Chapter 14
“Why are they called Avengers?”
Harley Keener was quite possibly the most curious boy Peggy had ever met, and possibly the most draining. They sat in the shed together with Stark’s latest suit, JARVIS quiet for now as he conserved energy, which left Peggy to entertain a ten-year-old boy who had been eating sugar all evening.
“That is the name they were assigned,” she replied, because honestly she wasn’t sure where Fury came up with the name.
“But do they avenge stuff?”
She stopped to consider his question seriously for half-a-moment. “I suppose in a way, yes.”
“Like in New York?”
“Yes, one could say they were avenging those who were killed by Loki when he tried to invade.”
Harley curiously considered this, slipping a sweet between his lips. “But don’t you have to wait for a thing to happen first before you avenge it?”
Peggy just did manage not to roll her eyes as she snagged his bowl of candy away and set it out of his reach, to his mild protests. “You are quite correct, Mr. Keener, and as it happened there were people who did die before Loki even made it to New York. One of them was a close personal friend.”
The boy stopped his chewing, regarding her with sheepish sorrow. “Your friend was killed by him?”
“Yes,” Peggy said, shortly, ignoring the sting of the hurt, knowing that Harley likely hadn’t considered the full ramifications of his question. “His name was Phil Coulson. He was an agent at SHIELD, like Agent Jameson. He was a friend to several of us, including me.”
That he clearly understood, nodding gravely. “I heard people got hurt and killed in New York, like soldiers, and police, and stuff.”
“Some did,” she acknowledged. She had never been one for sugar coating things like death to a child, especially not in a conflict. The war had taught her they could be more perceptive than adults liked to admit. “They died trying to protect people from the threat. Sadly, it happens sometimes.”
He took that in for a long moment, but his sugar-addled mind was already racing on to something else. “So do you know all of the Avengers?”
“As I am their boss, more or less, I do.”
“Seriously?” His eyes glittered at that prospect. “So, you know Thor?”
“He’s in town right now, working with Dr. Banner on repairing the water tower, or at least patching it up until they can figure out a work around.”
“Really? An alien prince in Rose Hills? That’s crazy!”
“You honestly just had Tony Stark in your shed all day working on his suit and you feel that isn’t crazy?”
He cocked his head, considering. “You got a point. I mean, he was cool, Tony. He helped me fix my potato gun.”
Something about the image of Tony Stark fixing a boy’s toy gun was ridiculously heartwarming. “He’s good at that…fixing things, that is. Or at least he tries to be.”
“Was his dad a deadbeat, too?”
That question was so out of the blue, it caught Peggy up short enough to drop a screw that she had been fiddling with on the well-worn worktable. “What?”
“His dad,” Harley reiterated, poking at the same worktable with a screwdriver, leaving tiny gouges in it. “I told him about my dad taking off six years ago and he said that dad’s leave all the time, no need to be a pussy about it. So I wondered if his dad left him and maybe that’s why he got it.”
It was such a random conversation to have in the midst of everything else going on, all while they were waiting on Stark to call. That this child could pick up on it proved Peggy’s rule on the perceptiveness of children. She sighed, wondering how much, if anything, she should tell him about what was Stark’s own private life.
“Tony’s father was…a complicated man,” she finished lamely, unsure of what to even say.
“What was complicated about him?”
“Why do you want to know,” she asked, bluntly, curious as to why it would even matter.
“I don’t know,” he admitted, scratching a long line in the already scarred wood. “My dad left because he couldn’t keep a job and he was tired of my mom yelling at him about it, I guess.”
He’d only been his sister’s age when his father had gone and yet he could recall his parents’ arguments. Her heart ached a little for him and the small well of trauma he carried with him, the one he covered over with his matter-of-fact attitude and endless curiosity. Again, she could see why Stark would be drawn to the boy, as in many ways he reminded Peggy of Tony…and of Howard as well.
“No, Tony’s father wasn’t a deadbeat,” Peggy replied, softly. “At least not in the sense you're thinking of. He was a complicated man because he was one of the smartest men in the world, who could build things that no one else could dream of, and yet when it came to relationships, he was a perfect idiot.”
