my black shroud
THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 6 — 8:00 AM
Happy Hogan is honestly not sure what his job is anymore. The Tower is a mess—new staff are all over the place, old staff moved from the compound are even more disoriented, and security is handled sporadically by Avengers and other superheroes, anyone willing to help out. Sometimes, Happy monitors the phones, sometimes he monitors the staff intake, and sometimes—sometimes he manages the cameras.
He’s sitting in the camera room eating a too-large helping of ramen from a white-paper takeout box, forking it into his mouth with wooden chopsticks. His eyes flick from one level to the other; most of the floors are in use, but there’s only two he’s paying attention to, really: the Medbay and the lobby.
And today, standing outside of the building and staring up at the security camera with twin withering stares, are two kids: one large and black-haired in a striped shirt, the other skinny and brown-haired in an oversized black sweater.
He remembers these kids. Peter’s friends. Ned…and Michelle. MJ.
The girl holds up her phone to the camera, and there’s one word displayed across the screen: PETER.
“Goddamn it,” Happy says, tired, and he scrubs his hand down one face. He forgot about these kids, honestly. He’s spent so much time worrying about Peter that he hasn’t had time to think about much else. He gets up from his chair, and the weight of him squeaks the metal springs. He definitely gained a few pounds since he found out about Peter—which, startlingly, two months ago to the day. It’s the way he’s always dealt with thing since he was young—eat and you’ll feel better. “JARVIS,” he says, peering again at the two kids on the grainy camera. “Beep them in, but only into the lobby, okay? No elevator access.”
“Yes, sir,” announces the British voice from above. “Edward Leeds and Michelle Jones-Watson, clearance level one: white badge.”
Happy wipes some of the soy sauce from his cheek, and he looks miserably down at the food in front of him. He leaves the takeout there, throws on his black blazer, and heads for the elevator.
The kids are in the lobby when Happy arrives.
He heads right for them, passing through one row of turnstiles, pushing through the revolving metal arm; the gate beeps, lighting up a bright purple, as he goes through. They look worse-for-wear, their clothes wrinkled; MJ’s usually frizzy hair is a complete mess, tied back in some kind of tangle, and Ned looks tired, his eyes rimmed with red. They’re sitting cross-legged on the floor speaking to each other, and they both stand when Happy arrives.
Between them is a second row of turnstiles, and Happy lingers on his side—those revolving arms are the only thing standing between him and the kids. “Don’t you two have school?” he says tiredly.
The girl gives him a withering stare. That sweater is much too big for her, swallowing her entire torso in knitted black, the sleeves drifting past her fingers, hollow. “Yes,” she says stiffly.
Ned gives in, though, ducking his head a bit as he talks; damn, that kid looks tired. “It’s the first day,” he says, and suddenly this whole scene makes sense.
“Oh,” he says, and the girl only glares at him.
They’re just kids. They’re just kids, and here they are—waiting to see their best friend after he’s been kidnapped and tortured for five months. They probably want to go play decathlon or build legos or recite memes to each other. Not check on each other in hospitals, not wait listless at the phone for a sign of life, not sit in the Tower lobby waiting for a word. They want to see him alive and well—and they won’t.
“Where is he?” asks the girl. “Can we see him?”
“We just wanna know,” says the boy, Ned, as the girl inches closer to the turnstile, “that he’s okay. You said he… He was okay, right? Is he still…”
Okay. Peter Parker was anything but okay. He was alive, he was barely lucid, and so traumatized that he was speaking in goddamn riddles, and he was definitely not okay. “He’s alive,” says Happy, and he tucks his phone into his pocket. “He’s…”
Happy was never going to finish that sentence; he doesn’t know why he even bothered to start it.
The girl’s at the metal turnstile now, and she slaps that white badge at the scanner: a blink of white light glows at the turnstile’s screen: a beep of refusal. “Is he here?” she says, insistent, slapping the badge once more against the sensor—another beep. “We have to see him. He—he’ll want to see us—did you ask him?”
Did he ask…
God, these kids have no idea.
“Ask him,” Michelle Jones continues, and her brow slopes a little, betraying a flake of worry in the teen girl’s face. “We’ve been calling, like, nonstop—do you people know how to answer the phone? If he—he’s gonna want to see us. We’re his—we’re his—”
“He needs us,” says Ned, with a more somber lilt to his voice. “Dude, please. Just let us see him. Is he—is he—like, awake?”
“He’s awake,” says Happy carefully.
Around them, several Stark Industries employees are starting to stare; a woman floats past them, scans her badge with a beep, and with a flash of green light, she enters and heads for the elevators.
The girl curses loudly and slams her badge down on the sensor. Another beep. “Oh, come on! Ask him! Ask him! He wants to see us! He missed us, I know he did!”
They don’t get it; neither of them do, and Happy doesn’t want to be the one to tell them.
“Then why can’t we—” Michelle Jones—MJ, right—slaps that badge for the umpteenth time against the sensor. A white light, and a loud beep—rejection. “Come on, man! We just… We just… We just wanna know he’s okay!”
What can he do? Lie?
Happy sighs tiredly. He feels old. He feels really, really old. He’s fifty-one years old, and he suddenly feels like an old man—in a rocking chair, wrinkled and peppered in age spots, his face in a perpetual wince. “He’s… He’s stable.”
“Can we talk to him?”
