Chapter Text
Jean Grey kneels over Peter Parker's corpse. Spiderman, New York's hero. The boy no one remembered. All alone in the world. Who would mourn him? He'd told his girlfriend. His friend knew now that Spiderman's name was Peter. The Punisher, maybe, would squint his eyes to stop tears from brewing.
He was the one who shot that bullet. What's it matter to him?
It was meant for her. Jean should've taken it. Should've let him put an end to her and send her off to finally meet her sister. After that whole fucking—fucking joke V-max was. But Peter, stupid, selfless, soft-hearted Peter spun her away before she could even realize there was a bullet.
Her hands keep slipping on the blood, and that thread of time she'd tugged and tugged and tugged to a frozen stop is sliding right through her stained fingers. Peter is still bleeding, wound gushing, but he's not breathing anymore. Jean, hunched over him, heaves a dry sob.
Why couldn't she have paused him, the way she paused all those bastards who killed her sister? Why couldn't she have frozen the wound in place, paused that lethal dripping?
She squeezes her eyes shut through another heaving gasp of breath and reaches for that string, Peter's string, and tugs-tugs-tugs. Tighter, tighter. It strains against her, and her slippery hands tremble.
A jolty breath shudders from Peter's chest. For just a moment he chokes and splutters, reanimated, brought back to life. Returned.
He shudders out and dies just the same when that thread slips from Jean's grasp, let loose in her shock. She just—
Panic flashes through her, feverish desperation. She just brought him back. A full stop is one thing, but a rewind? Jean doesn't even want to imagine what kind of nerdy universal laws she'd be breaking doing that; she'd caught enough to hint at 'quite a few' when she jumped into Peter's head.
But... nothing else seems to have gone back.
Just Peter. He just... reversed. Stitched himself a little more together.
Breathe in breathe out.
Jean's eyes close and her hands press down futilely against Peter's wound. Search and find. Pull pull pull. The thread fights and wriggles, and beads of sweat roll down Jean's temple as her shaky hands claw it under control. She's used so much power already, her energy is beyond depleted, but she can't quit now. She's awakened some sort of boost, being tested on like a rat in a cage, something that makes her more powerful than she ever realized she could be.
She locks her knuckles white-tight around it and yanks.
Her clean hands meet cold, dusty tile.
Peter, his pool of blood with him, has vanished. His thread, bright-red-bold, fades away. Not gone, but distant. Pushed—back.
Jean Grey has saved Peter Parker. She's launched him back in time.
Dying hurts.
Peter would like to reassure Jean, tell her he's okay and that it's not her fault, that she should get to live as happily and freely as she wants and he'll stick by her side through all of it, but... Well, there's no conceivable way he's surviving this. The Punisher's success rate is unbeatable, and his idea that bigger guns are more effective have to come from somewhere.
Honestly, Peter should've assumed that Frank was going to go off on his own thinking he'd be helping Peter out. Even though it's gotten him into this situation in the first place, Peter's never wanted to draw blood. Especially not from someone like Jean, who really hasn't done anything wrong. He'd been... hesitant about her, at first, because of everything that happened with Green Goblin, but all Jean had wanted was to find her sister.
Her sister, who Damage Control had taken from her. Permanently.
Peter had said that she had him. As a human meat shield, maybe. Heh. Long while that promise lasted, huh?
There's no more Tony to cry to about not feeling good. He can feel hands on him as he fades away, a brief jolt where his heart jumps like it's restarting and a forcible breath stutters from his chest, but it doesn't last long. The darkness consumes him, the pain visceral and pounding and flashing images of memories not one other person on earth has through his mind.
He blinks his eyes open to a stark sunlight, blinking blearily as a milder pain, a familiar and full-body ache, pulses through him. It's almost comforting, as the nonstop pain and fear and confusion of the last few weeks—months, years really—have finally receded.
It's like being fourteen again, following Mr. Stark around with the nervous buzz of a stupid kid talking to his idol even as he battled Avengers.
'I can't go to Germany,' he'd said. 'I have homework.'
God. Peter forces his eyes open and sits up, peering at the wreckage around him and wondering if the afterlife is supposed to look so... rough. Maybe it's because it's half-familiar, the kind of recognition you get from seeing a nightmare that's played in your head a hundred times over.
