Reconcile › P. Parker [2]

012. finding the truth

› CHAPTER TWELVE ‹

Maria Hill informed the superhero teenagers and adult that she and her team would clean up and help the people trapped in the Ferris Wheel, and they took this as their cue to leave. Quentin Beck had offered to but Raleigh and Peter a drink—non-alcoholic, that is. At the time, Raleigh didn't care if that was because Quentin wanted to get out of there, or because he noticed how uncomfortable the teens were with what transpired with Nick Fury. Raleigh was just happy to leave the whole scene together.

Though being in a bar, drinking a lemonade, of all things, wasn't something he saw himself doing during his vacation. Not that anything has happened thus far is what he pictured.

Raleigh sat beside Peter in the dimmed building, his head lowered and lips around the plastic straw resting in his lemonade. Each of them had their masks off, for the time being, knowing no one in the bar knew who the two were and that none of his friends or classmates would wander inside. It made Raleigh and Peter jumpy, but as time went by and no one pointed a phone in their direction, they relaxed.

They had been there for a while, and nothing much happened. Neither himself, Peter, nor Quentin said much during the time. They instead chose to listen to the bustle going on around them in the bar. Raleigh didn't understand any of the conversations, thanks to the differing languages, but it was nice to listen to something to keep him from being stuck in his head. If he was, he would be thinking about his friends back at the hotel, Peter (so many things about Peter), and Nick Fury's words.

He must have been making it pretty obvious he was evading his thoughts because Quentin forcefully drew his and Peter's attention onto him.

"We gotta celebrate." He said as Raleigh downed half of his glass. He shook Peter's shoulder and smiled at the two. "We did something good tonight."

Peter ran his fingertips over his eyes. "Fury was right. Tony did a lot for me... so, I owe it to him, to everybody."

Raleigh didn't say anything because he knew this was how Peter felt, and there wasn't anything he could to do to change that. They have had a conversation similar to this, and back then, Raleigh admitted he felt similar—despite knowing the pressure on Peter and what he felt was worse than what Raleigh could imagine.

Still, Tony saved Raleigh from being locked away in a jail cell by the government and continued to help him every day forward. He didn't have to do anything for him, but he treated Raleigh equally to how he treated Peter. He gave him a suit and mentored him on the right path to being a hero. When he was wrong, Tony let him know; and when he did something good, Tony would subtly congratulate him. Thanks to Tony, Raleigh became something more then what he ever expected himself to become. And that was all because Tony believed in him. So now, more then ever, he carried the pressure—the pressure he gives himself—to live up to what Tony saw in him. He owed that to Tony, and he owed that to the world now that Iron Man was gone.