Disclaimer: Everything you recognise here either came from the MCU films or the original Marvel comics, but I hope you enjoy the results anyway

Feedback: Feel free

AN: I apologise for the delay compared to my usual update pattern; RL issues meant that I just didn't have as much time to write as usual, but I hope to get back to a more regular pattern now.

The Legacies' Triad

A part of Peter was still surprised at how quickly he had moved on from his prior 'ambition' to be an Avenger, but after a couple of weeks he knew that he had made the right call when he passed Mr Stark's latest 'test'. Being able to focus on helping the little guy rather than working towards some vaguely defined idea of being a 'full-time' Avenger helped him recognise how he could make a difference in smaller ways, appreciating the chance to just help people rather than trying to sore 'points' by only dealing with the bigger threats.

He hoped that Mr Stark had understood his offer to be 'on call' if something came up that he could help out with, but at the same time, even if that offer to join the Avengers had been genuine rather than some kind of test, he couldn't see himself just sitting around the compound and training with the rest of the team until something came up. With Vision and War Machine the only other active Avengers right now (and there were a few rumours about Vision dropping out of contact now and again these days anyway), Peter wasn't going to say 'No' if he was needed, but this wasn't the time for him to just leave the city for good. He might not have spent much time working with Yelena and Kate, but it had been enough to make it clear that he still had a lot to learn about being a hero, so it was best to get back to the basics and focus on protecting people for the sake of protecting people.

He had accepted Mr Stark's 'gift' of the return of his more up-to-date suit, including Susan and access to the various criminal databases, but he had taken care to ensure that nothing had tried to access Susan's data while the suit had been away. Even if he wasn't likely to see Kate or Yelena again, what the three of them had shared for those few days… even if he still respected Mr Stark for everything he'd done as an Avenger, it wasn't the older man's business who Peter spent time with.

He was keeping the suit because it made it easier to do his 'job', and he needed the help to learn where he could make the most impact, but he was considering what he could do about making his own suit once again. He could certainly make better web-shooters this time around, and if he could get his hands on the right material it couldn't be that hard to make something that looked better than his original costume, but right now there was nothing wrong with keeping it easy. Liz's dad might be in prison, but there might still be a few of his weapons on the streets, and who knew what other kind of stolen tech might be out there.

He tried not to think about how lonely the whole thing suddenly felt as he went out for his latest patrol, a fortnight since Yelena and Kate had gone back to their own lives. He appreciated why they'd done it- Yelena had bigger concerns than some kids and Kate deserved to get back to her usual life- but it was sometimes hard to go out in the evenings with only Susan to talk to about everything. Things with Liz might have been impossible even before he got her father arrested- he hoped she and her mom were doing well in Oregon- but he still regretted not having at least a friend he could talk about things with right now. On the other hand, he didn't want to worry May, Ned wouldn't truly get the context of why being Spider-Man had to be a complete secret, and frankly…

What does it say about my life where there are only two people I'd want to share this with if I could, and I already decided they couldn't cope with the truth?

Peter was saved from taking that particular train of thought further when his latest swing led to a certain sound reaching his ears. Adjusting his direction towards the scream, he soon saw a teenage girl struggling against a trio of thugs, and was about to dive down when an arrow struck one of the men in the shoulder. Halting his descent, Peter watched as a young woman in purple with a purple cloth tied around the upper part of her head (eyeholes cut into it, obviously) basically leapt out from around a corner and kicked out at the nearest man. Peter watched for a moment as the woman dropped down to the ground and swung her bow to hit the third man in the head, but her target stayed on his feet and rounded on her with a blow of his own. The woman in purple managed to duck to avoid the worst of that attack, but when she tried to grab his arm, even Peter could see that she didn't have a good angle to properly get hold of the limb.

Mind made up, Peter fired a web-line and managed to catch the man on the elbow (another reason to appreciate the suit; he could improve his aim with its targeting systems), jumping down even as he yanked on the strand of webbing. As the man was sent staggering back, the woman in purple delivered a kick that managed to catch him in the chest, leaving him winded and gasping for air before Peter reached the ground. Firing a couple of additional web-lines to pin the man to the wall, Peter turned around to see the woman in purple kick the second man as he was about to get up, the man with the arrow in his shoulder still clutching at his injury.

"And that is what you get for doing… that kind of thing here!" the woman said. Her voice was lower than normal, but just like when it had been the other way around, Peter recognised his friend's voice despite her attempt to disguise it.

