Chapter 6
“Your majesty, I wasn't expecting you to call, is everything okay?”
“Mrs. Rogers, my sister Shuri demanded I introduce you two. Happy now?” A figure shoved him out of the way, jumping into the frame. “Toni Stark!” the girl exclaimed, and jeez, Toni was already thinking about how she and Pete would get along great. This one wasn't even an orphan and she still wanted to adopt the princess. “I've been working on upgrades for T’challa’s suit, and I was thinking about the benefits of vibranium combined with the Arc Reactor technology, my theory is...”
Toni smiled as she began to take notes. Yeah, she was keeping this one.
---
Steve was doing his best not to let Toni see him cry.
He really couldn't help it. She’d been having contractions for nearly 4 hours, and she had barely stopped screaming the entire time. She looked up at him, tears streaming down her face.
“Steve.” her voice was almost gone. “Stevie, it hurts.”
“I know, baby.” he pushed her hair out of her face, and he couldn't stop the few tears that slipped out. “It'll be over soon, right?” he turned to the nurse, who smiled sympathetically. “Judging by your progress, I’d say your baby should be in your arms in about two hours.” Toni looked at her, eyes glossed over. “We get a baby at the end of this?” Steve couldn't help but laugh, even as more tears fell. “Yeah, Toni. We get a baby.”
“That's good.”
“It is.”
“Stevie, hold my hand.”
“I am holding your hand.”
“It hurts!” She sobbed.
“Alright, we’re ready, Toni. I need you to push.”
---
Steve smiled down at the little bundle in his arms. Bright blue eyes, the same as his own, stared up at him. She had a head full of dark brown hair, some of it falling on her pale face.
She was the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen.
“Hi there, Brooklyn Hope Rogers.” He whispered, “I'm your dad. I've loved you since before you were born, did you know that?” She yawned, squirming in his arms. “God, you're just perfect. How can you even be mine? You're the most beautiful thing I've ever seen.”
“I guess that's how we know she’s yours.” Steve turned, smiling at Toni, who looked exhausted.
“She got the beauty from you.”
“I'm sorry, have you seen her eyes? That's all you, my love.”
“Let’s just agree it was a joint effort.”
“That sounds right.”
“But you did most of the work.”
“That also sounds right.”
Steve put Brooke back in her little basin, and laid down on the bed in the room Toni made for him.
“I don't think I've ever loved you more than right now.” He whispered into her hair. She nodded, pressing a kiss over his heart.
“I know exactly what you mean.”
---
“You’ve never even been in the same room as Toni Stark.”
Peter’s phone buzzed, and he ignored Flash’s laughter about how maybe it’s a text from Captain America.
It was.
It was a picture of Toni holding- she had the baby! Below it was a text ‘Hey big brother Peter, Brooke can't wait to meet you!’ He smiled, sending back a series of emojis and random key smashes. After a few minutes and maybe a million more pictures, Peter looked up sheepishly at Mr. Harrington. “My, uh, friends, just had a baby.” His teacher nodded, but Ned looked at him skeptically.
He’d deal with that later.
---
“Happy, the craziest thing just happened to me. These guys were robbing an ATM with these high tech weapons-”
“Kid, calm down. I’ll let Toni know, she’ll send someone to help, okay? Just go home until someone else can protect you.”
“But I-”
“Kid. You're too young to be charging in alone. Go home.”
“Okay, Happy.”
---
“You're the Spider Man. From Youtube.”
“...Yeah. I am.”
“So that text today-”
“It was Captain America.”
“Woah.”
---
“Do you lay eggs?”
“What? No!”
---
Peter was laying on the floor on his side, watching the baby wiggle around on the mat. He had shown up first thing in the morning with a bag full of gifts, and demanded that they hand over the baby and no one needed to get hurt. Toni had gone to sleep, and Steve was pretending to watch the news while he kept one eye on Peter and Brooke. The rest of the Avengers had been avoiding the new parents in the weeks since they’d brought the baby home, but Peter knew for a fact they were around, because the cookies he’d shown up with kept disappearing. Peter smiled when he turned around and saw Steve slumped over, dead asleep. Exactly what he’d been waiting for. “Hey, Brooklyn.” she looked up at him, her fist almost entirely in her mouth. “Let’s play dress up.”
Toni walked into the living room to see Steve passed out on the couch, and Peter playing with Brooke, but he had changed her outfit. She couldn't resist snapping a picture before talking. “Peter,” he turned to her, “did you make my kid her own spider suit?”
