They got their yearbooks back today, flipping through, Peter inwardly cringed at his portrait. He didn't look his freshest the day it was taken, having been out as Spiderman until five am that morning, getting about half an hour of sleep on the bus, only to remember it was photo day.
Realising that every kid had a copy of his portrait looking like he'd just shot up on heroin moments before the picture was taken. Peter also noticed that his picture wasn't under his homeroom's section, and instead, it was under the 'exchange students' subheading, saying that he was coming from Italy, how had the yearbook committee even gotten away with that?
It wasn't even funny or mocking, just a mistake. Peter honestly didn't know what they got out it. Ned looked over at Peter.
"When's Connor going to come back?" He asks, timidly. He knows there's something up with the boy, and that it was probably Avengers related, but Ned didn't know the specifics of any of it. Peter shrugs carelessly. He doesn't know anymore.
It killed him to not know, but he wasn't going to push Connor any further. Connor's name was taunting in his contacts list, and it took all the self-control Peter had to not call him up. He trusted Connor. Trusted Connor enough to know that there was definitely a reason for his extended absence from both School and the compound for the last week.
It's during his first class that Peter's pulled out. There was some kind of debriefing that was apparently much more important than Peter's language convention class. He hoped to god that it was important, English was hard and not something he did very well in, barely scraping together a C in his last test.
A car's waiting for him out front, as expected it's Happy. There aren't any words exchanged between them, Peter silently shuffles into the back seat uncomfortably. They take a route that is unfamiliar to Peter, so he assumes that they aren't going to the compound or Stark Tower.
They don't. Happy drives him forward to a government-run building, passing him a keycard and waits for him to get out the car. Peter's confused and doesn't know where to go. Awkwardly approaching the front desk of the professional looking building, the woman sitting behind gives him a once-over and directs him to an elevator, all without pausing from her passive-aggressive typing. It doesn't look like she's used the backspace key once.
Peter simply nods and walks into the elevator. There are no buttons for floors, and he hadn't been told which floor to head to. He's just standing aimlessly when a woman walks in. She's dressed professional but holds a defensive stance. She notices his confusion.
"You gotta hold your key card against the scanner. It'll take you to the floor that you're scheduled or appointed to." She holds her own key card against a small white square on the wall of the elevator. There's a little beep then a robotic voice that says "Dr Dora Skirth. Level 7 access." She motions for him to scan his own card.
"Peter Stark. Level 4 access." Hang on, what. Peter who?! That was not him. Although his guardianship had been taken over by Mr Stark, Peter doesn't recall ever having his last name changed to Stark. That was not something that had progressed, or developed in the past week or so.
If Mr Stark had done that behind Peter's back, why hadn't he told him? Peter wasn't exactly sure if he was ready to leave the very name that connected him to his Aunt and birth family. Sure, he considered Mr Stark his family, but there wasn't a stage that he considered himself a Stark.
"What is this place?" Peter asks the shorter woman in the elevator with him. She tilts her head.
"A SHIELD issued head-office and laboratory. You're headed to level 4, which is where all the high priority conference room is, so I'd assume you're a pretty important person. Maybe a young investor?" She shrugs but continues on.
"I'm a geneticist. Although they're closing the department I work in due to budget cuts next month, I'm getting a transfer to a privately run company. Life foundation. They do space exploration and extra-terrestrial investigation." She notes that she's been rambling, and blushes.
There's an empty silence and Peter feels obligated to explain himself.
"I'm Peter. Adopted by… Mr Stark. I think that's why I'm here." She nods, as if understanding his situation, although the reality of it is that she doesn't understand any more than he does. But Peter does have an inkling that he's here on Spiderman business than he is on Peter Parker business. The elevator lets out a small chime, notifying that he's on level 4 now. The doors open wide open and Director Fury is seated at the end of a large conference table.
"I'm assuming you know that we're here to talk about your 'extra-curricular' activities." Fury states plainly. The tone is enough to send shivers down Peter's spine. His anxiety levels rise uncertainly, and his mind immediately searches to every single thing he's done for the past five years, trying to find anything to warrant a talk with the man in front of him.
