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To Underoos and Microsoft, my first gift to you is a way to talk to each other. These are secure email addresses. Both of you have changed my life in some of the best ways. I don’t expect you to be as close as me and Rhodey, but play nice with each other.
“Hi, I’m Peter.”
“Harley.”
“How did you meet him?”
“He broke into my garage. You?”
“I met him at the Expo. You know, the one Vanko ruined? He never knew that was me. Officially, I’m his personal intern at SI after I won a scholarship.”
“Cool.”
I also have college letters for both of you, in the event that you choose to go. One for Abbie too. (Please don't go to Caltech.)
School had expectations. The team had expectations. May had expectations. The world had expectations, both in and out of the suit.
One of the only people who just allowed him to be was Tony.
Tony was gone now.
Peter. You’re getting a share of the company, and the lab we worked in together is yours. Mongoose sees you as a big brother, and that role is yours for the taking. You wouldn’t deprive May of the chance to spoil a little niece, would you?
The snap, to Peter, traded one brilliant Stark for another. Not quite 6-year-old Morgan was full of questions. Peter loved everything about her.
“You didn’t come back until after Daddy went away, Petey. Where were you?”
“Um, space.”
“What’s space like?” She leaned forward excitedly.
“I don’t remember much other than the donut shaped spaceship. There were aliens though.”
“Do you think the aliens made you forget what space is like?”
Peter pretended to think for a second. “It’s possible.”
“That just means we have to build special space helmets! One for Nebby too, cause they might try and steal her computer chip brain.”
“Yeah, we can make sure Nebula gets one. Do you want her to be our space tour guide, or should we try and find all the cool stuff ourselves?”
Spiderman, the research notes and suit upgrades I had planned are now yours to modify and create at will. Karen would have been released from the Training Wheels protocol at this point, had your guy in the chair not taken them off early. You have access to the plans for the other Avenger’s tech and if you haven’t gotten the clearance yet, I’m giving you the workaround I’ve had for years. My R&D labs are yours as long as you play nice with the employees.
Beck ruined everything.
Well, Beck and Fury.
Spiderman wasn’t protected by the Accords, because as far as the world knew, he had only ever operated in New York and that one time in DC. (Germany didn’t count, because it was only the Avengers and the friends that they invited to that weird airport fight that saw him there.)
Fury either assumed he had signed them and didn’t bother to check, or he knew and didn’t care that he was breaking several international laws.
Peter and his class had just barely made it back to New York before the news broke.
J.J.Jameson had never painted him in a positive light, and knowing who was under the mask didn't do him any favors.
He was in the compound doing some work when Friday locked him in one of the labs. She brought up a TV screen and showed him the video that changed his life forever.
Tears burned behind his eyes. “Can you call Miss Pepper?”
“Of course, Peter.”
A dial tone, then Pepper spoke. “Peter?”
“Have you seen the news?” He hated how thick his voice was.
“Which news?”
“Everyone knows. I didn't even get to tell them.”
“Are you somewhere safe right now?”
“I have eyes on him, Miss Potts,” Friday interjected.
“Is there anyone else we need to account for on your List?” The List was all the people that Peter cared about most that could potentially be in danger. May and Ned’s civilian status put them at the top of it.
“MJ is high priority. She’s also met Happy.”
“That’s good. Call May, alright? She’s going to need to hear from you.”
“Yeah, that’s a good idea.”
Pepper disconnected the call, and Peter immediately called May.
He cried on the phone with her. May wasn’t one for empty promises, but her reassurances of “this will blow over and we can get back to a new normal” and “it’s gonna be alright” didn’t quite feel real to him.
She did have to get back to work. “I larb you.”
“Larb you too.”
Sarah Keener and May Parker, you will never have to work another day in your life if you choose not to, though I am sure this will not be the case. I am also naming you the holders of accounts for Abbie, Harley, and Peter until the age of 21. Keep taking care of people.
Looking through Tony’s files, he found information that Black Widow had left about a safe in the compound. ‘Add to it as needed. When you need to disappear.’
Peter found it, filled with passports and other documentation, and they were sorted by some sort of method he couldn't decipher at a glance.
Passing over a trio of what Peter thought were a set of siblings-their stack was labelled as ‘Smaller Agents’-he stared at his own image.
There were four different names he could choose from. Thomas Holland, Peter Anthony Potts-Rhodes, Andrew Tobias, and Richard Benjamin Reilly.
He brushed a hand over the driver’s license for Peter Potts-Rhodes and then picked up Richard Reilly instead.
He could go by Ben for a while.
Harley, I leave you the plans for mark iii and a secret mission, if you choose to accept it. The relevant files will be sent with an encrypted laptop. Wait until the hour of need approaches, and make sure you have someone film the inevitable first time you break a window or two.
It was early in the evening when he knocked at the door, backpack over one shoulder and duffel bag over another.
