Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

When Peter was asked if he could babysit Morgan for a few days, he happily agreed. She was, after all, his baby sister. Besides, he has spent the better part of the last two years since the blip hanging out with Morgan and Pepper, so doing so again was hardly out of the ordinary for him. And if it gave him a much-needed break from Spider-manning, and let him mess around in Tony’s lab?

Well, that’s his prerogative. He doesn’t get many opportunities to work on his personal projects back in Queens, so he might as well put in the work when he can.

“Hey, Pete?”

He’s jolted out of the reports Friday sent to his tablet and looks towards the 7-year-old. “What’s up Mo? Bored?”

She nods while trying to make her eyes look as big as possible. “Can we go down to the lab? I can help you work!”

“You’re not allowed in the lab on your own, Mongoose. You know that.”

“That’s why I’m asking you! Come one, please? I learn so much whenever you let me help out in the lab. How could you sabotage your sister’s education like that?”

Letting out a snort, he reluctantly gets up to lead her down to the labs, all while understanding why Tony complained that Peter was giving him grey hair. The lab at the lake house was one of Peter’s favourites. It’s the lab Morgan knows and grew up around, and watching her innocent excitement never failed to bring a smile to his face. Not to mention that this was the lab in which Tony invented time travel so that he could save him. It is also, unfortunately, a lab Peter wasn’t as familiar with, compared to the ones at the tower or over at the compound. So he feels that it is in no way his fault, when Morgan ran ahead of him, found some weird machine partially covered by a tarp-cloth thing, and started poking around on it.

“Peter what’s this?”

Even before she was finished asking her question, Peter ran towards her and pulled her away, lifted her and sat her on the table opposite the weird machine. Now that he gets a better look at it, it's obviously a prototype. It doesn’t have any casing covering it in its entirety, showing a large number of its inner parts that are usually easily damaged. Turning his attention to Morgan, he starts his lecture while trying his best to imitate the I’m-not-mad-I’m-just-disappointed look Uncle Ben used to give him when he was younger.

“Morgan Stark, you know better than to mess around with a prototype device that you don’t even know the intended function of. What on Earth possessed you to do that young lady?”

Looking down, she whispers “I’m sorry. It wasn’t there the last time we came to the lab and I was curious.”

Peter let out a sigh. He shouldn’t be upset at Morgan for this. It was his fault for not keeping an eye on a kid in a lab with potentially harmful devices. “It’s alright Maguna. Try not to do that again alright? We don’t want your mom to ground both of us.” Leaning in, Peter stage whispers “And between the two of us, she’s a bit scary when she’s upset.”

Morgan starts giggling, and nods her head, though whether in agreement to keep between them or in agreement to Pepper being scary, Peter didn’t know. Smiling he says, “You know how your dad had a lot of cool stuff in the garage?” At her nod, Peter continues, “Well, a few of those were moved down to the lab because your mom wanted to clean up the garage. She wants to put cars in there or something, but that’s not as interesting is it?”

Morgan, thankfully, seems less upset about being given a talking-to, so that’s a plus.
“Now, what do you say we get to work, hmm? I can start teaching you how to make a simple robot. Or maybe a-“

Part-way through speaking, he realized that Morgan wasn’t paying attention to what he was saying and was instead looking behind him with a mix of curiosity and concern. When he looks behind to see what was so interesting, he stops speaking, grabs Morgan, and starts making a run for the exit, because the prototype machine Morgan was messing with is now glowing. Though sadly, he wasn’t fast enough. Just his luck.

Suddenly there’s a bright flash of blue light, far too bright for a baseline human, let alone his enhanced senses, and he loses track of all his senses.

When the light’s gone, and his eyes can see again, he notices that they’re no longer in the lab, but on a large open lawn in front of an expensive-looking building. Or would it be considered a Mansion?

He is startled out of his observations when a throat clears behind him. When he turns around, making sure that Morgan is firmly behind him, his breath catches in his throat at what he sees. Because standing there in a sleeveless top, is Tony Fucking Stark, looking far younger than he remembers.

Before Peter or Not-Tony-Stark could do or say anything, Morgan starts trying to go toward the Not-Tony-Stark and gets out “Dad?”.  Peter sees Not-Tony-Stark flinch slightly at the title, before smoothing over his expression, and saying “How old are you, kid?”

While Peter is still trying to figure out what exactly is happening, Morgan chirps out “I’m Seven Years Old!”

Not-Tony-Stark seems to take this in, then turns towards Peter. “And what about you?”

“I’m 18 years old Mr Stark”

“I would’ve been in my early twenties then. Not unreasonable. Not to mention you have my hair and my mother’s eyes. Alright pipsqueaks, why don’t we head on inside and down to the lab, and we can do a DNA test to verify things? Capiche?”

Nodding, Peter lifts Morgan and settles her on his hip, and starts following I-Think-It-Might-Actually-Be-Tony-Stark. “Yes sir. Although, you are taking finding out you have a kid better than I would have expected.”

Turning his head back a bit, Maybe-Tony replies “Eh, I’m fully aware of what can happen because of my lifestyle. This isn’t the first pregnancy scare I’ve had either. Though this is the first time my supposed kids show up on my doorstep, so there’s that.”

Peter nods. That makes a lot of sense. Besides, he’s pretty sure Tony is just compartmentalizing so he doesn’t panic in front of virtual strangers.
Tilting his head towards Morgan, he starts whispering instructions to her.

“Maguna, I’m gonna need you to be quiet and listen to me until I say otherwise. Can you do that for me?” He feels her nod into his shoulder, and releases and small breath of relief. Without Morgan's interference in this situation, he can work on assessing the situation and damage control.

He diligently follows Tony through the house and into the lab, where Tony starts gathering cheek swabs and a syringe. “Alright you two, come over here and we’ll get started with this.”

Peter walks forward and sets Morgan down on the stool. “Mr Stark’s just going to take some blood, alright? It’ll barely hurt. We can even have ice cream when this is all over.”

Morgan nods then turns towards Tony and stretches her arm out. Not wasting any time, Tony gets to work. As soon as Tony’s done, Peter picks Morgan up and sits down in her place. He knows that the paternity test for him will come back in the negative but complying and then feigning ignorance or confusion is much easier than trying to make up some excuse right this minute. So Peter sits down and complies with Tony’s instructions. Once Tony has both Peter’s and Morgan’s blood and the cheek swabs in the machine running paternity tests, Peter gets up and speaks up.

“Excuse me Mr Stark, but is it possible to take Morgan upstairs and let her watch the TV or something?”

When he receives a distracted nod as a response, Peter takes Morgan out of the lab and into the living room and turns on the TV. “I don’t want you to wander anywhere Mongoose. Sit here and watch tv for a while. I’m just going to speak with Mr Stark, and then I’ll be up. We can watch Bugs Life then.”

Chapter Text

When Jarvis suggested that he take a walk and come back to his project with a fresh perspective, Tony decided to give it a shot. After all, he was stumped, and nothing else seemed to help in the slightest, so might as well give J’s idea a shot.

He did not expect to run into a pair of kids in front of his house just staring. When they turn around to look at him, he sucks in a breath, because he knows those eyes. They’re his mother’s eyes. They’re the eyes that used to stare back at him in the mirror back when he was still Antonio. The elder one even looks a bit like Tony did back when he was at MIT. The same eyes, same jaw, same messy brown hair.

And then the little girl called him Dad and he absolutely loses it and isn’t able to hide his flinch. He can’t have kids. He can’t. Because if he did, if these were actually his kids, then that means he wasn’t in their lives for so many years. It means that he might actually be worse than Howard, because for as much of an asshole Howard Stark was, at least he was fucking there!

With years of practice, he pushes all those thoughts aside. Focus on the situation now, panic later.

“How old are you kid?”

“I’m Seven Years Old!”

Turning to the older kid, Tony asks “And what about you?”

“I’m 18 years old Mr Stark.”

“I would’ve been in my early twenties then. Not unreasonable. Not to mention you have my hair and my mother’s eyes. Alright pipsqueaks, why don’t we head on inside and down to the lab, and we can do a DNA test to verify things? Capiche?”

As they’re walking to the lab the Elder One pipes up. “Yes sir. Although, you are taking finding out you have a kid better than I would have expected.”

Tony has to suppress the urge to laugh like some demented villain from a shitty b-list action movie. He is most definitely not taking this whole situation well, but he’ll be damned if he shows it. Besides, aren’t parents supposed to be good examples? He’s pretty sure breaking into panic is not what people would generally consider a “good example”.

Instead, turns his head back a bit and goes for a nonchalant “Eh, I’m fully aware of what can happen because of my lifestyle. This isn’t the first pregnancy scare I’ve had either. Though this is the first time my supposed kids show up on my doorstep, so there’s that.”

When the kid comes back down to the lab, Tony and Jarvis have mostly got the results from the paternity tests back. The girl—Morgan—is his daughter. Her paternity test came back positive, but the Elder One’s test is taking a weirdly long time. Tony and the Elder One are related somehow. Jarvis was able to get that much from the bloodwork at the very least, but it’s not a conclusive ‘I am definitely his father’ situation. It’s not an issue with his tech; he’s had J run diagnostics to double-check.

“Hey, kid?”

Startling out of whatever he was thinking about, he tentatively asks “Yes Mr Stark?”

“What’s your name? I can’t exactly keep calling you the Elder One like you’re some knockoff Cthulhu.”

“My name is Peter, sir.”

“Alright Peter, your sister’s test came in, and she is my kid. You, however,” pausing, Tony thinks over how he should phrase this, and decides to just go for straightforward. After all, he’s never been one for subtleties. He does, however, notice Peter tense when he pauses.

“Your test however is coming back with rather bizarre results. Do you have like some sort of birth defect or something? Cause it’s either that or my tech just straight up stopped working.”

Untensing, Peter nods. “Kind of. Well, not really, but it’s close enough that it would be the correct analogy to use. Or I guess it wouldn’t really be an analogy because of the whole, you know, fucked up DNA I have. But it’s not like, a Congenital anomaly if that’s what you were asking about. Which you probably were-“

“Kid! You’re rambling. So you know that you have genetic abnormalities. That makes things simpler. Do you know any more information? I can calibrate the test parameters to take into account your abnormalities.”

The kid then levels Tony with a serious look. “Is this place secure from any eavesdroppers?” At this Tony nods, albeit with mounting incredulity. Of course his lab is safe from eavesdropping. It’s his personal little fortress. Even Stane couldn’t get in.

“Ok then. I’m enhanced.”

Tony narrows his eyes. “Define enhanced!” He demanded.

“An improved version of Dr Erskine’s super soldier serum. It was an accident on everyone’s part, which is a good thing. Being a genius that’s also a child and enhanced was just begging to be turned into an experiment or an asset.”

Enhanced. Of course the kid is enhanced. It's also a good thing that the whole thing was apparently an accident. If some clown was experimenting on his kid Ironman would have been having words with them. Through his newly renewing panic, Tony manages to ask Peter if he knows how his DNA was altered due to this enhancement. Tony’s rather proud of himself for that.

“My DNA was altered when I was bit by a genetically altered, radioactive spider. So DNA should be reminiscent of a Spider.”

“You heard that, Jarvis?”

There’s an immediate response from J. “Of course sir. Re-running paternity with new information taken into account.”

After what felt like centuries, Jarvis piped in with “The test has been completed, sir. Peter is your son.”

“What!?”

He looks at Peter. That was most definitely not the reaction Tony was expecting if he was being honest. Relief? Sure. Horror? Maybe. Disgust? People have had worse reactions to being associated with him. But confusion? That wasn’t what Tony was expecting.

“What’s hard to understand kid? The paternity test came in positive. It was mostly a formality, anyway, considering your sister’s test was also positive.”

Shaking his head, Peter turns wide, confused eyes towards him. “I was adopted into Morgan’s family. You mean to tell me she’s actually my sister? Holy shit my dad’s Tony Stark.”

Chapter Text

How exactly does one calm a panicking spider-kid? Tony hasn’t read any parenting books, but he doubts that they would cover that, and he can hardly try to just google it.

What would his mom do if Tony was panicking? Well, she’d probably hug him till he’d calmed down, but Tony couldn’t exactly do the same with Peter; he hardly knew the kid!
Okay then, different approach: what does Tony do when he’s panicking? He distracts himself by working on something until he can calm down. Wait, that’d probably work with the kid. That’s good. Tony knows how to distract a panicking genius. He’s practically an expert at it, what with how frequently he needs to put the skill to use with himself.

So Tony just starts rambling about one of the projects he’s working on. If the kid understands, he’ll be distracted into paying attention. If he doesn’t, he’ll be distracted being too confused to panic. It’s a win-win situation.
“Hey, kid? Do you think you can help me with a project I’m working on? Stark Industries’ newly opened Medical Division is planning on launching a new line of Prosthetics. We’re trying our hand at making a Neural Prothesis, and we figured out how to partially connect the prosthetic to the Femoral Nerve, but we’re running into issues doing the same with the Ulnar Nerve.”

