Katya used the keys to unlock the door, which took a little bit of wiggling, but knocked on it anyway before opening. When there wasn't an answer, she opened the door, knocking again, taking stock of the apartment in front of her. Furnished nicely- not in the posh way Avenger's Tower was, or the utilitarian way of the Academy, but in a slightly cluttered, homey way that put her at an ease she couldn't understand. "Hello?" she called out.

No one answered.

Katya pocketed the keys again and turned to lock the door behind her without thinking, but that was a normal thing to do, right? Lock a door behind you? Just in case someone wanted to get into your home without your permission? She'd been given keys after all, because it had been locked in the first place, but-

Katya shook her head, as if willing the thoughts to fall out of her ears. She was overthinking again,but it was hard not to when you'd had espionage skills drilled into your skull ever since you could remember. They'd had multiple lessons over the years at the Academy on cross-cultural facial expressions, body language, polyglotism, group think and other psychological phenomena, which meant taking note of every student's nervous ticks, the way they spoke and structured their language, the slight slouch almost every student at school seemed to have- and to subconsciously mimic it, mirror her peers, to try her best to blend in.

Though empty, the apartment felt full due to all the signs of life there were- unwashed dishes in the sink, clutter on the counters, a blanket on the couch that had been used but only haphazardly refolded. A nest she could easily see herself sinking into and never wanting to resurface from.

She couldn't breathe. First thing she knew she was falling through the sky, the jet blown to shrapnel, her ears stuck in a muffled ringing from all the explosions above her, but-

Something must have slowed her fall slightly, or maybe not, she didn't know how far up or down or where she was through all the smoke but she suddenly hit the ground on the flat of her back, winding but not killing her. Snow-she could only assume from the texture and the cold, because her eyes were still dotted with black spots from the fire- suddenly tumbled over her, and everything went quiet.

She lay there for what felt like hours, or it could have been minutes, she didn't know when her ears had stopped ringing but everything was still so silent, still.

She could have dug herself out. Easily. They'd been trained for this. But she didn't know what she would find aboveground if she did.

"It's okay," somebody said, their voice cautious, as if speaking to a bomb. "You're okay, let me help-" something was moving somewhere above her face, and darkness became light as sunlight began to permeate the snow around her-

Hands dug the snow out from around her face and arm, the rest of her still buried. Bright, blazing sunlight forced her eyes shut, but she grabbed the wrist nearest to her and twisted, which would normally force her attacker to flip over, but this one knew what they were doing and twisted back, folding her hand in on itself and shoving it back into the snow, under what felt like a knee. Pain shot through her wrist-

"Hit her!"

She screeched, willing herself to wriggle the rest of the way out of the snow, but someone was kneeling on her chest. Suddenly nothing but red flooded her vision, an odd synthetic smell flooding her senses- Nose, lungs, and chest, she couldn't breathe-

A nice, warm blanket to snuggle into sounded nice.

Peter'd told her to wait in his room, and at first she was worried she'd have a hard time figuring out which one that was, but when she found the disheveled bedroom with an unevenly used bunk bed, clothes strewn on any given surface, and a bunch of retrotech on the computer desk it seemed like she'd found the right place.

She dumped her school bag onto the floor and sighed, pulling out the textbooks she'd brought with her. Through observation she'd noticed people taking only a few at a time from their lockers, but she'd brought them all- she needed to, she had so much catching up to do. Apparently the first period she had Peter had taught her was pronounced A P Calculus, not 'ap calculus", and that was just one in a long string of things she wanted to bury her head in the wall for that day. She was a fantastic chameleon- they'd taught her to be- but little things like that she just couldn't seem to needed to be better than that, more detailed in her observations, less distracted by the novelty of it all. More vigilant. Not many people had spoken to her, thankfully, as one new kid didn't seem to be a big deal and Peter didn't seem to be very popular, but she didn't know how long that would last, and she needed to absorb all the information she could get.

She'd had about a half hour to herself, having gotten nearly halfway through the AP Calculus textbook that she was reading like a novel- it actually wasn't all that hard, there were just some terms she had to google on her phone (which Tony had given her and a crash course on how to use, even though he smirked bemusedly the whole time, as they both knew this tech was way below his pay grade) to make everything come together before there was a jangle of keys in the door.

Instinctively she stiffened, slipping a hand in her boot to check the butterfly knife was still there. It wasn't supposed to be there, Happy had told her no weapons more than once and sure, fine, she wasn't carrying any- her gauntlet was stored deep in the back of her closet and the butterfly knife was a toy more than a weapon, anyway- and she heard the rustle of paper and plastic bags hit the counter in the kitchen, a woman's sigh accompanying the crinkling.

It was probably the Aunt May that Peter had told her about, the Aunt he lived with, and he'd never mentioned any other occupants to their apartment. Tony had also told her as much, back when they were doing mild recon on him before Katya and Peter had officially met. Placated by the smooth handle she felt against her fingertips and ankle, she brought her hand back up to grasp the calculus book just in time for a knock on the bedroom door.