Wherever Peter is—heaven or hell or something more unimportant—looks startlingly like the Novi Grad, Sokovia he'd seen on TV, the pictures of the area from before Ultron struck. It buzzes with life, almost a thousand people Peter's never met going about their day, as downtrodden as they seem. The air holds its breath, the sky taut and dark with tension.
Something is coming, his senses tell him.
Peter, since the whole saga with Jean and MJ—and god, MJ finally found out but she doesn't even know him anymore, he left her and Ned without a proper goodbye but will she even miss him?—is much more inclined to listen. Even if this is the afterlife...
Well, Peter's been blipped out of existence for five straight years before. Having to keep fighting after death isn't the most shocking thing that'll ever happen to him.
He stumbles up to his feet, taking note of his civilian clothing. Strange choice of the afterlife; it's not something he would've worn in recent years. He's dressed like a middle schooler. He huffs at the thought and shakes his limbs out, trying to reorient himself. He feels gangly and shaped incorrectly, probably a holdover of bleeding out and dying in a hurting girl's arms.
God, Peter has so many regrets. He'd have never chosen anything but to save Jean, but—he'd just told her he'd stick by her. She'd been hurting and so alone and Peter was only able to wonder as he drew his last breaths if Uncle Ben, if Aunt May, had those same kind of thoughts while Peter held their rapidly-dying bodies.
He wishes he didn't inflict that on another person. He'd never wanted to.
Breathe in breathe out. They're all gone now. Peter is in his civilian clothes in Sokovia, or something (maybe this is the afterlife because it was destroyed during the whole Ultron thing?), and his spidey senses are screaming at him to get moving, get people to safety. Get himself away.
Okay. He can do that. Simple procedures. This is the afterlife, anyway, so it's not as though his actions have any real consequences. The only consequence of action is confusion and weird stares from other dead people. The only consequence of non-action, on the other hand, is a permanent and gut-deep guilt that'll twist Peter's gut for the rest of his eternal death, and he's not sure he'll be quite as okay with that.
The only thing is that...
Well, Peter is kind of stranded. He doesn't know anyone here and he doesn't have his suit or Karen Jr. or... anything but his phone, middle school backpack, and fourteen USD cash in his back jean pocket. He's prepared for walking home from school, not evacuating citizens from a foreign country from an unknown and rapidly approaching threat.
Okay. Someone here has to know the rules, right? Maybe Peter can just... wish really hard that he had all his gear and it'll appear? It makes no sense that, dying at age 20, he's reverted to being fourteen.
He carefully ignores the way his hands look too small and his limbs feel more gangly than muscular and the ground seems too close to his eye level. It's just the disorientation still nagging him.
First order of business, he's decided, is to ask the other... local dead about how he can get things moving. The first victim he's able to spot is a kindly-looking older woman with burnt auburn hair and pale eyes. They squint heavily. He jogs up to her on loud feet, his bag jangling with every step. It draws her attention like he'd hoped.
"Excuse me, miss?" he asks, plastering on his patent awkward but polite smile. "Sorry, I just got here and I'm a little confused. I'm supposed to have a suit and some tech stuff but I don't really know the afterlife rules on AI so even if I can't—"
"Младићу, шта то говориш?""Young man, what are you saying?" she interrupts, face scrunched with bafflement. "Ми не говоримо тим језицима. Окушајте срећу у Пољској.""We do not speak in those tongues. Try your luck in Poland."
Peter's enthusiasm dies in his throat because, right. Language barriers. It'd been idealistic of him to assume that sort of thing disappeared after death. That's fine. He's Peter Parker. He's Spider-man, the guy who saved Jean Grey and half-befriended the Punisher. He's working on it. Was. He can figure out a plan for evacuation with only a phone and prayers. As long as the afterlife has bluetooth and internet, he's not worried at all.
Five minutes and a hacked WiFi later, Peter's face lights up in a grin as he runs a bland-looking but urgent emergency message through a translator before plugging it back in to his input center. The afterlife has internet and bluetooth in spades.
Tony is having a terrible day, to put it so mildly. Ultron went crazy, everyone and their mother are breathing down his and Banner's necks because of it, and his whole army of top-of-the-line neo-Iron Man soldiers are under said insane AI's control.
The wild goose chase has led them—dragged, more like, after an unfortunate crosshairs with that nutcase witch—to Sokovia's capitol city.
