Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

The boat rocked in the dark waters and made him sick and dizzy, like he wanted to throw up.  Why couldn’t they just stay on shore?  He didn’t know.  He wanted to be off the boat more than anything, that was until a pair of hands grabbed him and lowered him over the side of the boat and into the dark waters.  Cold cold cold!  He was crying, choking as water got into his mouth despite that the life vest was keeping him afloat.  The water kept coming up over his ears and into his mouth and nose.  This was so much worse than being in the rocking boat.

One might think you’d never forget the rat-a-tat sound of rapid gunfire ringing through the darkness… the flashes of light coming off of guns as they took everything you knew and understood away from you.  But he did forget… he forgot everything but the bone deep cold of the water and the waves and his confusion as he stared up at the boat, wondering why they wouldn’t pull him back on board.  Peter remembered those things, but only in his nightmares.

* * *

Peter wanted to say he didn’t know how his descent into this, this shit hole of a life he’d found himself in had started.  He wanted to say it wasn’t his fault, that he was just a victim of circumstance, but that would be a lie, and if there was one thing Peter had never compromised on, it was his sincerity.  He wasn’t a liar, despite that foster family after foster family said that he was.  No… he knew exactly how his fall from grace had started.

He probably would have been fine in foster care after May and Ben had died.  He probably would have gone on to live a normal life.  It hadn’t been the first time his entire world had come crashing down around him and he’d found himself thrust into a new home with new people.  It had happened after Mary and Richard had died and he’d been sent to live with May and Ben.  Peter knew how to rebuild after losing everyone and everything.  No, his fall from grace wasn’t because of his change in guardianship.  It was because of a spider bite.  The day that Spider Man was born was the day that Peter Parker’s sincerity had shifted from innocent truthfulness to bitter sarcasm.  It was the day he’d first been labeled a liar.  It was the first time he’d been sent away from his foster home as a ward of the State of New York, and shifted into a worse one.  The first time of many.

Peter rubbed his jaw where he’d just been struck by his foster father before school that morning.  Twelve foster homes in a year and a half, each foster home he was moved to growing progressively worse had culminated in him living with a man named Ted who hated children.  He had come to a conclusion after 12 moves (his shortest time in a foster home so far had been two days), that if you were a good kid they put you with a reasonable family.  He’d started out after May and Ben’s death in a nice house in the suburbs with a nice man and woman who had two kids of their own and three foster kids.  Peter was their fourth, meaning they had a full house.  That was back when Peter was, “a good boy who stays out of trouble.”  That’s what his caseworker had told the family when they agreed to take him.  By his fifth foster home his caseworker didn’t try to talk him up like that anymore.  She was frustrated and exasperated by him if anything, and running out of options.  It was harder to find placement for a kid labeled a delinquent.  He wasn’t a delinquent but he also wasn’t the sweet innocent personality that had first entered foster care either.  Sometimes Peter missed that version of himself… the version May and Ben had loved and raised.  That version of Peter couldn’t have survived the last year and a half though.  He could have survived the spider bite… had been on his way to becoming Spider Man in fact, a hero he was certain his aunt and uncle would have been proud of.  He couldn’t have survived foster care that way though.  With each move to a new placement, Peter’s innocence slipped away.  With each new placement his countenance grew darker, his comments more biting, and his willingness to take what was handed to him with a smile gave way more and more to a complete lack of regard for how he was perceived.  He simply didn’t care anymore.  He didn’t care if people thought he was a delinquent.  If they thought it, he’d be better off playing the part.  Why try to convince people you’re not something they’re so determined that you are?

Peter Benjamin Parker, delinquent.  He shook his head, moving his jaw back and forth, experimenting with how it felt.  It hurt to talk, but he was hopeful the pain would go away by the end of the day.  He’d still have the bruise for a while, but his enhanced healing from Spider Man should at least start to repair the damage after he got his free lunch in the school cafeteria.  It was one of the only meals he could count on getting on weekdays, and the only reason he even bothered to show up to Springfield Gardens High.

The curriculum the school used was so far below Peter that he didn’t bother showing up to classes most of the time.  At first his teachers (the few that cared), had chastised him for skipping classes, but after several days of Peter showing up and intentionally shouting out correct answers to every question that was asked, they decided to let him skip without further comment.  One of them had told Peter that they’d try to give him more advanced work, but that ‘advanced’ work was still so easy for Peter to breeze through that Mrs. Jeanie Harrington had given up.  Now Peter only showed up for tests, most of which he aced without an issue.

If it wasn’t for the free lunch program, Peter wouldn’t bother going to school at all.  The bullying was just as bad as the curriculum.  He had muscles thanks to the spider bite, but they were hidden under the baggy secondhand clothes he wore.  All people saw was a skinny kid with messy hair and clothes that looked like they’d been pulled out of a dumpster somewhere.  Any of those were reason enough for the larger, stupider kids at Springfield Gardens to want to push him around.  Even some of the girls tried to give him a hard time.  The girls Peter ignored, but it had only taken him a few days to grow tired of being slammed into lockers by the boys before he’d decided to fight back.

At first he’d told himself that he shouldn’t use his powers as Spider Man to defend himself, because he hadn’t been able to do so before, so why should he now?  He could only take so much from other kids however.  Now, whenever someone knocked into him in the hallway on purpose, tried to punch him, or tried to force him into a bathroom to shove his head into a toilet, Peter gave them hell.  It had taken two weeks of fighting back for other kids to figure out that he wasn’t worth the trouble.  Now they only hurled words at him.  Insults Peter could handle.  He generally ignored them, though sometimes he threw a creative insult of his own back at them.  Fighting back and throwing around big words the other kids wouldn’t know had earned him the label of ‘trouble maker’ and ‘loud mouth’ from the staff.  While Peter never intentionally started something up with any of the other kids, he often had in school suspension right alongside the school’s worst bullies and other offenders.  He didn’t care because it meant sitting in a quiet classroom for the day where he could read what he wanted from the public library instead of being bored to tears in class.

“Hey Penis,” an oaf of a boy said next to him, elbowing him hard in the side.

Peter ignored him.  A few of the boys called him penis instead of Peter, and he refused to answer to it.  He knew it would only make the boy escalate but Peter almost wished he would.  He was already in the in school suspension room for the next two days.  What were they going to do to him?  Expel him?  This was already the worst possible school they could send him to.  They didn’t expel students here because no other schools would take them.

“Hey jerk off, I’m talking to you.”

Peter continued to ignore him and the boy got up and grabbed the back of Peter’s overlarge hoodie to pull him up out of his seat.

Before the teacher could stand up and tell the other boy to knock it off, Peter’s hands had already shot up like a flash and grabbed the boy behind the head.  He yanked hard and the boy’s face came down hard into the desk.  There was no blood, but Peter was satisfied as he sat back down in his seat as though nothing had happened, that the guy would have a big bruise on his forehead and a headache to remind him that Peter wasn’t someone to mess with.

“Parker!” the teacher shouted angrily.  “What the hell?  Office!  Now!”

Peter grabbed his book and his ratty backpack and stood up, giving an impassive look down to the moaning jerk on the floor.

“Defending myself,” Peter said as he passed the teacher, who was making his way to the injured student.

“Get out of my sight,” the teacher said.  “Don’t think I won’t check to see that you made it to the office!”

Peter pushed the door open to the room, turned around, and gave the group of onlookers a bow.  Most of these kids were the school’s worst troublemakers.  There was a girl in there who had thrown a book at a teacher’s head the day before, and a senior who had been caught with a knife that morning on his way through the school’s metal detectors.  If they knew that they shouldn’t mess with Peter, then the word would get around.

“Why’d you mess with him, that bastard’s crazy,” a girl said just as the door closed.  Good, Peter thought.  Let them think I’m crazy.  It’ll be less work for me in the end.

Peter Parker, crazy.  He could live with that.

The school used to call his foster parents, but Peter moved around so much now that they had given up and had started calling his caseworker instead.  They called every week to tell her how many classes he had missed, how many days of school he had skipped, and on days like today when he was suspended for fighting, they called her to come pick him up from school.  Sometimes she came, and other times she didn’t.  She was overloaded with cases like his and couldn’t always make it out to the school to pick him up by the end of the day.

“What am I going to do with you Peter?” she asked, giving him a dark look as she signed him out of the office forty minutes later.

“Was that a rhetorical question or were you looking for suggestions?”

She snorted as she led him out of the office and out the school’s front doors.  “Oh, you have suggestions do you?”

“Get me the hell out of this piece of shit school you stuck me in,” he said.

“Look at your school record.  Do you think any other school would take you?  Besides, this is the closest to your foster home.”

“Yeah, well get me the hell out of there too.”  He pointed to the bruise on his chin, but she was pointedly looking in the other direction.

“You know there’s nowhere else for you to go right now,” she said.  “If there was, I’d take you there.  There’s not even an open spot in a group home at the moment.”

“No group home,” Peter said with force.

