The Accords had been settled, the rogue Avengers pardoned, and everyone was back to being one big happy family at the compound. For the most part.
Peter was thrilled. He'd never held any actual malice toward any of the rogue Avengers, and while he still technically wasn't an Avenger, he'd been invited to team up on a lot of their missions and was currently spending more time at the compound than he did at his own apartment, going after school and sleeping over most weekends. It was his geeky childhood dreams coming true, being able to live and train with real superheroes, and he liked to think he'd managed to worm his way into each of their hearts with his endearing charm and personality. Things were going great.
Until they weren't.
"Stark's missing a team training session again?" Steve asked, clearly irritated. The whole team was sat in the conference room just down the hall from the gym. Steve had recently been taught PowerPoint and had unironically put together a presentation to go over their battle plan for the day—with cross-fade transitions and everything. Peter was impressed.
"I dunno, he said he was busy on Fridays. Maybe try some other day?" Peter offered.
"We can't, this is the day that worked best for everyone else, and they had real excuses," Steve argued.
"My kids' after-school activity schedule is ridiculous," Clint explained.
Sam shrugged, "I have group on weekends."
"And I have taken up a chess club on Tuesdays," Vision added.
"Okay, I know he didn't explain why he was busy on Fridays, but I'm sure it's legit!" Peter said.
"Or he just wants to get out of it," Natasha suggested in a neutral tone.
Steve sighed, "It's not your job to defend him, Peter. I guess we'll just have to continue without him. But I swear, if he keeps doing this…"
"I'll talk to him. Figure it out," Peter volunteered. And thus, the matter was settled.
...
"I'm busy."
"I know, but I was kind of hoping for…more than that. Like, that's totally cool with me, I don't care personally, but Steve and some of the others are kind of upset that you've been missing so many training sessions, and—"
"Well then Steve can shove it up his star-spangled…" Tony cut himself off abruptly, but Peter could fill in the blank. It was the next day, a Saturday, and the two of them were tinkering in Tony's lab at the compound. Tony had been in a good mood that day, and Peter had waited until the ideal moment to try to slip the topic into their casual conversation. However, Tony had shut down completely at the question of his whereabouts, voice clipped and expression guarded.
"Couldn't you reschedule it to a different day, at least once or twice?" Peter tried.
"No. Believe it or not, some things are more important than training. More important than the Avengers, even," and with that, he turned back to the gauntlet he was working on.
Peter turned back to his own work, but his elbow accidentally knocked the screwdriver he'd been using off the workbench and into his open backpack sitting on the floor. As he reached in to grab it, his hand brushed across the Sherlock Holmes book he'd been working on for his English class.
And suddenly, Peter had an idea.
...
The first thing to do was gather information. He wasn't expecting FRIDAY to tell him where Mr. Stark went each week, and he was right. However, He was able to find out that he left the compound fairly consistently at around 1:30 on those days
There was no way Peter was going to be able to attach himself to Mr. Stark's car without noticing (and, after scouting it out one day, Peter determined that Mr. Stark did drive himself to wherever this business was—usually in a nondescript, drab-colored car, which Peter found slightly unusual for the man's flashy tendencies), and most of the trip was too far outside of the city for him to rely on web-slinging the whole way. He knew which route Mr. Stark usually took to get into the city though, and by using his phone to calculate travel times and traffic conditions, he was able to get a fairly accurate estimate of when the man would cross the city limits. Conveniently coinciding with when he got off of school.
So then, all he had to do was wait.
Peter stationed himself on the roof of a building at the edge of the city that next week, suit on and backpack stuffed with his school books and an extra change of clothes. He'd calculated it almost perfectly; he spotted Mr. Stark black Honda Civic passing by exactly on time, and with a flick of his wrist he was off in pursuit, making sure to stay out of sight.
They traversed the city for almost twenty minutes. When he finally saw Mr. Stark pull into a parking garage, Peter had to do a double take.
They were at a hospital.
Peter landed in a nearby alley and changed out of his suit, back into the clothes he'd worn earlier that day at school. Rational thoughts were gone from Peter's head, overwhelming concern and curiosity in their place. He stuffed his suit into the bottom of his backpack and rearranged the supplies on top of it before turning out of the alleyway. He'd have to walk around to the other side of the building in order to access the main entrance; by the time everything was said and done, he was sure Mr. Stark would already be settled inside.