---
“So tell me about those weapons.” Toni gestured for Peter to sit on the couch, keeping her voice low so they wouldn't disturb Steve. Not like they could, anyway. The dude slept like the dead. “Uh, yeah.” Peter tried to remember his blur of a fight while Toni held a bottle up for Brooke to drink from. “They were like, alien, I guess. I've never seen anything like it. They were blue, they glowed, and when they shot one at me, I was just frozen in the air, and-”
“I'm sorry, you were shot?” She failed to keep her composure. “Any lasting effects?”
“Karen already cleared me, don't worry.”
“Kid, I will always worry.”
---
“Hi. I'm Captain America. Whether you're in the classroom or on the battlefield...”
Making sure the coach’s back was turned, Peter snapped a quick picture of the screen and sent it to Toni, who immediately sent it to Steve, who sent Peter a series of angry emojis.
“What's so funny?” Ned whispered.
“Captain America is a dork.” Peter smiled.
---
“Peter knows Spiderman!” Ned shouted.
Everyone turned to them, and Peter felt his cheeks go red. “Um, I mean, kinda... but only through my internship...” He saw Flash’s smirk, and tried to think of anything he could say to take the focus off of him.
“Maybe you should invite him to Liz’s party. Right?”
---
“Spider-Man is not a party trick, okay? Look, I’m just gonna... be myself.”
“Peter, no one wants that.”
---
“Now, this is crafted from a reclaimed sub-Ultron arm straight from Sokovia. Here. You try.”
Making sure they couldn't see him, Peter recorded about a minute of their conversation, before turning and running. He didn't look back, and he didn't see the thugs looking up at the space where he’d just been.
---
Iron Woman grabbed him a few seconds after he hit the water.
---
“And then he just, he just, like, swooped down like a monster and he picked me up and, uh, he took me up, like, a thousand feet and just dropped me. How’d you find me? Did you put a tracker in my suit or something?”
“I put everything in your suit. Including this heater.”
Toni sighed. “Kid, why would you go after these guys? Isn’t it a school night?”
“Well, yeah,” Peter began, “Is that why you're here? To take over?”
“Oh, I'm not here.” The suit opens to reveal no one. “Brooke is sick, and Steve is in Russia. I'm at home. Just like you should be. Please, kid. Forget about the flying vulture guy.”
“But I-”
“Pete. Go home. Trust me, I’ll take care of this.”
“...Okay, Toni.”
“You know, it’s never too late to start thinking about college. I have some pull at MIT, if you're interested.”
“Thanks, Toni.”
---
“Sorry, Peter. I guess we’re still losers. I’ll see you tomorrow.”
---
“Whoever’s making these weapons is obviously combining alien tech with ours.”
“Peter, isn’t this the perfect time to ask Iron Woman for help?”
“I got it, Ned. Don't worry.”
---
“ Hey, that’s one of the guys that tried to kill me.”
“What?”
“Yeah.”
“We gotta get out of here.”
“No, no, no, no, no. I gotta follow them. Maybe they can lead me to the guy that dropped me in the lake.”
“Someone dropped you in a lake?”
“Yeah, it was not good.”
---
“You left New York?”
“Uh, yeah. I'm at the academic decathlon.”
There was some shuffling on the other side, and then Peter heard Toni’s voice. “That sounds great, kid! Make us proud, yeah?”
Peter smiled. “Yeah, Toni.”
“Say goodbye, Brooklyn! Oh, honey, that's not food-”
Peter laughed as the call cut out, turning back to Ned.
“What's up with the tracker?”
---
“Why are we removing the tracker from your suit?”
“I just... Toni has enough to deal with, and I can handle this without her monitoring me.”
“So you're lying to Iron Woman now?”
“No, I'm not lying. She just doesn't really get what I can do yet. She thinks I'm a kid.”
“Peter, you are a kid.”
---
“Activating Instant Kill.”
“No, no, no, no, no, no, no. I don’t want to kill anybody!”
“Deactivating Instant Kill.”
---
“Maybe we should run that refresher course.”
---
“Ned, call me back! The glowy thing is a bomb!”
---
“Midtown takes the championship!”
---
“The Chitauri core has detonated and caused severe structural damage to the elevator.”
---
“My friends are up there!”
---
“Are you really friends with Peter Parker?”
He doubted they would've heard him anyway.
---
“Eight years, not a word from the Feds, nothing from those Halloween-costume-wearing bozos up there in Stark tower. And then all of a sudden, this little bastard in red tights shows up and he thinks he can tear down everything I've built. Really? I’m gonna kill him.”
---
“So... you got detention. You screwed up.”
God, next time Peter went to the tower he might just have to fight Steve again.
“You know what you did was wrong. The question is, how are you gonna make things right? Maybe you were trying to be cool. But take it from a guy who's been frozen for 65 years, the only way to really be cool is to follow the rules.”
