Archive of Our Own ^beta

Tony’s day starts, as it so often does lately, with him almost planting his foot into Peter’s face as he steps out of bed. Peter has made a habit of sneaking into people’s bedrooms in the dead of the night and curling up on the floor next to their bed.

“Sorry,” Peter says, not actually sounding all that apologetic. He is wearing his hello kitty pajama bottoms and one of Steve’s shirts.

Tony steps over him to reach his wardrobe. “You need to sleep in your own room, kid.”

Peter rubs his eyes and defensively peers up at him. “Why?”

Peter asks ‘why’ a lot, like a three-year-old who is discovering the world for the first time.

And so Tony’s morning begins.

-

Taking HYDRA down isn’t all that easy when you have a former-HYDRA teenager following you around like a duckling.

Peter doesn’t particularly seem to care who he gets to follow around, as long as it is someone. He does show a preference for Tony, Natasha, Steve or Bruce. But even the other occupants of the compound can fall victim to his stalking.

Most of the clothes they gave the boy are a few sizes too big. He keeps tripping over his pant legs. Which both endears Tony and every so often gives him a mini heart attack when Peter yelps and disappears behind a table again.

“So,” Steve says, “I think I’ll take him shopping.”

-

Peter likes puns, he decided.

He is following Steve around the mall. It’s big and loud and new and crowded, but everything will be fine as long as he can stay close to—

“You can find your own way around, right?” Steve asks. “I will give you some money, and I’ll sit down at that café right across from the store — see it? You can go find the stuff you like. Whatever you want, whatever you need. Sound like a plan?”

“Um.” Peter says. “Yes?” he tries.

Right answer. Steve smiles.

He takes out his wallet and hands Peter a credit card. “Don’t lose that. There’s enough money on it to get whatever you need. Do you know how credit cards work?”

“Yes,” Peter says, feeling mildly offended at the question. Then he remembers the look of tactfully-trying-to-hide-my-surprise he got from Steve last week, when he admitted he didn’t know how to use the toaster.

He stuffs the credit card into his pocket without another word.

He enters hostile territory, all by himself. A final glance over his shoulder confirms that Steve is casually installing himself at a table in front of the nearby café. Steve gives him a smile and a wave, before pointedly turning away and picking up the menu.

This has to be some sort of test.

He enters the store and then just stands there for a bit; his hand in his pocket, his thumb running along the sharp, clean edges of the credit card. There are racks full of clothes to his left and racks full of clothes to his right, and Peter knows all about the concept of clothing stores, but he has never actually had to buy anything in one. In front of him, a mannequin on a raised platform is wearing jeans, and a shirt that says “Don’t trust atoms. They make up everything!”. Hey, that’s— that’s funny.

The woman behind the counter stares at him across the rim of her pointy glasses, so he turns away and goes up an escalator. He ends up in the middle of the kids’ and baby’s clothes, so he goes down the escalator again. Which has to look pretty stupid, but he’s not entirely sure how to not look stupid.

The woman leaves the counter and approaches him. “Can I help you?”

“I have to buy clothes.”

She seems amused. “Anything in particular?”

“No.”

She seems more amused. “Does that mean you need my help, or would you prefer to just look around?”

He’s not doing anything wrong, he reminds himself. And he’s not undercover. He can ask for help. “What do you think I should buy?”

She glances down at the shirt and sweatpants the Avengers gave him. The sweatpants fit him decently, but the shirt is stubbornly refusing to stay up over both his shoulders at once. “What do you like?”

Some question. Peter likes chocolate, and that’s about as far as he’s come on that subject. Although…  “I like that,” he says, pointing at the mannequin’s shirt.

“I see.”

-

“Peter,” Steve says as he glances through Peter’s haul. “You were supposed to get a whole new wardrobe. You only got shirts. Come on, kiddo.” He lays both hands on Peter’s shoulder and steers him back into the shop, which means Peter did something wrong but he isn’t sure what. He hugs the paper bag to his chest. “Can— May I keep one of them?”

“You can keep the shirts, Peter. Let’s just get you a few other things as well, yeah?”

Which — sure — that’s fine. But why are there no jeans or sweaters with puns on them?

Steve picks up two items. “Which one?”

The Avengers constantly ask him “which one?” and it can be a little unnerving. As far as Peter is concerned, when he gets posed one of these brain-wrecking dilemmas, there are two possible scenarios: either his choice makes people smile, which means he answered right, or his choice makes people frown, which means he answered wrong.

But it’s hard to guess the right answer when Steve asks him to choose between a pair of pretty average socks and another pair of pretty average socks.

It’s a good thing Peter is excellent at reading people. “The blue ones,” he guesses, because Steve wears blue a lot, himself.

Steve gives a smile, and picks up two new items.

Peter doesn’t guess wrong once.

-

Peter doesn’t like HYDRA, he decided.

Because the Avengers don’t like HYDRA, and Peter does like the Avengers. So he doesn’t like HYDRA.

People at HYDRA have called him many things. A precious commodity. A political expedient. Useful. Useless.

The Avengers don’t seem to think in such words. Because he isn’t being useful at all and they are still kind to him. The Avengers are kind to him and he isn’t sure why, because there has to be something that will make them angry eventually. There has to be something. And he is going to figure it out.

So he climbs on top of the dinner table while Natasha is chopping onions for dinner.

Her brow furrows. “What are you doing?”

“I’m misbehaving,” Peter says.

Oddly, those words make her frown disappear. “I see,” she says. And turns her attention back to her work.

Which leaves Peter looking like an idiot, awkwardly standing on top of the dinner table. “Well?” he demands. “Aren’t you going to do something about it?”

“Nah,” she says. Which is in character. But also confusing.

And since Peter doesn’t know what else to do, he just climbs back down and sits in his chair. He’ll think of something better— worse tomorrow. Because there has to be something.

“Slice up these mushrooms,” Natasha orders him.

-

Across the country, in an underground bunker depressing enough to turn anyone evil, Malia Sanchov lays out the blueprints she procured.

