back. Pepper switches on all the lights, eyes searching for her daughter. “Morgan! Baby, it’s mom!”
She looks around her own room, frowning at her things lined up on the dressing table. She sighs in relief, and Tony quickly turns to see her fling open the bottom door.
“Morg—” she stops midway to the empty space in front of her. “She must’ve hid here.”
Tony stands above, heart racing so fast he swears it’ll jump out of his chest. He looks around, then at the bullet holes scattered across the wall.
“They’re safe.”
Pepper stands up, sniffling, “how can you know that?”
“Look,” he says, pointing to the bullets. “They were shooting to kill, and as bad as that sounds, they’re both not here. They got away,” he says, looking out the window.
“They could be in the woods. It’s logical. It’s a big hiding space.”
His suit warps around him, and then he realizes once again that Friday won’t be a big help. “Tell me Rescue’s working.”
“Yeah,” Pepper’s saying as her suit pulls up. She’s out the window in seconds.
He curses loudly, rebooting the system and making his way downstairs.
The holotable is pretty much intact, and he gets to working on the suit, and it’s stupid! Stupid how he has to fix this before he can find the kids, who are freezing somewhere in the woods.
“—and us, our kid, he was babysitting her. They’re both gone and—yes. Yes, that’s what I said, it’s not that complicated. I’m calm, you’re not listening to what I’m saying. They’re both missing—” Happy’s voice disappears outside.
He continues to bypass whatever the hell went wrong with Friday, clicking around until he sets everything right. “Friday?”
“Yes, boss.”
“Anything not working?”
“No, boss.”
He scans the place from above, “scan for heat signatures, we’re looking for Morgan and Peter,” he says, zooming down in on the two running towards the house.
When he gets there, Pepper’s dealing with them just fine. “I’m heading up there,” he tells her, and another heat signature lights up.
It’s too small to be an adult, so it has to be her. He shoots through the trees, landing right next to the signature. It’s her. “Oh, hey, baby, how’d you end up there?”
He hovers up, examining the webbing that she’s nervously sitting on. He reaches out, and she leaps onto him, shaking and crying.
“There were so many people!” she shrieks, and he nods, “I know.”
“Peter left me.”
He looks to his left, “yeah? where’d he go?” he asks, trying to catch anything around them as he takes her into the air.
“I don’t know. He said don’t come down,” she says, trembling in his arms.
“And you did great, look how good you did, you don’t even listen to me that well,” he replies, and he’s taking her back toward the car.
He drops her by May’s side. “Get in the car, May, we don’t know how many of them there are.”
May takes his child in her arms, who instantly latches on, “did you—” she looks on, afraid.
He shakes his head, “I will. The police are probably coming but stay in the car. Just in case.”
May nods, “yeah,” she says, then starts to head to the car. He has to give it to her for handling it so well, because they haven’t found the kid yet and he’s telling her to sit still.
When he starts to head back, Pepper’s nowhere to be seen. The men she was fighting are incapacitated where they once stood.
A gun blasts in the distance, and he’s heading to the noise as soon as he hears it, landing on his feet close to where he sees a lot of heat signatures – more than he can count properly.
“Pep? Where—”
He starts to walk, then power-walk, until he reaches the struggle.
“There’s so many of them, I can’t—I don’t know where they’re going.”
He’s standing behind Peter, who has his wrists tied and legs around the neck of someone struggling to breathe under his hold as they both fight for their lives.
His head is shaking as he presses down, leaning over the man as he wheezes.
By the time he’s right there, he can see the man point the gun up with great difficulty, make sure it’s pointing right at Peter.
He stumbles over his feet, pointing at the repulsors but failing to lock on the man. They’re too close and he’s not fast enough to intervene when the gun goes off.
Peter jerks back instantly, falling back and hitting the ground instantly.
The man scrambles to his feet shakily and whatever happens next is on instinct. He’s firing at the man, and then he’s on his knees next to Peter.
There’s blood all around his shoulder as he coughs and gasps for air. “Keep breathing. Come on, keep—keep breathing,” he says, freezing over the top of where the bullet has entered and breaking the zip tie on his wrists.
He’s speaking, but there’s blood coming out where the words should be, and his body is jerking trying to get some air in.
“No, no, no, come on, kid, you—I’m here. Y’see I’m here, right?” he asks, cupping his face as he waits for the help to come.
Peter reaches for his hand, gripping it in his own as he gasps. “H—help.”
“I’m helping. I’m helping,” he nods.