A tall girl with dark blonde hair opened it. “Are you Ben?”
“Yeah. I’m here to ask about the potato gun?”
She huffs a breath of laughter. “Dumb code. He’s in the garage, but said you could put your stuff in his room. C’mon.”
Peter followed her down the hall and dropped his duffel next to Harley’s desk. He took his backpack into the garage, along with two bowls of mac & cheese.
“Microsoft, I come with ominous tidings and pasta.” Peter attempted his deepest evil-villain voice and it was well off the mark.
“Ah yes, Underoos, our plans for world domination no longer have to be tabled.” The stick lighter in Harley’s hand clicked on as he donned a similar shitty villain voice.
He looked a lot like he did at Tony’s funeral, though instead of a suit Harley was in jeans and a paint-stained hoodie with knots in the drawstrings. It suited him just as well.
They talked about inconsequential things in between mouthfuls of pasta, starting with the not-SHIELD bits of Peter’s vacation and classes and inventions still in the ‘what if this was a thing’ phase.
Harley cleared his throat, “How long do you think you’ll be here?”
“I don’t know. Long enough that people have stopped actively doxxing Aunt May, at least.”
“People are doing that?” He sighs, then shakes his head in slightly exaggerated disappointment, “and I thought I already knew how close to literal garbage humanity could be.”
“Pepper and Happy said something about a counter statement and some more PR stuff that I only half-understood. I just hope that I can go home eventually.”
“At least you have priorities.”
“I would like to think I also have morals.”
“In your line of work, absolutely.” Peter rolled his eyes.
To my lovely wife, Virginia Potts, I leave my daughter, Dum-E, U, Friday, all my earthly possessions not already spoken for, my love, and my heart.
Thank you for everything, Pepper.
Their yawns caught up with them eventually, Peter’s usual energy drained from the hours of driving and the stress of everyone knowing.
With only a moment of awkwardness involved, Peter and Harley got into the bed.
“You can take off the watch, you know,” Harley mumbled.
“It’s sort of become the knife under my pillow. Turns into an iron gauntlet.”
“Have that many people tried to stab you in your sleep?”
“My prom date’s dad turned out to be the Vulture.” He still felt bad for Liz.
“That’s rough buddy.” A jaw cracking yawn. “Is this what girl sleepovers are like?”
“Dunno about girl ones, but I’ve had a few with Ned like this. Usually more legos though.” Peter’s thoughts started to slow down and shut his eyes.
“Nice.”
“‘Pologies if I turn into a squid, can’t thermoregulate well ‘nymore.”
If Harley said anything in response, Peter didn’t hear it.
Money will be set aside to continue to assist in the repairing of damages to civilian residences and civilian-owned properties caused by Avenger’s Level Threats. I was once told ‘You can’t be a friendly-neighborhood Spiderman if there’s no neighborhood.’ The Avenger’s can’t keep home safe if home doesn’t exist.
There was so much blood. It wasn’t blood, it was dust. It was Uncle Ben’s heartbeat fading under his hands, it was the hum of the power stone, it was the whine of drones.
It was Tony, begging. He clung to Peter and there was blood and dust and the ever present screaming of his senses about a danger he couldn't see. Tony vanished in front of him.
Peter was falling from the sky, diving after a tiny Morgan. A child-sized war machine suit closed around her but she was falling at such a velocity she crashed through a building before she hit the ground.
Mysterio held MJ aloft by the throat, but Peter could only stare in horror from where he was pinned under a building, unable to get up.
Orange light. The crushing weight of grief.
The sound of metal shifting around his arm and the whir of the arc reactor in his palm beneath a clenched fist.
An unfamiliar body pressed against his back, their hand over his heart. His name, being repeated.
“-ter. It’s alright. It’s alright Peter. You’re at Harley’s house.” Harley?
When had he shut his eyes?
He opened them to see the gauntlet around his left arm. Blue glow spilled between his fingers and dimly lit the room.
Peter brushed his thumb across the mechanism and seconds later an expensive, but otherwise normal looking wristwatch blinked the time back at him. The time was somewhere between late and early.
“Peter?”
“Yeah?”
“You’re shaking.” Was he? Harley pulled him close enough to rest his chin on Peter’s head.
Peter focused on taking deep, measured breaths.
“That was a lot,” he muttered.
“Think you’ll be able to get back to sleep?”
Peter shook his head minutely.
“Okay. I’m just gonna hold you for a while, if that’s alright.”
The last thing I’ll leave here is a message to my daughter, Morgan Stark.
If you’re listening to this, I’ve gone somewhere I don’t want you to go for a very long time. You’d better at least make it to 45 before you join me, kid.
Learn things. Make mistakes. Hell, make some of the same ones that I did, as long as you’re prepared to deal with the consequences. Stark Men might be made of iron, but you’ve got the potential to be something far better than that. Maybe you’ll be made of Vibranium, Mongoose.
I love you 3000,
Dad.