QBR Pt 3 Ch 2 An Old Friend, an avengers fanfic

Author's Note: Okay, I lied. It's really late in my timezone and I had a really long, really exhausting weekend, but I had a new chapter to put up, so I'm not actually doing review responses. If I get time (and with school I probably won't), I will try my hardest to PM responses to everyone but the Guests - which I will try to respond to on the next chapter. And this one's chapter title is also the title for the Part. *gives thumbs up* Excited? Me too. Let's go!

I stayed on the roof for a long time after Uncle Tony left. It wasn't until my watch beeped twelve that I realized I was hungry. I'd been up at five that morning because Bruce accidentally tripped the fire alarm by bumping it with his elbow while carrying a box of test tubes and woke me.

Using American Sign Language to talk to myself about food, I descended from the roof and down into the main bowels of the building. The floor we usually congregated on was number one-hundred-and-twelve—the very same one Loki threw Uncle Tony out of back when the demigod tried his hand at world domination. And utterly failed, I might add.

Oh, I guess I ought to mention that Tony isn't actually my uncle. It's just I've been living in the Tower for so long they all just sort of became family.

I emerged on floor 112 in search of the kitchenette and something to snack on or leftover pizza from the "slumber party" last night. Tony was talking to some guy with thick brown hair that sort of stuck out at weird angles whose back was to me. I stuck my face in the fridge and was peering through its contents when I heard my name. "Quinn!" It was Tony. "Come here! There's someone I want you to meet! I sighed. He wanted me to meet everyone in Manhattan apparently because this was a twice-daily occurrence. Sometimes I thought he was trying to show me off as his "niece" to important people. But he didn't need to increase his social standing—he was Tony-Freakin'-Stark for Pete's sake. "He's one of my interns!" the billionaire added. Once upon a time I was his intern too—that lasted for about a week before I ended up in an abandoned warehouse with a knife-wound on my chest and a scar on my forehead from getting punched in the face.

Quickly I managed to force my braid into a somewhat-decent, not-so-windswept look and turned around, closing the fridge door with a look of sadness on my face. Why couldn't Tony understand that I was hungry? I muttered more to myself in Sign Language and shook my head, twisting to face the men.

The guy's back was still to me, but I knew he was young. I began my slow, irked approach toward them both when the visitor turned around.

I halted in my tracks.

"Peter?" I asked.

His jaw dropped. Realization struck his eyes. "Robbie?"

In slow motion we closed the distance between us. I threw my arms around his neck and his wrapped around my waist. He buried his face in my hair and I pressed mine into his powerful chest, breathing in the smell of laundry detergent that was the exact same after three years of never seeing each other. I guess I never mentioned we were good friends right?

Tony was looking really confused. "You two know each other?"

"She was my lab partner second semester in Mr. Wright's physics class! We almost blew up the shed didn't we?" My mind shot back to his great idea of showing me how to bottle a flame in a water-cooler jug. He must have been nervous—I attributed that to the fact that I'm a girl—because he did something wrong and both of us ended up with faces smudged with smoke. Man did I have some explaining to do to my parents that night when they picked me up.

"No," I stressed. "You almost blew up the shed. I watched." He started laughing and in the same, gangly, socially-awkward way of his sat down on the sofa. I plopped down opposite him and smirked.

"Good times," he remarked. "How come I never saw you again?"

I didn't like revealing I was a total genius to people. I got a lot of disbelief, skepticism, and weird looks—so generally it was kind of a secret. But Peter was smart too—I could trust him. What would it hurt me? "I graduated," I answered.

"You were a freshman," he reminded me.

"Yeah. I graduated at the end of freshman year."

"Really?" I couldn't quite tell if he was shocked or impressed.

I nodded. "Yeah. I don't really advertise that I could be the youngest member of Mensa in the history of the world." For those of you who don't know, Mensa is an organization—or committee or something—whose members have to have like… 180 IQ or above. They were geniuses—like me. They weren't "my people" in the way ComicCon-ers were, but in another way, they understood me.

"Wow." He paused. "For the record, you were the best lab partner I ever had."

I felt a blush creep over my face. "Thanks," I replied. "I have to say the same about you. All the others were… halfwits."

Tony stared, back and forth between us, as we caught up. We'd spent many hours in the shed behind his aunt and uncle's house doing our science fair project and other physics labs—trying to replicate the way the teacher did them and usually failing epically. We almost blew up that shed more than once—and we weren't even in chemistry. I'd always meant to track him down and get back in touch after I graduated college—I had his email address—but I never had. Now he was sitting here in front of me and I felt like a fifteen-year-old freshman almost ready to graduate again.

"Okay, okay!" my uncle finally exclaimed. "We'll have time for the cozy catch up at dinner! Right now, we have to go…" He trailed off trying to find some valid excuse to get us to stop reminiscing. Peter stood up and tugged his skinny jeans—that made his legs look hot (don't tell him I said that)—further down from where they'd ridden up from sitting down.

"I came here to repair the intercom system in the med bay," he said.

"Yes, you go do that," Tony said. "And Quinn… go find something to do on your computer."

"With pleasure," I snapped at him in French sarcastically, guiding Peter toward the elevator.

"I heard that young lady!"

I spun around to face him, walking backwards, and gave him the sign for "don't care!" That one he didn't know, so he scrunched his eyebrows in confusion as I spun back and strode into the elevator car and hit the button for my floor—107. Peter hit 5. "You've got a long ride," I remarked.

The box started its descent and my stomach swooped.

Peter shrugged, hands in his pockets. "Meh. It won't be so bad. We'll have to catch up more at dinner, okay?"

"Sounds great." I smiled. "You know, sometimes I really miss those old physics days. You were the only friend I had until I met my college roommate, Rachel." I shrugged. Peter put up his hands in a gesture meant to look like a halt.

"Whoa, whoa, whoa, slow down," he ordered. "You're in college?"

"Not anymore. I graduated freshman year of that too."

"Seriously?" he demanded.

Ding!

I shrugged again. "Yup. Now, if you don't mind, this is where I get off." I gave him one of my sarcastic bows and left. As the doors slid shut, I caught a last glimpse of his incredulous face.

Turning back to my floor, I looked at my massive banks of computers and sat down at one. Search Stark Industries Intern list, I typed into the command box. Green letters of computer code scrolled past my vision. Supposedly I had access to all of Stark Industries' databases, but one time looking for a file, I found out that wasn't quite true, so I used one of my hacking programs to gain the unimpeded access I was promised. I just had to go out and get it myself. If you want something done right you do it yourself.

Intern name?

Peter B. Parker.

I pushed my chair back and went to my bedroom to redo my hair. The computer would probably take a while to load—who knew how many interns Tony's company had?—so I might as well make my hair look somewhat decent before I had to go present myself to my high school lab partner and the rest of the Avengers—they wouldn't care, it was Peter I was worried about.

Searching…

Loading…

Ready!

Gosh, I hated old computers. I should have picked one of the newer models closer to my room.

Intern not found.

End Note: Uh-oh. "Intern not found." Wonder what that means? (Well, I know. I'm just not telling you until the next chapter.) *Smirks with Loki-like mischief gleaming in eyes* Hope you guys enjoyed! I sure did!

Thanks for reading! Leave a review if you liked it!

~Cass