The Revenge of Devil | Irondad, pepperony

Chapter 61

"Help me?! Why would you help me after everything I've done to you? The only possible solution is to rid you of all you love. Only then will we be able to be together. That's the only way you'll understand me," she said suspiciously softly, lowering her hand with her weapon. But no one tried anything, because she was still the only one who was armed. One wrong move was enough and someone could be injured.

"It doesn't have to be that way," Pepper said again.

Tony glanced between his wife and his son, wondering if he was the only one who remained sane. He might still be able to understand Peter, but Pepper? He really didn't understand why she stood up for her.

A sad smile settled on Teresa's face, which surprised all members of the Stark family. It was the most sincere emotion they had ever seen. "You don't remember, do you?" she asked, staring at Peter. There was a hint of great sadness in her eyes.

"I don't remember what?"

"I had red hair back then and I called myself Charlotte. Getting to Oscorp's labs wasn't hard when my mother worked there. All my life, she fed the hatred I felt for you. She made me think I hated you. So I wanted to kill you. I didn't know exactly what she was working on, but I knew the results of her tests. No one survived. I was watching you, and when I found out you were going on an excursion, I arranged for me to accompany your class. Even before that, I broke into my mother's lab and stole her last spider, which I then secretly gave you," she explained almost regretfully.

"But I didn't die," he muttered a little incomprehensibly. "If you wanted to kill me, why didn't you try again?" Because she cares about you, the voice in his head urged.

"You were the only one who survived. Deep inside my heart, I knew it was destiny. But at the time, I still wanted to please my mother, so I kept living trying to kill you. I was just waiting for the right moment. I went to school a few times and watched you from afar. It took a while, but eventually, Richard showed me what I really wanted. I don't want to kill you, brother. I just want us to be real siblings."

Her speech surprised Tony the most, who was very surprised at her sudden expression of emotion. For a second, he could see in her just a girl who didn't know what she was doing. But he knew he couldn't think of her that way. Peter and Pepper might have been fooled by it, but not him. Plus, she was the one to blame for Peter being  Spider-man! It blew his bile nicely. He just had to hope that Peter wasn't such a fool to come alone. If he has a team nearby, they can handle it without any problems. But until he knew for sure, there was nothing he could do.

Peter thought about her words and realized something that warmed his heart. He was right. She didn't want to hurt him. She never wanted to hurt him if she didn't count the excursion to Oscorp. "Everyone tells me I can't save you anymore. But even so, I decided to fight for you because Richard believed it wasn't too late. And he was right. You never meant to hurt me. You may have thought so, but you weren't. When the spider bit me, I gained something like a sixth sense that warns me of danger. He never warned me in front of you," he informed her softly, hoping to finally see that no one else had to die.

Teresa gave him an inquisitive look, then smirked, and all traces of emotion passed away. She aimed her weapon at him. "What does your sixth sense say now?" she asked curiously.

"Nothing," he replied simply and truthfully, but his stomach tightened nonetheless. He didn't know what she was watching by it and he was afraid he wouldn't like it. Teresa stopped aiming at him and chose Tony and Pepper instead. And his sixth sense was going crazy.

"And what is it whispering to you now?"

Peter didn't want to answer. He looked desperately at his parents. Now he knew how crazy his idea was. He thought he could persuade her not to hurt anyone, but he didn't realize he was giving away her parents' lives. At least he should have said it to Nat. Everything could be different now. He would stop them from killing his sister, but he wasn't so sure if he would stop his sister from killing everyone else.

"If your sixth sense really works, you should say goodbye, because I will not be merciful. I may not want to kill you, but I don't care about the others," she said coldly.

"I'm so sorry," he whimpered, feeling like he was five, not fifteen. He seemed terribly weak and defenseless at the moment even when he could lift three thousand tons.

•••

"I already said no!" Natasha growled dangerously as Loki appeared beside her and began to convince her again that he could do it alone.

"But it would take me a maximum of five minutes and everyone would be safe. Well, except for the treacherous girl who dared to kidnap Pepper - and of course Anthony," Loki insisted.

"That's what this is about, we can't hurt her," she said irritably. She would enjoy Teresa's torture even more than Betty's. She would probably start with something physical and then move on to white hell. And this time she would make it to the end. But she couldn't do that.

"We could do it so Peter can't figure it out," he suggested insidiously, and Natasha couldn't stand it anymore. Before he could recover from what was happening, she pushed him against a tree and held a knife to his throat.

"If you don't shut up right away, I'll probably get rid of you," she warned him in a low but harsh voice.

Loki had to smirk at that. "Just obey, Romanov. You know I'm not in the habit of dying," he challenged her with amused sparks in his eyes.

Bucky cleared his throat. "We have a task," he warned them. At first, he didn't want to interfere, but Bruce, Steve, and Colonel Rhodes said nothing, and someone had to stop them. Others may have considered it typical of the red hair woman, but he knew it was more borderline. It wasn't the first time he'd seen anything like it.

Natasha reluctantly released him and hid the knife. "Sam, what do you have for me?" she asked on the walkie-talkie, avoiding looking at the others.

"About a mile from you is Tony's plane. There is no one else in the area, so it should be a piece of cake," Sam informed them through the radio.

This time she gave her team a look. "You heard. Ross should be on his way, too, so we'll just keep her for him. She's one stupid girl, we'll do it fast and you'll all get out of it without a single scratch. If I see even the slightest injury on someone, they will get a hundred extra push-ups in training," she told them in a firm voice and gave Bucky an intense look. When he nodded that he would make sure she didn't hurt Teresa, she walked in the direction where, according to Sam, Tony's jet should have been.