Chapter 1: Disciplinarian
Chapter Text
"Uh, hey, Mr. Harrington? Do you have a second? It's just, we're trying to do a feature on what happened in Washington D.C., I mean with Spider-Man and stuff. Could you say a few words for the Midtown Daily Newscast?"
Roger Harrington had a million things racing through his mind as he hurried into school that morning. It had taken him hours to fall asleep, and then he'd somehow missed the first three alarms on his phone before he'd finally woken up. Now, he had 90 copies to make and very little hope of beating the morning rush to the copier, but still, the nervously worded question from Betty Brant made him stop in his tracks.
He studied the teen in front of him, her blonde hair and bright blue eyes and nervous energy reminding him of another student on another field trip to Washington D.C. It had happened ten years ago, in a time when superheroes still belonged in comic books and Tony Stark was still the rich asshole who got drunk on national television and manufactured weapons of mass destruction. Back then, there had been no superheroes to save his kids when a man in his early thirties had opened fire on them in The Museum of Natural History.
The memory still made his breathing pick up and his chest tighten even a decade later. Blood and screaming and gut-wrenching, blinding fear. A seventeen-year-old girl lying dead and bleeding on the ground, her sightless eyes meeting his. He blinked away the nightmarish images and focused again on the girl in front of him. When he answered her question, it was with a gravity that clearly caught her by surprise.
"As you know, we made it out alive, and that's the important thing. I couldn't bear to lose a student on a school trip. Not again."
Betty stilled, shocked that he'd gone there, her eyes flickering up towards the memorial plaque which stood prominently near the high school entrance. He wasn't surprised that she'd made the connection; some histories would never be forgotten no matter how many years had passed.
Ashley Priest had been a senior like Liz Toomes in 2007. She'd opened a Facebook account only a few months before that field trip. He remembered that because Facebook had still been new then, and all the kids had been obsessed with it. He remembered her as being popular, brimming with joy and potential, with plenty of friends who would later be devastated by her death, just as he had been as her teacher. The dates bookending her cruelly short life, 1990-2007, were etched in harsh, indelible black.
Now, fresh off another field trip to D.C. that could have cost him six more of his kids, Harrington could only feel profound gratitude that he'd been spared that pain a second time. "I could have lost all of my students if it hadn't been for Spider-Man. I know you'll probably never hear this, whoever you are, but thank you. Thank you so much for saving my kids."
As he turned to leave, he noticed Peter Parker frozen a few feet away watching him with a very strange expression on his face. When their eyes met, the kid turned a deep shade of red and hurried away quickly. Harrington frowned, reminded that he needed to have a serious talk with Peter for sneaking out of his hotel room and blowing off Academic Decathlon. It would have to wait until later, though. Harrington needed to make his copies before the bell rang, or his classes would be an unmitigated disaster today.
He hurried down the hallway, thoughts of Peter forgotten, at least for now.
...
"Breaking News! We have reports that an armed and dangerous gunman has opened fire at the Museum of Natural History..."
Blood sprayed warm and wet on Harrington's face as a stranger went down in front of him, screaming. The deafening crack of bullets rang in his ears. The blare of proximity alarms added to the confusion as people panicked and jumped past the protective glass barriers to take cover behind towering dinosaur fossils.
"Ashley! Reva!" Harrington shouted wildly. "Where are you?"
The rest of his students were hiding behind a gigantic allosaurus dinosaur, but Reva had asked for permission to go to the bathroom and he'd told her yes, as long as she didn't go alone. Ashley had volunteered, and now he couldn't see either of them. He crawled, dodging behind fossil displays, shaking and cringing every time the gun went off.
"MR. HARRINGTON! What…"
"Roger, what the hell are you doing? Get back here!"
He ignored the voices of his students and his co-chaperone Monica Warren, his entire being focused on Ashley and Reva. As he ran and crawled and stumbled towards the door, he was certain he was going to die, that a bullet would hit him in the back or the stomach and that he'd collapse right here and bleed out in a room full of dinosaurs like an extra from Jurassic Park. Somehow, though, he made it out of the room uninjured and ran down an empty, blood-splattered hallway, headed for the bathrooms. For as long as he lived, he would never forget the sight that met his eyes when he rounded the corner.
Ashley lay spread-eagled on the floor outside the women's bathroom. Reva was on her knees beside her, sobbing, her hands covered with blood. He ran to them and nearly vomited when Ashley's blank eyes met his, the expression in them vaguely accusing. She was gone, killed in the blink of an eye for the crime of volunteering to wait outside the bathroom for her friend. The horror of it overwhelmed him for a long, awful moment, but then he gathered himself and focused on Reva, who was still alive. "Hey," he croaked. "Come on. We gotta get outta here. The shooter could be heading right back here; we can't stay out in the open."
She stared at him with tears trailing down her cheeks, refusing to get up.
Suddenly the bloodstained hallway faded away and Harrington found himself on one of the top floors of the Washington Monument, standing outside a broken down elevator staring down at her as she stood in an elevator. He held his hand out to her as the entire structure creaked ominously, threatening to give beneath her feet. She looked up at him and suddenly she wasn't Reva anymore but Liz. He reached out to grab her hand and missed by inches.
The elevator fell and she screamed; an awful, bloodcurdling sound that seemed to go on forever. Harrington screamed with her, loud and desperate and completely terrified because he couldn't lose another student, not like this, not ever again-
With a choking gasp, Harrington shot up in bed, panting harshly and soaked in sweat. His heart was pounding in his chest, and his bedsheets were twisted around his limbs like a vise. He fought to kick them off, blinking several times to clear his eyes of the moisture welling in them.
Safe, he told himself desperately, burying his face in his hands and focusing on his breathing. Just a dream. Reva's still alive. You ran into her three months ago with her son at the grocery store. She's fine, and so is Liz. You didn't lose anyone. You didn't lose anyone. He repeated the mantra to himself for several minutes before his breathing finally evened out, and then he flopped back onto his soaked sheets with a despairing groan.
"Jesus Fucking Christ," he muttered under his breath.
Still shaking a little, he reached for his phone and checked the time. 4:00 am. Still early, but it was only two hours before he usually woke up, and it wasn't like he didn't have work to do. Sighing, he got up and headed for the kitchen to make some coffee.
…
Later that day, at the end of 10th Grade Advanced Chemistry, Harrington paused by Peter Parker's desk. "Peter, can you stay after class for a quick word? I can write you a pass for Ms. Warren if you're late."
He had spoken quietly, but it didn't stop a few students sitting nearby from hearing. He watched as Ned shot Peter a panicked look and MJ eyed him with a speculative expression. Flash Thompson looked positively gleeful. Harrington leveled the kid with a ferocious glare just as he opened his mouth to voice whatever cutting taunt had just come into his head. Showing that he wasn't a complete idiot, the kid snapped his mouth shut and deflated.
When the room was clear of students, Harrington walked over to Peter and sat down at a desk across from him, watching him carefully. The kid looked downright miserable, his shoulders slumped and his mouth downturned. Harrington was worried about him. He had a heart of gold and was genius level smart, but lately, Harrington got the feeling that there was something else going on with him, something that was making his grades dip and his attendance fall. Harrington had been teaching Peter since he was a freshman. He had watched him mourn his uncle without letting his academic performance suffer in the slightest, so this was completely out of character. Harrington was determined to get to the bottom of it.
"We need to talk about what happened on the field trip," he said. "I didn't get a chance to bring it up earlier because of the crisis at the Monument and the whole Spider-Man situation, but let me be frank, Peter. If this had been any other situation, you'd be in massive trouble. As it stands now, I can only be happy you blew off the competition, not because we didn't need you, but because Spider-Man wouldn't have had time to save one more person before that elevator fell. So despite the situation, I can only be glad you weren't there. That doesn't change the fact that you broke some pretty major rules."
Harrington paused, wondering if Peter would bring up the fact that MJ hadn't been in the elevator either. He had broken protocol by granting her permission to read outside on her own, but it had seemed like the right thing to do. A student like Flash Thompson would have brought that up, but Peter didn't try to argue with him.
"I know," he said. "I messed up. I'm sorry."
"I left you in that hotel room without asking questions when you said you were sick," Harrington reminded him. "I thought, there's no way Peter Parker would blow off Nationals for Academic Decathlon if he wasn't sick. I called your aunt and she said I could trust you to be on your own, that you were a responsible kid. That was what I thought too, but then I got back to the hotel after almost losing my entire Decathlon team in a freak elevator accident, and you weren't in your room. Can you imagine what that was like for me, Peter?"
The teenager was staring at him with an expression of guilty dismay. "I was back like ten minutes after that," he said weakly. "I was fine."