Harley snorted, chuckling softly. “That’s a thing?”
“Oh, yes.” Peggy shook her head, recalling a long ago Christmas party, decades before Harley’s parents were even born. “Tony’s grandfather was a horrible man who didn’t get along with his son. From what I understand he resented how smart his son was and was generally not a good man. Howard hated his father, never wanted to be like him, so when he had his own son, he thought he would do the opposite and push Tony to be the best he could be. But the only example for being a father Howard had was his father, and so even when he thought he was doing something good, he was too hard, too critical, pushed too much. And it didn’t help that he was a busy man, so he wasn’t around much at all. You can see why Tony would feel hurt by that.”
“Yeah,” Harley acknowledged, head bent as he continued to scratch, lazily. “So he was around, just not really around.”
“Yes,” Peggy replied, already feeling she had revealed too much of someone else’s secrets. “I don’t think he meant to hurt his son, but…family can do that sometimes. Sometimes when you are hurt, deeply, you can lash out and hurt others. “
“Like PTSD,” he piped up. “Like what happened with Chad Davis.”
“Sort of…yes.” The truth of what happened to Chad Davis wasn’t widely known, and she wasn’t going to explain the particulars to a child. “Sometimes, when people carry that hurt inside of them and they don’t know how to manage it, it comes out in the worst possible ways, like being too hard on someone.”
“Or like when I get mad at my sister for no reason,” he offered, somewhat glumly.
“Sure,” she acknowledged, perhaps a bit delighted that young Harley was having a moment of self-awareness.
“Maybe that’s why EJ is a giant asshole,” he reasoned out loud.
Peggy blinked at his cursing, but chose to say nothing. “Errr…probably. Is EJ someone you don’t get along with?”
“Yeah, from school. Tony figured out about him, too.”
“Did he?” Peggy suspected Tony had suffered through his fair share of bullies as a child. It went far to explain his suits. “Well, I would guess that when it comes down to it, this EJ likely has something going on with him that is upsetting and bothering him and he is taking it out on you because he has nowhere else to direct his energies.”
Harley stopped his scratching to watch her, quietly, with something like faint respect. “I never thought about that before. I just thought he was being mean because he liked it.”
“Some people are that way, mean and cruel because they like it, but they are few and far between. Others, though, often are mean and cruel because they are hurt, or because they are bitter about things that happened, or because they just don’t know how to be anything else. This is why we have to stand up to bullies, because no matter what happens, it’s not acceptable to treat anyone like that, but, in standing up to them a little compassion and understanding doesn’t hurt. Sometimes it can help them see the error of their ways, or turn enemies into friends.”
“You sure know a lot about bullies,” he pointed out, shrewdly.
Peggy couldn’t help the small smile that pulled at her mouth. “Someone I love a great deal knows a lot about bullies. He doesn’t particularly care for them much, but he also understands it can be complicated. He taught me a lot about them.”
“You didn’t have any bullies?”
“Not really.” Peggy fully admitted her schoolgirl life had been rather charmed by comparison to many. “I knew of girls who got bullied, and I stuck up for them. I was something of a tomboy, though, and knew how to punch, so few other girls wanted to cross me if I got angry.”
Harley outright laughed at that. “You could punch?”
“Oh, sure, and shoot, and my brother even taught me a fair amount of fencing, using swords.”
“Really?” She might as well have told the boy she could shoot lasers out of her eyes as well. “I mean, I know girls who can punch. Dakota at school has a mean right hook. She once gave EJ a black eye. He left her alone after that.”
“See, she learned to stand up to her bullies.”
“Yeah,” he grinned. “I guess that’s what Tony does in his suits, too, in a way.”
She nodded, slowly, thinking that young Harley wasn’t far off. “I suppose that one could say that.”
Between them, the quiescent suit lit up, the eyes of the facemask glowing a bright blue-white. Harley hooted, spinning towards the laptop he had up and running various diagnostics on the suit itself. “Almost done, JARVIS?”