Tony heaves a sigh, dread building in his gut. Sokovia isn't densely populated, in fact one of the smallest countries by population in the world, but innocent lives are at stake because of his technology. Again. It's a life he swore to god after Afghanistan to leave behind. Coming up on Novi Grad churns his gut further, the air unnaturally still and quiet. Tony can't predict what Ultron planned, nor understand how far into his plan he's gotten.
He designed that damn thing to be the smartest in the universe. Even his own mind is... not meager, but slow compared to it. A supercomputer is, by right, faster at processing speed than a human brain, after all.
The Avengers fan out, brittle distaste stirring between them, to search for and hopefully evacuate civilians. At the least, they'd be protected.
Every house Tony checks is empty, mussed like someone left in a hurry. Most places are barren, belongings packed and taken. Little was left behind. He reconvenes with the rest of the group—most as perturbed as he is—before they encounter the first native life.
It's a young boy, probably middle school judging by the backpack and godawful civilian clothes, carrying two small dogs and a cat. He doesn't even pause to glance at them, jogging past and hollering "Евакуишите се! Сви остали су отишли!""Evacuate! Everyone else is gone!"
Tony's not fluent in Sokovian, but it's similar enough to most Slavic languages that he can understand the gist. The kid is telling them to get out. Either because he just watched everyone else get obliterated or because they all somehow foresaw Ultron coming here and escaped in hopes he wouldn't chase them.
A wise gamble, it seems, because Ultron is still here.
Still, it's not like they can let a single preteen go running around in these conditions by himself. "Подожди!""Hold it!" Nat calls, probably hoping the kid will understand Russian. It seems to work, anyway. The kid skids to a stop, pulling the whining dogs close to his chest as he whirls around to stare at them, wide-eyed like a deer in headlights.
"Почему ты здесь, если все остальные ушли? Где твои родители? Ты вернулся, чтобы забрать своих питомцев?""Why are you here if everyone else has left? Where are your parents? Did you come back to get your pets?"
His jaw hangs open dumbly as he gapes at them, perhaps just recognizing them as the Avengers. "Y-you..." he stammers, his English coming out without so much as an accent. Maybe he's got an American parent?
Either way, Tony's relieved the kid might be able to speak to them. "Did you understand the Black Widow, kid? What are you doing here still? Where is everyone else?"
He stares at Tony like he's seeing him for the first time. Like he's seeing a ghost.
The dogs whine and wriggle and the kid lets them go, arms falling lax. The cat curls, comfortable and satisfied, across his shoulders. He doesn't speak, staring silently with an alarmingly pale face and shaking pupils.
Nat takes a step forward and the kid backs up. She freezes right as he does, hands going up slowly, placatingly. She sends a look over her shoulder that cues the rest of them to shrink away, make themselves less intimidating. Tony notes with a small and smug derision that Cap's no particular good at it, stare permanently hard and wary.
"Hey, bud," she starts, voice soft and coaxing. Tony didn't realize Nat was any good with kids. "It's okay. We're not gonna hurt you. We're heroes. Do you know where your parents are?" Do you know why they're not fucking with you, Tony wants to ask?
The boy stares and stares and doesn't do anything but stare and it frays Tony's worn-thin-from-stress patience and he clears his throat and starts to say, "Look—" and somehow that's enough to get a response because the kid's breath hitches and a sob tears out of his chest.
The cat on his shoulders jolts and hisses, leaping off and sprinting away. That's a shame, if those really were the kid's pets. All three of 'em are gone now. Tony should probably be more sympathetic, but he's a little stressed right now. The middle schooler is choking on his own breaths, crying so desperately that he gags.
Nat takes another few quick steps forward and the kid doesn't flinch back this time. He's too busy staring at his feet, hands shooting up to tug at unruly brown curls. "It's not real," he mumbles to himself, pulling harder and then smearing his hands down his face. He hunches forward, moves his hands to clasp over his ears. "Would you shut up, it's not real! None of it's real!"
Nat turns back to look at them, meeting Tony's gaze with wide eyes.
Just our fucking luck, Tony thinks, wincing. We've landed ourselves a nutcase. Poor kid probably got left behind off his meds, or something, and now they've gotta find somewhere to put him where he won't die the second they start fighting Ultron. Vision's their trump card, sure, but...
