Avengers New Recruit

The day Tony Stark knocked on Peter Parker's bedroom door in Queens, Peter was in the middle of repairing his web-shooter with a bent paper clip and a piece of chewing gum.

It was not the most heroic thing he had ever been caught doing.

Tony Stark — Iron Man himself, the man with the red-and-gold suit, the man who had announced "I am Iron Man" on television — stood in the doorway of Peter's small bedroom in Forest Hills, Queens, looked around at the stacks of science textbooks and the half-built circuits and the model of the solar system hanging from a piece of string on the ceiling, and said:

"You're the kid I've been looking for."

That was the day Peter Parker became an Avenger.

But it was not easy. Not even a little bit.

Because standing in Avengers Tower, looking at Captain America — CAPTAIN AMERICA — standing right there in the actual flesh with his actual shield and his actual arms that were, truly, quite a lot larger than Peter's arms — Peter Parker's mouth went completely dry.

"Hi," Peter said. His voice came out about three pitches higher than usual.

Captain America looked at him seriously. "Good to have you, son."

Thor said something in Old Norse that no one translated. Peter was pretty sure it was a compliment.

The other Avengers were kind. But they had been doing this for years, and Peter had been doing it on his own in Queens, and the difference between the two things was… very significant. When the alarm went off in Avengers Tower, everyone moved at once — smooth and fast and practiced — and Peter scrambled after them trying to remember which corridor led to the hangar.

His spider-sense, though. That was something.

In the first real battle he fought alongside the Avengers — against a wave of threats coming fast from multiple directions at once — it was Peter's spider-sense that detected the one they had all missed. That prickling at the back of his skull. He shouted a warning before any of Tony's sensors caught it, and Black Widow pivoted and dealt with it in about three seconds flat, and afterward she looked at Peter with something like respect.

"Your senses are remarkable," she said.

"It's like having… a built-in alarm," Peter said. "For everything."

"Use it," she said. And that was that.

Peter found his role on the team. He was not the strongest — that was Thor and Hulk. He was not the most tactical — that was Captain America. He was not the most technically brilliant — that was Tony. But he was the fastest mover in a crowded space, the most agile scout, and the one who stopped to make sure civilians got out of the way while everyone else handled the main threat.

He was the heart.

While enormous battles exploded around him, Peter Parker would notice a child frozen in fear behind a toppled car, and THWIP — a web line to pull them to safety. He would see an elderly woman who couldn't run, and he would scoop her up and swing her three blocks away from danger and set her gently on the steps of a library and say, "You're going to be just fine," before swinging back into the battle.

Tony Stark watched him do this, and something in Tony's expression went soft and proud.

"You know," Tony said one evening, when they were back in the tower and eating pizza (the Avengers ate a remarkable amount of pizza), "most heroes at your age are trying to prove they're the biggest and the strongest. You keep trying to protect the smallest."

Peter shrugged. He thought of Uncle Ben. "Someone taught me that."

Tony nodded slowly. "He sounds like someone worth listening to."

The pizza went cold and they ate it anyway, two heroes — one in a very expensive suit and one who was still in high school — sitting together in the golden light of Avengers Tower, watching the New York City skyline, responsible for all of it, all those millions of lives.

Far below, the city hummed and glittered and went about its evening. Taxis honked. Pigeons roosted. Somewhere a siren wailed and then went quiet.

Peter finished his pizza and thought: from Forest Hills to here. From Uncle Ben's porch to an Avengers meeting. From the kid no one noticed at Midtown High to the scout that Black Widow actually said the words "your senses are remarkable" about.

He still couldn't quite believe it.

He hoped that was a good sign. The day you stopped being a little amazed, he figured, was the day you'd stopped paying attention.

THWIP.