Chapter 87
T'Challa stood on the basketball court looking at where the rundown apartment complex used to be. The building had been bought out years ago by developers who wanted to turn it into a condominium complex, however due to the nature of the neighbourhood, vandals who wanted to prevent gentrification always managed to slow down construction to the point where it was cheaper to let the building sit in stasis for years rather than continue to poor hundreds of thousands of dollars into the property.
He'd bought it out a few months earlier with the first set of profits from Wakanda's deals with Stark Industries, as the announcement of Wakanda and their technology had been highly beneficial for the Wakandian economy. While their country had been flourishing in solitude for years, they were truly thriving now. For the first time, they had a solid trade established with many European countries, and it was all due to the synthetized metal that Toni had help them create and patent so that even if any other corporation wanted to use it in the future, Wakanda would get a sizable compensation for it.
As he stared at the newly built compound in front of him, for not the first time in the last few months, he was grateful that he'd met Toni Stark that day in Vienna and that she had extended her offer of friendship to him. If it were not for her and her offer of friendship, he wasn't sure they would be where they were today.
He was sure Wakanda would still have emerged, as it had been a thought playing in his mind throughout the last decade, especially when Nakia mentioned it with passion. No, he was certain they would have come out to the world sooner rather than later. But having connections with Stark Industries, it was beneficial to say in the least.
"So you just gonna stare at your new building all day or did you put us all on a plane for hours for some other reason?" Erik asked as he glanced at T'Challa, "Cause Cuz, it's a nice building and all but did you really need to drag us all the way here?"
Getting Erik a fair punishment that would reflect the crimes he committed in Britain and still allow the man to help them out hadn't been easy. He'd spent hours working with the British Government, making promises to hold him accountable and punish him fairly while also providing them with their synthesized metal. As cold as it was, it was a business deal.
The metal beads on Erik's wrist glistened as the sunlight hit it, a design Shuri had created to keep Erik in line. Because as much as things were getting better between the two cousins, T'Challa wasn't naïve enough to believe that everything was in the past. Erik seemed like he was truly turning over a new leaf, but in case that wasn't the fact, well the bracelet wouldn't let him get too far.
"Forgive me Cousin, Sister," T'Challa drawled as he smirked at them both, "I had thought that perhaps the two of you would like to see the outreach centre that you would be running."
Erik looked stoic as Shuri's eyes widened.
"Are you serious, Brother?" she asked, looking like she was having a difficult time containing herself.
"I am," his lips curled up, "We're going to need someone like you, Shuri, to make sure the building is kept up to date. American technology is advancing terribly quickly, and it would do us no good if we started to fall behind, now would it? Wakanda has flourished beautifully under your care, and I know that you will find others like you here that you can inspire and teach. It means more lab minions for you, does it not?"
She threw her arms around him and he smiled as he held his baby sister. When she had been born, she had been so small but so filled with energy. And as she grew up over the years, that energy had never faded, turning instead to a passion for learning and creating. Not many in Wakanda had shared the same interests as her, and he knew it had been hard for her growing up. So when Toni had offered to take her under her wing to let her grow and create, he knew it would be something that could only help his sister.
"Why?" Erik said, saying at his cousin after a moment. "Why would you offer me this, after everything?"
"Wakanda is your home," T'Challa said, with a gesture of his head, "You may have not been born there or raised there, but you will always have a home there. We will always welcome you to stay, for however long as you wish it. But you, my Cousin, are not the kind of man who is happy living a life in one place, without a sense of purpose or drive. You are not happy staying in Wakanda while injustices occur around you in the world. And that is the kind of drive that I know will make you perfect for this. You grew up here. You care about these people. And I know you can make a difference here, helping them out."
Erik closed his eyes before nodding, "I…thank you, T'Challa. I appreciate it, I really do. That after everything that happened that that you trust me to run a project this big. I never would have imagined when I set course for Wakanda that this would have been the outcome of it all."
"We are your family," Shuri said, and while she had been reluctant to welcome in the man for everything he'd done, she was slowly warming up to him, "You do not need to thank us for being that for you."
Erik swallowed, "And the outreach centre? I can help people however I want?"
"Within legal reasons, yes," T'Challa said, "Anything they need; food, clothing, or even a place to sleep, we will provide. We will help them; you will help them."
Erik smiled, "Well then, let's get to work."
The news that Spider-Man had joined the Avengers was all anyone could talk about when Peter had come to school the following day. The hallways buzzed with gossip, and Flash was telling everyone he knew that he'd personally lent his car to Spider-Man to help the superhero with his mission. That he and Spider-Man were basically best friends now.
