Sorry for not updating last week - needed to let my batteries recharge. I'm back, though, and I have a plan! Please enjoy the chapter while I fortify my author-bunker.

Tony knew that, ideally, he shouldn't seek out the kid with an ulterior motive. It wasn't very hero-y, and considering that his curiosity about Natasha Romanoff's son was almost entirely self-centered, it was even more divorced from altruism. That said, from the moment tony laid eyes on the kid, with the phrase "Natasha's kid" being sung by a choir of his lesser angels, he knew he had to know who hell Peter Parker was. But he'd also been spending hours upon hours working with Nat, trying to work out their Vulture problem, and everyone deserved a break. So this - well, it could've been worse.

Kind of.

As such, he strode into the conference room, one of the compound's numerous, which had been converted into a makeshift classroom, at 2:30 PM sharp that wednesday. Tony swept away the thought that it would soon be three weeks since Peter arrived at the compound, and Natasha hadn't so much as laid an eye on him.

"Hey, young buck," Tony said, while Peter's tutor froze in his tracks. He raised an eyebrow to the tutor, a kindly woman who looked to be in her fifties. Peter's face was flushing impressively as he asked her, "School gets out right about now, right?"

Papers were clustered on the long, oval-shaped table, with topics that reached the dull basics of chemistry and physics to the vaguely interesting accounts of the chinese dynasties. Peter was going beet red, eyes settled squarely on his ratty tennis shoes. Peter's tutor cleared her throat, still looking a bit disbelieving. "Yes, it does."

"Mind if I steal him away?" Tony pointed to Peter, entirely certain as to why he was about to make a wisecrack and not very comfortable with it. "It's for SSL hours."

Peter gave a stifled giggle. His tutor took another moment, then shrugged. "Do you want to come with Mr. Stark, Peter?"

Peter Parker (Romanoff) blinked a few times, then hesitantly raised his head to return Tony's gaze. "That, uh," he began, "That sounds great."

Tony tried not to notice the bags under Peter's eyes, or the fear that stuck out on his face like a cold sore. Or the way the boy's hair lightly curled up at the edges, almost like - well, in fairness, like Natasha's hair sometimes did. Either way...

Tony nodded. "Great. Zip up that backpack there and let's down to the lab."

Peter's eyes widened. "L-lab?"

Tony nodded again. "Yep. My personal lab. You're uh - your chemistry project last year, the one about erosion of New York's sewer pipes, right? I'm curious as to how you got your data. I'd like you to show me, Mr. Parker."

Maybe he put a little emphasis on r's, but in any case, there were only two people who would even fathom to make a logical leap from there. Peter was scrambling to collect his things in his backpack - which Tony knew he'd only gotten a few weeks ago, because the kid was a total klutz with those things since he decided vigilantism was a fun way to spend an afternoon - while his tutor was watching the exchange with poorly hidden curiosity.

When Parker (Romanoff) looked up, some of the fear had left his face, replaced with naked excitement. Tony escorted the kid out of the room swiftly, a snarky part of his noting with some satisfaction that if the light hit Peter's hair just right, it appeared to be a very deep shade of crimson.

Okay. This was probably getting a little creepy, but Tony… he couldn't just look at the kid. Look at him and say nothing while his mother was off doing work that could kill her couldn't sit right with him.

"Mr. Stark?" Peter asked.

"Yeah?" Tony said, "Something biting at you, kid?"

"You…" the boy paused, as if the words were difficult to say, "You aren't just - uhm, I mean, like, you weren't just…" Peter licked his lips, then stuffed his hands into the massive front pocket of his hoodie, distorting the Millenium Falcon a good bit. "... lying, weren't you?"

Now Tony was the one blinking. "What?"

"You know," the kid scratched the back of his neck, "You don't just - I mean, I'm sure you care about the sewer thing, but…"

Tony snorted, rolling his eyes as they turned a corner. "Don't worry about that kid."

Peter nodded a tad too vigorously, "Yeah. Yeah, right. Sorry, Mr. Stark."