Tony shudders, running a hand through his hair. "Get it together, Parker," the kid's murmuring continues as background noise. "People need you." That's, of course, contributing nothing to assuring Tony that the boy—Parker, apparently—is mentally stable. Who could he be referring to?
Though, if that's what the kid needed to tell himself, Tony won't correct him, because just like that, those heaving sobs intercut by hysterical rambling slow into harsh breaths and then quiet, even nothing. "You're a big boy, Parker," he chides himself, head still hung. "Grow up. This is happening. You gotta fix it."
"Whoa whoa whoa," Tony interrupts before he can even pause to think about it, stepping up to Parker and ignoring Natasha's deathly glare. "I don't think the twelve-year-old is going to be responsible for any fixing, kid. Black Widow told you. We're heroes. We're here to fix things, so you just go on... away, somewhere, where you'll be safe."
Parker looks up. His eyes are hazy and tired but flinty with determination. "It's alright, Mr. Iron Man," he murmurs softly, obliviously childlike and respectful. He'd hesitated over the name. It'd sounded like he'd been about to call Tony 'Mr. Stark'. Tony doesn't like the way Parker's smile stretches, weak and taut, against his face. "I'm used to it. Don't... don't worry about me."
He presses a hand to his side, a brief discomfort slipping on to his features as though he's expecting to feel something that isn't there, before he shakes it off. He slides off his backpack, dropping to a knee and rifling through it as he leaves the adults around him to wonder what the hell that's supposed to mean.
Tony and Nat exchange another meaningful glance that Tony isn't actually privy to the meaning of when Steve takes his chance to step forward. "Hey. Parker, right?" he asks gently, standing in front of Tony completely. Tony would be more peeved by it if it wasn't abundantly clear something about Iron Man seemed to set Parker off.
"Peter Parker, sir," the boy answers dully, looking up with those same blank eyes from his likely useless backpack. "I..."
He sighs and goes quiet. "Peter, you gotta get out of here. I don't know if you know us—" Tony catches Peter's wry smile, then, something that reads an awful lot like who doesn't know the Avengers?— "but like Tony—er Iron Man and Black Widow said, we're heroes. We can take care of this issue, alright? You've done enough by surviving."
Wrong thing to say, they all realize at once, like Cap had stepped on a blinking, screaming landmine they'd all missed. Peter's whole body freezes and his eyes go wide and cold.
"...No."
"Youthful friend!" Thor shouts, a last resort Tony was really hoping would keep his mouth shut. "You must evacuate as well! We are here to deal with this mighty threat!" There's a pressure that exudes from the Asgardian, a natural tension only edged on by the pressure of the situation and Thor's completely unsubtle hinting at Peter to get the fuck out.
Peter smiles that same awful smile, zips up his backpack and slings it over his shoulders, and runs directly towards the location where Ultron is supposed to be.
Fuck, fuck, fuck! Anywhere but the damn church, brat! God, Tony wishes Bruce was here. Even those witchy twins would be helpful right now! Throw up a blockade, or something! And of course, Clint is still scouting with the rest of them. They're the evacuation team. At least, that'd been the plan, before they realized there was no one to fucking evacuate. If all goes well (and Tony knows by now it never will), they'll meet here in the next three minutes.
If not...
Well, Tony hopes Vision is quick.
177 confirmed deaths and a Civil War.
That was the cost of Sokovia. Peter doesn't know if that count covers the orphans or the aged and lonely gone without notice, the disabled left to die, the undocumented unrecognized.
He stands in front of Ultron and realizes that Jean and Mysterio and Green Goblin and all of those world-ending occasions of his past were never all that big of a deal. The be-all, end-all came down to the fights Spider-man took on because of the Avengers. Thanos. Ultron.
The big potatoes.
Ultron is a robot, impassive and incapable of human emotion the way a human experiences it, but he's still an AI created by Tony Stark. The capacity its mouth has for vitriol is unsurprising. "A new fodder for the canon," Ultron sneers. "And yet they preach of peace."
"I came here of my own volition," Peter insists, stubbornly defending his mentor. His mentor, who might actually be real and alive because he's here instead of dead on the ground and Jean had paused time once, why not do a little more than that? But that's not possible, it can't be possible, because that means Peter has a second chance and Doctor Strange would saw off his head if he knew what Peter is considering doing with that second chance.