"Yeah, that's why I didn't make a big deal out of it then. Everyone was shaken up enough without me reaming you out in the middle of all that, but Peter? You can't just vanish without a trace from your hotel room during a field trip, not when I'm responsible for you. If anything had happened to you, that would have been on me."
"I'm so sorry, Mr. Harrington," Peter whispered, miserable. "I really am."
"What were you even doing outside?" Harrington asked him. "Come on, level with me here. This is just not making sense to me. Why would you lie about being sick and blow off a competition this important? It doesn't make sense."
"I uh, didn't lie?" Peter rambled nervously. "I really did have a stomach bug and then I felt better and then I, uh, decided I wanted to go sightseeing, so I headed to…to…Lincoln Memorial."
"Lincoln Memorial," said Harrington flatly. "A building which is five minutes away from Washington Monument. Yeah, because that makes perfect sense."
"I'm not making this up, I swear," Peter protested, even less convincingly than before.
Harrington stared at him, completely incredulous. "So you're really telling me that, what, at first you were too sick to go to Academic Decathlon, then you miraculously got better, and then you snuck out to go sightseeing to a place five minutes away from us? That's seriously the story you're sticking with?"
"Um." Peter looked like a deer caught in headlights. "I, yeah. I really was sick."
Harrington just watched him, letting the silence stretch until it became more and more uncomfortable and tense. Peter squirmed where he was sitting, eyes darting around the room to land on desks and bulletin boards and lab supplies, but he didn't break. Harrington's patience evaporated, replaced by real anger now. He hated it when kids lied to him.
"I can't force you to tell me the truth, but I also can't let this pass," he said sharply. "I am booking you for a week's worth of after school detentions and I'm logging this incident on the Online Discipline Tracker, which as you know will include a full, detailed report of your actions that will be emailed to Principal Morita and your aunt-"
"What? Mr. Harrington, please, that'll go on my record!" Peter leapt to his feet, his eyes panicked. "I can't have people finding out about this; my aunt will kill me! Please, please can we just do the detentions without the ODT?"
"Peter, you lied to me, blew off your classmates, snuck off during a field trip, and even now, you're still not being straight with me," Harrington said in exasperation. "You're lucky I'm not pushing for a suspension here."
Peter flinched. This was probably the first time he'd ever been in this much trouble at school, and Harrington knew that for a student like Peter, an entry on the ODT was probably soul-crushing. He looked upset, almost near tears, and Harrington was almost tempted to say something to soften the blow. But the second tardy bell had just rung, and Peter had a class he needed to get to.
"That'll be all, unless you actually want to give me an honest answer about what really happened." He paused to give Peter one last chance to own up, but the kid just looked away. "Here's your pass for Physics. Tell Ms. Warren I'm sorry I kept you. And Peter?" he said as the teen reached the door. "I expect to see you at Decathlon practice today, okay? Don't be late."
"Really?" Peter looked back at him in shock. "I'm still on the team?"
"Yeah, really." Harrington had briefly considered kicking him off the team after this debacle, but he wasn't quite angry enough to take Academic Decathlon away from him.
"Thanks, Mr. Harrington!" Peter flashed him a smile, leaving the room with more of a spring in his step than previously, though he was still much more subdued than usual.
Harrington shook his head wryly. He admitted to himself that Peter Parker's puppy dog expression was hard to resist, even for a veteran like himself.
…
The next few weeks only increased Harrington's concerns. Peter blew off his first detention, earning himself another week's worth, a phone call from the principal to his aunt, and a second entry in the ODT. Harrington didn't try to lecture him again, even though he was very tempted. It hadn't happened on his watch, and he privately thought Coach Wilson deserved most of the blame for just letting a kid walk out of detention without trying to stop him. Seriously, which teacher did that?
After that small stumble, though, Peter seemed more invested in school than ever. His grades and attendance rose again- still not as good as he was capable of, but better than before. Still, his smiles seemed strained and he occasionally stared into space with an expression of sorrow and disappointment, as if he'd lost something that was important to him. Worried, Harrington tried to talk to him about it a few times, but he was irritatingly secretive, babbling nervously and saying a lot without really revealing anything.
Then, Peter disappeared yet again on the night of Homecoming, leaving Liz Toomes without a date. As students whispered and stared in her direction, she stood off to the side looking upset and embarrassed, surrounded by a small, fiercely protective group of friends.
Harrington wanted more than anything to call Peter's aunt and find out where he was, but this wasn't a school mandated event. Students could come and go as they pleased. Most had driven themselves or been driven by their parents. The teachers weren't actually responsible for anyone who chose not to attend, and there could technically be no consequences for someone who left early.
"Holy shit!"
Harrington's head whipped up in alarm, and he saw that a large group of kids had gathered at the entrance of the gym, murmuring excitedly and snapping pictures on their phones. Harrington hurried towards them immediately, wondering if someone had been hurt.
"Are those webs? Seriously? Like what the actual fuck, dude."
"I cannot believe I was in here wasting time dancing with random guys I don't even like, when Spider-Man was out there fighting a bad guy. I mean, oh my God…"
He pushed past the students and gaped in horror when he got an unobstructed view of the parking lot. There were destroyed school buses littering the parking lot and strands of Spider-Man's webs everywhere. Thoughts of Peter Parker flew from his mind he grabbed his phone to dial Jim Morita. The principal was going to have an aneurysm when he saw this.
…
By the next day, the story was all over the news. Spider-Man had taken down yet another dangerous villain with a crazy, overly dramatic codename. Normally, Harrington would have just rolled his eyes and moved on. It wasn't like it was anything out of the ordinary for New York these days. This time, though, the bad guy happened to be none other than Liz Toomes' dad, who had apparently been moonlighting as a supervillain and calling himself The Vulture. Apparently, this was just the world they lived in now.
Liz was the biggest casualty of the entire debacle, suddenly forced to relocate to Oregon in her senior year. Harrington had been her teacher through her freshman and sophomore years and had been coaching her in Academic Decathlon for even longer than that. He still remembered the glowing pride in her eyes when he'd announced her captaincy the year before.
To see her leaving this way, under a cloud of disgrace and shame which she'd done nothing to deserve, was too awful for words. Harrington had witnessed kids go through some truly awful experiences; unexpected pregnancies that turned their lives upside down, homelessness, abuse, prolonged custody battles, even, sometimes, parents being suddenly deported by ICE. Even with all that, a student turning out to have a supervillain for a father seemed a little excessive. For a moment he wondered if it had been worth it at all, if he should have stayed in academia or worked at a private research facility where he could have been making two or three times what he was making now.
He shook off the dark thought with practiced ease. Sighing, he grabbed his phone and quickly booked an appointment with his therapist for later the same day, barely wincing at the $70 charge. Apparently, this was just the price of doing business in New York these days.
…
By October, school had fallen back into a semblance of normalcy. There were no further reports of supervillains hanging around Queens, no more kids going missing from detentions, and the annual freshmen field trip to Oscorp went off without a hitch.
After everything that had happened, Harrington found himself appreciating the familiar rhythms of the school year far more than usual. On Halloween, he decided to go all out, wearing a fluffy Winnie the Pooh costume which had the students laughing till they cried and sneaking pictures of him all day. He knew he was going to end up in at least a dozen memes and only hoped that none of them went viral. He was gratified when no one laughed harder than Peter. The kid seemed to be in better spirits lately. His attendance was still erratic and his grades were still not quite where they should have been, but he seemed happier and had found a new friend in MJ.
In early November, the school received word that they had won a STEM Field Research Award from the New York City Department of Education. Apparently, it was being given to them both because of the school's excellent test scores and because of the recent Academic Decathlon win. The entire sophomore class was getting free tickets for a field trip to the Stark Industries Technology Museum, which was an amazing opportunity. SI Tech Museum tours were exorbitantly priced. There were digital lotteries to give the average Joe a chance, but the likelihood of actually scoring one was low. Harrington knew his students would be ecstatic about this.
"I have some great news, guys," he announced at the end of class. "Thanks to the performance of our amazing Decathlon Team, the city has given us free tickets for a field trip…" he paused for dramatic effect- "-to the Stark Industries Science and Technology Museum!"
"What?!"
"No way, Mr. Harrington. That's awesome! We get to go to Stark Tower; are you serious right now?"
Harrington smiled at the excited clamor, soaking in the fever pitch of their joy. It wasn't every day he got to deliver news like this.
"So when exactly are we going?"
"Next Wednesday," Harrington answered, "We don't have a lot of time, so I need you all to get your parents to sign permission slips and get them to me as soon as you can, okay? By the end of this week at the latest."
He handed out the permission slips, pausing briefly in surprise when he reached Peter's desk. The kid was staring down at the floor with a glum look on his face, barely responding to Ned's enthusiastic rambling about getting to see a replica of the Arc Reactor.
"Peter, is everything okay?"