Peter would have laughed at that, if he didn't remember the state he'd left Flash's car in on the side of the road near the factory. Toni had offered to compensate the car, saying that it was really nothing. And while he'd felt a sense of guilt, he was grateful to have her help him out. If anything, it made him more conscious of the damages caused in his battles, and he knew it would have to be something he worked on.
Ned of course, was barely holding it together since he'd heard the news. His eyes were widened from the moment he saw Peter, and in all honesty, every time Ned raised his hand in class to answer a question, he wasn't entirely certain that Ned wasn't just going to blurt out that Peter was Spider-Man. In fact, he was almost certain that Ned would do so at some point or the other.
Thankfully though, Ned had done no such thing.
"Dude," Ned said, as he sat down beside him on the lunch table, "Why didn't you tell me? I had to find out on the news when your Mom announced it to everyone. I thought we were best friends and I found out like a pleb!"
"Sorry," Peter laughed, at his friend's dramatics. He ran his hand through his hair, "Honestly, I had no idea. I got to the compound yesterday for training because that's what Mom and Dad told me, and then all of a sudden Mom said she wanted to make me an Avenger. I honestly thought it was a joke and said no."
"YOU SAID NO TO BEING-" Ned started loudly, and as people around him immediately turned their heads to their table, Ned started speaking in a shushed voice, "You said no to being an Avenger? Are you crazy?"
"I thought it was a test!" Peter said in his defense, "That she wanted me to say no to prove that I was aware of my limitations and that she'd let me be Spider-Man still after."
"Dude what even is your life?" Ned said, with a shake of his head, "Man I wish cool things like that happened to me. So why reserve member if she offered you full entrance?"
"I'd have to stop saving people in Queens," he sighed, "And I want to be an Avenger, I really do. But then what happens to the people on the streets? I started being Spider-Man to help fight the crime in the city. And if I join the Avengers, I won't have as much time to do that."
"Makes sense," Ned nodded, "You're a cool dude, Peter."
"Thanks," Peter laughed, as he saw Michelle make her way through the cafeteria towards them. Sorry, MJ; as she had recently become captain of the decathlon team with Liz's departure, she'd asked them to call her that.
"MJ," Peter greeted as she sat down at their table.
Ned looked a bit startled at her presence, and he knew that his friend was a bit terrified of the girl in question, but he didn't voice his fears.
"Parker," she said, as she stabbed one of the pieces of mystery meat on her plate.
"How come I get Parker if you get to go by MJ?" he asked her, a bit put off.
"Cause I like you," she said, corners of her lips turning up slightly.
He laughed at that, and MJ looked like she visibly relaxed. The two hadn't been close in his first year of high school, but though the last few months she was becoming more and more of a friend to him.
When the news came out that Toni and Steve had adopted him, she'd been the only one who hadn't treated him differently as a way to try and get into his good books as so many of the rest of the school had done. She'd stood up to Flash for him, and she'd offered him kindness, true kindness, when very few others had.
He felt a fluttering in his stomach, but he quickly pushed it aside, as Ned started talking about how he wanted to watch a Star Trek marathon on the weekend, and MJ had scoffed and called them lame.
"Why don't we do it together?" Peter said, looking at both of them.
"Do what?" MJ asked warily.
"Star Trek marathon," Peter said. "It's not as good as Star Wars obviously, but my mom loves it. She keeps trying to convince me that its good, so I gotta watch it all to prove to her why Star Wars is much better"
"You guys are so lame," MJ sighed.
"That's not a no," Peter grinned at her, "Why don't both of you come over this weekend and we can spend Saturday just watching all of it. It'll be great!"
"You're inviting me to the Stark Tower?" MJ asked, a bit surprised.
"Why not?" he shrugged, "You're my friend, right?"
"I guess I am," she conceded with a smile. "But your parents won't mind?"
"They'll want to meet you first," he warned her, "And you'll have to see them be weirdly affectionate with each other. But no. They trust my judgement. If I think you should come over they won't have any issues with it. I just gotta give them some heads up."
"That sounds amazing," Ned gushed, "Dude do you think we could get pizza?"
"We can but if we get it from one of those chain American places, Mom's gonna have a lot to say about it," Peter laughed, "She really hates pizza if it's not New York Style or authentically Italian. Says that it's not even a real pizza."
MJ gave him a look that he couldn't decipher but she smiled nonetheless. A sight he hadn't seen many times before.
Huh.
"I guess I'm hanging out with you two losers this weekend then," MJ said with a laugh.
"This is gonna be so much fun!" Ned said, hyping up.
He grinned at them both, excited for the new friend he'd seemingly gained and the plans they'd made.
