He was happy.
Tony Stark was not usually a happy person. He would put on a smile for the media, or grin and joke with his teammates and Rhodey, but it took a lot to be genuinely happy.
He could think of two ways that he'd feel happy: when he was with Butterfingers and Dum-E and the rest of his 'bots and Pepper too, sometimes. Joking around with the rest of the Avengers was fine, but they were only coworkers. They didn't feel like actual friends; not to him, at least. Maybe that would change, but right now, he felt as if people just didn't get along with him well.
The second way was more of a feeling of self-satisfaction. Like a piece slotting into place or a smoothly-cut slab of meat. He usually felt like this when he had solved a puzzle after the long and laborious process of figuring it out. This was the kind of happiness that he felt at this moment.
he smirked as he walked away from the Stacy household.
.o0|O|0o.
Perfect, he thought. Everything is going as planned.
.o0|O|0o.
The days were long and Peter, much like the rest of the residents of the house, preferred to surreptitiously slink away from and around supervisors than to confront them, even without conversations.
They weren't so bad, he supposed, but there was something about them. Something off. Call it his Spidey-Sense, but they just seemed a little too strict, a little too straight, a little too grey. Something about them was strange. Or maybe he was just being paranoid— it wouldn't surprise him, to be honest.
Peter sighed as he dug himself deeper into the white sheets of his bed, hearing it creak and groan at his weight. He was tired and his eyes were barely open, but there had been a constant headache in the back of his mind for a while now, and he couldn't sleep with it. It had been the faintest of mumblings a few days ago, like voices in a distant room, but now it sounded as if the voices had approached to just behind the door of his room. Warning voices. They were telling him something. Something was approaching.
He curled away from it all, enclosing himself in a pocket of sheets, and tried to block it all out.
.o0|O|0o.
Peter Parker.
That was his name. He knew it. Gwen's boyfriend all the way up until a few months ago. Who else could it be?
Coffee in hand, he sat on the kitchen island, going through blue file after blue file, trying to string together evidence, see the small scraps of truth into a story. Peter Parker... a mystery. There was almost nothing on his connections to Spider-Man. He was just a normal school kid. Into photography, science, almost all of the teachers loved him. Very smart. Quiet. Well-behaved. A little late to class... he snickered when he saw that last one. Maybe he'd take him under his wing, if he could pry him away from Fury's claws.
"What are you up to?" He jumped a little to see Captain Spangly-Pants in the room. Hadn't even noticed him.
Well, might as well get his hopes up. It's Peter that they're after, but it'd be fun to see Cap's hopes crash to the ground on the off chance that he's wrong. Which he's not. "I think I know who Spider-Man is."
His eyes lit up. Seriously, he's like an actual puppy. Is everyone sure that this guy is a murderer? In the name of all things good, of course, but still. He killed tons of Chitauri. "Really? When are we going to go after him?"
"Whenever you want, I guess." Who needs solid evidence? He's probably right, anyway.
He nodded, nibbling at an apple. Where did he get that from-? Oh right, there's a fruit bowl on the table. Pepper is rather insistent on their health. "So... what's he like?"
.o0|O|0o.
It had been a mistake to try and find Peter Parker— a big mistake. He didn't even know how it happened. How he let it happen. Was he so out of shape? So old, unpracticed? How had he not noticed? How had he been defeated?
He had to remind himself of the breathing exercises Bruce had taught him to keep him calm. Measure each well, breathe with your entire body, feel your lungs fill, and exhale through your nose. Five seconds in, eight seconds out.
Blood gushed from his thigh, thick and red and singing songs of death. His normally blue-armoured leg was soaked red and wet and sticky. It was his only injury, but it was deep. He couldn't walk.
Tony was even worse. He had packed his armour, but left it on the plane for the short stop they had been planning. He was covered in blood— red but without gold.
In fact, where was Tony? His breath stopped for a moment, sputtering to a stop and making him choke on his spit. He tried to spit it out, but it only dribbled down in his chin.
Five in, eight out.
He almost felt lost. What could he do now? The jet was gone; he had heard it take off. What else did he have? He tried to think it over. He had to repeat it over a few times.
A tracker. Implanted into his suit— a tracker. Although he supposed it wouldn't be too unusual if they stopped in place for a while. Who had access to that data, anyway? Tony? Fury?
A wallet? But that was in his bag— also in the jet.
Phone? Phone... radio! He had a radio! It was turned off, and not tuned in to the communal frequency that the Avengers used (Tony and him had chosen a new one for this mission), but he could fix that. He still had his arms. He still had his arms.
He still had his arm.
Covered in blood, probably a little too close to passing out for his liking despite his mild healing factor, he used one arm to tune in his radio.
.o0|O|0o.