“Yeah, I know.  You’ve made it clear you don’t want to be placed in a group home.  Unless you have a concrete suggestion of where you should go, then you’re going to have to stay put for now.”

Peter clamped his mouth closed as he got into her beat up car in the front passenger seat.  There was another place he might be able to go, but he couldn’t tell her that.  He had tried once, back when he’d first entered the system at almost 13 when he’d had a different case worker.  All he’d gotten for his trouble was laughter.  His first case worker had laughed at him.  He’d been shuffled off to a second case worker shortly after that.  He had also laughed when Peter had told him that his father was still alive.  By the time he’d gotten around to Mandy, his third case worker, he’d given up.  He was tired of being laughed at.

As she started up the car and pulled out of the school parking lot, Peter glanced sideways at her.  He liked Mandy and he didn’t want her to laugh at him.  She did try to help him, but her hands were usually tied.  “Can I- I mean…” he trailed off, voice quiet.

“What is it?  You want lunch?  We can grab you a burger and fries before I drop you back at your house.”

He cleared his throat and nodded.  He’d had to miss lunch.  He should have just kept a lid on things until lunch time.

“You said if I had another suggestion… could I- come home with you?”

She sighed and turned to give him a sad look as she pulled up at a stop sign.  “I’m sorry Peter.  You know I can’t.  That’s against the rules.”

He gave a nod and looked down at his fingers.  He didn’t want to see the look on her face like she felt sorry for him.  Like he was pathetic.

“Look, just… I’m working on another placement for you.  You’re not helping yourself any with all the trouble you get yourself into though.  I know you’re still sneaking out late at night and that some nights you don’t go home at all.”

“I don’t have a home,” Peter said, staring out the window as the car started moving again.  Because that doesn’t sound any less pathetic, he scolded himself.

“I know your placement now isn’t ideal, but you’ve got to make the best of it.  It’s a roof and three meals a day.  You have a bed, shelter from the elements…”

Right, three meals a day.  “Yeah, sure,” Peter mumbled.  Ted gave him one meal a day on weekends, and otherwise told Peter to fend for himself.  Whatever money the state gave Ted to take care of him was spent on Ted or sent to Ted’s kids that he no longer had custody of.  The fridge and kitchen cupboards were usually empty unless there was a scheduled inspection where the caseworker was supposed to come by.  Those days were the only ones when Peter really got to eat at Ted’s house.  If it was just the lack of food, Peter would have been miserable, but he would have agreed with Mandy that he had it better than other kids who had run away.

Peter moved his jaw around again, angry at the pain that blossomed there.  He knew he could expect to get hit again as soon as Ted got home from work.  Even if Peter hadn’t gotten suspended today Ted would find a reason.  Ted hated kids.  He hated kids, his job, his house, his shitty furniture, and life in general.  He hated Peter too, but even if he didn’t, Peter made for a great punching bag that Ted liked to use to take out all of his anger about his shitty life.

“Give me two weeks,” Mandy said, bringing Peter’s attention back into the car.

“Huh?”

“Give me two more weeks to find a new placement for you.”

“And then what?” Peter asked.

“Just, give me some time.”

He turned to look out the window again.  Two weeks.  He could do that.  He could do two weeks, couldn’t he?  He’d been suffering through one bad placement after another for the last year and a half.  He could do two more weeks.  Right?

“My father’s still alive,” Peter blurted out.  The words came out as a shout.  She startled but then stilled as she drove Peter towards Ted’s house.

“That’s not in your file.”

“I know it’s not.”

“Why not?”

Peter shrugged.  He honestly had no idea why.  After his mother and Richard had died in the plane crash (they had said it was a plane crash, but Peter was certain they had died in a boating accident) and Peter had gone to live with May and Ben at five years old, May had asked Peter about his father.  Peter had been confused, thinking his father had been Richard.  That’s when he’d been told that his father’s name was Tony.  Peter hadn’t understood the importance of that name then… not until he’d been watching the news a year later and the newscaster had been talking about Iron Man and ‘the man under the suit’ Tony Stark.  Peter had thought his father was just some guy, and had been completely wrong.  He’d asked aunt May after that why he couldn’t live with his father, but all she’d told him then, and again after that whenever he asked, was that his father didn’t know that Peter was his son and that Mary had wanted it that way.

“He uh… he dosen’t know about me.”

“But you know who he is?”

Peter nodded.

“Well, are you gonna tell me or what?  I can’t do anything about it if you don’t tell me who he is.”

“Yeah… yeah,” Peter mumbled.  “I told people before.  The other caseworkers.”

“Again, not in your file.”

They drove silently for several blocks.

“Well?” Mandy asked.

“Iron Man.”

She sighed.

“I’m not lying.  It’s Tony Stark.”

“Peter-” she didn’t seem to have words to give him though.  At least she wasn’t laughing, though Peter thought bitterly that the sad look of pity she was giving him was way worse than laughter.  Peter Parker, pathetic.

“Fine, you know what, fuck you,” Peter said.  He opened the door despite that the car was moving, and she slammed on the brakes.  He got out and slammed the door.

“Peter!” she called after him through the open window.

“It’s only a block!  I’ll walk!”  He couldn’t hold back the anger in his voice as he shouted at her.  He didn’t like to shout or curse at her because she was his one and only lifeline… his one hope at getting out of Ted’s house, though he knew from experience by now that he’d only be moved to someplace worse.

Peter left her there and walked down the sidewalk through the decrepit neighborhood.  His enhanced hearing told him that she wasn’t following him and that she had pulled away and gone down another street.

When he got to Ted’s house his stomach fell.  Ted’s old junker was sitting out on the street in front of the house.  Wonderful.  There was no reason for him to be home during the day unless he’d lost his job again.  He’d only just started it two weeks before.  Peter had been with Ted for three months, and in that time the man had had three different jobs.

Deciding against going inside, Peter instead went out to the little gravel alley in back and sat down with his back against a chain link fence where he’d be out of sight if Ted looked out one of the back windows.  He’d spend the rest of day out here, hungry, because Mandy hadn’t remembered to take him to grab lunch first.  At least he had his library book on quantum mechanics.  He pulled it out, grumbling to himself about the school, Mandy, and Ted.  He didn’t understand half of what he read in this book, but he understood some of it.  It challenged him, and forced him to find other books that would explain the concepts he needed to know.  It was how he’d learned most of the things he knew.  Like how he’d never been able to build a computer, but he knew how from YouTube videos and a dozen books he’d read at the library.  He was sure he could build one if he could come up with the parts.  Another year and he’d be old enough to get a job with permission from his caseworker so he could buy computer parts.

Bioengineering, computers, quantum mechanics, nanotechnology, green energy… there were so many things he was interested in and did his best to learn about.  Someday he was going to invent something that was worth some money and then go to college and get himself out of this shithole.  He’d invented his web slingers, even though he couldn’t sell that design.  His web slingers were an integral part of him being Spider Man, and Spider Man was the only thing he had.  Being Spider Man was what kept him going.  The daytime belonged to Peter Parker, delinquent, crazy, pathetic, and alone.  The night belonged to Spider Man though.  Spider Man was free to roam the city as he wanted.  Spider Man made his own rules and made his own way.  People wouldn’t dare to mess with Spider Man because of his super strength, and because Spider Man put creeps and criminals away.  Well, technically the police did that, but Spider Man helped.  And Spider Man wasn’t alone because he had the people of Queens, who were generally thankful for his interventions in small crimes.

Peter didn’t know his father.  He had no idea what Tony Stark was really like aside from what the news and magazines printed about him.  He was probably a rich asshole, or at least Peter assumed he was, because what other kind of person didn’t realize they had a kid?  The only thing Peter knew for sure about him was that he was Iron Man, and that Iron Man did good things.  Iron Man nearly died fighting in the Battle of New York.  Iron Man was part of the Avengers and hung around with guys like War Machine and Captain America.  Iron Man had built his own suit because he was smart enough to do so.  Those were all things Peter wanted.  He wanted to be brilliant.  He wanted to do good in the world.  He wanted to be an Avenger someday.  So when he’d been bitten by that spider on a field trip to Oscorp last year and found himself suddenly blessed with super strength, super hearing, and super healing, Peter had known exactly what he had to do.  He had to help people.  Spider Man had to be like Iron Man, because even if Tony Stark didn’t know he had a son, Peter Parker knew he had a father.

Peter didn’t go in from the gravel alley until it was too dark to see.  He thought about climbing up to the tiny second floor bedroom he currently lived in and sneaking in from the outside, but recently Ted had nailed his window closed so he couldn’t sneak in and out.  He could pry the window up, but Ted would find out and get mad.  Instead he went around to the front of the house and pushed the front door open.

“You were out late,” Ted called the moment he heard the front door close.  It sounded like he was in the little living room watching TV.

Peter came around the corner and spotted him sitting on the couch watching football.

“Yeah, sorry.  I was at the library.”

“Or you were being a dick to some kid at school and giving him a concussion,” Ted shot back, eyes coming up to Peter.