“Not precisely,” the AI running the suit responded, rather cagely for JARVIS. “I just received a satellite upload from Mr. Stark.”
Peggy jumped on that bit of news, the first sign of Stark’s whereabouts since she arrived. “A satellite upload? Where is he at?”
“Currently, he is in Chattanooga, where I am guessing they are hosting some sort of beauty pageant.”
Somehow, Peggy was not shocked that of all the places Stark could find himself at, he was at a beauty pageant. “Why is he there?”
“The television vans outside had the ability to connect to satellite servers. Mr. Stark was able to use Colonel Rhodes verification to access a communications satellite and break into AIM’s corporate servers.”
The details of how modern communications were still rather vague to Peggy in many ways, but whatever it was it was clearly enough to impress Harley. “Woh, he can just do that?”
“Tony is very, very good at what he does,” Peggy admitted with a grin of her own. “I assume he’s uploading the data back into your main servers?”
“As we are speaking. I am currently attempting to trace the signal used for the Mandarin’s broadcast an hour ago and use that to find where he is hiding.”
“When you have something, let me know. I need to let Sharon and SHIELD know about it as well.”
“I should have something soon,” JARVIS provided, helpfully. “Unfortunately, the suit is still having a minor problem.”
Harley spun to the laptop, clicking through screens, pulling up one that Peggy guessed had something to do with the suit itself. “It doesn’t look as if it is charging.”
“It is, just slowly.”
“Charging?” Peggy frowned down at the suit’s glowing face. “I thought the suits all ran on Tony’s arc reactor?”
“These latest round of suits all have been designed with extra capabilities, many of which require more energy than even Mr. Stark’s arc reactor, with its considerable energy output, can provide.” JARVIS provided, with all the equanimity the AI was famous for. “The Mark XLII in particular has its own power source it uses to maintain the various different prehensile pieces, allowing them to each have enough energy to operate on their own independently from each other and from Mr. Stark.”
“Basically his suit can fly apart and do things and then fly back onto him,” Harley translated with the knowing condescension of the young for the technology befuddled old. “Or so he told me when I was helping him earlier today.”
“Really?” This was his forty-second suit already? “Mr. Jarvis, how many of these suits does Mr. Stark still have?”
“That survive the bombing of the Malibu house? Thirty-four in total.”
Peggy nearly choked at that number. “Did you say thirty-four?”
“Yes,” JARVIS confirmed, unaware, obviously, at how astounding that number sounded.
“What model was he using New York?”
“He started with the Mark 6, which was heavily damaged by the turbines on the Chimera, and then switched to the Mark 7 once he returned to Stark Tower. Marks 8 and 9 were already produced in Malibu.”
“So he’s built thirty-two just over the course of the last eight months?” Her fingers crept to her face, as if trying to hold her jaw up in its disbelief. “How…”
“Mr. Stark has had a bit of trouble sleeping.”
Pepper had told her as much, but…thirty-two suits? “And they are all different?”
“Several have functions that are unique to themselves, so yes.”
“Oh, Tony,” she moaned, softly, her heart aching at the thought. Was he so scared that he spent all the months building these suits, just to manage his own well of pain and trauma?
Harley, his nose to the computer, turned to glance at her, worried. “Is that bad?”
What could she say to him about it? “It’s just…not good. He builds things when he’s worried or scared.”
That seemed to make sense to the boy. “I like to build things, too. Sometimes it helps when you're scared. You don’t focus on it so much.”
Peggy studied the young boy as he flickered through screens. “Does it help you, then? Building things?”
“Yeah,” he shrugged, in the offhanded way all young boys had. “I mean, if you can’t fix your situation, you can fix a lawn mower, or a potato gun, or maybe make something that can fix the thing, or invent something.”
Peggy glanced around the snug little shed, with its old furniture, the older style car parked inside of it, and its various bits of tools and other things, useful to someone who liked to build and tinker. “Is that what you do, then, when your mother is at work?”
“Sometimes,” he admitted, softly. “I mean, sometimes I like games, but sometimes I like being out here.”
She nodded, slowly, landing on a box of tools on the far end of the workbench. “Was all of this your father’s?”
