Bruce and Tony are at some convention talking about what to do with the abandoned alien technology left on their front lawn, and Steve and Sam are helping with special programs dedicated to jump-starting support for people who aren't coping well with resurrecting, down in Harlem. There are still an annoying assortment of construction workers ruining an otherwise pleasant foyer when Natasha forgoes them all and takes note of the black car pulling up to the half-mended facility. Peter Parker steps out of the back mid-conversation with Happy, dressed in some old jacket and cuffed pants, looking like the usual high school kid from the neck down. She can see a weariness in the lines of his face though, his smile too forced to be anything good.
Happy's gone just as quickly on business and leaves the boy to Nat's cold and calculating regime back in the lounge area — that is, she had only come out from a poker game to make sure someone was there for Peter, when he was dropped off. He had texted her early in the morning to let her know things hadn't gone too well with telling May his plan, the plan in which he had only told her about so far; she's not sure why he turned to her, to tell her what he needed to do, but she appreciates it all the same.
Ned took it a little better, but only a little, and so she's not surprised that he looks in dour spirits.
"Rough time at the apartment?" she asks, arms crossed.
"... Yeah... I'm just gonna — give it time." He walks in tandem with her. "She texted me that she loved me when I said I'd be hanging out here for a little bit today, so — she doesn't hate me totally. That's good, right?"
Natasha rolls her eyes, but there's no heat to it.
"Peter, your aunt isn't going to hate you for anything. That woman can only love you unconditionally; that much is obvious." May Parker was a force in this place, not remotely afraid to stand toe-to-toe with any of the other Avengers in the facility. She'd loomed and lingered, and if anyone even so much as breathed negatively in Peter's direction she would have taken them out like a professional hit man (perhaps a bit too extreme of a comparison, but you could never underestimate a mother figure like that). Peter seems a bit at ease when she speaks, his shoes scuffling a little less dejectedly.
"... I know. I'm just... sad that I hurt her."
"Good, then that proves you're human." Peter walks toward the lounge area, but Natasha reaches out and pinches his sleeve to tug him to the immediate left. At his puzzled glance, she says, "C'mon, don't go sulking somewhere. How good is your pokerface?"
"My what?"
She shrugs and frowns like a sturgeon. "That bodes poorly for you in the long haul."
The room is smaller and used to be some kind of living quarters, but it's been temporarily altered into some kind of gaming area by Clint himself in a moment of desperation. There's a folding metal table covered in poker chips and cards and drinks (that Peter is definitely not old enough to partake in), and there sit the knights of the square table — Clint's scrolling through his phone as he waits for the game to pick back up. And Thor is chattering eagerly at Rhodes about how disgusting it is to be nearly digested by some creature with a long-winded name.
"Heyyyy, kid," Clint says with a little smile. "Are you a gambling man?"
"I... played a little before?" He looks like he's unsure what's even going on, and Natasha just elbows him a bit from behind as she finds her seat. She figures it only seems right, to take his mind off the cloud brewing around his head. And if he does end up leaving — it would at least be better that he leaves with some pleasant memories with comrades, right? Rhodes expertly shuffles the deck and Thor offers Peter a friendly and kind smile; it's like putting the dog with the pup, and Peter can't seem to stop himself from smiling back.
"Worry not, Parker — it's a particularly new game to me, though we've had our share of interesting card games in Asgard as well." Natasha is happy to see there's no flash of something dark and miserable in Thor's mix-matched eyes when he says it; he genuinely seems fond, if not a bit wistful at the lost world he'd hailed from. "You can hardly fair any worse than I am; Barton's nearly wiped us all clean of our earnings."
"What can I say? I'm a prodigy," Clint sighs dramatically.
"He's been extremely lucky," Rhodes says, with an accusatory finger pointed Clint's way. "I'm getting those chips back."
"Not if I sneak it all from under your noses first," Natasha adds, sliding into her chair. The way she has to tug on Peter's pant leg from under the table reminds her all too much of when the boy had been a walking coma patient, but then he's jump-started back to life by her gesture and moves to take up the fifth seat. He is as awkward as ever, like a teenager sitting on the outskirts of a school dance, but she's happy to see him slowly loosen up and start up some harmless chatter.
"How is your aunt, may I ask?" Thor says. "We speak quite a lot off and on. If I actually bothered with a Midgardian phone, I would have gotten her number by now, but you know how it is. Poor reception in the confines of space and time."
"She's good, she's fine," Peter replies. "Just... getting back into the swing of things."
"Are you getting back into the swing of things?" Rhodes asks, perking one brow.
"Uh — oh. Heh. No, not yet. Just taking it easy the last week."
"I still can't believe you're Spider-Man," Clint huffs, eyeing his cards. "The kid who whooped Sam and Buck and Scott. You were all over New York, too. Right? Pretty busy for a little rugrat."
