Even Jedi need help sometimes.
Peter Stark met Ned Leeds in a bathroom stall. This wasn’t a very…illustrious first meeting, of course—it was Ned’s first day at Horizons, and he had cried the whole six hour flight, with his right wrist handcuffed to this large security officer who smelled like bologna and tobacco, clutching a letter from his grandmother that his mom thrust at him before rolling her eyes and complaining about the time, Jerry, we’re going to miss our ship . They were going on a cruise to the Bahamas while Ned was going to meet his doom with the Galactic Empire. (Ned found, even at age fourteen, pretend-play was underrated. It may have been a coping mechanism of a friendless boy—or a neglected one—but somehow imagining he was just a captured Jedi master made the whole thing more palatable.)
Peter Stark didn’t know about that. He had never seen Star Wars. His coping mechanism seemed to come from the long, imagined conversations he’d have with his dad—where they’d build robots that baked cookies and tease his mom about her singing voice and maybe even…hug? Peter thought, late at night, in the secret part of his brain, that hugs had to be the best thing ever. (He didn’t have much to back up this hypothesis, but he did know that the way Mr. Beck would bend down and put his arms around him was not the same as what he remembered a hug being like.)
Ned was given a uniform and a handbook and was about to be escorted to the dorm when he started to feel sick. Ned said this to the man who introduced himself as the principal and got his first lesson at Horizons in the form of a welt across his cheek. His second came after he threw up on the man’s shoes, where, as he was being dragged by his arm across the front lawn, he was told, "You want the bathroom, you shit stain, you can stay in there until the morning.” And without further ado, he found himself face-to-face with the Death Star in the form of a Porta Potty outfitted with a heavy, black lock.
“Enjoy yourself, Leeds. Tomorrow won’t be so easy.”
The door shut hard enough to shake the whole stall—the room was dark (light from the setting sun only filtering through the upper vent) and it was cold, and Ned suppressed a shiver as he worked to get his crying under control. The smell was overpowering and did nothing to settle his churning stomach.
“Don’t listen to him. The first day’s always the hardest. It’ll get easier.”
Ned—though he would deny it to this day—let out an embarrassingly high-pitched screech. His eyes adjusted to the quickly dimming light, registering a skinny boy with broken glasses and tangled, curly brown hair staring at him in concern. The boy was leaning against the other end of the wall—his uniform was torn in some parts, and he had a black eye, but he was grinning kindly.
“Sorry for scaring you! You’re Leeds, right?”
Ned sniffed and nodded.
“Nice to meet you! I heard we were getting a new student today—tough luck. I think you’ll have to bunk with me, my room’s the only one open right now.” He gestured to their surroundings, “The room’s not much but it’s way better than this. Oh! Don’t worry about this—this is what he does with all the new kids. You’ll probably never be in here again. He just wanted to scare you.” This was all said very quickly, and Ned got the impression this boy didn’t have a lot of opportunities to talk so when he got to, he made the most of it.
“You..are you new?”
The boy shook his head! “Nah, I’ve been here for almost,” he looked like he was thinking, “two years? I just made him mad today and sometimes he likes to remind me. He’ll let us out tomorrow. Probably without lunch privileges, but I hid some apple slices under my pillow—just a suggestion, they never look there, though it does seem like a very usual hiding place, don’t you think?—so you can have those if you get hungry!” Ned was feeling calmer by the end of the boy’s monologue, and offered him a tentative smile back.
“So, Leeds, where are you from?”
“Um…Queens. New York. You…you can call me Ned.”
“Ned! I love that name, Ned. Wow! New York. What’s it like? It’s got to be so cool, right? Do you know the mob? I read that New York has one of the largest mass transit systems in the world. Is that true? How many pigeons are in New York? I read that all pigeons are fully domesticated—do you have a pet pigeon?”
A sharp rapping noise against the stall’s plastic walls startled both boys into silence. The principal’s voice sounded angry. “Shut up, Brainless, or I’ll leave you in there tomorrow too.”