Throughout Tony’s ramblings, Peter pays more and more attention to what he was saying. By the point Tony’s done talking, Peter’s face is a mix of incredulous and excitement. “Are you trying to distract me from a panic attack by asking me to work on Neuromuscular prosthetics?!”

Tony shrugs. “Biomedical Engineering isn’t exactly my forte. I could use help.” After a pause, Tony adds “Is it working?”

Peter lets out a huff of air. “It is. And luckily for you, Biochemical Engineering is my ballpark. Can you pull up the schematics for the Brain-Computer Interface? If there’s an issue establishing a direct communication pathway, then the BCI might not be functioning as needed or wanted.”

Nodding emphatically, Tony pulls up the BCI schematics on the holotable. “That’s what I thought! I tried to see if there were any flaws in the design, but I couldn’t for the life of me find any!”

Gesturing towards the holotable, Peter asks “May I?”

Settling down on a nearby stool, Tony runs a hand over his face. “Be my guest. Maybe a fresh set of eyes can find whatever’s wrong.”

The kid, Tony realizes, is a genius. When he called himself a genius before, it wasn’t just his ego talking. Between Tony’s aptitude for Mechanical Engineering and Peter's talent in Biochemical Engineering, they finished the Prosthetics Project. The project that Tony has been trying and failing to finish for nearly two weeks.

Clapping his hands, Tony swivels his stool towards Peter. “So! Where’d you go to college kid? I’m assuming you have a degree in Biochem?”

Peter shakes his head, his mouth turning into a frown. “Morgan and I don’t legally exist. I’m self-taught.”

“You taught yourself enough Biochemistry to just waltz in here and finish a project that’s been plaguing me for weeks? Wait, did you say you don’t legally exist?”

“Nope.”

“Huh. We should probably get that fixed.”

“We should!?”

Tony is starting to reevaluate the whole genius thing. Tony makes sure to speak slowly, emphasizing each word. “Yes, we should. You need to legally exist to do things. Like, get a driver’s licence? Or got to college?”

“I know that!”, Peter snaps out. “I was confused about how we will go about making an 18-year-old retroactively exist!”

“Kid. I am a literal billionaire. I have an AI that can hack into virtually any database. And I have enough connections that even if we were detected, I can ensure that things stay quiet. Why wouldn’t we be able to retroactively make you and your sister exist?”

Peter opens and closes his mouth multiple times, and his voice squeaks when he finally says something. “Oh. Of course, I knew that. When do we start on that?”

Tony shakes his head in exasperation at the kid. “Right now. Jarvis, be a dear and start fabricating identities for my kids.”

Jarvis’ voice rings out throughout the lab. “Of course sir. Though I will need their information before I can do so.”

Jolting up, Peter turns towards the ceiling, then back to Tony. “Uhm, will our last name be Stark, or something else? Cuz it’s totally cool if our last name isn’t Stark, but I’ll have to go ask Morgan if she has any preferences for a last name if we have to choose our own.”

Scrunching his eyebrows together, Tony replies. “Of course, your last name will be Stark. There’s hardly a point in fabricating a new identity if we can’t just take the path of least resistance and scandal.”

“Right. In that case, my name is Peter Reilly Stark. I was born on August 10^th. My sister’s name is Morgan Hope Stark, and she was born on April 17^th. She was home-schooled until 1^st grade. We have different mothers, but apparently the same father. Her mother’s name was Virginia. I moved homes when I was a kid, so I can’t really give you much more information than that. Is that enough information Mister Jarvis? Because I don’t really think I have any more information that can go on like, birth certificates and stuff.”

“That is more than enough Young Master. However, if you know the name of your mother that would be beneficial.”

“Oh, Uhm, her name was May. She was a geneticist. She died when I was young in an accident.”

Throughout the whole conversation between Peter and Jarvis, Tony stayed quiet, opting to just observe his kid, but he’s brought back into the conversation when he hears about the kid’s mother. Letting out a chuckle, Tony looks toward Peter. “Looks like having parents die in an accident is a Stark trait. What about Morgan’s mother?”

Peter suddenly looks like he sucked in a lemon. “She’s, Uhm, she’s also dead. But it was rather recent, so maybe don’t bring it up with Morgan? I don’t think she’s understood the weight of what happened.”

Tony gives his agreement. He remembers how his mother’s death broke him. How he’s not sure if he would still be alive if it wasn’t for Rhodey taking care of him in the weeks following the accident, because Tony’s pretty sure he would’ve just died of an alcohol overdose or something. But it’s best not to go down that rabbit hole again because if he did, he’d probably start drinking, and he’d want to keep that at a minimum. He knows first-hand what an alcoholic father is like, and he’d be damned if he’s going to let his kids experience the same thing.

So to distract himself, he makes sure Peter has everything he needs at the moment. “Alright, kid, Jarvis and I are gonna be a bit busy creating identities for the two of you. Is there anything you need in the house? Other than rooms, of course. That’s already sorted out, just ask Jarvis.”

Peter stills, seeming to think on that. Eventually, he seems to make up his mind. “Well, Mr Stark-” Tony cuts him off.

“Absolutely not. I put up with the whole ‘Mr Stark’ and ‘Sir’ business when I wasn’t sure if you were my kid, but I am not going to be putting up with it now. Tony is the most formal I’ll accept from you.”

“I’ll try my best Dr Stark.”

Tony puts a hand over his chest in mock betrayal. Giggling, Peter continues. “But anyway, would it be possible for a room to be turned into a small private lab that I can use? There are a few things I’d like to work on now that I have the opportunity to.”

Chapter Text

“The test has been completed, sir. Peter is your son.”

“What!?”

Peter was honestly very confused, and maybe the slightest bit scared, because what the fuck Jarvis? How was he Tony’s son? He has a father-Richard Parker-not to mention that he only met Tony when he was 14! And wouldn’t Ben have said something, if Peter had this secret parent hidden away somewhere?

Tony shoots Peter a concerned look.

“What’s hard to understand kid? The paternity test came in positive. It was mostly a formality, anyway, considering your sister’s test was also positive.”

And in most cases, that would be enough to not confuse. Tony was Morgan’s dad. Peter had started to love Tony like a father. Put 2 and 2 together, and the answer should’ve been obvious. Except, Tony took Peter in once they started getting close. And Pepper took him in in Tony’s memory.

Peter shakes his head, turning towards Tony. “I was adopted into Morgan’s family. You mean to tell me she’s actually my sister?” The implications finally hit Peter, that the man he saw as a sort-of-father, was in fact, his father. “Holy shit my dad’s Tony Stark.”

And then he starts to think about it. He never looked like Richard did in the pictures he has of his parents. Ben and May always said that he looked like Mary, his mom, but never any comparisons to his father regarding looks.

And his mom was a bigshot geneticist who probably attended similar events, galas, and conventions that Tony did. After all, a single drunken one-night stand and enough bad luck is enough to result in a baby.

Wait does that mean he isn’t related to Ben or May?

Right as he starts spiralling into that good ol’ Parker Spiral ^TM, Tony starts rambling about something, and Peter eventually, clocks back into what’s being said.

“…Prosthetics. We’re trying our hand at making a Neural Prosthesis, and we figured out how to partially connect the prosthetic to the Femoral Nerve, but we’re running into issues doing the same with the Ulnar Nerve.”

And Peter suddenly has to suppress a bout of Hysteria, because it is exactly like Tony to panic when confronted with an emotional teen and spout off random science titbits.

“Are you trying to distract me from a panic attack by asking me to work on Neuromuscular Prosthetics?!”

Tony shrugs. “Biomedical Engineering isn’t exactly my forte. I could use the help.” After a pause, Tony adds “Is it working?”

Peter lets out a huff of air. “It is. And luckily for you, Biochemical Engineering is my ballpark. Can you pull up the schematics for the Brain-Computer Interface? If there’s an issue establishing a direct communication pathway, then the BCI might not be functioning as needed or wanted.”

Tony nods along to what Peter said and starts pulling up a bunch of schematics. Presumably for the BCI. “That’s what I thought! I tried to see if there were any flaws in the design, but I couldn’t for the life of me find any!”

Gesturing towards the holotable, Peter asks “May I?”

Settling down on a nearby stool, Tony runs a hand over his face. “Be my guest. Maybe a fresh set of eyes can find whatever’s wrong.”

There’s a lot of back and forth when they’re working, and Peter is suddenly hit with a bout of nostalgia for when he and Tony used to do the same thing, back at the tower.

Tony claps his hands and swivels his stool towards Peter. “So! Where’d you go to college kid? I’m assuming you have a degree in Biochem?”

He honestly has no idea how to respond to that. He can hardly just come out and say, ‘Morgan doesn’t legally exist because she hasn’t been born yet, and I’m supposed to be as old as she is right now’. In the end, he settles for a half-truth. “Morgan and I don’t legally exist. I’m self-taught.” Which is true. Either he doesn’t exist in this universe, or he’s much younger, in which case he still doesn’t have the correct paperwork proving his existence.

“You taught yourself enough Biochemistry to just waltz in here and finish a project that’s been plaguing me for weeks? Wait, did you say you don’t legally exist?”

“Nope.”

“Huh. We should probably get that fixed.”

“We should!?”

Tony speaks slowly, emphasizing each word. “Yes, we should. You need to legally exist to do things. Like, get a driver’s licence? Or got to college?”

“I know that!”, Peter snaps out. “I was confused about how we will go about making an 18-year-old retroactively exist!”

Tony looks at him with amusement.
“Kid. I am a literal billionaire. I have an AI that can hack into virtually any database. And I have enough connections that even if we were detected, I can ensure that things stay quiet. Why wouldn’t we be able to retroactively make you and your sister exist?”

Peter opens and closes his mouth multiple times, and his voice squeaks when he finally says something. “Oh. Of course, I knew that. When do we start on that?”

Tony shakes his head, which is totally not fair. Of course Peter’s confused about how to deal with the consequences of the whole time-travel thing!

“Right now. Jarvis, be a dear and start fabricating identities for my kids.”

Jarvis’ voice rings out throughout the lab. “Of course sir. Though I will need their information before I can do so.”

Jolting up, Peter turns towards the ceiling, then back to Tony. “Uhm, will our last name be Stark, or something else? Cuz it’s totally cool if our last name isn’t Stark, but I’ll have to go ask Morgan if she has any preferences for a last name if we have to choose our own.”

Scrunching his eyebrows together, Tony replies. “Of course, your last name will be Stark. There’s hardly a point in fabricating a new identity if we can’t just take the path of least resistance and scandal.”

That’s probably good. He’s not sure if there’s already a Peter Parker in this universe, so he doesn’t want to run around calling himself Peter Parker as well. Two probably kids of Tony Stark running around calling themselves Peter Benjamin Parker is going to look suspicious to anyone, and not having to make up a fake last name is a relief. Not to mention that it probably would have upset Morgan if her last name was no longer Stark, and he doesn’t really want to deal with a justifiably upset 7-year-old right now.

But that doesn't solve the problem of his middle name. Whether or not he’s actually related to Ben and May, they still raised him. Took care of him when he had no one else. It would feel like a betrayal if he just used any random name to replace Benjamin.

But then, he’s hit with an idea. What if he uses a different name that can be traced back to them, but not in so obvious a way that it would cause issues?

“Right. In that case, my name is Peter Reilly Stark. I was born on August 10th.” Reilly. Aunt May’s maiden name, and a common enough name to not rouse suspicion. It may not be a common spelling of the name, but it’s good enough.

“My sister’s name is Morgan Hope Stark, and she was born on April 17th. She was home-schooled until 1st grade. We have different mothers, but apparently the same father. Her mother’s name was Virginia.” Thankfully, Morgan didn’t exist at this point in time, so he could just give correct, unedited information for her.

He thinks if there’s anything else, then adds “I moved homes when I was a kid, so I can’t really give you much more information than that. Is that enough information Mister Jarvis? Because I don’t really think I have any more information that can go on like, birth certificates and stuff.”

“That is more than enough Young Master. However, if you know the name of your mother that would be beneficial.”

Well, fuck.

“Oh, Uhm, her name was May. She was a geneticist. She died when I was young in an accident.” There. Aunt May's name, but his mom’s occupation. And since he considers both of them to be his mothers, he won’t have to fake any sort of emotional attachment.

Suddenly, Tony chuckled and turned to look at Peter. “Looks like having parents die in an accident is a Stark trait. What about Morgan’s mother?”

Oh no. He doesn’t know if they can even get back to Pepper. Shit. He’s going to have to explain this to Morgan. And Tony. Maybe he could just go with the worst-case scenario? Work with that until it’s proven false?