"Yeah, while you were practicing poker in your hen nest, I was getting the real work done."
Rhodes gasps dramatically behind a palm as Thor applauds, throwing his head back for a rich and thunderous laugh. Everyone's a little tipsy save for Parker by the end of it all, and as planned, Natasha's sliding all the plastic coins over to her side of the table once everyone else is poised for a brutal loss, ignoring the boos from the archer while kicking at him from under the table. Peter's really no good at poker, Nat's decided — he sticks his tongue out at the corner of his mouth when he's trying to decide what to do with a bad hand, and he always avoids eye contact when he's got something juicy. In the end, the kid walks away with one poker chip, which he tucks into his pants pocket.
Natasha joins him as he waits for Pepper and Morgan to get back.
"I should probably stick to chess," he chuckles. He watches out the window where the Benatar is parked and slightly disassembled. Neither of them can hear what's being said, but it's clear Rocket and Drax are five steps away from a likely ridiculous fisticuff before Quill steps his away between them, wagging his wrench. She wonders if this 'Gamora' kept them more in line, but then again — families tend to fight, and she had little doubt that they weren't exactly that.
"I'm sure they'd all love you to drop in for more practice." She raises her brows at Peter, observing him like he's a mark, gathering as much as she can from his hands, his face, his posture. "You could get better with time... You have that, you know. Time."
"I know," he says softly, hands in his pockets. They're quiet for a long moment, simply taking in the activity around them. The facility was broken apart and faced hefty work even with all the fixing so far, that much was true... but Natasha could see a profound shift in this place, the last six months. This is the most any of them had managed to get along, as strange as that is. People usually expect teams to work well with each other; in all honestly, they only serve to be progressively more dysfunctional with time. That's what she's always seen, in her short but full life thus far: teams falling apart at the seams. But here they all are after everything, still moving forward, still caring deeply for each other. She can't say it's been the worst road traveled, even with Thaddeus Ross pecking at them.
"Hey, Nat?" Peter says, with some hesitancy. She looks at him as he shrugs helplessly, though he doesn't look quite so worried or tired as he had a few hours ago. "I just wanted to thank you. For not treating me like... I don't know. I just mean... this was one of the first times I got to hang out like nothing was wrong. I know everyone's just trying to help, but I'm really happy I got to hang out for a little bit, like I'm... normal old Peter."
"... Yes, well. I'm not actually that good at pep talks or speeches. And I don't particularly think I'm a good role model to listen to, anyway." She shrugs her shoulders, arms crossed over her chest. "I just wanted to see how bad you were at poker."
When she looks back at his face, she's relieved to find he doesn't remind her of the girls from the Red Room, with their despondent gazes and obedient, deadly hands. It's foolish to even compare the two circumstances or think Peter would have remotely shifted into such a dark role after his troubles, she knows, but... she has no doubt in her mind, that there's something there she can relate to. She knows what he's talking about — the others, they carefully tiptoe around him and try to preserve something childish and safe that he's already lost in the snap long ago.
And it's not like he isn't shaky and eager and immature in all the ways that endeared him to Stark, but there are indisputable stress fractures now.
He's becoming a man, if he hasn't already.
She looks out the window, sympathy pulsing in her veins. "You'll never be the same person you once were, and that's alright. You're still fighting for good things, Peter. Just don't lose sight of that, and the rest will never shape you into something you're not."
After a considerable pause between them, he says, "Sounds suspiciously like a pep talk."
Her smile spreads wider, despite herself. "What can I say? You bring out the worst in me."
"You're fighting for good things, too," he says. And then smiles a little, maybe smugly. "Like poker chips."
"I'm a prodigy," she mocks. Somewhere a chipless Clint is probably feeling the hairs on his neck stand up.
He reaches out and puts a hand on her forearm, a soft symbol of solidarity.
"And hey, thanks for looking out for me, when I was halfway gone." She smirks, patting her fingers over the earnest gesture and seeing just how easy it was for him to slide into the ranks of the Avengers. He leans in a little, brow furrowed, biting his tongue in thought. "... Hey, if I told you May said I could drink one beer, would you give me one?"
Perhaps becoming a man a little too fast, Parker.
"Not a chance."
Sure, she drank before he ever did, but that's beside the point.
May Parker is one enemy she's not keen on making.
Quill walks the streets of Queens with his eyebrows high on his forehead and a sort of wide-eyed, fixed awe on everything going on around him. Look, it's not like he hasn't been in crazy settings before; New York is nothing compared to the most seedy places he'd been dragged through in his lifetime as a space wanderer — no offense to NYC. But he also has recollections of Missouri that aren't remotely close to the hustle and bustle going on here. He can only think, wow, I really came from a quiet and tiny place in the grand scheme of things. He tips a decent guitar player with a dollar he stole off the kitchen table back at HQ and stops by the Sanctum to bug Doctor Strange for a hot second, but his main goal is a place down on Queens Boulevard, seven stories up in a beat-up but thriving apartment complex. He'd been surprised when May asked for him specifically — and without Lil' Pete involved. Part of him wonders low-key if she's gonna axe him.
