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Tony Stark and the Cursed Child

Chapter 12: The Photograph

Summary:

Rhodey meets Peter for the first time since Germany. Peter asks Tony about his parents and Tony learns about Parker Luck.

Notes:

I rewrote this chapter a couple of times, but I’m pretty happy with how it turned out. This one answers some of the questions that came up in the comments in previous chapters.

I would like to thank whomever nominated my story “Proof of Concept” for an Irondad Creators Award. That’s one of the first stories I wrote here and I’m really proud of it. I’m so glad others enjoy it as well.

I made a couple minor edits to this chapter to correct wording.

(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)

Chapter Text

As the weeks went on, Tony and Peter got to know each other better. To his own surprise, Tony discovered that he liked having the Damned Brat around. He even started to look forward to the days the super teen came to the Tower and spent weekends at the Compound. 

Rhodey’s assignment in DC got extended, so it was several weeks before he returned to the Compound. Once he was back, Tony made some needed adjustments on his friend’s leg braces. Then the two decided to catch up over a game of bowling.  

“Stay away from lane one,” Tony warned while they changed their shoes. “That’s the Kid’s lane.”

“You gave your Damned Brat his own lane?” Rhodey asked incredulously. 

“He’s not my Damned Brat. He’s just a Damned Brat,” Tony answered as always. It had become a running joke between them. 

Rhodey just laughed, as always. 

Tony continued, “I had to give him something or there was a risk I would wake up one morning and find that he’d dismantled half the equipment in the medbay.”

Rhodey chuckled. “Doesn’t he sleep at night?”

Tony frowned. “Not well, not since his parents… you know.”  The man’s expression was solemn and a little guilty. 

“Damn, that’s tough,” Rhodey remarked. Then he asked, “So what’s special about the Damned Brat’s lane?”

“He’s always changing things on it. Right now, it sets the pins up in a spiral pattern. Also the ball return has enough force to knock you off your feet.”  Tony tried to sound annoyed, but his amusement was obvious.  

“Okay, so I guess we’re on lanes five and six then,” the other man replied with a laugh. 

The two friends had a good afternoon of friendly competition and banter. They talked about Rhodey’s work in DC and the latest projects at Stark Industries. After a couple of games, they decided it was enough. 

Rhodey looked over at lane one. “I can’t believe you’re actually mentoring the Parker kid. And that he has a room in your private quarters.”

Tony shrugged. “His scary aunt didn’t really leave me a choice about it.  But he’s a good kid.”

“Yeah?” Rhodey had only met him briefly in Germany before the fight, before everything had gone to shit.  It hadn’t been enough to get a good impression of the teen. 

“He’s really a genius. I mean, we knew that, but seeing it is just something else. He’s amazing in the workshop and the research labs.”

Rhodey couldn’t help but smile. 

“Plus he’s a really good person. Always wanting to help other people.  He’s polite and respectful, except for when he’s being a snarky little shit. He’s full of brightness and hope despite everything he’s been through.”

Rhodey was now grinning widely, amused at how his friend was practically gushing about a child.  “That’s great, Tones.” 

——————

The next time Peter came to the Compound, Rhodey made sure to visit the workshop.  Tony and Peter appeared to not notice him at first. The two were working on the mechanics for a new version of the Iron Man suit. Rhodey observed quietly as Tony patiently explained the next steps and Peter quickly understood the reasoning behind everything. 

When Tony noticed his friend, he told Peter to continue the work, then stepped away.  Tony and Rhodey walked over to the far end of the workshop. 

“What brings you down here?” Tony asked lightly, although he had a good guess of the reason. His voice was low, barely above a whisper. 

“I just wanted to see how things were going.” Rhodey matched the quiet tone. He carefully watched as Peter worked, seemingly unaware of their conversation. “So that’s your Damned Brat, huh?”

“He’s not my Damned Brat. He’s just a Damned Brat,” Tony answered automatically. 

Now Peter did glance towards them. “Damned Brat?” he repeated. 

Tony cringed. Fortunately Peter seemed more amused than offended. 

“He heard us?” Rhodey asked, a little stunned. 

