Chapter 43 - 11 years, 5 months, 27 days
The light in the lab was dimmed down. Tony was resting his head in his hands. Eyes closed, he tried to drown out the multitude of thoughts that threatened to crash his system and would send him back into a panic, paralyzing him. The sound of metal clicking on the lab's tiled floor pulled his mind out of spiraling further downwards. He didn't look up when she sat down next to him on the couch. Her presence was uncomfortable after the months of estrangement that had just made it so much more obvious to him, how much he had been relying and leaning on her. For years.
"It's true."
He didn't look up, didn't move a single muscle.
"Tony..."
"Potts...", he responded with a sigh, trying to keep his voice steady.
"Talk to me."
Any moment now she'd reach for him. Place her hands on him ever so lightly and it would make him jump out of his skin. He desperately needed to release his frustration somehow, lash out against someone. And it couldn't be Pepper. Not again. This mess, his mess, was not hers to deal with anymore.
Her voice had been soft and calm before, but the next question came only in a whisper: "It's true, right? It's really Addy?"
He let his hands drop, lifted himself off the couch and strode over to one of his desks. He needed to put space between the two of them. The tools and the prototype of the Nano Housing Unit were still scattered all over the desk as he had left them when he had gone to find out the truth after all. When he had no longer been able to distract himself, had just needed to put an end to everyone's conspiracy theories. He grabbed a couple of screwdrivers, put them back into the top drawer, where they belonged. The movements so internalized after years of repetition, his arms relied entirely on muscle memory. It was soothing in contrast to the constant tension every muscle in his body had been limited to for the past days. Then he just stood there, his back still turned to her.
"Tony," her voice had lost some of the comforting vibe and taken on a tenser tone. "Talk to me!"
A short chuckle bubbled out of him. Dry and humorless. He cleared his throat. "I'm sorry, Potts. Am I not reacting on the appropriate emotional curve of the 'father being reunited with long-lost son' scale?"
"No, you are however perfectly aligned on the 'Tony Stark trying to battle some inner demons' scale that usually starts with you barricading yourself in your lab, refusing to speak to anyone and culminates with you blackout drunk somewhere between Vegas and Monte Carlo. So, cut it out! We had a deal: You tell me. You don't self-destruct."
He turned around, facing her. "That deal expired when you walked yourself out of this relationship and back to LA."
She kept her eyes on him, her expression remaining guarded and calculating. "Tell me."
"Tell you what? How are you even here?"
"Natasha called me. And don't even get me started on how pissed I am that this message didn't come from you. Tell me why you're here, locked up in the dark on your own, stewing in your lab while your kid, who we have been searching for and upended the whole country for - hell, the whole fucking planet - to find for more than a decade... he's up there on his own, scared and confused. He needs you, Tony. That's where you should be right now, by your son's bedside, holding his hand and telling him how everything's going to be alright."
In the old days, she'd have come over by now, rested her hands on his face, soft and gentle touches to reaffirm the intimacy between them, coaxing what he wasn't willing to say out loud from his lips anyway. But that was then and this was now. And she didn't move. Tony's gaze shifted from her face down to her hands that were gripping the edge of the couch as if she was forcing herself to stay put. He gave another humorless huff. She was treating him like a spooked horse, left alone to its own devices for far too long to be comfortable with close human interaction. It'd be hilarious if he didn't have this growing feeling in his stomach that was urging him to call his suit and just fucking bolt.
"And yet you are here." Her voice had lost the reproachful tone and turned almost tearful. "It's not... it's not him, is it..."
"You went to see him." Tony raised his gaze back up to her face and took in her glistering eyes as she nodded.
"Of course I did. I - apparently foolishly - assumed that's where you'd be as well."
It wasn't fair to put her through the motions of this, but Tony had to know. Had to know if the woman who had peered into his soul could see what he hadn't. He kept his tone as neutral as he could manage. "So, what do you think? Does he look like he'd be a son of mine?"
She stayed silent, just kept her gaze on him for a moment. Then at last Pepper got up and came to stand right in front of him. Her hand rose up to his face, tracing his features. He was caught between the urge to flinch back and the deep, deep longing to lean into her touch. At last, he closed his eyes as her index finger wandered down the bridge of his nose, then her thumb lightly followed the curve of his lower lip.
"Look at me, Tony."
He opened his eyes and did look right at her. Her face was so open, pain and hope so clearly drawn in her features. "Yes. Yes, he does."
He struggled to keep the emotion rising inside him out of his own face, out of his voice.
