Chapter Seven: Black Hole Sun
Midtown School of Science and Technology took Maggie by surprise.
For one thing, it was a school for smart people that had a football team. Maggie had thought science nerds and math geeks didn't play sports. In all the movies, they were the ones who only joined academic clubs and played Dungeons & Dragons and loved their homework a little too much, and the jocks were supposed to be dumb. But the massive yellow goalposts that bookended the turf field in front of the school suggested otherwise.
For another, the building itself was massive — a lot bigger than Maggie had imagined an elite high school full of geniuses to be. Walking across the turf field with May, Maggie worried about how she would find her classes. What if she got lost in the hallways? Would she be punished for ending up in the gym when she was trying to get to the library?
The sun hid behind gray clouds on that mid-July day, and a light mist of rain had latched onto the bottom of Maggie's braid; apparently, the weather hadn't gotten the memo that they were still in the middle of the summer. Pulling her sweater down over her hands and crossing her arms over her chest, Maggie stared up at the stone columns standing like sentries in front of the school's entrance, awaiting her arrival.
Mr. Morita, the principal, met them in a lobby that was longer than it was wide. The most impressive part was the polished marble columns lining the walls. Otherwise, there wasn't much else to it — a front desk, two television screens set against off-white walls, placed on the curve of identical archways that led to a wing of classrooms on either side.
"Good morning!" Morita said, grinning. "Welcome to Midtown Science and Technology, Maggie! We're very happy to have you here."
She tried to smile in return, but she wasn't sure it looked much like a smile at all.
As Morita led them further into the building, Maggie stopped listening to what he was saying, too focused on taking in everything around her. The lobby led to a large atrium with a high ceiling and even more hallways branching off in different directions. A broad blue and yellow staircase sat squarely in the middle of the atrium, leading up to the second floor. A banner strung across the top of the stairs, pinned to a flat wall that jutted down from the ceiling, read WELCOME BACK, TIGERS!
Mr. Morita's office, on the other hand, resembled more of a box than a room. A wooden desk took up most of the space, with one chair behind it and two chairs opposite. Glass cases full of military medals hung on the wall. The tops of the filing cabinets in the back corner were decorated with a few potted plants, framed pictures of warplanes and soldiers from World War II, and an aged portrait of a man in uniform who looked so much like Morita it was scary.
He caught Maggie looking at the black-and-white portrait and smiled. "That's my grandfather. He served in the 107th Infantry during World War II."
Maggie studied the pictures accompanying the portrait intently. She pointed to one in particular. "Are those—"
"The Howling Commandos, yes," Morita said proudly. "My grandfather was hand-picked by Captain America himself to serve with them toward the end of the war. I take it you're a World War II fan, then?"
"My aunt used to tell me all kinds of stories about the Howlies," she said. "She gave me her Captain America comics for my birthday when I was ten."
Maggie quickly blinked away the tears making her vision swim, absolutely mortified. When she was sure she wouldn't fall apart like a big baby, she sat down in one of the chairs across from Morita. May sat on her left. Maggie pulled in a breath through her nose, crossed her legs at the ankle, and pasted a polite smile on her face as Morita took his seat.
"First of all, I want to thank you for meeting with me," he said, looking between the two of them. "This isn't typically customary for new students, but I would consider this to be something of a special case since you're the first student with your… housing accommodations. How is that working out, May?"
"Great! Maggie is absolutely wonderful," she assured him. "Generous, respectful, I honestly cannot say enough about how lovely it is having her around. I'm so glad you thought of us, Mr. Morita."
Maggie's face burned with May's praise that she definitely didn't deserve.
Morita smiled. "I'm truly delighted to hear that. And everything is going well with your — er, with the kids?"
Maggie didn't notice his hesitation, but she did notice May's, as well as the pause she took to gather her thoughts.
"Well, you know Peter, he's always been such a sweet boy. He's really taken up the mantle of being Maggie's point guy, wouldn't you say, hon? Helping her navigate the city and explaining things when she has questions, you know. It's so great to see them together and I know Peter enjoys being able to help."
"And… Juliette?"
May's gaze slid over to meet Maggie's. She pursed her lips. "Daisy is… not taking it as well."
"Is everything all right?" Morita asked, his voice laced with concern.