“Yep,” he said, simply, eyes not leaving the screen. Still, the tension in his slight shoulders told Peggy much. Whatever his father was, and for whatever reason he left, he at least left something of a legacy behind for his son.
The phone sitting by Harley’s laptop rang with an obnoxious buzzing against the work table. The boy scrambled to grab it, flipping it open. “Hello?”
He was silent, listening, but the voice on the other end carried, and Peggy could tell it was undeniably Stark.
“Well, I was eating the candy to stay awake, like you said, but then Director Carter took the bowl away from me, so I’ll probably crash soon.”
He was quiet again, spinning to gaze at Peggy intently as he listened, then said. “I didn’t call her, she showed up with one of the deputies. Yeah…Thor is in town helping to fix the water tower. Do you want to talk to her? She’s right here.”
He listened, then proceeded to fiddle with the phone, turning on the speaker. The sound crackled from the other end with the noise of driving. “Peggy, how in the hell…”
“I was a spy in the war, Anthony! You don’t think I couldn’t track you down?”
Her comeback was not what he expected, judging from the moment of quiet on the other end of the line. “Fair point.”
Harley’s eyes goggled at Stark’s admission, delighted already to be included in this adult conversation. Peggy supposed it couldn’t be helped.
“Where are you,” she snapped, two days of her patience being drawn thin, finally breaking it profoundly.
“That depends on what JARVIS is going to tell me about where the Mandarin is broadcasting from. J, how are you doing, buddy, how is suit?”
The AI spoke up as Harley placed the phone near the suit’s speakers. “It's totally fine, sir. I seem to do quite well for a stretch, and then at the end of the sentence I say the wrong cranberry.”
Both Peggy and Harley winced.
“And, sir, you were right. Once I factored in available AIM downlink facilities I was able to pinpoint the Mandarin's broadcast signal.”
“What are we talking? Far East, Europe, North Africa, Iran, Pakistan, Syria? Where is it?”
“Actually, sir, it’s in Miami.”
That was not precisely where Peggy would have expected it to be, and clearly, neither did Stark.
“Okay, kid, I'm gonna have to walk you through rebooting JARVIS' speech drive, but not right now. Harley, where is he really? Just look on the screen and tell me where it is.”
Harley looked towards the screen, which indeed had pinpointed a spot somewhere in the southern end of Florida. “Uh, it does say Miami.”
“Okay, first things first,” Stark snapped. “I need the armor. Where are we with it?”
“Uh…” Harley looked frantically to Peggy. “It’s not charging.”
On the other end of the phone line they could hear tires screeching against asphalt.
“Tony,” Peggy yelped.
Heavy breathing sounded, desperate and frightened. Seemingly oblivious to the panic, or perhaps trying to reassure it, JARVIS quickly chimed in. “Actually, sir, it is charging, but the power source is questionable. It may not succeed in revitalizing the Mark XLII.”
“What’s questionable about electricity,” he barked on the other end of the line, sounding somewhat frantic. “All right, it’s my suit, and I can’t…I’m not gonna…I don’t wanna…”
His breathing came in horrid, heaving gasps, all the carefully bravo and devil-may-care confidence that was the hallmark of the great Tony Stark stripped away, until he sounded as if he was no older than Harley, panicked, terrified, and very alone. And it broke Peggy’s heart.
“Oh, God, not again,” he muttered, as noises sounded on the other end of the line. Harley looked at Peggy wildly, as the only other adult in this situation, begging her what to do, and frankly, she was as shocked as he was. She had never seen Stark like this, had never heard Stark like this, and it was more than a little unnerving.
“Tony,” Harley called, a thread of worry in his call. “Tony, are you having another attack? I didn’t even mention New York!”
Another attack?
“Right, and then you said it by name while denying having said it,” Tony gasped, grumbling even in panic.
“Okay, um?” Harley looked to Peggy, holding out a beseeching hand.
“Tony,” she called, softly, hoping to get his attention.
“God, what am I going to do?”
“Just breathe,” Harley said, simply, with firm encouragement. “Just breathe! You’re a mechanic right?”