“Yes, the Damned Brat has damned enhanced senses,” Tony hissed.  He sighed. “Come on, it’s time for a real introduction, I suppose.” The two men walked across the workshop. 

Peter seemed thrilled as Tony formally introduced them. “It’s great to meet you Colonel Rhodes! I mean, I know we kinda met in Germany. But that was just for a minute and that was before… Uhm… You look much better than the last time I saw you!”

Tony shook his head and rolled his eyes. But Rhodey only smiled at the boy’s good-natured rambling.  

“I am much better, thank you.”

“Are you here to get your leg braces adjusted?” Peter asked. 

Tony looked at him sharply. “I adjusted them just last week. They’re fine.”

Peter glanced toward Rhodey’s legs. “They’re out of sync. I can hear it when you walk.”

“What do you mean you can hear it?” Tony asked. 

Peter just shrugged, then went back to working on the Iron Man suit. 

“He’s right,” Rhodey said. “They’re out of balance. The right one is reacting a little faster than the left one. I was going to have you look at them.”

The three of them spent the next couple of hours working on the devices. As usual, Peter caught on quickly, asked intelligent questions, and even made some insightful suggestions on how to improve them. By the end of the session, the leg braces were working better than ever. Rhodey was as impressed with Peter as Tony was. 

Afterwards, Rhodey left to make some calls.  Tony and Peter resumed working on the Iron Man suit. 

“Can I ask you something?” Peter asked. When Tony nodded, he continued. “Are you mad that May is making you mentor me?”

Tony was taken aback by the question. “What makes you think that?”

“You call me a Damned Brat?” Peter said softly. 

Tony had hoped Peter would have forgotten about that, but of course he didn’t. “Don’t take that personally, it’s just a saying,” he said flippantly. 

Peter didn’t look convinced. 

Tony took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “I’m not mad. I admit that at first, I wasn’t sure if it was a good idea. But now I can see that May was right to insist on it.”

Peter considered that. “Yeah, she’s like that sometimes. She talks me into doing things I didn’t really want to do, and later it turns out she was right.”

Tony was both amused and interested. “Yeah? Like what?”

“Like, I didn’t want to go to the Homecoming Dance because it was on the anniversary of my parents’ death.  But May convinced me that Mom and Dad would have wanted me to go.  And in the end, it’s a good thing I went because I ended up fighting the flying vulture guy and saving your plane and everything.”

And nearly getting himself killed, Tony thought. Nothing is ever simple with this kid.  

“I don’t think that’s the outcome your aunt had in mind. But she’s right about your Mom and Dad. They would have wanted you to go to the dance and have fun with your friends.”

Peter looked a little unsure. “You really think so?”

A look of nostalgia came over Tony’s face. “Yes, I do. Your Mom loved to dance. She was very good at it.” He smiled at the memory. 

“You knew them pretty well, my Mom and Dad?” Peter asked quietly. 

“Uhm… yeah, I knew them way back. I met up with them a lot at scientific conferences and events like that.”

“You were friends with them?” Peter asked tentatively. 

“I’m not sure I would say that we were friends exactly.” He wasn’t really sure how to describe their relationship. “But we were friendly. Your Mom and I used to joke around a lot.”

“But you hated my Dad,” Peter said matter of factly.

Tony hadn’t expected Peter to know that. “What? Why do you say that?”

“Ben told me that you hated Dad. Because you had a crush on Mom.” 

Crush wasn’t the word Tony would have used. Lusted after was more correct. But he wasn’t about to say that to Mary’s teenage son. 

Tony sighed. “Your mom was an extraordinary woman. She was beautiful and brilliant. She had a wonderful sense of humor and was full of snark. I… admired her very much.”

“Ben said you asked her out,” Peter said, not accusingly, but with curiosity. 

Again, it was a simplified version of the truth, but close enough. Tony had to wonder why Ben Parker had thought it was a good idea to share all that information. 

“I did ask her out. Several times. But, she was only interested in your father. So, yeah, that rubbed me the wrong way. I mean, your Dad was a genius and very talented in his field. He was highly respected. And most people liked him. He was a very likable guy.”

“You didn’t like him,” Peter reminded him. 