“He’s—he’s just a little hurt, right now,” Pepper tells her daughter, smiling sadly.
All eyes are on her for some reason. They all watch Pepper explain, in baby terms, that Peter’s not really okay at the moment, but that he will be.
Morgan doesn’t seem convinced, because she starts to cry, and Tony tilts his head as he perks up. “Mom just said he’ll be fine, didn’t she?” he asks as Pepper takes Morgan in her arms.
“I did something by accident.”
Tony frowns, “what’s that?”
“He told me ‘stay upstairs’ but I came down and he was mad at me,” she says in a voice so quiet they barely hear her.
“And that’s why you listen go grownups,” Tony says in a not-so-serious tone.
Pepper looks to him as she tightens her hold, “honey, that wasn’t your fault.”
“But he said stay.”
“And—you listened the second time, didn’t you? Otherwise you’d have gotten hurt too.”
She considers it, then nods. “Is he mad at me?”
Before they can answer, May speaks up. “No. And I know that because I can basically read his mind,” she says with a soft smile.
Tony smiles too, because she’s not wrong. “Like Mom can read yours.”
She buys it, because she lets out a soft “oh” in relief, then frowns again. “What happened to ‘im?”
He purses his lips, then transfers her from Pepper to his own lap. “A bad man was trying to hurt him, and he was fighting back. But the man hit him too hard.”
“Like when you hurted your arm?”
He smiles sadly, “yeah. Yeah, exactly like that.”
“It’s just a flesh wound,” Peter stresses, wincing slightly when he moves up in the bed.
May frowns, “do you even know what a flesh wound is? You didn’t get a paper cut, you got shot, Peter, in the neck,” she says. “Not everything’s a joke.”
“Funny things are,” he replies, almost instinctively.
Tony almost flinches at the three words. It’s deja-vu. “She’s right.”
“You’re just saying that because you’re scared of her. And she’s only saying that because she’s scared of guns.”
May looks outraged, at a loss for words. “What—“
Tony intervenes before things escalate. “Everyone’s scared of guns. They’re guns.”
“I’m not.”
“Well, that speaks to your self-preservation instincts more than anything else. It’s also not the point. You could’ve died.”
Peter frowns, “for once, I can say I did nothing wrong in this situation.”
“You left her up there and went to tackle more than ten armed men by yourself.”
He sighs, “semantics.”
“Not what that word means. You could’ve died.”
“I know. You keep slipping it into every sentence.”
He sighs in frustration, finding the words much harder to say with Peter’s constant downplaying of the situation. “But if you weren’t there, we’d be in a much worse situation.”
Peter stared at him for a few seconds, then narrows his eyes. “Did you just subtly apologise?”
“I don’t subtly do anything. I’m saying it was good instincts. Except the last part.”
He exhales loudly before looking up. “Since we’re being honest, I did that part because I got shot in the head.”
Both their eyes widen like saucers, and they both shout “What?”
“Yeah, I thought I was gonna fall out the tree and take us both down. Turns out I just wasn’t thinking clearly on account of being shot in the—“
“You didn’t get shot in the head,” Tony interrupts, all but yanking his head forwards as he whines. “You can’t just say things like that,” he says, looking through the hair.
He reaches for his head, “I really did. But for your sake, I’ll go with grazed with a bullet in the head area.”
“God, Peter. They almost killed you,” he presses.
“‘Almost’ being the key word.”
May lifts up her hands with a scoff, shaking her head as she turns to leave, “I can’t do this with you right now,” May says, disappointment lacing her tone as she looks to Tony for a quick second before she leaves the room.
Peters face falters and he quickly moves up to stop her, but she’s gone too quickly and he suddenly feels like a jerk.
Tony sits down on the edge of his bed, “that really the best way you could’ve handled that?”
“She needed that.”
“She needed it?”
He sighs, “I can’t be sad about this. She’d freak out and start crying because this is how Uncle Ben died and I know that’s why she’s so scared,” he says, in a moment of vulnerability.
Tony’s face softens, “and what about you?”
He shrugs, narrowing his eyes at the duvet under his fingers, “obviously, I was scared,” he admits, trying to blink away the tears. “They were about to shoot me. In the head. That’s like a sure way to die—even you’d be scared.”
“I definitely would,” he says, “but you don’t do something as reckless as that again,” he says firmly.
“They would’ve caught us in the tree, Mr Stark, and I couldn’t run or send her somewhere safe. I went down to distract them and I—“ he blinks, “I didn’t think of what to do next. I figured I’d improvise.”