Flash Thompson scoffed loudly from a few desks away. "Pe- uh, Parker's probably just worried we'll find out he was faking his internship."
Peter wilted in his chair and Harrington turned and gave Flash a flat look, almost wishing he'd actually slipped up and said "Penis." Then, he would have had an excuse to ream the kid out for his language. "Peter isn't faking the internship, Flash," he said sharply. "His aunt sent an official permission slip signed by the people at SI months ago. Why do you think I let him have that many days off?"
He glanced at Peter, who was looking at him with stunned gratitude, ignoring the murmured whispers of "wait, so he really does work there? Seriously?" and "Maybe this means he actually knows Spider-Man, too."
Taking advantage of the momentary distraction, Harrington placed the permission slip on Peter's desk and leaned forward, making sure to speak in a whisper because he really didn't want to be overheard again. "Stay back for a second after class, okay? You're not in trouble, I just want to check in."
Peter tensed despite the reassurance. Harrington frowned, sensing that something was off here. Peter idolized Tony Stark. For him to have such an underwhelming reaction to this opportunity was completely out of character. After everyone had left, Harrington gave him his kindest, most reassuring smile.
"You can relax, you know. I really did mean it when I said you weren't in trouble. I'm just surprised, because I thought you'd be super excited about this field trip, but you seem really low. Is it because of the internship? Have you already been on the museum tour?"
"No, I haven't," Peter said unhappily.
"Then what's the problem?"
Peter stared at him with a disquieted air, fidgeting with his shirt sleeves. Harrington waited patiently.
"It's just, uh. I work there, so I already have the ID to get in," the kid said finally. "FRIDAY- that's the AI who runs the building- will scan everyone when we enter and announce our clearance levels."
"Okay," said Harrington, confused. "And this a problem because…?" Again, Peter hesitated, his expression conflicted. "Hey, you know whatever you tell me right now, I'll keep it to myself, right? You can trust me."
Peter let out a gusty sigh, some of the tension finally bleeding out of him at the reassurance."It's just that my clearance level is a lot higher than most people know," he explained. "I'm, uh, not just a regular intern there, I'm Mr. Stark's personal intern. He's kind of like, mentoring me, I guess? But yeah, you can't tell anyone. We're keeping it on the down low because he doesn't want the press to find out, which is also why I stopped talking about it every five seconds to the Academic Decathlon team. I've been working with him in R&D on some projects."
Harrington's face broke into a delighted grin. "That's amazing, Peter," he said, genuinely thrilled for the kid. "That sounds like such a great opportunity. I have no doubt you're going to design some really innovative projects for that company, maybe even change the world someday."
"Wow, really?" Peter looked startled at the praise.
"Of course." Harrington smiled at the kid warmly. "Come on, let's be real, here. This is a school for high-performing students, but even here, we both know you aren't always challenged as you should be. I try, and so do your other teachers; that's why you're in the Gifted and Talented track. Still, there's only so much we can do to differentiate the curriculum properly for kids like you." Harrington didn't mention the recent dip in Peter's grades. Hopefully hearing such effusive phrase would motivate him to do better more effectively than another lecture. "I'm happy Mr. Stark saw the potential in you," he continued. "A recommendation letter from him would probably look amazing on your college applications."
"Wow, um, thank you, Mr. Harrington," said Peter, flushing with pleasure. "For the record, your classes have always been pretty challenging. In like a good way, I mean."
"That's good to hear." Harrington returned his smile. "Now, about your problem. If you really don't want anyone to know your clearance level, I see two possible solutions. The first is for you to talk to Mr. Stark before the field trip and ask him to have his AI announce a lower clearance level on that day-"
"No, no way, I don't want Mr. Stark to know I'm going to be there on the field trip," Peter interrupted immediately. "He'll, like, want to drop by and see me- he already complains I don't come by enough during the week. Then Flash will say something really stupid because he's Flash, and then Mr. Stark will either yell at him or try to show off something I made, and oh God, it would just be an embarrassing mess, and like, not good at all, especially since we're supposed to be keeping it a secret that I know him."
Wow, thought Harrington. Peter had called Tony Stark his mentor, but Harrington had only ever heard teenagers talk about their fathers in that tone of voice. It was all he could do to contain his surprise.
"Well, your second option is to go straight to SI in the morning. Instead of coming to school and riding the bus with us, we can just meet with you inside the building. The school would need written permission from your aunt, of course, but you could get there early, pass through the scanners and wait for us. No one would be around to hear the announcement."
"Yeah, that sounds like it could work," Peter said, relieved. "Thank you. I was low-key considering not going before this."
"No problem," Harrington said warmly. Then a worrying thought occurred to him. "Just one thing, though. You probably know Stark Industries really well if your clearance is that high. You go there every week, so you probably know the people who work there. Am I right?"
"Yeah, but they won't be at the museum," said Peter. "I work in the labs. We probably won't run into anyone I know. There aren't that many of them, because Mr. Stark really is trying not to have too many people find out about me."
Harrington wondered why, if that was the case, Peter was so worried that Stark would gatecrash their field trip and embarrass him. It seemed a little illogical, but he decided not to touch that for now. "I want you to remember that while you're with me, I'm responsible for you," he told the kid firmly. "You can't skip off to the labs or go wandering somewhere I can't follow. You need to stick with the rest of your classmates and be present throughout, okay? Mentally and physically."
"Yeah I get it," said Peter, looking a little abashed. "You don't have to worry. This will be, like, the most uneventful trip ever, I promise."
Peter looked so earnest and sincere when he said this that it didn't even occur to Harrington that the kid had basically jinxed the entire thing by being that naively optimistic. Later, he would look back on it, and realize that this was the moment when he really should have known that everything was doomed to spiral out of control.
…
TBC…
Up next:
The sheer enormity of the situation suddenly overwhelmed Harrington, and he put out a hand shakily, feeling as if the ground had fallen out from under his feet. "Jesus Christ, Peter," he choked out, echoingly loud in the silent hallway. "You're just a kid! How could you possibly be Spider-Man?"
Chapter 2: Chaperone
Chapter Text
The morning of the field trip to Stark Industries dawned cloudy and frigid. Harrington could feel the excitement in the air as he walked down the aisle of the bus, checking that his students were buckled in and handing out plastic trash-bags to hang on the edges of seats so they would have somewhere besides the floor of the bus to throw trash.
He did a headcount twice to be safe and then texted Julius Dell, his co-chaperone on the other bus. I have all of mine. Good to go.
Me too, let's roll.
Harrington signaled to the driver that they were ready to leave and took an empty seat in the middle of the bus, sitting sideways so he could keep an eye on everyone. He shot off a quick email to Peter to let him know that they were leaving school so he could time his own entrance and get there before them.
The teens were chattering happily, messing around on their phones and eating a frankly alarming number of candy bars alongside several bags of chips. Harrington winced at the thought of how much energy they would all be exuding by the time they got to Stark Industries. Well, he thought wryly, hopefully it would also keep them responsive and enthusiastic during the tour.
When they finally got to Stark Industries, the excitement had grown almost deafening. Students yelled and cheered the second the familiar building was in sight. He stood and raised his hand for attention, and then gave them his usual field trip reminders- no sneaking off, no going to the restroom without a partner, always listen to your tour guide and your chaperone- before herding the students into the building.
They were greeted warmly by a couple of tour guides, who introduced themselves as Alejandra de la Garza and Dev Nagpal, handing out visitors passes to everyone. Harrington spotted Peter waiting on the other side of the security scanners, looking slightly awkward as he waved to them. Ned waved at his friend excitedly, barreling through the scanner ahead of everyone else.
"Leeds, Ned. Level 1, Visitor. Day Pass," a disembodied voice announced as he passed through, making several of the other students jump.
"Whoa, that was so cool!" Flash was already pulling out his phone to film himself as he walked through the scanner.
Harrington decided he should go through next so he could wait for the students on the other side and make sure they didn't wander off anywhere. As he stood a few feet away from them, he overheard Ned gushing excitedly to Peter. "Whoa, so that was FRIDAY, right? I cannot believe you actually work here now, dude. Like a real, actual internship this time. How is your life this awesome? Also, can you imagine if FRIDAY announced your real clearance level, everyone would have been like whaaat-"
"Ned, shut up!" Peter hissed, casting an alarmed glance towards his classmates. "Someone'll hear you!"
Once everyone had passed through the scanners, Alejandra clapped her hands to get their attention. "Alright, listen up. We're all going to be splitting into two groups. I'll take Mr. Harrington's group and Dev will take Mr. Dell's. My group will be heading to the tenth floor first. As you may know, the Stark Industries Science and Technology Museum opened two years ago. It is confined only to the tenth and eleventh floors of this building. I must ask you all to stay on these two floors because the rest of the building is an active workplace, which means there are people employed here who are doing very important jobs who should not be disturbed under any circumstances. Is that understood?"
