Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto, Marvel, or am I the author of Dreaming of Sunshine. I am but a simple fanfiction author that builds off of other people ideas because I find it interesting.
Looking down at the screen of her phone for the 100th time, May Parker can't help the dread that has been pooling in her stomach ever since she first saw Peter's text hours ago.
Sorry, Aunt May, we're heading to Wakanda for a little while. Piper's spells have been going crazy. Will call later.
Feeling Ben's hand on her shoulder, May looked up to her husband.
"Don't worry, May. They'll be fine. They're stubborn, and they're smart. They won't let anything happen to eachother."
"You say that, but you're just as worried about them as I am."
Their kids, Peter and Piper, teenagers, high school students, part-time vigilante/superheroes. Who apparently thought that going out and saving the world was more important than their education and their guardians' mental well-being. She's already gotten a call from the school that apparently her kids disappeared during a school field trip. And now, well, she and Ben have gotten off work and are waiting desperately for that promised call.
They've always known that parenting wouldn't be easy, ever since they took in the twins years ago. But nothing, not her parents, not the parenting manuals, her friends, neighbors, had ever prepared her for parenting Peter and Piper, her two little geniuses. Peter, with his insatiable thirst for knowledge, and a mad scientist streak to match, and Piper who always needed to be doing something at all times.
It was always a struggle to keep up with them, even when May knew what they were talking about, but she had encouraged them. She'd enrolled them for summer science camps, signed them up for the free self-defense classes they held over at the near-by dojo, and when Piper asked, enrolled her for some of the other classes. She's watched them experiment with the chemistry kit Ben had gotten them for their birthday, Peter pulling Piper into his mad scientist spree. She's seen Piper teach her brother what she's learned at the dojo, along with every other kid at the playground.
May has watched them grow up, and is so, so proud of them. She's taught them Italian, her mother's native tongue, heard them stumble over the unfamiliar words, slowly gaining fluency until she could carry on conversations with them around the dinner table with Ben having no idea what's being said. She's shrieked with glee as the scholarships and acceptance letters for the Midtown School of Science and Technology came in for both of her children. She helped them with homework, bandaged their cuts and scrapes, kissed their bumps and bruises. She's done the best she can, but right now it feels like it hasn't been enough.
She's so proud of her kids, but she so terrified that someday they won't come home. That she won't be able to hug them, kiss them on the forehead and send them to bed. That someday she won't hear them argue about the most inane things. That she might answer her phone to hear that her kids have died, fighting a war they shouldn't have to fight, that isn't their responsibility. She doesn't want them out there, fighting crime, but it seems that's what they've decided to do.
Of course, that hadn't been her first reaction to finding out about Peter and Piper's pastimes. Her first impulse had been to take the suits, ban them from ever going out, then go up to Tony Stark and slug him in the face for daring to pull her kids into his mess. But clearly, that didn't happen, though if she ever sees Stark again he will be getting a fist to the jaw. With Ben and Piper acting as mediators, eventually the whole story got out. About Peter and his powers, how after Ben and Piper nearly got mugged with the assailant getting away, he decided to start actively using them to help others, Piper following suit. How their 'internship' was actually Stark recruiting them to help apprehend Captain America and his rogue Avengers, (which had been something May had figured out, but made her incredibly angry to hear from the twins).
By the time the twins finished their story, May simply had to leave. Because this, this was huge, her kids, her children, had been keeping this secret from the two of them. She and Ben had known something was going on with the twins, of course they did, but this was no where near what they had expected. They had thought maybe, it was bullies, or something at school, they had not expected that Peter and Piper had taken Ben's lectures about responsibility to a absurd point and decided to go vigilante.
So she headed to the kitchen, planning to try one of her new recipes as she attempted to work her way through what her children had just told her. She hadn't expected Piper to join her. But when her niece started helping, May did not refuse the help. Piper didn't apologize, didn't make reference to what May had just heard, May didn't either, just worked. May had wanted to yell, wanted to scream and shout to the heavens about how kids shouldn't be fighting criminals, be on the streets, but she couldn't. Yelling never helped with the twins, especially with Piper. Piper who had always looked out at the world through different eyes, who stared out at nothing and contemplated the universe, the philosopher, the fighter. In the end, May only had one question.
"Do you need to do this?"
She looked into her niece's eyes in that moment and saw them unfocused. She noticed the tells of one of Piper's 'dizzy moments'. Piper's eyes flickered across the room, following invisible trails in the air. With the ease of long practice, May encompassed her niece in a hug. Piper whispered in her ear.
"A storm will be coming."
Now, with her children far from her reach and dread pooling in her stomach, she wonders if this was what Piper had been talking about. What Peter had been talking about when he had told Ben about Piper and her trances, about his suspicions about her possessing powers. But she can't do anything. So she hugs her husband and waits, praying for her children to come home.