Hence, standing in front of Ultron. "To wreak more damage? Accept your fate quietly. That will bring peace. The only wars are human. The only destruction, conscious and full, is the fault of your species. Decimating you will create peace."
This is stupid, Peter thinks, even as he raises his arms and feels his hoodie sleeves shift slightly down his wrists. This is so, so stupid. Mr. Stark is gonna kill me before Doctor Strange has a chance.
Ultron's eyes(?) narrow. "You are simple minded enough to concede to me so fast?"
"I'm smart enough to realize this isn't a fight I'm winning," Peter grits out, having to put in no work to inject shame and concession into his voice. "My approach to villainy is usually talking the person down then webbing them up for police, but my usual criminals are also, like, muggers and carjackers, so." He shrugs, gaze glued to Ultron's shoulderline and below. His joints are all covered with extraordinary consideration. His only obvious wiregap is the space crooking his elbow. "Big potato stuff isn't... my thing."
He can hear the Avengers getting closer, gearing up. They've already started decimating hive mind soldiers farther out, but it's barely loud enough for Peter to hear. He's sure Ultron hasn't picked it up yet. It's covered, too, by the trembling vibranium under the ground. Peter is praying to a god he doesn't believe in that Ultron doesn't manage to get Novi Grad in the air again. That'd been where most of the damage happened, and he's only put civilians in danger by shuffling them off to the nearby areas.
Ultron steps forward and Peter goes very, very still.
His hand raises as Peter's lower, sleeves sliding back down. He closes his eyes and focuses on his senses, making no move to escape the beam about to spew death from Ultron's palm. Something small and warm and metal lands in Peter's curled fingers.
He surges forward at the last second, the wall of the church demolished behind him as Peter smacks his hand hard onto that open crook, pasting it over with web fluid. He makes a show of binding the rest of Ultron, not doing particularly well and then making a break for it.
Ultron, expectedly, is furious, spitting fire about the deceptive nature of humans and their penchant for ruining everything. Peter crawls out a window onto the church rooftop, not a foot from the spire.
The late morning air is dreary in a peaceful way. A startling surprise, because Peter's been feeling nothing but doom and gloom since he... got here. Or whatever.
He's able to watch, only slightly fearful of the roof collapsing, as Ultron's furious attention is diverted by the Avengers. Peter takes the time to tug the other scraps out of his sleeve, wincing a little at the scrapes they'd left behind. He's grateful that he's got organic web-shooters now; not having those would've been hell on him now, because Peter doesn't think there's a single spot in Novi Grad that could provide him what he needs to rebuild those.
Plus, he'd feel terrible taking even more from these people. It's not like he whipped up that neutralizer out of nothing, though admittedly some of it did come from stolen lab supplies in his backpack.
It was a miracle he'd been able to make that little spider-device anyway, a machine that's shoved in like a leech and destroys tech from the inside. Ironically enough, Peter had learned—had been taught—how to make it for this exact purpose. Tony was insistent when, after the Civil War, Peter became his somewhat-official protege.
"Mr. Stark, I don't get why I need this. I'm not shutting FRI down anytime soon."
Tony sighs, hard and heavy and regretful. "Kid, there's a lot of shit we don't see ourselves doing in the future, near or far. I didn't imagine getting almost two hundred people killed creating a peacekeeper robot, but it still happened."
"Mr. Stark, that wasn't..." your fault, Peter wants to say, but he's tried that before and Tony shuts it down every time.
Like usual, he shakes his head. "I'm not throwing myself a pity party, Underoos. All I'm saying is that Ultron was a lesson. AI is a powerful tool and a dangerous weapon. I've been working on this for a while, because I've tested it on everything. You need any AI shut down, kid, any tech or robot in the world, you build this."
"I don't think I'll have access to your lab in the case of an emergency, sir," Peter points out wryly, even as he works diligently to mimic Tony's build.
Tony winces. "Then tomorrow you'll meet me out at the shed and I'll teach you how to build anything in the world with scraps. Get to work."
If only Peter could tell Tony—his Tony—how helpful his paranoia serves now. Peter can hear every wire the Neu-Spider (his own name, but Tony had approved so Peter clung to the boring thing with his life) snaps within Ultron, takes note of the robot's frustration as Vision joins the fight, his perfect foil, and keeps slowing Ultron more and more.