“Right,” Tony called bit, somewhat strangled.
“You said so!” Harley insisted.
There was a long pause, then a brief. “Yes, I did.”
“Well, why don’t you just build something,” Harley offered, rather matter-of-factly, looking at Peggy. “You like fixing things. So, build something.”
There was another long beat of silence on the other end, before Tony spoke again. “Okay,” he called, as if Harley had somehow uttered the magic words. “Thanks, kid.”
Harley’s pale cheeks flushed. “Don’t mention it.”
“Are you all right,” Peggy echoed, gently, unable to hide her worry.
“Honestly,” Stark asked in a shaking voice, even as she heard the slamming of the car door. “No, I’m not. It’s been kind of a rough week for me, what with, you know, the Christmas rush, the anniversary of my parents’ death, Happy nearly getting killed, my house being bombed by a guy who I accidentally pissed off once at a conference thirteen years ago, who may or may not be making moves on the woman I love…”
And he didn’t yet know that Killian had Pepper.
“Tony,” she began, unsure if given this episode if she should tell him, “I need to tell you that…”
From across the body of the Iron Man suit, Harley frantically began to shake his head, making slashing motions across his throat and holding up a finger to his lips in an effort to silence her.
“Tell me what?”
“I…” She paused, staring at Harley, it clicking that he knew what she was trying to tell Stark and urging her not to. “I brought Maya Hansen into custody, after the bombing of your house. She told us everything; about the Extremis experiments, about Killian’s funding, and how he was trying to get the formula to market to create his own super soldiers. He’s creating all of this. The Mandarin is fake, Tony, none of it is real. The Ten Rings are real enough, but the Mandarin is a sham created by Killian and his marketing team. He’s behind all of it.”
Stark exhaled, a low, slow breath. Whether it was to calm himself or to take in the information dump Peggy had just placed on him, it was hard to say. “Yeah, I figured out that the bombs weren’t bombs, they were people, and Killian’s been covering it up. Him making up a terrorist to cover it up makes sense.”
“Tony,” she began, urgently. “Look, I know you went to ground and have been doing this alone, and I know it doesn’t bear repeating that you don’t have to.”
“Peggy…”
“I’m not giving you a choice in the matter, you know,” she shot back, firmly. “I have to tell Sharon about the location in Miami. She’s going to mobilize SHIELD forces there. Meanwhile, I have Banner and Thor with me here in Rose Hills.”
“Not Cap and Romanoff?”
“No,” she huffed, mildly. “They are still on a mission for Fury, I’ve sent a message, but they’ve not responded yet. Whatever it is, they are in deep. Still, three of us is better than none. What do you need?”
There was a tapping noise as he hummed, likely his fingers on the steering wheel of whatever car he was in. “More than anything, I need that suit. See if you can get Banner out there to look at it. I mean, he’s no mechanic, but he’s been helping me with some of my designs, so he can see what’s up with that power source. I need it up and ready as soon as possible. Harley, you think you can help him with that?”
“Yeah,” he agreed, happily.
“As long as his mother allows him to do it,” Peggy cut in. “What else?”
“Think Point Break would like to do a little bit of B&E with me?”
“B&E,” Harley asked, curious in that way that all young boys had of zeroing in on the one thing that no one wanted them paying attention to.
“Breaking and entering, which is illegal and you should never do,” Peggy shot back at him and his mischievous grin. “I will let Thor know. I don’t think he will object. What will you be doing?”
“Doing what the kid suggested,” Stark replied. “I’m going to build something.”
Harley beamed with sly pride.
“Let us know where to meet you.”
“I need to hit a hardware store, then find a place to hunker down to do some work. I’ll call you when I’m ready, maybe could use a lift.”
Peggy tempered her relief at his promise of reaching out. “Will you actually call us, or are you saying that to get me off the line and force me to simply use JARVIS to track you down once again?”
It was unclear if his hesitancy to answer was out of guilt for being caught out or irritation she would even think that. “Anyone ever tell you that you’re paranoid?”
