Permanent

chapter seventeen

y'all I was editing this while listening to the radio and Easy On Me by Adele came on and I have no words. Let's just say it fits the vibe lol

––🕷––

Tony soon came back down to the lab. For a bit, they worked on their joint project, although they soon split off into working on their own.

Peter continued working on his AI, and finally, he'd finished it. He almost got up to get his suit out of his backpack, before realizing it was still at the orphanage and his mood deflated.

How long would it be before he had to go back? Sooner or later someone would make him go back, so he'd have to go back at some point. Not to mention, he wouldn't be able to code his AI into the suit and he wouldn't even be able to go on patrol.

Tentatively, he turned around towards Tony who was working on some new invention at the table behind him. The last thing he wanted to do was bring it up again, but he did anyway. "Hey, Mr. Stark?"

Tony paused a second before looking up at him. Peter took this as a signal to continue.

"When will I be going back to the orphanage?" he asked, fidgeting with his sleeves of his hoodie.

"You're not going back there, bud."

"But I'll have to go back at some point. Either CPS or the cops will make me go back."

Tony sighed, setting his tools down, and sat on his desk. Peter sat in his chair, spinning it to face Tony. "I won't let that happen. I don't know what I'm gonna do yet, but you're not going back there."

Peter nodded and after a short pause, Tony continued. "By the way, kid, can we talk about what happened? Can you tell me about the orphanage?"

Taking a deep breath, Peter froze for just a moment, caught off guard, but then nodded his head. "Yeah," he said with his voice shaking slightly.

Tony walked over to the couch and Peter followed, sitting at the other end.

"You don't have to tell me everything if you don't want to yet, too," Tony assured him.

With a shaky breath, Peter started. "Well, Ms. Pundow pretty much ran everything. The only other staff was the cooks and janitors. She wasn't ever really nice.

"There were some rules and stuff we were supposed to follow and they weren't unreasonable or anything, but I think she also was harsher on me because of everything that happened."

While Peter was talking, he played with the sleeves of his hoodie and started talking faste.

"I got in trouble a lot from missing curfew and this one guy got me in trouble and it seemed like her punishments got worse each time. The punishments also seemed kind of unreasonable, but I don't know because, at my old orphanage, there weren't really rules or anything, it was just always bad there. But here, it seemed like no matter what I did, it was always wrong and she already didn't like me."

While he vented, there was a lump in his throat that refused to leave.

"The punishments were what was bad though. At first, they didn't hurt at all... it was more of a mental thing, but once she realized nothing was working, or so she said, they–they started getting worse. And... and I just–I don't want to talk about what they actually w-were right now. I don't know why–really it doesn't seem that b-bad, but then when I think about it... it's–"

His ragged breathing broke through his rambling but he tried to ignore it and keep talking. After a few times though, Tony told him that was enough right now and if he wanted, he could tell him more about it later.