“She’s, Uhm, she’s also dead. But it was rather recent, so maybe don’t bring it up with Morgan? I don’t think she’s understood the weight of what happened.”

Tony goes quiet at that. Eventually, he looks away from Peter and back to the holotable.
“Alright, kid, Jarvis and I are gonna be a bit busy creating identities for the two of you. Is there anything you need in the house? Other than rooms, of course. That’s already sorted out, just ask Jarvis.”

Peter thinks about that. He has no idea how to recreate the time machine. So he is very much stuck here in this time.

Hesitantly, he starts with his request. “Well, Mr Stark-” Tony cuts him off.

“Absolutely not. I put up with the whole ‘Mr Stark’ and ‘Sir’ business when I wasn’t sure if you were my kid, but I am not going to be putting up with it now. Tony is the most formal I’ll accept from you.”

Peter is once again hit with that weird, bittersweet nostalgic feeling. He can’t count how many times they’ve teasingly had this same argument. Smiling, Peter fires back his retort with no hesitation.
“I’ll try my best Dr Stark.”

Tony puts a hand over his chest in mock betrayal. Giggling, Peter continues. “But anyway, would it be possible for a room to be turned into a small private lab that I can use? There are a few things I’d like to work on now that I have the opportunity to.”

Peter spent the entire time he was watching movies with Morgan thinking back on the day. He knows that the prosthetics that he and Tony worked on today weren’t supposed to be finished and released for at least another 4 years when Dr Helen Cho starts working at Stark Industries.

But they were finished now.

Because of Peter.

He doesn’t have every invention memorized. But he does have knowledge of certain inventions that haven’t been invented yet. Nanotech, for example, was something he was working on after Tony passed away, trying to improve it. He can share his knowledge and inventions, bettering the world faster than it did in his timeline. Maybe, just maybe, that would let them beat Thanos the first time around. Maybe if Peter can do this right, no one has to die this time.

After eventually convincing Morgan to go to sleep, he turns to the ceiling and calls for Jarvis.

“Yes, Young Master?”

“Could you please direct me to wherever my lab is?”

“It is not yet properly furnished with all the equipment that should be in place.”

Peter pauses in thought. “Is there holotable in there?”

“There is. However, it is the only equipment available within the lab as of now.”

“That’s fine by me. Lead the way, Jarvis.”
Once in the lab, he finds his gaze drifting to a comfy-looking red armchair-the only thing in the “lab” other than the holotable and a whiteboard.

Moving over towards the holotable, Peter turns it on. Turning to the ceiling again, he calls for Jarvis once more.

“Hey, Jarvis? Are you allowed to help me with my project?”

“I am allowed to help you in any way you need as long as it doesn’t go against my protocols or sir’s orders.”

“Cool, settle in then. We’re gonna be here for a while.”

Chapter Text

Tony has a thing when a wakes up. It’s kind of like his routine, but Rhodey threatened to stab him if he calls his thing a routine. He wakes up, and irrelevant of the time, gets some coffee, then proceed to go down to his lab. Occasionally, Jarvis will pipe up and inform him of some meeting or other, and he’ll ignore it till Pepper gets fed up and comes to drag him to wherever he’s supposed to be.

Which is why Tony isn’t surprised that Jarvis decided to interrupt his coffee time. He is surprised at why. Apparently, Peter wants to meet him at his new lab. Peter. His son.

He downs the entire cup of coffee.

“Alright J, let’s go see what he wants.”

On his way there, he makes sure to snag a couple of cups of coffee.

Once he enters the barely-a-lab, he sees Peter concentrating on the hologram of a Magneto Coil connected to a Spark Plug.

“Hey, Cthulhu! Got you coffee.”

Turning around, Peter takes the second glass of coffee out of Tony’s hands and levels him with a deadpan look. “I thought you wanted to know my name so you don’t refer to me as a knockoff Cthulhu.”

“Knockoff being the keyword. Now before we get into whatever you called me here for, I have some good news to share.”

Pausing for dramatic effect, Tony takes a long, drawn-out sip of his coffee while looking straight at an exasperated Peter.

“You and Morgan’s paperwork is complete. We’ll have to hold a press conference to introduce you to the public.”

Peter nods at that. “If both of us are being introduced, it’d be better to direct more attention towards me. I want Morgan to have as small a target on her back as possible.”

Tony raises an eyebrow. “You want to paint a bigger target on your back so that people leave Morgan alone?”

“I’m enhanced and an adult. I can take care of myself. Morgan’s a 7-year-old with a fascination with paint.”

Well. That’s fair. Though, if Tony’s being honest with himself, he doesn’t want either of his kids to be in the media spotlight. He grew up with it himself, his every move and mistake recorded and televised, without any private moments. Expecting his 7-year-old daughter to deal with the same thing is hardly fair. Peter has the right idea about painting targets elsewhere, but he won’t let Peter be the media’s latest victim.

“So what’d you call me here for? I doubt it was just to get a look at this handsome face.”

“More like ageing face”, Peter says dryly. Gesturing toward the holotable, Peter continues as if he didn’t just insult Tony’s 2-time Sexiest Man alive winning face.

“I know that this is probably crossing some sort of boundary, but I just got to thinking yesterday after working on the prosthetic with you. I know that Stark Industries has shut down its weapons division and is now expanding the rest of its divisions. Some of these are older inventions of mine, but I started designing concepts during the night.”

“Nah there’s no boundary about sharing inventions and ideas. Let’s hear him.”

“Okay, Jarvis please start the show.”

The lights darken a little, and the holotable changes from displaying the schematics of a spark plug to bandages and a ton of chemical equations.
“These are bandages that have painkillers and mild a sedative worked into the bandages. They also have a mild adhesive property that lets them painlessly remove dead skin.”

Tony cuts in here. “How are the painkillers and sedatives worked into the bandages? Just dip it into a vat of sedatives?”

“No okay you see here?” Peter moves around the hologram of the bandage and starts enlarging it. “There’s a Biopolymer gel coating on the inside, that’s going to have the sedative laced into it. The Biopolymer should keep the sedative from evaporating, and the modification I made over there with the chemical formula should make it more reactive to body heat, making it slightly melt and shift, apply the sedative, and become mildly adhesive.”

Tony starts looking through the work and information on display. “Kid, this is. You altered the base structure of a biopolymer, to the point that it can be classified as a brand-new semi-synthetic polymer. You invented a new polymer that has various medical uses.”
Tony takes in a breath. “Okay. For all the inventions you are showing me, I want you to also tell me when and why you invented it.”

Throughout Tony’s little rant, Peter starts blushing, becoming progressively more red. Letting out a nervous, shaky laugh, Peter continues. “Sure thing. The Polymer was based on the Polypeptide chain. I invented it when I was 14? No, it was when I was 13. Yeah, that sounds right. I made it to help me deal with the enhanced healing that comes with my enhancements, but really, it can actually be really useful for everyone.”

And from there, it was just Peter presenting invention after invention.

“These glasses and headphones can completely block out the users’ sight and hearing on command. I made them when I was 14 to deal with the heightened senses my enhancement gives me, but it can be useful to people who have issues with sensory overlord.”

“This is a pair of anti-fog glasses. I made them when I was 10 because I had glasses back then and having them fog up sucked.”

“This is the information I have on making a bacterium that eats through plastics and is completely non-toxic to everything else. I made it last year, and it was because I was in a phase where I wanted to fix the planet.”

“I was working on this when you walked in. It was the design of a potential flying car. If we repurpose your Ironman repulsors, we could have wide-spread propulsion tech.”

“I know you don’t want anyone to have the schematics for the miniature arc reactor, but if we turn them back to the size of a building, it will let us sell completely green, renewable energy. I have some blueprints for what an arc reactor powerplant could look like.”

“Behold, all the work I have on Nanites. Unfortunately, I have a very limited understanding of Nanotechnology, so this is as far as I can take it. Completed, it will open up the path to so many more inventions!”

“The last thing I was working on is this!” Peter points to the hologram schematics of a phone. “Other than Biochemical Engineering, Electrical Engineering is something I excel at. I was making phones and laptops and drones from parts I salvaged out of the dumpster since I was a year or two younger than Morgan. Check out the schematics and tell me what you think.”

Tony does so. He looks at all the equations and information on the side, looks at how the phone is put together, and looks at individual each part. It’s good. Really good. Better than any he can think of on or off the market.  

He’s also thankful that this is just an Electrical Engineering project. Tony’s decent at chemistry, but some of the kid’s Biochemical projects stumped him. He’s gonna have to read up on the relevant topics before he’s able to understand them. But Electrical Engineering is something he’s good at. It is, after all, one of the courses he has a doctorate in.

“You mind explaining why the phone will have an inbuilt AI? Handing Jarvis copies to everyone in the world is a bad idea.”

“What? No! It’s meant to be a worse version. One that can only control the device it’s on, and that too just barely. A phone that you can just ask to do stuff? People would love that! Wondering what the time is? Just ask your phone. Wondering how to make pasta? Just ask the phone, it has internet connectivity after all. Of course, we will need to put in some work to make sure the AI isn’t too smart and has some sort of cap on the self-learning protocol.”

Tony goes to his lab, while Peter goes off to entertain his sister. Tony should spend some time getting to know his daughter, but he’s been busy yesterday, and he knows he won’t be able to pay attention to anything else while he’s thinking about all the stuff Peter showed him today. The sensory glasses and headphones, the anti-fog glasses, and the bandages are all instantly marketable. The Phone and the Bacterium just need a little more work and polishing and they’ll be good to go. But none of those are what caught his attention. No, the things holding his attention hostage are the concepts and half-finished schematics Peter showed him.

An arc reactor powerplant? Good idea. It’ll need a lot of work to get it to be considered green energy, what with the palladium and all, but it’s a good idea.

The flying car? Peter barely had schematics for that, and what he did have was about reworking the battery to be much more fuel efficient.

And last, but definitely not least, the fucking Nanites. The kid has a good chunk of the theory of creating functional nanites worked out. With Tony’s help, they might actually finish it in a month or two. Which is honestly leaving him a bit dizzy. Nanites, something that people have been trying to make for years, are two months away from being completed in theory. Tony, for a brief moment, wonders if this mixture of incredulity, awe, and pride is what Rhodey feels whenever Tony does or makes something considered to be impossible.

And the kid wanted to give all of his inventions and research to Stark Industries?

Chapter Text

When Morgan woke up that day, Peter was there with that serious look on his face which means that someone, usually Morgan, is in big trouble. So to avoid a lecture, Morgan quickly got ready and went to the kitchen to eat breakfast. Maybe if she behaves really well, Peter will forget that Morgan is in trouble. She’s broken out of her thoughts by Peter putting a plate of omelettes before her. Peter takes a seat across from Morgan and stares at her. It was a bit weird, but adults do weird things. Morgan didn’t pay him much attention until he called her.

“Mo?”

She looks up from her food, with a piece of an omelette hanging out of her mouth.

“I need to speak to you about something important, and I need you to try your best to be brave. Alright?”

Morgan nods. Of course she’ll be brave. Peter’s here, and she always feels brave when he’s here. She knows that he’ll keep her safe from the monsters and bad guys.

“Okay. But first, Jarvis? Could you check for bugs, please?”

“Of course, young master.”

Morgan tilts her head to the side. That wasn’t Friday. She scrunches her nose. Maybe it was Friday, but with a different voice? But Peter asked for Jarvis, not Fri.

“No listening devices detected within property perimeters.”

“Good. Jarvis, disable surveillance in this room for the next 15 minutes.”

A beeping sound comes from the ceiling. Peter looks up, and asks “Jarvis?”

When the weird Friday doesn’t say anything, Peter turns to look at Morgan.

“Alright. Do you remember when we were in the lab, Mo? When that weird light came?”

Morgan nods, not sure if she’s going to be scolded for messing with that machine again.

“Okay, so that device did something that let us see dad again. Can you guess what it did?”

Morgan furrows her eyebrows. After a few minutes, she shakes her head. “I don’t know Petey. It’s not the holograms like in the lab. Daddy wasn’t blue yesterday.”

Peter nods. “Do you know what time travel is, Mo?”

This time, Morgan nods enthusiastically. “I do! It’s the thing daddy was working on to bring you back home! It means to go backwards or forward in time, right?”

“Right, we travelled back in time, back before your parents were together, or before you were born.”

Morgan’s eyes widened. “Does that mean we’ll see a tiny you!? Oooh, will I be older than you? I can teach you stuff you don’t know now!”

Peter laughs, causing Morgan to join in. “I don’t know about that Mongoose, but we’ll see. But there is some bad news. We’re stuck here in this time.”

“Why is that bad news? Both daddy and mommy are here. And so are you! We can all be a family together!”