“You don’t get far in my business without being so, Anthony, and you don’t precisely have the most reliable record on this score.”
“Fine, I solemnly swear I will call you before I make any actions. Besides, I will likely need the cavalry's assistance.”
“Do you know how much it warms my heart to heart you admit that?”
“Well, Christmas miracles and all,” Stark shot back. “I’ll let you know when I’m armed and ready to head out.”
With that the line on the phone went silent. Peggy and Harley stared at it sitting on the suit’s chest.
“Do you think he will do as he promised,” wondered Harley, idylly.
“He will or he will have to contend with me,” Peggy muttered, reminding herself she was speaking to a child and not a member of the team. “You said he had other attacks?”
“Yeah,” the boy nodded.
“When?”
“Earlier tonight, when I mentioned New York and the wormhole. I didn’t know it would make him upset.”
Peggy hadn’t either, not for certain, but she had suspected. His sudden disappearance while fighting Dark Elves in London now had far more context, and she guessed that it had little to do with faulty and malfunctioning equipment. Harley’s confession only confirmed what everyone from Bruce Banner to Pepper Potts had been saying.
Speaking of Pepper…
“Why did you cut me off from telling him about Pepper’s abduction?”
The look he gave her told Peggy that the young man clearly thought that it should have been obvious. “He was having a panic attack. Do you think he really needed to hear that his girlfriend was kidnapped by the bad guy? You guys are going to go stop him anyway, right? Wait to tell him then, so he doesn’t freak out now when he can’t do anything about it.”
Stark hadn’t just found a child sidekick in the form of Harley Keener, he also found a pint-sized psychologist. He had clearly picked up on something Peggy had not, and it amazed her how quickly he had understood an otherwise very adult situation.
“You did well there with him,” Peggy offered to the boy. “When he had his attack. You knew just what to say to help him. Any other child your age would have panicked, but you figured it out. Good job!”
Despite the diffident toss of his shoulders, Harley clearly was pleased with the praise. “Works on me, I guess.”
“You are a very smart boy, and it’s a good thing Tony found you. Who knows where he would be otherwise?”
“Cold on the side of the road, maybe, freezing in an ugly poncho, dragging his suit,” Harley replied, with a sort of world weariness that had Peggy biting back a snort at his cheek.
“Mr. Jarvis,” Peggy called to the suit. “Could you call Dr. Banner, see if he is available to come out and look at Mr. Stark’s suit? Give him directions so that Thor can bring him.”
“Of course, Miss Carter.”
Behind her, one of the creaking wooden doors that led inside of the shed flung itself open, and a harried looking, dark haired woman of about Peggy’s age threw herself in, staring first at Peggy, then at the suit, then at Harley, who rather looked as if he’d like to either hide under the work table or bolt out of the back of the shed. Peggy could hardly blame him for the look of fury on the frazzled woman’s face.
“Harley David Keener, just what in the hell have you been doing?”
“Mom,” he yelped, pointing to Peggy. “I’ve been helping the Avengers…”
The woman turned her anger on Peggy next. “Who are you, and what are you doing here with my son?”
A justifiable reaction to a stranger out in the shed with her oldest child, all things considered. “My name is Peggy Carter, I am with the Avengers. Young Harley here has been helping our team out.”
Whether it was the “Avengers” or the idea of her son helping him that caught her attention, Peggy’s words took some of the wind out of Leanne Keener’s stormy sails. Her ire melted into confused annoyance as she crossed her arms over her winter coat, a green polo shirt on underneath. “Avengers,” she drawled in the same sort of accent that both Deputy Richardson and Deputy Wyant displayed. “Harley? I’m sorry Miss…Carter is it?”
“Yes,” Peggy confirmed, pulling up all of the politeness and charm that her mother instilled in her long ago.
“Miss Carter, I don’t know what has been going on here, or what has been happening, but I do know that my son is ten-years-old and isn’t any…superhero!”
“I was helping Iron Man, Mom, I wasn’t doing anything crazy.”
