beginnings, 1
It was time to move on. Peter knew it was time to move on, he really did. When he had found out that his enrollment at MIT hadn’t been undone when everyone forgot, he figured it was a good opportunity, as long as he stayed away from Ned, and stayed away from MJ. They weren’t going to remember him, he had proof enough of that. Becoming friends with them all over again would have been unbearable - he’d be there knowing all that they’d already been through together, and they wouldn’t. Even if somehow they all grew close enough again that Peter could convince them of what happened to their old memories of him, they wouldn’t know. They’d never remember what they had shared.
Ned would never remember how much it had meant to Peter that he was there with Aunt May the moment Peter woke up from top surgery. He wouldn’t remember being Peter’s best friend, and his guy in the chair. MJ wouldn’t remember all that had evolved from banter into something that Peter had only just started to call love before it was ripped away. All the trust, all the significance of the shared experiences was just gone. It could never be an even playing field again. So it was better to move on, and leave them behind.
Peter knew he should leave Mr. Stark behind too, and stop clinging to the memories, to stop dwelling in the shadows of the dead man he had long since aspired to emulate. But… couldn’t he have just that one thing? Couldn’t he pick just one set of memories to carry forward, to drive him as he forged his new path?
In the end, it was hardly surprising where Peter had ended up on his evening walk. It was moving day, and he’d just taken his meagre set of belongings into his new campus dorm room. At least the full ride scholarship hadn’t disappeared, or Peter wouldn’t have been able to afford college.
So, evening came, and Peter found himself walking to the memorial statue of Iron Man that sat somewhere off to one side of the campus. To pay his respects, and hold onto just those memories of the man he had tried and failed to call “dad” right at the very end. Mr. Stark would have pretended to be uncomfortable, but Peter knew he really would have loved it. But Pepper was the one who needed to be with him then, and Peter never got that chance.
“He strikes an imposin’ figure, doesn’t he?” A voice said from beside him. And… wow, Peter didn’t usually get caught off guard like that. Either the guy beside him must have been professionally stealthy, or Peter must have just been that distracted.
He turned to look at the newcomer, and realised that the face was familiar. Not someone he knew well, or someone who had known him well. The guy had been at Mr. Stark’s private funeral. Harley Keener was his name, if Peter remembered right. Potato gun kid, as Mr. Stark had called him once when retelling a story of the time he’d been stranded with a busted suit in the middle of Tennessee.
But Harley Keener was no longer the child Mr. Stark had described. He was a little taller then Peter, pretty leanly built, and had blue eyes that weren’t exactly bright, but stood out just a little in the lamplight. His light brown - no, dirty blonde hair was cut kind of short, but long enough that Peter could see the telltale signs of waves starting to grow in. He looked exactly his age, fresh out of high school and ready to tackle college head on. He must have been blipped, just like Peter.
“Yeah,” Peter managed. Imposing certainly was one way to put it. “I reckon there was more to the guy than just billionaire superhero though. Bet he was a softie at heart.”
Harley chuckled at that. “He was terrible at showin’ it.”
“You say that as though you knew him personally,” Peter remarked.
“I did,” Harley said, somberly this time.
“Do you go around telling just about anyone that?” Peter questioned, and then immediately cursed himself for it. Why had he said something so needlessly judgy and harsh? There was playing the part of someone who had no reason to know all that he knew, and then there was going overboard. He’d gone overboard.
Harley tutted. “You’re not just anyone.”
Peter’s eyes widened, but he didn’t say anything.
“It’s funny, you seem so familiar and yet I have no idea who you are. I remember that you were at his funeral, so you must have been somebody important to him, and yet… nothin’.” Harley said all at once, and it was like Peter’d just had the wind knocked out of him.
They stood in silence for almost a full minute, between Peter trying to understand what had just happened, and Harley apparently not having anything more to say.
“Did you follow me here or something?” Was what Peter came up with, suspicion and jarred confusion overriding all else.
Harley shrugged. “Don’t flatter yourself, darlin’. I came here to pay my respects to the guy who turned my life around. I’m guessin’ you did too, yeah?”
Peter hummed in affirmation. “Sorry. I didn’t mean anything by it. Yeah, he practically picked me up off the streets, taught me how to really help people, and gave me a reason to rebuild my self-worth.”
Harley chuckled some more. “Wow, same hat. So, what’s your story? Name’s Harley Keener, by the way.”
This time it was Peter’s turn to laugh. Here was Harley, who somehow remembered even just the tiniest bit about him, and who was taking all the rest of it in stride. “Would you believe me if I told you I already knew that? You’re potato gun kid. I’m Peter Parker. Spider-Man to some, if you’ll believe it.”
“Yeah, I’d believe it,” Harley declared. “Don’t know why, but I do. You really must have been close with him if he told you about that. Shit, if he told you that, I must have mattered to him more than I thought.”
Peter paused again, to let the words sink in. He had just begun to accept that he was going to have to start a new life, alone, with nobody knowing even the slightest thing about him. He had finally come to terms with it, and yet… Harley Keener shows up, apparently having remembered Peter’s face. Nobody remembered Peter’s face. That’s probably why it felt so easy to just let his ‘vigilante’ identity slip like that.
“Do you really want to know my story?” Peter asked tentatively. It wasn’t like he was just going to dump all that on some stranger - because really, despite everything, Harley was a stranger. Wasn’t he?