“Because mom and dad won’t remember us. You saw how surprised dad was yesterday about seeing us, right?”

Morgan’s eyes widen, and she slowly starts to cry. She finally has her whole family with her, and they don’t remember her? She feels Petey’s arms wrap around her, and he brings her into a hug.

He just holds her and lets her cry. Eventually, her sobs grow quieter, and Peter pulls back a little to look at her. He brings his hand up to wipe away the tears still on her face and gives her a soft smile. “I know this seems awful, and you're sad. You're allowed to be sad. You're allowed to cry. And if you ever want a hug, you can always come to me alright?”

Morgan hiccups, and nods. She knows that. She can always go to Petey or mom whenever she’s feeling sad and wants a hug. Except she can’t go to mom now because mom doesn’t remember her. She feels a fresh bout of tears coming. Peter puts his hand underneath her chin, and gently raises it so that she’s looking at him.

“You know, we have both mom and dad now, right? They might not remember us, but we can always make new memories with them. You know they love you right?”

Morgan nods. Both mom and dad have always told her that they love her, and mom and dad don’t lie.

“So they’ll love you even if they don’t remember.”

Sniffling, Morgan looks up at Peter. “Can we just cuddle for now Petey? I really want a hug.”

Peter nods, lifts her up, and carries her towards the couch in the living room. As they just spend some time cuddling, she starts falling asleep from the exhaustion of all the crying and emotions. The last thing she sees before she falls asleep is her dad walking into the room.

She falls asleep with a smile on her face, knowing that Ironman and Spiderman will protect her from nightmares.

Chapter Text

When Tony walked into the living room, he froze at the sight in front of him. His 7-year-old daughter is sleeping while cuddled into her brother, with some cartoon playing on the tv. It’s the kind of thing Tony desperately wanted to do when he was a kid but wasn’t allowed to. Talking in the sight in front of him, he makes a vow to himself. He won’t be like Howard. He’s going to try his hardest to make sure that his kids have the kind of childhood that Tony longed for.

He slowly makes his way over to the couch and makes sure he whispers when he speaks. “Hey, Cthulhu. The other room. I need to talk to you.”

When Peter slowly extracts himself from his sister and follows Tony into the other room, he shoots Tony an annoyed look.
“Are you seriously using Cthulhu as my nickname?”

Tony waves him off. Quite literally at that.
“What? Of course I am. Not the point. I actually need to speak with you about the stuff you showed me this morning.”

Peter crosses his arms. “What about it? I’m pretty sure everything was as functional as I could get them.”

“Yeah, that’s kind of the thing. The work you displayed is something expected out of someone with a Doctorate in Biochem and a Master in Electrical. And you just. You just did them because you were bored or annoyed. What’re your plans for college?”

Peter closes his eyes and breathes out. “Why don’t we go somewhere we can sit?”

“Sure thing. We can head down to my lab.” Tony says with a shrug.

On the walk down to the lab, Tony keeps an eye on Peter, who is so lost in thought that he nearly walked into a wall. Tony had to reach out and pull him out of the way using his shirt sleeve. Peter smiles at him, then proceeds to go back to his thoughts. Shaking his head, Tony laughs under his breath. Guess he asked the kid something that he wasn’t prepared to answer.

When they reach the lab, they both find a stool each and sit down facing each other. They are also, of course, seated next to a holotable. They aren’t heathens.

“Was my work really that good?”

“Oh of course not. It’s not like you invented a new semi-synthetic polymer as well as the solution to excessive plastic. Those are definitely feats anyone could achieve.” Tony drawls out sarcastically.

Peter half-heartedly nods. “Right. Then I guess I’ll first test out of those courses.” Peter scrunches his brow. “Are Doctorates really that easy to get?”

Tony shakes his head. He’s pretty sure that there’ll be several people willing to strangle him for how blasé he’s treating this situation.

“Kid, just because you’re a genius doesn’t mean everyone is. Doctorates are hard to get for most people. And you're right in that you won’t just be handed a doctorate. Testing out of Bachelor and Master degrees for Biochem and Electrical is rather simple, but you will have to spend some time writing and submitting an actual thesis before you get a PhD.”

“But I will be able to test out of all the doctorate classes?”

Tony pauses to consider this. He’s not entirely sure. He thinks that’ll check out though. The worst-case scenario will be him pulling a couple of strings to let it happen. Though he doubts that’ll be necessary. Doctorates are for the sole purpose of advancing the collective knowledge of society after all.

“That should be the case, yeah.”

“Then I’ll work on getting a Bachelor's in Aerospace Engineering while I write my Biochem thesis.”

“Do you have any preference for which college you’ll go to?”

Without a moment’s hesitation, Peter responds. “MIT. I’ve wanted to go there since I was a kid.”

Tony nods his head with his eyes closed. He tries his best to get his voice to be wise and sagely. “Good choice young one.” He snaps out of his pose and continues. “I went there, of course. A reference letter from an illustrious alumnus such as myself will go a long way. When do you plan on attending?”

“Wait this wasn’t just hypothetical?”

“What? Of course not kid. You can get any education you want. I’m just asking to know if you needed any help applying.”

“I can’t just abandon Morgan and leave. She’s still upset that her mom isn’t here anymore. She fell asleep half crying in my arms just a few minutes ago! She needs me right now.”

Tony reaches over and rests his hand on Peter’s shoulder. “Kid, I’m the parent here. I know I haven’t been there for either of you for so long, but I promise to be there for you two from now. She’ll have me here with her to help her through this. You should live your life. You’re still just 18.”

When Peter still doesn’t look convinced, Tony decides to go all or nothing. “I’m not immortal.”
Peter’s head snaps up to stare at Tony. His eyes are wide, and his mouth is slightly open, as if he wants to say something but isn’t sure what.

“I’m not immortal. I was fine with my company and fortune just going to hell after my death. It’s not like I had anyone to give it to. But now? Now I have you and Morgan. If something happens to me, you will have to take care of Morgan. You can do that best with a degree.”

“Wait what does the degree have to do with your company.”

Sighing Tony pinches the bridge of his nose. “I’m not saying this right. If you have a degree, I can pass over my company and fortune over to you uncontested in the event of my death. That’ll make raising Morgan easier for you. If you don’t want to go get a degree for yourself, at least consider getting one for Morgan’s sake.”

Peter just gapes at him. And continues gaping at him until Tony snaps his fingers in front of his face. Peter jolts up, still looking shocked. “Are you making me your primary heir?”

“Yep,” Tony says, popping the P.

Peter catches up to everything else that Tony said, and gets up suddenly, pushing the stool out of the way. “No. Absolutely not. You’re not dying anytime soon. I refuse to let that happen.”

Tony knows that he’s slowly dying. The Palladium is killing him, and there are no alternatives. If one of the last things he does is make sure that his kids are safe, then that’s fine. It’s much better than just letting all of his stuff just go to waste. At least this way, his legacy might be positive. At least now, someone other than Rhodey will miss him.

So Tony gives Peter a sad smile. “I’m afraid that I can’t control when I die.”

Slamming his hands on the holotable, Peter snarls. “Well, you better figure out how, because I sure as hell ain’t losing a 7^th fucking parent.”

And with that Peter starts storming out. Tony takes a deep breath. He was prepared to die. He’d come to terms with it. But Peter and Morgan’s unexpected entry into his life threw a wrench into those plans because he’s no longer content with just passing away. He wants to watch them grow up. He wants to watch Morgan learn about robotics. He wants to watch Peter graduate college. He wants to do so many things now that he has kids, and he can’t do any of them.

But he’ll be damned if he doesn’t try to at least make sure that his kids will be alright after he’s gone. So he calls out to Peter before he can leave the lab. Peter turns around. “What?”

“Fine. We’ll work on better defences for the house and more advanced Ironman suits. I’ll try my best to stay alive for as long as I can for you and Morgan. I promise that much.”

Peter just stares him down for a few minutes. “I’ll leave for college as soon as we figure out how to make an Ironman armour with nanites.”

Getting up, Tony walks over to Peter and holds out his hand. “You got yourself a deal. Wanna shake on it?”

Chapter Text

Walking up to the door, Tony knocks. On hearing a faint “Come in”, he opens the door and leaves it ajar.

“Hey, kid. You mind if we talk about what happened this afternoon?”

Sitting down on the bed, Peter puts his head in his hands and groans. “I’m sorry about that by the way. I know that prepare for the best and hope for the best is, like, a common thing, but I literally just got you, and hearing you talk about your death just kinda pushed me over I guess.  I’ll try not to lose it like that again.”

Tony tentatively walks forward from where he was standing at the doorway and takes a seat on the bed next to Peter. He raises his hand. Is this one of those situations where he’s supposed to give a hug? Tony hardly has any experience to draw from, but he thinks it might be. In the end, he just settles for settling a firm grip on Peter’s shoulder.
“Hey, kid, can I tell you something? I never really had much of a childhood. Most of the happy memories I have of when I was younger are from the brief time when my mom still used to call me Antonio. So I don’t have an example to follow here. I don’t know what to do or what I’m doing. But I do know what I’m not doing. I’m not gonna be like my asshole dad.”

Tony finally looks up from the floor and turns towards Peter, who’s staring right back with misty eyes. “I don’t want you to go to college because you feel obligated, or because I pressure you. If you go to college, it should be because you want to. I’m sorry for trying to pressure you before.”

Peter reaches up and wipes his eyes. “It’s okay” He sniffs and rubs his eyes in another attempt to stop his tears from flowing. “You were right. Morgan and I aren’t alone. We have you to step in. I should go and get a better education. I’ve always loved learning. Besides, it’s” hiccupping, Peter goes back to staring at his hands. “It’s not like Morgan won’t ever see me again. We can visit every week or something.”

Tony smiles. He’s feeling a mix of disbelief and pride. Pride at how emotionally mature Peter is. And disbelief because this emotionally mature kid came from Tony. Tony “I refuse to acknowledge how much I care about Rhodey because I don’t want to seem weak” Stark. Tony “I’m gonna distance myself from Edwin and Ana Jarvis because I don’t want to break from their deaths” Stark. Tony “Drinking enough booze to kill a herd of elephants is a good way of dealing with his mother's death” Stark.

Clearing his throat, Tony changes the subject. He has most definitely had enough emotional bullshit for the day. On to lighter subjects.

“So, Aeronautical Engineering, huh? Any specific reason that you’re taking it?”

Peter nods. “Yeah. I wanna take humans to space. I want to design and invent spaceships, and FTL, and all the other cool sci-fi stuff.”

Well. That is certainly quite ambitious. And yet, Tony can’t wait for the day Peter actually does it. Can’t wait for the day that he invents better flight engines, and thrusters, and FTL, and the whole nine yards.

His mood falls abruptly. He won’t be able to. He won’t be able to see Peter achieve his dreams. He’ll die so much sooner than that. Deep breaths. 3 in, 5 hold, 7 out. It’s fine. Tony is perfectly fine. He was meant to die in that cave anyway. Yinsen bought him a few months. That was enough time to clean up the mess his company made. And it was enough time to meet his kids.

“By the way, why nanite armour? There are so many other arbitrary conditions you could have put, but you put nanite armour.”

Peter twists around so that he’s sitting fully on the bed while facing Tony. “If you have an Ironman armour made out of nanites, then you could have it on you at all times. We could make a modified version for Morgan, with the sole purpose of getting her out of situations. It’d give me some peace of mind to know that the family I have left will be protected.”

“Wow. My son and heir is a genius biochemist, aspiring Aerospace engineer, and paranoid enough to only leave his family when they have enough tech protecting them that they look like a sci-fi movie.” Tony comments wryly.

Peter looks towards his feet and starts rubbing the back of his head. “Uhm, about that.”

“Oh boy.” Tony lets out in a breath of air. “Is it one of those times where I don’t want to know, or am I going to have to ask you to clarify?”

Blinking, Peter tilts his head. “Uhm, ask to clarify?” He says, sounding less like a reply and more like a question.

Snorting, Tony goes with it. “What is it then, Cthulhu?”

Peter has a weird scowl on his face like he’s half nervous and half annoyed. “I was wondering if I could make some requests for equipment and stuff. You know, being your son and heir and all that?”

“Sure thing kid, ask away. What do you need?”

Swallowing, Peter responds. “Okay, so the Stark Industries storage facility that’s upstate New York? The one that’s mostly empty and abandoned? I want the building in my name. There are some modifications I want to make and stuff I want to build.”

“Jarvis? Is the facility expendable for us?”

“Affirmative. There are old supplies and equipment that were never cleaned out once all staff moved to a different location.”

“All yours then kid. Anything else?”

“Could I maybe, possibly, potentially have some money to buy equipment when I need it? I mean, I can pay you back later, I swear. I just don’t have any on me right now, and I’d appreciate it.”

