I'M BACK! So sorry that I made you guys wait so long! Please enjoy the chapter!
oOo
"You should go, Peter. You've been talking about this for months."
Peter sipped hot chocolate before responding, "I just don't want to go to Worlds anymore."
May took his hand in hers. They were sitting on the little couch in May's Queens apartment, where Peter had spent most of the four days since Ben's death. Tony and Pepper sat in the small kitchen, making drinks and trying not to hover. Midtown Tech was flying (on one of the Starks's private jets) to Louisville, Kentucky for VEX Worlds the next morning, but Peter hadn't even started packing.
"Honey, if you really just don't want to do robotics anymore and don't want to follow your team to Worlds, then you don't have to. But, I don't want this to be about you thinking you have to stay and watch over me after Ben-" May cut off, took a deep breath. "Ben loved you very much and wouldn't want you to miss something you've been so excited about because of him."
Peter looked down at his hands. "I just- I… it doesn't feel right to just go and be happy. I don't want to leave you."
"I can't force you to go, but I think you should. Get your mind off of everything, and don't worry about me." May smiled and placed her arm on Peter's.
The teen sighed. "Okay."
"'Okay:' you'll go, or 'okay:' you want me to leave you alone?"
"I'll go."
May smiled. "You have to have fun, understand?"
"Yes ma'am, I'll do my best."
"Good." May kissed him on the forehead softly. "Now go pack, so you can sleep and get up in time for your flight tomorrow."
oOo
The flight left at six o'clock, Wednesday morning. 16 students, two team coaches (the physics and the engineering elective teachers), and three volunteer parents sat in little groups around the private jet. There were some people sleeping on the reclining chairs, others talking quietly in the little pods of seats that could swivel to face each other. All three teams were coming, but only Peter's was competing. Their robot, Teddy, was packed safely in the cargo compartment at the back of the plane.
Tony sat at the back of the jet, trying not to attract too much attention. He was the parent chaperone assigned to look after Peter's team. There were only four kids. He could keep track of four kids for four days. Everything would be fine.
Tony kept an eye on his son, who sat only a few rows in front of the older man, in one of the chair groups with the other three members of his team. Peter and Jael, a tall junior girl with stick straight brown hair, built the robot. Ned, Peter's friend who had been a little too excited when meeting Tony at 5:30 AM, was the programmer on the team. Finally, both Jael and Arwen, a dark skinned girl with short hair in tight curls whose parents liked the Lord of the Rings books a lot according to her, were the drive team for the robot.
The billionaire met all of them, before boarding the school bus that would take them to the private airstrip, when the teachers assigned a chaperone to each team. A substitute security guard counted all of the students before they got on the bus.
. The entire school had been informed of Mr. Fitzpatrick's death (though they didn't know a student was with him at the time). The atmosphere in the bus, and later on the jet, was rather subdued, so no one noticed Peter's zoned out expression as the rest of his team discussed strategy. No one, that is, except his father. Tony watched his son closely, noticing how Peter's chest rose and fell in a forced slow tempo to calm himself down. Tony didn't even know how the kid was keeping his eyes open.
Both father and son had barely slept the night before their flight. Tony didn't sleep because he was a little nervous to be with his son in a place with lots of potential threats. Peter had slept for a little while until he had a nightmare that he wouldn't talk about, and joined his dad in the lab.
Pepper had to stay in New York to deal with all of her CEO duties, but Tony promised to film every competition so she could watch them.
The last few hours of the plane trip flew by as Tony relaxed and worked on a new design on his tablet. After the plane landed at a private airstrip outside of the city, the teens and chaperons loaded up two ten-passenger vans, and they headed off to their hotel near Kentucky Exposition Center.
Tony had never been to a Courtyard Mariot, but Pepper wouldn't let him spend an exorbitant amount of money to upgrade the whole team to a hotel more suited to his tastes.
The physics teacher, Mrs. Emerson, checked in at the front desk and passed out the respective key cards to the chaperones. Tony would be staying in a room with Peter and Ned because there weren't enough adults to be in each room, so they had the guardians stay with their own kids.
All of the way up to their room, Ned whispered quickly to his best friend, glancing at Tony every so often. The older man resisted the urge to roll his eyes at the teen's antics.
"Okay kids, we're supposed to drop off our bags quickly before we head off to the convention center," Tony instructed as they entered the hotel room. There were two queen sized beds and a couch to sleep on. The boys dropped their suitcases and bags on the floor except for a small drawstring backpack that Peter had on.