He passed through the automatic glass doors and found himself approaching the front reception desk, a bored-looking receptionist scrolling through her phone in between quick glances out into the lobby every other minute. When Peter reached her, she looked up at him with a disinterested gaze.
"Can I help you?"
"Uh, yeah," Peter swallowed a lump in his throat. For some reason, he never imagined getting this far. "I'm looking for Tony Stark."
"I'm sorry, sir, there's no one here by that name." but a spark of recognition in her eyes gave her away instantly. Peter scrambled to figure out his next course of action.
"I know he's here. I'm his intern! Look," he fished through his jacket pocket and flashed her his Stark Industries ID. "and he, uh, he called me because he forgot some really important documents that he needs for a meeting right after he leaves here, see?" he pulled a green folder out of his backpack and held it up, fingers strategically covering the corner that had Math written on it in Sharpie.
It was a lame excuse. Mr. Stark hadn't kept anything on paper since the 90s. She seemed less convinced about that part, but apparently, in conjunction with his ID, it was enough because after searching his soul with a stare for a few more, very long seconds, she conceded. "Ninth floor, room ninety-seven."
"Thank you, ma'am!" he said quickly before bypassing her to the elevator. He was alone as he punched the button to bring him to the ninth floor, only his thoughts to keep him company.
Mr. Stark had to be sick. That was the only explanation: he was sick and he was keeping it from the team. Peter remembered hearing about the time where he nearly died from Palladium poisoning with no one knowing because he refused to tell them. He must be getting some sort of outpatient treatment here, if he'd done it at the Avengers medical center he risked the team finding out…
If the man ever had a cold or a paper cut, he'd bemoan it for days to anyone within earshot—he could be the biggest drama queen Peter had ever met when he wanted sympathy. But when things got serious, he shut people out. That meant whatever this was, it must be bad. Very bad.
He reached the ninth floor with a ding! of the elevator and found himself in front of another nurse's desk with a small waiting area. As soon as he stepped forward, the nurse on duty pointed him to the hallway on the right—the receptionist downstairs must have called to say he was coming. Resolutely focused on his task, he made his way down the hall and right to room ninety-seven. The door was cracked open, not enough to see inside but enough that Peter felt comfortable only briefly knocking on the door before pushing it open.
Four heads whipped toward him as soon as he entered. Wait, four? That couldn't be right. Because there was Tony, but he looked perfectly healthy, and he was sitting in a chair next to the bedside of a young boy. And there was another man and woman on the other side of the bed that looked enough like the boy to probably be his parents, except Peter had never seen any of them before and…
"Peter?" he'd never heard the man so completely caught off-guard before.
Peter was at a loss.
"I, uh, papers," he floundered, halfheartedly waving his math folder in the air, unsure what to say next. In the space that utterance, Mr. Stark had composed himself completely, and he politely excused himself from the room as he stood and practically strong-armed Peter out into the hallway.
As soon as the door to the hospital room was closed, Mr. Stark's face morphed into an expression of anger. He had an ironclad grip on Peter's arm, and it was actually starting to hurt a little. "I don't know how or why you're here, but you are going to sit at the nurses' station and not say another word until I'm done, do you understand me?"
Peter swallowed hard and nodded. Mr. Stark took a deep breath, calming himself before turning around and heading back into the room. Peter could just hear him say, "Sorry about that…" before the door shut once again.
So…he obviously miscalculated a few things. As he headed back toward the small seating area near the nurses' station, he finally noticed more about the environment around him that he'd ignored in his haste to see Mr. Stark. There were large, brightly colored geometric shapes on the walls in a very playful pattern, and the desk at the nurses' station was decorated with paper hearts with scribbled crayon designs and painted handprint flowers for Valentine's Day. As he sat down, he saw that the directory posted right next to the elevator listed floor nine as "Children's Oncology".