“I thought the school didn’t call anymore.”

“Your caseworker called to let me know she was picking you up because you were suspended.  In school suspension wasn’t enough?”

“He started it,” Peter said, muscles tight.  At any moment Ted was going to jump up off the couch and wallop him.

“Right, they always start it.  You’re never to blame.  Keep telling yourself that.”

“He did,” Peter said.  “I’m going to bed.”

“How about, gee, thanks for providing a roof and food Ted,” the man snarked.  Peter disappeared up the narrow staircase and into his room, closing the door with a snap behind him and locking it.  At least he was safe for the night.  If Ted had a key to this room he had never used it.  Peter was amazed that he’d been allowed to pass through the house without incident.  Maybe Ted hadn’t lost his job after all.  Maybe he had a random day off in the middle of the week.  Peter didn’t know or care.

He flipped the dim lamp beside his creaky twin bed on and flopped onto the bed, pulling out his library book.  He would take notes if he had any paper to write on.  All he had was a couple of broken pencils and an old test he’d aced.  Ted was supposed to be buying him the things he needed, but Peter knew that was never going to happen.  The last foster home he’d been at before this had actually made an effort to buy him some secondhand clothes and school supplies, but that had been a long time ago, and the foster father, Skip, had given Peter the creeps.  He’d stayed for two nights and then bolted out the window when he’d woken up to find Skip standing in his doorway staring at him in the darkness.  He’d used the phone at school the next morning to call Mandy and had told her there was no way in hell he was going back there.  Later that same day he’d been dropped off at Ted’s house and Mandy had begged him to stay put for as long as possible.  Ted’s house wasn’t the worst place in the world to be, but Peter would rather be almost anywhere else.  His mind flickered to Stark Tower, where his father lived, but Peter brushed the thought off.  Mandy hadn’t believed him.  No one had believed him.

Peter read for another hour, and then, stomach aching from hunger, turned off the little lamp and went to sleep, knowing the new day he would wake to would be just as grim as this one had been.

* * *

Ted had lost his job, and he made Peter pay for it.  Peter had been paying for it every day after school for two weeks.  Two weeks, I can do this!  He had bruises on his arms, chest, face, legs, and somehow one of his ankles.  In order to heal like Spider Man could, he needed way more food than he was getting at the school during lunch time.  He’d almost considered taking someone else’s lunch, but that would just leave another kid hungry… a kid potentially just like him who only got to eat at school, and Peter wasn’t about to do that to anybody else.

14 days.  That’s what Mandy had asked for.  Just 14 days.  Those 14 days passed in a flurry of fists, hunger, and Peter getting suspended from school for another two days.  A new teacher had found him wandering the halls and forced him to go to class.  He’d been so resistant, yelling and cursing, that the new teacher had insisted he be suspended for a day for being disruptive.  Mandy hadn’t come to get him and he ended up sitting in the office until school was over and then going to the library after that so he could stay away from Ted’s house until the last possible moment.

Two weeks and one day after he’d last seen her, Peter called Mandy.  He kept her card with him and usually called her from the school office since he didn’t have money for a payphone or a friend to loan him their cell phone.  He sure as hell wasn’t going to ask Ted to use his cell phone.

“I’m sorry Peter, I’ve been trying, but there’s no one to take you right now.  Everywhere is absolutely full and you know there’s a shortage of foster homes right now.  An opening did come up at a group home, but it’s a lock-in home.”

“No.  I’m not doing that,” Peter said, hands shaking as he gripped the phone in the office.  He was so angry that he was having to stop himself from gripping the phone too hard.  If he broke it, the office wouldn’t let him use their phone again.

Mandy sighed heavily into the receiver.  “I’m sorry Peter.  I really am.  I’m not giving up though.  You shouldn’t either.”

Peter slammed the phone down onto its base, earning a dirty look from the secretary at the front desk.

“Sorry,” he mumbled, because he was.  He didn’t often apologize to people anymore, but he couldn’t afford to make the secretary mad.

Peter had trouble controlling his temper for the rest of the day.  He shouted at the gym teacher, cursed at a girl that had called him a name in the hall, and shouted at the top of his lungs at one of the lunch ladies in the cafeteria when she’d slopped some kind of nasty meat slush onto his tray.  He needed this food to survive and they were feeding him with whatever the hell this was.  “What the fuck is this?” he asked her loudly.  “This looks like dog barf!”

She looked startled to be yelled at, and looked around warily.  Other students were clearly listening and watching.  “Hey!” Peter shouted.  “What the hell is this?  I wanna know what I’m being forced to eat!”

“Hey!  C’mon!  Move already!” a guy from further down the line said, and Peter took his tray of mush and went to sit at a table.  It smelled awful and he wondered if it was just him or if it smelled that way to everyone else too.  His stomach was turning just looking at it.  This was going to be his only meal and he couldn’t skip it.

“You’re not eating that dog vomit are you?” a girl asked when Peter picked up his fork to try to eat some of it after he sat down.  “That’s nasty.”

He shot her a glare and she looked like she felt sorry for him.  Fucking awesome.  Even the bullies feel sorry for me.  Peter left his tray there and stood up to leave.  He knew the kitchen cupboards were bare, but there had to be something at Ted’s house.

He left the school, finding no reason to be there if he couldn’t even eat lunch, and walked back to Ted’s house.  Ted was home and didn’t ask why Peter was back early.  When Peter searched the cupboards again and found nothing to eat, not even a can of tuna, he snapped at Ted, “Why can’t you buy some fucking food?  I know they pay you to keep me.”

“A couple hundred bucks a month,” Ted said from the couch.

“Still, that’s money to buy me food.  I have to eat.”

“Eat at school.”

“They tried to serve us dog vomit today.”

Ted laughed, and Peter clenched his fists.

“What the hell is funny about that?” Peter spat.  He knew it was a mistake as soon as he had said it though.  Ted put up with some of his back talk, but not a lot of it.  He stood up off the couch, coming up to his full height.  He was a tall man with a beer gut and large muscles.

“Come here and say that to my face you little shit.”

Peter stood his ground.  He could beat Ted up in a heartbeat, but that would mean going to a lock-in group home.  Lock-in homes locked you in at night and on weekends.  You couldn’t get out, and they drove you to and from school as well.  You had zero freedom.  It was one of the reasons Peter never fought back when Ted punched him in the face or pushed him down.

“I need to eat,” Peter said, eyes dropping to the floor.  “The checks will stop coming if I’m dead.”

“Like I said,” Ted told him, advancing.  “A couple hundred bucks.  That’s nothing.  You think you’re worth two hundred dollars a month?  You’re not worth shit to me.”

Peter ended up bruised and his face bloody when Ted was done taking out his anger on him.  He had a split lip and a bloody nose.  “Just take your crap and get the hell out.  Geez, it’s no wonder no one else will take you.  You’re too damn whiny.”

Peter pulled himself up off the floor, wincing, and dragged himself up the stairs.  “I’m calling the caseworker!” Ted yelled up the stairs after him.  “Don’t even think of locking yourself in there!  You’re gone!”

Peter only had a few outfits and his spider suit and he stuffed them into his backpack along with the library book.  He took the blanket off the bed too, rolling it up like a sleeping bag.  There was no way he was going to let Mandy come and take him to a lock-in group home.  He sat down on the edge of the bed for a moment, head pounding as he let the reality of what he was about to do wash over him.  If he wasn’t going to a group home, and Ted wouldn’t let him stay here, then his only option was running away.  For the last year and a half he’d been telling himself every time something bad happened that at the very least he was better off than the kids that had pulled themselves out of the system and were living out on the streets.  Now he was going to be one of them.

He shook his head and finished rolling up the blanket.  It was too big to stuff into his already full bag so he was going to have to carry it out under his arm.

Back down the stairs Peter didn’t even look at Ted as he went for the front door.

“Hey!  That blanket’s not yours you little shit.  That’s theft!”

Peter spun around, anger in his eyes and said, “Come and get it then!”  He didn’t wait for Ted to advance on him though, and instead threw open the front door and ran out and then down the street.  Ted didn’t come after him.  Peter slowed down as soon as he was down the street and around the corner and was certain that Ted wasn’t going to jump in his car to chase him down for the blanket.

As he walked, his stomach grumbled, his face hurt, and he continued to taste blood from where he’d been punched in the mouth.  The full weight of things was slowly settling down over his shoulders.  He was alone now.  Alone.  He’d been alone since aunt May had died, though this was the first time that realization really washed over him.  For a year and a half he’d been trusting his caseworkers… trusting the system to take care of him.  The system had laughed at him and then chewed him up and spit him out.  Even he could have done better for himself at 13 than the state had done for him, and CPS was full of adults.  Adults and their rules, their red tape, their shitty schools and their shitty foster homes.

Peter turned and kicked a chain link fence he was passing hard, making it rattle, though he regretted it immediately because his body was already aching from Ted going after him.