"Don't apologize." Tony said, "Anyways, to answer that burning question of yours, yes. I could care less about the sewer thing." he stopped them in front of a glass door. He punched the code into the door handle, and ushered Peter in brusquely. "I actually wanted to talk about your suit."

Peter's head snapped back to stare at him. "Oh."

Tony raised an eyebrow at him. "Jesus, you don't have to react like I'm about to give you a bad report card. I'm genuinely interested."

Peter swallowed. "T-thanks, Mr. Stark. That - that means a lot." His head turned back to Tony's lab, surveying everything. Tony stepped up beside the kid, whose eyes briefly flickered over to him, then returned to taking in the lab. "T-this is…"

"I have a bigger one in Malibu." Tony shrugged. "Not the same house, by the way."

Peter's hands were still buried deep in his hoodie's front pocket. The teen inclined his head, walking over to a spare workbench, where a heavily scorched Iron Man mask rested against an old toolbox. Tony observed one of his hands begin creeping out of his hoodie, before Peter paused.

"Uhm," he began, "What's that?"

Tony walked over to the mask, frowning as he picked it up. "It's… huh. Yeah, okay. This is one of my old tries at nanotech. Looks like it's from…" Tony turned the mask over in his hands, squinting at the date he'd written in sharpie. "... three months ago."

Before he knew Natasha had a kid. A kid that was standing right next to him; walking, talking, breathing, and asking him questions. Who looked up to all of them as heroes.

Because he didn't know him. Peter didn't know any of them, because Natasha didn't want the kid involved with her life. Therefore, she didn't raise him around the team, therefore, he didn't know the team.

Part of Tony meekly pointed out that his train of thought was spiraling, but he didn't care overmuch.

Because Peter Parker (Romanoff… it still didn't sound quite right) thought Mary Parker had given birth to him, and that his parents were dead, and while Tony knew he shouldn't be doing what he was doing, he conjured up the image of Peter standing in front of Natasha's headstone, conflicted.

Tony narrowed his eyes and internally smacked himself. "It's not much, honestly." He glanced at Peter, who was in turn looking at him with a bit of alarm. Tony quickly added, "I'm not mad at you kid. This thing just gave me a nasty burn the last time I tested it."

Peter better have bought his bullshit, because Tony didn't need psychoanalyzation by anyone right now, expressed to him or not.

"What happened?" Peter peered at the mask with curiosity, his lip curling downward a bit. Good.

Okay, maybe not the best, because Tony could see the ghost of Natasha's frown at the moment, but it was better than the alternative. "I tried to see if I could store the suit in the mask - put the mask on, and the suit comes - yeah, you know what I mean." He set down the broken hardware and paced a few steps, beckoning Peter to follow. "Anyways, I got everything in there, and when I test it for the first time - it blows up in my face."

Peter's mouth further took on the concave of a frown. "I thought you said it burned you?"

Tony stopped for a second. He recovered himself quickly, but the damage was probably done, knowing him. "Did I? Sorry, I wasn't running on a lot of sleep then. Either way, Steve wasn't happy with me."

Amusement flickered across Peter's face, which Tony was thankful for. He snapped his fingers, making a blue hologram of Peter's supersuit appear, next to a prototype that Tony had thrown together over the past few weeks. "But this what I really wanted to talk to you about, kid."

Peter's eyes grew wide, and his jaw gradually slackened as he studied the holograms, eventually saying in a small voice, "T-thank you Mr. Stark."

Tony waved his hand, "It's nothing special yet."

Peter looked at him, face reddened, with a smile fighting it's way across it. "I - thanks, Mr. Stark. Sorry."

Tony shrugged. "Stop saying sorry, kid."

Peter Parker nodded, and in the back of Tony's mind, part of him wondered what Natasha would do him when she found out about this.

Natasha studied a map of New York's chitauri energy signatures , arms crossed. Steve stood to her left, frowning as he studied it as well.

"Vulture's moving," he said, "the signature for his weapons are too scattered."

"Yep." Natasha responded, pulling her focus away from a signature in Queens. "Guessing Rumlow must've said something."

Steve turned to her. "You think we have a mole in the team?"

Natasha raised an eyebrow. "No. Do you?"

