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Peter Parker is 10 when he's adopted by the Avengers as part of this huge publicity stunt that's meant to make the Avengers look more human. When he thinks about it, that's probably at least part of the reason why he's a freak, but he can't really blame his superhero family for everything that's wrong with him considering they haven't always been his family.

He still blames them for everything that's wrong with him, though, because Peter doesn't really have the heart to blame Aunt May and Uncle Ben for anything. They were sweet and they tried their hardest to raise him right, but Peter's always had a penchant for trouble. He knows, logically, that he shouldn't go poking his nose in places it doesn't belong, but he always ends up poking his nose in places it doesn't belong somehow and that's the real reason why he blames his family for everything that's wrong in his life.

They could have adopted a cute baby or an adorable child that said the darndest things, but nope. They chose to adopt Peter, freshly re-orphaned and a little angry at the entire world.

He knows the real story of why they adopted him—even if that doesn't help him accept his new life—because he's old enough to understand what's going on the second time. He knows that Uncle Ben had listed Uncle Bruce as legal guardian in case of emergency, because Uncle Bruce had been good friends with his father and Peter doesn't really have blood relatives outside of Aunt May and Uncle Ben. He remembers Uncle Bruce being around in his life, dropping by the house to bring him a present on his birthday or Christmas. Uncle Bruce is the only one who talks to Peter about his dad, and so when Aunt May and Uncle Ben both died in the car crash, Peter mostly knows what's likely to happen to him.

The big thing that Peter doesn't know is that Uncle Bruce is also the Hulk and has been for a couple of years. Peter only has postcards from India about his travels that don't mention anything about him being the Hulk so, you know. The whole Avengers thing is a little startling, but Peter thinks he takes it surprisingly well when he finds out. Aside from the whole crying and refusing to speak to anyone for three weeks bit.

It takes him a while to adjust to the fact that where he once had a family of three-sometimes-four, he now has a family of six-sometimes-six-hundred. Peter is suddenly surrounded by people, all of whom are trying to help him adjust to his new life. Which kind of doesn't explain how Tony becomes "Dad" and Steve becomes "Pops." Peter really chalks that up to Steve and Tony being the people that spend the most time being invested in raising him properly (even though he's mostly already raised), because they don't really seem to have anything else to do with their spare time. Pops joins the PTA at Peter's school and sometimes picks him up or helps him with his history homework. Dad helps him with his math homework and teaches him terrible pranks Pops tells him that he should never use. Dad was (and still is) the single biggest PR disaster known to man, and Pepper thinks that maybe letting him hang out with a small child will be good for him.

At least that's what Pepper tells him when he turns thirteen and asks about it. Peter doesn't know if she's telling the truth, but he assumes she is because Pepper is too scary for him to think otherwise and Dad stopped being sympathetic to Peter about Pepper being scary a long time ago because quote "you just have to man up and deal with Pepper and let me tell you: she never stops being scary" unquote. Pops is a little more sympathetic, but Peter still feels bad that Pepper scares him more than all the supervillains he's ever seen combined.

The point isn't that Pepper is scary, though, the point is that Dad and Pops became Dad and Pops because they spend the most time with him. Pops is the kind of person that's great with kids and loves them and people go "you'll make a great dad someday," and Dad is kinda bad at being a parent, being that sometimes he's even less mature than Peter, but he tries. Peter spends a lot of time with him in his workshop learning stuff about how to build things that the world will call you a genius for.

When he's not spending time with Dad in the workshop, he tends to spend his time trying to teach Pops how to deal with the twentieth century or being babysat by one of the other Avengers. Uncle Clint teaches him how to shoot an arrow and Peter's never going to be as good as Uncle Clint, but he's pretty damn good—Aunt Natasha says so, and Peter knows for a fact that Aunt Natasha isn't afraid to tell him when he's awful at something. She had definitely told him that he sucked at lock picking when she first started teaching him and she had told him that he sucked at hand-to-hand combat when she first started teaching him and she had told him that he sucked at lying when he first started having to avoid inviting his legal guardians to school functions and basically Aunt Natasha told him he sucked a lot until he didn't suck anymore and then she just nodded and told him that he did well. Uncle Clint told him once that that was basically the highest compliment Aunt Natasha ever gave out, so Peter tries to take it for the huge honor it is.

Occasionally everyone else will be busy doing other things—Dad will have Important Corporate Meetings, Pops will have some public speaking engagement, Uncle Clint will be busy on a secret mission with Aunt Natasha and Agent Coulson—and Peter is left to hang out with Uncle Thor or Uncle Bruce after school. Uncle Thor is kind of tiresome sometimes, because he thinks everything about human culture is fascinating and also he has even less of a grasp on pop culture than Pops, but Peter likes hanging out with him because he's fun and he lets Peter eat pop-tarts for dinner if he wants to. He doesn't eat just pop-tarts for dinner anymore because it gives you a stomachache and no one should eat more than two pop-tarts at a time unless they're Uncle Thor.

Still, as much fun as Uncle Thor is? Peter likes hanging out with Uncle Bruce best. For the first couple of months after the Avengers adopted Peter, Uncle Bruce was hesitant around him because of the whole Hulk issue and Peter was all alone in the world without a single familiar face around him—just a lot of people who wanted to help but didn't know how. Gradually, Peter thinks that Uncle Bruce came to realize that nothing bad was likely to happen and starts letting Peter hang out in his labs when Dad is there. Eventually Peter starts wandering in without Dad, and Uncle Bruce lets him so Peter starts going to Uncle Bruce whenever he wants somewhere quiet—or he needs help with his science homework.

For all that people are afraid of Uncle Bruce becoming the Hulk and therefore becoming a monster, Peter isn't scared of him at all. He thinks that Uncle Bruce is still the same person that he was before—only now there's another side to him that's maybe not so great and maybe a little bit scary. Even so, Peter believes with an unfounded and probably misplaced certainty that Uncle Bruce would never hurt him. Besides, Uncle Bruce is the last familiar thing Peter has and he can't be afraid of that, no matter how much he should be.

Having superheroes as parental figures really isn't so bad. Peter figures out pretty quickly that they're just normal people and the people that seem the most normal are the ones that you should really be scared of. Agent Coulson and Pepper are the scariest people Peter has to deal with on a regular basis and they're not superpowered at all—just really badass.

"When the Avengers first became a team and we were trying to save the world from Uncle Thor's brother Loki," Uncle Clint tells Peter whenever he has the chance, "Phil tried to take on Loki by himself with an untested SHIELD weapon because he's just that badass. When you grow up be like Phil, Peter."

Peter's heard a similar story from multiple people, including Director Fury, so he believes that Agent Coulson is badass and he shouldn't mess with him. He's not as sure why Pepper is badass, but Dad just says that Pepper is scary and you should always listen to her because bad things happen when you don't and that's a fact of the universe. Peter thinks that people who can scare superheroes into submission are clearly people you should always listen to, and so he tries not to get on their bad side.

All in all, everything is pretty okay until just after Peter turns fifteen. Really. Sure, he's got a family made up of superheroes that go out and save the world on a regular basis, but Peter doesn't think anything about his life is really bad until The Accident.
(He always thinks of it with capital letters in his head, because it's not just the accident. It's The Accident, the single event that probably shaped his life more than anything else. The big turning point in his life. The moment he became a superpowered kid instead of a normal kid with superpowered parents.)

The thing that Peter's learned over the years is that superpowers are rarely gained intentionally. They're handed to you, or they're an accident, or you're born with them—but you don't ever get to chose your superpowers. Even Dad didn't get to chose his superpowers, in a way, because his superpowers were based on who he was and what he did. So, in a sense, Peter gets his powers the same way most superheroes get their powers: by accident.

Uncle Bruce drops the gamma rayed spider he's working with while Peter is in the lab and it bites Peter before Uncle Bruce can get it contained again. There's so much fear in Uncle Bruce's eyes when he sees the spider bite, and Peter isn't able to say anything. He doesn't feel any different either, but Uncle Bruce insists that they tell the rest of the Avengers what had happened.

"We can't hide this, Peter," Uncle Bruce says, gripping Peter by the shoulders and looking him straight in the eye, "It'll be fine if we tell them, but if we try to hide it then it'll be awful. Do you understand?"
"I don't feel any different," Peter says, frowning, "but if you think we should tell them, then we'll tell them."

The family meeting is awkward and tense. The whole house is tense for a week while Peter's new powers actually make themselves known, and Peter stays home from school while Dad and Uncle Bruce run tests. Peter wants to tell them that he's fine, but he really can't say that when he's just been bitten by a radioactive spider. Once they figure out that Peter probably has spider-based powers, though, everything becomes a lot simpler. Uncle Bruce is still pretty distraught over what happened, but Peter tells him it's fine. He's still alive and that's good. That's worth being happy about.