"Oh yeah," Peter added, glaring down at the fallen attackers as he fired off a few quick blasts of webbing to tie them down properly. "You can just wait here; I've already let the cops know where you are."

"How- oh, Sus-" the woman in purple began before she stopped herself.

"Yeah," Peter turned back to look at the woman, allowing himself a slight smile under his mask at this further proof of her identity. "Kestrel, I take it?"

"I'm… it works," the woman he now knew was Kate Bishop said, a slight smile on her exposed chin as she acknowledged his impulsive. "Good to see you again, Spidey."

"Oh for-" one of the criminals groaned, before Peter fired a quick web-blast that sealed the man's mouth shut.

"You don't get to talk right now," he said, before he turned back to Kate. "So… let's get out of here?"

"Probably a good call," Kate said, indicating the alley she'd left earlier. "My bike's just over there; where to?"

"The safehouse," Peter said, keeping his voice low to avoid being overheard by the other people in the alley. "We need to talk."

He was relieved when Kate just nodded at him in agreement and moved off into the alley, followed by the sound of a bike starting reaching his ears. He was fairly sure Kate was going to along with this request, but since he hadn't been expecting to see her out in the field like that in the first place he felt that he had the right to be a bit cautious. Once he had started swinging himself, he stayed a short distance behind and above the street to keep an eye on Kate's progress, but once he was satisfied that she was heading for the safehouse rather than her own house he picked up the pace to head for the relevant building himself.

Once he reached his destination, he wasn't entirely surprised to see that the rest of the building was still dark. He didn't want to think about the expense involved in keeping an entire building relatively empty in any part of New York, but he would suppose it was just something set up by the program that sponsored the Black Widows in the first place. Touching down on the ground outside, he waited until Kate arrived on the motorbike, which he now recognised as the same one she and Yelena had used to join him at Coney Island.

"I take it you managed to grab a keycard before we left?" he said, folding his arms and giving off a semi-joking serious glare at his friend.

"Well… nobody ever told me not to take one," Kate said with a cool shrug as she stood alongside the bike. "I just thought… I mean, she left all that gear…"

"We should probably take this inside," Peter observed as he indicated the building before them.

"Fair point," Kate said, giving him a relieved smile as she moved the bike around the back of the building. With no other way in himself- he didn't want to try and get in through a window in case it triggered some kind of alarm- Peter walked in through the front door and waited in the 'lobby' area until Kate returned, still wearing her mask. As though acting on some unspoken agreement, the two entered the elevator and rode up to the level of the safehouse in silence, only removing their respective masks once they were inside Yelena's 'home'.

"So," Peter looked Kate over with what he intended to be a disapproving stare but privately acknowledged probably wouldn't come across that way, "what exactly led you to come back here?"

"Well… look, I did try and just go back to the way things were, but… I mean, I couldn't talk to Mom about anything even when she got back, and…" Kate waved her hands as though trying to find the words for what she wanted to say, before she sighed and gave Peter a forlorn look. "I just… I wanted to do something more with my life again…"

"Don't take this the wrong way, but you get that you were the least experienced of the three of us, right?"

"Well… yeah, I got that, it's not like I'm Gilderoy Lockhart believing his own crap, but I just…" Kate shrugged. "I mean, you're out there doing your thing, Yelena's out tracking down the other Widows, and I just… you were both helping out, so I felt like if I didn't do something…"

"Nobody… you know that we didn't expect you to be anything, right?" Peter said, looking uncertainly at his friend. "I mean, I'm not trying to speak for Yelena here, but I think we just-"

"I expected something from me," Kate cut him off, even as she gave him an understanding smile. "I understand what you're saying, but it's like… I spent all that time training to be like Hawkeye after I saw him in action during the Chitauri invasion, and it wasn't until all this happened that I realised I had to do more than just train if I wanted to actually make a difference to anyone."

"You get that this isn't a game, Kate," Peter looked solemnly at her, wondering if he could say this without coming across as a hypocrite. "You had me and Yelena as back-up the last time you went out anywhere, but you can't just… it's not going to be that easy all the time…"

"I know that things were… close… when you saw me this evening, but I can do more; I just need some actual experience out there," Kate said, looking at him with a new sense of urgency. "You and Yelena are doing something that makes even part of the world a better place; I'm not saying I want to go straight to being an Avenger, but if I can make a difference to someone… isn't that why you do this?"