"I think in the end it'll all be fine," May said, though Maggie couldn't tell whether that was for Morita's benefit or her own. "I'd hoped by now she would have adjusted to the change, but… this year's been hard on her. It's been hard on all of us since—"
May stopped here to take a steadying breath. It took a moment, but she composed herself enough to finish, "Since we lost Ben."
Oh.
Shit.
Maggie shifted uncomfortably in her chair.
Morita's gaze softened. "I understand. I'm sorry for bringing up the subject."
"It's all right," May said, waving away his worry. She cleared her throat. "But, um, yes. We still have the rest of the summer, so hopefully, things will all calm down by the start of the school year."
"Hopefully," Morita echoed. His tightly knit brows betrayed his lingering unease, but he powered through and turned to Maggie, likely to give May some respite. He regarded her with an expression that seemed equal parts professional and disguised giddiness. "How are you feeling, Maggie? How has everything been going so far on your end?"
Maggie chose her words carefully. "It's been fine, sir. Everything's been going really well. I really like the city, and like May said, Peter's been an excellent tour guide."
She hated the city and its constant thrum of noise that never allowed her a moment of blessed silence, had been avoiding Peter and Daisy as much as possible when May was at work to save them the trouble of having to deal with her… but neither Morita nor May needed to know that, did they?
"Good, I'm pleased to hear that," he said. "Now, since you're here, did you have any questions for me about the coming year? About school, your courses, anything like that?"
How would she find out both her classes and her way around the school? Would she have her own locker? Where would she get her books and things? How did real school actually work?
Her mind churned out a thousand questions in the time it took her to shake her head and tell him, "No, sir. None that I can think of right now."
Morita nodded. "All right. If you think of any before school starts, you can always reach out to my email, okay? Now, before we continue, I'd just like to let you know that starting the first week of school, you will be required to meet with your guidance counselor on a regular basis."
"Guidance counselor? Why?"
"Midtown Science and Technology is a school for the best and brightest in the area," he explained. "Our students are engaged in incredibly rigorous, challenging academic work that transfer students can often find overwhelming initially. We understand the transition to a new school can be difficult, especially in the academic environment we cultivate here. Knowing that, we want to provide you with all the tools you'll need not only to succeed but to thrive here at Midtown Science and Technology, and that includes weekly check-ins with the Guidance department to make sure you're on the right track and doing okay. It's simply a way for you to be able to ask for and find any sort of help you may need for the first few months of the school year."
Maggie just smiled and nodded as she thought, Don't hold your breath.
When Morita asked May to step outside for a moment, Maggie knew the conversation was about to become much more interesting — and, perhaps, much more personal than she was going to like. She squared her shoulders and sat a little taller, schooling her features into a pale imitation of the perfectly sculpted Stark mask she'd seen on her father's face a thousand times before. No more playing the dumb new kid anymore.
Fingers steepled in front of his face, Morita fixed Maggie with an intense look for one long minute before relaxing back in his chair. He said, "It really is an honor to have you here, Miss Stark."
Maggie once again took care in choosing her words. "I'm just glad for the opportunity, sir."
"Well, when Tony Stark's daughter inquires about attending our school…"
He raised his brows like the answer was completely obvious.
Maggie bit the inside of her cheek. That they'd made an exception for her — that they'd allowed her to bypass the entrance exam with no questions asked — left a sour taste in her mouth. She didn't want to be catered to just because of who her father happened to be, even if it was certainly convenient for her situation. Knowing her last name carried more importance than she did made her sick to her stomach.
"Well, I think I'll actually appreciate being just like everyone else for once," she said coolly.
"Of course. The rest of the staff are aware of your, ah, cover, for lack of a better word, and I will personally ensure that they treat you like every other student here at Midtown. That will, however, mean you won't get any free passes. If you receive disciplinary action for infractions against the rules set out in the handbook, you will have to serve whatever punishment you're given."
Elbows balanced on her thighs, Maggie leaned forward. "That's exactly what I want, Mr. Morita. No special treatment. I'm just a regular student. Nothing more."
He gave her the kind of appraising look parents give to their children when they can't be completely sure they're not lying. Maggie stared right back. Whether he believed her or not, she was, for once, telling the truth.
In the end, he let her go with a warm send-off and the promise of a good school year. They both stood from their chairs and shook hands, but Morita paused on his way to the door.