“Steve, I've played Monopoly with you. You’ve never followed a rule in your damn life.”
“You say somethin’, Parker?”
“No, sir.”
---
“So your body's changing. Believe me, I know how that feels.”
Ew, Steve.
---
“I can run facial recognition on the footage of that encounter.”
“Footage?”
“Yes, Peter. I record everything you see.”
“Everything?”
“Everything.”
“Like all the time?”
“It's called the Baby Monitor Protocol.”
“...Toni, why?”
---
“Staten Island ferry, eleven.”
“Oh, that's soon. Hey, that's gonna dissolve in two hours.”
“No, no, no, no. Come fix this.”
“Two hours. You deserve that.”
“I got ice cream in here.”
“You deserve that. You're a criminal. Bye, Mr. Criminal!”
---
“Yoink!”
---
“Great job, Peter. You are 98 percent successful.”
“Ninety-eight?”
---
“Hi, Spider Man. Band practice, was it?”
---
“I told you to stay away.”
“I know-”
“I asked you to trust me, that I’d take care of it. And you ignored me.”
“Toni, I'm sor-”
“I had to leave my kid, and I really don't like being away from my kid. I listened to you, Peter. Who do you think called the FBI, huh? Do you know that I was the only one who believed in you? Everyone else said I was crazy to recruit a 14-year-old kid.”
“I'm 15.”
“No, this is where you zip it, all right? The adult is talking. What if somebody had died tonight? Different story, right? ‘Cause that’s on you. And if you died, I feel like that’s on me. I don’t- Pete, I just want you to be safe.”
Peter had tears in his eyes, and Toni sighed.
“I'm taking the suit.”
“For how long?”
“Indefinitely.”
“No, please-”
“Let’s have it.”
“You don’t understand. Please. This is all I have. I’m nothing without this suit.”
“If you’re nothing without this suit, then you shouldn’t have it. Okay? God, I sound like my dad.”
Peter looked up at her, crying. “I just wanted to be like you.”
Despite everything, Toni opened her arms, and Peter collapsed. She held him close, stroking his hair while he cried.
“You’re better, Peter. But you're still just a kid”
He let out a sob, and she continued to hold him, shushing him gently. “It'll be okay. Peter, I promise. You'll be okay.”
He felt like a little kid, even though he was furious at her, all he wanted was to be near her. They stood there for what seemed like forever, until Toni pressed a soft kiss to the top of his head. “Everything will be okay Peter, as long as you trust me this time. Can you do that?” He nodded, wiping the tears from his eyes.
“I don’t have any other clothes.”
She nodded, smiling reassuringly. “Okay, we’ll sort that out.”
---
“I lost the Stark internship.”
“What?”
“Yeah.”
“What happened?”
“I just thought that I could work really hard and she could, she would, you know. But I screwed it up.”
“Oh... It’s okay, it’s okay. It’s okay.”
“I’m sorry I made you worry.”
“You know I’m not trying to ruin your life.”
“Yeah, I know.”
“Just... I used to sneak out too.”
“Yeah, I know.”
“And take a shower. You smell. You smell like garbage.
“I know.”
---
“Hey, look, I, uh... I just wanted to apologize about the whole Decathlon thing. I really-”
“It’s fine. Last week, Decathlon was the most important thing, but then I almost died.”
“No, I, I just mean that... it was not cool, especially... (sighs) ...because... I like you.”
“I know.”
“You do?”
“You’re terrible at keeping secrets.”
“Yeah, you’d be surprised.”
---
“Does she know?”
“Know what?”
“So she doesn’t. Good. Close to the vest. I admire that. I’ve got a few secrets of my own. Of all the reasons I didn’t want my daughter to date... Peter, nothing is more important than family. You saved my daughter’s life. I could never forget something like that. So I’m gonna give you one chance. Are you ready? You walk through those doors, you forget any of this happened. And don’t you ever, ever interfere with my business again. Because if you do, I’ll kill you and everybody you love. I’ll kill you dead. That’s what I’ll do to protect my family. Do you understand?”
“Hey. I just saved your life. Now, what do you say?”
“Thank you.”
“You’re welcome. Now, you go in there and you show my daughter a good time, okay? Just not too good.”
---
“Flash, I need your car and your phone!”
---
“Hey, have you gotten through to Happy yet?”
“Yeah. I’m working on it. I just gotta backdoor the phone system.”
---
“Come on, Peter. Come on, Spider-Man. Come on, Spider-Man. Come on, Spider-Man. Come on, Spider-Man!”
He pulled himself out and laid on the ground, catching his breath. He stayed there until he saw a shadow above him.