"Well… yeah…" Peter conceded with a tentative nod, unsure what he should say after that particular declaration. "But… I mean, I only got into all this after the bite because of what happened to Ben…"

"That just gave you the kick you needed to do something about this right now," Kate interrupted, a new sense of confidence in her voice as she looked at him. "Maybe you were being a bit stupid early on, but you're too good a guy to have kept that up; once you had the power, you were always going to be a hero rather than a jerk."

Somehow, the simplicity of that statement made Peter feel better than he'd felt for a long time. He still felt like kicking himself for letting that thief go at the wrong moment, but the way Kate was so confident that he would have been a better person even if his uncle hadn't died that way…

"…Thanks," he said, forcing down the urge to give Kate a hug; when he still found himself thinking back on that moment he'd woken up hugging her in bed (don't think about her boobs), he didn't want to make this already awkward talk even weirder. "So… if you're sure about doing this…"

"I'm sure," Kate nodded firmly. "I'm working on the trick arrows and I'm taking care about where I shoot, so I promise you that I'm not just going to… y'know…"

"Never thought you were," Peter gave her a reassuring smile before he let himself look more solemnly at Kate, hoping he wasn't about to make a bad call. "But if you're going to do this, we need to do it right."

"Do it right?"

"I'm not going to make you stop this, but if we're both going out there… would you be up for some training?"

"Training?" Kate repeated once again, her own cautious but eager grin on her face as she looked back at him.

"I get that you know what you're doing with those arrows, but there's still a lot involved in going out on a regular basis to deal with stuff on the streets," Peter explained. "We'll need to work out a schedule and get you some practice on that bike so you can get around a bit quicker, but if I can get you your own access to Susan and help show you the ropes more directly… I mean, if you're-"

"Oh, I'm up for it!" Kate grinned, giving him an enthusiastic thumbs-up as she moved forwards, only to pause as her eyes flicked to one side before she stepped back. Peter thought he knew what had just occurred to her- it was hard to miss that the bedroom was in the direction she'd just glanced- but he wasn't going to press the issue when they were already in a good place.

"I get that I'm not going to be a great teacher-" he began.

"You'll be an amazing teacher!" Kate grinned at him. "You've actually been out there doing all this stuff; you're already getting a feel for what to look for and how you can find people to help, when I'm just… driving around shooting bad people if I find them… and does that make me sound weird?"

"No more weird than anyone in this line of work," Peter returned her grin with one of his own before he adopted a more serious look. "So long as you're sure you're shooting at bad people; I once had a moment where I tried to stop a carjacking but the guy had just locked himself out of his own car…"

"Oops?"

"Well, I'd just webbed him to the car, so there wasn't any serious damage, but that wouldn't exactly be an option for you if you made a mistake…"

Neither teen was aware that another party was listening in on their conversation as she sat silently in another safehouse, watching her laptop in contemplation as she studied the display from one of the internal cameras. Yelena had intended to essentially leave the safehouse closed until the next time her mission led her to New York, but when she had realised that she had misplaced a keycard for that particular facility, she had activated the safehouse's security system by remote to alert her if anyone used it. She had been initially cautious after realising that Kate Bishop had returned to the safehouse on her own, but when she had observed Kate practicing with the available weapons for a time, she chose to leave the matter alone and see how it would play out.

Seeing Peter Parker and Kate Bishop back in the safehouse, making plans to return to the streets of their city to hunt down criminals… it was a small thing to use those resources for, but in some ways Yelena felt that it was the best thing they had been used for in some time. When the Widows as a whole had become little more than a tool in Dreykov's own self-aggrandizing games, the idea of Peter and Kate using them to keep others safe appealed to her, essentially laughing at Dreykov's larger, self-centred ambitions by using them for a smaller, more selfless goal.

And it helps me keep an eye on them…

She wasn't going to abuse this opportunity to simply watch her… friends… whenever she wanted, but it would make her feel better to know that she could keep tabs on them and be aware if something happened. She had faith that they could handle street-level crime for the most part- a thief in a high-tech bird-suit and a Black Widow were not exactly easy targets- but if something else came up…

Yelena hoped it didn't make her a sociopath to hope that something big might come up so that she had a reason to visit them again soon…

Beyond these two safehouses, nobody was aware of the third party watching them both, already making plans for their own next move in a potential campaign.