No. Happy rubs at his forehead; his stomach hurts now, pressing at him like something ill. “I don’t think that’s…”
“Is he hurt?” she demands, pressing her fist into that metal barrier. “Is he?”
Happy winces. “Yes,” he says quietly; that’s the one question he can answer without a moment’s hesitation.
Ned, in a wavery voice: “Is it bad?”
“Yes,” he says again, in the same still voice.
The girl slams her fist into the barrier. “Is he okay? What happened? Can you tell us what happened?”
“He’s…” he tries.
“Can we see a picture? A video? Anything? We deserve to know! I wanna know what happened to him!”
“I can’t give you specifics,” he says. “You’re not family, and Peter—”
“Tony said he, he needed,” says Ned, and his voice drops to this horrible, kid-like whisper, “a… a…”
“Yeah, well,” says Happy, knowing exactly what the kid’s trying to get at, “he shouldn’t’ve told you that.”
Truth is, they’ve all been breaking HIPAA this whole fucking time. Left and right. Helen Cho’s outburst, even—displaying the kid’s entire injury scan in a roomful of superheroes? Not exactly her best move. But… This is hard. And none of them have seen anything like it—so they’re just…moving on.
“It’s bad,” says Happy. “It’s really bad. That’s all you need to know. I can’t—I can’t tell you—”
“So you can’t give us any more than that?” snaps MJ. For someone so young, her voice is cutting. “Peter’s our best friend. We were—we were—”
She sighs harshly then, and MJ fumbles through her pocket and pulls out her phone, quickly tapping through it to open a row of blue bubbles onto her screen. Messages. “Look,” she says harshly, and she tips the phone towards him.
She shows him the last texts she got from peter. It's in a group chat with her and Ned; she scrolls up a little and stops, leaning the phone onto the metal turnstile so that he can see it properly.
He realizes then, with a twist in his gut, what she’s showing him. At the top, a date and time when these messages began: Fri, Apr 6 at 7:31 PM.
The first one comes from Peter.
Peter: [mays taking me, kinda awsome right? b there soon]
It’s followed by a link to some Thai restaurant on the other side of the city. That’s the one they must’ve been driving to right before Peter was taken.
MJ: [do ur flash cards during dinner]
Peter: [make me]
Ned: [omg fight]
A picture of Ned’s flash cards, and a black furry creature that might be the kid’s cat sprawled out over them.
Ned: [kylo is helping me study]
MJ: [one more pic of ur cat and i’m gonna kill it]
Peter: [as kylo’s officla bodyguard im taking tht as a threat of natinal security]
MJ: [i ordered a contract killer]
Ned: [omg]
Peter: [this is war]
A moving gif of stormtroopers from Peter. And then another. And then another.
MJ: [one more and ur dead to me parker]
Yet another stormtrooper gif in response.
MJ: [that’s it]
MJ: [im giving brad ur spot]
Peter: [NOT BRAD]
Ned: [omg]
MJ: [study now parker]
Ned: [perfect hair brad?]
Ned: [wait put brad on the team he’s hotter]
Peter: [NED SHUT UP ADSKJDAK]
Ned: [sorry not sorry]
Peter: [mean]
Ned: [ur just jealous]
From Ned, a picture of a dark-haired teen—a screenshot, something from one of those social apps.
MJ: [stay mad parker]
Peter: [i literlly hate u]
Ned: [omg fight]
And Peter sends a little flashing meme, and Ned sends a Star Wars gif, and MJ texts them something incoherent—something that’s a string of acronyms that Happy doesn’t really understand, and that’s the end of it.
It’s kid stuff. Kid stuff.
Happy feels this horrible twist in him, like someone’s taken a corkscrew and twisted it into his belly, turning, turning, turning.
The last messages Peter had sent: the final one, from MJ, was sent 7:31 on Friday, April sixth. Minutes before the car crash—minutes before he was taken from his own car, shoved into the back of a van, and disappeared for nearly five months.
Five months these kids had spent sitting, fretting, worrying, knowing…
MJ snatches her phone back then, clicking it off with the side-button. “We’re his best friends, Mr. Hogan. We know about you—everything he’s ever told you, he told us” —she thumps at her chest with that— “first. We know all about Tony, about Pepper, about everything he’s been through.” You don’t, Happy thinks sadly, You really, really don’t. “We’re his best friends.”
“Can we see him?” manages Ned, his voice croaky. He looks as though he’s about to cry, a shine in his eyes.
What would happen if he let them see Peter? Even a picture? He’d probably scar them for life. Happy still can’t get that first image of the kid out of his head, no matter how hard he tries: that one photo floated around the Internet for hours before JARVIS got ahold of it: of Tony holding the kid on that mountain in New Hampshire,
“No,” says Happy, and the ache in his chest has him thinking about that takeout box he left in the security room. Ned’s looking at him now like he just tore the kid’s heart out with his bare hands, and MJ looks suddenly darker.
He’s never seen the girl like this. “Please,” she says, with such desperation, all tainted by anger, by frustration, by grief. “You have to—Mr. Hogan, he’s… He’s all we have.”
Happy swallows. “I’m sorry,” he says. “No.”
Then Michelle Jones gives him a withering scowl and shoves back from the turnstile, heading back straight into the lobby. Ned looks at him, squints his face into this sad wince, and shuffles after the girl.