Peter's happier about that than his new powers, to be honest. His new powers means intensive training in how to use them, and intensive training is no fun. Especially when Uncle Clint and Aunt Natasha decide that they're going to take time off from being super-spies to supervise his training.

It isn't really any different from Uncle Clint teaching him archery or Aunt Natasha teaching him how to fight. During training, Peter discovers that the skills they've been teaching him all along help him figure out how to use his powers: Uncle Clint's archery lessons help inform his web-shooting skills, Aunt Natasha's lessons on subterfuge and how to hide on a ceiling if necessary help inform how he treats being able to stick to walls, Pops' lessons about knowing your own strength help him cope with his unwieldy superstrength, Dad's lectures about aerodynamics and his penchant for speed help when Peter finds out he has superspeed, Uncle Thor's ridiculous hand movements and learning how to duck them make getting used to perfect balance easy, and Uncle Bruce's constant reminders that Peter always needs to be alert and watch for danger make getting used to his spidey-sense simple.

Getting used to actually going out and fighting crime is a different problem entirely.

For starters, Peter still has a curfew and he's still expected to get good grades and "I need to go save the world so we can have class tomorrow" is apparently not an excuse that flies with most of his high school teachers even though it is, in all technicality, totally true. He only thinks about trying that once anyway, because he realizes that if they did believe him then it would be pretty easy to figure out that he's Spider-Man. So Peter spends a lot of time sitting out the exciting fights happening around New York and the rest of America because sometimes supervillains decide that cows are awesome and they decided to attack Kansas or someplace that isn't New York, but Peter's not allowed to go because he might not get back in time for school in the morning.

For the most part, Peter honestly doesn't even mind not being able to help defend New York. Years and years of living with superheroes don't make him that eager to fight crime, although he recognizes that it's his duty. Even if his duty mostly consists of wearing his supersuit under his clothes at all times and walking around with his mask shoved into his backpack so he can actually step in when something major happens in his vicinity. Being raised by Pops means that Peter has this need to help people in trouble—even if it's just kitties in trees or old ladies crossing the street—because it's like his Moral Duty. He spends a lot of time helping old ladies and saving cats if he's being honest, but then something big and terrible finally happens in New York in the middle of the day when it's not a school night.

Doctor Doom unleashes some kind of army of tentacle monsters on Manhattan and the Fantastic Four need the help of the Avengers because they apparently can't fight hundreds of tentacle monsters and Doctor Doom at the same time—who would have thought? So Pops is yelling "Avengers, assemble!" and Peter's pulling on his mask before anyone can stop him. Pops gives him a look, but eventually he sighs and gives up because it kind of sounds like the Fantastic Four need all the help they can get. It's Peter's first time out in a real fight, and Uncle Clint tells him, patting his shoulder, that all he needs to do is listen and everything will be fine.

It is. Peter just does what Uncle Clint tells him to do or what any of the other team members tell him to do when Uncle Clint's not telling him to do something, and he takes out a fair number of the tentacle monsters before Manhattan is safe again—although a small portion of it is decimated once again and Peter feels kind of guilty about that. It's really not his fault he got thrown through an office building, okay? Tentacle monsters are nasty little buggers, apparently, but on the whole Peter isn't too badly banged up and all that happens is that Agent Coulson writes him a PE excuse for the month because he's sore and it's just better not to exercise unnecessarily. Peter thinks about protesting, but getting thrown through a building hurts like a motherfucker and he is definitely not saying no to something that means less pain. Especially if Agent Coulson is recommending it, because Uncle Clint has always drilled it into his head that We Listen To Phil Because When We Don't, Bad Shit Happens.

Peter doesn't want bad shit to happen. Well, he's aware that the bad shit will happen whether he wants it to or not, but he'd rather bad shit he could have prevented not happen. That's the better way to put it.

Barring the occasional supervillain disaster, Peter spends most of high school working hard to get into college. Dad wants him to get into MIT because of legacy bullshit, and paying for it is literally of no consequence at all, so Peter can go anywhere he wants. He almost picks a tiny liberal arts college in bumfuck nowhere to drive his parents insane, but he knows that image is at least a little important to Dad and he knows that Pops is just happy he's going to college at all—as is most of his family. He doesn't even really know what he wants to do, but he gets an internship at the Daily Bugle to round out his hectic life when he's sixteen and suddenly Peter is in love.

Part of him knows that his family will love him no matter what and that he shouldn't be ashamed of loving something like this, but Peter doesn't let on that journalism is what he wants to do for a couple of months. He does, however, become a columnist at the Daily Bugle. It's not a very big column, just five-hundred words every Sunday that talk about what's up in superhero news. Sometimes he asks his family to contribute, asking them all to give an answer to one question, and sometimes he just talks about what it's like to be ordinary (hah!) in a family of extraordinary people. It's an extremely popular column, and he feels a little bad that it's going to have to stop when he goes off to college. Peter wants to go, though, and try to pretend and be normal for a while.

He wants to live somewhere where no one knows that Uncle Clint and Aunt Natasha are banned from every high school division archery competition forever because when Peter had joined the archery team Uncle Clint had come to all of his matches that he could. Peter liked that Uncle Clint and Aunt Natasha came when they could, because he liked knowing that they cared that much, but he really could have done without the way they heckled the other competitors. Agent Coulson had been very unhappy when they got kicked out of a competition because Uncle Clint kept insulting the other school's form and Aunt Natasha kept making snide remarks about their uniforms.
(To be fair, Peter really could have taken most of them on half-asleep and drinking coffee. They didn't have the benefit of Uncle Clint forcing them to do exactly that one a week until they could shoot an arrow on three hours of sleep with reasonable accuracy. Uncle Clint called it preparedness. Peter called it torture.)

There are dozens of things like that, and sometimes Peter is tired of being "the Avengers' kid" or "little orphan Avenger" or whatever else the media has decided he is. Sometimes Peter just wants to be the kind of kid that can go out with his friends and maybe try not to worry that the entire city might burn down or be invaded by aliens or something else. He just wants to have friends period, because truthfully? Peter doesn't have a lot of those that aren't superpowered too.

So, when Peter is finished looking at colleges and trying to decide where he wants to go, he decides that he wants to go to Harvard, which he figures is an Ivy League school Dad will be proud with that has a decent journalism school. It's also far enough away from home that his family might drop in unannounced (but probably won't) and large enough that Peter can pretend it's anonymous enough to keep him safe. A small part of him also thinks Dad will find it hilarious, because he's heard about the pranks Dad pulled at Harvard when he was at MIT, and that Dad might actually let him go because Peter could pull pranks on MIT and it would be beautiful. Or something.

He has to get in first though, so Peter applies to Harvard and Northwestern and NYU and some other places that he doesn't really want to go to but figures he'll get into if he's still breathing. His GPA is good and his extracurriculars are good (although he doesn't list "saved Manhattan from tentacle monsters HA TAKE THAT" among them), so he shouldn't worry about getting in. Still, Peter wants to get into his first-choice school and his counselor says Harvard is difficult to get into. If he doesn't get accepted to Harvard, Peter will probably end up at NYU, forced home every weekend and continually missing class because it's a Tuesday and Loki is bored.

(Whether going off to college is safe or not was a huge topic of discussion between Peter and his family. He keeps telling them that they've trained him well enough that it isn't likely to be a problem, but they worry. They always worry.)

When his acceptance letters come, Peter sets them aside. He gets into NYU but not Northwestern, and the only one of his top three choices that he's waiting for is Harvard. It comes about a week after the rest of the acceptance letters, and Peter is so afraid of opening it that he takes it to Pepper, who isn't afraid of anything, and asks her to open it for him. Pepper gives him the same long-suffering look that she often gives Dad, and opens the package for him but doesn't take the contents out. She just hands it back to him, and Peter takes it from her and breathes before he looks inside and sees that yeah. Yeah, he got into Harvard.

"I got in," he says, looking down at the paper in disbelief, "Pepper, I got into Harvard."
"Congrats, Peter. I'm sure your fathers will be very proud. Now will you please go tell everyone else so I can clean up your Dad's messes and run his company?"

Peter knows (and it's not his spidey-sense that tells him) that Pepper loves him very dearly but Dad left a huge mess and she doesn't want to deal with it so she's sighing a lot and Peter should really go. So he does, and he tells everyone that he encounters because he got into Harvard. They have a family dinner that night that isn't interrupted by something rampaging Manhattan for once, and when Pops asks where he's thinking about going, Peter just smiles.

"I really want to go to Harvard. NYU is too close, and you guys will bother me all the time if I go there."

It seems to be enough of an answer for his family, and then Peter is all set to go to Harvard. There's about a week where Peter is jittery with excitement and then Pops and Dad and the rest of the family have a Very Serious Conversation About Safety that seems to end in Pops deciding that Peter's probably a really big target if he goes to college under his own name and can't Tony do something to keep him safe. Somehow, and Peter really isn't that sure how, everyone comes to the consensus that Peter needs a pseudonym so no one knows he's at Harvard.

