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The thought came to him in history class. They were studying WWII and the concentration camps that took place during Nazi Germany’s reign. Peter was Jewish. He had family members who had died in the Holocaust. He knew because Ben would talk about it on Hanukkah each year.
They were supposed to do a presentation on WWII and Peter asked if he could do his presentation about his family. His history teacher had okayed the idea and Peter went home to look through their old family albums. There were a few pictures of his grandparents towards the end of their lives in the albums. But no photos of his great-grandmother, the only surviving member of her family out of Germany after WWII.
“I think those albums are in the storage locker downstairs,” May had said when he asked.
“Can I go down there?”
“Of course you can, sweetie. It’s your stuff too. Let’s go down after dinner and take a look.”
They sat down together for a plate of overcooked spaghetti and freezer meatballs. They talked about their days, Peter itching to rush down to the locker every minute that passed.
When they finally made it down there, they sorted through their boxes together. Ben’s stuff was in a few boxes that May looked through. Peter found the two left by his parents and ended up looking in there.
“Whoa, look at these pictures,” Peter laughed.
He handed May a photo of Richard and Ben in little 70s-style shorts and sweatbands around their foreheads. May snorted, a sad fondness on her face as she looked at the photo.
“This is a good idea, Pete.”
He looked up from where he was seated on the floor, a box in front of him.
May grinned at him. “Ben would be proud of you for choosing to do your project on your great-grandmother.”
Peter smiled back at her. “I was thinking about him when I suggested it.”
May sniffed, tears in her eyes. She cleared her throat as she turned back to her box. Peter did the same with his own. There were a lot more older photos as well as a few papers for patents his dad had made and some contracts. His eyes lit up when he found his parents’ birth certificates. He’d never seen those before.
Peter pulled them out and looked over their names and weights. His father’s middle name was Bernard. His mom had been born at eleven pounds.
“Oof,” Peter laughed under his breath.
His eyes caught on a specific piece of information and his brows furrowed. He looked back at his father’s birth certificate.
“May?”
“Yeah, honey?”
“What’s my blood type again?”
She looked up from her box. “AB+, why?”
Peter looked up and met her gaze. “Both my parents are negative.”
May stared at him for a moment. “What?”
Peter held up the birth certificates. “Mom was O- and Dad was AB-.”
May took the papers and looked them over. “That’s not- how is that possible? You can’t be positive if both your parents are negative. Maybe- maybe I’m remembering wrong?”
“Do you have my birth certificate?”
May nodded. “In one of these. There might be a copy in that box too.”
Peter turned back to his box and began rifling through it faster.
“Got it!” Peter announced at the same time May exclaimed, “Ah ha!”
He looked up at her. “You found a copy?”
May nodded as she read her copy. She shook her head. “AB+, I just don’t get it. It’s not possible. That would mean- well…”
“May… This one says A-.”
May’s head shot up. “What?”
Peter stood and joined her. They held the two birth certificates side by side. The one Peter held said A- and the one May held said AB+. All the other information was the same.
“This is very weird,” Peter stated.
May slowly shook her head. “Maybe… I dunno, I was going to suggest adoption, but then…” She looked at the birth certificate in Peter’s hands. “I don’t understand.”
“Maybe… Maybe the blood type was a typo and they got a new one?”
May narrowed her eyes. “There’s no way for an O- and AB- couple to have a child that is AB+.”
“What’re you saying? That- that Dad isn’t my dad?”
May stared at Peter for a moment. She swallowed and shook her head. “No. Of course not. I’m not saying that. It was a typo. Of course it was. Here.” She took both birth certificates. “Come on. It’s getting late. I’ll look for your great-grandmother’s things tomorrow before work.”
“May-”
“-You have homework, kiddo.”
Peter sighed and nodded. They closed up the locker and headed back up to their apartment. Peter went to his room and got out his homework. He couldn’t stop thinking about it. He stared at his physics textbook for twenty minutes doing nothing.
He turned and looked at his biology textbook. Peter grabbed it off the shelf and pulled it open. He went to the index at the back, found the pages for blood types, and flipped through until he found an explanation of blood type inheritance.
There was a handy little chart showing Parent A and Parent B and the combinations of blood types parents could produce in their children. A parent with blood type O of either positive or negative is unable to produce a child with the blood type AB.
Peter’s mother was blood type O- and Peter was probably AB+. It was impossible.
Peter got up and went out to the living room. May was sitting at the kitchen table with the birth certificates in front of her. She looked up when Peter entered the kitchen. They made eye contact.
“I’m not a Parker,” he said into the silence.
May was on her feet in an instant. She cupped his face in her hands. “Of course you are. You’re mine and Ben’s. You’re a part of this family, Pete.”
“But where did I come from?”
May opened her mouth, but no words came out. She shook her head. “I don’t know. Peter, we don’t even know which of those birth certificates belong to you. I don’t know. Maybe you were adopted?”