She has been around the proverbial block. She has seen projects go over budget, get shut down by superiors, even explode and kill one or two of her subordinates. But she never had a project get kidnapped. Project S26 has been missing for over a month, and most of her team at HYDRA seem to have moved on.

Not her.

“Still hung up over your lost spiderling, huh?” her colleague Delaunay says.

Delaunay is a moron.

She addresses her superior instead. “My team spent years on him. He was only months away from his first assignment. I’m not throwing all that out the window.”

Delaunay is still pretending like he is somehow part of this conversation. “You should know better than to waste your time on a lost cause.”

“And you should know better than to discard a precious commodity,” she snipes back. “Perhaps you missed the memo. The Avengers and SHIELD have declared war on us. They destroy base after base, expose spy after spy. They have many enhanced on their side. We had one, and he’s gone.”

The object of her ire merely sniffs disdainfully. “We don’t need an enhanced. We can deal with the Avengers just fine on our own.”

“Those sound like famous last words.”

“I know you outrank me, Sanchov, but—”

“My left pinky outranks you, Delaunay. My toothbrush outranks you.”

Their long-suffering superior takes another looks through the blueprints she provided. “Breaking into a place like this requires manpower. A large division of our best men. I need to know it will be worth it. Are you positive that this is where our enhanced is being held?”

“I don’t see another possibility.”

“Devise a strategy, and I’ll consider it.”

-

“So,” Steve says. “Has anyone had any miraculous insights about our dilemma?”

“No miraculous insights,” Tony says. “Only… convoluting ruminations.”

Natasha raises an eyebrow. “Did Pepper get you a word of the day calendar?”

“Blow me, I’m a genius.”

Today’s topic of debate is an unassuming suburban couple, living in Queens with their dog. He works as a police officer and volunteers at the library. She works as a teacher and is a member of the local bridge club. May and Ben Parker.

They bounced back pretty well after the family tragedy that struck them, almost eight years ago. The plane crash that killed Ben’s brother, sister-in-law and young nephew.

As far as they know.

So now the question is: what to do?

Ask Peter if he wants to meet them? But what if Peter gets excited and it turns out his family doesn’t accept him in their lives anymore? Contact May and Ben first, to make sure they are capable of dealing with this? But what if they demand to see their nephew — even to get guardianship of him, to call the authorities and get them involved — and endanger Peter’s safety that way?

“And how are we supposed to bring it up?” Tony says in that optimistic tone he only uses when he is feeling pessimistic. “Hey, Mr. and Mrs. Parker. You dead nephew is actually still alive, the plane crash was likely orchestrated by HYDRA, the kid was brainwashed and spent the last eight years, his formative years, being raised by them. And now he lives with the Avengers and is still officially dead and we’re not yet sure what the next step should be.

Anyways, want to meet him over coffee, or just go straight to therapy?”

They cut off their conversation for a moment when Bruce passes through the living area. Peter is pattering after him, wearing one of his new sweaters and not tripping over his properly-sized pant legs.

“He bought a lot of blue,” Tony remarks once they are out of earshot again.

“That’s just because he was with Steve,” Natasha says. “If he’d gone with me, he’d have chosen all black.”

Steve’s brow furrows in confusion. “What do you mean?”

-

“Do you know what a blanket fort is?”

“Yes,” Peter says, but this dear, awkward boy always says ‘yes’ when he means ‘no’, so Tony explains anyway: “We’re going to put the dinner table over there, and then pile loads of blankets and cushions around it until we made our own little den. And then we’ll sit in it and drink hot chocolate while we gossip about the other Avengers. How does that sound?”

“Structurally unsound.”

“The fort, or the gossip? Help me. I want to make a giant one that spans this entire wall.”

“Why?” Peter asks, looking concerned.

“Because it’s fun!”

Peter continues to look concerned.

“Just gather as many pillows as you can, soldier, that’s an order!”

“…okay,” Peter says, an unreadable expression appearing on his face.

As Tony loots Clint’s guest bedroom, he realizes that the word ‘order’ was poorly chosen. It must have a loaded meaning to Peter.

He returns to the living room to find the boy sitting on top of the dinner table, clearly not having moved from the room at all. His hands are clasped together in his lap and his head is ducked down. Tony pauses in front of him, pillows tucked under both arms. Peter stares back at him, somehow managing to simultaneously look more defiant and more timid with every moment that passes.

Tony hoists the pillows up higher. “What are you doing?”

Peter squares his shoulders. “I’m… disobeying.”

“Not the most interesting way to go about it,” Tony says. “You should wait until the fort is finished and then destroy the whole thing. More fun that way.”

The boy looks momentarily stunned, and also like he still expects someone to beat him over the head. So Tony drops the pillows and makes sure to efficiently hug that look off him, hard. “Hold this end,” he then says, shoving the tip of a green, checkered blanket into the kid’s hands.

‘Structurally unsound’ is a pretty good description of the blanket fort they end up with. They huddle together under the table. “All we need now is a chimney for Santa to crawl through, over there. Although a fire place in a house of blankets is a hazard if I ever heard one. And we’ll need a balcony facing south over here.”

“No. South is that way,” Peter says, and points very resolutely at the green, checkered blanket-wall behind Tony.

“What? How do you know?”

“What do you mean, how do I know? South is always that way, it doesn’t change. And you could use code F168.”

“What?”

“Code F168. It sets off the sprinklers in just this room.”

“I know what code F— How do you remember?” He had seen the kid glance through FRIDAY’s codebook last week. Glance. But he should have known that Peter’s eerily precise memory would retain everything in there. His brilliance is frightening. “Do you remember all the security codes?”

Peter visibly takes a moment to try and figure out which is the more socially acceptable answer to that question. “No?” he then tries, eyes darting away from Tony.

Tony just snorts. “Yeah, okay, kid. How about your little exercise in rebellion; you still want to destroy this blanket fort?”

Peter narrows his eyes at the blanket under his feet, and locks his shoulders. “It wasn’t a joke.”

