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“So,“ Spider-Man coughs slightly. It’s not like he can get sick – Eden noticed he did those weird little things just so that he would look more relatable. “How ’you doin’, eh, uh, Toni?”
Eden is looking at the masked hero in front of her, trying to keep her cool. And, to be quite honest, she is fighting the urge to slap him across the face. “Well, if you haven’t noticed already, I’ve been more well in the past already. My face is plastered all over the news, and since I can’ do fucking anything in this shit tower, I guess I’m just living.”
The brunet girl did not need to see the face behind his mask. Her tone was full of pettiness and spiteful. And if there was something the Stark’s were good at, it was showing what they wanted to show. It hadn’t been a long time since she yelled at Tony Stark while being imprisoned at the Raft.
And it had been even less time since the said man had come back, claiming that she will go with him. Eden did not even know how that happened. One time, she was being beaten and interrogated by a guard for Steve’s location, and the next time, she was in a fancy ass aeroplane with Anthony Stark on board. Honestly, by the first minute she knew why her mum hated the man. The fact that they were related by blood was cool, yeah, but it did not change anything about the said man kicking her off Stark’s September Foundation even before him knowing about her.
But she honestly could not care less about the other people they left in the Raft – she spoke to no one, yet she still felt a stabbing feeling in her guts, fearing of what would Steve say to her morals.
No, he’s a fugitive. He could not care less, Toni.
Spider-Man was quiet for a while. Eden could see his opening and closing mouth. She knew the man behind the mask was not bad – not necessarily. Hell, he was the person who took her off the Queensboro bridge only about a year or so ago. He was one of her only friends here in New York.
“Did Stark pay you up for you to befriend me?” she suddenly turned to him. They could see the shining lights of New York that was before them. They were at one of the Tower’s balconies. There were no additional barriers before the driveways under them, and Eden liked to think about Stark not putting them there just for her to jump. She knew that if she would, it would’ve made his life many times easier.
And since Eden was a proper Jarvis, she was not going to do that simply because of her pettiness. Her grandpa was the same.
“What?” Spider suddenly jerked, his voice an octave higher than normal. “No, Toni, you have to know that I would never-.. You, you’re my friend, and I-” he started, but she stopped him.
“Don’t call me Toni,” she barked at him.
“I-I’m really sorry,” Spider-Man continued.
Their conversation from just months ago was clear as day to him now.
“I could make you brand-new web shooters. Or look into your current ones. They won’t have to be holding thanks to duct tape,” she offered. “And we could meet like this, if you wanted to.”
Please say yes. Please say yes, please say yes.
She was in need of friends. Or a friend, as in a singular.
“Oh, do you think you have what it takes to help the amazing Spider-Man?” he asked ironically. “You know, you have to be a genius to do that. To be in the category
“Tony Stark” or a higher one. Do you have that? You don’t look like that,” he exclaimed.
Eden grinned.
“My name screams Tony Stark,” she said with confidence.
“Oh, really?” he grinned,
“My middle name is Toni,-” she started.
“NO WAY!! Your mom is obsessed with Tony Stark or some shit?” he called out immediately. “His name literally is Anthony Edward Stark, and your name is Edward and Tony!”
“No, Toni. Like Antonia, without the H. And a nickname for that is Toni, but not with an Y, but with I. And that’s not all!” she explained rapidly.
“Shut up! That’s so cool. I wish my parents named me like that,” he sighed. “Toni is cool. Can I call you Toni? It’s like I will have an actual personal Tony Stark, you know.”
“Yeah, sure thing, Spider. But the name Toni is just for my besties. You betray my trust, and we are at the end, ” Eden nodded. She did not really care in particular, and she did not mind the names, but she wanted to sound important and cool.
“So, what’s next? What is your next reason why you are the next Tony Stark, Toni Stark?” Spider asked after a minute of silent walking.
Eden grinned.
“Well, my last name is Jarvis. Like-”
“Like the AI that he has?! Oh God, that’s so cool!!!!!” Spider exclaimed once again.
Once again, Spider’ thoughts were stopped. Eden continued.
“You’re the reason for this, you know,” she just casually pointed to her almost healed black eye. Spider nodded. He knew.
“I didn’t know it was you,” he tried. His voice actually sounded as if he was sorry, and it made Eden only more angry. Stark was bluntly ignoring her – locking her in a random room like a dog. She wasn’t allowed to go alone to the gym or to the kitchen. The only person communicating with her was Miss Potts. And now Spider-Man.
Eden was honestly surprised he showed up after the fuck up that their friendship had brought.