Good. If they've got things under control there, the Neu-Spider should completely paralyze, if not decimate, Ultron within ten to fifteen minutes. The cost of quality is effectiveness, he supposes, but he'd rather his work be slow than unsuccessful.
Now comes Spider-man's job, Peter's out of the way. Peter tugs his hoodie up, unsure if any news anchors are going to be filming at this time and unwilling to compromise his identity before it even becomes a secret. He stomps hard around the city, taking note of where the ground seems hollow, how deep the hollowness goes. That's where the vibranium boosters are. The ones Ultron is going to use in approximately less than five minutes, by Peter's estimate, to turn Novi Grad into a meteor waiting to crush a hundred seventy-seven people and cause irreparable damage to the nearby areas.
He finishes his patrol exactly where he wanted to be: the Sokovian house belonging to an eccentric old man who'd faced Peter with a jackhammer when Peter initially approached to convince him to evacuate. A little terrifying at the time, but incredibly convenient now, because Ultron had stuck the boosters strategically to avoid pressure fissures.
He does want Novi Grad to fall on people, but it'd be ineffective if it was just small chunks smashing down to the excavated rock beneath them from five feet in the air. And that's exactly what would happen if, say, the land was split before the boosters started.
Peter is sure this is irreparably, undeniably stupid and equally reckless. However, it's his only shot of doing this right, so he runs some quick double-checks of his high school AP Environmental Sciences class and does a lot of guesswork and pokes a fat few holes deep into the ground at the pressure points between each booster. A few of them will probably be balanced enough to rise anyway, but...
Well, Peter's webbing is a lot stronger now. Nothing a good old hook-and-pull can't fix, probably. Hopefully.
His mental clock ticks down and down and down, spidey senses screaming at him that something very bad is going to happen soon. It's like a geocaching sensor. Ding. Ding. Ding. Ding, ding. Ding ding ding, ding ding ding. Ding-ding-ding-ding, ding-ding-ding-ding ding-ding-ding-ding-ding-ding-ding—
The ground shakes and rises under Peter's feet.
Fuck, these big potatoes are seriously too much for a friendly neighborhood Spider-man.
A phone sits on the helicarrier—the latter Fury's courtesy—that doesn't belong to anyone.
It's been sitting there for god knows how long, probably magnetized to Tony's suit and fallen off with the rest of the shit as he chucked it off. Tony's only just noticed it now. It's kind of stupid-looking. Definitely cheap, cracked screen, childish stickers on the case. A little charm dangling from the side of Iron Man.
Tony shoots up from where he was slumped against the wall, scaring the shit out of everyone lounging in their own misery around him. "Stark!" Clint snaps. "Don't fuckin' jolt up like someone just died! What's your issue?"
Tony whips on Natasha, ignoring Clint completely. "I totally fucking forgot about the kid," he whispers, throat feeling strangled. "I don't—I don't know where he is." Novi Grad hadn't caused the large scale destruction Ultron envisioned, but it'd rose up ten minutes before his systems imploded (Tony is still wondering about that, but Vision destroyed the very memory of Ultron's programming. There's no way for him to investigate now.) in chunks of land that'd turned over on themselves like a manual earthquake.
If that kid, reckless and bleary-eyed and smiling too wearily for his age, was on that godforsaken land when everything started going to shit—
"You mean this kid?" Fury asks, pushing forward the meek-eyed and shuffling middle schooler who's scrubbing at his eyes in order to rub the sleep out of them. He's unable to stifle a yawn, which Tony can relate to. It'd be cuter if Tony's whole body didn't slump back with relief.
"Fury, you're a god," he groans, smearing his hands down his face. "I don't know what I would've done if we really lost track of him."
Peter blinks at Tony uncomprehendingly. "Of... me, Mr. Stark?" Somehow, Mr. Stark sounds a lot more right on his tongue than Mr. Iron Man. He seems oblivious to Tony's incredulous look, continuing, "I told you I'd be fine."
"And I'm supposed to believe the scrawniest preteen I've ever seen on that?" Tony snarks without thinking. He should probably be a little gentler, but the kid doesn't seem bothered by it. Unlike Natasha. Or Steve. Or... or Bruce and Clint. Why are they all staring holes into him?! At least he's making conversation.
Peter rolls his eyes. "I'm fifteen, Mr. Stark. That's not a preteen."