Personally, Peter thinks that's a really dumb idea, but it seems to be the only thing that is going to placate his family so Peter just sighs and accepts it. Apparently—and Peter really never wants to think about why this is a thing—SHIELD has a set of seven preconstructed identities for Peter to choose from. Agent Coulson lays them out on the table, seven different ID cards with seven different names all bearing the same picture that's unmistakably him, and Peter stares down at them. He picks one at random.

"Okay," Peter says when he's looking at the ID more closely, "I guess I'm going to spend the next four years being 'Eduardo Saverin.' I hope you know this is going to make keeping the friends I make in college really difficult and I kind of hate you guys."
"You'll thank us later," Agent Coulson shrugs, "Trust me."

He did, but he still kind of wished that getting ready for college didn't involve training sessions from Aunt Natasha on how to keep his story straight and always respond to the correct name and a lot of really illegal and probably insane hacking on Dad's part that Peter Did Not Want To Know About, No Really Dad I Will Call Pepper. When the five months before him going off to Harvard are over and he's being escorted there by Agent Coulson and Agent Hill (another very scary person with no superpowers that Peter tries not to piss off) because being escorted by Dad and Pops and the whole other entourage would have been really suspicious. It would also probably pretty dangerous because Loki is being bored and an asshole again so his family is otherwise preoccupied.

When he's dropped off and moved in, though, Agent Coulson clasps his shoulder and looks him straight in the eye. Peter tries not to apologize for things he hasn't even done wrong, but it's kind of hard.

"Okay, Eduardo," Agent Coulson says, "You have your cellphone and all your emergency contacts are programmed in. Your allowance is still deposited on the fifteenth of every month, and I will be monitoring your charges—so please don't do anything stupid. Please call or email us as frequently as you can, because you know how anxious the family gets. Do you have everything you need?"
"Yes, father," Peter says, "You can go now. I'll be fine."
"I'm sure you will, Eduardo. Do good, okay?"

Ruffling Peter's hair in a gesture that feels foreign and familiar at the same time, Agent Coulson smiles at him before leaving Peter in the land of Harvard all by himself. Peter waves as Agent Coulson leaves until he can barely see Agent Coulson at all, and then he takes a deep breath, settles into Eduardo Saverin, and starts his college experience.

It's easy to be Eduardo Saverin, because he's such a different person. Peter kind of likes being Eduardo Saverin, if he's telling the truth, because no one tries to blow Eduardo Saverin up. Eduardo Saverin doesn't have superhero family that still insisted you be home by curfew even though you were a superhero too. He could get drunk and make stupid choices! He could party all night and sleep with girls that hadn't slept with his father (although they might have wanted to)! He had friends that liked him as a person, not because he sometimes saved the world and had famous parents. Eduardo Saverin is not Peter Parker, because he's a relatively normal journalism student from Manhattan and he has never been any of the things Peter was—except maybe mad that the city needed to be constantly rebuilt. Peter figures that's a pretty universal feeling in New York.

Oh, and Eduardo Saverin is focused on his work and tries his hardest to be an awesome student. Dad taught Peter how to be charming and Peter probably would have picked up on it even if Dad hadn't explicitly taught him how to charm people into doing what you want them to, but for the most part Eduardo doesn't use that skill because he tends toward Pops' philosophy on treating people nicely. Sometimes, though, Peter just wants someone to lend him their notes or sleep with him—in some ways, Peter guesses that he probably turned out a little more like Dad than he'd like to admit. It makes college easier, though, and Peter may be from a rich family but he still wants to prove that he's at Harvard on his own fucking merit and make his family proud because he graduated from Harvard with all sorts of honors and shit.

So he works hard and spends a year being Eduardo Saverin, and never giving away the fact that he maybe isn't who he says he is. Then everything changes because Peter meets Mark Zuckerberg and Mark Zuckerberg tends to change things. He meets Mark at a party, because Mark is talking with someone about the Stark Tower and then Peter is butting in before he can stop himself because he worked on some of the latest improvements and the other guy is so wrong about some of the functionality and Peter is just really proud of his home, okay? It's really hard to listen to people trash it.

"No," Peter shakes his head, "You're wrong. Stark Tower is run on totally self-sufficient Arc Reactor technology and has been for about a decade. So the new lighting that we just installed is keyed in to that and is built to more closely mimic natural sunlight. It only comes on when ambient light drops below roughly a hundred lumens or it's voice activated though Jarvis."

Mark looks him up and down and raises an eyebrow. Peter thinks it's was weird and a little uncalled for until he realizes that he had kind of said we and that was probably going to be rather difficult to explain away. His brain starts whirring, putting all the good tips about lying that Dad had taught him over the years to good use, and Peter really just doesn't want to blow his cover.

"You helped install the lights?"
"Yeah," Peter smiles, the charming one that he learned from Dad, "Stark Industries likes to give opportunities to the young up and coming geniuses of America. A bunch of high school students interested in engineering and construction work were invited to come and help with the installation."

It's technically the truth, but Mark has a knowing look on his face. He probably recognizes the bullshit for what it is. Peter hopes he doesn't go digging around, because the lie is only good enough to hold up for this conversation.

"My name is Eduardo," Peter says, the year of practice being Eduardo paying off, "It's nice to meet you."
"Mark," Mark says, still a little skeptical.

Peter doesn't actually know why Mark becomes his friend, but Mark is pretty much the first friend Eduardo makes that doesn't fall for the easy charm that Dad's instilled in Peter. He feels a little like a dick for lying to Mark about who he is, only Peter is about 80% sure that Mark knows his super-secret superhero identity anyway. Besides, he figures that even if Mark isn't certain who Peter really is, this is all part of having a secret identity in the first place.

(Only he really has two secret identities because Pops had frowned a lot before Peter had debuted as a superhero and his mask was full-face. No one knows who Spider-Man is except the people who were already there when Peter became Spider-Man. He likes it better that way, to be honest.)

Being friends with Mark is how Peter accidentally makes friends of Dustin and Chris and Billy too. They're a lot more curious about Peter's backstory, and Eduardo Saverin is just a name with a very vague and limited backstory Peter is free to modify, so Peter ends up telling them all kind of things that are pulled from his actual experiences. Sometimes they have to be modified so that they aren't about superpowers and other things he isn't supposed to talk about, not really. He tells them about how he was one of the only kids in his family and he grew up with a lot of Uncles and Aunts that taught him everything he knows about the world. He tells them about the one time his Uncle got banned from his archery tournaments for being a heckler. He tells them about archery and how awesome he is at it. He tells them about what it's like to grow up in a city that's constantly being attacked by supervillains. He tells them a lot about the Avengers, trying to stick to stuff that's actually been published somewhere.

Still, Eduardo being a journalism major hailing from Manhattan tends to cover up the fact that Peter knows so much about the Avengers. He says he interviewed the Avengers on more than one occasion, which is true, and Mark never asks why a journalism major knows so much about engineering and programming and 40s slang and lockpicking and Norse mythology and circus culture and gamma rays. Peter suspects that his occasional, off-hand "I had a pretty strange childhood" comments cover that up anyway. Which, if Peter is really thinking about it, Aunt Natasha would be very mad at him for being so bad at keeping his cover. It's just that he isn't made for pulling a long haul like this, and he only knows about certain things. It's the Avengers fault that his skill set is oddly specific anyway, and Aunt Natasha—no matter how hard she tried—was never able to get him to lie as well as she wanted. Peter is passable at lying, but he isn't someone who lies easily and keeps track of them without losing track of them, so Peter tends to tell modified truths instead of flat-out lies. It's much easier to remember and keep up with for him.

All the different skills that Peter possesses, though, mean that a lot of the time Dustin and Chris and Billy pester him for help with their homework instead of asking him about himself. Peter likes that better, because he's good at helping with math and science and and sometimes English. It kind of depends on whether they need grammatical help or creative help, because Peter is fine at proofreading things but he isn't a creative writer beyond column-writing and he's not very much help when someone needs to write a short story or, god forbid, poetry. Nobody in his family was that big on literature aside from Agent Coulson, because Agent Coulson was a well-rounded person with diverse interests or something, and Peter's spent his life surrounded by too many scientists to be good at writing poetry. He read a lot of really boring books about science and journalism but not a lot of fiction is what that basically translates to.

So Peter helps Dustin with his science homework because Dustin is terrible at labs and would probably fail otherwise, helps Chris with some of his business homework because he's so used to hearing Pepper break down things into small words for Dad that occasionally Chris will say a word and Peter will actually know how to explain it, and helps Billy with his math homework because apparently not all programmers are good at math.