“Kid. Peter. You are not going to be paying me back. If we don’t spend the money, there is nothing else we can do with it. Speaking of which, Jarvis? Add a 100 million to the kid’s account.”

Peter sputters and chokes. “What the fuck. I was thinking more like 20-30k at most. What the fuck” Peter whispers the last bit, quiet but with feeling. Tony hears it all the same in the tiny room.

“C’mon, kid. We have the ball rolling here. We need anything else?”

Shyly, Peter looks up. “Could, ah, could you teach me how to code an AI?”

Tony’s face breaks into a huge grin. “Course I can! You have any progress made so far?”

Peter nods. “It’s mostly in my head. It’s pretty basic and barebones though. I do have a specific purpose I want it to fulfil, so I have the code towards that end a bit more done.”

“Neat. You got a name for it?”

“Yep. Very Electronic Neural Operating Module.”

Chapter Text

The morning after their emotional chat, Tony decides that they need to head out to New York for a bit. There’s quite a bit of paperwork that needs to be taken to his lawyer to deal with. And a decent portion of said paperwork requires Peter’s presence and signature. They’ll obviously be taking Morgan as well. After all, they can hardly leave the kid on her own in the mansion. That’d be extremely irresponsible according to the parenting books he read last night.

Twirling around on his stool, he starts giving out commands to Jarvis.

“J? Be a dear and send Peter over to my room, will you? And prepare the private jet. While you’re at it, contact Hogan. Tell him to call me soon as he’s free. His little vacations over.”

“Peter has asked me to inform you that he is currently in his lab, and will come up as soon as he has finished his work there.”

Sometimes, he looks at that kid, and can’t believe that he came from him. Other times, it’s eerily like looking into a mirror.

“Incoming call from Happy Hogan, sir.”

“Accept.”

The silence that Tony’s room was in until then ended. In its place, was his bodyguard/friend’s voice. “Boss? You said to call you?”

“Afraid it’s back to work for you Hogan. Vacations over.”

He hears Happy’s grumbling over the line. He pointedly ignores hearing about Stane’s mess and moves on. “I’m having Jarvis prepare a jet. I’m gonna need you to send for your most trustworthy pilot. And maybe try evacuating the area? I’m gonna need a little privacy in a hot minute.”

He doesn’t hear anything from Happy’s end for a few minutes. “J, did he cut the call?”

“Happy Hogan is still on call.” “I’m still here.”
He hears the dual response at the same time.

“What’s this about Tony? Is there anything I need to know about?”

“Oh, there most definitely is. It’s not something I’d trust to talk about over the phone, I’m afraid.”

“Ok. Ok, I’ll pilot the jet myself then. It’ll be the safest option. Is this paranoia something I’ll have to worry about in the long term?”

Tony's answer, is a simple and firm “Yes.”

“Then I’ll need to look into hiring someone both of us find trustworthy later. Where’re we going anyway?”

“New York. Have someone leave a car with dark windows in advance. I don’t want the vultures to know that I came to New York.”

“Will do, Boss.”

Once Happy hangs up, Tony sighs. That’s the problem of getting to New York solved.

“J, where’s Peter? Did he get distracted by something in the lab?”

“Peter is currently eating breakfast with miss Morgan. I would advise that you join them.”

Jarvis is probably right, he thinks, as he’s getting up. Tony really should join them. He’s spent virtually no time with Morgan, after all.

When he reaches the kitchen, it’s to the sight of Peter and Morgan laughing while eating breakfast. Smiling, Tony moves to join them.

“Oooh, that looks delicious. You two leave any for me?”

Both Morgan and Peter look up with a deer-caught-in-the-headlights look. Morgan is the first to snap out of it, and shakes her head. “I tried to, daddy. But Peter ate all of it.”

Peter’s head swivels towards Morgan. Putting both his hands on his chest, Peter retorts. “This is the thanks I get for cooking you food? You throwing me under the bus?”

Morgan starts giggling at her brother’s antics.

Shaking his head, Tony leans over the table and takes a bit of Morgan’s food. She turns to him pouting, causing both Tony and Peter to chuckle. “Alright child of mine. Get ready. We’ll be going out today.”

“We will?” both Morgan and Peter ask in unison.

“Yep. So you two better get ready.”

Peter and Morgan look at each other, then look back at Tony. Peter speaks up for both of them it seems. “We’re both ready. We don’t really have anything to pack.”

“Cool, then down to the garage we go. By the way, Peter? You know how to drive?”

“Uhh, yes? I mean, I learnt how to drive when I was 15, but I don’t see how that’s relevant right now.”

Walking into the garage, Tony gestures towards his small hoard of cars. “Because you’ll be driving us today.”

“Absolutely not.”

Grabbing the box of keys off the table, Tony shakes it and holds it out towards Peter. “Come on kid. Morgan wants to see you drive. Don’t you Morgan?”

Morgan nods vigorously, and with absolutely no hesitation. She then turns her doe eyes on her brother.

Groaning, Peter throws his head back. “Fine! Fine, I’ll drive. Just gimme the keys.”

The entire ride is spent with the three of them singing ‘Let’s Kill Barney’.

Happy is waiting for them outside when they reach the jet. Before anyone can get out of the car, Tony turns around so that both of his kids are in his view.

“That’s Happy Hogan. He’s my bodyguard and friend. If something’s wrong, and you can’t contact me, you call him. Got it?”

When he receives nods in response, Tony says “Good. That’s good. Now stay inside the car for a moment, alright?”

Without waiting for a response, he opens the car door and walks out. “Productive as always Hogan.”

Glowering, Happy stands there with his arms crossed. “What’s the situation?”

Tony walks over to him and taps him on the shoulder. “Lighten up Hap.”

Happy’s scowl intensifies. “I’ll lighten up when you tell me the situation. I need to know what I’m working with here.”

“I have kids.”

There’s a moment's pause.
“What the fuck?”

Tony just stands there waiting for Happy to get it together.

“You…have kids?”

“Yes, Hogan. That’s what I just said.”

“You’re sure? I mean, you’ve had a lot of women show up claiming that you got them knocked up.”

 “The difference here is that I walked outside to find a couple of kids claiming to be mine.” Tony retorts dryly.
“Ah.”

“I ran a paternity test. They’re mine. No doubt about it.”

“How old are they?”

“18-year-old Peter Reilly Stark, and 7-year-old Morgan Hope Stark. I need you to get a security detail arranged for them.”

“Right. I’ll get on that. I assume they’re in the car, then?”

“Yep.” Turning around, Tony waves towards the car in a come-hither motion. Peter and Morgan get out and walk towards them. Well, Peter walks towards them. Morgan just starts running towards them.

“Hi, Uncle Happy!”

 Happy sputters and turns wide confused eyes towards Tony. “What’re you looking at me for? Go start the plane.”

They all board the plane and settle in. Morgan seems really excited, poking around at anything she can reach and trying to take anything that isn’t bolted down.

Peter, on the other hand, is looking a little pale. Leaning forward a bit, Tony whispers so Morgan can’t hear. “You okay, Cthulhu?”

Peter shakily nods. “Yeah, I am. My, ah, my parents died in a plane accident, and there was that time a plane I was on crashed. Can’t say I’m a fan.”

“Well then,” Tony says with a clap of his hands, making sure to be loud enough for Morgan to hear. “We’re going to New York right now. We have stuff to do. Do either of you want a list of everything we’ll be doing there?”

Both Peter and Morgan nod, Peter’s nod a bit less shaky than before.

“So first, we’ll be heading to a penthouse I own in New York. Then we’ll spend the day out shopping to buy the two of you clothes, and anything else you want that we can carry. We can have a movie night with Pizza.”

Morgan pipes in here. “Ooh, can we watch Wall-E? Please?”

“Sure thing Ms Stark. Anything else?” Tony asks.

At Morgan’s giggles, Tony finds himself smiling.

“Then the next day, we’ll stay in the house. Peter and I will be meeting a co-worker of mine.”

“What about me?” Morgan asks, with a cute tilt of her head.

“You can start looking for furniture for you and your brother while eating ice cream.”

“Can I have juice pops instead?”

Tony blinks. “Uh, sure thing kid.”

Morgan just continues staring at him. After a few seconds of silence, she breaks.
“Well? What’ll we do after that?”

“Oh! We’ll be going upstate to take a look at a building your brother wanted to have.”

This time, the interruption comes from Peter. “We will?”

“Course we are. You wanted the building. We’ll just take a look at the building.”

He turns towards Morgan. “You want to see the building that your brother has, don’t you?”

“Mmhm. Is it going to be your house, Petey?”

“Uh, no it won’t.”

Morgan pouts at that. “I really wanted to see your house.”

Peter smiles at that. “Tell you what. Once we come back from New York, we can start designing a house for me. We’ll make sure you have a cool room in it too!”

Morgan’s face lights up at that. And she starts drawing ideas she has in a notebook she found somewhere on the plane.

“So we’re going to go there just to look at the building?”

“Well, not just look at the building. It’s an old facility, and Jarvis isn’t installed there. We don’t have an exact inventory of all the stuff in there. We can make an estimate of when the building will be available for your use. You can also start making notes on modifications and improvements you want.”

Chapter Text

The shopping trip happened with no interruptions. No one was able to recognize and harass Tony and his kids, so he’s rather thankful for that. It was also a surprisingly productive trip, all things considered. He honestly expected his kids to cause more chaos than they did.

They were able to buy clothes for the two, a few Lego sets that both Peter and Morgan wanted, and a few board games that Morgan wanted. Tony was also able to buy a few old laptops and computers for Morgan to mess around with. He’s not sure if that’s the kind of thing Morgan likes to do, but he knew that he loved taking apart machines at that age. And from what Peter told, so did he.

The doorbell ringing distracts both Peter and Tony from where they’re sitting on the couch. Tony hurries over to the door and opens it, quickly ushering his lawyers inside.

Locking the door, Tony swivels around. “Alright”, he says, with a clap of his hands, “glad we’re all here. Peter, this is Oliver Reeves and Ellis Zane. They’re my personal lawyers, and the best there is. Ellis, Oliver, this is my son Peter.”

“Oh. I see why you insisted on such secrecy this time.”
Ellis then takes a seat on the couch opposite the one Peter was sitting on and holds out her hand. “As your dad said, my name is Ellis Zane. You can call me Ellis. It’s nice to meet you, Peter.”

Shaking her hand, Peter smiles. “It’s a pleasure to meet you, Ms Ellis.”

Taking a seat next to Ellis, Oliver gives a nod to Peter. “You can call me Oliver.” Turning toward Tony, he clears his throat. “What’s the situation, Mr Stark?”

“Peter here needs to be legally made my primary heir. I also need to have papers drawn up regarding his employment at Stark Industries. Then there’s the matter of signing over an old, unused SI property over to the kid.”

Ellis and Oliver pay rapt attention to what Tony was saying while looking through their briefcases, most likely for specific documents or a notepad or something. He’s been trying for years to get the two of them to ditch pen and paper, but so far, they’ve stubbornly stayed rooted in their choice.

“Wait, what’s this about my employment at SI? I’m not qualified for that!”

All three heads turn to stare at Peter, Ellis and Oliver in confusion and Tony in exasperation.

“For fuck’s sake kid. You already do the job of an R&D Division head in your free time. The only difference this would make would be you getting paid.”

Tony turns back towards his lawyers, who were already discussing things between themselves. “So what do we need to do? How long is this gonna take?”

Ellis looks up from the laptop she got from somewhere, probably her briefcase. “Making him your heir is the simplest part of what you’ve requested. Oliver is gathering the required papers, both of you will need to read them over and sign them.”

And true enough, Oliver is, in fact, collecting papers from his and Ellis’ briefcases and stacking them in some kind of order.

“Okay, what about the other two?”

Ellis responds even as she goes back to her laptop. “Do you have a printer in here?”

“Down the corridor and in the office.”

“I’ll need to print out the required documents regarding the property transfer, but that should also be rather quick. Would you mind describing to Oliver what, exactly, you had in mind for your son’s employment?”

With that, Ellis picks up her laptop and walks in the direction that Tony pointed. He hears a throat clearing.

“Mr Stark? Here are the papers regarding making your son your primary heir.” He directs what he says next towards Peter. “I would recommend that you read through those.”

“And Mr Stark? The details of the employment if you would please.”

“Right. He’s going to be the R&D Head of the newly-about-to-be-opened SI Transportation Technology Division. I’m also appointing him as the temporary head of the Medical Division.”

Tony really loves his lawyers. They took nearly no time at all to have all the paperwork filled in, and they’ll be filed and done within a couple of days.

Then again, compared to the messes they usually have to drag him out of, this was probably a vacation for them.

At least the drive towards the storage facility was fun. It was filled with Morgan excitedly informing them about all the cool furniture she found and bought. Tony’s starting to second-guess how smart of a decision it was to leave a 7-year-old in charge of buying furniture.