"You know, he's been walking in and out of the Tower and the Compound for months. I had him right in this lab at least twice a month, 2 to 3 days a week at the Tower. At least."
Pepper froze, trying to read him, to make sense of what he was telling her.
"I..." he tried to keep his voice steady "I looked at that face of his for five or six months and I didn't even suspect a thing. The universe was dangling my son right in front of my nose and I was too busy with my own bullshit to notice a fucking thing."
Silent and open-mouthed, Pepper tried to hold onto him, but Tony pushed past her, picked up a stack of papers from the table next to the spot on the couch where she had found him.
"Wait, just give me a second with this..." she didn't follow him right away as Tony made no attempt to storm off. "You've had him in the lab? For months? But..."
"It's Peter."
She shook her head in confusion, brow furrowed. "Your... your intern? He brought him along?"
"No, for fuck's sake, Potts... It's him. Peter Parker. He's—he's my son."
Pepper looked at him with a blank expression on her face. "But... No. That's impossible."
"Oh yeah? You think I don't know that?" Tony bit back, he stalked over and flung the stack of paper onto the workbench in front of her. "I ran the test 15 times! He's... It's Aiden."
"I don't... I don't understand. How..." Pepper frowned, ignoring his frustrated retort.
"I..." He swallowed hard, not meeting her eyes. "I don't know, Potts."
She looked over to him, her eyes still narrowed. "Does he know?"
"No, he doesn't know."
"Are you sure?"
"How would he know, if I didn't even know?"
She was biting her lip, eyes way too sad. "Tony, we don't know what happened. We don't know what kind of people—"
"No. Stop."
"Tony..."
"No, Pepper. He's a good kid. I've worked with him for months. I... He doesn't know. He can't tell a lie without it showing on his face. There is no way!"
She dropped her gaze, her feet still rooted in one spot a few strides away from him. "We don't know, what he's been through. We don't know what... what happened to him."
He shook his head, glaring at her. "I know that. You think I don't know that?"
The expression on her face was almost painful. While she kept her distance her, eyes were back on him. "It's an awfully strange coincidence that he just happened to end up as an intern, let alone an intern working in such close prox—"
"That was me. It was me, not him."
The confusion was evident on her face. "What are you talking about?"
"I placed him in the internship program."
She blinked at him, her eyes leaving his face for a moment as her brain seemed to wreck itself to make the connection. "What does that even mean, you placed him—"
"He's the Spiderling."
It didn't happen too often that he would leave Pepper speechless. She was so used to his antics that she'd usually find a witty reply to whatever bombshell he'd drop on her. This particular one had the opposite effect. Pepper just stared at him, her mouth slightly open. She didn't even gasp, she just stood there frozen, the wheels turning in her head as she put all the little things together. The lies. The excuses.
He took a deep breath. "I... I don't even know where to start with this whole thing. It's a fucking mess." He waited for her to react, to do something, anything, that would give him a clue what she was thinking. "Pepper—"
"I think..." She cleared her throat. "I think where you should have started this was - I don't know - about 5 months ago by telling me that oh my god, that vigilante you were sponsoring is a 13-year-old kid? Tony, what the fuck where you thinking!"
"It's more complicated than that—"
"Oh, is it?"
"I didn't know he was a minor! Not at first. And I certainly didn't know he was this young!"
Pepper buried her face in her hands, shaking her head. "How could you be this reckless, Tony?"
"What would you had me do, huh?" His temper was making his heart race. "Lock him up? Hand him over to the authorities? This was maybe a month before the Accords, the climate was changing strongly against us. The NYPD actively pressured us to round him up for them! What do you think Ross would have done with a vigilante teenager?"
Her eyes were closed, one hand still covering her mouth.
"It's what he had set his mind to. He wanted to do something... Wanted to help. So... So, I did the only thing I could do. I tried to protect him."
She opened her eyes at that, looking right at him. "You should have told me."
Tony gritted his teeth. "We weren't really on speaking terms. You weren't even taking my calls! You think I'd wanted to add on the pile of crap you were already furious at me for?"
She didn't look at him, walked over to the sofa and let herself fall into the cushions. Again, she hid her face behind her hands, shaking her head continuously.
"You think I didn't want tell you? It's not been all that easy, alright? It's..." He bit the inside of his lower lip, cursing internally. Of course, he'd screw this up again. "Pep, I—"
"I'm sorry," she said, her voice though awfully quiet still stopped him in his tracks. "I never thought it would get this far. That... that you would think you couldn't tell me about something like this. That I would leave you alone with this."