He shook his head. “I’ve seen the photos of Mom pregnant, May. I’ve seen the photo of her in the hospital with me. And if my blood is A- then how did they get one that says AB+?”
“Well, like you said. Maybe it was a typo? There’s no need to spiral, okay? I’m sure it’s perfectly explainable.
Peter stared at her. “Okay. How?”
May opened her mouth. She shook her head. “I don’t know,” she finally said. “I don’t know. But we can figure it out.”
><
May brought Peter to work at the hospital with her. She called in a few favors to get his blood drawn and tested. They wouldn’t get the results immediately, but faster than if they ordered an at-home test kit. In the meantime, they went back to the storage locker. They found Peter’s baby blanket and a lock of curly brown hair in a little baggy.
“But there’s no root. I don’t think we can test that against yours.”
Peter looked up at her with wide eyes. “You want to test my DNA against my baby hair?”
“Well.” She shrugged and gestured.
Peter grinned. “You watch too much Criminal Minds .”
May huffed. “That’s beside the point. Also, we have two pieces of official documents claiming you have different blood types. It’s not weird to want to see if the hair is different too.”
Peter hummed. “Well, they have developed ways to check DNA in hair without a root.”
May scrunched her nose. “That sounds expensive.”
“Probably.”
May crossed her arms over her chest as she hummed. “There’s… they do postmortem DNA testing.”
“What?” Peter asked, horrified. “What’s that?”
“Where they check if you’re related to someone who passed away.”
“How? By digging them up ?”
May shrugged. “Well?”
“Oh my god, you’re going full grave digger on me.” He leaned forward. “May, are you secretly a serial killer?”
She rolled her eyes. “You’re taking this too lightly.”
“I cope with humor, don’t pretend like you didn’t already know this.” He turned back to the boxes they were still making their way through.
She grinned and nodded. “I did know that. Okay. It’s an option. I’m just throwing it out there.”
“Yeah,” he agreed without looking up, “throwing it out there with the bones of my dead parents.”
May looked heavenward and sighed.
Peter opened a box and found something black and shriveled inside. “Oh, gross. What is that?”
May peered over his shoulder. “It’s your umbilical cord.”
“Oh, nasty. ”
May flicked his head. “It’s not nasty, it’s normal. Also, an umbilical cord has DNA .”
Peter narrowed his eyes. He pulled out his phone and did a quick search. “So, a test with a dried umbilical cord only works 50% of the time.”
“Damn.”
He shrugged. “Better than nothing.”
“We already have a fifty/fifty situation happening here.”
“Let’s take this stuff upstairs,” Peter said. “We can look over our options. You take the dried-up body parts. You’re the serial killer here.”
May huffed out a short laugh.
When they were back in their apartment, Peter pulled out his laptop and did some research into their options. The umbilical cord test was pricey but doable. The hair test would be a lot more difficult to swing.
He felt anxiety rising the longer they researched, the closer they came to a possible solution.
“I don’t know,” he said. “Maybe we should just leave it.”
“Leave it? I thought you wanted to look into this?”
He shrugged. “Let’s just leave it for now. Take a break. I dunno. I have schoolwork and stuff. We don’t even have the results back from the lab. I’m probably A-. We’ve just… we’re spiraling for nothing.”
May stared at him for a long moment. “If you’re sure?”
He nodded. “I’m gonna do my homework and go to bed. Night.”
“...Night.”
><
Peter sat on the edge of the building late one night during patrol. He stared out at the city streets beyond and thought about that baby. The baby that he might not be. Because if they were testing Peter’s DNA against his baby DNA, it was because there was a chance he wasn’t that baby.
They didn’t know. They hadn’t received the results from the lab for Peter’s blood test yet. Maybe they had. Maybe May had gotten it already. Would she tell him what the results were? He’d told her to drop it.
He was living in limbo. Living as Peter Parker on the precipice of knowing if that was the truth or a lie. Peter felt like he’d already fallen off the cliffside. The idea was out there now. The idea that maybe he wasn’t Peter Parker existed in his world now and that idea couldn’t go back into the box he’d pulled it from.
The truth was that there was a chance he wasn’t Peter Parker. So who the hell was he? Where did he come from? What had happened to the real Peter Parker?
He swallowed thickly.
Peter didn’t know and he was too scared to find out.
><
Time passed. May and Peter had Thanksgiving together. Their first without Ben. It was hard and lacked a warm presence that both of them felt. They sat on the couch together and watched Jurassic Park .
Peter buried the thought of the blood types and baby DNA deep in the back of his head. May had put the little pieces of evidence they’d found away and he never saw it again. He didn't talk to Ned about it. Peter was already hiding Spider-Man from his best friend. What was one more secret?
Winter break came and so did the first night of Hanukkah. May and Peter lit the menorah together. It was quiet and solemn without Ben. Peter sat at the table and watched the candle burn down while May put some freezer blintz in the oven.