There was a chorus of nodding and yesses.
"My group will be doing a complete guided tour of the tenth floor first, including the most recently added display that all the local papers have been raving about, a series of exhibits showing how Tony Stark conceptualized and designed the Arc Reactor. Going through those displays will take two hours, after which we'll break for lunch."
"While Ale takes half of you on the Arc Reactor tour, I'll take Mr. Dell's group to the Circuitry Exhibit on the eleventh floor," Dev said, taking over from Alejandra. "Tony Stark was an electrical engineer before he became anything else, and he wanted to make sure this place showcased the true potential of circuitry. We have some circuit boards for you to experiment with and a couple of other activities as well. Then we'll take you into the Robotics and Tech Design Studio where you'll have some time to just walk around and explore. It's an interactive exhibit. You'll also get a chance to design some real robots!"
At this announcement, there was another loud burst of animated conversation. Harrington smiled fondly at the sheer nerdiness of his students. For them, a chance to mess with circuit boards and machine scraps was more fun than a hundred viral TikTok videos.
"After we do the first two hours, we'll break for lunch at 12," said Alejandra. "It's on the eleventh floor. Then we'll switch and you'll get to go do the other activities during the second half of the day. Please feel free to ask us if you have any questions about anything. Make sure you stay with the group at all times and avoid touching the exhibits if they aren't interactive."
"This is so fucking awesome," Abe exclaimed to Cindy as they headed for the elevators.
"I know right?" Cindy pumped a fist in the air, beaming incandescently.
Harrington suppressed a grin, pretending he hadn't heard the profanity because he honestly didn't have the heart to scold anyone for such a genuine burst of enthusiasm. They reached the tenth floor and were immediately pulled into a whirlwind of incredible displays.
Harrington was pleasantly surprised at the unvarnished honesty of some of it. The story of the foundation of Stark Industries and of Howard Stark's history and contributions during several wars was less self-aggrandizing than he would have expected. Howard Stark and Anton Vanko's work creating the giant version of the Arc Reactor was given a full display of its own, though, complete with pictures and newsreels from the 1960's.
There were also exhibits showing Tony Stark's "Merchant of Death" days. These were quite sobering, including graphic descriptions and pictures of the destruction some of the weapons had caused around the world. There were even pictures and memorials for some of the people who had been killed by some of Stark Industries' more notorious weapons, people who came from all over the world; from villages in the Middle East, tiny towns in Asia, and cities in Africa. There was also an entire wall dedicated to the Ultron disaster and the people of Sokovia.
It was surprisingly moving with its clear emphasis on remembrance and atonement. The tone of the entire exhibit reminded Harrington strongly of a Holocaust memorial museum, and he was impressed that something like this would be built here, in the same building where those weapons had first been designed.
Finally, they came to the display that everyone had been gushing about in the news and on social media; the untold story of Tony Stark's invention of the miniaturized Arc Reactor. The first exhibit was a huge cave, including sand under their feet, a very realistically painted backdrop of an Afghanistan desert and a very lifelike rendering of Tony Stark bent over a number of machine scraps, an expression of intense concentration on his face, one eye shadowed by a dark bruise. Something that looked vaguely like the Arc Reactor was beginning to take shape in his hands. Two menacing figures- tall, scowling men from the Ten Rings organization, stood guard with guns.
The tableau brought Harrington and his students to a complete stop. It was stunning in its realism. Even the sand looked real, like it would burn hot under their feet if they took off their shoes. Out of the corner of his eye, Harrington noticed Peter Parker moving towards the figure of his mentor, his face tight with emotion as he stared at him. It was clear that he was distressed, seeing this.
"Wow." Ned was the first to break the silence that had fallen over the group. "This is…"
"I know, right?" Alejandra came up from behind them, a look of appreciation on her face. "I don't think this one will ever get old. It makes me feel so proud that I got to work here, you know? Under Tony Stark, I mean. He's such a badass."
"Yeah." The hero worship was written across Peter's face. "He really is."
"I know Captain America officially has the title, or well, had it before he became a war criminal, but I think Ironman is the OG First Avenger," Alejandra said. "In the sense that he's the first superhero most of us remember, right? Like, there was a time when we didn't have superheroes and gods and aliens and it was just Tony Stark in this suit that he built, trying to make a difference and make up for his mistakes. He has this amazing origin story, and he's so heroic, and he's created all these amazing inventions, and now he's working on clean energy…"
The teens were all nodding, understanding and agreement on their faces. Like Alejandra, they were all Generation Z, and this was the Tony Stark they had grown up with. For Harrington, Stark had been the Merchant of Death first, but for Alejandra and Peter's generation, his weapon making days were ancient history, belonging in an age that predated smartphones and social media. They knew him as the man who was trying to stop climate change, who had flown a nuke into outer space to save New York City, who had fought for people like them with his defense of the Sokovia Accords.
"Um," Peter was frowning, his hand raised as he turned towards Alejandra. "Is this, like…did Mr. Stark agree to this? I mean, this exhibit?" He indicated the room with a sweep of his hand, a troubled look on his face. "Because this part of his history is kind of painful, isn't it? I mean, it's amazing and heroic and all, but he's a pretty private person from what I've heard."
"Tony Stark, a private person?" Alejandra looked amused. "You did see the clips of the infamous press conference, right? I am Ironman- the video's playing on a loop in the room right next to this one in case you missed it somehow."
"No, I know that, I just meant- I mean, I'm just surprised to see this here," Peter tried to explain, flustered. "He never talks about Afghanistan in- in the press. About what he went through there."
"That's true," Alejandra said. "The Arc Reactor exhibit was actually commissioned by Pepper Potts. He definitely knows it's here, but it's not like he actually comes down here that often. Maybe he hasn't realized how raw and badass it is." She paused, looking thoughtfully around the cave. "I like to think this is an indication of how she sees him. I mean, they did just get engaged, right?"
"Yeah, I guess," Peter said, his expression clearing a little.
The rest of the morning flew by in a series of exhibits, all telling the story of how the miniature Arc Reactor had been created. They were all just as stunning and lifelike as the cave display. By the time they got to images of Ironman blasting away terrorists in Gulmira like an avenging angel, Harrington was kind of tempted to declare himself a proud Ironman fanboy like the rest of his students. The teens loved every second of it, and they had had stars in their eyes by the time they got to the final exhibit, a breathtakingly realistic miniaturized Arc Reactor, proudly displayed and glowing gently behind bulletproof glass.
When it was time for lunch, they all went to the cafeteria on the eleventh floor, meeting up with Dell's group of kids. Harrington and Dell did a quick headcount to make sure everyone was accounted for and then sat at a table by themselves, leaving the kids to talk and laugh amongst themselves as they ate lunch. Alejandra and Dev sat with them.
"This is a really good tour," Dell commented. "They're learning a lot. I'm glad they were able to come here."
"Agreed," Harrington smiled at Alejandra. "You're doing a great job explaining things. And it helps that you're clearly a big fan of Ironman too. We have a lot of those in our class."
Alejandra ducked her head and grinned a little sheepishly. "He's my favorite superhero," she confessed, "Always has been. Tony Stark is the whole reason I decided to major in electrical engineering in college. It's why I applied for this internship, and I'm going to apply to work at SI as soon as I graduate NYU. This is literally my dream job."
Harrington eyed her thoughtfully, wondering how well she knew the other SI interns. She and Dev had been nodding greetings to other employees on that floor, but no one had recognized Peter so far. Not that that was surprising; Peter had said as much himself, but now after hearing Alejandra's story, Harrington couldn't help but wonder how his student had landed this internship in the first place. "How old do you have to be to apply for an internship here?" he asked. "I know a few of our kids would definitely be interested."
"It's only open to college sophomores and above, sorry," Dev replied. "They'll have to wait till college. But I doubt most of these kids will have trouble getting an internship here. They seem really smart. A few of the robots they threw together this morning could have given full-time engineers a run for their money-"
He was cut off by a loud, high-pitched alarm that propelled everyone to their feet.
"Intruder alert," FRIDAY's voice rang out across the building, "The building has been breached. Threat level unknown. Please make your way to the designated safe area on your floor. This is not a drill. Intruder alert. The building has been breached. Threat level…"
"Everyone, stay calm!" Dev was on his feet, shouting loudly over the heads of alarmed students as Alejandra rushed to the cafeteria entrance and spread her arms wide to stop anyone from rushing off in a panic. Dell hurried after her, using his own larger build to block the entrance.
"Guys, please follow our lead. We've been trained to get you through any emergencies safely." Despite her youth, Alejandra's voice was firm and authoritative, betraying no hint of nervousness. "Please form a single file line behind me. Teachers, I need one of you with me in front and one of you can stay at the back with Dev. We're going to lead you to the panic room on this floor."