"I, uh, know it's not really my place," he said, shifting his weight back and forth on his feet, "but I have to ask — will there be any chance that your father might pay us a visit in the near future? Welcoming the great Tony Stark to our school would be a historic moment for Midtown Science and Technology and to have that opportunity—"
"No, sir," Maggie replied, her voice flat and curt. "My father has his hands full right now dealing with the aftermath of the Accords and the fallout of Captain America's actions, you understand."
"Yes, yes, of course," he conceded immediately. "I apologize."
She left the office without giving him the chance to say anything else. Her hand curled into a fist at her side.
May was waiting outside, reading one of her mystery novels on the bench across the hall. She glanced up at the click of the heavy wooden door and rose to her feet. "Hey, hon. How was it? What did he want to talk about?"
"Just new student stuff. Really pushed the whole 'It's okay to ask for help if you're struggling' thing. Nothing big."
Maggie wondered when her tongue had become so accustomed to lying.
They matched strides as they retraced their path through the hallways, passing empty classrooms and science labs she hadn't been able to focus on when they came in. She had never seen a real classroom before. She wondered which ones she would use in just a few weeks' time.
As they reentered the atrium, Maggie came to a sudden halt. A mural covered the entire back wall. Painted faces of famous scientists, pioneers in their fields, stared out from among the bricks. She saw Sir Isaac Newton underneath the giant window, Dr. Abraham Erskine behind him, a solar system circling Albert Einstein's head. Marie Curie. Galileo.
And high up on the wall, next to a rocket in launch, Howard Stark's portrait pinned her to the spot with those stern, calculating eyes she'd seen only in the few photographs of his father Tony kept around.
Her palm ached under bandages she'd taken off weeks ago as blood ran from her fingers and drip, drip, dripped to the floor.
"Pretty neat, huh?" May said of the mural. "I've always loved that. When the kids toured here for the first time, I remember saying to Daisy, I said, 'You two are gonna be up there one day, I just know it.'"
Her voice kept at bay the biting wind that sought to rip open Maggie's skin and settle deep within her bones, the tears that would freeze solid in their race down her cheeks. Her hands physically shook with the effort it took to ground herself in the here and now. To shove away the black-and-white image of Granddad's limp body being dragged across the ground on the side of a road twenty-five years removed from that moment.
Just when Maggie couldn't bear the silence that had settled between them, May continued toward the lobby and offered her ice cream to celebrate the start of her time at Midtown. As the Soviet bunker and that damn computer screen receded to the edges of her memories, Maggie accepted.
By the time they made it out of Manhattan and back to Queens, walking side by side with their ice cream, the misting rain had stopped falling, though the sky stayed that gloomy gray. Despite the chocolate on her tongue and May's bubbly presence next to her, Maggie felt about the same as Mother Nature. She wouldn't have been surprised if she had seen her own personal raincloud floating above her head had she looked up.
The great Tony Stark, Morita had said, with that stupid look of admiration and awe everyone seemed to have.
Four tiny words within the English lexicon, and yet they had dictated Maggie's entire life from the beginning.
Learning that she was different had been a gradual process, but it also felt like a fact she'd known since before she could remember. She'd always been Maggie Stark first and just Maggie second. From a young age, she'd understood that being a Stark meant being something more — more than average, more than others, almost more than human. Her grandfather had begun the tradition; her father kept it alive.
The world expected her to be like them. To be better than them. To continue the Stark legacy of pioneers and trailblazers and superheroes. When people looked at her, they didn't see her. They saw the next entry in the lengthy and ever-growing list of her family's accomplishments. They pinned her down with the crushing weight of anticipation, the bated-breath suspense of What will she do to outshine her father as he's done to his? Maggie could name on one hand the people who saw Maggie before the Stark: Pepper, Uncle Rhodey, Uncle Happy, and Aunt Peggy.
Her heart clenched painfully in her chest. Two months later and it didn't feel real that Aunt Peggy was just… gone. Maggie was sure if she called the nursing home right then she would hear Aunt Peggy's delighted voice on the other end of the line, asking about her violin lessons and if she was being a good girl for her father. She had attended the funeral, and still, the knowledge that her father's godmother was long dead and buried in a plot thousands of miles away did not seem to want to take root in her brain.