Tony crossed his arms, shifting his weight from one leg to the other, eyes firmly on her. "It's not... Come on, Pep, it's not that I don't trust you. Of course I do. There was no point in putting this on you as well and I just... I was just trying to protect him and it... it was alright. For the most part, I was doing alright."
"He's 13 and he went hunting for thieves and criminals? Tony, he's 13!"
"Please, just... just don't make me think about that. I don't even... I don't even want to start thinking about any of that."
It's the connection he had been trying to ignore all night. He had helped his 13-year-old son chase criminals. His son had been jumping off buildings, stopping cars with his bare hands and Tony had enabled him. Had stood by as the cops had been chasing him, shooting at him. He had flown his 13-year-old boy to fucking Germany for a superhero fight. Tony swallowed hard then tried to breathe, deep breaths, slow breaths otherwise he might be sick. His stomach was turning.
"That day in Queens. When I... when I came to New York to see you for his birthday..." Pepper's voice was strained. Tony turned towards her, but she still just sat there on the couch, her head bowed low and both hands buried in her hair. "He protected me from those thugs. I can't—" She took a deep breath, swallowed hard. "Aiden... that... that can't be real, can it? It's impossible. How is that even possible. Is it... Why? And... and how can he do that? Did... did someone do that to him? Did someone make him into that?"
Tony slowly walked stepped closer to her, hesitated before he sat down next to her. "It's... it's a combination of a few things. Equipment as well as... as a mutation."
"A mutation?" When she looked up at him, her eyes were wet, one hand covering her mouth.
"It's... it's a long story and... he's fine. It's not... it's nothing awful. Nothing bad."
"What do you mean mutation?"
"Just... He's fast and strong. The superhuman kind. Bit like..." Tony swallowed hard. "Bit like Cap. He... his senses, his hearing, and his eyesight, all that is a lot better than normal."
"Is that... is that why they kidnapped him? Because they wanted him for... for these mutations? Experiment with the—"
"No." His stomach turned at the thought of these assholes putting their hands even more on him. "I don't think so. I don't think they knew. Not initially. They took him to get to me. They were after technology and weapons. Thought they had my intern and then... then they figured out who he is. Who he really is, even before I fucking knew." He ran a hand threw his hair, the agonizing hours of confusion and scrambling for information coming back to him like reliving a nightmare. "I'd benched the kid. He was... He tried to take on Rogers and god... god, they could have seriously messed him up. Ross almost got the whole lot of them. I told him to stay away from them. I told him, to stick to his neighborhood in Queens! But that boy... it's... it's like scolding a concrete wall. He just does whatever he thinks is right, not even a shred of self-preservation!"
Pepper snorted with what sounded a lot more like laughter than despair, and he pulled back in surprise, eyes narrowed on her. "I'm sorry, did I say something funny?!"
She snickered again, wiping tears off her face. What the hell was funny about that? The kid had almost given him multiple heart attacks.
"I'm sorry, honey..." she bit her lip, rubbing at her eyes. "Seems like... like we don't even need a blood test to determine paternity here."
He scowled at her. "That's not funny, Pepper."
Pepper nodded slowly and then looked up at him, her face soft. "I'm sorry."
He fell silent and so did she. For a few minutes, they just sat there, staring at their feet not saying anything.
"What are you going to do?" Her eyes were back on him, concern etched in every line of her face.
"I... I don't know." His feet were itching to move and he stood up, walked back over to his workbench only to remember that he'd already put everything away. Nothing left to distract him from his own thoughts.
"Do you know where he lives? Is he... like I don't even know... does he live with a family."
"With a woman." Tony gritted his teeth at the though. "He calls her his aunt, I..." He tried to shake off the anger that rolled through him whenever he thought of May Parker. "Her husband was killed. They adopted him when he was... well, when Peter Parker was four. Autumn of 2005."
"That's close."
It was. Still, there were months between when Aiden had been kidnapped and the date on those adoption papers. There was always the possibility of those being fake of course. Tony had no idea about the details. Not yet.
"He was 2 and a half years old." Pepper shook her head, eyebrows drawn in concentration. "They would have known that he's not 4. Addy... Addy was advanced for his age but not that—"
"I know that, Pep. FRIDAY is looking into the Parkers. I don't know enough yet. I don't know what they did. If they did this. I just..."
She sat up straight. "You haven't called anyone yet, have you? Police? CPS?"
"No."
"And... are you planning to?"