Ava may have had a book in front of her, but she'd long since given up pretending to read it. And if the in the room knew she was watching them openly, well she didn't really care about it. How could she when her brother and Natasha were awkwardly dancing around each other for them all to see.
"That was a good training session," Natasha said, as she drank a glass of water.
"Yeah, you really managed to find new ways to tackle me, didn't you?" Harry said with a laugh, "I think I'm going to have bruises for a few months now."
"As long as you're good enough to fight again tomorrow," Natasha said, as she smirked at him, "I need my favourite fighting partner."
"More like favourite punching bag," he groaned as he rubbed his backside. "Honestly Romanoff, I don't know if I'll recover from this. I may need to retire permanently."
"And do what, sit on your ass all day?" Nat remarked, "You'd get bored, Carter-Sousa."
"At least I wouldn't be getting abused on a regular basis," he shot back.
"Whatever," she rolled her eyes, "I'm going to go hop in the shower. Later, old man."
She stalked off, leaving just Ava and Harry in the room, and she put down her book, not even pretending to read it anymore.
"What?" Harry said, looking suspicious as she looked over at him.
"I haven't said anything," Ava said, as she silently watched him.
"But you clearly want to," he sighed, "So what is it, little Sister? What are you going to bug me about today?
"Why do you automatically assume that I'm going to do something to bug you?" she pouted, as she swiped one of the strawberries from the bowl he'd placed in front of him to eat. He scowled at her but didn't stop her from grabbing another one and popping it in her mouth.
"Because you have Mom's look," he said, "The one she wears when she so obviously disapproves of something but insists that it's our lives and that we should be able to make all the decisions in them, even if she disagrees."
"Because I do disagree," she said simply.
"About?" he asked her with a sigh.
"You know what," she said, but he didn't respond so she went on, "What are the two of you doing, Harry?"
"We're working together," Harry said, "We just finished training and she had a few barbs for me, and I had some for her too. That's normal."
"Was it?" she aside him, raising a brow, "Because it seems like there's a lot of tension there. And don't tell me I'm wrong or don't know what I'm talking about, because everyone senses it. Everyone can tell that there's something going on between the two of you even if no one is entirely sure of what it is."
"We're just friends," Harry said, and she nearly snorted at how unconvinced she was by his statement. She wasn't entirely sure who it was that he was trying to convince, because it definitely wasn't her.
"Mm hm," she said with a laugh, "Because I flirt with all my friends like that. All the time."
"We weren't flirting," he sighed, "Look, after everything that happened, we decided to try and be friends okay? It's easier for us and it's working. Why fix something that isn't broken?"
"Harry, I love you, but that's the biggest load of bullshit I've ever heard in my life," she said to him, "Both of you clearly have feelings for each other and it's abundantly clear that the two of you are dancing around each other. You have been for years, neither of you quite willing to make a move. Doesn't it get exhausting? Knowing you have feelings for each other and not doing anything about it?"
"Doesn't it bother you?" he blurted out, "That it's her?"
"What do you mean?" she said, frowning.
"If it weren't for Natasha, then Bruce may still be here," he said, pointedly, "She kissed him and triggered Bruce into the Hulk. How does that not bother you? She kissed your boyfriend who you were considering marrying. And don't tell me you weren't. I know you were serious about him. I know that you loved him."
"I did," she conceded, "Sometimes I think I still do. Bruce was…loving Bruce was complicated. I always knew that as much as I loved him and as much as he loved me, that the fact that he was the Hulk would always come between us. That one day it would be our breaking point. Toni told him once that he needed to embrace the Hulk side of him, but he never could. He was always going to leave me, Harry. And after Johannesburg, it was really only a matter of time. Both of us knew our relationship was running on borrowed time. I'm not surprised he left. Whether it was that day or a year from then, Bruce always was going to leave me."
"I'm going to kick his ass when I see him next," her brother promised her, and she laughed as she waved a hand at him.
"I appreciate the offer, Harry, I really do. But I want you to know that it doesn't bother me. I'm always going to be unhappy that she kissed Bruce as part of her spy mode, but that's because I'm not like you. I'm not like Toni, or Mom, or even Dad. I never felt comfortable saving the world by fighting like that. I wanted to save the world with science. But you? You fit right into Mom's world like you were always made for it. I'm not surprised that did. And if it weren't for the fact that it hurt me, you wouldn't have batted an eye about that kiss because you knew the two of you weren't together and that she did what she thought she needed to."
He looked down, and she knew he knew it was true.
"Don't stop living your life for me, Harry," she told him, "You like her. Maybe even love her. You should tell her."