He turned his steps towards the river and Manhattan.  If nobody would help him, he was going to have to help himself.  He’d thought a hundred times about sending Stark Industries an email, or calling them up, but he’d never done it.  He doubted a random email or phone call would get through to the Tony Stark.  He was going to have to go to Stark Tower himself and try to get an audience with the man.

As he walked he worried though.  He worried that the man did know that he had a son… that he did know and that he didn’t want him.  There had to be a reason he wasn’t in Peter’s life.  He couldn’t imagine his mother not wanting Tony in his life… the man was a genius and a billionaire.  Surely she’d want child support at least?  But for whatever reason Peter was here alone.  “A couple hundred bucks.  You think you’re worth two hundred dollars a month?”  Ted’s words from an hour before came back to him again like the man was right next to him talking in his ear.  It wasn’t the first time someone had said something like this to him.  May and Ben had sworn that Peter was the best thing that had ever happened to them, but most foster homes he went to seemed to think Peter was the worst thing that could have happened to them.  He wasn’t worth two hundred dollars a month to Ted.  Peter didn’t even have two hundred dollars a month to give to Tony Stark.  What would he want with him?

Peter didn’t know.  He had nothing to offer at all.  All he knew was that he needed a place to stay.  He needed food, and clothes, and a warm place to live before the weather got too bad during the winter.  Peter wanted things too… he had dreams, but the world had gotten in the way.  He couldn’t get a good education when CPS had stuck him in the worst school in the city.  He couldn’t invent things if he couldn’t even afford to feed himself.  In the back of his mind there were other things that Peter wanted that begged him to notice… to give credence to those wants, but he pushed it all down.  He wanted a family again.  He wanted to be wanted, like he had been with May and Ben.  Those were stupid things to want after though when he didn’t know where he was sleeping tonight, or when he didn’t know where his next meal was coming from.  He didn’t have time for wants like that that would never become a reality.

Peter walked all evening and most of the night.  It was one in the morning when he crossed the bridge into Manhattan and neared Stark Tower.  It was closed now, but he would be here when it opened in the morning.

He settled himself down against a concrete wall and waited, arms wrapped around himself for warmth.  What was he even going to say to Mr. Stark when he saw him?  ‘Hey, I’m your son Peter.  I’m cold and tired and hungry, and I need you.’  He scoffed at himself.  He really was pathetic.  ‘You knocked my mom up and then forgot about her and me.  Well here I am, you’ve got to deal with me now.’  He didn’t want to sound pathetic, but wasn’t sure the second thing he’d thought up to say was any better than the first one.  ‘Your my dad, and I’ve been reading about you my whole life.’

Peter huffed and let his head fall back to the concrete wall behind him.  None of those were going to work.  He supposed he might not even get a chance to say those things to the man if he couldn’t get an audience with him first.  His first goal was to get past the front desk in the lobby of Stark Tower.  He wondered for the first time how many kids showed up every year trying to be claimed as Tony Stark’s son.  The guy was known as a playboy after all.  Did he have brothers and sisters?  If he did, would Mr. Stark even know about them?

It was likely he’d be turned away if he went in and told the receptionist that he was Mr. Stark’s son.  That wasn’t going to work.  Instead he cast his mind around for any other reason that a genius billionaire might agree to talk to a scrawny kid covered in bruises.  Peter didn’t have any great inventions to show him, or any business deals to make with him.  All he had was himself and Spider Man.  Spider Man.  Mr. Stark was an Avenger.  Spider Man hadn’t done anything spectacular like save the world, but maybe he would be enough to peak Mr. Stark’s interest.  All Peter needed was one minute in the same room with the man.  He didn’t know what he was going to say when he saw him, but he’d figure it out when he got there.

Cold, aching, and hungry, Peter let himself drift into an uneasy sleep.  He kept waking up, but he was able to get ten minutes here, and twenty minutes there off and on until the sun came up.  He was hungrier than ever when he pulled himself up off the concrete and started to bounce around on the balls of his feet, trying to warm up, rubbing his arms vigorously to get his blood flowing.

Peter didn’t know what time Stark Tower opened, but he watched from across the street until he saw people in business attire going in with regularity, and then he crossed the street and took a moment to stare up at the tall skyscraper reaching into the sky.  He sucked in a deep breath, set his shoulders so he could walk in with his head held high, and opened one of the glass doors.  He knew he looked pitiful.  He couldn’t help that.  All he could do was look like he was on a mission and hope they would take him seriously at the front desk.

“Arms,” a security guard said.  Peter lifted his arms up and let the guard scan him for metal objects.  Peter didn’t have any.  It didn’t stop the guard from giving him a dirty look as he let Peter pass.

The lobby wasn’t busy yet because it was early, but there were still about 20 people inside waiting for elevators or buying coffee at the lobby coffee shop.  Peter tried to look like he was supposed to be there and walked to the front desk.

“Hello, welcome to Stark Tow-” the receptionist cut off when she looked up from her computer and saw Peter in all his bruised glory.  “Oh my gosh honey, what happened to you?  Do you need me to call the police?”

Peter frowned at her and cleared his throat.  “I um- I’m here to see Mr. Stark.”

She frowned but didn’t contradict him.  “What’s your name?  You have to have an appointment.”

“Peter Parker,” he said.  “Can I make an appointment?”

She stopped tapping at her keyboard and looked up at him again.  “Do you have some sort of business with him?” She looked like she doubted he had any sort of reason to be there at all.

“It’s more of business with Iron Man,” Peter said, trying to keep his voice steady and to sound confident even though he felt anything but.  “I have information for him about Spider Man.”

“Spider Man,” she said quietly.  “I see.”  She cleared her throat.  “Vigilantes are usually dealt with by SHIELD.  I can write down their number for you if you want, though you can find it online too.”

“I need to speak with Mr. Stark, not SHIELD.”

She leaned forward, looking at his bruised face and split lip again.  She looked like she felt sorry for him.  He’d come in trying to exude confidence and all he was exuding was the sense that he was pathetic.  “Honey, look, I’m sorry, but Mr. Stark doesn’t just see random people that walk in off the street.  You have to have an appointment with him, and that’s not something I can make for you here.  Now if you have real information about Spider Man, you can contact SHIELD, and if it’s something Mr. Stark needs to know, they’ll send the information to him.”

Peter clenched his fists at his sides and just like the other day in the cafeteria, felt like he had to start shouting to be heard.  “Are you listening?” he asked loudly.  “I can’t contact SHIELD.  I need to see Mr. Stark, and only Mr. Stark.  I have vital information for him!”

A hand landed on Peter’s shoulder and he spun around and swung at whoever had him.  For a brief moment he’d thought Ted had somehow found him.  He found himself face to face with a security officer dressed in a black suit with an earpiece in his ear.  The guy was skinny but looked strong.  “I’m going to need you to come with me.”  He reached out to grab Peter’s upper arm, but Peter struggled against him, ripping his arm free.

“Just help me make an appointment,” he said angrily to the woman at the front desk.  She no longer looked like she felt sorry for him.  There was fear in her eyes.  He felt bad, but he was too angry to care much that she was scared at the moment.

Another security officer appeared seemingly out of nowhere, and then a third one.  They gripped Peter’s arms and took him across the lobby and through a door which led to a security office.

“Sit down,” one of the guards said, pushing down on Peter’s shoulder to get him to sit in a hard plastic chair.

“What’s going on?” a man behind the security desk asked.  He looked like he might be in charge.

“Kid was making a scene in the lobby because Amy wouldn’t let him see Mr. Stark.”

“That right?” the blond man behind the desk asked, turning his gaze to Peter.  He pointed to Peter’s face and said, “What happened to you kid?”

“Nothing.  I need to see Mr. Stark.  I have information about Spider Man.”

“Spider Man?” the guy asked.  “That guy do this to your face?”  He pointed at Peter’s split lip and black eye again.

“No.  But I have to see Mr. Stark.”

“Right, information about Spider Man.”

Blond dude pulled out a pen and a piece of paper and then looked up at Peter.  “I’m listening kid.  Whatever info you have, I’ll write it down and pass it along.”

“That’s not gonna work,” Peter said, feeling desperate.  “I need to talk to Mr. Stark and only Mr. Stark.  It’s important.”

“Yeah, well that’s not how this works.  There’s channels to go through.  You tell me what info you have, and I’ll take down your name and number, and if Mr. Stark feels like he needs more information then he can decide if he wants to call you.”

Peter huffed a sigh in irritation.  “I already said, my name’s Peter Parker.”

The guy jotted his name down and then looked up at Peter again.  “And the rest?”

“I have to tell him in person.”

Blond guy looked up at the other three security guards still standing behind Peter and said, “If that’s all you’ve got then we’re done here.”

Someone took his arm from behind him and Peter panicked.  This was his one chance to get help from his father.  “He’s my dad!” Peter shouted, and the guard behind him let go of his arm.