“I know. But you had fun, right?”

Peter jerks his gaze back up at him. He searches Tony’s face for a few seconds. Then crosses his arms across his chest and lifts his chin. “You mentioned hot chocolate?”

Behold, years of manipulation, unraveling at the seams. Tony leans in and ruffles his hair. “Coming right up, you chocolate monster.”

-

Natasha is the one who finds Peter on the floor next to her bed this morning, blinking up at her.

She must admit that, the first two or three times, finding Peter curled up by her nightstand unbalanced her. Not because she doesn’t want him there — As far as she is concerned, he can sleep wherever he wants. But she doesn’t usually let anyone or anything get past her, not even in the middle of the night. Somehow, Peter manages to sneak in time after time without waking her up.

The boy is certainly using all his HYDRA-training to his advantage.

The fact that he feels safer close to them than hidden away in his own room, is a sign of trust. Though she does take note of the way the Peter lies there; curled in on himself as if he has learned to take up as little space as possible.

“Up you get, Pete,” she says, poking him in the side with her toe. He starts and shirks away from it, the motion a little too stilted.

Natasha pauses and cocks her head, one foot still in the air. “Are you ticklish?”

“I— No,” Peter says, wrapping his arms around his stomach.

“I will remember this,” she warns.

Peter looks appropriately concerned.

-

Peter doesn’t like ‘snakes and ladders’, he decided.

The game is boring, and he always loses, and he’s pretty sure that’s why Bruce always wants to play it. Peter can beat him at pretty much every other game.

He had only seen one reasonable solution: he had to rid himself of the game. Which he had skillfully and successfully achieved, through a process that involved using a vacuum cleaner as his mule and timing his actions in accordance with the compound’s trash pickup schedule.

So this morning, when Bruce opens the hall closet holding their board games, ‘snakes and ladders’ has mysteriously disappeared from the top shelf.

“You know, you could have just said you didn’t want to play,” Bruce says.

“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

Bruce holds scrabble and battleship out to him. “Which one?”

Peter picks scrabble. Bruce gives a smile, so he chose right.

They set up in the living room. “Bruce. What does ‘ticklish’ mean?” Peter asks as he sorts his letters on the tile rack.

“You know how, when someone pokes you, it makes you giggle?”

“Yes,” Peter says, though he is pretty sure the ‘No’ is written all over his face, because Bruce gives him a flat look and then explains anyway.

“When you are ticklish, it means you have a reflexive response when someone pokes you. It makes you laugh, involuntarily.”

That sounds… ominous. “Why?”

“For fun.”

“Oh. So it’s good?”

“Yes,” Bruce says, and plays the word ‘friend’.

-

“Have you had breakfast?”

“Yes,” Peter says, and watches her pour a cup of coffee.

“I’m gonna be in my office all day.”

“Okay,” Peter says, and follows her. Natasha has long grown used to hearing the steady padding of feet following her around the compound, wherever she goes. She put an armchair next to her desk weeks ago. Peter curls up in it with a book, while she sits and works.

He is wearing one of Bruce’s woolen sweaters, even though he has his own wardrobe now. Natasha supposes it is another sign of trust.

She has been pretty sure for a while that Peter knows they are still hunting HYDRA. But when she turns back from the printer and catches Peter looking right at some of her research on HYDRA bases in the US, and still not saying a word, she decides to bring it up. “You never ask about this stuff.”

“It’s not as if you’d tell me anything if I did ask,” Peter says, as if that’s an entirely logical assumption.

“Does it bother you that we’re trying to take HYDRA down?”

There is a brief hesitation from the boy as he fiddles with the pages of the book.

“You can be honest, Peter, there’s no wrong answer.”

“I don’t know.”

“That’s all right.”

“Some of them were nice to me.”

Natasha really, extremely, very much doubts that. “Tell me an example of something nice they did. I mean actual nice, not just basic human decency.”

Peter gives her a look and Natasha realizes that he might not really have a frame of reference to understand the difference between basic human decency and actual kindness.

But Peter does give an example. “Malia taught me to fold origami swans.”

“Malia.” She knows the name. Malia Sanchov is on a few of their lists. Not the lists of ‘our favorite HYDRA agents who are secretly probably very nice’, but the lists of ‘known-for-depraved-behavior HYDRA agents who we want behind bars sooner rather than later’.

She would love an opportunity to meet this woman face to face one day.

“Yes. She taught me to fold origami swans. And to solve a Rubik’s Cube, though that one— I’m not sure if that was just for fun, or if that was part of all those number problems they gave me, for— I don’t know what for. Either way I— I thought it was fun.”

“I see. And what is the worst thing Malia Sanchov has ever done to you?”

“They didn’t hurt me that much,” Peter says. “Because I wasn’t expandable. Um—" he sounds like he is quoting someone, “a precious commodity.”

Natasha marks a few more locations on the map. “I think the proper term is ‘precious chickpea’.”

-

“Count von Count. I like his name, it’s funny.”

“You could put it on a t-shirt, huh?” Steve turns the volume up as Count von Count breaks into one of his renowned musical hits.

After waking up in 2011, he had taken up the habit of keeping a list of everything he needed to listen to, watch or read to catch up on the last seven decades of human culture. Turns out his experience is strangely applicable to the boy sitting on the couch next to him, hugging a pillow to his chest. This boy, who remembers all the compound emergency codes after reading through the file once. Who knows how to disable a bomb. But who never understands any pop culture references, because he doesn’t know who Kim Possible and SpongeBob are.

So Steve dug up his list again, even added to it, and now they work their way through it together.

(“AC/DC had better be on that list,” Tony had told him. And Steve added it, but also may or may not have told Peter the song was from Led Zeppelin, just to mess with Tony.)

Sesame street, check.

“Hey Pete, I need to talk to you about something,” he says after Count von Count has belted out his final note.

This has the usual effect of bringing out all of Peter’s defenses. The boy draws up his shoulders and warily squints up at him, hugging the pillow tighter.