“So this is Petey’s not-house?”

“Yep. What do you kids say we check what it’s like inside?”

“Cool. Here take this GIS scanner and wave it around a bunch Morgan.”

“What’s a GIS scanner do?”

“GIS stands for Geographic Information System, and we’re gonna use that GIS scanner to get a 3D scan of the building.”

Scrunching her brow, Morgan asks “So that we can use it with the holograms in your lab?”

“Wow, you’re one smart cookie aren’t you? 10/10, good job. Now go have fun with the scanner. Your brother and I are going to do the boring job of” here, Tony exaggerates a shudder, “cataloguing the leftover inventory manually.”

As they make it inside, Tony’s distaste for his soon-to-be task evaporates, because the only inventory in here is a couple dozen Tony-sized crates.

While Tony and Peter are slowly opening each crate to see if there was anything important and/or dangerous in them, Tony starts making conversation.

“So, that AI you were talking about the other day. Was it an acronym? Because it spells V.E.N.O.M, and that hardly seems like a coincidence.”

“It was intentional. Thought I’d stick with the whole Spider theme.”

“Yeah, I figured. When do you want to start working on it?”

“You’re not gonna be working on V.E.N.O.M.” Peter retorts dryly.

Tony raises an eyebrow. “I thought you wanted me to teach you how to make an AI?”

“I do want you to teach me. But that doesn’t mean I’m gonna let people mess around with my AI. I wanna be solely responsible for it, ya know?”

 Tony just hums in response. He probably gets it more than most. In most ways, he considers DUM-E to be his first child and refuses to update and ‘fix’ his coding. If Peter already has some form of attachment to the AI he’s making, well, Tony isn’t a hypocrite. He still remembers crying when Jarvis first told him that he might be more than Just A Rather Very Intelligent System.

“You wanna make a brand-new AI during my esteemed…lessons…”

He tapers off towards the end of the sentence because he finds something rather odd in the latest crate he opened. It’s his dad’s old Stark Expo model, along with a cassette tape labelled “For Tony”.

“…ou alright?” He hears Peter’s voice right as he zones back in.

“Hey, Pete?” He cuts off whatever Peter was about to say.

“Yeah?” Peter asks tentatively and with concern.

“You think you and Morgan can stay in the Penthouse here for a while? There’s some stuff I need to do, and I don’t want Morgan to get in the way or hurt.”

“What? What’s going on? I can help. I’m smart and I’m good in a fight, let me help.”

Finally looking away from the crate and towards Peter, Tony levels him with a look. “You can help me by listening to me. I promise that I’ll explain soon as I’m back. You have everything you need to take care of yourself and Morgan for a week?”

“Can I have Ellis’ number? There’s a couple of legal matters I want to have taken care of, and I might as well get productive if I’m on house arrest for the week.”

“You’re not on house arrest! It’s just to keep you two away from the mansion for a few days. And ask Jarvis for the phone number. If there’s anything else that you need, ask Jarvis. You can also ask Happy if it's something that needs a person. He’ll be posted at the penthouse for the week.”

Chapter Text

“What is and always will be…my greatest creation…is you.”

What the fuck? What the fuck? Tony has half a mind to think this was doctored, but there’s no way anyone would know he would see it. Not to mention he vaguely remembers that day. But this video makes no sense! It makes no sense that his asshole, neglectful dad was secretly loving, because Tony distinctly remembers being told that he was a disappointment to his face. He remembers having a childhood being told that he wasn’t smart enough, that he wasn’t mature enough, or stoic enough. Being told that he wasn’t enough.

And to hear this now? Well, suffice it to say that Tony isn’t a happy camper right now.

Thankfully, Howard also provided the perfect little distraction to let Tony push off dealing with all these emotions.

“Jarvis, you up?”

“For you, sir? Always.”

Walking away from where the video was playing, Tony stops at the table holding the 1974 Stark Expo Model.  

“Wonderful. Could you kindly Vac-U-Form a digital wireframe? I need a manipulatable projection. And put on some music while you’re at it.”

“It’s nice to see you again, Peter. How may I be of assistance?”

“Take a seat, Ms Ellis. I know it’s only been a couple days, but I was wondering if there were any updates?”

Ellis smiles kindly at him. “Making you the Primary Heir of Stark Industries and the property transfer were both done in a few hours.  The paperwork making you Head of the Transportation Technology Division, and Temporary Head of the Medical Division was filed this morning before I made my way here.”

Peter blinks in surprise. Wow. That was fast. He thought it would take a few weeks at least to get that done.

He says as much to Ellis. Ellis’ response was to laugh in his face. “The last time you’re dad came to us, it was to fight a legal battle on whether or not telling homophobes to get fucked on live tv was a hate crime. This time was rather tame, all things considered.” She voiced dryly.

“I…I don’t know what to say to that.”

The two sat in companionable silence for a few moments, before Ellis broke it. “Was that all you needed?”

That snaps Peter out of his dumbfounded incredulity. He’s been feeling far too incredulous ever since he came back in time.

“Am I allowed to set you to work on things, or is Tony the only one?”

Ellis shrugs. “Don’t see why not.”

“Cool. That’s cool. Then could you start a non-profit organisation? It should be under mine and Tony’s names.”

“Sure thing. What kind of organisation is it going to be?”

Peter smiles, all teeth, and all too sharp. “A private army and security firm.”

See, Peter has plans. The last time around, when Thanos happened, the Avengers were broken and spread out. Unable to meet him full force. And the reason they were broken in the first place was because of the Accords.

Peter’s read the accords. They are, to be extremely polite, fucking awful. They infringe on far too many human rights, don’t have any proper accountability clauses, and their definition of enhanced was so vague that it could be used to take out political opponents. Like, they were so vague, that Ned would have counted as enhanced because it can be argued that his intelligence was an enhancement.

Peter wants to get ahead of the curve this time. Propose actual, working laws that do their fucking job without infringing on rights that Peter wasn’t even aware could be infringed upon. But he needs time for that. He’s a chemistry nerd, and writing up a set of laws for an entire community is a little above his pay grade at the moment.

So, his solution was this.

“Oh, and name the organisation ‘The Avengers’”

As a private army, they could officially be sanctioned to step in and intervene in situations, and they can’t even be scapegoated for it.

“What is it you’re trying to achieve sir?”

“I’m discovering…correction. I’m rediscovering a new element, I believe. Lose the landscape, the shrubbery, the trees.” Tony flicks his hands about, removing things from the hologram one by one. “Parking lots, exits, entrances. Structure the protons and neutrons using the pavilions as a framework.” Tony brings his hand over his mouth. It’s…it’s a nucleus. Tony touches the hologram and brings his hands apart, expanding the hologram. “Holy shit, I did it.”

“The proposed element should serve as a viable replacement for palladium.”

And holy fucking shit! He’s not going to die. Tony’s not going to die! He lets out a delirious, watery laugh, with his hands over his mouth. He can see his kids grow up. He can watch as Peter goes to MIT, drop off Morgan on her first day of school, teach Peter how to make an AI, and help Morgan find what her interests are. He can be here for all of it now.

“Unfortunately, it is impossible to synthesise.”

Tony scoffs. He’s Tony Fucking Stark. He redefines what’s impossible on a weekly basis. “Get ready for a major remodel, fellas. We’re back in hardware mode.”

“Good job Mo. Is that an automated crane?”

“Yep! I finally figured out what was wrong! I had the Ball Screw in at the wrong axis.”

Morgan moves from where she was bouncing on the balls of her feet and tries to climb onto the holotable. Eventually giving up, Morgan turns to pout at Peter. Rolling his eyes, Peter levels Morgan with a fond, exasperated look. “You could have just asked me to help lift you up.”

Morgan crosses her arms. “No, I couldn’t. I’m all grown up now, and grown-ups don’t ask for help getting onto a table.”

 Peter shakes his head in amusement. “Why did you want to climb onto the holotable anyway? You get bit by a radioactive monkey while I was looking away?”
Giggling, Morgan answers. “No, I wanted to see what you were working on! I want to help. I’m really smart, you say so yourself.”

Lifting Morgan up despite her protests, Peter rests her on his hip. She stops trying to complain as soon as she sees what the holograms are displaying. “Woah! Is that Spiderman stuff? Are you gonna be Spiderman again? Can I help? Please! I promise I’ll listen to what you say! Cross my heart.” Morgan mimics crossing her heart when she says that. She looks so serious when she says it that Peter loses his control and starts laughing. When he gets himself under control, he turns towards Morgan, who’s split between being annoyed that he laughed at her, and buzzing in excitement.

“Yes, it’s Spiderman stuff. No, I don’t think I’m gonna be Spiderman again. And yes, you can help as long as you listen.”

She nods frantically, as if afraid that Peter might change his mind.”

“Initialising Prismatic Accelerator. Approaching Maximum power.”

Turning the lever gets harder to turn the more he turns it. He really should work out more if he can’t even handle the switches and levers in his lab. Hopefully, that’ll be easier once his body is no longer deteriorating.

He slowly turns the lever with great difficulty, setting half the room on fire. Once it hits the triangular piece of metal, he shuts down the accelerator. He picks it up with a pair of pliers.

“Huh. That was easy.”

“Congratulations sir. You have created a new element.”

Tony places his newly invented masterpiece in the awaiting, modified, arc reactor. It slowly starts lighting up.

“Sir, the reactor has accepted the modified core. I will begin running diagnostics.”

“Cool. You do that. I’m gonna go start designing facilities to make more of this element. Ooh, I get to name it, don’t I?”

Tony starts rubbing his hands together. He looks towards the nearest camera and cracks a smile. “Gimme a ring if you need me, J. I’m gonna be busy.”

“Of course, sir. Would you also like me to fax you an invite?”

Tony shakes his head, but makes no other reply. Sue him, he’s far too happy over the fact that he’s going to live to be even faux upset at petty shit like this.

“Yeah, sure thing Tony. Yeah, I get it. Thanks.”

Peter cuts the call and looks towards Morgan. “That was dad on the phone.” It was? Morgan scrunched her nose. Then why did Petey call dad Tony? She decides it’s just one of those adults being weird situations and lets it be. “He’s done with whatever he was working on and is coming back here.”

Morgan smiles wide. She hasn’t spent as much time with daddy as Petey has, and she can’t wait to show him the little robot she made with Peter’s help.

Peter kneels in front of Morgan and lays a hand on her shoulder. Morgan tilts her head. Petey looks nervous. But why would he look nervous? He just said daddy’s coming back.

“Morgan, you know how you helped me make Spiderman stuff?”

Morgan nods. Of course she remembers. She had loads of fun. Peter let her change the colours of the suit to a very pretty green and purple. He even tried to teach her what the webs were made of. She didn’t really understand much of it, but she had fun anyway.

“Well, that’s so that I can go on a super-secret mission.”

Morgan gasps. That sounded so cool! “Does daddy know you’re going on the mission?”

Petey shakes his head. “Daddy doesn’t know about Spiderman yet, remember.”

Morgan frowns. She does not like this one bit. It’s so weird that daddy doesn’t know about the cool stuff Petey can do. Like, that one time Petey made a web hammock at the top of the trees for Morgan to hide from mom. Or when Morgan lost her crayons under the couch, and Petey just lifted it.

Petey speaks again. “Yeah, I know it’s weird. It’s weird for me too. But I wanted to ask you if it’s alright if I go on a super-secret mission once daddy comes back.”

Morgan considers this. “You’ll tell me about the cool stuff you did once you come back?”

Petey smiles, and nods. “Of course I will Mongoose.”

Chapter Text

Tony is a genius. He has been ever since he was a little kid. He made an engine at the age of 5. He joined MIT at age 15 and graduated at 18 with 4 bachelors and 2 masters. He got 3 doctorates by the age of 21. He took his father’s successful company and made it into the company to go to if you want half-decent weapons. He miniaturized an Arc Reactor while half dead and in a cave. He made the Ironman suits. And most recently, he created a brand-new element.

The point is, Tony is smart. He’s often left his peers, and even his educators in the dust. So feeling like he was called into the principal’s office is a feeling he’s not used to. And yet, standing in front of Peter, after Tony explained the whole Palladium business, that’s exactly what Tony feels like.

Like an unruly child that has to be scolded.

Eventually, thankfully, Peter stops just staring at him and says something.

“You were dying.”

Tony slightly flinches at how flat the kid’s voice was. “Uh, yeah. I was.”

“And you didn’t ask for help, why?”

“There was nothing to ask. I was dying. There was nothing that could stop me from dying. End of story.”

Peter tilts his head, but his eyes are just as cold, just blank. It was extremely unnerving. “Oh? I thought you weren’t dying right now.”