The candle flickered and a big drop of bright blue candle wax hit the plate beneath the menorah.
He thought about his great-grandmother who had survived WWII. He thought about the stories Ben would tell about her every year at Hanukkah. About how she survived. How she lost her family. How she never truly knew what happened to her little sister or her brother. Her parents had been killed in a camp, but there were no records of her siblings. They could have lived. They could have escaped.
She died not knowing.
Peter wiped the tears off his face.
“Peter?”
He looked up at her and sniffed. “Do you- do you think there are people out there looking for me?”
May’s face softened. She took the seat beside him at their little circular table. She ran a hand through his dark curls.
“I don’t know, sweetie. But I think you’ll never stop thinking about it until you find out the truth.”
Peter nodded. “But if I was… if… Mary and Richard did something bad,” he glanced up at her. It was the first time he’d voiced such a thought and May only nodded, clearly having come to a similar conclusion, “then what if they take me from you? The people who I… I could also belong to?”
“I don’t know. But, hopefully, they’ll be reasonable and I would still get to see you and spend time with you. And if you’re from... further away, I’ll come visit you. But, Pete, sweetie, there’s a high chance we go looking and don’t find anything. We don’t know. This could still be a big mistake that we’ve completely blown out of proportion.”
Peter nodded. “I’m scared.”
“Me too.”
“But we should still look.”
She nodded. “I agree.”
><
May hadn’t stopped working on it, even when Peter had said to forget about it several months prior. She had an entire file compiled of as much information and research as she could find. But it all started with the results of the blood test.
“Your blood is AB+.”
Peter sucked in a sharp breath. He wasn’t Mary and Richard’s baby. He wasn’t Peter Parker.
“Okay,” Peter responded, his voice wobbling with barely contained tears. “Okay. So… so what do we do?”
May squeezed his hand comfortingly. He held onto it like a lifeline.
“We could do an Ancestry.com DNA thing,” she told him, presenting her findings to him. “It might not give us an exact answer of… who you are, but it could give us relations to go off of. They’ve also been known to work with law enforcement. So, if you’re a missing child case, you might get flagged right away, but I'm not really sure of their involvement in all of that.”
Peter nodded. “Okay. What about the baby DNA? It doesn’t really answer our questions about… that .”
“Right. I’m not sure how we’ll get answers to that. I mean, beyond reporting it, there’s not much we can do.”
“There’s still a chance, though, right? That the birth certificates were miswritten?”
“Right…”
“But mom has O- blood,” Peter remembered with a sigh. “Which means I can’t be her kid.” He dropped his head into his hands. “Okay. You want to report it?”
She tilted her head as she considered that question. “It’s complicated. If we go to the police… I could lose custody of you.”
Peter’s head shot up. “That’s not happening!”
“I think we can avoid it if we go through the Stark Foundation.”
Peter raised an eyebrow. “I didn’t know Tony Stark had a foundation?”
“He set it up after his kid went missing. The whole Anastasia situation.”
Peter nodded. The missing Stark child was a well-known factoid. People from all over the world came to New York, claiming to be Tony Stark’s long-lost child. The case was as infamous as Princess Anastasia and just as tragic. Obadiah Stane had the child executed while Tony was kidnapped. The Malibu house had been riddled with bullets and part of it even exploded. Happy Hogan was the only known survivor, in a coma until weeks after Tony returned from Afghanistan.
The baby, barely even one, had disappeared the night of the attack – presumed dead. Over the last decade and almost a half, a body hadn’t been found, which led to the Anastasia comparison. There was always a chance that the Stark Baby lived and people clung to that hope.
“They would help us?”
“They’ve been known to do DNA testing and other things pro bono for suspected missing children or other weird situations. I feel like we fall under that category.”
Peter tilted his head. “Weird is the simple description, yes.”
“They also have special contacts and procedures,” May continued. “You should get to stay with me as long as I’m cleared as a suspect. It’s the safer option, rather than going to the police.”
Peter licked his lips as he nodded. “That’s- yeah. Okay. Let’s do it.”
It would also give him time before he was possibly ripped from Aunt May and thrust into a different family’s arms.
“Okay,” May agreed easily. “Whatever you want to do, sweetie.” She pressed a kiss to his forehead. “I’ll make an appointment.”
><
School started back up again before their appointment with the Stark Foundation. Peter went to school, feeling like his head was submerged under water. He didn’t even remember the commute to school. He blinked and then he was there, standing in the freezing cold in front of the big white building.
“Pete! Peter!”
Peter turned and felt his shoulders relax when he saw Ned heading towards him.
“Hey, man. Happy New Year!”
Peter tried to smile. “Happy New Year.”
“You good?”
“Uh… let’s get inside. I’m frozen.”
“Same!”