“Yeah, well, I didn’t think Richard deserved Mary.” Tony paused, gathering his thoughts. “But, obviously I was wrong. Your parents were very happy together. They were especially happy about having you.”

Peter smiled at that.

“Do you have any photos of them?” Peter asked a little hesitantly. 

“Of your parents? I don’t think so. There might be one or two in the archives from some scientific conference. But it would be a search to find something.”

“Oh,” Peter said. The one small sound was full of disappointment. 

Tony was puzzled. “I’m sure you have plenty of pictures of them.”

“Not really,” Peter said sadly. “Just a few that May and Ben took.”

Tony frowned. “Didn’t your parents have pictures? A wedding album? Photos with you as a baby?” 

“Yeah, but everything was lost in the fire,” Peter replied. 

“What fire?” Tony didn’t know about any fire. 

“Our apartment building caught fire when I was three years old. We lost everything.  Mom and Dad and I barely made it out alive.”

Tony thought that must have been a terrible thing for a toddler to witness. “I didn’t know that. I’m sorry.”

Peter got a far away look on his eyes. “It’s actually my first memory. How Dad pulled me out of my bed and carried me out of the building. How Mom cried while we watched the flames destroy the place we lived.”

Tony felt guilty - had the curse done that too? Was the fire his fault?

“What happened?” he asked quietly. 

“Something electrical, I think. The whole building burnt down. Then we moved to a new apartment. It was a little smaller, but that didn’t matter because we didn’t have any stuff anyway. We had to get new furniture and clothes and everything.” 

“That must have been hard,” the man said sympathetically. 

Peter shrugged. “I remember that i missed my old toys, but I got some new ones. Dad said it didn’t matter because all we lost was stuff and stuff can be replaced, but we were all alive and that was what mattered.”

“Your Dad was right,” Tony said, struck by the irony that Richard and Mary died only a couple of years later. 

“Yeah, but Mom was sad that we lost all the pictures. Digital cameras were still pretty expensive back then, I guess, because Mom and Dad always used film. So the pictures and the negatives were all destroyed.  That’s why I wondered if you had any, since you were friends with them.”

Tony considered. “Like I said, there might be some archived somewhere. I’ll see what I can find.”

Peter’s face brightened. “Thanks, Mr. Stark!”

———————

That night after sending Peter to bed, Tony had FRIDAY search through photos from the various conferences, to find some of Mary and Richard.  Unfortunately, there weren’t really any good ones. All the ones FRIDAY could find were too blurry or too far away or didn’t show both their faces. 

Finally, FRIDAY found one good picture of the couple. Tony frowned when he saw it. It was actually a picture of the three of them together.  Richard and Mary both looked relaxed and happy. Mary looked beautiful in her flowing red dress, her hand rested gently on her pregnant belly.  Tony, on the other hand, had an unhappy, scowling expression.  

He remembered that night clearly. It was the same night he had cursed the Damned Brat. The image was a terrible reminder of what he had done. 

“FRIDAY, can you crop me out of the picture? Or edit it so I’m not in it?”  

“I’m afraid not, Boss. The position of the figures in the photo doesn’t make that possible.”

Tony sighed. “Can you at least edit it to make it look like I’m smiling?”

“Sure, Boss. I can do that.”  

A few minutes later there was a revised image. FRIDAY had done a great editing job. Now the picture showed Tony smiling alongside Mary and Richard. He looked genuinely happy too, a real smile rather than the one he always gave the paparazzi.  The image was flawless, a flawless lie. 

“How’s that, Boss?” the AI asked. 

“It will do,” he replied. 

——————

After they had lunch the next day, Tony pulled out a print of the edited photograph and gave it to the Damned Brat. 

“Look what FRIDAY found.”

Peter grinned and his eyes went wide. “Oh my god, that’s you with my Mom and Dad! That’s awesome!”

Tony couldn’t help his own smile at the reaction. “It gets better.” He pointed out Mary’s swollen abdomen. “That’s you.”

Somehow, Peter’s face got even brighter. “Really? That’s amazing! All four of us in one picture!  I never knew that you met me before I was even born!”