“I don’t know if you remember but… you have family in this city. An aunt and uncle. May and Ben Parker.”

Peter says nothing and his face gives nothing away.

“Do you remember them?”

“Maybe,” Peter says, ducking his head lower behind the soft safety of the pillow until only his eyes still peek over it.

“As far as they know, you died in that plane crash when you were little. We’ve been talking about how to deal with that and I just… want your opinion. You don’t have to give it right away, you can take some time to think about—”

“Are they nice?”

“I— I don’t know, son. I’ve never met them. I’m sure it won’t— It won’t be easy for them either. They had a funeral for you. It’s been many years.”

“Do you think it’s better if they just keep thinking I’m dead?” Peter’s voice is all business, which is possibly only more heartbreaking.

Steve swallows and lowers a hand onto Peter’s shoulder. “If you want my honest opinion, then no. I don’t want to lie to them. That’s what HYDRA did. If we follow the same blueprints, what would that make us?”

Peter clearly isn’t used to being asked for his opinion. But with a little coaxing, he manages to formulate one: “Okay. I guess— I guess you can let them know I exist.”

-

Peter likes hugs, he decided.

They can be soft or boisterous, brief or drawn-out, and sometimes they tickle.

“Why do you not want to sleep in your own room?” Bruce asks as he peers over the edge of his mattress.

Peter tenses under his gaze and shrugs against the beige carpet. “Because.”

“You don’t like being alone, hm?”

Peter doesn’t reply.

Bruce runs a hand through his pillow-hair and climbs out of bed. “I’m taking a shower. And then we’ll go have some breakfast, okay?”

The door clicks shut behind him. Peter slowly pushes himself to his feet. He climbs onto Bruce’s bed and sits on top of the covers, cross-legged.

Just to see what will happen.

He has counted to three hundred and sixty two when Bruce steps out with wet hair and clean clothes. He looks right at Peter, but he doesn’t say anything. He just turns to his wardrobe and rummages through his pile of sweaters.

“I’m sitting on your bed,” Peter points out, just to be clear.

“So I see.”

“I’m breaking the rules.”

Bruce shrugs into a maroon sweater. “Oh. Breaking what rule, exactly?”

Peter blinks at the odd question.

Bruce steps forward and leans down to give him a hug, his cheek resting on top of Peter’s head. His woolen sweater tickles Peter’s cheek. “You’re a good kid, Peter,” he says. “And very huggable.”

Which is not how he is supposed to react at all. The Avengers keep hugging him when he does stupid stuff, and that is not how it should work. There has to be something that will make them angry. There has to be something.

-

The Parkers live in a quiet, suburban house in Queens, across the street from a playground. A young dog presses his nose against the glass pane in the door and barks when Steve rings the bell.

A heavy voice calls the dog away and then Ben Parker opens the door, eyes widening. “Holy—"

A female voice, from somewhere inside the apartment: “Who is it, honey?”

“It’s… It’s Captain America.”

A chuckle. “Oh yeah? Along with Mickey Mouse and Buffy the Vampire Slayer?”

Ben makes a strangled sort of noise, and then May Parker sticks her head into the hallway with a concerned frown that is quickly replaced with a look of astonishment. “—shit,” she finishes.

“May I come in?”

Ben steps aside and then leads him into their living room, where the puppy trots circles around his legs, sniffling at his shoes.

“Bed, Woody,” May says, and the dog retreats to his dog bed, though his stare on Steve remains unwavering, alert.

Ben waves for Steve to take a seat, and the Parkers perch at the edge of their couch, with equal wide-eyed expressions.

Those eyes only grow wider when Steve starts talking. The Parkers react with agape mouths, a not inconsiderable amount of swearing and a worrying amount of blinking. And an avalanche of questions that Steve has no answer for.

“Why did HYDRA want him?”

“We don’t know.”

“Has he— has he killed people?”

“We don’t know.”

“Will he ever be able to go back to school, get an education?”

“We don’t know.”

“Will he ever have a normal life?”

“What is normal?” Steve asks. “For now, our focus is on making sure he feels safe. All that other stuff… we can figure it out later.”

Ben is barely breathing by now, but has enough air left in his lungs to manage: “Can we— Can we see him?”

“If you want to,” Steve says, taking out a pen to scribble down his phone number. “Let it sink in. Think it over. Then call me.”

-

The clouds above are fluffy; serenely drifting through an endless blue sky.

“Why are we here?”

“For the fresh air.”

“There’s fresh air at home.”

“For the trees.”

“There’s trees at home.”

Tony scratches his head, glancing around the park that he drove Peter to this morning. “For the goats,” he says, pointing towards a fenced-off meadow.

The real answer to Peter question is for getting you to practice with normal human situations, but he doesn’t need to say that out loud.

“Oh,” Peter says, his suspicious look melting away. “Okay.” And he trots over to the goats who are already gathering near the fence in anticipation of human treats.

Tony saunters after him and looks on as Peter picks a dandelion and pokes it through the fence, where it is promptly beheaded by a white goat.

“Want more?” Peter asks.

The goat bleats once.

“Look at that, kid. You’re a goat-whisperer.”

“I’m Ace Ventura,” Peter says.

Tony lays a hand over his heart. “Did you just make a pop culture reference? Proud dad moment.”

The goat-whisperer smiles, showing dimples. Tony taps a finger against Peter’s cheek. “I want to see more of that.”

Peter begins painstakingly pushing strands of grass through the fence for the goats to nibble on, his head slightly cocked to the side as he attempts to distribute the grass amongst the goats with precise equality. He looks peaceful, engaged, completely swallowed up by his current activity. But you can never be entirely sure what is running through this kid’s head at any given—

“Why am I living with you?” Peter asks.

Point in case. “Where did that question come from?”

“It didn’t come from anywhere, it’s in my head all the time.”

“You mean this cute lil’ round thing up here?” Tony sets a hand on top of Peter’s head. “We care about you, kid. You’re family.”

“But I just happened to you.”

“Exactly. No one gets to choose family.”