One of the guards behind him began to chuckle, and Peter’s face turned red with anger.  Why did everyone always laugh at him?  “I’m not lying,” Peter said through gritted teeth. The blond guy behind the desk only gave Peter a hard look in return and then motioned with his fingers to the three guards behind him.

One of them grabbed his arm again and the chuckling guard said, “Yeah, and you’re his heir, right?  Come to collect on all the wealth that’s due to you?  Get real kid.”

Bile felt like it was rising up in Peter’s throat.  It burned along with Peter’s face.  His face had been red from anger, but now it was red with embarrassment and panic.  Pathetic.  They thought he was pathetic, and a liar.  It was nothing new, but it still stung.

Peter was ‘escorted’ out of the security office and back into the lobby and then out the front doors.

“You’re trespassed from the tower kid.  You walk through those doors again, we call the police.”

Peter stared at them, not knowing what to say or do.  He’d blown his one chance at getting himself before his father.

“Don’t make us call the cops,” another security officer said, giving him a stern look, and then closing the door and leaving him outside on the busy sidewalk.  Peter stared at his reflection in the dark glass.  The glass was whole, but what it reflected back at him was broken.  Broken, broken, broken.

* * *

It was a lie that Happy Hogan never smiled.  It was true that he rarely had an occasion to smile, but the rumors that he’d been given the name ‘Happy’ during his boxing days because he was perpetually unhappy were simply untrue.  Happy loved his job as head of security for Stark Industries.  He loved being able to travel the world, and the excitement that the last ten years of his life working alongside Iron Man had brought.  There were a dozen other security guards and ex-SHIELD agents after his job (he was the highest paid head of security anywhere), but he would never give it up.  There were downsides to his job too, like dealing with Tony’s bullshit, but he didn’t mind too much, despite that he liked to grumble about it a lot.  Tony was his boss, but also his friend.  Sometimes Tony was a really shitty boss, but the things Tony did as his friend always made up for it.  Happy always had a new car to drive for work and knew that if he asked Tony would let him drive a sports car instead of the black SUV he used to drive Tony around in.  Tony would do something like tell Happy to pick him up McDonalds, as if Happy were his personal assistant rather than his head of security, but then he also did things like sit at the side of Happy’s hospital bed for days after he’d been caught in an explosion during his off hours.

So while Happy rarely smiled, especially not when he was working, he was generally very happy over the course of any given day doing his job.  He was proud of the work he did and wouldn’t trade his job for anything.  Then there were days like today, when his nickname became painfully ironic.  Yesterday he and Tony had been in France, having coffee at a sidewalk cafe after a mission, and today he’d walked into Stark Tower ready to get back to his normal daily routine, only to find out that his security staff were all idiots.  As he had personally vetted all of them, that made him an idiot by extension.  Happy rubbed his forehead hard and said, “Run it by me again.”  It was too early to have this big of a headache.

“We had to escort two disgruntled ex-employees out of the building Monday,” Henderson said.  Henderson was in charge of tower security when Happy was out, and generally did a good job.  “Then there was a fight with Doctor Miles Warren.  He was fired Tuesday and had to be escorted out.  He made a scene all the way down through the tower and then out.  And then on Wednesday-”

Happy heaved an unhappy sigh.  “I meant the part about the kid.  Skip to Thursday.”  He was going to have to look at security footage of the incident with the fired doctor.  They had a protocol for firing employees and his team hadn’t followed it at all.  They were supposed to wait until the end of the day and catch whoever was being fired after they had left the building to let them know what was going on.  That way there would be no need to escort them out at all.  With as many employees as Stark Industries had working there at the tower people were hired and fired every day.  He’d have to go over their protocols with the team again, which he wasn’t pleased about.  First he needed to hear about the incident with the kid again though.

“So this kid comes in and wants to make an appointment to see Mr. Stark,” Henderson says.  “He’s all beat up… black eye, busted lip, bruises everywhere.  He tells us at first he’s got information about Spider Man, but then refuses to give us any information, and when we’re getting ready to escort him out, he shouts that Mr. Stark is his father.”

“And then?” Happy asked.

Henderson shuffled the incident reports in front of him, trying to straighten the stack of papers.  “We trespassed him.”

“What information did you get from him?”

“His name.  Peter Parker.”

“That’s it?  Someone comes in with information about Spider Man and you don’t get their number or anything else?”

Jensen huffed a laugh from beside him and Happy turned to give him an irritated look.  “Boss, he didn’t want to give us any information.”

“What did the police report say?”

Jensen and Henderson gave each other a sideways glance, and by the way they both shifted, like they were uncomfortable, Happy knew they hadn’t called the police.

“Are you kidding me with this?” Happy asked, hands on his hips.  “There’s an injured minor that comes in and you don’t call the police?  You know if anything happened to him while he was on the premises we’re responsible right?”  Never mind the fact that the kid had claimed to be Tony’s son and that he had information about Spider Man.  Either one of those claims was reason enough to get more information from him before trespassing him.  Even if the boy hadn’t been willing to give them any information, the police should have been called.  The boy would have had to cooperate with them, and then they could have obtained a police report with the information they needed.

“He wasn’t hurt that bad,” Henderson said.  “Looked like he got into a fight with another kid maybe.”

“Pull up the security feed.  I want to see it.  All of it,” Happy said.

Jensen began tapping away on one of the security tablets designed just for their team by Tony, and after a few moments had the security footage ready.  He passed the tablet across the table to Happy, who frowned down at the video.  His frown only deepened as the video went on.

“That looks like he was in more than just a fight with another kid,” he said.  “You could have talked to him a little and coaxed some information out of him.”  Instead his guys had laughed at the kid.  Happy rewound the footage and watched as the slight boy clenched and unclenched his fists at his sides and as his face turned red.

“Everyone’s going to get new training on how to deal with something like this if it happens again,” Happy said, pushing the tablet back across the table to Jensen.  “And don’t think I forgot that you didn’t follow the procedure for employees who have been fired either.”

“Yes boss,” Henderson said.  Happy pushed himself away from the table and left the security briefing room on the ground floor.  Having to go up to the penthouse to tell Tony about his team’s incompetence was a shitty way to start the week.  Happy grumbled to himself as he got into the elevator across the lobby and hit the button for the 80th story where his office was.  This elevator wouldn’t go any higher and he would have to take another elevator once he got up to the 80th floor.

He would like to just go to his office to catch up on everything that had been piling up, but it would have to wait until he spoke to Tony.  As soon as he stepped out of the elevator, he turned to the left and pressed his thumb to the fingerprint scanner on the wall at a second elevator and stepped inside.  Happy’s apartment was on the 81st floor along with one that Rhodey used to live in, and then everything above that was either used for Avengers business, like the med bay, or for Tony’s personal use.

It was only a minute before the elevator door opened on the 93rd story and Happy stepped out into the large penthouse.  Tony was in the kitchen making coffee and looking like he’d rather be back in bed.

“If you’re coming up here to bring me coffee and donuts, I’m giving you a raise,” Tony said, not looking at him.  Happy knew FRIDAY would have alerted Tony to his incoming arrival as soon as he passed the 92nd floor.

“No coffee,” Happy said.  Tony looked up from the coffee pot and took in Happy’s irritated expression.

“What’s that look for?” Tony asked.  “Did someone say something mean to you again?  Do I need to fire someone?”  He smirked at his own joke, but Happy didn’t find it funny.

“There were a few incidents while we were gone that you should be aware of.”

“I’m listening.  Just so you know, whatever it is that put that look on your face would have gone over better if you had brought coffee.”

Happy grumbled.  He hadn’t even had time to get himself a cup of coffee yet.  Tony remedied that a moment later by pushing the cup of coffee he’d just poured across the kitchen island to him.  “Come on, lay it on me.”

“Doctor Miles Warren made a scene after he was fired.  My team didn’t follow protocol.  I’m going to have them re-trained on that by the end of the week.”

“Warren, Warren…” Tony said, trailing off, trying to put a face to the name.  “That’s the cooky guy from the biochem department isn’t it?”

“That’s him.  Apparently he threatened to come back and rip the foundations of the tower out with his bare hands.”

Tony laughed and took a sip of his own coffee.  “Let him try.”

“And then there was an incident with a kid.”

Tony had turned his back and was rummaging around the fridge for something to eat.

“That it?  With the look on your face I thought you were gonna say someone died or something.  I would have been concerned except I know Pepper’s alive because she woke me up at seven texting me about the ten thousand things I’ve fallen behind on.”

“Actually, the incident with the kid is something you’re gonna wanna know about.”

Tony turned and gave Happy a brief glance to gauge the look on his face before turning back to the food he’d pulled out of the fridge for breakfast.  He didn’t say anything though so Happy plowed on.

“A teenager came in trying to get an appointment with you.  He made a scene when the front desk told him no.  He said he had information for you and only you about Spider Man.  He refused to contact SHIELD.”

“Spider Man?” Tony asked, turning with the leftovers he’d scraped into a bowl.  He must have ordered takeout the night before when they’d gotten back from France.  “The vigilante in Queens?  What kind of information?”