"I'm so sorry for sneaking into one of your storage facilities that one time and couldn't get out for a lon-"
"I'm sorry - you what?! Anyway, we're not here to talk about that." Fury looks into a security camera positioned into the corner of the room and makes a hand gesture. Peter doesn't know what it means, but notes of it to search for later. In walks an old woman - around 70 - dressed in a nursing outfit pulling through a tray-table stocked with medical items.
"We need your blood." Fury doesn't tell him what for but doesn't give him a chance to refuse anyway. Unless Peter was to attack them and run away, he couldn't stop the nurse from extracting two vials of his blood. She runs one vial through a centrifuge machine and then spills a few drops of the blood onto a slide before placing it onto the stage of a microscope.
She squints, then scribbles down something onto a clipboard.
"Uh huh, honey," She refocuses her attention from the microscope and looks Peter into the eye. "I'm afraid that you have a special genome located on your 23rd chromosome." She sweet talks to him as if he's four, instead of fourteen. "All these big science-y words must be confusing you, this is all just grown-up talk. You'll understand one day, sweetie." She pulls off her gloves one at a time, without moving her gaze from Peter.
"It's simple, really. All this means is that you're special. What do we call special kids like you? Mutants. You have a single different gene - the x-gene - which makes you different, and with that, potentially dangerous." Peter's panicking, his heart is pounding in his chest, as he processes what this could potentially mean. He knew what certain government departments liked to do to mutants.
" 'Dangerous', that's a pretty big word, huh? It means you have the ability to hurt somebody. We don't want to hurt anybody, do we?" Despite her continuously and obviously baby talking with a falsely sweet voice to him, Peter finds himself shaking his head to her words. No, he doesn't want to hurt anybody. His constant anxiety that he'll hurt somebody innocent when he's in the suit plagues him when he sleeps.
"Do you know your mutation yet? Has anything… strange happened to you?" She trains her eyes on him once more, and Peter struggles to speak out a shaky 'no' from underneath his breath. It's a lie, but he had always thought that his abilities had come from a spider-bite he'd acquired from sneaking around a laboratory on a school field trip. It also makes sense to him though, that his abilities had come from the trauma he'd received from a particularly life-threatening spider-venom.
"Are you sure?" The woman - Peter finally looks at her name tag, it reads Susan Jones, (Peter distinctly gets a flashback from ned telling him you should never trust somebody with two first names) - hums. He nods, more confidently than he was when he spoke. She's leaning into him, trying to find any sign of deceit in his eyes. Peter truly notices how she makes him feel, and why he instinctively squirms when she's looking at him. It almost makes him feel physically ill to be near her - something's just so off about her.
She reminds him of a character he'd read in a Harry Potter book once. What was her name…? It dawns on him after a few excruciatingly long seconds. Dolores Umbridge! That was the name. Once she's certain she doesn't find any lies, she rummages through the tray table, opening a drawer and pulling out a small white bottle of - assuming by it's rattle - pills.
"You know what these are? It's called medicine, used to treat sick people. Kid's like you - born with the X-Gene, are born sick, ill. Since you haven't shown any signs of mutation, besides the gene, these are going to suppress the gene before it has time to activate. Almost a cure, although, not quite. If you even a single day from taking the pill - the suppressed gene might want to spontaneously activate. You understand, right?" Peter nods for what seems like the hundredth time. He finds it in himself to speak up.
"You know I'm not a fucking baby, right? You can speak to me normally." He didn't mean it to come out so harsh, but it did and he doesn't regret it, even when he sees the look of horror that passes her face. Her sweet face turns into an ugly scowl. She opens a folder full of Peter's records and flips through some of the pages.
"I know your kind, you think you foreigners are entitled to live here just because it's a free country. Well, get this, America doesn't owe you shit. Go back to your own country, freak." Peter's about to mention the fact that a large demographic of Americans, especially in New York, have some kind of Italian ancestry in them. He wasn't even born in Italy, and had never been there in his life.
Peter scrunches up his nose.
"You know," She begins to add. "I heard your close to Mr Stark, haven't you ever heard what his father thought of mutants? He's going to drop you the second he finds out." Peter freezes, and something in his stomach drops. He hadn't thought of that, and he'd never really gotten what Tony's opinion on mutants.
But Tony wouldn't abandon him for that, would he? Peter's got nobody left and nowhere to go without Tony.