Peter frowns thoughtfully as he attempts to offer a handful of grass to a timid, brown goat who keeps skittering away when other animals come near it. It scuttles to the left and to the right a few times, before giving up and moving away to nibble on a tree trunk.

Peter gives up, too, and wipes his hands on his jeans. “Can I have food?”  

“You hungry?”

“Yeah. Hungry.”

Another first: Peter saying what he needs. Tony nods. “We passed that pretzel cart by the entrance. Do you want to go grab two? Or we can do a thumb war. Loser has to go.”

“No,” Peter says, looking strangely alarmed. “You don’t— I’ll go.”

Tony reaches into his wallet to take out a few dollar bills. “Don’t wander off, all right, kid? At least, not without telling me where you go first. Or at least give a little shout and wave.” It seems like a redundant rule. Peter never wanders off, he prefers to stay leeched onto whichever Avenger is closest. Buying pretzels all by himself must already be quite a daunting errand for the kid.

Or so Tony thought. Because Peter doesn’t come back after five minutes. Or ten. Or fifteen.

Panicking but pretending like he isn’t panicking, Tony begins to sweep the park. A group of young girls trying to catch frogs by the pond, a small clutter of people staring up into a tree, a few joggers, a few dog-walkers…

—why is there a small clutter of people staring up into a tree?

Because there is a damn teenager about thirty damn feet up the damn tree.

Tony sprints closer, pushing a few people out of his way until he is directly under the tree. “Peter!”

A pair of brown eyes peek down at him, through the foliage. Definitely his damn teenager up there. With his arms full of cat.

“Your son is quite a climber,” a lady compliments.

Tony ignores her. “Peter, careful!”

“I’m careful,” Peter says, and scales down the tree with terrifying ease, until both his feet are placed firmly on the ground. The cat immediately squirms out of his arms and shoots away.

Peter sheepishly looks up at Tony. “Um. It was stuck. Really high up. And it kept climbing higher when I—”

“Walk with me,” Tony says through gritted teeth.

Peter hastens to obey.

Tony glares daggers at a few people until they disperse, and leads Peter away until they are out of earshot. “You wandered, kid.”

“And I didn’t get the pretzels either,” Peter helpfully adds.

Tony pinches the bridge of his nose. “I was moments away from calling the whole team down here for a full search of the premises! What is the one rule I gave you? The one rule?”

“Don’t wander off, at least not without telling you where I go first or at least give a little shout and wave,” Peter sums up. As always, his precision is slightly unnerving. As is the fact that he is clearly bracing himself for… what, exactly?

“I broke the rule,” Peter says.

“Don’t ever do that again!”

“Okay. But what would you do if I did do it again?”

“Excuse me,” Tony says. “Is this some sort of social experiment to you?”

“No, I— No.”

Definitely a teenager. Tony inhales as he stares down at Peter for a moment. “What do you think I should do if you did it again?” he asks.

It is a testament to how much the boy has grown, that Peter doesn’t immediately look around for escape routes. He just gives the same sort of calculating, speculative look he does whenever Tony asks what he wants for dinner. Like he wants to believe there’s no larger scheme behind everything Tony says, but can’t really embrace it yet. “If you say you’re never going to do anything, I don’t believe you,” he says. “And I’ll figure it out eventually.”

“We need to figure it out, too,” Tony admits, because yeah, rules and consequences is a thing that families usually have. But what is reasonable in this situation? “However, I can tell you that we won’t hurt you. Ever.”

The boy is giving him a look like he fundamentally doesn’t understand how you can punish someone without hurting them. So Tony responds in the way he usually does to a look like that: he wraps his arms around Peter in a tight hug, leaning back until the kid’s feet are lifted of the grass and left kicking the air.

“What— nngh— What are you doing?”

“Extra special hug.”

“You’re embarrassing me!” Peter complains, before squirming out of Tony’s grip, in a lovely impression of the cat he saved earlier, and stalking towards the pretzel cart.

For the first time since he found the boy locked away in the crummy basement of a bunch of child-abusing psychopaths, Tony is entirely sure that he is knocking this parenting thing out of the park.

-

Steve receives a phone call from May. A chaotic, garbled message that pretty much boils down to yes, we would like to meet him.

-

“Peter, you have visitors. Are you coming?” Bruce asks.

“I just want to finish this. Um. Keep them talking. I’ll be down later.”

“We won’t leave you alone with them. We’re staying with you the whole time.”

“I don’t care about that,” Peter says, extremely unconvincingly.

“And they have a puppy.”

“… I’m coming.”

Peter trails after Bruce and half-hides behind him when they reach the living room. May and Ben are on the edge of the couch, looking anxiously curious. They both rise to their feet as soon as they lay eyes on their nephew.

Bruce steps forward, gently tugging Peter along.

“Hi, Peter,” May breathes, her fingers white against her purse.

“Hi. I remember you a little bit,” Peter says as he tucks his hands into his sleeves. “I’m sorry you thought I was dead. Can I… Can I pet your puppy?”

This is probably not how May and Ben had expected a HYDRA-brainwashed teenager to be.

“Don’t worry,” Ben tells him when Woody skitters away from Peter’s outstretched hand. “He’ll come around. He doesn’t immediately take kindly to strangers.”

“Okay,” Peter says, even as his eyes narrow in determination.

Bruce squeezes his shoulder. “Hey, you know what, maybe May and Ben are up for playing a boardgame for four? That expands our options a bit.”

Peter perks up. “Can we play Trivial Pursuit? I already read through all the cards and learned all the answers.”

Bruce blinks. “That’s…”

“—a great idea, Peter,” Ben says. “I can’t wait to finally see someone beat May at this game.”

-

“What’s the main vegetable in vichyssoise?”

“Leek.”

“Correct again. Another pie wedge for you.”

Bruce watches Ben and May cycle through stages of disbelief, awe and hilarity at Peter’s ability to answer every single question. From astronomical terms to heavyweight boxing champions to French literature. There are moments when this boy’s ability to retain knowledge is almost terrifying.

