Tony should have expected Harley would be haunting the workshop, waiting for their return. He was sitting on a table, rolling a Bluetooth speaker absently between his hands.
"Hey, FRIDAY wouldn't let me touch anything until you got back, but…" His eyes widened as they flitted to the aching spot on Tony's face. "Uh, what …?"
Tony gave a small shake of his head, and Harley pivoted like a pro. "What—a shame Sam couldn't serenade the entire compound from his shower this morning. Dropped his Bluetooth speaker and killed it. It's probably the tile floor. You fancy people don't know what you're missing with linoleum. You could literally throw stuff at the floor in a poor person's house and it would just bounce."
Tony snorted, grateful for Harley's easy chatter as he studied Peter from the corner of his eye. The kid lingered silently near the doorway, shoulders tense, his hands shoved into the sleeves of his borrowed hoodie. Tony found himself missing the bit of ornery fire Peter liked to hide behind.
"So, no more renditions of 'Ain't No Mountain High Enough.'
"Wonderful!" Tony exclaimed, his voice bright with manufactured cheer.
Harley blinked. "I don't think he was all that bad. Maybe a little too early in the morning..."
They really couldn't get luckier than that. The Avengers were always dropping off broken items in Tony's workshop, but they weren't usually such a simple and easy fix. Peter could definitely handle a broken speaker, with a little help, Tony thought.
"No, we need something to fix. I bet a wire has been knocked loose inside. We can teach Peter how to solder." Tony turned to the still quiet teen. "What do you say, kid?"
Peter nodded silently, looking everywhere but at Harley and Tony. He still looked so small and unsure after that morning's events. Tony was surprised to note he missed the kid's usual ornery confidence.
Harley handed Peter the broken speaker and a set of mini screwdrivers. "Sam says there's a batch of peanut butter cookies in it for whoever gets it to work again."
Peter was already frowning at the speaker, turning it in his hands delicately. Tony wondered if the kid even knew how to pop the case. He leaned over to get a good look at the black cylinder. "You'll want to peel the rubber base off at the bottom. It looks like the screws might be hidden underneath."
Before Tony could even finish his sentence, Peter's movements changed. His hands stopped trembling, and with a quiet, focused efficiency that had no place on a jittery teenager, Peter dismantled the speaker. The rubber base came off. The screws were popped loose. The plastic casing fell open with a soft snap as Peter pulled out the exposed circuit board and tilted it toward the light, inspecting the fragile web of components.
Tony froze, watching the kid's transformation. It was like someone had flipped a switch. The uncertainty vanished. The careful precision with which Peter handled the speaker was eerie, like he'd done this a hundred times before.
Peter's voice was quiet but assured when he spoke. "The connector for the charger is lifting off the board." He held up the tiny PCB between his fingers and wiggled the loose component. "It's not making contact."
Huh. "Good catch, kid." He watched as Peter's face lit at the praise.
Harley handed the boy the solder and stood back to watch, eyes sharp on Peter's steady hands. The younger teen made quick work of the repair and popped it all back into place. The screws were inserted and the rubber footing was replaced in a shockingly short time.
Okay, maybe Tony's curiosity was a little piqued. The kid looked very comfortable with simple electronics repairs. He wondered how far this little talent of his extended. Tony suddenly had a list of increasingly difficult projects for the kid running through his mind.
Peter gave a small, satisfied smile. "All better." As if he'd simply pressed a bandaid onto the side of the speaker "Sam can get back to singing tomorrow morning. Maybe now we can work on some noise canceling headphones." He smiled again but as soon as he looked up and met Tony's intense gaze, he faltered.
Harley kicked him under the table, and Tony made an effort to look more friendly and less intensely-calculating. Peter was not just a puzzle to solve. He was also a kid. Tony cleared his throat, shifting his expression into something more relaxed. "Nicely done. I couldn't have done it better myself."
Peter glanced between the two of them uncertainly, like he was trying to figure out what unknown faux pas he might have committed.
Harley grinned at the boy. "Okay, Peter, you may be getting cookies, but I get to choose what we do next." Harley exclaimed. "Let's blow something up!"
Tony pretended to give a long-suffering sigh. Blowing things up was never off the table, but he didn't want Harley to know that. "I suppose we could do that."