It was very clear that Mr. Stark was not sick. But the question remained, who exactly was? Peter didn't recognize that boy or his parents at all, at least, not from the quick look he had at him. He didn't really have any resemblance to Mr. Stark either except for his dark hair. Could they be related? If not, how did they know each other?
He sat at that chair for almost an hour before Mr. Stark finally reemerged into the hall. He'd only made it halfway to Peter before he was interrupted.
"Tony!" a little girl cried in greeting as she rushed down from the opposite hall toward him, dragging an IV pole behind her. Peter's heart just about leaped into his throat when he noticed that the beanie covering her bald head was red and black, patterned just like his Spider-Suit.
"Hey, squirt!" Mr. Stark greeted back in a cheerfully authentic manner that seemed entirely out of character to Peter as he bent down to meet her with a hug.
"She knew you'd be spending most of your time with Caleb today, but she wanted to make sure she saw you before you left," said a woman, presumably the girl's mother, as she finally caught up from behind.
"Really?" Mr. Stark asked, not leaving his crouched position as he made sure to keep eye contact with the little girl. "Well you know I always love seeing you, Ellie. How are you doing today?"
"I'm doing great, I just got new meds and I got a good grade on my math test and I made something for you, see?" She reached into the pocket of the oversized hoodie she was wearing and pulled out a Lego creation. It looked mostly like a big rainbow cube with some bits sticking out and four wheels on the bottom.
"I love it," Mr. Stark said immediately. "Tell me all about it." Admittedly, that was a much better way to phrase, what in the world is it?
"It's a flying ice cream truck!" she explained as she handed it to him. "There are its wings, and that's its thruster. It's so it can fly all the way up to the windows of the hospital to deliver ice cream to everyone!"
He turned it around, admiring it and making an exaggerated impressed noise in the back of his throat. "You know, I think we've got a natural-born engineer on our hands here. I'm going to treasure this forever. But I've got a gift for you too. Hold on a sec."
Mr. Stark slipped the ice-cream truck into his own pocket as he turned toward the nurses' station. He nodded to the nurse on duty, and she smiled back as she pulled a cloth shopping bag from behind the desk and handed it to him. He bent down once more to be on Ellie's level as he pulled out a build-your-own-robot kit and presented it to her. Her eyes went as wide as saucers.
"It's so cool!" she exclaimed.
"Yeah? Do you think the other kids will like them too?" he tipped the bag toward her to reveal a dozen more boxes inside.
"They'll love them! Thank you Tony!" she leaped forward and gave him another hug.
"No problem. You know you munchkins are my favorite focus group." He stood up and ruffled her hair, then turned to her mother. "SI is developing a whole line of STEM activities for kids. Thought they might enjoy them."
"You have no idea," she said with a laugh. She glanced down at her daughter tearing into the packaging of her robot for a moment with an unquantifiable amount of love in her expression before looking back up at him. "Thank you."
"And how are you doing?"
The woman's posture immediately shifted into something more uncomfortable, her eyes darting away from his gaze. "El's new medication is working great. You remember what she was like two weeks ago, she's doing so much better now…"
"Anna," he called out her obvious deflection.
She sighed. "Miguel just lost his job. Apparently, the hotel isn't doing so great and decided they didn't need so many maintenance technicians. He's been trying to look for a new one ever since, but nowhere seems to be hiring…"
"Oh," Mr. Stark said solemnly. Then something sparked in his eyes, and he continued. "Well, it's a good thing Stark Industries is looking to fill an opening that requires his exact skillset. Here," he reached into his pocket and pulled out a business card. "Is he free tomorrow?"
Anna looked like she was about to cry. "I can make sure he is."
Mr. Stark handed the card over to her, "Have him go to this address and ask for Tanya. He should be prepared for an interview, but I have a strong suspicion he'll do great. It's a good job. Full pay, benefits…and as many paid vacation days as needed to visit family members in the hospital."
"I don't know how to repay you," she said, clutching the business card to her chest.
"A new Lego sculpture from this one every time I visit," he joked, pointing down at Ellie who had migrated over to the little end table next to the waiting area and was now fully engrossed in her robot kit. "But seriously. We really could use another good technician. He'd be doing me a favor."
The smile she gave him was more grateful than words could express. Then she leaned forward to turned to her daughter. "Come on, El, clean that up. Do you want to go give the rest of these to your friends?"