“Bruce. What does ‘thumb war’ mean?” Peter asks as he scratches one very-quickly-won-over puppy’s belly.

…and then there are moments like that.

-

Far away, somewhere in a steel grey underground bunker that hasn’t gotten any less depressing, Malia Sanchov is repeatedly slamming her pointer against the tactical illustrations she drew up. “This building has security like nothing we have ever dealt with. So pay attention, because I’m explaining this only once, and every dumbass who fucks up during our extraction mission, is gonna be a dead dumbass.”

And she proceeds to fire off instructions and slam her pointer against a few more drawings, and against a few soldier’s heads when their eyes begin to lose focus.

“I get the enhanced out,” she finishes. “He knows me. He’ll follow.”

-

Steve is standing in the doorway of his bedroom, right across the hall from Peter’s.

“We’re going to do this one step at a time, all right?” he says as he beckons Peter. He steps aside to show that he moved his own bed into a different corner of the bedroom.

A few weeks ago, this would have left Peter wondering what exactly Steve was playing at. But he knows by now that Steve is never playing at anything.

“We can move your bed into the other corner of your room too, if you want,” Steve suggests. “And then we’ll both leave our door open tonight.”

Peter glances at Steve’s bed. At the door. Back at his own bed. And he understands. “Okay.”

That night, Peter sleeps in his own room. He jumps awake in the middle of the night as usual, but when he turns over in bed he can see right into Steve’s room, at the blanket rising and falling with deep, even breaths.

He is able to fall back asleep.

-

When May and Ben visit again the next weekend, they come bearing gifts.

“It’s a bath bomb. I know it’s silly, but you used to love them when you were little.”

“Bomb?”

“It just makes bubbles when you put it in the bath with you, and it turns the water a different color.”

“Oh.” Peter turns the bath bomb over in his hands. “Why would— Oh. Is it for fun?”

“Yes, it’s for fun.”

The second gift is a set of playing cards. “I couldn’t believe you didn’t have one yet,” Ben says. “Do you want to learn to play Bridge?”

“Yes,” Peter says, eager. Because learning new stuff has become fun ever since he moved into the compound.

“Good,” Ben says, rubbing his hands together. “May is an excellent player. So I can’t wait to see you beat her. I’m sure you’ll—”

Steve strides into the room with sudden urgency, not even acknowledging May and Ben. “Bruce,” he says, with a tight face. “Call from Thaddeus Ross. Suspicious activity near the Raft. They need back-up. Tony and Rhodey are already in the air. Me, Sam and Nat are taking the quinjet.”

May frowns in concern, reaching out for her husband’s arm. “Should Ben and I come back some other—”

“No, don’t worry. Stay, please. Bruce?”

“Got it,” Bruce says with a confirming nod, before turning to their visitors with a bright smile. “So. Who wants tea?”

“Hang on,” Peter says, leaving his gifts on the table and rushing after Steve. Steve, who was already halfway down the hallway, but pauses when he hears Peter’s footsteps and turns, a resigned expression on his face, like he knows what is coming.

“I could join—”

“No. Out of the question, Peter.”

“But I know how to fight.”

“I know you do. But you’re staying,” Steve says, with gravity in his voice but something else entirely in his eyes. “It’s good for you to get used to spending time with May and Ben, anyway. Go on.”

Peter shoves his hands into his pockets and slowly saunters back towards the living room. He can hear Steve shouting orders from somewhere at the other end of the hallway. An engine firing up.

It’s good for you to get used to spending time with May and Ben. What the hell is that supposed to mean? Is Steve planning to send him to go live with these people? Has that been the plan all along? Suddenly, with a terrible sinking feeling in his gut, Peter realizes there is something he hasn’t thought about. He has been waiting for the other shoe to drop, waiting to discover the point where the Avengers will no longer be nice to him.

But it had never occurred to him that they might try to get rid of him instead.

-

‘Suspicious activity’ has turned into a full-scale siege by the time the quinjet reaches the Raft. Natasha counts at least two dozen speedboats chasing each other through the waves. Roughly half of them have the unmistakable outline of HYDRA’s logo visible on the sides. The other half have frustratedly shouting prison guards at the helm. The boats are going round and round, seeming almost aimless.

What are they playing at?

Only the top three feet of the Raft are visible above the water; the rest of the prison still submerged. Guard after guard is rushing above deck, taking position to guard their prison against a HYDRA-invasion that doesn’t feel like much of an invasion, with the enemy speedboats only going in circles.

Ross takes a break from shouting orders at his guards to greet them as they land. “They are mostly making evasive manoeuvres at the moment,” he says with a large sweeping gesture that doesn’t tell them anything. “They keep fucking around in those blasted boats, without actually attempting to get nearer the Raft. We assume they are expecting more back-up. Let’s not wait for it to get here, and start rounding them up.”

“They are not waiting for back-up. One of their men is already inside,” Natasha says as her eyes sweep the scene.

“Don’t be ridiculous, Romanoff, I should know if—”

“Those boats are clearly a diversion. I’m going in.”

Ross looks vexed. “Control your team, Rogers. I’m calling my guards up here to defend against the actual visible threat, rather than some imagined one.”

“And we’ll assist,” Steve says diplomatically, before turning to Natasha and adding in a low voice, less diplomatically: “You and Tony go down and search the lower levels for any signs of intrusion.”

Stark has the subtlety of a bulldozer, but all right.

“We’re splitting up,” Natasha tells Tony, as soon as they are inside.

The Raft hasn’t gotten any more warm and welcoming than the last time she was here. The guards she runs into are all on high alert, but clearly preparing for an attack from the outside. They are rushing to the higher levels of the prison, leaving the lower levels unguarded. If she were sent on a one-woman mission and had to shut a facility down from the inside – and she has had to do that plenty of times – there is one obvious place to start.

She flicks her eyes up to the pipes running along the ceiling and follows with a steady pace, towards the Raft’s utility room.