“Oh don’t bullshit me, Spider, you knew it was me all along,” she jerked up. The masked vigilante was able to see her expressions. She looked like a kicked puppy and his angry Aunt May at the same time. Damn Italian genes.
And, to be quite honest, Peter knew why. He had known it was her, at the airport in Germany – but when he asked Mr Stark about her in the comms only seconds before the catastrophic fight began, he said she was just Captain Roger’s accessory, and no one important.
And then he webbed her up, thwarting her only escape – and that was getting into the Quinjet with the Captain. He saw that James Barnes, Captain’s former friend, was protecting her all the damn time, and when he had the chance, he wanted Eden to stay.
Hell, they didn’t even know about each other until they met there. And he thought that maybe he could get her outta here – explaining to Mr Stark that she was, in fact, not a dangerous person, rather than just a simply civilian victim.
Then he found out she was not just a simple civilian who got kidnapped or who got accidentally into it. He never thought that Toni’s Steve was the Steve Rogers – the Captain America. That she hacked into the Quinjet’s database servers and deleted everything she was able to, disabling for Mr Stark to find the escaping aeroplane. Even weeks later, Mr Stark wasn’t able to find any traces – zero, zip, nada. The servers were deleted, and the contact was irretrievably lost.
But after all, it made sense. When they met for the first time, she looked like she was going to off herself on the bridge. It was only days after the SHIELD vs HYDRA tragedy in Washington that caused many innocents to die. Of course she would not have trusted just some stranger, she told him Captain America saved her back there, and it only made sense that he brought her to New York with him. And then, when he offered a place to stay, she did.
Peter Parker had instant regrets when he saw his best friend on a verge of tears at the airport. She yelled at Captain and Barnes to run, not to wait on her. And they didn’t, because they couldn’t afford to spare more seconds for her to try and get there, too. Instead, he, her only friend, had webbed her up. When the secret services came, he had to go and hide (as Tony Stark told him). Yet he could hear Toni’s muffled noises after they dragged her to a van, interrogating her.
She told them nothing.
And he was silent. He had actual nightmares about the electricity buzzing of a taser that they hit her with.
He never asked Mr Stark about her after the fight – it seemed silly. But then the news about Tony Stark’s child got leaked, and he could see her at the photos. There weren’t many of them – only three, in which they were seen getting of Mr Stark’s plane. She looked fine on them.
But Toni in front of him was like a walking corpse. She still had bruises and her hair was messy. Her usual clothes and style of a walking thrifting grandma mixed with an old man that wore leather hunting boots everywhere was nowhere to be seen. Instead, she had grey shirt and pants on her.
What pained him more were the barely visible scars on her wrists. Peter was in fact sure he had never seen her in a short-sleeved shirt before. Some of the scars were more recent than the others. And he only felt worse every single time he looked at them.
He saw her at the Tower a few times before, too. He was just too much of a coward to come back as her friend. She saw him as Peter Parker – Tony Stark’s intern. And Peter was also really conscious of Mr Stark actually being more communicating with him outside of the labs, too. Suddenly, he was being invited for a pizza or a movie night.
Toni was never invited, though. It was always only Tony and him. Tony even invited him for a weeklong vacation in Malibu, which Peter had to decline. He felt so weird about all of it. It was almost as if Mr Stark was acting Peter was his kid, not Toni.
And he had no idea how to stop it.
But there was a thing worse than that – it was the fact that Toni had no idea Peter Parker was him. The name Peter became a taboo in front of her – it looked like his friendship with Ned before his hero-identity-reveal, only reversed. And much worse.
“Can I hug you?” he asked instead of more apologies.
Toni in front of him did not say anything. So, he slowly wrapped his arms around the smaller girl. He was able to smell the shampoo she used, and she had her head on his chest, around the height of where his heart was.
It took her quite a second to wrap her arms around him, too. And none of them said a word for quite a while.
“I though the Raft was a myth. I thought it wasn’t real,” she said suddenly. Peter only wrapped his arms tighter around her. The girl was shaking, and he wasn’t sure if she was cold or scared.
He said nothing in response, only waited for her to continue.
“General Ross showed up in front of my cell quite a few times. He interrogated me, too,” she inhaled deeply. “I don’t think anyone apart from the other Avengers know about it. He.. he yelled a lot. And he told me a lot of stuff.”
“Yeah? Like what stuff?” Peter asked quietly, slowly stroking her back in comfortable motions.
Sixteen. The girl was only sixteen, yet she was locked in the prison just like the other Avengers.