Tony watched as the boy studied the photo with a grin. He was thankful that Ben Parker hadn’t told the boy about his real reaction to the pregnancy. 

“This is incredible, Mr. Stark. Thank you so much!” 

“It’s lucky I found it,” Tony remarked as he cleared away the dirty dishes. 

Peter laughed. “Lucky in a good way. That must be Stark Luck, because Parker Luck is never good.”

Tony frowned. “What do you mean?”

“Parker Luck is always bad luck. Bad things just happen a lot,” Peter said matter-of-factly. 

Was Parker Luck the same as the curse? That reminded Tony of something May had said. He had put off asking about it, but he needed to know. “The first time May dropped you off here, she said that it was like you were cursed with bad luck.”

Peter set the photo down on the table and looked at Tony. “Yeah, there’s a funny story about that.”

“Oh?” He tried to sound casual. 

“So like I said, bad things happen a lot. Some of it’s big stuff, like the fire or Mom and Dad dying. Some of it’s smaller stuff, like when I fell off my bike and broke my arm. Even just things like how most days I miss my train on my way to school. You know what I mean?”

Tony nodded. “Yeah, sure. Go on.”

“Well, a few years ago, May got a little annoyed with things going wrong all the time. She told Ben that there had to be some kind of reason for it. So she took me to see this psychic…”

“What? Like one of those fortune tellers with the neon storefronts?”  Street psychics were everywhere in New York City. 

Peter laughed. “No, it was nothing like that. This was supposedly a real psychic that one of her nurse friends used. She had like a regular office and she wore regular clothes. We had to make an appointment and everything.”

“May believes in that stuff?”

Peter chuckled. “A little. Her grandmother used to tell her stories about fortune tellers who could see into your soul and all that.”

The man nodded. His own grandmother had told him many stories as well. “Well, what happened?”

“May told her a whole list of bad things that had happened to me. Then the psychic lady studied my hands, and looked at some cards, and did some other stuff I don’t remember. And do you want to know what she said?” 

Despite his better judgment, Tony nodded. 

“She told May that I had been cursed. Not only that, but the curse was so strong that it must have happened when I was just a tiny baby or even before I was born. She said the curse was like a mark on my soul. So there was nothing she could do about it.” 

Tony felt the color drain from his face. 

Peter laughed, “I mean how ridiculous is that? May was furious that she had wasted money on that bullshit. Ben teased her about it for a while afterwards. It became one of our running jokes.”

“So none of you believed it?” Tony asked carefully. 

“No, of course not. I mean, obviously curses aren’t real. And even if they were, only a monster would curse a baby like that.  Right? It’s crazy.”  Peter shook his head, still laughing a little. 

“Yeah, right,” Tony agreed quietly. 

“Anyway, it’s all  just Parker Luck. It doesn’t have a reason, it just is what it is. That’s why I don’t worry about bad stuff happening to me when I’m out as Spider-Man.”

That last comment caught the man unprepared. “What do you mean?”

“Oh you know. Parker Luck killed my parents. Parker Luck killed Ben. Bad stuff keeps happening to me. I know that eventually Parker Luck will kill me too. That’s part of why I became Spider-Man. After Ben died,  I realized that if I’m going to die anyway, I might as well help as many people as I can in the meantime.”

Tony was floored by the kid’s reasoning. Not just floored, he was horrified.  He had caused all this. What Peter called Parker Luck was Tony’s curse. But only a monster would curse a baby, especially before it was even born. And the Damned Brat knew everything, but was too sensible to believe in it. Tony was in too much shock to reply. 

Peter was completely oblivious to Tony’s reaction.  “Anyway, can we go to the lab?  I need to make another batch of web fluid before I have to head home.  And thanks again for the photo, Mr. Stark!”

Notes:

I like how in CACW Peter mentions that it had been a really good day and one of his reasons is “I didn’t miss my train”, implying that he misses it most days. So I made that part of his Parker Luck. And yes, I decided that Peter didn’t have enough tragedy in his early life and added an apartment fire. It was necessary for the plot.

I know it was a long wait between updates. I hope this chapter was worth the wait. The next couple of chapters will explore the nature of the curse a little more and how it affects Tony and Peter’s relationship.