They hurried inside the school. Ned filled Peter in on his winter break as they headed towards their lockers. Peter began pulling off his mittens and unbuttoning his jacket. Ned unwound his four-foot-long scarf.
“My Lola made it for me,” he explained as he shook some snow from the creases.
Peter hummed in response.
It wasn’t until their free period after lunch that Ned finally called him out.
“Dude. What’s wrong? Are you okay? You’ve been off all day.”
Peter looked up from his open textbook. He and Ned were sitting in the library together. There was a little buzz of noise around them from a class off by the computers and random students searching for books amongst the stacks.
Peter leaned forward with a sigh. “You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”
“Of course I would,” Ned replied without hesitation as he also leaned forward.
“Right. Of course you would.” He leaned even further forward and Ned did the same. “I’m not Peter Parker.”
Ned narrowed his eyes. “Is this a ‘these are not the droids you’re looking for’ situation? Like-”
“-No. Like… May and I were looking for stuff for that history project at the start of the semester and we found my birth certificate.”
“Okay.”
“It’s fake.”
Ned’s eyes widened. “ What ?”
“That’s wild,” another voice put in.
Peter and Ned’s heads whipped around. Michelle peered around the bookcase by their table. She had a book in hand.
“I wasn’t eavesdropping.”
Peter raised his eyebrows. “Uh… sure.”
Michelle put the book back on the shelf and came around to stand at their table. She wrapped her hands around the straps of her backpack and shrugged.
“So, what happened?”
Ned turned to Peter. The teenager sighed and gestured to the chair in front of Michelle. She sat down without a word.
“We found two birth certificates. One had my blood listed at A- and the other was AB+ and that’s mine. The AB+, we got my blood tested just to make sure… but my mom is O-. Which is impossible. O- can’t create an AB blood type at all.”
Michelle raised her eyebrows. Ned’s eyes widened.
“Yeah, so basically, she’s not my mom. And so… we got more evidence-”
“-What kind of evidence?” Michelle asked.
“Uhm, we found a lock of baby hair and then an umbilical cord too. May suggested we take it to the Stark Foundation.”
Michelle nodded. “Smart.”
“So, what happened?” Ned pushed.
Peter shrugged. “Nothing, yet. May called and explained the situation. We made an appointment.”
“Did you contact the police?” Michelle asked.
Ned’s eyes widened. “The police? Why?”
Peter shifted uncomfortably. “Because I’m- I’m not Peter Parker. The DNA didn’t match mine. I’m… a missing kid?”
Ned frowned. “I don’t understand. Who did the baby's DNA belong to?”
“Peter Parker.”
“But you’re Peter Parker?”
“He’s saying,” Michelle interrupted, “that the baby is Peter Parker and somehow the baby is gone and he took the baby’s place. It died?”
Ned’s eyes widened. “You replaced a dead baby?”
Peter shrugged and gestured. “I don’t know! Not by choice? I didn’t know until now.”
“What will the Foundation do?” Ned asked.
“They’ll corroborate what we pretty much already know. We do have some baby DNA. It could just be mine from when I was little… the hair, not the uh, umbilical cord we found. But they’ll probably also take a look at the two birth certificates we found. I mean, no matter what happens with the baby's DNA, I can’t be Mary Parker’s child. The blood makes it impossible.”
“Not even like, a different dad?” Ned pressed even though he also already knew the answer.
Peter shook his head.
“There are instances where someone’s blood type can change,” Michelle stated calmly.
Peter frowned. “Really?”
She shrugged. “It’s really rare. Like with bone marrow transplants or leukemia.”
“I mean, May said I was sick as a baby?” He shook his head. “I’ll bring it up with her.”
Ned shifted in his seat. “But you guys like, already think it’s not that?”
“Well, we don’t have any medical records from when I was sick. It just looks like I was A- one day and AB+ the next.”
“What happens after the Foundation confirms it?” Michelle asked.
“May will have to be questioned, social services will be consulted. She didn’t do anything wrong, so it’s likely I’ll just go home with her. And then they’ll… search for my bio-family, I guess?”
“Oh my god, Peter,” Ned leaned forward, eyes wide. “What if you’re like Anastasia?”
Peter reared back. “Excuse me?”
Michelle raised an eyebrow at Ned. “You mean Stark’s missing kid?”
“Yeah! Well, not literally because he's younger than us. But like, people have been looking for you forever and now they’ll find you and you’ll be a princess!”
Michelle shrugged. “You’d look good in a crown.”
Ned nodded and Peter couldn’t help but laugh.
“ I can’t believe you’re Anastasia,” Ned breathed in wonder. “ This is insane .”
Peter ran a hand through his hair. “I think I’m having an existential crisis.”
“You’re definitely having an existential crisis,” Michelle responded dryly. “You’d be crazy if you weren’t.”
Peter sighed. “I just… I feel like an imposter. Like I stole something.”