Ned turned wide-eyed back to his roommate, but the boy just rolled his eyes and whispered instead. “He’s gotten more dramatic over the years.”
“What’s your name?” Ned whispered back.
“Oh! Sorry! I forgot! I’m Peter. Peter Beck.” He said it easily, but Ned thought he caught a wince.
“Beck? Isn’t that his name?” He jerked his head towards the sound of the principal retreating.
“Ah. Yeah, Mr. Beck adopted me when I was eight.”
For the first time in his life, Ned felt thankful for his own parents. “I’m sorry, man. That’s like Darth Vader bad.”
“Darth Vader, like from Star Trek, right?”
Ned choked, “Um, no, Star Wars.”
“But they’re kind of like the same thing?”
Two hours later found both boys on the sticky floor of the small Porta Potty whispering about the politics of the Rebellion and which orphan had a better childhood—Luke or Leia.
“I mean, one was a princess, right? The other grew up with his uncle? It obviously would have to be Leia.”
Ned shrugged. “Maybe. Luke was a lot safer though. Being a princess had to have put her in a lot of danger—kidnapping threats and all that.”
His new friend hummed noncommittally. “I guess. Uncles aren’t always safe, though. I wonder if you could actually build a lightsaber in real life.” And they considered that query for another two hours.
Ned didn’t realize he drifted off to sleep until Peter’s voice woke him up.
“C’mon little guy. If you stay here, Mr. Beck will kill you. That’s right, through here and keep going towards the fence. To freedom! Go be with your family.” Ned watched as he gently cupped a large spider and helped it through the vent.
When he turned around, he caught Ned watching him. Rubbing the back of his neck, he gave him a half-shrug, “Hey. One of us should at least get a chance, right?”
Spending twelve hours in a Porta Potty can really bring people together, and that next morning, when Beck unlocked the door and shouted at them to get a shower and get out of my face, Ned knew he would do anything to give Peter that chance.
Which is why, almost a year later, he found himself unlocking his phone and handing it shakily to the man sitting next to him.
Mr. Stark had already coached Ned through two panic attacks, and when the group in the limo couldn’t get him to say any more about the danger Peter warned him about, they traded their questions of why Peter didn’t want them to know, to where the boy was currently: “Pretend that’s off the table, Ned. Pretend that’s nothing to worry about. Let’s not think about it, ok, kid. Just tell me about the most recent conversation you’ve had with him and where he might be.” Mr. War Machine was so earnest and Peter’s dad still had his hand on his back, and Ned was so worried about Pete, and surely the Avengers could take care of themselves? (“You’ve got to promise, Ned, under the oath of the Jedi, that you don’t tell anybody about this. I mean it, Ned. It’s the most important promise you can make. It’s an ancient blood oath—I’m pretty sure you’ll turn into salt or something if you break it.”)
Handing the email thread to Mr. Stark, Ned kept looking down at his feet.
“What am I looking at?” Mr. Stark’s words sounded like cliffs, rocky and ringing in his ears.
“God. Ned, what am I looking at?” They echoed in the crowded space, bouncing against the windows and into his conscience.
“New York. Does he say New York here? Is that what he means by “i’m fine and in ny”? Ned—Please?” And he knew Mr. Stark was asking him, he knew it was a question he had to answer, but all he heard was his heart thumping to a beat that sounded like “traitor traitor traitor ”.
Mrs. Stark took his phone from her husband’s shaking hands and read through it quickly. She took a picture of it with her own phone and handed it off to the rest of the passengers.
It may have been a minute, it may have been a day—to Ned, it felt like an eternity because he knew—gosh he knew—that he just lost the only friend he had ever had in his entire life because he couldn’t keep a secret.