“Nothing crazy?” Her neck practically snapped as she whipped it around to face her sheepish son. “I get a call from Deputy Wyant that he’s out at the house with you and Lexi because you been running around town with a stranger, leaving your sister all by herself.”
“She was fine, she was watching TV.”
“She’s seven, Harley, she can’t be left by herself!”
“What else was I supposed to do, not help Iron Man?”
This was quickly turning into a family argument, and that Peggy felt would be better hashed out between mother and son alone, or at least certainly not with her present. “Mrs. Keener, you are right, Harley should have been home with his sister and not out with Mr. Stark earlier this evening.”
The glare Harley shot her was of pure betrayal. “But…”
Peggy cut off the boy before he got much farther. “But be that as it may, Harley was of great help to Mr. Stark when he needed it most. His suit malfunctioned and it left him stranded not far from here, and Harley’s quick thinking and gift with mechanics helped Mr. Stark on his mission. I am sure that we can all agree that in the face of that, despite his other poor decisions, he was also incredibly brave today?”
Mrs. Keener paused, considered Peggy’s words, and then regarded the prone Iron Man suit on the table. “You’ve been helping Iron Man out today?”
“Yeah,” he muttered, his chin lifted defiantly, even if he refused to look his mother in the eye.
She blew out a long gust of exasperated breath, fogging in the cold coming in from the door leading outside. “All right, I’m not mad at you…for now. But you can’t do things like this, Harley! You and Lexi are all I got, and if something happened to you…”
“I know, Mom,” he grunted, rolling his eyes.
“No, you don’t know! People died in town tonight, Harley, people were hurt real bad, and buildings were damaged. I know I’m not around, and I’m sorry for that, but that’s why I need you here, safe. We’re a team, remember?”
While Harley was a level-headed, quick-thinking young man, he was still a little boy, and if his mother’s plea made him a bit teary eyed, Peggy wasn’t about to judge. “Yeah, sure. Sorry, Mom.”
Relenting in the face of her son’s obvious regret for having worried her, Mrs. Keener rounded the table to where he stood, as Harley met her in a bear of a hug. While she was average height, he already was gaining on her, and Peggy had a feeling the other woman was already lamenting how fast her child was growing up on her. The events of the last twenty-four hours likely were only going to make that even more poignant.
“Mrs. Keener,” Peggy cut into the domestic scene, hating to do so. “I know this is a lot to take in, but as I said, Harley here has been helping Mr. Stark with his suit. It’s currently in need of repair, and one of our team members is coming out to help work on it, but Mr. Stark has asked Harley to assist, as he’s been helping to work on it this whole time.”
Harley pulled away from his mother’s embrace enough to look up at her hopefully. “Please, Mom! I promised Tony I’d help him out.”
His mother looked doubtful, staring at the suit on the table. “Harley, this is something the grown ups should be handling.”
“But I’ve been helping with it all day.”
“Yeah, but it’s gettin’ on near eleven…”
“It’s Christmas Eve tomorrow, I don’t have school.”
“If it’s any consolation,” Peggy offered, quietly. “I can sit out here with them and make sure that Harley goes inside to bed when he needs to.” She offered him a pointed glare and at least didn’t point out the bowl of sweets still on the table.
Mrs. Keener eyed her, then considered. “I’ll be out every half-an-hour to check in. I don’t care who they are, if I see so much as a yawn out of you…”
“I promise,” Harley crossed his heart across his chest, a childish gesture that Peggy suspected was calculated in getting what he wanted from his mother.
“Lord,” she sighed, wearily scrubbing her face. “I shouldn’t be agreeing to this. Fine! You do what Miss Carter says, mind.”
“I will,” he vowed with the fervent assurance of the young.
“I’m going to go in and talk with Deputy Wyant and check on your sister.” She turned to Peggy then. “You think you and your Avengers will be long?”
“Hopefully not, and I promise, we will leave as soon as we no longer need your hospitality.”
“Good,” she replied, firmly, before patting Harley on the head and heading for the door. Peggy watched her go, silently, before turning to Harley.
“If I see so much as a droopy eye, young man…”
“I know,” he groused, returning to the computer. “Guess that means we better get to work.”