“Well done, Rhodey,” Steve compliments over the comm. Which probably means it’s going well up there.

“If they didn’t want to swim, they shouldn’t have come in such perfectly sinkable boats,” Rhodey replies. Which confirms it.

But Natasha knows the real threat is down here.

The metal door leading to the utility room is firmly closed. If someone is inside, they are probably keeping half an eye on the entrance.

Then again, she wasn’t planning to knock politely and leisurely stroll in.

She kicks the door open and immediately dives inside. On cue, a bullet flies over her head, lodging itself into the metal door, right where her head could have been.

Natasha catches a glimpse of— of a face she recognizes from leafing through endless HYDRA files… Then rolls to her right to hide behind a steaming engine. “Malia Sanchov, am I right?” Her voice echoes through the chamber.

At her two o’clock, a gun cocks. Footsteps. A sharp voice: “You have something that belongs to us. We’re here to collect.”

All of this, just because they want the kid? That’s… disturbing. And something that will only happen over her dead body. Natasha cocks her own gun. “Your little enhanced is not here.”

“You lie,” she spits. “I know what he is capable of. There is no other place that can contain him.”

“We don’t need to contain him.”

“What?”

“We don’t need to contain him. He’s already dead.”

“Lies!” Sanchov blindly fires another shot, the bullet ricocheting against the pipes overhead. “He’s too valuable to kill!”

“Stark,” Natasha hisses into her comm. “Found our good friend Sanchov, Lower level. Meter room.”

“Keep her busy, Nat. On my way.”

Keep her busy. What does this genius think she’s doing?

Head ducked down, she manoeuvres past a row of electricity meters. Through a gap between some shelves and a large water pump, she spots a leg. Natasha aims her gun, at the spot just below the knee, and fires--

The sound of boxes smashing to the floor. “Fuck!” Sanchov screams as the leg disappears from view. “You asshole!”

Natasha swiftly steps around the high shelves, gun ahead. “Surrender and we’ll get that boo-boo checked out!”

She rounds another corner and sees Sanchov. Standing against the far wall, leaning her weight against it as blood dribbles down her leg. But she is still holding the gun, cocked, raised in front of her with a shaking hand.

Natasha holds her own gun steady as she looks into the face of who she could have been, had her life gone differently. “Drop it. Your team is currently getting dredged up by my team. This is pointless. And I don’t want to shoot you if it’s pointless.”

The only response is a hissed: “give him to me.”

“He is dead. He attacked first, so we gunned him down.”

“You lie,” she says in the tone of a soldier who is slowly realizing she may have spent weeks on a dead-end plan.

“I apologize for your wasted time and effort,” Natasha says. “And by apologize I mean, of course, I enjoy it immensely.”

“You have a death wish,” Sanchov says, eyes narrowed. “Just tell me where he is.”

“He. Is. Dead.”

Sanchov pulls the trigger. So does Natasha.

The Iron Man suit bulldozes into the room, exactly at the right moment to see them both go down.

-

Tony’s voice breaks through on the comm. “Ross, send your medical team down to the meter room, stat. Romanoff is down. Penetrating injury to the chest, blood pressure plummeting, lung in danger of collapsing.”

“What about their guy?”

“Dead. The scene is clear. GET YOUR PARADEMICS THE FUCK DOWN HERE.”

-

May and Ben went home a while ago, after a lot of hair-ruffling and a little bit of tickling. Bruce moved to the kitchen to clear away the cups. Peter is left on the carpet next to the coffee table, fiddling with his deck of cards and wondering where to find the courage to ask if the Avengers are actually planning to send him away.

The return of the team is announced by the deep rumbling of the quinjet’s engine. It’s just Tony who enters the room a few minutes later. “Bruce,” he says, a forced calmness in his voice. “Go find Steve, he needs to debrief you.”

Something shifts in the atmosphere. Peter can see it in Bruce’s face as he drops the tea towel onto the kitchen counter and leaves.

Tony approaches Peter, kneeling on the carpet with a slight grunt. “Hi kiddo. Did you have a good time with May and Ben?”

Does he think Peter is too dumb to realize something is wrong? “Just tell me what happened.”

Tony does him the courtesy of dropping all pretenses. “We arrested a lot of people. But Natasha was injured. Shot in the chest.”

Peter knows enough about gun shot wounds to understand what that means.

“It shattered two ribs and perforated her lung, but her heart and spine were not damaged. So it could have been a lot worse. We’ve been told her chances are pretty good.”

Peter mentally racks up her chances of survival. Swallows. “Can I go see her?”

“She’s in surgery. But as soon as she can be transported, we’re moving her into our own medical wing. So you’ll see her soon, all right?”

“I’m sorry,” Peter whispers.

“Kid, none of that is—”

“I’m sorry for— for not getting the pretzels and for climbing the tree and for the blanket fort and for the cat— I don’t want to leave, I like it here.”

Tony blinks. “We like you here, too. Where is this coming from?”

“May and Ben are really nice, but I don’t want to leave you guys, please? I want to stay here.”

“Did they imply you were supposed to go live with them?” Tony asks in an indignant voice that sounds strangely faked. “Because I will fight them. Your aunt’s a little scary but I’m pretty sure I can take your uncle.” His eyes are doing that crinkly thing at the corners, which means he is somehow finding this amusing.

“Uhmmm…”

“Come here, you brilliant little dummy.” Tony scoots forward and pulls Peter into another one of those cutting-off-your-blood-circulation hugs. “You’re not going anywhere. We love you. Please never stop rescuing cats from trees.”

“That makes no sense,” Peter complains, weakly flopping his arms around.

“I know, kid. Just give it time. Things are going to make more and more sense as time goes by.”

-

Natasha awakes with an IV in her arm, a chest tube under her rib cage and a teenager sprawled out on the mattress next to her. And a foggy numbness, probably from the medication, that she doesn’t care for at all.

Steve is hovering next to her bed, smiling down at her and then reaching out to softly pinch Peter’s arm.

“How long?” she asks, her voice raspy.