Mark never asks for Peter's help with anything, but Peter's programming skills turn out to be the thing that Mark ends up pestering Peter about. It's not like Peter knows a ton about it, and Mark is way better at programming than anyone Peter knows—maybe even his Dad. Mark tells Peter that Stark Industries offered to buy something that he programmed once, some dumb program that predicted people's taste in music, and Peter has to stop himself from saying anything about how he remembers that and he remembers how upset Dad had been that he couldn't just throw money at Mark and get what he wanted. Dad had been so upset that Pepper had needed to take his mind off it.

(Peter doesn't like to talk or think about Pepper in conjunction with his Dad unless he needs to, because when Pepper needs to take Dad's mind off something? It's serious and Peter doesn't really want to know anything about what Pepper and his dad do together, okay? He doesn't like to think about the way that Dad comes home with weird bruises and shit after Pepper takes his mind off a problem. Like, Peter is all for consenting freaky shit because Natasha gave him a lecture and that isn't really the problem. The problem is that he doesn't want to think about his Dad doing freaky shit with Pepper.)

He also remembers how mad Dad had been when Mark released the thing for free on the internet. Peter had played with it a little, and it was fucking fantastic. He really wasn't lying when he said so to Mark, who smiled almost imperceptibly and continued coding whatever it was he was working on.

That's pretty much how all of Peter's sophomore year in college goes, and then he's home for the summer and there's a week where the Green Goblin terrorizes New York because it's June or something, like Peter knows the reasons why supervillains do what they do, but otherwise everything is pretty uneventful on the supervillains front.

Mark asks Peter if Peter wants to hang out because apparently Mark's mom found out that he only lives in Manhattan and there's so much reconstruction going on that Mark's mom was wondering if Peter wanted to spend a week or so in their guest bedroom. He asks Agent Coulson and the rest of his family if he can go, since he probably won't be able to get back to Manhattan super quickly if he's not in the immediate area and they shrug and tell him that the city will be fine for a week.

Which is how Peter ends up being Mark's house-guest. He notes how Mark is different around his family, softer and less abrasive, and leans over Mark's shoulder while he codes. Sometimes he even has advice for Mark, and Mark's mother laughs at that.

"I suppose that's why he likes you," she tells Peter one day, "You actually understand all that computer mumbo-jumbo he loves so much while the rest of us kind of just nod and pretend."
"Only a little," Peter says, smiling, "It's just stuff I picked up here and there, I'm nowhere near as good at it as Mark is."
"Nobody's as good as Mark is," his mother says, words absolutely sure, "and I don't think he'd want them to be anyway. He just wants people to be honest like he is."

Peter thinks about her words, even when he's hugging Mark's family goodbye and saying that he'll try to visit again sometime, because sometimes he hates lying. He hates the fact that he has to be Eduardo Saverin, who can't shoot web from his wrists and can't save the world. He hates lying to all the people he meets as Eduardo Saverin, because as genuine as Peter is when he's being Eduardo Saverin? It's still a lie. He's still hiding a part of himself from them.

A small part of Peter wants to just tell Mark the truth, but he knows that would be a security risk he can't take—as much as it kills him to lie to Mark. Instead he exchanges the odd email with Mark for the rest of the summer and tries not to feel too guilty about lying through his teeth about who he is and what he does.

When he goes back to Harvard, he seeks out Mark because he can't just disappear off the face of the Earth. Besides, Peter doesn't want to lose what few friendships he has. Mark doesn't act like anything is different, and Peter is introduced to Erica about two weeks into the term. She dates Mark for about two months before they break it off in a spectacular fight because Erica doesn't understand that Mark wants and believes in honesty. Mark is angry after Erica, and Peter knows that sort of anger so he shows up to Mark's dorm unannounced at ass o'clock in the morning because he wants to make sure Mark's okay.

"I need you," Mark says.
"I'm here for you," Peter says, "what do you need?"
"I'm trying to figure out how to code something that will rank girls against each other. You're a math genius, do you know how to do it?"

He does, and Peter tries not to think too hard about why he does, because he tries not to think about a lot of the things that happened when he was fifteen. They're full of too many memories about being angry and a little frustrated with his powers and Dad trying to help the only way he knew how: by giving Peter puzzles to solve. He'd told Peter that he couldn't construct an algorithm to rank chess players and Peter had taken the bait. It takes him a moment to remember the algorithm because it's not like he uses it every day and it's been five years since he created it, but it's a hard thing to forget.

"Marker," Peter says, and Dustin presses a marker into Peter's palm, "Okay, so it's been a while since I used this algorithm, but it should be exactly what you want."

Writing the algorithm out onto the window of Mark's dorm, Peter knows that this is a monumentally stupid idea. He can hear the Pepper in his head saying I'm very disappointed in you, Peter. I thought you were better than your Dad. but he honestly doesn't care because Mark asked him to do something, and Peter can do it. Besides, Peter hasn't really done anything on the level of stupid Dad would be proud of yet in his college career, so he figures that this can be his first truly stupid stunt at Harvard.

Except for the time with the time at MIT that he clearly did not have any involvement in regardless of what his Dad thinks.

Mark copies the algorithm into his code when Peter's done and sitting on the bed next to Dustin with a red cup of unholy alcohol combination mixed by Chris (who had the knack for mixing alcohol in exactly the right amounts to make someone totally plastered) dangling from his fingertips. He sips at it while he watches Mark work, and somewhere around 2:30 in the morning, Mark finishes his website and send it out to a couple of people—who send it to their friends who send it to their friends who send it to their friends—until it's 4AM and Dustin is leaning against the doorway to Mark's room.

"We crashed the servers," he says proudly.

That's probably not something to be proud of, but Peter is proud of what they've created in the same way that Dustin and Mark are. Yeah, they'll probably all end up getting Academic probation or some other punishment, but it's kind of nice to revel in the fact that they managed to create something together that managed to bring down the Harvard servers. Mark smiles, and Peter smiles too, and they forget that there's real-world consequences to what they've managed to do.

Only when the disciplinary action comes down, they peg everything on Mark. Peter is furious, because Mark shouldn't have to go down alone, but Mark rolls his eyes at Peter and refuses to let Peter get dragged down with him because it was all his idea. Peter wants to yell about team and how it doesn't matter if it was all Mark's idea because he never could have gone through with it if Peter hadn't given him the algorithm, but Mark is nothing if not stubborn, and Peter can't convince him to give him some of the blame.

"Eduardo," Mark says finally, "just let me do this for you. You don't need this haunting you, but I'm good enough that the whole world would worry if I didn't do something stupid in my past when I make it big."
"I hate you," Peter huffs, "I seriously hate you."

He doesn't really mean it, though, and Mark must understand because he just smiles at Peter and challenges him to a round of Mario Kart. Peter loses, because for all Dad is about fast cars and speed? It doesn't translate well into video games, which Peter had never played with any regularity before he met Mark. The N64 and PS2 hooked up to the TV in Mark's suite are apparently the way that the four boys living there prefer to waste their time when they aren't absorbed in schoolwork and Peter is learning how to play Mario Kart but he still sucks at it—which amuses Dustin to no end.

"Dude," Dustin says, "You can manage to hit the dead center of the dartboard four times out of ten and you can't manage to run Rainbow Road without falling off at least once."
"This shit is hard," Peter grumbles, falling off again, "Seriously, this has nothing to do with accuracy or aim: this has to do with possessing magical skills that make you not veer off the edge of the road into the abyss."
"You just suck, Eduardo," Dustin bumps their shoulders together, "Face it."

And yeah, Peter basically does suck at Mario Kart but seriously whatever. He is awesome at other things and no one is good at everything. Not even Dad, who can't cook anything without adult supervision and is terrible at art and archery alike, or Pops, who isn't that great on the science front and also still doesn't get pop culture at all. Besides, getting better at Mario Kart is an excellent distraction from the fact that Mark has an AdBoard meeting in three days. It doesn't stop the meeting from happening, though.

Mark goes to his AdBoard meeting while Peter waits outside after his last class lets out and fiddles with the experimental music player Dad gave him for his last birthday. It seems to take forever, and Peter would be more worried about the fact that he's using prototype StarkTech where anyone could see if it weren't for the fact that Peter is pretty sure the model he's got just came out. His doesn't look quite normal, because whenever Dad makes him a prototype it's a little bit off from market standard, but Peter figures that's easily explained away by the fact that he tinkers with things.

Currently, Peter's trying to see if the rewrite of the file display system he loaded into the stupid thing last night works at all. It doesn't, if the way it's currently displaying a blue screen is any indication, and it's times like this that Peter is sort of glad he switched out the error message for something neutral instead of You're an idiot, Peter. Smiling to himself, Peter waits for Mark so he can help him figure out what the fuck went wrong. It's probably a skipped comma or something stupid, because that's the kind of thing that happens when the new function is something coded in twenty minutes, but the fact remains that he's completely busted this music player for the moment and if Dad knew he had a back-up iPod, he'd probably be a little furious.