Steve shook his head resolutely. "No. No, I just…" Natasha let him trail off, watched the cogs turn in his head. "... something's off."

"About what?" Natasha asked him. She wasn't entirely sure why she was attempting to prompt him, but she had a bad feeling it was related to the tightening she felt whenever she had spoken to May in the past two and a half weeks.

"The kid." Steve sighed. "I don't know why he was targeted."

Natasha paused minutely, before she nodded. "I see."

Steve crossed his own arms. "Penny for your thoughts, Nat?"

"Well," Natasha said, "I've had a similar thought for a while, now, too. I've been doing plenty of digging, looking for a potential third party, but nothing's come up. The police still haven't caught the shooter and even then, I still don't have a clear shot of his face."

It had been many late nights in actuality, but no one needed to know that. No one would need to know about the feeling in her gut during those hours, a lasso of bile and disgust that had nowhere to go except to fuel single thought. She'd been able to broadly exclude it from her thoughts, but it never truly left.

Steve's frown deepened a bit. "Does he have any tattoos? Unique features?"

"Not that I've been able to see," Natasha shrugged. "Standard cacucasion male. Looks like he came from the Baltics, but millions of people live there, none of whom have any connection to us or the kid."

"I wish he didn't have to go through this," Steve grumbled, "He has so much potential."

"I'm sure we'll find the shooter," Natasha said, squaring her shoulders. "But until then, we should probably focus on this. If he get rid of Rumlow's local supplier, he'll be less of a problem."

"You're right," Steve uncrossed his arms, redirecting his eyes back to the map of New York. "It seems like Vulture is operating mostly out of this abandoned industrial district," Steve pointed to it, right over a collection of purple dots. "But he's recently moved to areas farther from the city."

"FRIDAY, can you look for any deals being done in or around companies associated with Hammer Industries?" Natasha asked.

"Of course, Ms. Romanoff. I remind you that I have run a search with these parameters fifteen times before."

"Just do it." Natasha briefly looked up toward the ceiling, then back to the map. Steve shifted, leaning back a bit, studying the map harder. Natasha noticed his eyes kept creeping over to Brooklyn.

"Search complete. No anomalies found."

"We already know what gangs Vulture has been selling to," Natasha said, "but none of them appear to have HYDRA ties. And most of the people who conduct the deals are given the weapons are predetermined locations, and those don't have anything in common with each other."

"Compartmentalization." Steve stated. "What? I do listen to Nick sometimes, Nat."

Natasha shook her head, tightening her arms a bit. Rumlow had been quiet, and so had Hammer. It also wouldn't do for her to interrogate him, because he was legally doing everything above book. His shell companies had upgraded their security to the point that FRIDAY was still sorting through all of their financials (not a single one so far had actually held anything suspicious, either). Rumlow's mercenary group had never had a name to begin with, and even his previous hirers had nothing to tell any members of the team.

Natasha could feel the frustration building, and thusly she stamped it out. "Fri," she began, "could you look at any salvage companies that had been hired after the chitauri invaded?"

Steve looked to her in surprise. "Was that a random request or are you throwing ideas at the wall?"

"Bit of both." Natasha answered evenly, surveying the map again. After a list of salvage companies appeared in front of the map, she said, "Fri, who ran each of those companies, and which ones went belly-up after Damage Control took over Salvage."

Steve's frown faded, replaced with curiosity. "Burst of inspiration from the mighty Natasha Romanoff?"

The edges of Nat's lips quirked up a bit, before flattening as another list appeared in front of the first. "FRIDAY, can tell if any of these guys have suspicious tax returns?"

A moment of silence passed, where Steve slowly began to smile. Natasha stayed zeroed in on the list of names.

"None, Ms. Romanoff. Although one does strike me as suspicious."

"Do tell." Natasha said.

"Adrian Toomes. Former owner of Bestman Salvage, whose crew was pushed out after Damage Control took over government contracts. He has taken on other contracts in recent years, but his house is worth almost a million dollars. He also didn't return a round of salvage that his team had collected before they lost the contract."

Steve turned to Nat, grinning. "Nice work."

Natasha felt the lasso loosen just a bit. "Thanks."