“Don’t be silly, you didn’t do this. Your parents did. They replaced their own child.”
“Maybe. I dunno, maybe something else happened?” he responded with a weak hope.
“What? They abandoned their kid? They traded him with another one?”
Ned made a noise of commiseration. “I don’t really think there’s a better alternative besides like, leukemia? Which is the darkest thing I think I’ve ever said. I’m kind of hoping you had cancer, Peter. I’m sorry.”
Peter ran a hand down the side of his face. “It’s fine, Ned. I’d rather that too, I think. If I have another family out there, they could take me away from May.”
“They can’t do that,” Ned stated. “May is your guardian. She raised you.”
“She’s Peter Parker’s guardian. That’s not me.”
“You’re not a kid though,” Michelle put in. “When my parents got divorced, I was really little, I didn’t get a choice. But my older brother was fifteen. He got to choose who he wanted to live with.”
“Do you think I could get a choice?” Peter asked.
Michelle shrugged. “I don’t know, it’s not the same thing as getting a divorce. But you could… ask, I guess?”
Peter’s head dropped to the table with a dull thump . “I don't want to have to deal with this. I wish I never went looking in our storage locker.”
"I'm sure you do regret it," Michelle agreed in her usual dry tone, "but I'm sure there's a family out there who is going to cry tears of joy over the fact that you did."
Peter lifted his head. He sighed. "Yeah… yeah."
It didn't make it easier.
><
“Mrs. Parker?” a woman called.
May and Peter jumped to their feet in the swanky Manhattan office.
“Yes! Yes. That’s me.”
The woman, an older Asian woman in a pencil skirt and blouse, smiled kindly. “I’m Olivia Ross, right this way please.”
They were led to an office and gestured towards a pair of comfy chairs on the opposite end of a modern desk. Olivia Ross sat down across from them.
“I’ll admit, your case is a most interesting one. Did you bring the birth certificates as we asked?”
“Yes.” May pulled out a manilla envelope and handed it over.
Olivia opened it up and pulled the two documents out. She looked them over with an interested hum before handing them off to an assistant.
May watched the assistant leave with her brows furrowed. “Uhm, where are you taking those?”
“We need to have them authenticated.”
“We didn’t fake them,” Peter told her.
Olivia smiled kindly. “I don’t believe that you did. But having two different birth certificates with differing information is certainly interesting, we want to make sure it isn’t exactly what you suspected yourself, a typo that was fixed.”
Peter narrowed his eyes. “If it was, then it raises more questions than it answers.”
“You are correct, Mr. Parker.” She turned to May. “You have the baby DNA?”
“We brought both the hair and the umbilical cord.”
“Great. What we would like to do at this juncture is take a sample of Mr. Parker’s DNA and take the baby DNA you brought. We can test them against each other to identify if they’re a match or not.”
“Today?” Peter asked.
“As much as we’d love for everyone to get an answer right away, there is a waiting time for procedures such as these. We will contact you for another in-person meeting when we have the results. Okay?”
Peter and May nodded.
“Wonderful. There are some documents you’ll need to sign. Okay?”
Peter glanced at May who smiled encouragingly. Peter sighed and nodded. Olivia handed a clipboard over to May and a pen. May read over it as Peter waited, knee jiggling with nervous energy.
“What happens if it’s not a match?” he asked.
“Let’s wait and see what happens before we make any other plans, okay?”
“But what usually happens?” Peter pressed. “Are we in trouble?”
“You’re not in any trouble, Mr. Parker. If they’re not a match, authorities will need to be alerted. Your Aunt May will be questioned and cleared of all involvement if that’s the case. We have CPS on hand as well. Unfortunately, things get rather complicated if it’s not a match. But it has happened before and almost every time, the child gets to go home with their current guardian after everything has been okayed by CPS.”
“I don’t have to go home with some new, random family?”
“That all depends on whether you agree to put your DNA into our database. And even if you do, discussions can be held and lawyers brought in to help determine where you would like to go.”
“With May. I don’t want to go with anyone else.”
“Of course. But any birth parents you might have out there, if they still are, will have some rights regarding you since you’re still a minor. But as I said, this is all hypothetical. You don’t have to agree to give your DNA to the database.”
“But that’s what this is,” May said and looked up from the contract with a frown. “You want me to agree to submit Peter’s DNA to further testing.”
“Not further testing, one further test. The first test is the DNA crossmatch with the DNA you brought. The second test is standard for the Stark Foundation.”
May raised an eyebrow. “Which is?”
“All DNA brought to the Stark Foundation is cross-checked against Tony Stark’s DNA.”
May and Peter stared at Olivia.
“As in a paternity test,” she elaborated.
“ Oh ,” they said at the same time. May turned to Peter. “In case you’re the lost Stark baby.”
“That’d be wild,” Peter returned. He nodded at May. “You can sign to see if I’m Anastasia.”