Peter shifts next to her, groggily opening one eye.

Steve straightens himself. “Three days. And you’re going to be out the running for a few months, at least. But if you do as the doctor says—” he shoots her a look that says I know you won’t do what the doctor says, but for my sake at least pretend that you will — “you are expected to make a full recovery. Eventually.”

Natasha knows the statistics. She doesn’t want to think about them right now. She glances down at Peter, then back up at Steve. “You tell him?”

“No, we thought you might want to do that yourself.”

Peter pushes himself up with sudden urgency. “Tell me what?”

Steve swiftly and tactfully withdraws, murmuring something about finding Dr. Cho.

Natasha closes her eyes for a moment to gather her thoughts. It’s harder than usual, through the haze of painkillers. She opens her eyes again and looks at Peter. “Killed Sanchov.”

“Sanchov.”

“Your… origami teacher.” Natasha tries her hardest not to sound contemptuous. It would be perfectly logical for Peter to have conflicting feelings about this.

“Oh. Malia.” Peter draws up his knees. His shoulders hunch, then straighten. “Well. That’s— That’s just what it is. I know she wasn’t really a very good person. As long— As long as you’re okay. Never mind, that was stupid. You’re not okay. There’s tubes sticking out of you.”

“Been better. Could be worse.”

Peter lies back down on the mattress next to her. “I was trained to kill people.” He says it as if it is a big revelation.

“Yes, I’m well aware of that.”

“Gun shot to the chest is bad. The bullet can shatter the breastbone into splinters, which get propelled further into the whole chest area. They rupture your heart, and puncture your lungs.”

“This a pep talk?”

“Sorry,” Peter says. “I’ll shut up. You need to sleep.”

She really, really does. And with her arm around this kid; this brilliant, ridiculous kid with his awkward sort of confidence and his endless trivial pursuit knowledge, it’s easier than ever to drift off.

-

“I see us doing this when we’re eighty.”

“Except you better believe you’ll be the one in a wheelchair.”

“Hm. Try not to get shot again, and I’ll see if I can make it happen.” Bruce halts next to the fountain and turns Natasha’s wheelchair so the sun isn’t in her face. He knows she hates that. He sits on the stone edge of the fountain. “Do you think we’ll all still be living here when we’re old?” he muses.

“I don’t know,” she rearranges her blanket. “We apparently adopted a teenager, so we’re officially past ‘just work colleagues’. It was time for me to retire fieldwork, anyways. Getting too old for this crap. I think I’ll become a stay-at-home mom. I’d be excellent at it.”

Bruce snorts.

He doesn’t know what an adoption process usually entails, but he’s pretty sure it doesn’t include faking a child’s death to cut all ties with his previous… caregivers.

Natasha had suggested, as soon as she was lucid enough to form coherent strategies, to accidentally on purpose leak a story to the press: A HYDRA soldier was shot and killed during a recent bunker raid. Turned out to be just a teenager. Very tragic. Sad, sad. Collateral damage.

Thaddeus Ross had objected: a story like that would tarnish SHIELD’s precious reputation.

Tony had reminded them that his reputation was already in tatters. “So it seems like we have an easy solution right in front of us.”

They had set everything in motion last night.

Natasha already took a literal bullet. And now Tony was taking a figurative one.

-

Peter likes blanket forts, he decided.

They are soft and homely and safe, and as long as Tony isn’t around to make a mess of things, they can be sturdy and reliable.

Tony lifts the blanket and sticks his head through. “Permission to come aboard?”

“Yeah,” Peter says, and scoots over to make room for Tony. Steve crawls in after him, a rolled up newspaper in his hand.

Tony eases back against a pillow. “Aaah.… Excellent blanket fort, kid. Couldn’t have made it better myself.”

“Yes. I know,” Peter says, his tone bone-dry.

“Hey. Respect your elders, kid.”

It isn’t the first time someone said that to Peter. But he knows it’s different when Tony says it, with that smile and those crinkly eyes. Like he enjoys it when Peter is borderline disrespectful. Which still makes no sense. But Peter will take what he can get. “So, what’s— what’s going on?”

Tony exchanges a look with Steve and sits up straighter. “Some of our very confidential documents have been leaked to the press — So inconvenient, who knows how that happened? — and those documents happen to detail a blotched mission from two months back. The Avengers attacked one of HYDRA’s bunkers, and Iron Man accidentally gunned down a HYDRA child-soldier. Killed instantly.”

Peter’s eyes drop down to the paper in Steve’s hand. “You want HYDRA to read it and think I’m dead.”

“All Nat’s idea. The article doesn’t mention you by name. It just mentions an unnamed fifteen-year-old. So it won’t pull focus towards you or your family. But HYDRA will know what it means. It will get them off your back. And piss some people off, of course, but—”

Peter sits up straighter, folding his legs underneath him. “Why would people be piss— um… pissed— Angry?”

Tony shrugs leisurely. “Iron Man running in half-cocked, getting a kid killed. That will certainly fuel some of my usual critics.” And he adds, when he catches Peter’s worried look: “The public finds a reason to hate me every few months or so. I can deal with it. It’s a small price to pay.”

“Why?”

“Because I care about you, kid, wasn’t that clear already?”

Sure, but there is a difference between caring about someone when it is convenient or caring about someone when it’s... Peter doesn’t really know how to put it in words.

So he hugs Tony instead, tucking his head under the man’s chin.

Because the Avengers stick up for him and keep wanting him around, even when it means dealing with his moronic behavior or getting public backlash or being shot in the chest.

They have called Peter many things. A chocolate monster. A precious chickpea. Ticklish. Huggable.

They let him figure things out. He knows he likes hot chocolate, and Led Zeppelin, and feeding goats, and reading the trivial pursuit cards, and using his stickiness to save cats from trees. He knows he doesn’t like pretzels, or Rubik’s Cubes, or going shopping for clothes.

Steve has turned the newspaper to the sixth page, and holds it out to Peter. “You’re dead, kiddo,” he says with a smile.

Peter has never been more alive.