Warnings: language, guns, mentions of death
Characters: Peter Parker, Morgan Stark, EDITH, James Rhodes, Minor OCs
Mentioned: Pepper Potts, May Parker, Tony Stark, Happy Hogan, Quentin Beck
@whumptober2020 Day Three: Held At Gunpoint
If he was being completely honest, Peter never thought there was any danger in babysitting Morgan alone. Morgan wanted to see him and Pepper needed a babysitter. He was almost seventeen at this point and had superpowers. He never went anywhere without his webshooters. He thought that they would be safe.
The day started out fine. They stayed at May and Peter’s apartment for the first few hours. Peter didn’t plan on leaving while Morgan was with him, either, but she had been begging for pudding all day and he hated that he didn’t have any to give her. So, he sent Pepper a quick text asking if it would be okay for him to take her to the store. When she said it would be fine, the two walked down to the small store nearby.
“Hold my hand,” Peter told her. He knew Morgan didn’t enjoy it, but she didn’t complain as she slipped her smaller hand into his. She didn’t quite believe that she was as young as she was. Honestly, sometimes Peter forgot himself. The girl was smart; much smarter than she should be at her age. It wasn’t really a surprise to anyone considering who her parents were, but it still amazed her teachers and classmates.
“Can we look at the toys?” Morgan asked him as they stepped inside, spotting the Avengers display in the corner. “Please, Petey?”
Peter looked over at the toys and then down at Morgan, who looked up at him with wide eyes. “Sure, Mo,” he replied. Morgan lit up and dragged him quickly to the toys, letting go of his hand long enough to pick up one of the plushies that was made to look like Iron Man. She smiled at it before reaching it up to show Peter.
“Look!” she squealed. Peter smiled down at her and started to speak before his Spider-Sense started ringing an alarm in the back of his head. He froze and glanced around, but the moment his eyes were off Morgan she started to scream. He turned around quickly to see a man gripping her arm, pointing a gun at her temple. “Petey!”
Before Peter could respond, he felt someone grab his own wrist and hold a gun to his head. “Don’t move,” the second man growled.
Peter’s heart was racing as he saw tears leaking from Morgan’s eyes. She was still holding the plushie, pulling it close to her chest with her free arm. “Let my sister go,” Peter pleaded.
“Your sister, huh?” The first man asked, looking down at the toy Morgan was holding. “I’m pretty sure this one doesn’t have any siblings.”
“P-Petey’s my brother,” Morgan protested. She knew that they weren’t really brother and sister, but she had taken to calling him her brother anyway. “Please don’t hurt us.”
“We’re only going to hurt you if you don’t cooperate,” the man who was beside Peter told them. He moved his gun just long enough to point it at a nearby door. “Inside. Let’s go.”
Peter knew that he had no choice but to cooperate. “Okay, okay,” he replied quickly. He saw Morgan look up at him with a question in her eyes. “We’ll come with you.”
“Good,” the first man replied, moving the gun from Morgan’s head and leading the way inside. Once they were inside and the door was locked, they put their guns away. They forced the two to sit down and Peter did as he was told, knowing that Morgan would cooperate if he did and they had to cooperate if they were going to escape with their lives.
“What do you want from us?” Peter asked. “If it’s money, you’ve got the wrong kids. I only have enough to buy her a toy and some pudding.”
“Oh, don’t worry. It’s not money we want,” the first man replied. “We want information.”
“Of course you do,” Peter groaned. He moved his hand to his head like he was scratching it, instead clicking the button on the side of his glasses to activate EDITH. “About Stark Tech, I assume?”
“Smart kid,” the second man grunted. He glanced at Morgan, who was pressed into Peter’s side now. “We sure he’s not her brother? Her dad did get around when he would have been born.”
Peter felt Morgan squeeze his hand as they spoke negatively of her dad and he squeezed it back. He tapped the back of her hand twice and she hesitated before tapping back. While the two were distracted, he took off a webshooter and slipped it onto her wrist.