"Peter?" A woman's voice called as she knocked, "You in here?"

Katya didn't formulate a response in time before the woman opened the door all the way and they locked eyes. The woman looked taken aback, but not upset.

"Who are you?" Her voice was light, and curious- Katya got the sense that this woman wouldn't even kill a mosquito. Katya scrambled to her feet.

"Hi, erm, I'm Katya-" she stuck her hand out to shake. "Peter's friend. He said he'd help me with my homework, I just needed to wait for him to get home from his internship."

The woman regarded her for a second before smiling warmly. "Nice to meet you, Katya. I"m Peter's Aunt May- .Peter's never mentioned you, are you new?"

Katya nodded, hoping there weren't any more follow up questions.

If there were going to be, though, she was saved by a knock on the front door. "Just a second."

She disappeared back into the kitchen and there was more movement at the front door for a moment before Katya clocked Ned's voice. She vaguely remembered him saying something about coming over to build something called a Death Star, but of course she'd be lying if she said she knew what that meant.

"You can just hang out with Katya until he gets back I guess," She heard Aunt May's voice from the kitchen, "I'll get started on this meatloaf."

"Katya's here?"

"Yeah, she's-"

Soon Ned Leeds' form filled the doorway, his arms full of some sort of spherical model made up of tiny plastic bricks. "Hey!" He said brightly, sitting down on the bottom of the bunk bed. A slight indentation where he made to sit suggested he spent a lot of time in that very spot."I thought you had the internship too?"

Katya, who'd waved, cleared her throat before dropping her eyes back down to the calculus book. "Yeah, they didn't need me in the lab today."

"Whoa, so is Peter just hanging out with Tony Stark in the lab on his own?"

Katya bit back a smirk and nodded. "Yep. Something like that."

"So what do you do there that they don't need you today?"

Katya's eyes froze on the infinite curve graph she had been looking at. "Oh, erm- I do a lot of the same stuff, I just finished my half early."

Ned gingerly moved the model sphere to the side so he could turn to look at her better. "You mean you finished your half faster than Peter did? Whoa. What're you working on?"

This time Katya allowed the smirk to slip past. "Top secret."

"Oooooh." Ned's eyes widened as he gushed. "Top secret Stark Industries?"

Katya nodded, her smirk turning into a smile. "Yep. Top Secret Stark Industries." She pointed over his shoulder to the model he'd been carrying. "What's that?"

"Oh, this? It's the mainframe to the Death Star," he told her, with pride that rivaled a new parent's. "Peter and I were going to finish it when he gets home."

Katya nodded, not wanting to ask what the Death Star was just in case that was supposed to be common knowledge. She could figure it out through context as the night wore on.

The next hour or so the two spent working on the homework for their shared classes together, allowing Katya enough things to distract Ned with- he seemed very distractible- to field the questions she didn't want to (or didn't know how to answer). They tackled Spanish first, which Katya spoke fluently, so that wasn't a problem ("Where'd you learn to speak Spanish?" "My last school focused a lot on linguistics, and I started when I was really young." ) then the Calculus she'd been studying, where she'd thankfully gotten far enough that she could match Ned's skill pretty easily, before moving on to English ("Where's your accent from?" "A little bit of everywhere, but my first language is Russian so I guess that's what you're hearing?") but when Katya suggested the AP Chemistry worksheet Ned told her he'd already done it, so he moved back over to the bed to grab his backpack ("You can just copy it, I don't mind, every shares homework around here kinda") where he had to pull his Death Star model back onto his lap to reach.

It was getting late, and Katya vaguely wondered how long 'patrol' was supposed to last when, as if on cue, she caught the bedroom's window slipping open out of the corner of her eye. Ned had grown quiet, adjusting something on his model, as Peter slipped in, clinging to the ceiling and silently crossing the room. Katya stared at him, willing him to look in her direction so she could alert him about his friend, but he was too focused on closing the bedroom's door that Ned had left open before dropping down to the ground. "Hey, Katya, I'm sorry-" he started, as he dropped down from the ceiling, before turning around.

There was a crash as the model Ned had been holding in his hands rolled off his lap and onto the ground, shattering into a million- or, 3,803- pieces.

May's voice piped up from the kitchen immediately. "What was that?!" She sounded concerned.

Peter's eyes may as well have been popping out of his head as he turned back towards the door, a hand held out to Ned to give him pause. "Er, nothing! It's nothing, we're okay!"

"You're the Spiderman." Ned whispered in awe, "from youtube."

Peter smacked his suit's chestpiece to inflate it so it fell off, pooling around his feet. "I'm not, I"m not," he panted. He glanced to Katya, as if for help, but she just shook her head at him incredulously, without a clue what to say.

"You were on the ceiling." Ned told him, as if they all hadn't just witnessed it.