May snorted and shot him a mocking glare. “Great.” She signed the document and handed it over. “We’ll do the tests now?”
“Yes,” she took the document and stood. “Let me go process this and grab the doctor. She will take Mr. Parker’s DNA and then you’ll be free to go.”
Peter looked up at May the moment the door closed behind Olivia. “This was a bad idea,” he told her, knee jiggling again.
“It wasn’t a bad idea. It was exactly what we talked about a million times. Peter, it’s okay.” She leaned forward and cupped his cheek. “I’m right here, kiddo. I’m right here.”
A few minutes later, Olivia returned with a female doctor. The doctor took a mouth swab from Peter and promptly disappeared again.
“You have time to decide if you’d like to submit your DNA for further testing after this. But if you are a missing child, the police have been known to get involved and do their own search. In which case, it is out of our hands what happens.”
Peter ran a hand through his hair. “Right. Okay. Cool.”
May squeezed his arm. “That’s okay. We knew that was a possibility. Going to the police was our only other real option.” She turned to Peter. “Okay, kiddo?”
He swallowed and nodded quickly. “You’ll call us in a few weeks?”
“Yes. I will be in touch, Mr. Parker. Thank you for coming in today. This is my contact information.” She handed a card to May. “If you have any other questions or concerns, please call. Our Foundation provides a number of free resources, one of which is therapy in case you feel you need to talk to someone. Please, don’t be afraid to reach out.”
“Thank you,” May said as she stood.
Peter all but fled from the room.
><
“I can’t believe I have to go to school tomorrow,” he whined into May’s lap on the couch.
She ran her fingers through his hair. “I’d tell you to stay home, but I also have to go to work. I think you’ll just spiral in my absence.”
“Probably.”
A short silence descended.
“What do you think happened to him?” Peter asked in the quietness of the room.
“Who?”
“Peter Parker. The real Peter Parker. What do you think happened to him?”
“Honestly?”
“Preferably.”
“I think he died.”
Peter tensed. He rolled onto his back to look up at her. May looked down.
“Babies die sometimes. It happens. And you… you were sick as a baby. Mary and Richard took you all over to different specialists. They didn’t really settle in Queens until you were two.”
“Plenty of time to hide a dead baby and get a new one.”
May winced. “I- yeah, I guess.”
“That’s awful,” Peter whispered.
“Yes. Yes, it is.”
“Michelle said my blood could have changed for medical reasons, like a bone marrow transplant or like leukemia? Do you think it could be that?”
May ran her fingers through Peter’s curls. “I don’t know, sweetie. You weren’t around a lot when you were sick. Richard spoke with Ben about it. I don’t know the details. But… we don’t have any medical records to that effect.”
Peter sighed deeply. He wrapped his arms around May’s waist and buried his face in her stomach. She ran her fingers through his hair. He couldn’t ignore the fear and anxiety that lived in his chest now. He didn’t think it would ever go away now.
><
They were sitting on the couch together when everything changed.
Peter and May were snuggled together under a fuzzy blanket. Peter wiggled his toes in his fuzzy slipper socks that May had gotten him for Hanukkah. Peter had gotten her a new hot water bottle with a knitted sleeve.
“He’s my hero,” May whispered as Indiana Jones appeared on screen.
“May, chill .”
She laughed. “He’s so handsome.”
“I like him as Han Solo better.”
“He was very pretty in that too.”
Peter rolled his eyes even as a smile touched his lips.
A knock came at the door. May got up and went to answer. Peter glanced over from where he was lying on the couch and saw May stiffen in shock. Peter was immediately on his feet.
“What’re you-?” she said. “Oh my god.”
“Can I come in?” a man’s voice asked in an undertone.
“May?” Peter cut in as he made it to the door. “What’s going on?” He pulled the door open even more and promptly froze. “Oh my god.”
It was Tony Stark. Tony Stark was standing at their doorway.
Tony Stark’s eyes snapped to Peter.
He looked both exactly like he did in magazines and also nothing like that at all. Tony Stark was short, only an inch or two taller than Peter. He had messy dark hair and a neatly groomed beard. He was wearing a pair of square, thick-rimmed Stark glasses. Peter had read a paper about the tech in them the other day.
It was Tony Stark .
“Hey,” his hero breathed out softly.
Peter blinked widely. “Hi. Oh my god. Hi . You’re Tony Stark!”
Tony winced visibly. “Yeah. Yeah, I am. Can I come in?”
Peter blinked again. His brain finally began to function. “What? Yes! Please, come in. May, Tony Stark is coming into our apartment.”
Tony closed the door behind him. May didn’t say a thing. She had her arms wrapped around herself and a sad look on her face.
“What’re you-” Peter’s eyes widened and he swallowed thickly as it finally hit him.
Tony Stark was here. There was only one reason Tony Stark would come to Peter Parker’s home.
