May was awoken by a very startled noise from her nephew.

She immediately got up from the uber-padded chair she'd fallen asleep in next to his hospital bed and, despite feeling very lethargic, put her hands on his shoulders. She was briefly struck by the thought that despite the superpowers he supposedly had, she could still feel the tips of the bones in his shoulders.

Peter was staring at her, taking in swift, shallow breaths. Morning light poured in through a window in the hospital room, sharper due to the pale gray skies outside. Water threatened the edges of Peter's eyes, prompting one of May's hands to wipe it away with her thumb.

"Hey," she murmured, "It's alright, Petey. I'm here."

"I…" Peter began scratchily, "I… had t-this weird dream that the avengers rescued me." he gave her a look that bordered on pleading, even as his shoulders jumped, suggesting a chuckle. "W-weird, right?"

May internally sighed, and kept up the smile. "Did you like that dream?"

Peter should've nodded. Given a resounding yes. The Peter she'd raised should've done both.

Instead, the boy in front of her faked a smile of his own. "I guess."

Nothing had worked out. The plans laid out to protect her and Peter had failed. The mighty had stumbled, and now their lives would never be the same; there was no returning to how things were. Her ignorance had been stripped away over ten years ago, and yet the back-ups put in place by the people best able to ensure their security had been utterly blindsided.

And that wasn't even considering how she'd failed to stop her own nephew - and Peter was her nephew - from risking his life every night. She should've clamped down harder, or at least kept a sharper eye on him; the first time he snuck out, she should've stayed up, waited for him to return. But it so close after Ben and… she lapsed. Had he gone out to fight a cirminal? Take a photo? Both? She hadn't learned. She noticed her sewing supplies going missing after Peter had promised that he could make due with what he had, and discounted it. If Peter wanted to find expression in new arts, who was she to deny him that? And all that exercise wasn't simply to get in shape or process anger or anything normal, of course, it was meant to let him fight people. With no training. On his own. And Jesus, when her first aid kit disappeared...

"Pete," May whispered, cautiously slipping arms around his frame. "I'm so glad you're okay." she closed her eyes, and felt Peter stiffen in her arms. She let out a shaky breath. "I love you, you know that, right?" she considered her words for a moment, "I love you, Peter."

"I-" Peter said, "-I love you too."

She held her kid a bit longer, careful not to damage the stitches, before pulling away. She stretched, as Peter's eyes remained on her, rapt. Skittish glances to other places in the room poorly hid the uncertainty clouding them.

"Where am I?" he asked.

"Well," May said cautiously, "we were rescued by the avengers. We're at one of their facilities until the people threatening us." The words felt a good bit beyond alien to say, as was the sheer panic that seized Peter's entire face. He made a vain attempt to hide it by coughing violently into his elbow, but May wasn't so easily fooled.

"They know about you being Spiderman, Peter," she told him slowly, "Just like I do."

Any veneer of calm vaporized. Peter's jaw fell slack as he balked, and his eyes grew to the size of dinner plates. "M-may-" he spluttered, "I-I can-"

May sighed heavily, putting a hand to her forehead. "Pete," she interrupted, "let me talk first, alright?"

Peter opened and closed his mouth a few more times, like a fish out of water, then lowered his eyes to his bedsheets, nodding.

"I wish you'd told me," May said, "I was so worried that you were going to get hurt due to normal teenage stuff, but if I'd known what you were doing, I would've stopped you." May reached for Peter's hand, which he let her take. It was limp as she gave it a squeeze. "I also wish that you'd told me about the superpowers." Peter shifted to the left in the bed. May entwined her fingers with her nephew's. "From now on, no more secrets from me, alright?"

Peter swallowed. "Mhm."

"Hey, hon, look at me." May said. It took Peter a little bit to finally turn his head toward hers. "I'm also proud that you've been helping people." she hesitated for a moment before saying, "You're Mary and Richard's son through and through."