"Yes!"
"But you're wearing goggles this time. You too, Peter. Super healing or not, I don't want to find out if you can regrow an entire eyeball."
Harley bumped Tony with his shoulder. "Look at you, being so responsible."
"Just a temporary condition, and unfortunately for you, probably not contagious."
They didn't accomplish much after that. Blowing things up with controlled charges wasn't productive , but it served its purpose: it distracted Peter. The kid's nerves unwound bit by bit as Harley's laughter filled the workshop, and by the time Tony called for a break, Peter was smiling. Not a faint, fragile smile— really smiling. Harley even had the boy laughing before it was time to break for lunch. Tony raised his eyebrows and smiled at the unexpected sound. Peter looked so young when he laughed.
"Boss," FRIDAY's voice interrupted, slicing through the cheerful warmth of the workshop like a knife, "Natasha Romanoff has arrived and needs to meet with you immediately."
The mood instantly felt heavier and the boys froze, looking at Tony.
"Sounds like a good time for lunch." Tony said briskly, keeping his tone light. "Go warm up some leftovers and I'll come find you after." Tony found himself trying to be calm and reassuring at their startled looks; even as he felt his own heart rate pick up. Being around all these kids couldn't be good for him. He was getting soft.
Harley threw an arm over Peter's shoulders as he led him out, but not before shooting Tony a concerned glance over his shoulder. Tony sighed, rubbing a hand down his face. I'm getting soft, he thought bitterly. This was Harley's fault. And now Peter's too.
"FRIDAY, does she need medical attention?" Tony asked, already putting tools away.
" Miss Romanoff does not require aid. She'll meet you in the conference room ."
"Sounds good. Headed there now."
The conference room meant a "show and tell" was in order. Nat had something to share. Tony picked up his pace and jogged the entire way, his nerves thrumming.
When he threw open the doors to the conference room, Nat was already there, arms crossed and a remote in her hand. She raised a single eyebrow at his black eye, but otherwise did not speak.
Steve soon walked in as well and closed the door. He and Tony took opposite seats at the table.
Tony nodded. "Nat. Give us some good news."
Her expression gave little away but, thankfully, Natasha dove right into her update. "We are satisfied that we were able to flush out and deal with the Hydra presence around Rose Hill. Clint has made his way back home since the mission was successful."
Tony took a breath. Okay. The coast was as clear as it was going to get. He'd beef up security at Harley's house, and let his family go home. Hydra had bigger issues to contend with at this point, being down so many agents and losing an enhanced asset. Whatever they had intended with Harley was probably the last thing on their minds at this point.
Natasha continued. "Yesterday we found the safehouse they operated out of in Clinton, TN, approximately 42 minutes from Rose Hill."
Nat turned on a monitor and a video that must've been taken from Clint's bodycam appeared. Nat was to his right, approaching an abandoned-looking house. She entered first and Tony and Steve could hear Nat's staticky voice announce each room cleared through the comms.
Steve looked confused. "No one was home? Did they think the safehouse had already been discovered?"
"All the Hydra members intercepted prior to discovering the safehouse were scattered and disorganized. I think they were waiting for extraction or backup that never came. They had been abandoned."
The video feed of Clint and Nat continued as they circled the property. Clint entered the front door and paused, their view lingering in the foyer as Cint surveyed something out of view.
Tony squinted. "What did you find inside?"
Nat pursed her lips. "A trail of bloodied breadcrumbs." The camera view pivots and there's a very clear blood trail down the hallway. Toppled furniture. Desperate handprints and scratches in the wallpaper.
"There's one useful security camera feed that wasn't entirely destroyed. It's not the best angle but it does shed some light on what occurred. FRIDAY, can you switch to the video file I gave you, please?"
A grainy video materializes on the screen. Peter is led into the safe house by two people: the man that attacked the boys at Harley's house, and a woman in a white lab coat. Tony leaned forward in his seat, tense, as he watched two Hydra lackeys approach the group in the same hall that is now covered in blood. The camera did not give a good view of faces. White Coat prodded Peter forward but he wouldn't move, so she pulled out a little device. Tony's eyes narrowed, it looked like…
White Coat pressed a button and a shock coursed through Peter. Tony saw then that the boy had a narrow metal loop hanging around his neck. While Peter's hands involuntarily clenched and spasmed, Tony caught a glint of something shiny between his fingers. Then it was gone, hidden in his grasp. The kid quickly recovered from the shock and staggered forward, perfectly docile, into the hands of the lackeys.