Morning came with the dreaded crack of a wooden slap. The door had burst open.
A menacing woman stood in the doorway, the look on her face like an anticipatory lion's. Her teeth shined with imminent danger, her skin crumpled and sagging but still somehow managed to look terrifying.
She grabbed the brass ringer from her belt, and shook it like a death bell. If everyone hadn't been awake yet, they were now. And yet, the sound of it couldn't even dream of contending with the screaming in the back of his head.
"Get up, get up!" She sounded like a stalking lioness. "It's seven o'clock!" Peter didn't even have to look at a clock to know that it was six. "I want you all down in five minutes!" Fifty seconds. With that, she fled from the groaning room with a flap of dark cardigan.
Peter punched his face into his pillow with exhaustion and nudged his feet to fold away the duvet. Fifty seconds wasn't long. The other boys, just as tiredly, began to drop from their beds with the slow countenance of zombies. Peter was last to the floor, and last out the door. Fifty seconds be damned.
He pushed his feet to the stairs and stumbled down each step (if not for his spider abilities, he might have fallen down them).
The kitchen was clean, the lights were bright and hard, and his fingers stung with detergent every time he touched a surface.
He felt nothing as the face of the old lady from before looked at him disapprovingly, not saying a word. Her look was enough.
The chair was cold and hard and he slouched over the table, letting his overgrown hair cloud his face from his peeping peers. "Right, now that everyone is here..." she was shooting him not-so-subtle glares, he could tell without even looking. "Distribution of jobs." The room was silent; they knew better than to complain.
Peter fell into a sleepy trance as she listed off who would be doing what that day. He would probably be stuck with taking out the rubbish and compost, or maybe washing the toilets, even though he knew that they had been done just yesterday. Or at least, he thought it was yesterday.
He was a little surprised when he got poked in the shoulder by a little girl with blonde hair and blue eyes (familiar). He was usually set those tasks on his own— probably because he was hated by the supervisors there or something. He couldn't be bothered to ask, so he just followed after the girl and her friend (a boy with stringy dark hair and a crumpled darker face) as they walked towards a door. He couldn't remember where it lead.
Quite suddenly, he was outside, and the low sun was beating into his eyes, trying to force happiness on him or something. Or maybe it was just being mean. Or maybe it was an inanimate object with no ulterior motive. Who knew?
Why was he outside again? He could not remember. He wasn't sure if he was supposed to remember. He wasn't usually allowed outside because they didn't want him (a lowly disheveled teenager) to be seen as a representative of what it was like inside the orphanage. Why was he outside?
He sighed, a shiver of steam slipping from his lips. Autumn. Was it that late in the year already? Hadn't it been Spring recently? Maybe he was just over-thinking it.
He was sagging behind the other two, who looked to be chatting animatedly (or maybe that was normal talking, it just seemed happy to him?) a few metres ahead. He couldn't make his body move any faster than this. He was tired.
He was so, so tired.
So tired, in fact, that he didn't notice the man that he bumped into. He almost thought that it was a wall, to be honest, but then he remembered that his spidey-sense wouldn't let him bump into a wall. Actually, it wouldn't let him bump into anything, would it? Why hadn't he noticed?
He regretted trying to tune into his spidey-sense. Mistake, mistake, bad, bad, bad. It was shrilly screaming: a siren, an alarm, a terror-filled room. The voices weren't outside the door anymore, they were right in his ear.
Taking a step forward, he went to walk past the wall (which was actually a man) but was jolted to a stop almost violently. He was a little confused, but tried again, only for the sameness result. What–? Oh. Someone had his arm.
A croak came from his mouth. He had intended for it to be a question, but really, he hadn't spoken much in the past few weeks, so what did he expect? "H-huh?" He cleared his throat. "Ye-es?" His voice broke half way through anyway. Oh well. He was too tired to be embarrassed.
He tried to look up, but he could barely see... whatever he was looking at. A face? ... A face. A familiar face. Where did he know this face from?
The winning smile reminded him. "Hey, kid. Got a moment?"
Maybe once he would have jumped for joy at the notion. Of even speaking a word to Tony Stark, he would've, but really, he was too tired. Way too tired. And not in the mood for talking. Hadn't he been trying to avoid this guy, anyway? Oh yeah— they were hunting him or something. He hadn't been Spider-Man in a while, though. "N-n... not-t today. Not today."
.o0|O|0o.
Loki's grin was wide, filled with teeth, and held no joy whatsoever.
"Too bad."
A/N: So. Here we are again. How long has it been? Idk. I'm not even keeping track anymore. I bet most people have forgotten this exists. For those of you who haven't... it will be finished. Even if it takes years. So... uhh... sorry for the wait. Sorry.
Uhh, bye, I guess.