"What's in the bag, Peter?" The boy's father asked.
Peter smiled for the first time all day. "They're our costumes."
"Costumes? Is that… a requirement?"
"Not a requirement Mr. Stark, just helps with team spirit." Ned squeaked out an answer.
"Right, okay. If that's all we need, let's head back to the cars before they leave us."
oOo
Most of the students wanted to see some of the talks that were being put on at the first day of worlds, which left only Tony's four charges to decorate their booth and practice with the robot. Midtown chose an Avengers theme for their booth which was fitting considering their qualifying team was named "Revengers." Peter had conveniently forgotten to tell his father about the punny name…. the teen had also not mentioned the costumes were all themed after different members of the superhero team.
Jael wore a belt with an hourglass symbol reminiscent of Natasha's symbol. Arwen had little wings made out of scrap metal that could extend and were detailed like Sam's. Ned had a little Mjolnir to carry around, and Peter had a glowing LED "Arc Reactor." Tony wasn't exactly pleased to see his son sporting the item that had haunted him for years, but he tried to not let his discomfort show.
Tony wore a flimsy Iron Man mask with an elastic strap to hold it to his head. It, ironically, concealed his identity so all of the little nerd kids wouldn't distract him from watching over his son.
Midtown Tech's booth was set up with a paper cut out of the Manhattan skyline and paper Avengers flying around the buildings. Even the members of the team that couldn't fly, like Clint and Steve, were flying around in the little paper diorama of New York City. Tony thought it was ridiculous, but helped put everything up anyway.
It wasn't long before the small group finished the decorations and brought their robot (his name is Teddy, Dad) over to one of the inspection tables, where he passed with flying colors.
For the next few hours Tony just sat back and watched as the "Revengers" worked at one of the practice fields (except for when he was retrieving spare pieces or tools from the booth). The women of the team worked on driving with the controller. Ned perfected his programs, which were already quite impressive. Peter and Jael made minor repairs and improvements, tightening bolts and Zip-tying wires that came loose.
Peter plunged too far into his work to dwell on current events. Tony was glad to see him smile and laugh after barely functioning for five days, but he was also worried that the teen was taking after his father by throwing all of his energy into a project instead of dealing with emotional issues.
Tony hoped this trip would be good for Peter and not make everything worse.
oOo
Sounds of running water radiated from the small bathroom and engulfed the hotel room where Peter rested on the couch scrolling through Instagram. The first day at Worlds had been exhilarating and exhausting and the team was turning in early after their dinner so they could get a good night's sleep.
Ned had earbuds in, listening to a podcast on one of the beds. He and Peter would swap sleeping spaces to keep it fair, Ned got the bed for the first night.
Peter had a towel under his hair to protect the couch from his showered head as he looked through his classmates' Instagram Stories. Most were just artsy group photos or memes, but some were more serious and political posts. He didn't pay that much attention to any particular post, until a few words popped off the screen making him stop.
oOo
Last year, in New York City, there were 50,088 reported violent crimes
352 murders
2,244 rapes
16,946 robberies
30,546 aggravated assaults
The Avengers have saved the world multiple times, but they have done nothing to stop all of the suffering in their own backyards.
The police don't do enough, the Avengers don't do enough, there's no one to protect our citizens.
oOo
Peter thought back to his last conversation with Ben. "If you really do want to help people, I always find it's best to listen to what people are asking for."
The teen set his phone down, almost as if in a trance. He reached into his backpack and pulled out his navy leather notebook. He flipped to the page with "Avenger" written at the top and dragged a line through the title. Peter skipped to the bottom of the list and added another item.
Protect the little guys.
oOo
Teddy the robot was doing well in competitions as Jael and Arwen operated the robot like they were born with controllers attached to their fingertips. Ned and Peter watched every match, cheering on their teammates and thinking up new improvements to make to Teddy.
It was at night, when there was no tournament to focus on, or robot to fix, that Tony noticed his son struggling to deal with everything that had happened over the past weeks.
On the first night at the hotel Tony decided to actually try and sleep (at three in the morning), a few hours after the teens already fell asleep. Tony forced himself out of bed and stumbled sleepily through the room and down the tiny corridor to the bathroom to brush his teeth.