“After a few days, he told me about Stark being my father. They took my blood samples only a few hours before. I wasn’t telling them my name, so they hoped they would get a match. He showed me camera records of how he told him. It was.. it was insane. And he was just.. just cold as stone. No-.. no response from him. He only nodded. And then Ross was threatening me he would take me home if I wouldn’t show them Steve’s plans and the access codes for the contact with him.
General was threatening that they will announce that I am enhanced, and that I broke the Sokovian Accords. They would have actual reasons to keep me here for eternity.”
Peter was quiet for a while. “I’m here, baby, you know. I spoke to Tony about you. He said he’s.. confused about you. Give him… time,” he tried lightly.
He, in fact, did not speak to Mr Stark about Toni at all. And the smaller girl knew it very well.
“Spider, he almost slapped me the first moment we came to the Tower. I tripped and he was aiming at me with his repulsor,” she chuckled. “No need to make things up, you know. He doesn’t give one shit about me. Miss Potts is the one who is handling everything after I got leaked. I bet it was Ross, you know. He threatened with many things. Maybe he promised me just that before I lost my consciousness, I don’t know,” she shook with her arms.
Peter inhaled sharply. Was Mr Stark actually able to do something like that? That didn’t sound like him at all. He was ironic, of course, but aim at a sixteen-year-old?
“And then there’s his next kid, you know. That one was not leaked, yet. He always makes sure I hear about the damn kid every single time I see him,” Toni continued slowly.
Suddenly, Peter felt anxiety rising in his throat and chest. He did not say anything. And he didn’t need to – Toni continued, totally oblivious of his internal fight.
“I met him twice when I woke up in the middle of the night, you know. And, apparently, the only thing he can talk with me about is the damn kid. His kid this, his kid that. He was drunk, of course. He doesn’t talk to me when he is sober,” Eden went quiet once again.
And Peter had no idea what he should tell. How to comfort someone who has been travelling their whole life, never really got to know what the word home meant, and when they finally got one after their mum’s death, their other parent did not give a shit about them.
Peter was suddenly thinking about all the nights that they spent together – on the roof of the flat where she lived with Steve. Toni was never really happy, never really got to enjoy something. But she told him about her day – speaking to her French neighbour, Mrs Williams, and sneaking off the NYU STEM classes under fake names.
Peter knew she had at least a dozen of fake student cards so that she could get into any lecture possible, since she wasn’t able to go to high school. Technically, she was on a run. Toni never really spoke about what happened in Washington, but Peter knew her mum was someone important, who was hiding from HYDRA. That was the reason of why was Toni as a child almost every year in a different country (and also the reason of why she spoke so many of them, which truly fascinated Peter).
He missed those times. And he knew it was part his fault, too. Even though the news about Tony Stark’s child were only rumours, and the photos couldn’t be used as a proof to anything, Peter suspected she cared way more than she showed to anyone.
It was truly a miracle he was still able to hug her like that. Toni didn’t like physical touch most of the time. She must have felt really drained.
“It’ll get better, okay? I promise. I’m not gonna leave you again, promise,” he declared after a while, while he was slowly stroking her hair. “How about I’ll comb your hair, hm? My Aunt taught me how to braid it. You can tell me everything that has been on your mind, and I’ll tell you what has been on mine. And maybe we could colour some strands of yours again, like we did four months ago, how ’bout that?” Peter continued.
Toni only nodded. She felt too numb to do anything else. Peter felt it, too. He knew her enough by that time.
They slowly made their way back to the guest room she was staying at, and they spent a lot of their night in silence, simply doing stuff.
Spider promised Eden he would bring some posters, and get her some books, since she wasn’t allowed to go anywhere near Stark’s labs.
Eden knew she wouldn’t forget about what Spider did to her, yet she felt so tired that she simply wanted to forget about everything that happened in the past few weeks.
So when she was half-asleep in her bed with the boy next to her, hugging her lightly, she actually believed every single whisper he said.
“It’s gonna be alright, okay? I’ll talk to Tony, and you’ll go to school. You’ll get some friends, and he will care. I know he does, but he’s really shitty with expressing his feelings. I promise I’ll never leave you again,” Spider was slowly saying to her ear, while they watched Harry Potter at the TV.
She simply murmured in agreement, and before she could see what happened next in the movie, she drifted off to sleep.
Eden didn’t have a nightmare that night, and when she woke up, the other side of the small bed was cold and empty. That, however, didn’t ruin her mood one bit. She hoped that what Spider said was true. And even if it wasn’t, she had a feeling she would always have at least him.