If They Knew All About You

Legal Guardian

All his words were reassuring. Mr. Stark said that things would be just fine. That he'd be alright. That there was a plan and Peter would just have to trust them. That everything would be just fine.

But the man's eyes said something different. His pulse said something different. It screamed that he was nervous, tense, even... maybe even afraid.

10 minutes at best, that was how long Mr. Stark held him, tried to calm him, but Peter just couldn't get a grip on his senses. He felt exposed, too open, too vulnerable. One wrong step, one wrong word and they might all know. He might just give it all away. 10 minutes and then the lady from CPS turned up again. Peter didn't even mind her all that much, she looked just as scared by everything happening around them as he felt.

But she was a stranger. A stranger that worked for a government agency. They couldn't trust her and he couldn't hold it against either Miss Potts or Mr. Stark that they pulled away from him when the lady entered the room. Still, it felt like someone pulled the rug out from under him, again. His skin was prickling with nerves. Without the cuffs confining him to one place, Peter had a hard time just lying there. He wanted to fidget, unable to find a position on the bed that he could tolerate for more than a minute or two, but every movement reminded him of that bullet wound in his arm, the bruises on his body.

Mr. Stark was the first to reach for his hand again. He would whisper reassurances, repeat those words about safety and protection that all rang like lies even though Peter knew that he wanted to mean them, wanted to make him believe, maybe make himself believe that they would get out of there.

It was a waiting game. They both pulled a chair close to either side of his bed and settled down, took turns talking to Peter, would type frantically on their devices if they weren't, exchange glances from time to time. Time seemed to crawl as they were waiting for the results of the DNA test. Results that in their primary purpose, Peter didn't even question anymore. Way too quickly, he had made peace with what had come to be his new reality. If there had been any doubts left in him before, doubts that might have still plagued him the day before or even that very morning, they had all evaporated. As soon as Mr. Stark had pulled him close, when his arms had held Peter tightly and this ambient vibe had settled in his stomach, everything had seemed so clear all of a sudden.

Maybe he was just being silly. It didn't make any sense, scientifically. He couldn't deny it though. And maybe it wasn't even about genes, maybe it was just trust. Comfort that had been earned over time, over the last few months and some serious trouble Mr. Stark had helped him through. Maybe he really did just want to believe it was true, but with all the thoughts, all the worst-case scenarios that buzzed in Peter's mind, not once was he worried that the test could somehow not confirm what had been unthinkable.

The unthinkable that Mr. Stark really was his dad.

No, it was everything else. His powers, things in his DNA that none of them had even thought of, that might catch them all by surprise. The door opening and a whole SWAT team pushing in to arrest him. Those kinds of fears kept him on edge. Mr. Stark needed to be reasonably sure though right? Reasonably sure that whatever they had planned would work, otherwise they surely would have busted out of there long ago. Or maybe not.

It had to have been less than an hour later when Natasha Romanoff made her way back into the room, carrying a tray of food. It wasn't even lunch or dinner time, maybe she was just grasping for an excuse to check up on them. It was then that Peter caught a glimpse of the armed guards patrolling in the hallway. They couldn't just bust out, could they? Not with Miss Potts there. Or other civilians that might be caught in the crossfire. No.

Shaky hands shoved the pieces of cut-up sandwich into his mouth that the Widow had brought him. He wasn't even hungry, but all the grown-ups insisted that he had to keep his strength up, that his body needed the energy to heal. It didn't seem like the best idea to him. Healing any faster than he normally would, seemed to be anything but a desirable goal there and then. As if she could read his mind, the Widow disappeared again and returned with more bandages and proceeded to carefully wrap his wrists that had been rubbed raw between the Winter Soldier's assault and the cuffs that had cut into his skin.