Aunt Peggy, who had the worst disappointed frown but the kindest smile. Aunt Peggy, who brought her sweets with that sly, secretive wink every time she came to visit despite Dad's protests. Aunt Peggy, who never allowed Maggie to believe she was anything less than capable of doing whatever she set her mind to. Aunt Peggy — the only person in the world who would promise Maggie she could be whoever she wanted to be and have Maggie actually believe her for one shining second.
"Hey, kiddo," May said with a gentle nudge, pulling Maggie out of the depressing spiral of her thoughts. "You doing okay?"
Maggie's first instinct was to assure May she was fine, even though she felt just about the opposite. It was becoming second nature. But she thought about the conversation in Morita's office, the hiccups in May's voice as she talked about Ben, that looming presence over the Parkers that had always felt more familiar than Maggie wanted to admit. She figured if anybody could understand, it would be May.
Maggie took a sip of her milkshake. "I'm… kind of in the middle. Not bad, I guess, but… not great either."
"You wanna talk about it?"
She shrugged.
"Is it about school or… something else?" May asked.
"Both," she admitted. Her hand twitched at her side, craving an outlet for the stress building up in her chest. "I've never been to public school before. Today made everything seem a lot more real. It's a bit intimidating, to be honest."
May hummed. "Right, that makes sense."
"And also…" Maggie sucked in a breath, let it sit in her lungs for a long second, then exhaled slowly. "You know how I mentioned my aunt? When we were talking about the Howlies?" May nodded. "She, um. She died. Not too long ago."
"Oh, honey," May breathed. "I had no idea."
"It's okay, I never said anything. It's just. Talking about her made me think about her and how much I miss her and how... We had a big family emergency right after the funeral and everything kind of fell to shit afterward — sorry, fell apart—" Maggie shot her an apologetic smile; May had been getting on her for her swearing habit. "Everything fell apart and it was all one huge mess and I guess… I guess I never really got to mourn her properly, with everything that happened. So it's just kind of hitting me now, you know?"
"I do," said May, taking the hand at Maggie's side and giving it a reassuring squeeze.
Outside of Mr. Delmar's place, as an older man reading the newspaper tipped his hat to May as they passed, Maggie felt the hairs on the back of her neck stand on end. Throwing a quick glance over her shoulder, she caught sight of a hooded figure darting into the tight alley behind Delmar's out of the corner of her eye. Her brows furrowed. But before she could investigate, the stoplight turned, and they crossed the street.
They walked to the park a few blocks down from Wisteria Towers. Despite the weather, a handful of people were strolling along the trails around the perimeter. Kids climbed over the playground equipment with abandon, not bothered in the least by the lingering threat of rain. May and Maggie chose a bench under a big leafy tree and sat on their raincoats.
Neither spoke as they watched the children play. The kids shrieked with laughter as they ran through puddles and splashed their friends. Maggie decided she'd lost that sense of reckless, innocent joy sometime between the first time she'd been kidnapped and the second.
May shifted next to her.
"You know, my husband Ben and I never really talked much about having kids," she said at length. She kept her gaze straight ahead. "Ben's brother and his wife had the twins, see, and we used to spend so much time together before Richard and Mary passed that Ben used to joke that we already had kids — Peter and Daisy. I don't think any of us realized how true that would end up becoming."
"I didn't know their parents had died," Maggie admitted. She'd wondered, of course, how the twins had ended up in their aunt's care, but it hadn't been much more than a passing thought.
"Richard and Mary dropped them off with us for a weekend work trip, just like always, and four days later we found out their plane had crashed," explained May. She spoke in that quiet way Aunt Peggy did whenever she talked about Steve (before he'd been thawed out of the ice). "The kids were so young, I doubt either of them remembers much. Ben and I, we did our best. Tried to raise them the way we thought Richard and Mary would've wanted. And with all the chaos those two brought along, having our own kids sort of fell by the wayside."
She paused to finish the last few bites of her mint chocolate chip ice cream. Maggie threw out the empty cup for her.
May's eyes had gone a little misty by the time Maggie got back to the bench. "I wish you could've met him, Maggie. If he didn't know you, he'd introduce himself and in seconds it would feel like you'd known him your whole life. He was… Ben was one of those people who made everybody feel better with just his smile, you know?