White Coat handed the little shock controller to one of the lackeys and, for a moment, Tony thought he saw Peter smirk, but it might have been a trick of the snowy video image. White coat gestured to a button, showing Lackey #1 how to work the controller when Peter dropped to the ground like a puppet whose strings had been cut, but at the last moment, kicked the legs out from under both Lacky #1 and White Coat. Chaos erupted and Peter somehow had the shocker in his hands as well as the shiny metal object Tony thought he'd spotted moments earlier.
There was a flurry of panicked motion and a spray of blood. It was hard to keep track of all the moving pieces, as Peter seemed to be doing damage on multiple fronts at the same time. Within seconds, everyone in the room was down except Peter and the big male handler. Peter made a break for it, and Big Handler darted in the opposite direction, limping heavily. A moment later Big Handler returned, staggering past with what appeared to be a tranq rifle over his shoulder.
The angle wasn't great but one twitching lackey was visible on the ground, and White coat was lying very still in a growing pool of blood. It wasn't immediately clear if the people were dead or alive.
Natasha pointed her remote at the screen and sped the video up. The timestamp showed several hours passed without the bodies moving from the field of view. Nat stopped speeding through the video and Big Handler returned to the house again. He dragged White Coat out of sight. A few minutes later he returned and dragged the two remaining Hydra members away.
Natasha sped up the video again and they watched the man dart in and out of view, removing boxes and other items.
"He was in a rush." Natasha explains. "He removed physical items and electronics but didn't have time to clean the blood. He destroyed the security cameras upstairs, along with their saved data, but he didn't realize the downstairs cameras were on a separate system." She stopped the video.
The room felt stiflingly silent, as though the scene on the screen had sucked all the oxygen out of the room. Tony stared at the frozen image of blood smeared across stark white walls, the harsh casting jagged shadows over the aftermath of violence. He didn't realize he'd been holding his breath until it escaped him in a shuddering exhale, his chest tight as if the air itself resisted leaving his lungs.
Nat finally took a seat. She propped her feet up on a second chair and leaned back, letting the events settle into the silence. "So, where is the baby viper anyway? Still under lock and key?"
"No. He's having lunch with Harley in the kitchen." Tony's voice sounded far away in his own ears.
Nat tilted her head, her attention flicking briefly to Tony's black eye before settling on her nails, which she inspected with an air of feigned indifference. "What do you plan on doing with him?" she asked, her casual tone not fooling anyone in the room.
Tony's throat tightened. The question seemed to echo inside him, each word reverberating against the knot of emotions he couldn't quite untangle. He was surprised when Steve answered before he could find the words himself.
"Fury wants him to stay with Tony," Steve said, his calm voice laced with an undertone of unease. "I don't know if this changes anything, but—"
"This doesn't change anything," Tony cut in sharply, the words spilling out faster than he could think. His hand moved to pinch the bridge of his nose, as if trying to physically block the flood of thoughts and doubts threatening to overwhelm him. He took a deep, shaky breath. "It's obvious now that Peter had already turned against Hydra even before the amnesia—if he was ever on their side to begin with."
His voice cracked slightly as he continued, his frustration and disbelief spilling over. "They had him in a shock collar, for Christ's sake. A shock collar. " The image of Peter in that grainy footage—staggering under the jolt of electricity, his small frame barely holding itself upright—burned in Tony's mind. He clenched his jaw, swallowing hard against the lump rising in his throat.
"And we already knew what he was capable of," Tony added, his voice softer now. "This doesn't change anything," he repeated firmly.
Natasha's piercing gaze lingered on him. Her expression softened slightly. "Good," she said at last, her tone measured. "Though, if you didn't want him, I would take him myself."
Of course she would. A deadly stray was exactly the sort of thing Natasha would want to keep. "I'll keep that in mind for when he grows out of his cute puppy stage. FRIDAY, cut the video, would you, dear?" Tony scrubbed at his face. "Peter can't know about this. He can't see this video."
Steve and Natasha nodded in silent agreement.