“We don’t know.  He refused to say unless he could talk to you directly.”

Tony frowned.  “I can’t imagine there’s any information I would need about him.  He’s into small-time stuff.  Bike robberies… helping little old ladies cross the street…” he trailed away.  “He’s barely even on SHIELD’s radar.”

“At first the security team thought Spider Man might have beaten the kid up because he was pretty bruised.  It looked like he’d taken a beating.  The kid said that wasn’t the case though.”

“Ok, so, I assume the kid was escorted out?  If he had important information he would have left it with the front desk or contacted SHIELD.”  It was clear from Tony’s tone that he didn’t understand why he was being bothered with this.  Happy’s team dealt with a dozen security risks a day, and Happy only brought the serious ones to Tony’s attention.  As much as Happy and his team and even FRIDAY did to keep the tower and the tower’s employees and residents safe, Iron Man was the ultimate deterrent for anyone causing real trouble.

“As they were trying to get him to leave the tower he shouted something else.  Unfortunately my team didn’t handle the situation well.  I’m going to ensure they get new training on handling this sort of thing as well.”

“Something else about Spider Man?” Tony asked.

“He said you were his father.”

Tony stopped what he was doing and looked up at Happy.  There had been a few claims over the years that Tony was the father of a child, but they’d always proved to be false.  A kid had never come directly to the tower claiming that though.  It was usually a lawyer representing one of Tony’s previous flings that delivered paperwork stating they wanted child support, and then always for a baby, never a teenager.

“They didn’t get any information from him other than his name,” Happy said.  Tony sighed and then shot Happy an irritated look for only a moment before he schooled his face blank.  “I take full responsibility boss,” Happy said.

“Stop.  I know for a fact your team is one of the best trained security teams in the US.  This is on them, not you.”

Happy kept his mouth shut despite that he disagreed.

“Relax,” Tony said, going back to his breakfast.  “It’s not my kid.  It never is.  Definitely have a talk with the guys about getting more information next time though, and about calling the police when a minor walks in with injuries.”

“On it boss.”

When Tony didn’t say anything else, Happy turned and went back to the elevator.  He knew Tony would be pulling up video footage of the incident as soon as he left.

After the elevator door closed and carried Happy down to a lower floor, Tony took his bowl of leftovers into his lab and had FRIDAY pull up the footage.  Claiming he was Tony’s kid was a wild thing to do, and Tony had a feeling the boy had only done it to gain an audience with him.  All it would take would be one DNA test to prove the kid was lying, which is why Tony was certain most scammers didn’t come calling claiming their kids belonged to Tony.  If the kid really was his, he was certain the kid’s mother would have contacted him when he was younger for child support.  That was all Tony was good for in most people’s eyes was his money.  It was rare that he found people that wanted to be around him just for him, and when he did he always ended up pushing them away.  Pushing people away was the one thing he was truly exceptional at.  He’d done it with the Avengers, he’d done it with Rhodey, he’d done it with Pepper, and he’d even done it to some extent with Happy.

He turned up the sound in the lab and listened as the teenage boy (damn, he really had been beaten to a pulp), tried to get an appointment with him at the front desk.  After he was denied he got angry and security swept in and pulled him into the security office.  FRIDAY switched videos to the lobby security office without him having to ask, and he watched as Peter Parker tried to convince security that he needed to see Tony and only Tony.  He held his breath when the boy proclaimed that Tony was his father.  There was a hint of desperation to his tone and it made Tony wary.  There was no way this was his kid, he told himself.  The kid was just saying whatever he could think of to get past security.

“FRIDAY, see what you can find out about Peter Parker.”

“Working,” the AI answered back.  He got up from the stool at his workbench and took his bowl back to the kitchen.  It would take FRIDAY some time to pull up public records.  Tony tried to forget about Peter Parker and his claim as he finished his first cup of coffee and poured himself a second one.  The kid had seemed desperate, and his first claim was that he had information about Spider Man.  Despite the kid’s assertion that Spider Man hadn’t beaten him up, Tony wondered about it.  Maybe Spider Man was the kid’s father, or another family member, and had hurt him.  That would be a great reason to out Spider Man’s identity.  If that was the case, why not just contact SHIELD then?

“I have information about Peter Parker,” FRIDAY announced.

Tony went back down the steps into his lab and pulled up the holo screen.  “Show me,” he said, and an image of the kid came up on screen.  It was definitely him, though he was a year, or maybe two years younger here.  His face wasn’t bruised, and while he looked sad, he didn’t look sullen like in the security footage Tony had watched.

“Peter Parker, age 14, ward of New York State.  Current Status: Missing.”

“Happy’s gonna love that,” Tony said.  They’d had this kid in custody and had let him go.  The file on screen showed that he’d been missing since the night before he’d shown up at the tower and had a run in with security.  That had been on Thursday and it was Monday now.

Tony tapped on the keyboard at his workstation and sent the file to Happy and then turned the holo off.  He had work to do.  He was certain Happy would include the file in whatever training he was going to do with his security team as a reason why they should have called the police or held the kid there since he was hurt at the very least.

Whatever information Peter Parker had for him about Spider Man, Tony would never know.  He tried to push the kid, his claims about being his son, and the spider vigilante of Queens from his mind as he showered and got ready for the day.  Pepper was in charge of his company, but since she’d left him and moved out of the penthouse six months before, she’d been pushing more and more work into his inbox and hounding him to take care of his responsibilities to the company.  That meant he had three meetings to attend that day with Research And Development, and a shareholders meeting.  His entire week was booked up with meetings and paperwork he needed to do.

Tony really wanted to forget about the boy covered in bruises.  He tried his hardest not to think of him as he sat through boring meetings and answered emails, and as he got to work on reviewing several big projects R and D had been working on that needed his approval before they went any further.  Peter Parker kept flitting through his mind though, like an inconvenient fly he might have to swat away from his face.  The information he’d refused to give to security and the front desk was a mystery. It was a puzzle Tony wouldn’t be able to solve.  He was a mechanic, and solving puzzles… working the problem until he had a working knowledge was what he did.  By the end of the day he’d come to the conclusion that there was no way he was going to be able to just forget about the kid and whatever information he had to share.  There was also no way he was going to be able to get that information when the kid was missing.

“FRIDAY, bring up the file on Parker again.”

FRIDAY made a noise to let him know she was working, and then the file flew up on his holo again.  There were pages and pages of hacked information FRIDAY had gotten from CPS computers.  Tony frowned as he flipped through them, eyes scanning over the information briefly before moving on as if there was some information there that could solve the puzzle.  He ended up closing the file a minute later without getting any real information from it.  What was he going to do?  Track the kid down?  He was listed as a runaway.  The city was huge and he could be anywhere.

“FRIDAY, bring up all the information SHIELD has about Spider Man.”

A new file opened up on the holo above his workstation.  It included links to several YouTube videos of the masked vigilante.  Tony clicked on one and watched as Spider Man stopped a speeding SUV from hitting a bus full of people with his bare hands.  He clicked on the next video and found Spider Man standing on the edge of a roof doing backflips for a group of school children below.

“Begin compiling all the data we have on him and then project incidents where he’s been spotted or involved onto a map of the city.  From that extrapolate the area he’s most likely to be found in and when.”

“Yes boss.”

A map of the city appeared on the holo and points began appearing on it around Queens as FRIDAY sifted through data from SHIELD, YouTube, and the internet.  The points in red showed police reports of where Spider Man had apprehended criminals.  There were blue points showing where videos had been taken of him, and green points where people had reported seeing him, but there had been no videos or evidence.  While there were a few points in Manhattan, Brooklyn, and the Bronx, the majority of the spots FRIDAY added to the map were around Queens.  There were over two dozen points tightly centered around a small area.

“What’s there?” Tony asked, motioning with his hands to zoom into the map at the cluster of red, blue and green points.  “What is that?”

“A bodega.  Delmar’s sandwich shop,” FRIDAY answered.  She was still adding points to the map, and as Tony watched, several more appeared around the bodega.  He had a feeling this was where FRIDAY would suggest he might find Spider Man despite that she hadn’t gotten through all the data points yet.

“From current data on the map, what time is Spider Man most likely to be found here around the bodega?”

“Between 4 pm and 1 am.”

Tony got up and left the program running as he headed to one of his suits.  It was seven PM now.  He’d never find Peter Parker to get whatever information the kid had wanted him to have about Spider Man.  There just wouldn’t be enough data for FRIDAY to extrapolate a time and location.  He would just have to find Spider Man then, and see what kind of information Spider Man would give up.  He didn’t need the kid when he could go straight to the vigilante.

As his suit closed up around him and he hit the button that opened up the side of his lab wall to let him fly out, his mind grumbled that he still wouldn’t be satisfied until he found the kid.  The kid wasn’t his son… but Tony couldn’t stop his mind from replaying the part of the video he’d seen that morning where he claimed he was.