Harley turned to look at him, to properly look at him, with this soft, welcoming expression on his face. “I never had half-way good people skills - got the autism to thank for that, though I suppose it’s just allistic people skills I can’t do. But you look like you need to tell your story. Yeah, hit me with your best shot.”
“Heh, relatable. Double empathy problem and all that,” Peter chuckled. Harley gave him a soft sort of look - one of recognition and camaraderie. Peter always knew that he clicked better with other autistic people; Ned and MJ were prime examples. He found himself wanting this not to be a one off chance encounter with Harley. For the first time since he lost everything, Peter found himself wanting a friend. “There’s a perfectly good bench over there, want to sit?”
They sat, and Peter told him about how he’d worked with the Avengers, helped stop Thanos, and then had his private identity outed to the whole world by Mysterio. Peter told him about how he tried to get the help of Doctor Strange to fix that, screwed it up, and gotten his aunt killed. Peter told him about how Doctor Strange had helped clean up the whole mess, at the cost of nobody remembering who Peter Parker was, and Peter told him about how he’d lost his best friend and his girlfriend. How they never remembered.
“Shit,” Harley uttered, once Peter was done. Harley grabbed Peter’s hands, giving them what had succeeded in being a reassuring squeeze. “That’s… I’m glad you told me. Well, told someone. You shouldn’t have to work through that alone.”
“You barely know me,” Peter stated, gently pulling his hands back. Was this too fast, too much to unload onto someone he'd just met? “So why-”
“Why not?” Harley smiled. Peter relaxed, and let his hands be held. “If it helps, maybe you can think of it as me repaying Tony for all he did for me by helpin’ you, now that he’s gone, payin’ it forward. But if I’m being honest, I don’t really have a reason. And hey, we could fix the whole thing about not knowing each other. What’re you studyin’?”
What an odd way for Peter to make his first new friend. But he wanted this. Harley hadn't backed away, and that counted for something. “Chemical engineering. You?”
“Mechanical. We should have a lot of the same classes this year, for the introductory units. We could be friends?” Harley offered.
“Let’s,” Peter agreed.
If Peter thought that was where the interaction for the night was going to end, well… he was quite wrong. Apparently Harley had more plans, which, judging by the whole situation, had to have been spontaneous.
“So now that you’ve spilled your heavy secret to me, can I show you mine?” Harley asked after a few long moments of silence. “It might be a bit of a walk, unless you want to… you know, swing us there?”
Peter raised an eyebrow at him. “Wouldn’t it be easier to do tomorrow, in the daylight? Unfamiliar city and all that.”
So much for his worries about having gone too far and oversharing. Apparently, Harley was very much the same.
Harley tutted again. “Naw, tomorrow I want to grab a coffee with you and talk about normal college student things. Normal friend stuff like normal people do.”
Peter huffed in amusement.
“Then sure,” he agreed, finding that he didn’t have to strain to wear a smile this time. It came naturally. “Show me this big secret of yours. How far?”
Harley got up, and Peter followed. “About… huh, actually it should be pretty close from this side of campus, maybe two blocks away. I haven’t actually been there yet.”
“You have this big secret place to show me, and you’ve never been there yourself?”
“Only moved in today, didn’t I? Pepper sent it ahead for me, and had everything set up,” Harley answered.
That was a pretty major hint as to what the secret might have been, and Peter decided to figure out how he actually felt about it later, if his suspicions were even confirmed. He didn't think he'd be opposed, but he'd be lying if he said he wasn't at least a little bit out of touch with his feelings.
They walked the two blocks in silence, until Harley came to a stop in front of a door sandwiched between two warehouses. It didn’t look like it led into either. Harley pulled out a perfectly ordinary key, and unlocked the door. Inside was a short corridor leading to yet another door. This one, however, had a pretty standard Stark access panel. One fingerprint scan and one retinal scan later, and Harley was leading Peter up a pretty long set of stairs.
“Almost there,” Harley assured him. “God, she could have found me a place that was easier to get into, the schematics didn’t make the staircase look this big.”
“It’s good exercise?” Peter tried awkwardly, before he was finally led out through one last door and into a fully kitted out workshop that was far too reminiscent of Mr. Stark’s. Sitting off to one side was… yep, that was an iron suit. It definitely looked different to Mr. Stark’s suits, but it was an iron suit all the same.
“So, what do you think?” Harley asked, gesturing widely at the entire workshop, but looking all too much like he was worried that Peter would react badly.
Peter could connect the dots well and truly easily enough. “You’re trying to fill his shoes?”
“Hah, I could never,” Harley responded almost shakily. Peter hadn’t meant to sound harsh that time. If anything, he was impressed. Mr. Stark’s death had left a massive hole where superheroes were concerned, and if Harley was trying to step up and help fill it, Peter was more than okay with that. “No, I’m trying to honour him by doing this my own way. Honour his legacy, maybe. Pick up the mantle, but do it my way. He wouldn’t want me to be a copycat, he knew I could do better.”
Peter smiled, because truer words couldn’t have been said. “Yeah. He would have had any number of disparaging quips for you if you tried to be too much like him. He always wanted us to be better, huh?”
Harley hummed at that. “And we can only try. I was thinking of the name Iron Lad. Thoughts?”
“Bit on the nose,” Peter teased. “Makes you sound like a Brit. You’ll have to perfect a nice posh accent.”
“Oh hell no! Ain’t nothin’ gettin’ in the way of my lovely southern twang,” Harley protested indignantly.
“Sure thing, darlin’,” Peter said in teasing imitation. “Or should I say, Iron Lad.”