It's kind of not Peter's fault that Apple has sexy product design and he also frequently busts his StarkTech by trying to upgrade it and failing—he's really not as good at programming as most of the people he knows, and sometimes he just does really stupid shit that takes a while to fix. He never uses the iPod unless he has to, but it's on and blaring music when Mark storms out of the building. Peter stands up.

"So?"
"Six months academic probation," Mark says and then pauses, pointing to the iPod in Peter's hands, "Is that an iPod? I didn't even know you owned anything that wasn't StarkTech."
"Back-up music player," Peter shrugs and tucks it into his pocket, "I broke my StarkTech one by trying to add a function and now it's blue-screening everywhere. You know it's not personal, right? They had to make an example out of you."

Mark makes a grabby motion with his fingers, and Peter hands over his broken StarkTech music player without asking what Mark wants. He watches Mark look it over instead, like he'll know how the code is written just by seeing the device.

"They had my blog," Mark grumbles, frowning at the device, "I shouldn't have written that thing about the farm animals, that was stupid. You shouldn't load shit onto this without running it by me first. That was also stupid. And I was kidding for gods sakes! Doesn't anybody have a sense of humor?"

Peter only barely stops himself from saying that even if the AdBoard didn't find it funny, Dad found it hilarious when Peter told him about it. He thinks that his Dad and Mark would get along really well, and he hopes that he can introduce them one day. That day is far into the future, though, and Peter tucks the thought into his pocket with his headphones. He's still Eduardo Saverin here, and that probably won't change any time soon.

Instead of trying to reassure Mark about the facesmash thing, Peter says: "Can you fix it?"

The withering glance Mark gives Peter tells him everything he needs to know about whether or not Mark can fix it. He wasn't really worried about it to begin with, because Mark is a savant of coding, but it never hurts to ask. Besides, it gets Mark to berate Peter the whole way back to Kirkland instead of trying to exact revenge against the AdBoard. Pops probably would have seen right through Peter's tactics and known he matched up loading an experimental feature onto his music to the date of Mark's AdBoard meeting to distract him. He's learned some more subtle skills from his family over the years, and taking care of people that can be destructive when left to their own devices is one of them.

"What were you even trying to do?" Mark says finally, once he's done berating Peter, "Because I seriously don't even understand how you broke it this badly."
"I was trying to get the file directory to display the option to sort by song length so that I could use the music I'm listening to like a timer," Peter shrugs, "It didn't seem like it would be this complicated."

He leaves out the part where he coded the function in twenty minutes last night and didn't bother to test it before he loaded it on. Mark doesn't need to know that, and he's absorbed in muttering to himself about how to fix Peter's faulty coding when they're walking up the stairs to Mark's suite together. He disappears into his room once they get in, and Peter would follow him but he knows that Mark's going to be absorbed in fixing the music player for at least twenty minutes. He sits down next to Dustin instead.

"Hey," Dustin says, not looking away from his game, "How'd it go?"
"He's on academic probation," Peter shrugs, "but sufficiently distracted by the disaster I turned my music player into for now, so he'll get over it."
Dustin glances over, "What did you do to it?"
Peter smiles, "I loaded a completely experimental feature onto it and now it's blue-screening."

Dustin snorts, because he knows that Peter may not be that great at programming but he would never do something like that unless it was on purpose. Peter just hopes that Mark never notices that sometimes Peter creates little diversions like that to distract him. He doubts Mark will, if Dad has never noticed the fact that Pops and Pepper have both been doing it for years.

Chris comes into the common room at some point and starts backseat gaming Dustin, which is mostly useless because Chris understands whatever complicated game Dustin is playing about as well as Peter does. Peter joins in after a while and eventually Mark emerges from his coding to toss Peter's music player back at him. It's fully functional again, and Peter smiles at Mark.

"Thanks," he says, "Come sit with us and talk about what Dustin should do next in this game Chris and I don't understand at all."
"Dude," Dustin rolls his eyes, "It's Duke Nukem. All you do is blow shit up."

Mark flops down on the couch next to Eduardo and is about to say something when there's a knock at the door. They all look toward it, because no one knocks on the door politely like that, and Chris gets up to open it. Really, Peter is half-expecting what happens next because he's always half-expecting Dad and Pops to show up and collect him for a world crisis. So, when they walk into Mark's suite, Peter kind of just sighs and resigns himself to fighting more giant tentacle monsters or the Green Goblin or the weather or whatever the fuck it is they need help on. He would be mad, but Dad and Pops wouldn't show up if it wasn't a really big deal because they save the world all the time without him. Peter likes saving the world—he really does!—so he tries to focus on that instead of being angry that his life is being ruined.

"Hey, Dad. Pops," Peter says, falsely cheerful, "What brings you to Harvard?"
"Peter," Pops says, all sad eyes and I'm really sorry expression, "I know we said that we’d leave you alone while you were away at college, but there’s An Issue."

The capital letters in An Issue are audible in the way that they always are with Pop. Peter's vaguely aware that Dustin and Chris are both staring at him in shock and that Mark seems about as indifferent as he ever is but he's looking at Peter a little questioningly. Peter sighs some more.

"Do I have to?"
"Peter," Pops says, stern and brooking no argument, "come with us."

If there was any hope of covering up the fact that Peter is (surprise!) not actually named Eduardo Saverin, that hope pretty much dies when Pops keeps calling him Peter instead of Eduardo. There's also the fact that Captain America and Tony Stark are standing in the common room, but Peter only thinks about that as an afterthought. Peter buries his face in his hands and tries to think about how, exactly, this could get any worse.

"Wait," Dustin gasps, "Peter? As in Peter Parker?"
"Yeah," Peter mumbles, "That's me."
"You weren't joking about the messed up childhood thing," Mark says, and then: "I knew. It's not ready, but take this."

Pressing something cool into the palm of Peter's hand and curling his fingers around it, Mark just looks at Peter like he's trying to remember his face in the event that Peter doesn't come back. Ignoring Dustin's hysterics, Peter uncurls his fingers and looks down at the object in his hand. It's a small red button in a metal casing about the size of a pack of gum. Peter frowns.

"What is it?"
Mark smiles, barely, "You'll know when you need it. Go save the world, Peter."

There are so many things that Peter wants to say to Mark, but he doesn't say any of them. Instead he curls his fingers around Mark's device and stands up. He grabs his messenger bag from where it's propped up against the couch and nods to Dad and Pops. They nod back, and then Peter is being escorted to the StarkJet and leaving Eduardo Saverin behind forever.

When they're on the StarkJet and up in the air, Pops hands Peter the debrief folder and he scans over it quickly. Apparently aliens are coming to attack the Earth of their own free will this time—not like the time Loki decided to call aliens from null space or something about a tesseract and shooting Uncle Bruce out of the SHIELD magic airfloaty ship and Agent Coulson trying to take on Loki all by himself and almost dying. Peter doesn't know, it's just the story of how his family became a family and he's heard it so many different ways from so many different people that it all comes out a little muddled when he tries to retell it himself. He wasn't there, and all he has is second-hand gossip.

The point is that SHIELD has called all the supers they have record of to come and fight off the impending alien invasion—which means Peter's whole extended extended extended family is going to be there and it'll be a blast. Except for how that means all of the X-Men will be there and the Fantastic Four will be there and apparently SHIELD is paranoid enough that they've resorted to calling in the Great Lakes Avengers, which.

Peter looks up at Dad, "Seriously? They're calling in the Great Lakes Avengers?"
"I'm pretty sure they're just calling them in because Squirrel Girl is on the Great Lakes X-Men and it would be kind of rude to only call her in."

It kind of makes sense, but Peter sort of thinks that the rest of the Great Lakes Avengers—who are apparently calling themselves the Great Lakes X-Men now because they received a cease and desist from the Maria Stark Foundation, something that was probably Dad's doing—aren't worth how awesome Squirrel Girl is. And Squirrel Girl is really fucking awesome, Peter knows, because she once took on Doctor Doom single-handedly and defeated him without breaking a sweat. She wanted to become Dad's sidekick, but Dad had said no because he worked alone. The rest of the Great Lakes X-Men, though, are . . . sub-par. Really sub-par. Even Professor Xavier thinks the Great Lakes X-Men suck, and Professor Xavier is all about all mutations being useful and shit, so Peter knows that he doesn't really need to feel that bad about ragging on them.

Pops gives him the look that says "play nice with the Great Lakes X-Men or I will be very disappointed with you," and Peter goes back to reading over his file more carefully. Apparently these aliens may or may not be after the tesseract that Loki had gone after before Peter was adopted by the Avengers, and Loki was even cooperating with SHIELD for the moment because these guys were bigger and badder than the things he called up and they were angry about not having the tesseract in their possession because apparently Loki was supposed to have given it to them and he didn't because the Avengers stopped him and so now these aliens (with what was probably super-advanced technology) were coming down to Earth to find it and kill everything in their path that stopped them. So, in essence, it sounds like Peter is going to spend his whole weekend fighting aliens and being covered in alien blood.

