“Yeah… I met a couple of the others. Who knew that you’d be cloned so often? Don’t go around giving away your DNA now, it’s not a good idea.” At the smile dropping off Peter’s face, Tony’s own dad tingle or whatever the hell it was went off. Something was wrong. And worse, there was something that Peter hadn’t told him about.
“Uh… sounds familiar. FRI?”
“Quentin Beck was former Stark Industries employee, boss. R&D department. The last project he worked on was holographic technology, later incorporated into the binary augmented retro-framing project,” FRIDAY said.
“Oh, him. He left, didn’t he? After that huge ass quarrel about potentially weaponising his stuff.” Tony shook his head. Listening with growing concern about Peter’s recap of the shit that had apparently gone down after he’d died, he couldn’t help rage from seeping into his face. Even when Peter had turned his back, Tony could practically hear the tears in his voice.
God, he wished he’d punched the guy in the face when he had the chance.
“No,” he said, pushing the glasses back to Peter. “No. Kid. Just…”
So many things to say, but really, all he wanted to do was to pull him into a hug. Shit, this was exactly why he’d tried to keep Peter away from super-heroing and all that. This was the very thing he’d feared when he thought about leaving a legacy to the kid - that his curse, his mistakes, his monsters would descend on him.
“Shit,” he whispered, feeling guilt knife through him. “I’m sorry, son. But if there’s anyone to blame, it’s not you– it’s me. I’m the one that Beck had issues with. I’m the one who put you in this spot. Not you. Me.”
peter laughed softly at the whole ‘being cloned’ thing. “yeah, i’ll keep that in mind. i like ben and kaine though. it’s... it’s nice to have brothers. it’s more complicated than that, obviously, but we’ve kinda just simplified it into saying we’re brothers.” he explained with a shrug of his shoulders.
“no, dad, no, i--,” he stammered, shaking his head. “he might’ve had issues with you, but his actions because of that are on him. not you. it’s not like you held his hand and forced him to do all of that shit. he was a messed up guy. the shit he was doing with the drones? that attack he had planned in london would’ve cost so many lives. but he didn’t care. all he cared about was being a hero. the problem is, he was good at hiding his true intentions. who he really was. and he fooled me.” peter sniffled. “he knew how much you meant to me. and he exploited that.” he added, before he paused for a moment. tears streaked his cheeks and he moved to pull tony into a tight hug.
“thank you. for everything. nothing that happened is your fault, please know that,”