* * *

Peter was starving.  He was certain he wasn’t literally starving, but it felt like he was.  All he’d had to eat since last Wednesday at school was one sandwich from Delmar’s that Mr. Delmar had given Spider Man on the house when he’d stopped a shoplifter, a burrito from a street vendor that a little old lady had bought him for returning her purse and stopping the purse snatcher that took it, and all the water he could drink from the water fountain at the public library.  A burrito, a sandwich, and water weren’t enough to keep him going for six whole days.  After four days the hunger pains had gone away, but the constant dizziness and nausea had not.

Spider Man sat on the roof of a building a few blocks from Delmar’s watching the streets below as the light faded.  He was wearing the spider suit, but there was no way he could help anyone in his current state. He could barely stand up, let alone swing through the city or fight bad guys.  Still, it was better to wear his spider suit and be Spider Man than to be without it and be just Peter.  Peter would get mugged or killed while he slept, but people would leave Spider Man alone.

He closed his eyes and let his head fall back a little.  He was going to have to figure something else out.  He really didn’t want to call his caseworker and end up in a lock-in group home. It would be the end of Spider Man until he turned 18, but he felt like it would also be the end of Peter.  He’d encountered a lot of foster kids since going into the system.  Sometimes they were in homes he was in, and a few he’d met at the Child Protective Services office during the many times he’d been there.  Most of them had been in group homes at one point or another, and many had been in lock-in homes.  Peter had been in a regular group home for several weeks and it had been awful.  It was noisy, there was no privacy, and some of the other kids stole what little he had.  A group home he could deal with, but not a lock-in home.  The lock-in homes were for kids prone to running away, or who had criminal records.  From the stories Peter had heard from other kids, they were dangerous places to be.  A lot of kids got assaulted inside, and because they were locked-in all the time aside from going out for school, court, or to go to places like the doctor, there really was no way out. It was like prison, or one step away from it.  No thank you. Peter would take his chances out on the streets.

He had to admit though, that his short time on the streets really hadn’t been working out for him. He’d hoped the people he saved would be more generous than they had been, but found there was no way he could survive on that scant amount of food.  He’d had trouble after being bitten just living on three meals a day. He was always hungry.  Then he’d ended up at Ted’s and found out what it was like to live on one meal a day, and had learned that his powers wouldn’t heal him with that small amount of food.  Now he didn’t even have that.  He was stupid and should have kept his mouth shut with Ted.  If he had been able to stay at Ted’s he could have at least continued going to school to get his one free meal a day there.  Now that he was on the run he didn’t even have that.

Life fucking sucked sometimes.  Peter had known that for a while, but every time he thought that about his own circumstances, he found that life could get worse.

“Napping on the job Spider Man?”

Peter frowned beneath his homemade mask and pulled his head up.  He must have fallen asleep… or must still be asleep, because there hovering in front of him was Iron Man.  Some of his senses had been coming and going in the past few days and Peter had decided it must be due to lack of food.  Sometimes his vision went blurry, or his sense of smell dimmed as though he was stuffed up.  Tonight it had been his hearing. He could still hear, but things weren’t as sharp as they normally were for him.  Either he had fallen asleep, or his hearing had fuzzed out for a minute, because he hadn’t heard the soft whir of Iron Man’s thrusters as he approached the roof.

“No?  Not sleeping?” Iron Man asked, landing with a clunk on the roof next to him.

“What?” Peter asked.  He felt like Iron Man must have said something before this, but if he had, he couldn’t remember what.

“Nevermind,” Iron Man said. He looked around for a moment and then said, “So I’ve got this problem, and you seem to be at the center of it.  A puzzle has fallen into my lap and I don’t have all the pieces to put it together.”

Peter pushed himself up slowly. He still ached everywhere from the last beating he’d taken from Ted.  That jerk.  It was a really shitty way to send Peter off, especially given he had no food so his body couldn’t really heal.  Once he was standing he faced Iron Man and his heart skipped a beat, and then another.  He didn’t think he was dreaming.  In fact, it was like he was just waking up for the first time in several days from the nightmare he’d been thrust into.  His father was standing in front of him.

“What puzzle?” Peter asked.  He was so dizzy all his effort was just going into staying upright.

“Someone came to see me the other day.  He said he had information about Spider Man that he would only share with me, not SHIELD.  Maybe you know him?  His name is Parker.”

His heart skipped a beat again, and then fluttered.  It felt like it was rolling over in his chest, though he knew such a thing wasn't possible.  Then again, radioactive spiders weren’t possible either, yet here he was.

Peter did something he never thought he would do. He reached up to his homemade mask and pulled it forward, revealing his bruised face and messy hair. He'd thought, after he’d first been bitten, that if May or Ben were still alive he would have told them.  They weren’t though, and Peter hadn’t had any friends or family, or anyone he’d grown close to at all since then.  This was his father before him though.  He hadn’t gotten to tell him who he was when he’d gone to Stark Tower, but for some reason fate, which was usually unkind to him, had decided to give him a second chance. He wasn’t going to waste it.  “I’m Peter,” he said.

The metal clad Avenger just stared at him for long moments.  Then his metal faceplate flipped up and revealed the man behind the mask.  There was something in his eyes… excitement maybe, though Peter couldn’t tell. The man’s expression was quickly schooled blank again.  Maybe Peter had imagined it.

“Of course you are,” Tony said.  He took in Peter’s bruises for a moment and then said, “What did you come to tell me at the tower?  Run into a big bad you needed help with?”

“I needed to talk to you.  I didn’t think they’d let me in unless it was for Avenger business.”

“So that’s a no then?  Did you come because you’re in dire need of a suit upgrade?”  Tony’s eyes swept over Peter’s dirty homemade suit.  It was singed in one spot and ripped in several places. He seemed to think what he’d said was funny, but Peter was too dizzy and too hungry to think anything could be funny.  It was bizarre standing here on a roof in front of his father… in front of Iron Man.  He’d told himself days ago that he’d figure out what to say when he met him.  Maybe that had been a bad plan, because here he was in front of him and he couldn’t think of anything to say at all.

“I need your help,” Peter said, and Tony’s eyes came up to meet his again.

“All right, what do you want?”  Tony seemed wary, but masked it, face blank.

“I want you to get me the hell out of here.”

Tony frowned and opened his mouth to speak, but Peter cut him off, taking a step towards him. He noted that Iron Man’s gauntlet came up a bit, as though he expected to be attacked.  “I’m your son,” Peter said.  “I’ve got no one else.  I’ve been living in an alley for the past week.”  Well, it hadn’t been a full week yet, but it felt to Peter as though it had been a month.

“You said that at the tower too,” Tony said, voice quiet.

“Because it’s true.”

Tony only stared at him.  The man’s eyes flickered up to his hair, then to his face.  Peter thought maybe he was trying to find similarities… to look in a mirror and find his own reflection.  The only thing Peter could reflect was bruises and exhaustion.  Broken he thought again, because that’s what he’d thought when he’d seen his reflection in the doors of Stark Tower.

“You don’t want to take me in,” Peter said, gritting his teeth when Tony still hadn’t said anything in the tense moments that stretched out between them.  “Fine.  Give me some cash so I can at least eat something.”

His father flinched.  Peter was sure he’d seen it.  He looked for a moment like he’d been struck.  Peter didn’t know why he looked like that and was too angry to care.  His fists balled and unballed at his sides.  “Fifty bucks,” he said.  You’re not worth two hundred bucks.  He hoped he was worth fifty.  It wasn’t enough, but he was too hungry to try to bargain for much more.  If he didn’t get something to eat soon he was going to pass out.  He’d just lie there on the roof and waste away and that would be the end of Peter.  It would be the end of Spider Man too.

“Ten,” Peter begged, anger ebbing away.  I guess I’m not worth fifty dollars either.  “Ten bucks.  I need to eat.”  Suddenly the hunger pains that he hadn’t had in the last few days came rushing back.  His stomach was a gaping empty pit.  Darkness edged in on his vision as he looked back up to his father’s face.  He didn’t look like he’d been struck anymore.  All Peter found in his expression was pity.  Damn it.  Surprise filtered across his father’s face too, but Peter wasn’t sure why.  He wasn’t sure why Iron Man was tilting sideways either.  Was he flying off?  He was reaching forward, but Peter never found out why, because the darkness had covered his eyes.  He was no longer aware of the world around him, or that he had hit the roof, and lay there unmoving.

“Shit!” Tony knelt down in his suit and said, “FRIDAY?”

“Spider Man has passed out.  His heartbeat is erratic… he’s experiencing heart palpitations.  He is breathing, but his vitals are erratic.”

Tony sighed heavily.  “Other injuries?”

“No major internal injuries detected.  A full examination should be done to determine minor injuries.”

Tony looked down at the kid.  His hair was dirty and tangled, and his face and neck were covered in bruises, just like they had been in the security footage from last Thursday.  Even his lip still looked split, as though it hadn’t been able to heal at all.