“It doesn’t matter if he’s actually his kid or not, okay?” The first man groaned before turning to Peter. “The SI plane that crash landed a few years before the Blip; where’s the equipment that was in it?”
Peter looked him straight in the eyes and lied through his teeth. “Rhode Island,” he told him, feeling relief in his chest when EDITH understood what he needed. He had come up with the idea of having codes for Rhodey, Happy, Pepper, and pretty much every active Avenger after the Mysterio incident. A red light blinked in the corner of his vision before turning solid, letting him know that Rhodey was listening and watching what was happening. “It was mostly guns.”
Rhodey must have understood his message, because a text box popped up under the red dot. “I’m on my way. Keep them distracted.”
“Just guns?” The second man asked, seemingly a bit disappointed. “Are you sure? I wouldn’t think he would send Spider-Man to protect it if it was only guns.”
“That’s just what he told me,” Peter replied with a shrug. “He hadn’t known me long at that point. Maybe he didn’t trust me enough yet to tell me what was really on it, but I do know that he sent the equipment to Rhode Island.”
The first man didn’t look convinced. Peter tensed up as he walked over, pulling out his gun and pressing it to Morgan’s temple again. His heart started pounding again as she squeezed his hand tight. “I don’t believe you,” the man sneered. “Now, tell me where it really is or I’m going to blow her brains out.”
“Okay, okay,” Peter said, starting to panic. He didn’t want to tell these men where the technology was, but he wasn’t going to let them kill Morgan over it. Besides, Rhodey was on his way now. He would catch them before they managed to get there. “It’s at the Avengers Compound upstate. Arc reactors and some Avengers weapons. You can put the gun down.”
“I’ll put the gun down when I want to put the gun down,” the man growled. Morgan was sobbing at this point, but the man didn’t seem to care. He just laughed. “Where’s your daddy, Morgan? Oh, wait—”
“Don’t go there,” Peter snarled. If the man wasn’t holding a gun to Morgan’s head, he would get up and attack him, but he couldn’t risk it. “You wouldn’t be alive if it weren’t for her dad. None of us would be.”
The man just rolled his eyes. He started to speak before there was a knock on the door. The two men looked that way and Peter took the moment to shoot a web and steal the gun from him. Now safe, Morgan shot at his legs, smiling as the web wrapped completely around them and he fell to the ground. While she shot another to web him to the ground, Peter took out the other man. “You’re Stark’s f*cking sidekick,” the first man growled, struggling to try to get out of his cocoon.
“First of all, don’t curse around my little sister,” he started, shooting a web at the man’s mouth to shut him up. “Second of all, ouch. I’m an Avenger, Dude. We were teammates.”
Rhodey saw that the two were down and kicked down the door. He let the suit open up and ran over to them, pulling one kid towards him with each arm, squeezing them tight. “Are you both okay? Did they hurt you?”
“U-uncle Rhodey,” Morgan whimpered, pressing into his chest as if trying to get as close as she could. “Th-they were gonna hurt us. Th-they wanna hurt us.”
“We’re okay now,” Peter breathed. He felt childish for squeezing closer to the man, but his adrenaline was fading and it was hitting him all at once that one wrong move could have taken Morgan away from him. That wasn’t something he was ready for. “Just shaken up.”
Rhodey put a hand on the back of Morgan’s head and kissed her. Then, to his surprise, did the same to Peter. “Okay, okay,” he murmured. Peter could hear the speed of the man’s heartbeat and knew he must have been terrified. For Morgan, he understood, but he hadn’t expected him to be equally relieved that he was okay. “You’re okay.”
“They know Petey’s Spider-Man,” Morgan whispered, pulling away just enough to look up at her uncle.
“Okay, that’s okay,” Rhodey told her. “We’ll make sure they end up somewhere that they won’t have anyone to tell, alright? It’s going to be okay.”
Morgan nodded, pressing the side of her head against Rhodey’s shoulder and looking at Peter. “Am I your sidekick now, Petey?” she asked. “C-cause I helped?”
Peter smiled at her. “Yeah, Mo. You’re the best sidekick I could ask for.”