"Let's move quickly but calmly, people," Harrington called out as years of experience leading students through evacuation drills took over. "Just like we do at school for Code Yellow drills, okay? Just follow Alejandra."
The teens began to sort themselves into lines, murmuring worriedly. Some of them were already calling their parents, eyes frightened as they described what was happening. As Harrington walked to the back of the line, he overheard Peter talking low and urgently to someone. "…send me the information by text, okay? I know he won't approve, but I still need to know what's going on, Karen. Because this is my class we're talking about here, I can't just…"
"Okay, guys, let's move! Stay in single file so we don't get in the way of the other tour groups as they're evacuating."
They followed Alejandra down the hall, walking as fast as they could without running. Harrington's heartrate sped up as she led them through multiple hallways, rounding several corners in rapid succession. There were clear signs near every hallway, but they were moving too quickly for anyone to pause and read them. There was no way he could keep all of the students in his line of sight with these twists and turns, and he shuddered to think how easily someone could lose their way.
As they walked through the hallways, they could feel an ominous thumping coming from below their feet. Whatever this threat was, it was clearly a serious one. He spared a moment to be very grateful that this had happened during lunch when they'd all been together instead of spread out over two floors. The hallways emptied quickly as other employees and tour groups also headed to safety. The museum staff were working like a well-oiled machine; Alejandra hadn't been kidding when she said they'd been trained for this. Eventually, they turned into a corridor which had only a white concrete wall at the end of it, but before Harrington had a chance to wonder if they'd made a mistake and reached a dead end, Alejandra pressed her palm to the wall and it slid back like a sliding door. A massive room was revealed behind it, huge enough to hold at least fifty people comfortably.
As the teenagers all spilled into the room, Harrington noticed there were already ten SI employees inside, as well as a group of Chinese tourists who he'd seen touring the museum earlier that morning. The door slid shut behind them, muffling the sound of the alarm still blaring outside, and Harrington's ears filled with the din of anxious conversation, a mix of Mandarin, English, and panic.
Harrington exchanged a determined look with Dell before they both leaped into action, rounding up the teenagers, who had swarmed all over the room in anxious groups, most of them already on their phones again. His own phone was buzzing incessantly in his pocket, but he ignored it, knowing it was probably parents who were panicking because of the messages their kids had sent them. He didn't have the time to respond right now.
"I need everyone seated, please," he said, pointing to the collection of chairs, couches, and sofas spread through the room. "We need to do a headcount."
"Come on, guys." Alejandra and Dev walked to the groups of teens in far off corners, corralling them towards their teachers. "This way."
The other adults in the room were eyeing them with expressions of commiseration and horrified empathy as the teens meandered towards them, in no real hurry to follow directions. Harrington pursed his lips in irritation but decided there was no point scolding them. He and Dell began to count them as soon as they were seated, even as they themselves paid little attention to anything but their phones, thumbs flying as they texted their friends and loved ones.
When he finished counting, he got only twenty-nine kids. One short. Annoyed with himself for miscounting, he started again from the beginning. A slow, creeping dread clenched in his stomach when he once again reached the same number. Twenty-nine, not thirty. He turned to Dell, still praying he'd made a mistake, but Dell had also finished counting and was staring at Harrington with an expression of dawning horror on his face.
Oh God, who the hell did we lose?
Harrington's eyes searched the room frantically, watching clumps of boys huddled together and groups of girls hovered over each other protectively, as well as the few loners who sat to the side, completely focused on their phones. His eyes fell on Ned and MJ, both of whom were whispering to each other frantically, darting nervous looks towards the closed wall they had just come through.
Harrington's mind came to a screeching halt when he realized it was only the two of them. There was an empty chair beside them, but Peter wasn't in it. His eyes swept the room again, and, oh fuck, the kid really wasn't there.
"Guys!" He raised his voice, addressing the room. "I need your attention. Stop talking! Has anyone seen Peter Parker?"
There was a moment of dead silence before the room exploded into frantic conversation. Alejandra let out a choked out "oh, fuck" and Dev's eyes went wide and panicked. All the other adults in the room, even the group of Chinese tourists, were staring in their direction with expressions of horror; the situation clearly transcended any need for translation.
Harrington saw Ned and MJ exchanging alarmed, shifty-eyed looks. His eyes narrowed and he stalked over to them. "Both of you, a word please," he said through clenched teeth.
He marched away without waiting to see if they were following, heading to an unoccupied corner of the large room for some privacy. He turned then and crossed his arms, facing the two teenagers head on. Ned wilted under his glare. MJ tried to maintain a neutral expression, but even she missed her customary nonchalance by a mile.
"Alright," said Harrington harshly. "This is where you both start talking. Where the hell is Peter?"
…
Apparently, Peter had gone off to look for Spider-Man.
As he crept down a deserted hallway on the tenth floor with a grim-faced Alejandra at his side Harrington allowed himself a moment of sheer, angry disbelief as he repeated that in his mind and realized again the sheer insanity of it. A teenager getting lost because he'd wandered off to sneak some pictures, that would have been bad enough, but misplacing a kid because of attempted superheroics? And especially when he'd explicitly warned Peter not to sneak off?
Worse, Ned's story about how Peter and Spider-Man knew each other because of the Stark Internship seemed ridiculously farfetched. Even MJ had looked unimpressed when he'd said that the superhero had needed Peter's help with something important. If Harrington hadn't been as worried as he was, he would have been furious with Ned and MJ, too, for not stopping their friend from going out in the middle of a lockdown.
He couldn't believe he was in the middle of yet another field trip emergency (the second one this year!), searching for his missing student with the help of a tour guide who was young enough to be mistaken for a high school student herself. Harrington felt bad for putting her in danger, but he hadn't protested when she'd offered to help, knowing he wouldn't be able to find his way through the building without her.
As they crept through several empty displays, passing the cave from Afghanistan and the pictures of Howard Stark's giant Arc Reactor, the metallic thudding and pounding grew louder. Exchanging an alarmed look as they realized how close to the danger they now were, Harrington was about to suggest trying another route when he heard a short, aborted cry.
"Peter, is that you?!"
Harrington raced towards the sound, his heart pounding. When he turned the corner, the first thing he noticed was a swarm of round metallic flying…what the hell were those things? Robots? Drones? They were shaped like frisbees, hovering in the air and emitting angry, screeching noises as they rammed themselves repeatedly into the huge, glass wall that held the miniaturized Arc Reactor display.
"Holy shit."
Over half the robot frisbees turned at the sound of Alejandra's voice, moving away from the Arc Reactor in a smooth, coordinated action. Tiny red lights on their metallic surface blinked malevolently in their direction like angry, threatening eyes.
Harrington experienced a moment of pure, unadulterated panic. Then, from above his head, "Mr. Harrington, look out!"
In his shock at hearing Peter's voice emerge from the ceiling, Harrington didn't react quickly enough. His head jerked up wildly, but instead of his student's familiar brown curls, all he saw was Spider-Man leaping down from the ceiling. The superhero dove onto a cluster of frisbees which had been heading straight for Harrington and dashed them against the floor with all his strength. They shattered into pieces, making high-pitched electrical screeches as they died.
The frisbees abandoned their initial target and completely focused on the three of them. There were too many of them for Spider-Man to stop by himself. Harrington watched in mute terror as one of the things flew straight at the tour guide, crashing into the side of her head before she had a chance to get away. She dropped like a stone, out cold.
"Alejandra!" Harrington fell to his knees beside the young woman.
Spider-Man crouched protectively in front them his palms pointed outwards as he used his webs to deflect the frisbees, slamming them into the floor and the ceiling, but still they kept on coming.
"Is she hurt badly?"
Harrington probed her head injury. "I'm not sure."
"You'll have to get her out of here, then. We can-"
He was interrupted by the arrival of Ironman, who came barreling down the hallway in his suit. Harrington gaped, slack-jawed, as he blasted a couple of robots out of the way before he turned on Spider-Man, irate. "Kid, what the hell are you doing here? Are you cutting school again?"
"No, of course not!" came Peter's voice again. "I have a super reasonable explanation, I swear, and I'll tell you all about it later, because right now I think we need to focus on the flying saucer drone robot frisbees which are trying to kill us!"
"You don't say," came the sarcastic response.
"I think someone clearly sent them to steal your Arc Reactor display, not that you can really blame them, because seriously, who wouldn't want amazing technology that could literally power the entire-"
"Kid, what have I told you about talking in the middle of fights?" Stark interrupted, exasperated. "Just shut up for a second and brace yourself. This isn't going to be pretty."
He pulled out a device from somewhere inside his suit, a small, gray metallic box with a number of small buttons on top of it. "Spider-Man, protect the civilians," Stark commanded. "This is an EMP; if I hit this button the drones should deactivate immediately, but they probably have countermeasures to prevent that."