“Didn't Toni ask you to stay out of trouble?” Steve smiled down at him.
Peter took his hand wincing in pain as he stood. “Relax, I'm not gonna yell at you.” He helped dust him off. “I know there’s no point telling you to back down, but I can at least help keep you safe. Trust me?”
Peter nodded, still shocked that he was about to team up with actual Captain America. He’d hung out with Steve, sure, but this was different.
“Pete?” Steve waved his hand in front of Peter’s face, concerned. “You with me?”
Peter looked up at Steve, and despite everything, broke into a smile.
“I'm with you.”
---
“I feel like now is a good time to tell you, Toni doesn't know I'm here.”
“WHAT?!”
“Yeah, we’re both dead.”
---
“Really, Steve? You two are going to make my life a living hell. I swear to God, are you two trying to kill me?”
The two looked up at her, hovering a few feet above the ground, and they were both bleeding and bruised, and probably burned, and they were covered in sand, but they were alive, and standing, and Toni was just so happy to know they were safe that nothing else mattered. She dropped out of the sky, ran out of the suit, and pulled her boys down for a hug.
---
“Ow!” Steve tried to pull away from Toni, who rolled her eyes.
“Supersoldier, my ass.” She grumbled, grabbing the back of his neck and pulling him forward. Peter, who was already cleaned and bandaged, was holding Brooklyn up to a mirror and making faces while she babbled.
“You're sure about this, Pete?” She met his eyes through the mirror. He smiled back at her.
“I'm sure.”
---
“We’d like to introduce the newest Avenger... Spiderman.”
---
“What the fu-”
---
“Can anyone explain to me why there’s a selfie of Thor with some girls all over twitter?”
“...What.”
---
Peter ran into the kitchen.
“Toni, have you seen the news? Should we-”
“Get. Your. Ass. To. School. T’challa can handle himself.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
---
Toni opened a private line to Shuri that evening.
“T’challa can handle himself, right?” she asked.
“Of course not, he’s a man. But we’re taking care of him, don't worry.”
“Kid, I will always worry.”
---
Bucky froze in the living room, taking in the scene around him. Steve and Toni were on the couch, passed out. The baby was wiggling happily on the floor.
The kid was about 3 months old, and Bucky still didn't trust himself enough to be near her. He and Sam had been working with B.A.R.F almost daily, sometimes with Toni, but mostly just the two of them. They’d been going through his memories, and giving Bucky the chance to fully accept that whatever happened wasn't their fault, and after months of work, they were pretty okay.
But after taking one look at the child, he was freaking out.
That kid was too fragile for him to be allowed anywhere near her.
He was a weapon.
The Winter Soldier.
Except he wasn't.
Not anymore.
But he still could be.
No, he couldn't.
Taking a deep breath, Bucky took a few steps and sat down next to Brooklyn. He had no doubt that F.R.I.D.A.Y was watching, and could easily wake Toni or Steve up if anything happened.
Slowly, he extended his flesh arm towards her, just resting it on the ground next to her. The baby grabbed one of his fingers, and looked up at him, confused. She stared at him for a minute, until she apparently decided that he was okay. She tugged on his finger, and he went with her easily, letting out a small smile when she attempted to shove it into her mouth.
“That's not food, little girl.” Bucky said. She didn't seem to care. She smiled at him with bright blue eyes he’d only ever seen on one person before, and he found himself smiling back. “You’re very small.” he informed her, just in case she forgot. “And I'm a dangerous man. I could hurt you. Easily.”
The baby didn't respond.
“I don't want to.” he continued, “But then, I've never wanted to hurt anyone before.” She hummed around his finger, not taking her eyes off him.
Carefully, giving the baby plenty of time to notice, he began to move his metal arm towards her. When the light hit it, she turned, letting his flesh finger drop out of her mouth, and studied the shiny thing crawling toward her. He recognized that laser focus stare, he saw it every time her mother worked on the arm. After about a minute of silent staring, she decided that the metal arm was not food, and reached out to squeeze his thumb once, and just left her hand in his.
“You're not afraid of me?” She smiled up at him, babbling quietly.
Guess not.
Toni opened her eyes, and her heart almost burst at the sight that greeted her.
“...and then your dad, the punk, decided he was too good for a parachute-”
Brooklyn was staring up at Bucky from her spot in his lap. One hand was holding his flesh arm in her mouth while she slobbered all over his hand, and the other was patting the metal arm wrapped securely around her waist.
“F.R.I.D.A.Y?” Toni whispered, “You getting this?”
“I've been recording for the past half hour, Boss.” F.R.I.D.A.Y spoke in her ear.
“That's my girl.”
---