Sometimes, Peter thinks that saving the world kind of sucks. It's worth it at the end, sure, when the good guys have won and the Earth is safe from the assorted hazards that befall it for a week—maybe a month or two if everyone is lucky—and there's the promise of a bed and food and pancakes if everything is really utopian. Saving the world kind of sucks during all the other parts of the process, though, especially because there's people who hate that superheroes didn't save their mother or their sister or their pet Rover, because saving everyone is actually impossible and trying to save everyone generally means that you don't live to save anyone else. Still, everyone just assumes that when a superhero comes to save the day it means no one gets hurt and no one dies, but Peter knows that's not true.

He's seen his family come back from saving the world hollow and a little broken because someone died in their arms or they couldn't get somewhere in time. He's pulled people close and repeated the words that Agent Coulson taught him when he was really small, back when he didn't quite understand why he was all alone again: "You can't save everyone all the time. Almost everyone is as good as everyone, most of the time." He's been held close and had those words whispered into his ear, fierce and unapologetic.

Saving the world really sucks, when it comes down to it, and Peter is so not looking forward to the rest of the weekend. Twenty years old and Peter has saved the world more times than he can count on his fingers. He wishes he were happier about it.

When the StarkJet lands on top of SHIELD's airfloaty ship (it has a name, and people have been telling it to Peter since the first time they had to take him on the ship, but Peter mostly refuses to remember it on principle at this point), the rest of his family is there to greet him. Uncle Thor picks him up in a bone-crushing hug, because that's what Uncle Thor does, and Peter can hear his bones crack in mildly unpleasant ways that'll be fun to heal up. Uncle Bruce hugs him too, much softer and with less cracking bones, and Peter sighs into it. Aunt Natasha gives him a curt nod, and Uncle Clint ruffles his hair. It's the kind of homecoming he loves, but he seriously wishes it were for a different purpose.

Agent Coulson is waiting off to the side, and he clears his throat once they've finished their little family reunion and tells them that it's time for a full debrief with everyone. Those always suck, because not everyone wants to do what they need to do because they think they have a better plan, and Peter puts on his best fake-smile—Uncle Clint calls it the "Stark Schmoozer," and Peter is generally inclined to agree.

The meeting is exactly like every other large tactical meeting that Peter has sat in on, and Peter pays as much attention as he really needs to while Director Fury outlines their plan of attack and Loki schools them on the powers of these aliens. As much as Loki causes trouble, Peter thinks he might actually like it on Earth enough—or maybe he wants the honor of blowing it to smithereens for himself, which is something that Peter seriously does not want to think about—to be providing them with real information. Peter breathes in and then out, giving Pops a smile when he glances over, worried.

Luckily, the basic plan of attack seems to be "take the enemy out and don't die." Peter can work with that, because that's generally the plan his family adheres to. Sure, they've all got assigned sections of the city to be protecting, but Peter and his family are so attuned to each other that he doesn't think it'll be a problem. Director Fury releases them after an hour and a half, and then they wait. It's the part that no one tells the newest recruits about, the fact that saving the world requires a lot of waiting, and Peter drops his messenger bag into the lab that Dad and Uncle Bruce usually work in while they're on the airfloaty ship before he goes to find Uncle Clint or Aunt Natasha. Either would work, but Peter knows that Uncle Clint is probably with Agent Coulson getting a special debrief and interrupting them would be a bad idea. Aunt Natasha is likely to be alone down in the training room at the moment, though, so he tries for her first. She's exactly where he thought she would be, and Peter steps onto the mat with her.

"So," he says once he's loosened his muscles, "Remember how you once told me that some day I would have to lie to someone that I cared about and that there were good ways of fixing the situation and bad ways of fixing it?"

Aunt Natasha nods, shifting imperceptibly before she charges at Peter, who dodges her barely and takes a shot that she blocks. The conversation continues while they fight.

"Lying is necessary more often than it's not," Aunt Natasha says as she tries to kick Peter's head, "but the important thing to mention in this situation is that you weren't lying to them because you wanted to, but because it was the best chance of keeping a large number of people safe."

Peter tries to block Aunt Natasha, but miscalculates and ends up flat on his back. Aunt Natasha looms over him, looking down, and Peter likes knowing that some things never change—no matter how many superpowers he gets, he'll never be able to beat Aunt Natasha in a spar.

"You're improving," Aunt Natasha says, "but to continue the earlier topic: by lying, the average supervillain would have to do a lot of work to figure out where you are, and you know they're not that motivated. There are easier and flashier targets than one scrawny boy who still can't defeat me in a fist-fight. Go find some of your X-buddies, I'm sure they'll be happy to see you."

Slowly getting up off the floor because he just likes being slow after losing fights with Aunt Natasha, Peter mock-salutes her and smiles when she rolls her eyes. He wanders back to the lab in time to find Dad and Uncle Bruce excitedly working on something, so Peter sits on one of the tables and watches them work. He doesn't really feel like making nice with all the other supers that are currently milling about, because part of him wants to go save the world and the other part just wants to be back at Harvard.

That part of him just wants to crash Harvard’s servers with an algorithm he made up when he was fifteen because Dad said he couldn’t, just wants to fall asleep on Mark, drunk and happy. It wants to be around people that make fun of him when he complains about the shawarma around Harvard or refuse to believe that he can shoot as accurately as he claims until he grabs a handful of darts and sinks them into the board—all in the bullseye. Mostly, though, Peter just wants to be Eduardo Saverin again, although he’s not sure he can at this point. There’s a lot of explaining to do on his end, that’s for sure.

Some part of Peter hopes that they'll understand that he didn't lie because he wanted to. He lied because it was either lie or not go to school at all and Peter really, really didn't want to give up higher education because he was scared of supervillians. He doesn't know how easy that is for normal people to understand, but it's everything that Peter knows and it has to be enough.

When Dad and Uncle Bruce finally notice him, they kick Peter out of the lab and tell him to play nice with the other supers. Peter wants to point out that they've both been hiding from Reed Richards, who's kind of over-enthusiastic but not as bad of a guy as they seem to think he is, but he knows that'll just get him into trouble so he goes out and plays nice with the rest of the supers. Kitty Pryde is entertaining herself by phasing through doors, and she almost gets stuck in the metal when he sees him, over-excited and all smiles.

"Hey, Peter! They pull you out of school for the impending alien invasion too?"
"Yeah," Peter slumps into a nearby chair, "I've got a lot of explaining when I get back, though. I've kind of been Eduardo Saverin for the past two years instead of Peter Parker and, well."
"Tough break," Kitty patted his shoulder, "Being a superhero is full of situations like that, though, and you learn that sometimes they work out and sometimes they don't. You can't dwell too much on it, okay?"

One of the X-Men that Peter doesn't recognize (and really, there are like a hundred thousand of them so he doesn't feel bad about that) calls out for Kitty, and she gives Peter's shoulder a quick squeeze before she flits off again. There's a couple of minutes where Peter just sits in the chair and tries to steel himself for the coming battle before he sighs and tries to get some sleep like everyone else. He wakes up with the sun, before the alarms are flashing red and Peter hears Pops yelling Avengers Assemble! on the communications system that's hooked into the suit he's just finished pulling on. When the alarms do go off, everything is a mad rush to get everything into place and go save the fucking world. He stands up, rushing to where teams of supers are being deployed one after another to stop the aliens from destroying the Earth.

They land on the ground in their designated sector and it's an immediate fight. Peter ties up some of the aliens with web and leaves them for someone else to take out while he follows the rest of Uncle Clint's orders being called out from up high. He'd moved on from being sad about losing his cover at Harvard to being angry at the aliens for ruining his life, and punching alien scum certainly helped alleviate his anger. Uncle Bruce is always telling him that letting out your anger is a good thing, and he sees that the Hulk has made an appearance, smashing things left and right while Peter is flying off walls and straight towards aliens that he punches in the face, so Peter thinks this counts as letting out your anger.

He probably shouldn't think of the fight in personal terms, but Peter blames the aliens for the fact that going back to Harvard could suck (if he goes back at all), blames the aliens for the fact that he might never see Mark again, blames the aliens for the fact that his weekend is ruined, blames the aliens for the fact that he's not memorizing his speech for class on Tuesday right now. There is no inter-dimensional portal to close this time, which makes the possibility that they'll all die trying to defend the Earth a very real and tangible thing, and all Peter can see is the endless waves of alien figures coming down to wreak havoc on the world. It shakes him, but Uncle Clint's in his ear saying to your left, Peter, and Peter moves without thinking.