“T..tha…that’s our b…bur…burner email.” The explanation was stuttered and broken but Peter’s mom switched places with Mr. Stark at some point and started holding his hand, so he continued, “Whe..when P-P-Peter ran, he p-p-promised,” and here Ned choked back a sob, “that he’d email m-me every month. H-he‘s g-going to Italy. He was gonna…he was gonna get a j-job in New York until he had enough money for the p-p-plane. I…I offered,” the car was silent “my savings b-but he said no. He said it was t-t-too dangerous to meet but he promised to keep in touch.” Ned looked for understanding—maybe some sort of penance—among the adults. “He PROMISED. I wouldn’t have called but he promised. I hadn’t heard from him in three months until y-yesterday. He must have just got here. I don’t know whe…where…but he’s here...”
Ned’s confession came to a stop at the same time as the limo. No one moved. Mr. Stark stared at the email. His breathing was stilted and seemed to be coming in waves. Ned was surprised to see streams of tears running down Mrs. Stark’s face.
A disembodied voice echoed in the car. “Sir, Mr. Rogers is waiting in the kitchen, with Dr. Banner and Mr. Wilson. I thought it would be most beneficial that they have the most recent intel. Mr. Leeds, welcome to Stark Tower. I quite appreciated learning all the lyrics to Blank Space. If you would, please exit the vehicle and Mr. Hogan will show you to Sir’s movie theater while you wait. My sources say you might enjoy the latest Star Wars film?”
Ned looked around confused. Ms. Romanoff exchanged glances with Mr. Barton and Mr. Barnes and then smiled at him warmly. “Go ahead, Ned. Jarvis is Tony’s AI. He’ll take good care of you.” She communicated silently with Mr. Hogan who nodded and walked around the car. He opened the door. “C’mon kid.”
As Ned awkwardly climbed out of the limo, he watched Col. Rhodes move in front of Mr. Stark, “Five things you can see, Tones. We’re right here. That’s it.” Ned heard Mrs. Stark let out a loud wail and the limo door closed quickly behind him.
Mr. Hogan was quiet and intimidating, but Ned didn’t get the same feeling of danger from him as he did from the bologna guard at Horizons or Mr. Beck or even his own dad. He was more of a Chewbacca-type. Ned wished that was an observation he could have shared with Peter, but he was about to lose Peter, so he probably didn’t have any right to be making observations at all.
Mr. Hogan deposited him without ceremony into the most comfortable looking home movie theater ever. There was a popcorn and soda machine in the back and the seats were huge recliners with back massage features and surround-sound speakers built into the headrests. The lights dimmed and Jarvis (an honest-to-God-AI, wow, Peter would freak) spoke again. “Mr. Leeds, I took the opportunity to contact your grandmother about dinner tonight. If you’d like to stay the night as a personal guest of the Starks, I will make sure you get a room…” He hesitated (or seemed to, Ned wasn’t quite sure if a computer program could hesitate), “I personally wanted to thank you for the care you have shown to Master Peter this past year. Any friend of his is a friend of mine. I, too, cannot wait to have him home.” Ned gave a half-smile to the speaker in the ceiling. The system went on, “I am puzzling over part of the email you sent. Why the nom de plumes? What is the significance of spider-man and gitc?”
Ned thought about the boy with the black eye in the nasty bathroom gently carrying a large spider to safety. His heart dropped to his stomach. His voice was quiet—so quiet Jarvis’s sensors strained to pick up the audio. “It’s a code name…For someone who’s a hero, and someone who’s always got their back.” And if Ned cried after that, the theater was too dark to bear witness to it.
Meanwhile…
“I really don’t have time for this, Toomes.”
“I think this one will interest you, Mac. Remember the kid you sent to me earlier today? Your new rabbit?”
“The runt?”
“Mmm. That one. Well, color me surprised when I open page six of the Times and find a spread on Iron Man’s missing son. 10 years. They’re offering a new reward, I’m sure even an illiterate slug like yourself has seen it.”
“Four mil for a ghost, Adrian. What’s your point?”
“The bitch I was with today pointed it out to me. Have you seen their latest computer rendering of Baby Stark? Google it. I’ll wait.”
“...well I’ll be damned.”
“You know what to do.”