"Like what?"
"There's a good chance they'll explode. Or worse."
Spider-Man nodded. Then, without warning, he launched himself into Harrington, knocking him to the floor. The teacher grunted as he found himself pressed into white tiles, spandex limbs bracketing his body. The superhero had managed to push him down until he was practically on top of Alejandra. He was lying over both of them, shielding them with his thin, lithe body.
There was a faint click as Stark pressed the button on the EMP, followed by a deafening series of explosions. Angry, metallic screeches filled the air, a horrible cacophony that seemed to go on forever before finally fading into silence.
Spider-Man scrambled off Harrington, landing gracelessly on his back with an undignified yelp. Now free to move, the teacher dared to raise his head and stared with wide eyes at the total carnage surrounding him. There were hundreds of metallic shards littering the floor, several of them emitting smoke. He scrambled upright, trying to process what had just happened.
Ironman strode forward, pulling Spider-Man up and away from Harrington and onto his feet. The faceplate on the suit slid down to reveal Tony Stark's thunderous expression. "What the hell were you thinking, kid? I can't believe you're missing school to patrol again, I thought we talked about this-"
"No, no, I promise that's not what happened, I just…I, well, I actually just happened to be in the neighborhood-"
"On a school day? This far away from Manhattan?"
"Oh my god," Harrington whispered as the pieces fell into place.
Several disparate memories flashed before his eyes. Peter's disappearance from the hotel in Washington DC. The destroyed school buses in the parking lot, right after he had ditched Liz at Homecoming. Spider-Man going after the Vulture by hijacking Flash's car, and the recent dip in Peter's grades...
"Oh my god," he said again, more loudly this time as the shock settled in.
At the sound of his voice, both superheroes fell silent, staring at him. "The Stark internship," Harrington said in a hoarse voice which he barely recognized as his own. "All the lies and the missed homework and the unexcused absences and- and Germany? That was you, fighting Captain America under that mask? You could have been killed out there! And- and God, this is why Monica's always complaining about you watching YouTube videos of Spider-Man in her class, isn't it, because- because you're…"
The sheer enormity of the situation suddenly overwhelmed him. He put a hand out shakily, grasping at air for support, feeling as if the ground had just fallen out from under his feet. "Jesus Christ, Peter," he choked out, the words echoingly loud in the silent hallway. "You're just a kid! How could you possibly be Spider-Man?"
…
TBC…
Up Next:
The smile slipped from Stark's lips. "So," he said grimly. "I guess we have a lot to talk about."
"Yeah," said Harrington, glancing at his still-masked student, who looked far more vulnerable standing there in his superhero costume than he had ever looked sitting in Harrington's classroom. "We really do."
Chapter 3: Protector
Chapter Text
As soon as the question left his mouth, he knew he'd guessed correctly. Tony Stark stepped forward with an expression of raw, protective fury, putting his own body between Harrington and Peter, and Peter made a strangled sound and stumbled backwards, falling heavily against the wall a few feet away. Pure panic was pouring off him in waves as he trembled minutely, his breath coming in gasps.
Harrington felt pretty panicked himself. Before he could say anything, though, there was movement on the floor near him. Alejandra groaned softly and opened her eyes, squinting in pain.
Realizing guiltily that he'd forgotten her completely, Harrington crouched beside her, relieved for the distraction of worrying about something else. "Hey, hey, easy," he said gently. "Here, let me take a look."
"Mr. Harrington?"
"Yeah, that's me," he said with a reassuring smile. "It's a good sign that you were able to recognize me. Here, just let me-"
"Ow," she complained as his fingers grazed the lump on her head.
"Sorry." He withdrew his hands. "This isn't exactly my area of expertise."
She began to sit up slowly, accepting his assistance when he reached a hand out to help her up. "What the hell happened? Did you find Peter?"
Harrington's breath caught in his throat. He was spared answering when Alejandra stiffened in shock as she finally noticed the two superheroes standing a few feet away. "Uh," Alejandra said, glancing back at Harrington with wide eyes, "did I hit my head harder than I thought, or...?"
"That's Ironman and Spider-Man, yeah," Harrington confirmed, feeling a deep sense of kinship with her. She was obviously as out of her depth as he was. "They helped take down the frisbee things." He gestured vaguely at the carnage in the room.
"Okay," said Alejandra, looking around with a dazed expression. "That's…wow. Thanks for saving us, I guess."
She got to her feet painfully, still massaging her head. Then her gaze settled on Tony Stark, and she straightened abruptly. "Uh, Mr. Stark, sir, I'm so sorry about all this," she stammered nervously. "It's well, actually an honor to meet you in person, you're literally, like, my favorite superhero ever. Thank you so much for saving our asses from these…whatever these things are. And like, for saving New York in 2012, and working on sustainable energy, and-"
"I'm sorry, who are you again?"
Embarrassed, Alejandra gestured towards the Stark Industries lanyard and ID card around her neck. "I'm Alejandra de la Garza, an SI intern. I work here part-time as a tour guide at the museum. There was a field trip from a school in Midtown. It was all going fine until we lost track of one of the kids on our way to the panic room. Peter Parker, he's a 10th grader, right?" She glanced at Harrington for confirmation, who nodded. "We need to find him."
"A field trip," Stark said, his voice flat. He turned, pinning Spider-Man with a pointed glare.
The superhero ducked his head and half-shrugged sheepishly, and Harrington felt another jolt of shocked recognition. He had seen Peter do that dozens of times during Academic Decathlon practice, every time he messed up a question. It really was his student behind that mask.
Stark was looking towards Harrington now. "And I'm guessing you're one of the teachers?" he asked. There was a note of apprehension in his voice. The billionaire knew very well that Harrington could blow Spider-Man's secret wide open if he wanted to. Well, Harrington definitely had no intention of exposing Peter's identity to a young woman barely out of high school herself.
"I'm Roger Harrington," he said. "I'm a science teacher at Midtown Tech. We were eating lunch in the cafeteria when the alarms went off. Alejandra and the other tour guide led us to a panic room on the tenth floor. That was when we did a headcount and figured out one of our students was missing." Harrington didn't miss the way Peter winced at that, shrinking into himself. "Alejandra bravely volunteered to guide me through the building. Which, thank you again, by the way."
"You're welcome," said Alejandra. "We still need to find him though, so shouldn't we…?" She gestured at the path ahead of them, obviously wondering why they were still wasting time talking.
"Actually, Spider-Man already found him," Harrington told her. "He said he stumbled on him wandering around and took him to a panic room on this floor." He looked in Stark's direction, hoping he'd have the presence of mind to go along with the hastily constructed excuse. "You're going take me to him now, isn't that right?"
"Yes, of course," said Stark. He turned and smiled at Alejandra. "Thank you so much for everything you've done today, but I think you should go and get yourself checked out by Medical, okay?"
"I…" Alejandra stared at Stark, still obviously starstruck and overwhelmed. "Okay. I'm glad you found him. Thanks again for saving us." She turned and headed for Medical, still wincing and massaging her head.
Then it was just the three of them in the hallway.
The smile slipped from Stark's lips. "So," he said grimly. "I guess we have a lot to talk about."
"Yeah," said Harrington, glancing at his still-masked student, who looked far more vulnerable standing there in his superhero costume than he had ever looked in Harrington's classroom. "We really do."
…
Stark took them to an elevator, heading up to the seventy-third floor of the building. It was a quiet, tense ride up. Harrington's mind drifted to the rest of his students who were still in the panic room downstairs, wondered how Dell was managing with them by himself. His phone, which had not stopped vibrating since this mess had started, buzzed again in his pocket.
Stark led them to a small private boardroom which had a mid-sized conference table, motioning for them to take their seats. Peter, who was still in full costume, sat down gingerly on the plush black chair, looked completely incongruous in such a corporate environment. "Peter, could you take off the mask, please?" he asked. "I'd like to have this conversation face to face."
The kid froze, his breath stuttering. Stark immediately laid a calming hand on his shoulder. "You should probably go and get changed anyway, Pete," he said. "You can't head back to school looking like that." He frowned. "Please tell me you actually remember where you dumped your backpack this time?"
"Um," said Peter sheepishly, and Stark rolled his eyes.
"Of course not. It's fine, take your time. We'll be here when you get back."
"Wait!" Harrington exclaimed as Peter began to get up. "Do you have your phone on you?"
"Um, yeah?"
"Great." Harrington grabbed a notepad-and-pen set from the table and pushed it towards his student. "Write your number down. I'm not letting you out of my sight again without having a way of getting a hold of you."