“Because I created a brand new element, and I was only able to do that because Howard did half the work before he died.”

Peter glares at Tony in response. “You gave up before that. You just gave up! Morgan and I would have been alone. You fucking promised that you would try your best to stay alive, but apparently, that was a straight-up lie.”

Tony’s mildly offended now. He made that promise, yes. But he also kept it. “I kept that promise! I’m no longer dying, am I?”

“Yeah, but you gave up. That fact that you stumbled upon the solution was a literal miracle, and I will be thankful for that later, but right now? Right now, I’m pissed that you lied to my face about something like this.”

“What did you want me to say? ‘Hey kid, I know I’m your dad, and that we just met, but I only have 10 months of life expectancy’?”

Peter opens his mouth, looking ready to shout again, but suddenly shuts it close with an audible clack. When he speaks again, it’s in a whisper, and his eyes look haunted. “That’s why you wanted to make me your primary heir.”

Tony nods. That was his intention, yes. If he was going to be dead, he wanted his kids to be safe and secure. Financially, at the very least. “Doesn’t matter now. I’m no longer under Palladium poisoning. I don’t intend to die for a long time. You just worry about MIT, and dating, and parties, and whatever else teenagers like to do.”

Peter slumps forward like he’s had his strings cut. Rubbing his face, he groans. “I-I can’t do this.”

“Do what?”

Peter gestures vaguely in all directions.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“You were dying, Tony. I can’t just stay here and pretend that it never happened, and Morgan doesn’t deserve to deal with me while I’m so emotionally unstable.”

“Okaaay? You gonna elaborate on that, kid?”

Peter looks straight at Tony. “I was planning on going on a 1 to 1-and-a-half-week trip after you came back. I’ll still do the same thing, but I’ll make the trip a few months instead.”

“Wait, you’re just gonna be gone for months? Why? For how many months?”

“Finding out that your newly found father was about to die isn’t exactly good for someone’s emotional stability. I want to take time off for myself so that I can work through my emotions. I don’t want to snap at you or Morgan because I refused to face my emotions. And as for how many months…”

Peter turns to the ceiling. “Jarvis, when’s the Stark Expo?”

“The Stark Expo is in 5 months, 3 weeks, 1 day, Young Sir.”

Nodding, Peter turns back to Tony, who is starting to dread what’s about to be said next.

“I’ll be back in 6 months then. It’ll be enough time to work through my emotions, and enough time to take a nice vacation.” Peter nods to himself. “Yeah, 6 months is a good idea. It’ll even be a good way to see if Morgan will be alright with me being gone for long periods.”

Tony is speechless for once, because he did not expect that. At all.  “I-wh-where will you be going?”

Peter shrugs, though you can see a small smile on his face. The little shit is probably enjoying Tony falling over his words.

“Dunno. I figured I’d just travel, ya know? On that note, do you have a boat that I could borrow? Wait, it’d be ship. Do you have a small ship that I could borrow?”

Well, at least Peter’s going to be taking some of Tony’s stuff on this trip. Maybe he can convince him to take an emergency phone, as well.
“I have multiple ships, kid. What do you want it to have on it?”

“Oh.” Peter just stares for a few seconds at that revelation, then shakes his head. “Living quarters, kitchen, a lab, and an extra room to store additional stuff.”

“Sure. Should have a couple like that at the New York Harbour.” Tony says with a shrug.

“Ok. Good. I’m just gonna go make sure I have everything packed, and say goodbye to Morgan. Speaking of Morgan. You really should spend more time with Morgan.”

Nodding, Tony throws Peter an emergency beacon. Catching it, Peter alternates looking between it and Tony a couple of times. “What’s this?” He asks, raising an eyebrow.

“That, young padawan, is an Emergency Beacon. If you’re ever in danger, turn it on. Ironman will be at your location as soon as it’s possible.”

Smiling, Peter tucks it into his pocket. “Thanks, Tony. And don’t worry, I’ll call frequently. After all, I still want those lessons on making an AI.”

Well, guess he didn’t mess this relationship up completely. Tony can live with that.

Chapter Text

So, he knows that he overreacted. He’s most definitely gonna call Tony soon and apologise for snapping…even though he promised that he wouldn’t snap at him about the topic of Tony’s potential death. But in his defence, he didn’t know about this. The whole Palladium poisoning is something he never knew about. He didn’t know-and still doesn’t-whether this was something that was supposed to happen. What if Peter’s presence and actions caused some sort of weird butterfly effect that poisoned Tony? Peter doesn’t think he can live through being personally responsible for the death of another parent. He can’t have that blood on his hands. Not again.

Of course, from what Tony told him, he’s been poisoned long before Peter and Morgan showed up, so it’s extremely unlikely that it was the butterfly effect. It was probably something that always happened, and Tony just kept it quiet. Though he thinks that Past Peter can be excused from getting emotional and snapping, considering Peter only just thought of it…

Yeah, he should definitely call Tony and apologize. Especially after the whole 6 months thing. He honestly just picked the first arbitrary event that he could think of, and gave a number after it.

He’s kinda glad that his knee-jerk reaction to panicking is to just say random shit until he’s out of the situation. He has 6 months to figure things out now, at least. He probably would have second thoughts about the whole “stay away from Morgan for 6 months straight” deal if he actually thought it through.

Sighing, he pulls out his phone and calls Tony.

“Hey kid. Didn’t think you’d miss me that soon.”

“I’m calling to apologise, though I’m starting to think that I should hang up so as to not feed your ego.” Peter drawls out.

“What the hell are you apologizing for? Did you wreck one of my cars or something? Jarvis, did he do anything illegal?”

“I-no! I didn’t do anything illegal! I was apologizing for snapping at you, even though I said I’d try not to snap when it came to your potential/hypothetical death.”

“Nah, it’s fine. I’m not all that good at the whole Sharing is Caring shtick, so it’s gonna take a bit before I can do the whole parent thing properly.”

“Huh. Okay? I’ll call you later for the AI lessons, I guess.”

The door to his office slams open.

“Anthony Edward Stark! What do you think you’re doing?”

Tony looks down at what’s in his hand, then back at the woman who apparently doesn’t know what a muffin is. “Eating a muffin? You feeling alright, Ms Potts? The job comes with health benefits, y’know. You can go to the doctor if you’re sick.”

“I-what? I’m not sick! And don’t change the subject. We are five months away from the Expo! And you, what? Go off vacationing? Do you have any idea how busy your schedule actually is? You can’t just not show up.”

“I’ll have you know that I was actually ill. Of the terminal variety. I’d appreciate a bit more sympathy. Maybe a ‘glad you got well’ gift in the form of cleared schedules?”

“You were what?! And you didn’t think to inform me? How do I think I’m supposed to do my job if I don’t know things that can heavily alter your schedule like this Mr Stark?”

“Well, frankly, I didn’t think it was anyone’s business but my own.”

Pepper looks at him like he’s an idiot. Then shakes her head and moves on from the topic befitting her long experience of dealing with his shit.

“Is there anything I should be aware of, then? Because I can clear and change the schedules if there is an actual need.”

“Yes, actually. I’ll be doing most of my work from the mansion. Prefer to get some rest and all that. I also have a few appointments scheduled with an important scientific mind.”

“Okay. I can just drop off all your work at the mansion then. And who do you have appointments with? Do I need to work it into your schedule?”

“Nope, sorry. Mansion’s on lockdown for a few months. No one but me and happy are allowed inside right now. And his name is Peter. Brilliant guy. Biochemist. Can barely understand his research, but the plan is to start manufacturing some of the designs he gave me.”

“Of course. Will that be all Mr Stark?”

“That will be all Ms Potts.”

Pepper starts leaving, but before she leaves his office, she turns around to face him.

“And Tony?”

“Hmm?”

“I hope you know that you would’ve been missed if anything happened to you.”

“Mhmm. Rhodey would’ve gotten over it.”

“I wasn’t talking about Rhodey” Pepper says, sounding the slightest bit annoyed, but mostly exasperated. It’s easy to spot, to be honest. She gets that tone frequently when dealing with him.

She makes her way out of the room before Tony can figure out what he’s supposed to say,

Peter is oh so happy that he and Ned were uber Nerds. Nerdy enough, that when the news came out that Captain America was rescued from the ice, he and Ned hacked into the government just to find out more about their hero. Of course, Ned did most of the hacking. Peter just kinda helped wherever he could.

But yeah. He’s so happy that they were big enough nerds to do that, because otherwise, he wouldn’t have known where to go to find the Captain and fisk him off to safety before Shieldra gets their hands on him.

Putting on the suit he designed for the arctic climate, he grabs the mining gear he bought and climbs off the ship. He takes a look around to get his bearings, and there's ice. Just. A lot of ice.

He immediately starts feeling slightly drowsy, and curses his damn mutations and inability to properly thermoregulate. Guess he’d better start looking for the captain then.

While the Captain is defrosted and in a bed in the spare room on the ship, Peter heads to the lab. It’s best if he starts planning things out in a bit more detail than he already has.

He needs a suit. A proper one. Not the one he made specifically to use on this fishing trip. And he wants that suit to be Project Venom. He didn’t make much progress on that before the whole time travel thing, mostly because he didn’t really have a pressing need for a more cutting-edge suit than the nanotech suit Tony made for him.

But now? With the Chitauri invasion, and Thanos looming over the horizon? You can bet your ass he’s upgrading as soon as possible.

But of course, that brings him to the same issue he had the last time he tried to make progress on this. What to make the Nanites out of. He wants a more reactive nanite suit that is capable of much more. Better protection, better offensive options, the whole shebang. But the current material that nanites are made of has already been taken to its absolute limits. Aluminium is too brittle, titanium is too heavy, and lead is a bit too toxic even with his regenerative capabilities. Vibranium might work, but acquiring Vibranium is a whole other headache. Wakanda’s still closed off and secretive right now, and no one in there would still remember him.

Then he’s hit with an idea. What about Uru? The metal that makes up Thor’s hammer, and later axe, were made of a metal that was apparently sought out by weapon and armoursmiths. But first, he’d need to run some tests to verify its qualities. For all he knows, it’s even less suited to his needs than Mercury.

And getting Uru shouldn’t be that hard. Far as he remembers, Thor first shows up somewhere in New Mexico at the same time as the Stark Expo. He doesn’t know what happens then, but if he helps Thor then, he could ask for some Uru. Thor seemed like a pretty cool guy when he wasn’t wallowing in misery, so Peter thinks that Thor’ll just give him some.

He also wants to somehow get people to space and interacting with other planets. It’d be a lot easier to deal with Thanos if it wasn’t just them, and could call for backup. Right now, the only person capable of doing so is Fury, and he doesn’t trust that fucker far as he can throw him after what happened during the Europe trip.

He’s brought out of thoughts by enhanced hearing picking up faster breathing and feet hitting the floor in the other room.

Chapter Text

“Anthony Edward Stark!”

“Jesus FUck! What the hell’s wrong with you, Rhodey? I was just trying to make a fucking omelette, why the fuck are you using your lecture voice. And on call too.”

“I’m using my lecture voice because I had to find out from Pepper that you were Terminally ill. What the actual fuck Tones? Why wouldn’t you tell me that sort of thing?”

“Because it was terminal, and there was no cure. Didn’t see a point in parading that around.”

“Wait, are you still dying? Cause if that’s the case, and you still didn’t tell me, I’m gonna stab you myself asshole.”
“Don’t be dramatic, Platypus. I invented a cure. I’m fine now. A bit weak and tired, but fine. I have the mansion on lockdown and security all the way up.”

“But you still should have told me, Tony! Of all the irresponis-”

“Oh fuck, my omelette. Hope you’re fucking proud of yourself Sourpatch. You caused my omelette to burn!”

“Tony, I could not give less of a shit about an omelette. The fucks wrong with you man? You still feeling any residual effects or something?”

“No, but it seems I’m not allowed to eat food in peace without someone screaming my full name. First Pepper and the Muffin, and now you? Et tu Brutus?”

He hears Rhodey sigh loudly over the call. “I’m definitely going to be giving you one hell of chewing out for this shit. You know that, right?”

“Not if I hop into the suit and fuck off to Tennessee or something.”

Snorting, Rhodey replies. “That’s why I’m gonna show up for the Expo, jackass. No way you’re dodging me.”

When Steve wakes up, he’s instantly on alert. The last thing he remembers is taking the Valkyrie down with him. Now, he’s in a bed, meaning he’s been found, captured, and relocated. Whether he’s in the custody of allies or a prisoner of HYDRA is unknown. The only heartbeat he can hear is slightly muffled, likely due to distance or the obstacle of walls. His priority should be getting armed, then finding out his current location and the intentions and allegiance of his would-be-captors.

Right as he stands up, Steve hears footsteps approaching the door. Looking around in a hurry, he spots the window curtains and rips the curtain rod out.