There is very little time to think in a battle like the one they're currently fighting, and Peter knows that he won't remember this fight with a whole lot of clarity beyond we won. Eventually he might remember the way his body twisted out of harm's way, the way his knuckles felt impacting against alien faces, the way Aunt Natasha took out an alien coming up behind him that he didn't have the time to react to. He'll remember the whole fight in brightly colored flares of memory that flash in his mind one after another like some kind of slow-motion movie montage, but he won't really remember it at all. He won't remember it the way every second of the night he helped crash Harvard's servers with facesmash is burned into his mind—the way Mark's sheets had felt under his hand, the way Mark seemed so angry and Peter just wanted to fix it, the way Dustin's laugh was a little too loud, the way Chris' face lit up when he saw what was on TV, the way the endless input of characters flew across Mark's screen, the way Mark had turned to Peter and said we did it in a quiet whisper—because he doesn't want to remember this.

Peter doesn't want to remember the battles that he fights, because remembering them would mean having to think of all the people that he didn't manage to save and all the ways in which he could have died. He never wants that. Caving to those feelings of guilt is what sometimes turns people from doing good to doing bad, and Peter believes that the world is a decent place. Maybe not everyone is decent, and maybe not everyone can see that the world isn't half bad, but growing up surrounded by people that believe the Earth is worth fighting for and who consistently put themselves in danger to make sure other people are safe? Peter can't turn his back on that so easily—even if his Dad could have been a supervillain, could have been someone that Peter needed to take down because the world had betrayed him.

Maybe that's what scares Peter, deep down: the knowledge that it isn't that hard to turn evil because that the line between good and bad is very fine and they all walk along it at some point. Are they doing this because it's what they should do, or because it's what they believe the people need? Who is to say that they're actually doing good and not bad? Do the aliens just think they're doing the right thing too?

The world is a lot of shades of gray without a whole lot of black and white, which is a scary thing for someone who frequently saves the world. Peter tries not to dwell on that too much, because dwelling on it would probably make him turn into the thing he fears.

Uncle Clint tells him to swing up to help Dad with the cluster of aliens he's dealing with, and Peter does it on autopilot. He kicks the one who seems to be giving Dad the most trouble away, and doesn't manage to dodge another of the aliens in time. The alien throws him into a building that Peter absently notes is not a building he's been thrown into before fancy that, and Peter hisses when the shattering glass cuts into him. He thinks that he should tell Dad to send a donation to the owners of whatever building he's tumbling through as an apology. They do that a lot, actually, because Peter always feels bad about it and the city's repair fund covers most damage caused by shit like superheros being thrown through windows but Peter likes to help out.

"Spider-Man," Dad says through the comm link, "do you copy?"
"Yeah," Peter stands up and tries to shake some of the glass off, "I'm fine, Iron Man. Hawkeye, orders?"
"I need more arrows."
"On it."

Shooting web at different structures and swinging across the city, Peter heads toward Stark Tower to retrieve another stash of arrows for Uncle Clint. It happens sometimes, because as careful as Uncle Clint is with his arrows, they're not like ammunition for guns. Since being added to the team, Peter usually ends up on arrow runs if they're absolutely necessary, because he's the fastest and smallest target. The whole arrow retrieval mission takes three minutes total, not counting the minute he spends taking out a particularly persistent alien, and then he's swinging up to where Uncle Clint is stationed and handing him his new sheaf of arrows before being instructed down to where Pops is trying to face off against twenty aliens by himself.

Peter takes out two when he's swinging down to the ground, and it's really not that hard to take the aliens out but they just keep coming. He doesn't know how many they've taken out, but the bodies are piling up and he's covered in more than a small amount of the oozing purple blood the aliens bleed. Not that far away, Peter can see aliens dropping to the ground dead as Emma Frost walks by, her fingers brushing against them. Loki's on the top of a nearby building, casting magic and dropping aliens like flies. He can see some of the flyers engaging in aerial combat too, and Peter wonders how many of the people fighting are going to make it to the end of the battle. He hasn't been very far and he has no idea what the body counts are like on either side, but it seems like they're winning and that thought pushes Peter on.

He couldn't count the number of aliens he kills, without remorse and without feeling anything, because it becomes a kind of muscle memory after a while. It's how all the battles he's been in go, because at some point it stops being about anything but surviving and Peter knows he's pretty banged up after hours and hours of fighting. This is the longest fight he’s ever been in, and he's more resilient than a normal human because he can handle being thrown through a building or two, but at some point he's just not going to have the energy to fight anymore and Peter doesn't want to think about what would happen in that case. Looking around, Peter can see that everyone is a little worn out. They can't keep doing this, and the stream of new aliens doesn't seem to be stopping any time soon.

"Oh my god," Peter says as he ducks alien gunfire and punches one out, "I'm going to die."
"Don't you dare say that," Aunt Natasha yells over the comm link, "None of us are going to die today."
"Black Widow's right," Uncle Clint says, "Swing up to help Thor, yeah?"

Swinging up to the second floor balcony of some building, Peter manages to pull one of them off the balcony and swing away as it hits the ground. He doesn't really know how or why Uncle Thor is on that balcony, but battles are a strange place and Peter's generally discovered that it's better not to ask. He's swinging up to help out Uncle Thor again when everything goes blindingly white. It retreats after a few seconds, but it's enough time that Peter's too close to a building and he smacks into it. Luckily, Peter still has the presence of mind to cling to the building instead of ungracefully sliding down. Everything is full of static for a moment before he hears Pops yelling in his ear.

"Spider-Man, do you copy? Spider-Man, do you copy?"
"Ow," Peter mumbles, "I swung into a building, but I'll be okay. Any word on what that white flash was, Cap?"
"We don't know yet," Pops says, voice still a little loud, "but it appears to have stopped the waves of aliens flying down to destroy us and was probably magical in origin. Report to ground while we wait for further instructions from SHIELD."

Carefully, Peter climbs down the building because there's no chance of another blinding flash making him hit a building if he climbs down it instead of swinging down. The wall-clinging is muscle memory, web-swinging is physics. Suddenly aware of how much his everything hurts, Peter walks over to where the rest of his family, minus Uncle Clint, is slumped against various pieces of rubble. Peter sits on a demolished car when he reaches them.

"I never want to do this again," Peter groans, "Let's never piss aliens off so badly that they bring the entire race to come destroy us."
"SHIELD says that they've scanned the skies," Pops says solemnly, "and whatever that light was? It seems to have sent the rest of the troops away or otherwise made them disappear. They're checking with the magic users now to see if it was magical. Everyone stays put until we know what that thing was. Spider-Man, are you going to be okay? You look pretty banged up."
"I'll be fine," Peter shrugs, and it hurts, "Just got thrown through a couple of buildings, nothing to write home about."

Pops looks him over like he's not fooling anyone, but there's other people on the team that look just as battered as he does, so the subject drops. Peter wants to make a snarky comment, but he can't think of anything so he waits instead. None of the aliens they were fighting are moving, and SHIELD still hasn't sorted out what the fuck just happened. Peter would be more worried about it, but extraordinary shit happens in his life often enough that it's mostly all just ordinary at this point. He breathes as a reminder that he is, in fact, alive and is happy that it doesn't hurt in the way that breathing with cracked or broken ribs does. It just hurts in the way that means he's bruised to all hell and probably going to need to come up with an excuse for that. They'll go away, but Peter suspects that moving isn't going to be the most fun activity for the day or three.

They're all just waiting, and SHIELD takes long enough trying to sort out what happened that Uncle Clint comes down from his vantage point and leans against Aunt Natasha. He's not that banged up at all, but he looks as exhausted at the rest of them, and just when Peter is started to get fed up with standing out in the street when there's a bed and painkillers waiting at Stark Tower after he gets through medical, Pops gets word from SHIELD.

"The light wasn't magical, it was apparently an experimental weapon that one of the Great Lakes X-Men found in the lab, stole, and fired because they figured they had nothing to lose. Is there something you maybe want to share with the class, Iron Man? Doctor Banner?"

Dad and Uncle Bruce have the decency to look a little sheepish, and Peter squints a little before it suddenly hits him. They hadn't wanted him in the lab because they were working on totally dangerous and untested secret weapons. Peters covers his face with a hand and sighs out.

"Really? That's what you guys were doing?"
"We've been working on something since the first alien attack," Dad says with a shrug, "and we figured that now was as good a time as any to actually construct the thing."
"And then you left it out," Pops glares, "for anyone to find and take. We're going to have a talk about why we don't do that once you've all been checked by medical and cleared."

Uncle Clint looks like he's going to complain about that when he turns his head slightly toward where the airfloaty ship is probably concealing itself and just sighs. It happens a lot, so Peter doesn't think anything of it, just waits while Pops signals SHIELD for pickup. Medical is swamped when they actually get on the ship, which doesn't surprise Peter in the slightest, and he slumps into a chair while he's waiting. A junior agent he doesn't recognize (and he doesn't feel bad about that because SHIELD goes through junior agents like tissue paper) hands him a bottle of water and something to eat. Peter doesn’t really look at it, just eats it before his body decides to give the fuck up on him.

And then it's really just more waiting. Seriously, Peter kind of wishes someone had told him that being a superhero required so much downtime.