Tony knew that Peter was Spider-Man.
Please don’t be here about Spider-Man, he thought. Please, please, please.
“What’re you doing here?” he asked weakly.
Tony seemed at a loss for words.
Oh, no , Peter thought. “It’s not about- you’re here because…” He trailed off.
Tony nodded. “Yeah.”
“Oh, god. Okay.” He glanced at May, who was staring at Peter with wide eyes. “Look, May. It’s not- it’s not what it seems.”
“Peter, it’s okay,” May soothed.
Peter’s eyes widened. “It- it is?”
“Of course.”
He leaned closer. “You’re not mad?”
She slowly shook her head. “Peter, sweetie, why would I be mad?”
Peter raised his eyebrows. “Because I’m breaking the law ?”
May blinked.
“Because I’m Spider-Man .”
“ What ?” May and Tony snapped at the same time.
Peter’s eyes widened. “Is that not what’s happening right now?”
“You’re Spider-Man?” May shouted.
Tony raised a hand to his forehead. “Oh my god. Rhodey was right. Karma is real.”
“Peter what the absolute fu-”
“-I’m sorry!” Peter cut in, hoping to stop her before she started spiraling. “I thought you knew! I thought you figured it out! Why- why else would Tony Stark be at our-” Peter gasped loudly “-Oh my god, I’m Anastasia!”
May dropped her face into her hands.
Tony stared at him. “What?”
Peter stared back. “That’s why you’re here. You’re my- I’m your-”
Tony swallowed thickly. “Yeah.” His eyes flickered across Peter’s face. “ Yeah .”
A heavy silence followed.
Tony shifted uncomfortably. “Let’s uh- can we sit? Talk? Let’s sit and talk.”
They moved towards the kitchen. May leaned towards Peter and hissed, “You are so grounded .”
Peter winced as he took a seat. “I’m sorry. I really thought that’s what this was about.”
“ That’s what you’re sorry about?” May exclaimed as she pulled out three mugs from the cupboard. “Peter, I watched a news story about you getting shot at by the police last night.”
“The police shoot at everyone, May. I’m not special.”
The look May shot Peter was deadly. “Do you have any idea how dangerous it is out there? To do something like that?” May gestured at Peter as she turned to Tony. “Tell him!”
Tony looked like he’d rather be anywhere else. “I- am completely unprepared for this conversation.”
“He’s fifteen,” May seethed.
“Fourteen, actually,” Tony corrected.
The tension in the kitchen immediately fizzled out. The realization of why Tony was in their kitchen settled over all three of them.
Peter’s shoulders slowly hunched over as he processed what was happening. He was Tony Stark’s son. Tony Stark was his birth father.
Someone had tried to execute him as a baby.
“How did I end up with the Parkers?” he asked the room quietly.
Tony shook his head. “I don’t know. I’m looking into it. Now that we know where you ended up, we might be able to work backwards. But… we might never know.”
Peter turned to May who was holding an empty mug in her hand like she didn’t know what it was used for. “Do you think they knew who I really was?”
May opened her mouth but no words came out. She shook her head and shrugged.
“When did you find out?” Peter asked Tony.
“The results came through about fifteen minutes ago.”
And he came directly here, went unsaid.
“What happens now?” Peter whispered.
“I have to be questioned,” May said.
“You didn’t do anything," he protested.
May rested a hand on Peter’s shoulder. “And we have to prove that, kiddo.”
“The FBI are on their way,” Tony told her. “We should be able to get things cleared up tonight. But you should probably make some coffee. It might be a long night.”
Peter turned to Tony. “You’re going to help clear May?”
“I have no desire to put someone in jail who wasn’t involved. And I know who did this. Stane is dead. Maybe your parents were involved in it all, but from what my AI told me as I flew over, it’s unlikely. Even if they were, they’re also gone.”
“May raised me.”
“I know.”
“I want to stay with her,” Peter emphasized, tears in his eyes and his throat tight.
Tony nodded. “That… makes sense.”
May sat down between them. “But we want you around too.”
Peter and Tony turned to her with matching brown eyes. May smiled weakly.
“I don’t see any reason for you not to get to know Peter. He’s your biggest fan,” she confided teasingly.
“ May," Peter whined. He could feel his face and neck growing hot.
“And maybe,” she continued, cutting her nephew a sidelong look, “you can talk some sense into him about this vigilante business.”
Peter visibly wilted. “I’m not gonna stop.”
“I bet you will if Iron Man tries to stop you.”
Peter narrowed his eyes. “Bet.”
Tony raised his hands. “Okay. Let’s just… Let’s roll this back a second. We’ll talk about the Spiderling thing tomorrow-”
“-It’s Spider- Man -”
“-the FBI is gonna be here soon. I just… I’d love to just…”
Tony leaned forward. He met the eyes of his son for the first time in over a decade. Peter stilled, caught in the stare of the man who was his hero, idol, and now birth father.