That almost got a smile out of him. Peter swallowed thickly once more before asking, "So, uh, do we just stay here for awhile?"

"I know you'll have tutors," May said, "and that they'll take your spit and fingerprint for ID," Peter shifted again. May squeezed his hand again. "But other than that, this is a bit of an adventure for both of us."

That got Peter smile just a little bit. It quickly disappeared, however, and he asked, "Will they do more tests? Like, for my…" he directed his eyes around the room before circling back to her skittishly. "... my powers?"

"We'll see," May said, "But for now, I think it's around lunchtime. What would you like, Pete?" Peter was silent once more, prompting May to turn his head so he was looking at her. "Hey, kiddo," she told him, "you will be fine. We will be fine, okay?"

Natasha kept her eyes focused on the road, as if her trunk didn't hold a teenager's attempt at a supersuit. As if she hadn't just broken into their home, just hours before compound security would discreetly retrieve all the items May Parker had requested be brought to her and her nephew.

She was thankful that the stretch of road she was on hadn't been paved over in a few years, because the shrill sound of her tires against it provided another noise beside the occasional click-click-click of her turn signal, or the ambient hum of the camaro's AC. Again, she tried to avoid looking in the other cars on the highway: and again, she failed.

She hadn't slept. She couldn't. She'd covered up the bags under her eyes and made sure it appeared as if nothing was amiss, but she knew the signs of her fatigue would inevitably show. Natasha bitterly detested the idea that the presence of offspring would cause her to lapse in self-care, but she had been forced to shelve those emotions. They would only get in the way, and she would need to stay alert for the near future.

Natasha knew she was on edge. She knew her agreement to collect their super suit held more edge than it should've. She needed to stay professional - impassionate; no one could know. It would disrupt not only her life, but theirs, and no matter how much a corner of her wanted to throw it all aside because aren't we close enough, anyways? They aren't stupid. People will notice that you two look alike. The longer we put this off-

If she had any faith in any sort of god, now was right about when she would even begin to consider prayer. But she couldn't.

She wasn't a parent. She couldn't be a parent.

Parenting required empathy. Comfort with expressing affection. And, above all, unconditional love. Natasha could certainly pull off the first two, but her love? It didn't come easy, nor was it unconditional. Not only that, but she already had a family, practically speaking. It would never work.

Their room had been messy - cluttered with over a decade's worth of living. She noticed an old, clunky laptop with a tattered piece of paper taped to it, onto which the name "KAREN" was written in nearly illegible chicken scratch. It took less than a second to suss out where they had hidden their suit - a panel in the ceiling that lead to a small, cubbie-like space with stale air. Their bed was unmade, and upon further investigation into their closet, she found a heavily battered first aid kit, wrapped in a paper towel and stuffed into a heavy duty ziploc, which was itself inside another ziploc. Their super suit had been simplistic, with messy stitching and patches placed here or there, likely due to tears.

What surprised her was the goggles. Even being unable to see out of them, she could make the lenses zoom in or out, a remarkable feat for someone with so few resources. Even the-

No. Natasha counted to five and let out a slow breath, just as the shrill noise from the road disappeared, and she was surrounded with near-total silence. Black Widow narrowed her eyes for a fraction of a second, then forced her expression to be neutral.

Her thoughts failed to quiet, however.

Her attention shifted to other concerns; she'd had enough time mulling over Rumlow's attack to suspect that it wasn't him. Unless he knew about them and was trying to prove it to Hammer, there would be little to do what their attacker had done; Spiderman had been specifically stabbed with a syringe, and it was only when they began to fight back that their attacker struck out. Even the gunshot was suspect to her: no-one who knew that they were enhanced and wanted them dead would even take the chance of running, unless there was an ulterior motive.

If, hypothetically, a third party wanted to partner with Rumlow and Hammer, knew about Spiderman's true origins, and needed to prove it…

Natasha's jaw tightened, and she turned to join the road that would take her back to the compound, counting to five once more.