Peter did as he was instructed and then left the room, his head darting between the two men before he closed the door behind him. Stark wasted no time after his departure, his previous warmth now replaced with sharp edges and shrewd eyes. "Here's how this is going to work," he said. "I've already told FRIDAY to contact my lawyers. They're probably already on their way here with a watertight NDA, and you are going to sign it before you leave here today. Peter will go back to being just a regular student in your class, and if you do anything to reveal him, I will personally see to it that you're never hired anywhere else again."
"Excuse me?" Harrington was on his feet, incensed. "Just who the hell do you think you are, here? You might be one of the most powerful men in the world, but I'm his teacher and he is a fifteen-year-old child. You don't get to try and intimidate me into silence, here."
"You can't tell anyone!" Stark was on his feet now, his voice raised in panic. "if his identity gets out-"
"Fuck his identity." Harrington was completely beside himself now. "Peter is so much more than Spider-Man, he has so much more potential even if you don't see him as anything but a superhero sidekick. If you think I'm going to sign anything until I'm absolutely sure it's in his best interests, then you're out of your damn mind!" By the look on his face, he had apparently shocked Stark into silence. "He told me you were his mentor," he continued, still fuming. "The last time I checked mentorship doesn't involve letting a teenager get into firefights with criminals! The only thing he should be worrying about at his age is doing homework and finding dates to the Winter Formal, and instead you're having him fight underworld dons and going to Germany to battle armed, dangerous war criminals!"
"I didn't know it was going to be like that. They were my friends. I thought we were just going to talk and maybe exchange a few half-hearted blows, I thought it would be good training for him. If I had known it was going to become a real fight-"
"Good training for what, taking down the Vulture?" Harrington snapped. "Or almost getting killed while trying to stop a ferry boat from being torn apart? That ship was almost split in half; it was on the news for days. Dozens of people would have died; Peter could have died. He's just a child, and here you have him playing superhero as if-"
"Playing superhero?" Stark took an angry step forward, his hands balling up into fists at his sides. "Is that really what you think? He saved your life Washington Monument, or did you conveniently forget about that? If it hadn't been for him playing superhero that day, you would all have fallen to your deaths. So you might want to think about that before you decide to ruin his entire life!"
His words left a ringing silence, and they stared at each other, both breathing harshly.
"I know he saved us," Harrington said finally. "I do know that, and I'm grateful, but he still shouldn't be exposed to this kind of violence on a daily basis."
"You think I don't know that?" Stark spoke with a guilty, desperate frustration that caught Harrington by surprise. "I'm not the one who got him into this. He was going out on his own months before SHIELD found out about him. He was fourteen when he started taking down muggers and gang members and would-be rapists with no protection at all, wearing a ridiculous onesie he made by hand. I did my best to protect him, I tried to give him a better suit. After the ferry boat, I even distanced myself from him and told him to stop. And then he went after the Vulture without any protection, without even telling me where he was. That bastard brought a fucking building down on his head, and he almost died, and he couldn't even call me for help because I'd taken away his suit-"
"What?" Harrington broke in. "Liz's dad almost…? Oh my god."
Stark just stared at Harrington, his eyes pained and helpless.
"Did she know?" Harrington asked. "Liz, I mean. Did she know he was Spider-Man?"
"No," said Stark. "The only people who know are his aunt, my bodyguard Happy Hogan, me, and now you."
Harrington sank back into his chair, his anger now replaced with a consuming sense of fear as he realized the situation he was in. As a teacher he'd been trained to spot signs of abuse, addiction, and neglect; he knew what to look for and whom to contact if a child seemed depressed, but he had no idea what he was supposed to do about this.
If Harrington did report this to Morita, he knew the principal would want to involve other people. The school psychologist for sure, but also, probably, Child Protective Services. After all, Peter was putting himself in harm's way on a daily basis, taking regular beatings from supervillains. Harrington was fairly certain that fell under his obligations as a mandated reporter for the state of New York. He knew he was probably required to report this, but the thought of getting all of those people involved, of threatening Peter's place with his last remaining family member...
His spiraling thoughts were interrupted by a sharp knock at the door. Harrington tensed when he saw the lawyer Stark had mentioned, holding a thick legal contract printed on the Stark Industries letterhead. Stark took the papers from the lawyer and closed the door, then placed the NDA in front of Harrington with a determined expression. "Sign it," he said.
"No." Harrington pushed his chair back instinctively, putting distance between himself and the conference table.
"Look, I know you're angry," said Stark seriously. "You have every reason to be. God knows I haven't done a good enough job keeping him safe, and I appreciate that you're trying to protect him too. Signing this NDA is how you can do that best. You know as well as I do that if anyone learns who he is, it will destroy any shot he has at having a normal life."
"I'm sorry, but I can't," said Harrington, feeling helpless and deeply conflicted. "I need time to think. You can't expect me to just sign a legal document without even reading it. Besides, I still think it might be in Peter's best interests to at least report this to the principal."
"If you get even one more person involved, it's only a matter of time before it gets out," Stark pointed out. "First the principal, then a couple of other teachers, then a student overhears it and then it's in the news and criminals are going after his aunt and his friends, attacking him at school. And then there will be nothing either one of us can do to protect him."
Harrington couldn't hold back a shudder at the picture that Stark was painting, but he also knew this wasn't that simple. "You're forgetting that Peter's not my only student," he reminded Stark. "Even if keeping this a secret is in his best interests, there are five hundred other kids attending Midtown High. What happens to them if someone comes after Spider-Man the way the Vulture did only a few weeks ago?"
"That won't happen again, because no one else is going to find out," Stark insisted. "The only reason anyone would is if you report it. That's the whole point."
"You sure about that?" Harrington countered. "Are you really telling me that Adrian Toomes doesn't know? He came after Peter while he was at school, at the Homecoming Dance."
"Peter saved his life, and his daughter's. Toomes owes Peter. He hasn't said anything yet, and he won't say anything now."
"Maybe," said Harrington, "but I hope you realize how lucky we were that the only collateral damage from that mess was a few destroyed buses. It could have been so much worse. If any other kids had wandered out of the gym and stumbled onto that fight..." He inhaled deeply, trying not to think about how easily that could have happened. "If I keep this secret today and there's an attack like that again, and one of my other kids gets killed, how am I supposed to live with that? Can you tell me that?"
Stark looked shaken by the question. He opened his mouth as if he wanted to keep arguing, but no words came out. For a long moment, the two of them stared at each other, at an impasse.
"Look, as much as I'd like to, I can't guarantee everyone's safety and protection," Stark said finally, and Harrington could tell that it pained him to admit it. "All I can say to convince you is this: You called your students your kids just now. That means Peter has to be, too. So I'm begging you here, please help me protect him, because right now, you're the only one who can."
Unable to look for a second longer into Stark's fearful, pleading eyes, Harrington leaned forward and buried his face in his hands. He could barely breathe through the tightness in his chest. He heard the sound of the door opening and closing, and then there were shuffling, hesitant footsteps.
"Mr. Harrington?" Peter's voice was tinged with worry. "Are you okay?"
Harrington schooled his expression and looked up. He took in Peter's appearance, his unkempt hair, the frayed backpack and the black T-shirt featuring one of his ridiculous science puns, 'Don't trust atoms, they make up everything.' The leaden feeling in his stomach increased.
"I'm really sorry," said Peter miserably. "I know I promised I wouldn't sneak off again, but I couldn't ignore an attack like that, not when there were people in danger and I was close enough to do something about it."
"You don't have to apologize for trying to save lives, Peter," Harrington said tiredly.
"Uh…that's, yeah. Thanks for saying that." He paused, fidgeted with the sleeves of his shirt. "So...are you going to like, tell anyone about this?"
"I honestly don't know." Harrington tried not to let himself be affected by the way Peter's face fell, his eyes filling with anxiety. "This has just been a lot, and I need a couple of days to think it through. What I can promise is that I won't decide anything without telling you first. That's all I can really give you right now." Harrington's phone buzzed audibly against the chair he was sitting against. He was reminded suddenly that Dell and the others were still downstairs, waiting. "We have to go," he said, standing abruptly. "We've already spent too long up here, and Mr. Dell and the others are probably out of their minds with worry downstairs."
Stark nodded and stood as well. "Let's table this till the weekend." He was all business now, his previous worry and desperation concealed behind a polite mask. He reached into his suit pocket and pulled out a business card. "Here, this has my personal number. Peter's aunt is free on Saturdays. If you can make some time, we can address your concerns and answer any questions you have. That'll give you a couple of days to read through the NDA, too."
"That sounds great," Harrington said in relief. "Saturday evening, around five?"
"Perfect. Should we go to Peter's house or yours? It can't be in public, and it can't be here. There are always reporters hanging around outside the Tower. Although I guess I could send a car..."
Harrington hesitated. He wasn't sure which of those three options were worse, but either way, meeting with a student off school grounds without the school's permission was a fireable offense. "Peter's," he finally decided.