“Hi," the older man greeted in a weak voice, "I’m Tony. I’m your dad.”
Peter was quiet for a long moment. “There are… so many jokes I want to make, but I will refrain.”
May rolled her eyes. “The willpower of a saint.” She stood and began making coffee again, giving the two some semblance of privacy.
“Hi,” he continued. “I’m Peter.” His eyes widened. “I hope- I hope that’s okay.”
Tony tilted his head. “What?”
“That I go by Peter.”
“Why would that be a problem?”
“It’s not- it’s not the name you gave me. Don’t you care?" Peter wondered genuinely. "I mean. I’m a liar. An imposter. I’m not Peter. I’m stealing his name .”
Tony nodded. “You’re right.”
Peter looked up, eyes wide. “What?”
“You should go by something else.”
Peter nodded slowly. “The name you gave me?”
Tony tilted his head and hummed. “You’re not that baby anymore. What, we’re gonna pretend the past decade never happened?” He waved a hand. “Nah, kid. Here, let’s pick a new name. You can use my grandfather’s name.”
May looked over her shoulder at the two of them as she continued to make coffee. She didn’t interrupt them, but she didn’t look overly pleased at the direction of the conversation.
“Your grandfather?” Peter asked.
“Yeah, his name was Peter.”
Peter blinked. “But that’s my name.”
“Yeah, see.” Tony gestured to him. “It already works.”
Peter’s brows furrowed. “But I don’t want to be Peter Parker.”
“Well, you’re not, are you? You’re Peter – what’s your middle name?”
“Benjamin?”
Tony nodded. “Good name, from what I understand, was also a good man.”
“The best,” Peter responded quietly.
“So there you go. Peter Benjamin Parker Stark. Or we can drop the Parker. You can talk to May about it.”
He nodded at May as she set a coffee mug on the table in front of Tony. He shot her a smile in thanks. She had an answering, amused grin on her face. She sat down at the table with them again.
“You don’t care if I go by Peter?” the teenager asked as he accepted his own mug of coffee.
“My grandfather’s name?” Tony shrugged. “I think it’s great.”
Peter’s mouth flattened. “You know what I mean.”
Tony sighed. He set the coffee aside and leaned forward again. “Peter – Pete – kid. I have spent the last decade thinking you were dead. You think I give a shit what you want to call yourself? I never thought I would ever get to see you again. Get to hold you.” He stared at Peter with wide, wet eyes. “You’re so fucking beautiful.”
Peter swallowed thickly. “I’m sorry you thought I was dead.”
Tony shook his head. “It’s not your fault.”
“I know. But I’m sorry you had to go through it.”
“I’m sorry I put you in danger. And I don’t think I can be grateful for what your parents did, but I’m happy you had Ben and May. They clearly love you… as much as I do.”
May reached forward and took Peter’s hand in her own. “We do,” she told Peter. “I’m always here for you, kiddo.”
Peter’s eyes teared. “I do want to stay with May,” he reiterated.
Tony swallowed and looked down. He cleared his throat and turned back to the two of them. “Why did you go looking if you didn't want things to change?”
Peter made a face. “Because I'm not Peter. I stole his life. There's a dead baby out there and no one knows what happened to him.”
“Richard and Mary did that. They hid that child away. Stane stole your life. Mine. The one we would have lived together.”
Peter looked conflicted by Tony’s words.
The older man sighed. “Look, I don't want to take you away from your world, kid. But I want to be a part of it and I want you a part of mine.”
Peter stared at him hopefully. “How would we do that?”
“I don't know. Let's figure it out. After the FBI do their stuff, you and May can come stay with me at my penthouse. We'll talk, work it out. Get to know each other. We'll make it work.”
“What about the baby-Peter?”
Tony’s mouth twisted. “I can talk to some people, but at the end of the day, the only people who know what happened to him are probably gone.”
Peter nodded. He looked up at May who smiled encouragingly. “Okay. Let’s uh- let’s do that.”
“Great. Okay.” Tony grinned at him. “Good.”
May nodded. “And while we’re there, we’ll discuss how long you’ll be grounded for this Spider-Man stuff.”
Peter groaned. “Ah, come on, May. I’m helping people!”
“It’s dangerous, Peter!”
“Especially in your little onesie get up,” Tony agreed.
“Thank you," May responded as she gestured to him.
“We’ll have to make you a better suit.”
“Really?” Peter exclaimed excitedly.
“What?” May’s head whipped around. “Are you out of your goddamn mind?”
Tony smiled at Peter’s obvious excitement. He nodded to May. “I’ll make it safe. I won’t let anything happen to him.”
Not again, went unsaid.
“I’m gonna have a suit!” Peter went one eagerly. “Can I help you with it? Can I see your lab ?”
“Anything, Pete,” Tony promised. “We’ve got time.”
THE END