He sighed, "When did you get so smart?"
"I was always smarter that you," she laughed, and he shook his head with a smile.
"I love you, Ava," he told her.
"I know," she said simply, as her brother looked contemplative. She knew she'd given him a lot to think about. But she hoped that he did something about it.
Or she would.
Toni browsed through page after page on her tablet, as she let out a frustrated sigh.
"What is it, Darling?" Steve asked her, as he sat down beside her on the couch.
"You realize that we only have like three months left til this baby gets here?" she asked him, as she gently caressed her baby bump. "Do you know how much we still have left to do? The nursery is still in a state of disarray, we need to baby proof this entire floor, and maybe some of the other floors, I have so much to wrap up at Stark Industries, and we don't have enough baby clothes."
"We haven't finished the nursery because you can't decide on the right shade to paint it," Steve told her. "You threw your hands up last time because the yellow was the wrong colour and asked me to handle it."
"And did you?" she retorted.
"I'm working on it," he said evasively, knowing fully well that Toni hadn't set foot in the room in over a month. "The floor is baby proofed. You just keep changing your mind about how much to proof it. I swear, I couldn't even get into the top cabinets in the kitchen the other day, Sweetheart. Do we expect the baby to climb up onto the counters and open the shelves in their first month?"
"We don't know that they won't!" she defended, "We have a spider child for a son. Who knows what kind of shenanigans our other child will get into?"
"I think our pantry will be safe from the baby," Steve said dryly. "As for baby clothes, between you and Pepper, you've bought enough clothes that the baby can change their outfit three times a day for the first month of their life and still have clothes to spare. You know how quickly they grow at that age. At least wait until they're older before you buy them a full wardrobe."
"My child will be dressed in nothing less than the best," she said, raising her nose in jest.
"What does that make me then?" Peter said as he entered the room then, "I don't wear brand name clothes."
"Yeah but that's because you have your whole down to earth teenage heir thing going on," Toni waved at him, and Peter looked surprised.
"Why are we talking about baby clothes?" Peter asked, trying to catch up.
"Your mother is worried we still have a lot to do to catch up for when the baby gets here," Steve told him.
"Oh," Peter said in surprise. "Like what?"
"We still don't have a baby name," Toni said, showing them both the screen she was looking at, as it lit up in front of them.
"You don't have any that you like so far?" Peter asked, as he leaned forward to get a better look.
"Why don't you help us pick?" Steve suggested, as he scooted closer to look as well. "We can come up with some baby names for girls and boys."
"Olivia?" Peter asked, "That's a pretty name."
"I knew an Olivia in boarding school," Toni made a face, "She was a real piece of work. How about Luna?"
"Sounds like one of those modern hippy names," Steve said with a quick shake of his head. "What about Theodore if it's a boy?"
"Sounds posh," she said with a sigh. "You know how I feel about posh names. Including my own."
"Why Antonia?" Peter asked her curiously.
"My father was really hopeful for a boy to name Anthony," she sighed, "I was what he got instead."
"Oh," Peter said simply, "Adrian?"
"Doesn't feel right," Steve shook his head.
"How about this one?" Peter asked as he pointed to one below.
"That's," she said, voice tightening.
"It's perfect," Steve said, as he wrapped an arm around them both.
"Thank you, Peter," she said, and her son looked sheepish.
"All I did was point to a name," Peter said.
She smiled at them both, as she rubbed her stomach. Her baby had a name. And whenever they were born, she would gladly tell them all about how their big brother chose the perfect name for them.
"There is one more thing," Steve said, as he helped her up, "Peter and I have been working on it for the last little bit, and I just found out they finished it a few days ago. I've been waiting for the perfect moment to show you."
She glanced at him confused, as he helped her walk through the hall before stopping outside the nursery. He opened the door and she half expected to see the yellow disaster she'd left behind with seven different shades painted all around each other as she struggled to find the right colour for it.
But instead she was met with a white room. And on the walls, tiny, cartoon versions of the Avengers were painted, decorating the walls. Each one of them. Her, Steve, Peter, Rhodey, Nat, Bruce, Harry, Thor, and even Loki and T'Challa. Plastered in various poses, doing cute things like eating cookies or sleeping, and even reading.
She looked at it all, taking it in, unable to say anything.
"Our baby will have so many people in their lives to love and protect them," Steve told her, "And I wanted to show them that."
"I love it," she whispered, "And I love you. Both of you. Thank you so much for doing this."
"I'm glad you like it," Peter said as he hugged her, and she held him tightly.
"I do," she said, as Steve kissed her head. "I love it more than anything."