He eventually gets checked out by someone on the medstaff though, and they declare him really fucking banged up, but probably okay enough that they don't need to rush him into surgery or anything. They do give him a couple days' worth of painkillers, though, and Peter appreciates that. Painkillers make the healing part easier, because he's really been through worse, but what he needs right now is to sleep for a week and maybe never ever wake up because everything hurts.

(It's melodrama, of course, and Peter knows that he'll actually be close enough just fine when he wakes up that it won't even cause a problem, but right now everything kind of sucks and there's not any adrenaline from winning to keep him mostly sane. He really just wants to go back to Harvard, curl up next to Mark, and never leave.)

Pops ushers them all into one of the SHIELD helicopters, and Peter wants to fall asleep, but he's so tired that it's actually kind of impossible. The helicopter ride feels like it takes approximately forever because of the way Peter's mostly fitful sleep before the battle has been stretched too thin and is going to snap. It doesn't really help that he's not that fond of helicopter rides to begin with.

When the stupid helicopter ride is over, when Peter is tired, banged up, still covered in icky purple alien blood and sitting on the couch trying to convince himself to get up and go to sleep, he remembers the little device Mark gave him. Fishing it out of his messenger bag, Peter turns it over in his hands. There's not really anything complicated to it now that he's really looking: the device is just a red button and probably some electronics inside that do something Peter is too exhausted to comprehend and doesn't really want to look at anyway, but there’s a latch on the back that makes a piece of paper flutter out when it's released. The paper says when you get your miracle, push this button. in Mark's heartbeat handwriting, and Peter does because he can't think of why he wouldn't do anything that Mark wants.

The button flashes red, and the tiny device says: "Transmission sent. Please come back soon."

It's not Mark’s voice, because it's female and faintly Jarvis-like, but Peter can hear Mark saying it all the same. He smiles. Well, if Mark wants him back enough to make a stupid little device like this, then Peter will go.

Going home is the best part anyway, and Peter would really love to go back to Harvard (which, he supposes, is home in a way that Star Tower isn't) only he really isn't in any shape to be going anywhere. Convincing himself to actually get the fuck up, Peter stumbles to his bedroom and falls asleep by flopping onto the bed after a shower, exhausted beyond all belief, before he can even think about going anywhere. He knows better than to try and fight the exhaustion to do something like travel, because there are times that you can ignore the way your entire body feels like it's filled with sand weighing you down, and there are times where you're of no use to anyone without some fucking sleep. Peter has seen his Dad on the bad end of sleep deprivation enough to know that trying to fly back to Harvard before resting would probably be disastrous in his current state. Besides, he's also sure that Pops would probably tie him down if he tried to leave without resting even a little. Or, well, Jarvis would detain him because Pops gave him the order not to leave and really that's the same thing. So Peter sleeps off some of the battle.

When he wakes up, though, Pepper is standing in front of him and looking down. She's holding food and a water bottle, patiently waiting for Peter to sit up so she can get some sustenance into him. It takes effort, but Peter does drag himself into a sitting position and lets Pepper hand him the items. He eats the sandwich that Pepper brought, drinking most of the water too, and is about to ask about how he's getting back to Harvard when Pepper smiles.

"The StarkJet is waiting to take you back whenever you're ready, Peter. Go back to Harvard and we'll try not to cause any more incidents big enough to require your help. I would assume you've got people waiting on a very complicated explanation from you."

Peter winces a little at Pepper's words, because he really does have to explain the whole situation. At least he kind of knows how to do it now, thanks to Aunt Natasha. He doesn't say anything, though, just drains the remainder of his water bottle and dumps the trash before gathering up his stuff and preparing to leave soon because as much as he wants to grab his messenger bag and hop in the StarkJet, Peter knows that he has to at least say goodbye to the members of his family that are up and not in recovery in SHIELD medical facilities. He asks Jarvis who's awake and who isn't, quietly saying goodbye to each of them before he climbs into the StarkJet and heads back to Harvard.

(The only people Peter doesn't say goodbye to are his Dad, Thor, and Aunt Natasha—who is being kept in medical because she apparently cracked a rib somehow and letting her run around while it heals is a terrible idea because she's Aunt Natasha and it would probably just break in two before it healed.)

The plane ride is uneventful because it's not very long and there aren't any current threats to air travel on the supervillain side, which Peter is glad for because he's had to fight aerial battles and they're never fun. He gets back from New York and saving the world when the early morning light is just touching the campus, bathing it in dim light, and people are kind of waking up but not really because it's a college campus and no one wakes up before noon if they can help it.

The only people who are up are the sorry losers that have morning classes and the people who have been up all night. Peter is technically in the first category, because he has a class later in the morning, but Peter knows he can afford to skip it and charm someone into giving him notes later just this once. He doesn't do it that often, because Peter actually likes knowing he earned his grade himself, but he's pretty sure you don't grow up with Tony Stark as a father figure without picking up a little charm that's good for getting what you want and using it for slightly less than moral purposes. Peter figures that it's okay as long as he doesn't make a habit out of it, and he knows Pops would probably be mad at him for playing hooky just because he didn't feel like going, but Peter's pretty sure Pops will forgive him for doing it on this particular occasion if he ever finds out (which he won’t, if Peter can help it).

Once he's gotten off the plane and actually arrived on campus, Peter heads to Kirkland without much thought and creeps into Mark's dorm after using his universal cardkey (that is totally illegal but something Dad would be proud of) to get into the building. No one has ever asked how Peter gets into their dorm when it requires a card key to get in and he doesn't actually live there so he wouldn't have one, but if they did Peter has a lie about waiting for someone to exit and then getting it that way. He's pretty sure most of the people in Kirkland assume he lives there anyway, because he's there enough that it seems like that.

Taking the stairs quietly so he doesn't disturb people who are probably still sleeping like normal college students, Peter finally gets to Mark's suite. He picks the lock using the lockpick set Aunt Natasha gave him for his thirteenth birthday that he nearly always has on his person, careful to use the efficiency and quiet that Aunt Natasha has drilled into his head. That might take a little more creative explaining if Chris or Dustin decides to ask how Peter got into their locked room without knocking, but he's banking on the fact that they'll be distracted by the bombshell he dropped on them. Carefully closing the door behind him, Peter walks across the suite's common room toward Mark's room, faintly glowing with the light of computer screens. He walks into Mark's room without really alerting Mark to his presence, but he suspects that Mark knows he's there because Mark is alarmingly good at knowing where Peter is even though Peter has super-secret spy skills learned over years of training with Aunt Natasha. Peter sits on Mark's bed and waits for him to notice that Peter's there or finish what he's doing. It takes five minutes, and Peter's really not very surprised when Mark doesn't bring up the fact that Eduardo Saverin isn't a real person at all. Peter figures that he probably went digging for information on Eduardo Saverin, came up with nothing, and found that the data matched Peter instead a long time ago.

"That didn't take very long," Mark says.
Peter shrugs, "Dad let me take the private jet, because Pops was all worried about me missing too much class."
"You have class in fifteen minutes."

The statement isn't an accusation, just a fact. Mark doesn't care either way, Eduardo knows, because Mark couldn't care less about perfect attendance (or attendance in general). He's the same kind of person that Dad is, and Peter sort of wonders what that says about his taste in potential love interests, but that tends to fall under the category of gross shit he tries not to think that hard about. He stops and tries to roll some of the tension out of his shoulders instead of dwelling on it.

"I know," Peter says, cracking his neck, "I thought I'd play hooky. I think I deserve it, having just saved the world and all."

Mark looks like he's going to open his mouth and say something about Peter’s questionable choice in slang again, but he doesn't. Instead, he stands up, bones cracking awkwardly in a way that makes Peter want to offer a massage even though he's probably just as sore, and sits on the bed next to Peter.

"I have this new idea," Mark says, "Do you want to hear about it?"
Peter smiles, "Always."

He means something slightly different than what Mark's asking, probably, but Mark seems to understand that when Peter says always he really does mean always and it's not just a line. The implications of Peter saying it to Mark don't quite translate, but he's sure that Mark would understand if he ever met the family. Slumping against Peter's side, Mark starts talking about thefacebook and how it'll change everything and how Dad will probably want to buy it from him but Peter is going to help fend him off and help with the coding and functionality and advertising and how Mark is a little frightened because this could be big but it could also fail spectacularly and how Mark is probably going to need some financial help anyway so maybe Peter should just hammer out a deal with Dad to get Mark control of the site while still pouring a little cash into it and and and endlessly.

There's something soothing about hearing Mark's hope after fighting a battle that seemed hopeless. Yeah, they won, but it didn't feel like a win at all and Peter's still a little defeated. Hearing Mark talk so easily about having a future and all the great things about it makes Peter smile. It's refreshing to talk to someone and have it not be about supervillains or saving the world.

Content, Peter listens to Mark talk and is glad to be where he belongs.