When the door opens, a young man with brown hair and eyes walks in. He freezes when he sees Steve, and slowly raises his hands so that Steve can see them.

“Captain Rogers, please calm down. We don’t need a fight.”

Steve doesn’t, in fact, calm down. He actually does the opposite, lifting the rod up and dropping into a fighting stance.

“Who are you? Where am I?”

“My name is Peter Reilly Stark.”

“Wait, Stark? Like…” Steve momentarily lowers his guard, taken aback.

“Like Howard Stark? Yeah. He’s my grandfather.”

“What?”

“It has been over 70 years since you crashed the Valkyrie, Captain. Now, can we just put down the weapons and sit down? Maybe have a chat over drinks? I have some cool drinks in the freezer.”

The rod falls from his hand, and he drops back onto the bed he was on. Peter slowly walks over to the chair in the corner of the room.

“I’m sure you have questions. I’ll try my best to answer them. Take your time. I’m sure this isn’t the easiest thing to process.”

Steve agrees. 70 years is a long time. So much would have changed. So many people he knew are probably dead. He’s not sure where to start. Everything and everyone he’s ever known is gone.

“I…I don’t know what to ask.”

“That’s just fine. Why don’t I just talk, and you can cut in with questions?”

When Steve nods, Peter continues. “We won the war, for one thing, and it was thanks to you. The year is 2010. I found you and the Valkyrie in the ice and fished you out. Now, while most of your friends are unfortunately deceased, a few still remain.”

“Who!?!”

“Ms Carter is alive, and so is Mr Morita.”

“And how are they?”

“They’re fine, far as I’m aware. Ms Carter married a disabled Veteran, and they had kids. Mr Morita, likewise, had kids. In fact, his grandson is the principal of a prestigious high school.”

As Steve’s staring off into the distance, trying to process the information, Peter clears his throat, causing Steve to turn back and look at him.

“There is another person that is still alive, but I don’t want to dump too much on you too quick. Not to mention discussing what you wish to do now.”

Steve is about to ask about the other person that’s still alive, but his curiosity and confusion is piqued by the second statement.
“What do you mean ‘what I wish to do’?”

Peter tilts his head to the side and stares at him like Steve is being deliberately slow. Yeah, he’s definitely Howard’s grandkid alright.

“You spent years serving the country. You very nearly died. And then you gave another 70 years of your life. If you want to, we could just have a fake identity made, and you can live a completely normal life. I’d understand if you did that. There’s no shame in retirement.”

Steve raises an eyebrow. Doesn’t sound so appealing, but he’d rather have all the information before he makes a decision as big as this.

“You get put back in the field to fight the good fight. Stand up to bullies, protect the innocent, all that jazz.” Peter opens his mouth as if to say something, then closes it. Then, after a moment of hesitation, he presses on.

“There are a few more pieces of information that would probably influence your decision. Just give me a minute to go grab the files.”

Peter leaves the room then, and Steve is left to his thoughts about what, exactly Peter wants to tell him. He can tell that it’s important. Though whether it’s important to Peter, or whether it will be important to Steve is something that he’ll need to wait and see.

When Peter comes back into the room, he’s holding a few files and folders.

“Alright, Captain Rogers. Now, unfortunately, while we won the war, we didn’t defeat HYDRA.”

And suddenly, every muscle and instinct in Steve’s body is running at full gear. He straightens up where he’s sitting, ready to move at a moment’s notice.

“They lost, so they slunk off into the shadows, and waited. They waited until people forgot about them, and how much of a threat they are. They’ve infiltrated most world governments.”

Peter hands over a rather thick-looking file that’s overflowing with papers. Steve takes it from him and starts flipping through them, scanning over important details on each page. There are Presidents, Vice Presidents, Generals, Colonels, CEOs, known Terrorist heads, and even heads of Spy and Intelligence Gathering Organizations. Before he woke up HYDRA was such an out-there and obvious organization, that they built the fucking Valkyrie. Now? Now, they’re some snake hidden in the shadows, presenting no visible threat, yet more dangerous than they’ve ever been.
“That is all the information on hidden HYDRA Agents in high-up places. It’s also why I fished you out myself, rather than informing the government of where you were. So if you decide that you’ve dealt with HYDRA enough to last a lifetime, and would rather just be a farmer or something, I can have something arranged.”

Steve looks straight into Peter’s eyes. “Kid, sometimes you fight not because you want to or need to, but because no one else is. You fight because you’re the only one willing to, and to look back and say ‘I stood up to them. When no one else wanted to, I stood up to them, and they didn’t have an uncontested reign’. If they’re hidden as this intel suggests, they’re practically a ghost. Like hell am I going to stand down and let these bastards win!”

Peter slowly starts grinning throughout Steve’s speech and lets out an impressed whistle at the end. “You know, when I read about Captain America in my textbooks, I thought he was cool for standing up to bullies, and tried to take on that philosophy. But it seems that the History Books don’t do you justice. This is a list of all the HYDRA bases I have intel on.”

Peter hands out the second file, one that is bigger than the third and last one, but considerably smaller than the one Steve has already been given. He puts aside the file he was reading and starts looking through the second one.

And as he does, his blood boils.

“Is this accurate?”

“Unfortunately.”

“HYDRA’s experimenting on orphaned kids now?” Steve growls out. Peter just gave him a sardonic smile.

“How are we going to be getting them out? Especially without military support or authorization?”

“Oh, that’s the easy part. Already had it handled. I started a private military and security firm. We can provide vague, yet accurate information to the government, have them give us permission, and then bust in and take out the HYDRA base. The hard part of all this is going to be rescuing prisoners. Especially the Maximoff Twins, or the Winter Soldier.”

“The Winter Soldier?” Sounds like a junior league baseball team. Now introducing, the Winter Soldiers. Steve snaps back to attention once Peter starts talking.

“The Winter Soldier is HYDRA's first experiment. He’s also the most dangerous, considering he’s brainwashed to fight for them.”

“Do we know who he was before HYDRA took him? We might be able to reach him.”

Nervously, Peter holds out the third and final file that he was holding. “About that. We do know who he was, but you’re not gonna like it.”

Steve reaches for the file. “Why?”

Peter speaks as Steve is about to open the file.
“Because the Winter Soldier is the longest-held Prisoner of War in history. Sergeant James Buchannan Barnes.”

And at that, Steve sees red.

Chapter Text

“What,” Steve grunts out through gritted teeth, “did you just say? Hydra has Bucky?”

And Peter, without an ounce of fear, looks Steve in the eye and nods.

Steve takes in a deep breath. Murder comes later, information now. “You said he was brainwashed. Explain.”

“It’s pretty much what you’d expect,” Peter shrugs. “Doesn’t know his name, where he’s from, that sort of thing. Fortunately, from what I’ve managed to gather, he can be snapped out of it, but only temporarily.”

Steve leans back and closes his eyes. He is going to enjoy strangling the Hydra asshole in charge of that.

“So what? It’s hopeless? We just put him to rest?” Steve asks with a heavy heart. After everything that Bucky’s done for him, after all these years of friendship, Steve won’t be able to make the hard call. If he had to pick between Bucky and the rest of the world, Steve’s not sure what he’d do, and that scares him. Scares him because he’s not sure how far he might be willing to go, how many people he’s willing to betray.

Though the thing that scares him the most about this situation is that he already knows the answer.

Peter grins wide. “Ah, you’d think so. And normally, that would have been the case. If only Hydra had better firewalls. I mean, for a world-threatening century-old terrorist organization, they were laughably easy to hack into, and that was for me. Ned would have done it in seconds….”

Peter trails off towards the end when he realizes what he said and snaps himself out of it by shaking his head.

Steve just watches quietly. He’s seen that look enough to know when someone’s grieving. But it’s not his business, so he’ll stay out of it. Instead, he speaks up to get them back on track. “So it’s possible to cure Bucky?”

Peter just hums in response.

“So what’s the plan? Do we just bust in and break him out, or what?”

Clicking his teeth, Peter shakes his head. “We don’t know where he is. We’ll need to break into another Hydra base and try to see if they have any information we can use.”

Steve raises his eyebrow in surprise at that. “We? You’re coming along?”

Peter crosses his arms and looks at Steve with an amused expression. “Two super soldiers can get the job done faster, right?”

Steve just blanks. What the fuck. Did he hear that right? “Did you just say Super Soldier?”

“Some dumbass tried to recreate and improve Dr Erskine’s Super Soldier Serum, but they fucked up and it ended in me. So yeah. I’m a Super Soldier, but no one outside Family knows it.”

At that, Steve can’t help but chuckle. A chuckle that ends up turning into a full-blown cackle. “Oh, Hydra has no idea what’s coming for them, do they?”

“Careful, Captain. You know what they say about Hydra, don’t you?” Though his words were admonishing, his tone was amused.

Getting up and stretching, Steve grins at Peter. “You cut one head, two more will replace it. But it doesn’t matter if I set the entire thing on fire, does it?”

Shaking his head, Peter moves to the door. “Get yourself ready Captain. The information about the base we’re going to is in the last folder I gave you. Your equipment and clothes are in that closet, there’s a stack of newspapers in the box below the bed, and there’s a tablet with detailed instructions on it and the modern world in the top drawer of the bedside table. Call if you need anything.”

When they get near the Hydra Base in Siberia, Peter starts suiting up himself. He doesn’t have any of his normal suits, but that’s for the better anyway. Red and Blue does not sit well with stealth reconnaissance. His current suit is just a more High-Tech version of the Night Monkey suit he wore during the mess with Mysterio and the Fire Elemental.

He checks that he has everything that he needs, and steps out to be greeted by a waiting Captain Rogers, dressed in a similar suit to himself.

“Captain.” Peter nods.

“Stark. What’s the plan?”

“You’ll wait outside their front door. I’ll sneak in through the back. If I need a distraction, I’ll tell you over comms. Then you go in and raise hell. Sound good?”

Clipping his shield onto his back, Captain Rogers nods. “Sounds good to me. You any good at sneaking around?”

Peter smirks, not that it’s visible through the mask, and jumps onto the ceiling.

“Don’t worry Captain. This itsy bitsy spider can climb up the water spout.”

“Ah.”

Snorting, Peter falls back to the floor with a flip, landing on his feet.

“You know how to use the comms, right?”

“Harr harr. It’s not that different from a radio.”

“Captain? Over.”

“Copy. Over.”

“I see eleven hostiles and six incapacitated hostages. Hostages located in the west wing with three hostiles. The North and East wings have two hostiles each. A patrol of two hostiles approaching you. Take care of them quietly and move on to the south wing. Over.”

“ROGER WILCO. Over.”

Leaving the four idiots in the south wing, Peter carefully crawls along the ceiling to the intersection between the north and east wings. He needs to take out the other four guards on his end. Thankfully, no one ever bothers to check if there are any intruders stuck to the ceiling, so knocking them out and tying them up was rather easy.

He sighs when he hears a metallic clang and the shattering of glass, followed by bullets. Dropping back down to the floor, Peter starts running to where the noise is coming from, to see Captain Rogers fighting four of the super soldiers that were previously in the cryo pods.

Deciding that now is not the time to be asking questions, Peter jumps over the Captain’s head and kicks one of the super goons in the face.

Barely flinching, Super Goon number 1 tries to stab Peter. “Knife to meet you too!”

Feeling his Spidey Sense go off, he backflips and dodges a stab from Super Goon number 2.

“Ah, I see you tried to stab me in the back! What a magknifeicent plan.”

Grinning, Peter swerves to the side, holds onto Goon Number 1’s hand, and slides beneath him. “Ah, Super Soldiers versus Super Soldiers, huh? A match blade in heaven!”

Taking a rope out of his pocket, Peter flips to the side, getting Goon Number 2’s hand stuck in it. Twisting it around, he starts tying him up. “This is just a stab in the dark, but I’m starting to think you don’t like me.”

When Goon Number 1 tries to take advantage of Peter’s distraction, Peter, still holding the rope, jumps again, tying both of them up with the same rope. “Ooh, are you two going to kiss? Did I walk in on something?”

He looks to the other side of the room and sees the Captain finishing up his fight as well.

“Not bad, Stark. Where’d you learn to fight like that?”

“I used to be a pizza delivery guy.”

“I-I don’t understand. What does that have anything to do with it?”

Looking straight ahead, and with as much solemnity as he can muster, Peter replies. “Because no one out pizzas the Hut.”

“I…see.” Based on his tone, he absolutely does not. “Should we check for any folders? Or interrogate the people here?”

“Sure. Where are the fifth and sixth Super Soldiers, by the way?”

The Captain gestures towards two of the cryo pods. “Seems one of the people in here noticed no one radioing back and let those four out of their pods. The remaining two are still in there.”

“Right. You get them out of there, I’m going to see what they have on the computers.”