"Yes!" she shot up and quickly but carefully put all the pieces to her robot back in its box, then clutched it to her chest as she hurried back over to her mother.
"We'll see you next week?" Anna asked Mr. Stark.
"Of course," he promised. As they started to walk away down the hall, Ellie turned back around to wave one last time.
"Bye Tony!"
Mr. Stark gave her a warm smile. "See you later, alligator."
The girl giggled and they turned the corner, out of sight. Mr. Stark finally acknowledged Peter, who had watched the entire exchange in stunned silence. "I'm starving. Let's go get some lunch."
He said nothing more until they were seated at a café a short way down the road from the hospital with a large BLT and fries in front of him. Peter had a strawberry milkshake, but he'd barely drunk any of it. He was too distracted by all the questions running through his head.
"I'm not related to any of them if that's what you're wondering," Mr. Stark began. He didn't seem angry anymore. "No secret kids, or nieces or nephews or anything like that."
"I didn't think—" Peter began to lie.
"Sure you did. Hell, I had to convince most of the Avengers you weren't my secret kid when they first met you," he pointed a French fry at Peter to punctuate the sentence. "Why does everyone assume I have a secret kid? Don't answer that."
Peter stirred the straw around in his milkshake. It was starting to melt, the condensation on the glass dripping down onto the tabletop below. "Okay. So who are they?"
"Great kids…who happen to be very sick," his words were tentative, deliberate but unsure. "God, I've never told anyone else about this before, I don't even know where to start."
He shoved a few more fries into his mouth instead, chewed for a long time. When he was done, he seemed to have collected his thoughts.
"In two-thousand eight, I was contacted by the Make A Wish Foundation. They told me that they had a five-year-old boy, Caleb, who probably wasn't gonna live to see ten, and the one thing he wanted most in the world was to meet me.
"I was pretty egotistical back then, but even so I had no idea why this kid wanted me. Iron Man didn't exist yet. I was still primarily building weapons for the military, and the headlines with my name in them weren't something you'd show to your child. But apparently he'd seen an interview I'd done for a kid's TV special—some bit I'd been forced to do to excite kids about engineering, because it would be good for publicity—and he got hooked. Loved looking at schematics released to the public by Stark Industries, had his parents read him scientific articles I'd contributed to, et cetera. He didn't understand a lot of the more complicated stuff, but he still loved it."
He was on a roll now. Peter didn't try to interrupt.
"So yeah, I get this phone call, and of course I say yes. I had no idea what I was doing, but how the hell do you say no to that sort of thing? The foundation worked with me to plan a whole day for the kid. They were going to fly him down to Malibu, I'd show him my workshop, introduce him to my robots, the works. But then a few days before it was all supposed to happen, he got worse. He couldn't travel, and they didn't know when he'd get better. They told me he was at a hospital in New York, and I had some other business to take care of in the city anyway, so I just decided to go visit him. Brought Dum-E and everything—and let me tell you, it was not easy convincing the nurses to let him up there."
A fond smile touched his lips for a brief moment at recollecting the memory. Then, in a flash, it was gone.
"Caleb was so weak he couldn't get out of bed, but he was smart and asked good questions, and he loved Dum-E. Dum-E loved him too, almost couldn't get him to leave by the end of it. I had this pet project I was working on at the time, this device that would dispense peanut butter and jelly in perfect proportions on bread according to taste. It was dumb. I was bored. But the kid asked if I would come show it to him when I was done. Now, you gotta understand, the doctors couldn't promise me…" he paused, considered his words. "They said it could be years, or it could be months. They couldn't guarantee that he'd be around by the time I finished with the project. And technically, I wasn't obligated to ever see him again, after that first time. The Make A Wish stuff was over. But I told him sure, because I thought that maybe if he had that to look forward to, just maybe, y'know, he'd…stay.
"He did. I kept going up to visit him two or three times a month, whenever I was in New York, and I'd bring different projects each time, keep him excited about it. I-I don't know why. He was a good kid, I guess, and I liked seeing him. He'd look forward to every time I'd visit, and being that for someone…it was nice."