“What if—“
“Yeah, but—and don’t freak out, but, I mean,” he’s struggling to put it into the right words, because they sound wrong in his head. He grimaces, “like, at least one of us would’ve made it.”
Mr Stark’s face says it all. He didn’t choose the right words, because that face changes from pity and sadness to firm, guilty and angry, and his eyes are tearing up. “At least one of you would’ve made it?” he repeats like he’s making sure he heard it properly.
“I mean,” he scrunches up his face again, “yeah. It was better than the alternative, Mr Stark, you can’t deny that.”
“Okay, I just—you’re never babysitting again.”
“That doesn’t even make sense. You know that worse things would’ve happened if I didn’t stuff her in a tree.”
“I’ll up security then.”
“Then why can’t I stay?”
“Because this is the last time I’m dealing with your self-sacrificing, zero self-preservation idiotic behaviour. That’s not funny. Joking about dying isn’t funny. Talking about being possibly dead isn’t funny.”
“I didn’t say it was funny.”
“Really? ‘Funny things are’? Where did you even hear that?”
“I didn’t hear it anywhere, you’re being paranoid, Mr Stark, we should be moving on not obsessing over small details. It happened. You can’t change it.”
“I can change the future. That’s what I can do.”
“Mr—“
“And what about May? Did you think about her?”
“Of course I did,” he says in a sudden tone change. He sits up straighter with a wince, “but there were a lot of them. And yeah, I was t thinking properly. I was scared I’d drop down and she was with me—and if anything happened to her when I was meant to be watching her then it’d be my fault. And—“
“Peter,” Tony shakes his head adamantly. “I’d never—“
“No, you wouldn’t, but that would—“ his voice trembles and he cuts himself off this time. “I know Ben was my fault,” he nods.
Tony tilts his head trying to wrap his mind around the minefield he’s just stepped into. “No—“
“It was. Just because I was fourteen doesn’t change anything. Y’know that’s like saying—like imagine you’re walking past an injured homeless person and you don’t help him. You don’t have to but not doing it makes you a bad person. You don’t have to do anything. And I didn’t have to do anything but I should’ve. I should’ve—“ he sniffles and wipes his eye harshly.
He extends a hand to put on Peter’s shoulder as the kid turns. “I just…I wish I could tell him I’m different now,” he says, eyes glistening. “I wish he knew that I do everything I can, and that I don’t get angry now and…” he trails off, biting his lip.
His heart melts at the confession and he tilts his head sympathetically, “I’m sure he knows.”
The boy closes his eyes and places a shaking hand on top of his left eye. He’s still crying. When he opens his eyes, they’re bloodshot. And filled with tears. “I don’t want to worry her. Or do anything that stresses her out—and Spider-Man stresses her out, I know, but I’m helping people. But I don’t want her to…be worried all the time. Like what if she has a heart attack or something one of the days I forget to come home on time?” he asks, completely serious.
Tony’s at a loss for words. A little, or a lot, out of his depths if he’s being honest. “You don’t give her enough credit. She’s stronger than us combined.”
“No, what if—what if something happens and—or she just grows old and I have—“ he hitches, voice trembling. “I have no one. No family. Like my kids won’t ever see grandparents or aunts and uncles and…” he sniffles. “I don’t want that,” he says, “but it’s what’ll happen. Because I only have her. So I have to keep her safe,” he says, determined.
“Ok, hey, you got us. You have Happy, first of all, so I think that’s the grandparents slash granduncles and aunts covered, and you have—Ned, who can pass as your uncle. You have Morgan as a little aunt. That’ll work. Me as the cool uncle who you see on vacation, known for giving out the coolest gifts.”
Peter smiles, “grand uncle.”
“What?”
“You’re not my brother, so you’ll be a grand-uncle.”
“Yeah. No.”
“You want May, who is definitely younger than you, to be the grand aunt?”
He sighs dramatically, “you know, this ‘grand’ business is getting out of hand.”
“You’re like fifty, Mr Stark.”
“Watch it.”
“That’s really nice of you. To say all of that.”
“I know. No need to get sappy.”
“I’m serious,” he says, “I think about all of this a lot. Probably more than I should.”
Tony shrugs, “and if you’d told me, I would’ve helped you sooner,” he says, finally relaxing in his chair.
Peter nods. “That means you can’t get mad at me for Spider-Man stuff, because family always forgive.”
Tony scoffs, “that means I can get more mad, as long as I forgive.”
“No, because then it’s just awkward.”
“Oh, is it?”
“It is.”