Before he could reach the bathroom door, Tony heard a small squeak from a couple feet away from him. He turned around and the father's eyes fell on his son, curled up on the couch. Peter clutched the thin blanket wrapped tightly around him with face screwed up, but clearly still asleep.
Tony immediately thought back to the night in the hospital where Peter had a nightmare, and approached the couch. The father ran a hair through his son's messy locks. "Hey bud, you're okay."
Peter mumbled something unintelligible in sleep, his face still scrunched up.
Tony sat down on the floor and leaned against the couch, unwilling to leave his kid alone. Who needs to brush their teeth anyway. Tony stayed on the floor next to the couch for the rest of the night. Neither of them talked about it when Peter woke up to his alarm at 6:00 AM and saw his dad.
Over the next few nights Tony watched his son closely and observed similar behaviour to the first night. Peter wouldn't wake up, like he did in the hospital, but he would toss and turn, trapped in his own head. The teen never wanted to talk about his dreams in the morning, leaving Tony to imagine the worst.
It wasn't until the last day of the competition that Peter's insistent nightmares bleed into his waking hours.
The "Revengers" had done well in their division, not quite good enough to make it to the semi-finals, but Tony couldn't be prouder of his son.
Tony and Peter were packing up the last of the building materials before they headed for the final lunch, the rest of the team already outside. Tony wasn't wearing his plastic Ironman mask; after three days, the foam on the inside smelled a little funny.
"Thank you for helping me clean up." Peter smiled up at his dad.
Tony passed the teen the box of allen keys and replied, "no problem kid, thank you for letting me tag along on this adventure."
The teen opened his mouth to reply when something dropped from a few booths over creating a loud boom. This wasn't the first loud sound at the competition, with a building full of clumsy teens and metal pieces there were many accidents. But Tony immediately noticed a difference with his son's reaction.
Peter jerked toward the boom, dropping the box of tools, adding to the comotion.
Tony approached his son slowly. "Peter, hey."
The teen turned his face toward his dad, Peter's brown eyes not quite meeting the older man's.
"You okay, kid?"
Peter took a little gaspy breath before giving a minute nod as a response.
"Oh I'm sure."
Peter's hands started trembling.
"Let's sit down, bud." Tony sank to the floor and sat with his legs crossed, sheltered a little by the plastic table at the front of the booth. It took the teen a few seconds to process his father's words, but when he did Peter almost collapsed next to Tony. The teen pulled his knees up to his chest in a protective manner.
Peter started trembling, rocking forward and back slightly, his breathing grew even more ragged.
"Hey bud, can you look at me?" Peter met his dad's eyes after a few seconds. "You're safe. We're in Kentucky at VEX Worlds. I'm right here; no one can hurt you."
The teen's breathing evened out slightly and he outstretched a shaky hand for his father.
Tony took his son's hand in both of his and steadied the tremors. "You're doing great, buddy. Just keep breathing for me." The father was a little worried that this panic would cause an asthma attack, but Peter seemed to be getting control back over his breaths.
They sat like that, facing each other, Tony holding Peter's hand, for a few minutes while the teen's breathing evened out.
"Can we go now?" Peter whispered.
"Sure, bud, let's go back to the hotel."
oOo
VEX Worlds ended too soon, and Peter was thrust back into reality. Ben's funeral was on the Monday after Worlds.
As the sun started to sink lower in the sky, highschoolers and friends of the Fitzpatricks filtered into a small church at the top of a cemetery.
Peter stayed in one of the back pews with his parents as different friends and colleagues went to the front and spoke about Ben in front of the man's urn. Peter heard every word but couldn't retain any of the information. The teen kept watching powerpoint with pictures of Ben Fitzpatrick and running through his last conversation with the man.
"If you really do want to help people, I always find it's best to listen to what people are asking for."
The post that kept popping up on Peter's Instagram feed flashed through the teen's mind.
"The police don't do enough, the Avengers don't do enough, there's no one to protect our citizens."
The teen's mind drifted to his notebook at home with the chemistry equations and diagrams of the webshooters. Peter wasn't going to let anyone else get hurt because he didn't stop it.
oOo
This is where I got those statistics about New York City: .
Hopefully I'll be able to update sooner next time! The school year just ended and I have more free time:)
In other news I was recently diagnosed with dyslexia- I'm glad we figured that out, but it would have been nice to do before I was going into my last year of high school…
Your comments give me life! Thank you to everyone leaving them!
Stay safe and healthy,
Jewell