He flipped his faceplate down and then scooped the kid- Peter- Spider Man up into his arms and stood up, the suit doing all the work of carrying him for him.  “Notify the med bay that I’m bringing someone in.”

FRIDAY chirped to let him know she was doing what he’d asked.  He glanced down at the kid’s face again, trying to figure out if he looked like him at all, but then took off back towards Manhattan and the tower.

Tony was alone. He spent his days alone in the tower.  He spent his time alone on vacations.  Even in a room full of SHIELD agents, Avengers, or employees at the tower, he was alone.  He was a master of pushing people away from him, and as a result people often kept their distance.  The ones that didn’t, like Pepper or Rhody, got tired of him eventually and removed themselves from his life.  So when the kid had claimed yet again there on the roof that he was Tony’s son, a spark of excitement had come over him.  A son would mean he wasn’t alone anymore.  Then the kid had demanded money and that spark had gone out of him.  The only thing people wanted from him was money.  Money for charity, or their business start up, or for kids that weren’t actually his.  This kid was no different.  He’d only said he was Tony’s son for money.

Tony flew right into the med bay high up in the tower. There were only two places in the tower that he could fly directly into. One was his lab in the penthouse and the other was the med bay.  The night shift doctor was waiting for him, and as soon as Tony landed, the doctor pointed at a hospital bed. Tony walked forward and set the limp form of Spider Man down.

“What are his injuries?” the doctor asked.

“I don’t know.  We were talking and he passed out.”

Tony watched as the doctor hooked the kid’s body up to a heart monitor and then took his blood pressure.  He collected several phials of blood and then put them into one of the machines R and D had developed for hospitals but that hadn’t been rolled out yet.  It would run tests on the blood and spit out lab results in minutes rather than hours.  The med bay and several SHIELD facilities were equipped with this and other equipment Stark Industries had invented.

“With blood sugar this low I’m surprised he was awake at all when you found him,” the doctor said.

Tony looked over at him.  “What does that mean?”

“I don’t know if he just has ultra fast metabolism like some other meta-humans, or if he hasn’t eaten in days.”  He moved to put an IV into the kid’s arm and then hung up a bag with some sort of solution.  “He has to be a meta-human. A regular person would be dead already with blood sugar this low.  I’m giving him something to bring his levels up fast.”

"Give me some cash so I can at least eat something." The kid had said that, hadn’t he?  Then when Tony hadn’t agreed to pay him $50 to stay quiet and go away, he’d begged for $10.  What had seemed like a demand to pay up or else be blackmailed on the roof, now seemed like desperation to eat.  The kid had been starving to death.  He’d said he was all alone too hadn’t he?  He’d come to Tony at the tower for help and been turned away.  He’d claimed he was his son.  The kid probably believed it was true.  His mother had probably told him he was Tony’s son, but Tony really didn’t think he could be.  There was just no way that someone would keep that from him when he could provide a sizable child support check every month.  But still… a son.  A kid that might be his.  He had to know for certain. 

“Doc, I want you to do another test.”

The man snorted.  “I’m running all sorts of tests.”

“I want a DNA test.  A paternity test,” he clarified.

“Fine, that’s easy enough.  Who’s sample are we comparing it to?”

“Just take his DNA and let FRIDAY catalog the results,” Tony said.

The Dr. hummed in an irritated way but moved to get a sample kit so he could get a cheek swab.  Part of working in the tower med bay was following orders and not asking too many questions. This doctor was one of Tony’s favorites because he didn’t get on to Tony when he came in battered and bleeding after a mission.  He just did what needed to be done and minded his own business.

The doctor swabbed the inside of the kid’s mouth and cheeks and then moved off to put the swab in some sort of solution and then into another scanner.

“Let it run for a few minutes,” he said.  He came back to the table and began removing the kid’s awful suit.  When the shirt was off it revealed mottled bruising across his chest and stomach.

Tony frowned and wanted to look away but couldn’t tear his eyes away from the injuries.  He’d known the kid couldn’t just be bruised on his face, but this was worse than he’d been expecting. Spider Man couldn’t have gone after the kid, because the kid was Spider Man. He must have tried to take on a criminal bigger than he could handle and had his butt handed to him in a to-go bag.

After poking and prodding his chest and torso for several minutes the doctor said, “He doesn’t seem to have any broken bones.  No internal bleeding either.  These bruises are going to take some time to heal though.”

“Is that DNA test done yet?”

“FRIDAY?” the doctor asked. The med bay doctors had limited access to FRIDAY, mostly for research purposes or to keep track of patient vitals.

“DNA test is complete.”

“Who are we comparing the results to?” the doctor asked again, not looking up from Spider Man’s battered body.  He was cleaning several cuts up.

Tony didn’t answer and instead walked out of the main med bay room and into the hallway.  When the glass door had closed behind him, he turned and looked back through the glass wall at the doctor and kid.

“Privacy screen up FRIDAY,” he said.  A gentle buzzing filled the air and with a look up and down the hallway to be certain he was alone, Tony said, “Compare Peter Parker’s DNA to mine.”

FRIDAY chirped to let him know she was working, and then almost immediately said, “Comparison complete.”

“Well?” he snapped.  “What are the results?”

“DNA is a 99.9% match.  Peter Parker is your son.”

Excitement and fear flooded him simultaneously.  His chest clenched as his eyes flickered back up to the glass wall and fell on the battered body of not just a kid, but his kid.

He took several deep breaths, unable to rip his eyes away from the unconscious form of his son and the doctor working silently over him.  I have a son.  I have a son.  I have a son.  He had a son that had asked for his help specifically, not for money at first, but for a place to live.  That must mean that he really had nobody else.  A son that wanted to live with him?  That spark of excitement from earlier in the evening came back to him then, because it meant he wouldn’t be alone anymore.  It was followed directly by wariness, because the reality was he’d chase this kid away eventually.  It might take months, or a year, or maybe just days.  It was an inevitability that any kid he had would end up hating him just like Tony had hated Howard.

Howard had been cruel though.  He’d used his fists when he was angry.  He’d put Tony   down at every turn, and never missed a chance to express his disappointment in him.  Usually when Tony pushed people away it was for other reasons.  He would never hurt someone he loved physically or put them down like Howard had done to him.  What the hell did he know about raising a kid?  Nothing.  But he did know how he wouldn’t raise one.  Everything Howard had ever said or done was on Tony’s list of ‘never gonna happen’.

He took a steadying breath and pushed the door back open, breaking the privacy barrier and causing it to drop.  The doctor looked up at him as he came back in.

“Almost done here.  His blood sugar’s already coming back up.”

“That’s- that’s good,” Tony said.  His voice was small… not the confidence he usually projected when he walked into a room.  The doctor noticed.

“Find out what you wanted to know?”

Tony nodded, not lifting his eyes away from the kid… away from Peter.  Holy shit… my son is a fucking meta-human?  He’s Spider Man?

“Are we sure he’s a meta-human?” Tony asked.

The doctor nodded.  “While you were in the hall FRIDAY has been listing some interesting results from the blood I drew.  His blood is definitely not normal.  Where’d you find him?”

“On a roof.”  On a roof, ready to die, instead of in the lobby of the tower.  Peter had come to him for help, and had been turned away immediately.  How many times had this happened before?  Was this Peter’s first time coming to him?  Had other kids come to him and been turned away?  The security team needed more than re-training, they needed to be fired.

“Based on the lab results so far, I’d say he has super metabolism like Captain America.  There’s a potential he has the ability to heal himself if he gets enough to eat.  That’s what we typically see with others who have super metabolism.  I have no idea how many calories a day he would need for that, but it’s more than what he’s been getting. Based on how skinny he is, it’s more than he’s been getting for a long time.”

“That’s going to change,” Tony said.

“He’s small.  My guess is 13.”

“14,” Tony corrected him. Suddenly he wished he’d taken more time that evening to read through Peter’s file.

“You know him?” the doctor asked.  He could tell he was prying for information.

“This falls under doctor patient confidentiality,” Tony said.  “And if not, every NDA you’ve signed.  The information doesn’t leave this room until I say it does.”

The doctor met his eyes, held his gaze and nodded.

Tony let out a sigh and ignored the anxiety gripping his chest long enough to say, “He’s my son.”

The doctor looked at Tony, and then back down at the kid.

“Congratulations Mr. Stark. It’s a boy.”

The cover art for this story was a commission done by the highly talented RJTomlinson25!

A/N: I'll be posting a new chapter every week on Wednesdays (United States time).  Most of the chapters are very long (more like 2 chapters in one), so I think one chapter per week is a good pace. 

I've been working on this fic for months and am so excited to finally start posting it up!  I really wanted to write a dark-ish Peter fic so here we are.

Please comment to let me know what you thought, or drop a kudos if you like it :p  I really enjoy hearing what everyone thinks, good or bad.  Also, lemme know what you think of the art.  I'll pass the art comments along to the talented RJ who made the art piece for this fic!