"And he loved those kids like they were his own. He used to dance around the kitchen while Daisy stood on his feet. And he always listened to Peter's tangents about science and engineering and all that, even when he didn't understand a single word coming out of his mouth." She let out a wet laugh. Reaching into her bag, she brought out a pack of tissues to blow her nose. "He gave them everything he could, right up to the end."
May's voice had become delicate as she spoke, but Maggie had enough experience with her shattered family to know how to handle a glass voice with care.
After a long moment, she hesitantly asked, "What happened?"
May sniffled and cleared her throat.
"Peter was having a hard time last December," she explained. "He just… wasn't himself, you know? Ben and Daisy and I tried to help him as much as we could — as much as he would let us. He and Ben got into a big argument one night and Peter ran out of the apartment. Ben wanted to give him some time to cool off, but I-I was worried about him being out by himself. So Ben went out to look for him and—" Her words rattled on their way off of her tongue. "Ben was the type of guy to put himself in danger for others, to help out the little guy who didn't have the muscle Ben did. The, um, the police told me the kid who had the gun was probably just desperate, in over his head, y'know, and he tried to take this old woman's car, and B-Ben—"
She blew her nose again. Silent tears cut through the light, tasteful makeup on her cheeks. Maggie ignored the tears stinging her own eyes and placed her hand over May's. May gave her another tight squeeze.
Maggie marveled at May's strength as she pulled herself back together, piece by piece, dabbing at her eyes with a careful hand.
"Anyway," she said, turning to face Maggie fully, "all of that is to say — I understand. Losing anyone you love is difficult. And the awful thing about grief and mourning is that they don't like to play by the rules of time. God knows there are days when the hole Ben left hits me a thousand times harder than it did the day before. It's like—"
"Like a black hole in your chest," Maggie supplied. "The weight of all the love in your heart that's supposed to go to them, except it doesn't have anywhere to go now because they're not around to be on the receiving end anymore. Sometimes it's manageable, other times… it gets bigger and bigger until you're sure it's about to swallow you whole."
May raised an eyebrow. "Did you come up with that yourself?"
"No, I stole it from my therapist," she admitted, and she laughed when May did.
"Well, your therapist is one smart cookie."
May wrapped her arm around Maggie's shoulder and pulled her into her side. Maggie froze. No one had touched her like this — without a threat of goodbye, without conflict lingering in the background — since before Siberia. Before the Raft. Hell, even before the goddamn funeral. For Maggie, who at one time couldn't go more than a few days without getting a hug from her father or Steve or any of the other Avengers, the realization of just how starved for affection she was hit her like a freight train.
May's touch left her unguarded for the first time since she'd arrived in Queens. It reminded her of movie nights snuggled under a shared blanket and seeking comfort in the young hours of the morning after a nightmare. It reminded her of plane rides back and forth from Malibu to New York to Paris to a world of possibilities, a Senate Committee meeting she was too young to understand, and the arms she'd clung to when they rescued her from Uncle Obie.
It reminded her of love.
It reminded her of Pepper.
And slowly, forcing back the sob desperately clawing its way out of her throat, Maggie allowed herself to lean into May, rest her head on her shoulder, unclench her body one tensed muscle at a time.
"You're gonna be just fine in school, honey," May said softly. "Peter and Daisy and I will be here to help you. As for the rest of it… I can't promise it'll always be easy, but we can deal with those black holes together, okay?"
May couldn't have known that Maggie's black hole was too big, too deep. That it wasn't just the loss of Aunt Peggy, but of Steve and Della and Natasha and Sam and Wanda, of her father's anger and Pepper's absence and Maggie's own self-imposed isolation. That if the black hole didn't consume her first, the guilt would eventually.
But Maggie let out a shaky breath and nodded anyway. "Okay."
A/N: In case anyone caught the little mention and was curious, Della is another of my MCU OCs, Della Travers. She'll eventually have her own fic within the TSB-verse and series, but we're still a little ways away from seeing her just yet. She was created well after Maggie and Daisy were, which is why her fic, despite taking place before the events of TSB, will end up being written and hopefully posted after the start of TSB, but she is super important to Maggie and her background, so she'll be mentioned and featured more going forward in the series. If anyone has any questions or wants to learn more about Della, feel free to ask over on my Tumblr, iron-parkr!
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