"No I wasn't."

"Yes you were- Katya, you saw, right?"

Katya shook her head and shrugged. "I don't know, I mean, looks can be deceiving-"

"-Ned, what are you doing in my room?!" Peter cried, clearly growing desperate.

"May let me in, you said we could finish the Death Star! Katya and I were doing homework!"

"You can't just bust into my room-"

At that, May opened the door, bringing with her a giggle and a tendril of smoke. "That turkey meatloaf recipe was a disaster." She unclipped her hair from where she'd tied it up and brushed her hands through it to smooth it out, "Let's go to dinner. Thai? Ned, Katya, you want Thai?"

"No!" Peter cried- if he was trying to stifle his panic, he wasn't doing a very good job. "He's got a- a thing."

Ned nodded. "Yeah, a thing to do…after."

May raised an eyebrow but didn't press. "Okay, well…" she made to close the door again before adding, her eyes darting to Katya who was staring very intently at a paragraph she had now tried to read at least three times, or at least that's what she was telling herself. "Maybe put on some clothes." She shut the door behind her.

Ned exploded. "DUDE! She doesn't know?!"

"No, nobody knows! Well, Katya knows, and Mr. Stark knows because he made my suit, but that's it." His voice rasped like a whisper but was too loud to be considered one.

"What?! Katya, you knew?"

Katya felt her face grow hot. "Sorta."

"How?!"

"Through the internship." Was all she offered. Peter had to handle this one on his own.

"Are you an Avenger?"

"Yeah, basically-"

Katya snorted, earning her a glare from Peter. He rounded back to Ned.

"You can't tell anybody about this, okay, you gotta keep it a secret."

"A secret? Why?" Ned sounded so disappointed.

"Why? You know why- if May finds out people are trying to kill me every single night she's not going to let me do this anymore! Come on, man. Please."

"OK, okay, okay, I"ll level with you." Ned voice was momentarily serious before his excitement bubbled back to the surface. "I don't think I can keep this a secret, this is the greatest thing that's ever happened to me-"

"No! May can not know, okay, I just can't do that to her right now. And with everything that's happened with her, I- please." Peter's voice was shrinking.

There was a beat, but Ned agreed. "Okay, man, I won't tell." Peter's shoulders relaxed visibly as he turned away, but Ned wasn't finished "Can I try the suit on? How does it work, is it magnets?"

Peter raked a hand through his hair, looking to Katya. "I can't believe this is happening right now."

Katya offered him a strained smile- about all she could do right now- and tapped his foot, which was in reach of her outstretched one, with her own reassuringly. "It's okay. He's gonna keep it a secret. Right, Ned?" She shot the other boy a threatening look. He nodded hurriedly.

"Right, Right-" he babbled as Peter began to push him out the door. Before he made it all the way out though, he paused. "Wait- how do you do this and the Stark Internship?"

Peter and Katya glanced at each other, and Katya rolled her eyes. Peter sighed.

"This is the Stark Internship."

There was a beat before Ned connected the dots. "Ohh…so wait, you two are-"

"Bye Ned!" Katya called from her spot on the floor, loudly enough that May would hear, as Peter finished his hushed whispers ("I"ll tell you everything at school tomorrow, okay?) and finally getting his friend all the way out of the door.

Both Katya and Peter stayed silent until they heard Ned's voice wish May goodbye and disappear down the apartment's hallway. Peter let out a sigh of relief. Picking through the plastic brick shrapnel, he heaved himself onto the place in the bunk bed where Ned had been only moments before, muttering to himself with his head in his hands.

Katya wasn't sure what to do so she scooted from her place next to the computer desk over to where the boy was sitting, wincing when her open palm landed on one of the plastic bricks. She tapped him lightly on his knee. "Give me your phone."

It took Peter a second to stop muttering to himself and looked up. "What?"

"Give me your phone."

He mustered up the wherewithal to raise an eyebrow but dug it out of his pocket to give to her nonetheless. She quickly added her information into his contacts and sent herself a text from his phone so she'd have his. "Next time, I can warn you if there's anyone else around."

"Yeah, that'd be nice." Peter grumbled, heels of his hands over his eyes. He took a few moments to breathe and Katya let him, turning so she was sitting with her back against the bed frame, next to his legs so he could have some space but still know she was there. After a bit, he asked, "Do you want to come to dinner with us? Happy seems pretty busy with the move but May's probably going to ask you a lot of questions, so whichever sounds less terrible to you."

Katya shrugged, "I can handle a stressed out Happy and stay out of his way- the real question is do you want to be alone with your aunt right now?"

Peter was staring at a point in space somewhere between himself and the bedroom wall. "I'd totally be throwing you under the bus."

Katya knocked his knee with her shoulder. "I can't stop buses with my bare hands like some people-" she offered him a smirk, "But I can totally handle it if I'm already under it. Plus, I've never had Thai food before."

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