Tony looks him up and down, incredulous. Peter pauses, considering. Hesitantly, he amends, "...fourteen."
Tony wants to pull his hair out and scream quite dramatically right now because how the hell did he just let a kid go and do all this? but his dramatics are (unfortunately) interrupted by that cartoonishly-decorated phone ringing loudly with... the Iron Man theme from TV.
The kid's face flushes bright red and he scrambles to snatch it up, spluttering some hurried excuse that Tony doesn't catch. He tries not to let his smug pride at the kid's clear admiration show, but it's clear all his coworkers notice.
It becomes a whole lot less funny when the kid sees the contact photo and his face drains of color the way it had when he'd first laid eyes on Tony. Tony feels like he can safely assume by now that he reminds Peter of someone he's lost, but if this person, living, is eliciting the same reaction...
It's better not to draw conclusions. "A-Aunt May," Peter stammers when he swipes to accept the call and the ringing stops. He presses it to his ear, but has to yank it away a second later, the volume of the person on the other side loud enough for the Avengers to hear her clearly.
"Peter Benjamin Parker, where on God's green earth are you?!" the alleged 'May' shrieks. It's startling, almost all of them but infuriating Fury jumping slightly at the sudden volume, but the concern is clear in her voice. "Peter, if you don't come home right now—"
"I-I'm on my way home, May," he murmurs, subdued and eyes glistening. "I'm sorry for scaring you. I thought I left a note. I just—left some notes at a friend's house. I walked over to get them back."
The lie is obvious, as is May's sigh. "...Right. You're not letting that Thompson boy walk all over you still, right?"
Peter flushes again, glancing hurriedly at the Avengers who all smartly decide to pretend to be occupied with something other than eavesdropping. "No, May. I'm fine. I'll be home soon."
"Just—walk under the street lamps? Keep 911 on speed dial, and don't be caught alone with anybody. If you are, run as fast as you can home and call me. If you call me and can't say anything, I'll know, alright sweetheart? Will you be safe?"
Ouh, that is sounding an awful lot like an underlying paranoia. That's a little worrying, because Peter's eyes crease with sadness and recognition in a way that makes it clear he's used to this overbearing worry—might even expect it. "I'll be safe. I'm not..." He starts but trails off, seeming to think better of his words.
A sob hitches over the line. It's startling how alike she and Peter sound. "I know you're not your uncle, baby, but he was so careful. He always promised he'd come home and now that he's gone I can't let him down. Him or your parents. I need to protect you, Pete."
Peter smiles, comforting even though May can't see it. It probably leaks into his voice in a way Tony doesn't know him well enough to discern. "Self-sacrifice is part of the job, Aunt May. He said it himself. He was happy dying protecting other people. He was a hero."
And oh, Tony realizes. That's why the square of the kid's shoulder was familiar. That's why he was rummaging through his backpack and Clint asked if one of them was hopping around on a jackhammer and Ultron collapsed inward without any reason or notice.
"Let me know when you're here, alright? I'm getting dinner ready."
"Alright. Love you, May."
"I love you, Peter. Be safe."
The call clicks to an end and Peter stares down at the black screen, swallowing hard. "You're not Sokovian," Nat finally interrupts the silence. Peter shakes his head in confirmation. "...And were you the one to evacuate the civilians?"
He hesitates, jaw clenching, but they'd catch him in the lie easily. He goes for a faux-casual shrug, stuffing his phone and his hands into his pockets. "Yeah. I... I didn't do it for anything bad, I just... I mean, I really only had to access local authorities' servers which weren't all that guarded and from there it's a self-explanatory notice distribution software so..."
He trails off into a mumble, gaze locked onto his shoes. "Ignoring that you hacked a government database," Steve says,
"Server," Tony corrects him under his breath.
"Government server, you did a good thing, Peter. But how did you know how to do something like that? If you're not from Sokovia, I'd have to take a wild guess from your voice and say you're a New York native. How does a fourteen-year-old New Yorker who lives with his aunt get to Eastern Europe and just so happen to know exactly how to stop an Avengers-level threat?"
Which, hm. Good question.
Peter suddenly looks intensely awkward in that unique, teenager way. He takes a sharp breath in and exhales slowly. "Well, uh, with great power comes great responsibility," he says, sounding like he's quoting something. "I'm Spider-man, and I'm kind of from the future."