He wouldn't be super surprised if she tried to axe him? Like, he's been nearly murdered by women more times than years he's been alive.
Gamora kicked his ass when they first met, after all.
He smiles weakly at the thought, his stomach dropping like it always does when she comes flooding back into his mind like a nostalgic fragrance. He's only lucky he's already in the elevator and making his way up to the Parker home, or else he'd just drown in his thoughts and become a moody asshole for the rest of the day once he remembered with striking clarity that she was murdered, alone, without anyone to help her; no, he's got to focus, got to not think about things that feel more and more like everything he cares about gets smashed in front of him, on repeat. Over and over and —
He makes a fist, fingernails biting hard into his flesh, and walks down the hall. Someone is arguing in one of the apartments he passes — something about child support that makes him take a wiiiide step toward the other side of the hallway — and ticks off the numbers until he eventually comes to the right door. Raps on it. Waits. Feels like he's gonna get an axe to the face. But none of that happens when it creaks open May greets him with a heavy stare behind her thick glasses. She breathes in. Steps back to let him in.
"Mr. Quill," she greets.
"Mrs. Parker," he returns.
As he walks into the quiet apartment, he feels the warmth that permeates through it: there are pictures adorning the walls of Pete and his small family, and despite how the amount of people in them seems to shrink and shrink, everyone in them looks happy to be there, to have each other. He knows that May is all Peter has when it comes to a biological family, so he can't help but wonder what became of those in the shot. He's a little impressed at how easy it is to tell who was Peter's father. They're spitting images of each other.
"I wanted to talk to you about Peter," May says, pulling his attention to her.
She's pouring a cup of coffee and slides it over to him (hopefully not poisoned).
"... Alright..." He sits.
She wastes no time. "Did he come to you recently, about going with you?"
"To Vormir? Yeah. He wanted to be there if—" He stops himself, corrects himself with determined certainty. "... When Gamora's brought back."
"... And are you going to take him?"
"If you mean 'are you taking him without my permission', then... no." She looks surprised when she looks up at him, and he sounds a touch offended. "C'mon, May. I'm not going to abduct a kid into space from an unwilling family. At the end of the week, whether he likes it or not, if you're not on board, he's not on board. That's my hard line in the sand."
She leans against the counter with her coffee steaming in her hands, and he sips his own quietly as her focus fades away from him and to something else — likely the boy back at the facility, the one who was playing catch with Stark's kid on the lawn when Quill was leaving for a spell. He wonders if May would have preferred him to be more like a Ravager: that he'd just kidnap Peter and leave the choice out of her hands, to give it to Pete wholly, so she wouldn't have to feel like she's holding his safety over some big and dangerous cliff, wondering whether she should let him fall to his death or not. He clears his throat. "We'd protect him, you know. I get that we're a pretty crazy bunch, but we're more capable than we look."
"And you're willing to have him on board."
"Yeah, sure. It's not that much trouble to bring him back."
"And how do I know you'll put his safety over the safety of your own? Over Gamora?" His breath catches at how easily she says it, and a cold darkness seeps out inside him, the hand around the coffee mug clenching tightly. Not at her — he's not mad at her. But god, is he mad at everything else. She watches him and his cold fire with a passive patience, and seems to note the way his face drains of emotion. "I'm sorry if I'm overstepping, but if my kid is on board — I will always prioritize him over whatever goal you have in mind. So if your mission is just to get back what's yours at whatever cost... I just... I need to know. That he'll be okay. And that if I... do... agree to this, it won't be the last thing I ever let him do."
She scoffs, looking down at her bare feet before her gaze raises again to meet his with a rigidness that reminds him of someone preparing to rush out into a hopeless battlefield. "Maybe he is an adult now. Maybe this conversation shouldn't even be happening. But I need to know... that he will be back to New York as soon as possible, so I can worry my ass off about him here, and not somewhere I can't reach him."
He breathes out, listening to the ticking clock on the wall. Closer and closer he gets to stepping foot on Vormir. With every moment the hand passes through the hour, he nears the day he'll — he'll bring her back. He won't let that mountain keep what isn't its to keep. And yet... Here was someone — someone who held someone as dear as he held his lover, pleading with her fiery gaze to keep them safe. "... How about this? I promise you that I will die before I let anything happen to the kid."
It's the best he can do. He can't swear that Lil' Pete'll be safe and sound out there. Space is fucking scary if you're not careful.
And reckless, wild things happen there.
But he can at least put his own head on the chopping block, and hope its enough.
She squeezes her eyes shut like the words in her throat are hurting her.
"Then it's settled. Please, take care of my son."