"Yes. No." His lungs deflated with a sigh. "I don't know." Tony evaded her eyes. He didn't know what to do. He didn't even know where to start. It wasn't as easy as just keeping the boy. The lump in his throat had gotten even thicker. He was about to lose the fight against his rising emotions. Pepper got up slowly, still kept her distance, hovering close to him now, unsure how to help.
"I call them and then what? I have no idea what they'll do. They might..." He took a deep breath trying to steady his voice. "I call them and they might take him, they'd want to investigate shit, right? It's been 11 years, they... they'll not just give him back to me and wish us the best, are they? They'll probably put him in a "neutral" place til, I don't know... Who knows how long they take to come to any kind of decision on what happened and during all that time he'll be on his own, alone, left to the whims of some bureaucrats, CPS agents, strangers..."
He was fidgeting with the stack of test results that he had left on the workbench. "And even if they don't, his DNA is... it's complicated with his spider powers, the mutation. They could be difficult. They could be real difficult if they wanted to be. Worst case scenario would be them simply looking for an exact DNA match. Then they'd figure out that he has mutant DNA and that would open a whole different can of worms. And it's his DNA that would be their go-to way to determine that it's... well, him. That it's Aiden."
She still didn't get any closer, still left him his space and for the first time in a long time, he was starting to wish that she wouldn't. Something weak and desperate in his very soul was aching for that comfort they used to share. All those nights that she had taken some of the burden off of him when he hadn't been alone in the pain and despair that was now so tightly knitted with the memory of Aiden.
Her breathing was deep and controlled. She blew out one particular deep breath before she spoke up again. "We'll figure something out, alright? I... I don't know what our options are. I don't... I just don't know enough right now, but we can figure this out. We will be okay, Tony. Addy... he's here and he's safe and he's going to be okay. We just need a plan, alright?"
Tony huffed out a shallow laugh. Always the optimist. "He's lying up there in his bed and I... I don't know what I'm supposed to do, Pep. Am I... am I supposed to tell him? I mean, I have to, right? He deserves to know the truth, doesn't he?"
She was close enough now to reach for his hand, her fingers soft on his skin just squeezing him lightly. "Of course he does. You both do."
"And then what?" Tony turned his eyes right at her. "Am I supposed to make him stay? What if he doesn't want to stay? What if he wants that lady in his life instead? What if he's been stockholmed thoroughly enough that he wants to stay with her instead? What if he just loves her more than he will ever—"
"Tony..." She pulled him closer, one hand cupping his face, trying to calm him. "He'll be thrilled."
"What if he's not?" Tony pulled in a deep breath. "What if he doesn't pick me? Am I... Am I supposed to make him chose me?"
"Honey, he's a 13-year-old kid who likes to jump off rooftops and hunt down bank robbers. You think a kid like that can make a sensible choice that will alter the rest of his life?"
She was so close to him all he could do was let his eyes fall shut to cut himself off, to find some space to distance himself from the inevitable decision that was lying right in front of him.
"Tony, he deserves to know. He has a right to know the truth."
A shiver ran down his spine, his whole body was trembling with nerves and exhaustion.
"The truth..." He shook his head, eyes still averted. "The truth will ruin the life he has. It will change everything. And I can't..." Another deep breath, but it wasn't enough now to keep his voice from shaking. "I'll have to tell him because the one thing I do know is that I won't let him get back to that witch of an aunt." Tony's eyes found hers, tears overcoming him at last. "I won't. I will do everything I can to get her into the deepest darkest cell they can find. The raft should have some spare rooms. She will never, never put her hands on him again." He tried to slow his breathing, get a grip of his voice and his anger. "But... but he loves her. He will try everything to get to her. And he will know that everything that is happening to his life will be because of me. Because I want him back."
He stepped into Pepper's embrace, her fingers softly caressing his neck.
"He'll blame me, Pep. He'll hate me."
"You don't know that. He's lying up there recovering and after everything he went through he's only asking for you." She hugged him closer as his breathing became more erratic ."Honey, you need to breathe. Just breathe with me. We'll figure this out. You are not alone in this." Her hand softly ran through his hair, her other hand on his back pressing him firmly against herself. "You don't have to do this alone."
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[author's note:
Alright, guys. Thanks again for sticking with me.
This is a little bit of a milestone tbh. This chapter is the very setting that this whole story revolts around, the first one I wanted to write back in November of 2018.
Thank you so much for all the lovely comments and for sticking with the story. It's certainly been a whole lot of fun for me :)
There is more to come, don't worry. We're not at the end yet... ;) ]