Mr. Stark had picked up a piece of lettuce that had fallen out of his sandwich. He started to tear it into pieces absentmindedly as a dark expression fell over his face.
"Then Afghanistan happened. I didn't think about Caleb while I was there. Kind of distracted by other stuff. But by the time I got back, I found out his tumor had come back too. I visited him as soon as I was mentally and physically capable. It was a rough day for him. His parents went out to get a bite to eat for a little bit during the visit, and he made me come close to his bedside and pinky swear that I would make sure his parents were okay, no matter what happened."
He laughed, the noise devoid of any real humor. He'd run out of lettuce to shred, so his fingers pressed against the chipped Formica tabletop instead, turning white.
"He was six fucking years old and he made me promise to take care of his parents when he died."
He seemed to retreat inside himself, for a minute. Peter got up enough nerve to say, "But he's okay, right? The kid I saw, that was him?"
Mr. Stark's focus was brought back to Peter. "Yeah, that was him. Twelve years old now, he'll be thirteen in four months. His health goes back and forth, but he's doing okay at the moment."
"…so who was the other girl?"
The mention of her made him smile. "Her name is Ellie. The kids in that ward, a lot of them stick around for a while. I've gotten to know them over the years, it's almost like they're—" he cut himself off before he could finish the thought.
"You seemed really good with her," Peter continued. The patience and adoration he showed to her was something Peter had rarely seen him afford to anyone else. Certainly not with children. As far as Peter knew, Mr. Stark thought children were barely more than sticky, snotty versions of aliens.
"You're surprised," Tony commented. "I get it. I'm not good with kids. But when I met them, I figured it out. I had to."
The waitress chose that moment to come to their table and ask if they needed anything. Tony waved her off.
"Y'know, if you just told the team about this, they'd be super understanding. Like, it's super cool that you—"
"No," Tony interrupted.
"Why?" Peter asked.
"No one is supposed to know about this, not even you. Do you know how easy it would be for me to sell this to the papers? "Iron Man visits children's hospital", people would eat that shit up. God knows it would do wonders for my publicity, and I'm sure the team would stop thinking I'm such an asshole all the time. But this isn't about me, and it's certainly not about the team. It's about the kids. The last thing they need is any unwanted attention. So you can't tell anyone, got it?"
Peter held up his hands defensively, "I promise, my lips are sealed!" he drew an imaginary zipper across his mouth.
"I'm serious, Peter," and he was. His look was intense, confrontational. Peter tried to convey as much sincerity into his voice as possible when he answered.
"I won't tell anyone. I swear."
Tony held his gaze for another few, long seconds before seeming satisfied with the response. He leaned back in the booth and flagged the waitress down to bring them the check.
Admittedly, it was a lot to take in. Peter felt like he'd discovered a whole new side to his mentor that he never knew existed before. But amidst all of the other thoughts swirling around in his head, the image of that Spider-Man beanie on that little girl's head stubbornly remained at the forefront. Tentatively, a new idea formed in his brain.
"Um, Mr. Stark?"
Tony looked up from the signature he was scribbling on the check. "Yeah, kid?"
"Would…would you like company next time? I mean, do you think the kids would like to meet, uh, Spider-Man, or something?"
Tony's expression softened as he considered Peter for a moment. "You know? Yeah, I think they would. What are you gonna tell Rogers?"
"I guess...that some things are just more important."
...
Nurses are perceptive. That's the very foundation of their job. Therefore, it's not a stretch to say they certainly noticed when Tony Stark started entering the children's oncology wing each week with a teenager at his side. It can be said that they also certainly noticed how shortly afterward, that teenager would disappear just in time for Spider-Man to arrive suspiciously from the direction of the bathrooms. Sure, they had gone to med school, but it didn't take a genius to put the pieces together of what exactly the connection between those two incidences might be. Anyone of them could have leaked what they knew and profited considerably from it.
But they also noticed how utterly joyful the children became during each visit, how much energy and life it gave them to meet their heroes each week, how the positivity seemed to keep them stronger and healthier. Their laughter and smiles were the first contagious things in that wing to be embraced rather than frowned upon.
Certainly, that was worth the price of a little secret.