As he rode the elevator back down with Peter in silence, Harrington's mind was consumed with the choice that now lay before him. It should have been simple. One kid's future weighed against hundreds, a complete no-brainer...except for one thing. Because Stark was right. Peter was one of his kids too. And Harrington had no fucking idea what he was going to do.
…
The bus ride back to Midtown was subdued. Peter kept a low profile, sitting with Ned and MJ and not saying much. The three of them looked very downcast as they sat huddled together at the front of the bus. As he watched them, Harrington wondered what Ned and MJ knew about Spider-Man. He was sure that Ned knew the truth, at least. He and Peter were inseparable. His sense of dread and anxiety increased. Stark had told him that only four people knew, but here was at least one other kid that was probably involved in this mess.
They arrived back in school, greeted by a profoundly relieved Jim Morita and a crowd of anxious parents. When he was finally alone in his classroom again, Harrington collapsed at a desk, feeling completely drained and on edge because of the day's events. He stared unseeingly at his hands and tried not to think about anything.
There was a light knock at the door, and Jim Morita stepped inside. His expression immediately morphed into one of concern when he saw Harrington sitting slumped and blank-faced in the middle of his classroom at a student's desk. "Roger, are you okay?"
"Fine, yeah." Harrington tried to shake off the stupor he'd fallen into.
"I know it's been a hell of a day," Morita said sympathetically. "You probably want nothing more than to go home, but I need to talk to you and Julius first. I need to know exactly what happened today with Peter Parker so we can figure out how to address it. Can you come by my office?"
"Yeah, sure." Harrington rose from his chair, feeling older and more tired than he had in years.
Despite his best efforts, his exhaustion must have shown on his face, because when he walked into Morita's office, Dell, who was already waiting for them, looked at him with unconcealed worry. Harrington tried to smile reassuringly, but it came out more like a grimace. He took a seat, pretending not to notice Dell and Morita exchanging troubled looks over his head.
"So can you walk me through what happened?" Morita asked. "How exactly did Peter go missing?"
Harrington only half-listened as Dell narrated the events of the first half of the day. He paused when he got to the moment of Harrington's departure from the panic room, eyeing him with expectant curiosity. Harrington took a deep, steadying breath before he started talking.
He stuck to the facts for most of the story. By the time he got to the attack of the flying frisbee drones, both Morita and Dell were staring at him in horror. There was a churning in the pit of Harrington's stomach as told them the lie he'd come up with to protect Peter's identity, explaining how the teen had been found by Spider-Man and been taken to safety.
"I cannot believe that kid was stupid enough to wander off like that," Dell fumed when he was finished.
"And this is the second time," Morita noted grimly. "I'm going to recommend a one-week suspension, along with a written apology to you and Dell. And I'm going to call his aunt in for a meeting."
If Harrington hadn't known the full story, he would have agreed completely with the punishment, but now he found himself hesitating. Peter didn't deserve to have a permanent blemish on his transcripts for trying to help people. "I'm not sure we should do a suspension," he said, receiving looks of surprise and incredulity from his coworkers. "You know he's a very bright student and he's a genuinely good kid, even despite all this. If he wants to get into a top college, he needs to have a clean record."
"But there have to be some real consequences here," Morita said with a heavy frown. "He didn't just put himself at risk, Roger. You could have died out there, and the tour guide actually was hurt."
Harrington searched his mind for a suitable alternative. "Maybe we can do an in-school suspension instead," he suggested. "And then as a big, long-term consequence, we can ban him from all future trips off campus for the rest of his time in high school. Anything that happens off-campus, he can't go to, even if it's a picnic or a school dance. I think that's a pretty big punishment, but at least it won't go on his transcripts."
"What about Academic Decathlon?" Dell asked, his eyebrows rising.
Harrington concealed a wince. This was going to hit the team hard, but he knew Morita wouldn't accept anything less. Besides, he himself wasn't sure if he wanted himself or any other teacher to have to chaperone Peter on a field trip ever again, and this took care of that. "He can participate when we host in-school competitions, but he'll have to stay behind for the bigger ones."
"Fine," said Morita. "I'll write an email to his aunt and request a meeting as soon as possible. After that, we should…"
Harrington's focus slipped as he felt a wave of crushing relief at Morita's agreement. It was accompanied by a swelling sense of guilt and shame at omitting the truth like this and manipulating the entire situation. He couldn't believe he was already lying for Peter when he hadn't even made up his mind yet.
"…Roger? Hey, you alright?"
He opened his eyes with a start, never remembering closing them in the first place. Dell was leaning towards him with an expression of concern, and Morita had half risen in his chair, his face alarmed.
"Yeah, sorry." His voice cracked even as he tried to reassure them. "I, uh, this whole thing has just been a lot. I need...I need the rest of the week off. I know it's short notice to find a good sub, but-"
"It's not a problem, Roger." Morita's eyes were gentle as he watched him closely. "I can't imagine what this has been like for you, or the kinds of memories it's probably stirred up. You can have as many days as you need, even into next week if you really need it."
"No, no, that's okay," said Harrington. "I just need a couple of days. Thanks. I'll make lesson plans for the sub and email them in by tonight."
The prospect filled Harrington with despair. Making full-fledged plans for two classes, for two days of absence would take at least two hours of work. Right now, with how tired he was feeling, all he wanted to do was go home and sleep for a week.
"Don't bother with the plans," Dell suggested, correctly reading the exhaustion on his face. "We can just use the emergency sub plans in Google Drive. If that's okay, Jim?" He turned towards the principal.
"Of course," Morita agreed immediately. "That's what they're there for. Just go and get some rest, Roger. You don't need to worry about anything else."
With how raw he was feeling, their concern and empathy moved him to tears. Mortified, he tried to conceal the moment of weakness, but from the looks on their faces, he knew they had seen it. "Thanks," he choked out. "I'll just…"
He rose and bolted out of the room like a bat out of hell, speeding past two teachers in the hallway without even a nod of acknowledgment when they called out to him, wanting nothing more than to just get out of the building and into his car and back to his apartment as fast as he possibly could.
…
TBC…
Up Next:
He looked again at his student, taking in the rigid shoulders, the carefully controlled breathing and the dark circles under his eyes. He was sitting beside Stark, who had a calming hand on his shoulder. The billionaire glared in his direction. "Well?" he demanded. "You gonna leave us in suspense all night?"
Chapter Text
When he got home that evening, Harrington fell into bed and slept for fourteen hours straight. When he woke the next day, he felt better; less emotionally fragile and more ready to face the world.
The first thing he did was look through the notifications on his phone. There was an email from Dell, who'd sent him a copy of the lesson plans he'd left for the sub that day. He sent his coworker a quick, heartfelt thank you. Then, he focused his attention on the teachers' group chat, which had exploded overnight. The attack on Stark Industries was all over the news, and several teachers had shared links to articles that referenced Midtown Tech. Harrington felt a spike of anxiety at that, but most of the articles just mentioned that a high school field trip had been caught up in the attack without going into too much detail.
Stark Industries had released a press statement the previous day accusing Justin Hammer of orchestrating the attack. Apparently, the drones used in the attack on SI had similarities to some of Hammer Industries' signature designs. Nothing could be proved, but it was well known Hammer Industries had been trying to replicate the Arc Reactor technology for several years. Everyone also knew that Justin Hammer still had ways of influencing his company, even disgraced and incarcerated. Though the company denied his involvement, Hammer Industries' stock had been in free fall since the news broke, which gave Harrington a moment of petty satisfaction.
After scrolling through the news, Harrington made himself sit down at his desk and look at the twenty-page NDA he'd been ignoring. The writing was deliberately obtuse, full of legal jargon Harrington could barely understand. He had to pause several times to look up words he didn't know. As he read through it a second and a third time, he was increasingly alarmed by how extreme some of the clauses seemed. He knew Stark had done it to protect Peter, but the consequences of breaking the agreement would be genuinely catastrophic for Harrington. He was in over his head with this, and the smart thing to do would have been to get a lawyer to look at it...but he also didn't want to get a stranger involved. It seemed like too big a risk.
Once he thought he had a grasp of the NDA, he spent the better part of the day pacing around his tiny apartment, trying to play out every possible scenario. He pictured himself walking up to Morita's door on Monday and telling him that Peter was Spider-Man. He imagined pleading with him not to get anyone else involved, to not report this to CPS, to keep Pete's identity protected. As much as he tried, he couldn't think of anything he could possibly say that would convince Morita to agree to that.
He imagined himself signing this, and then saw nameless, faceless villains attacking the school, going after Spider-Man. He heard the ring of gunfire in his ears and envisioned barricaded classroom doors, kids cowering behind desks, sobbing and afraid in the eerie darkness of a lockdown. He pictured them bleeding out the way Ashley had, collateral damage in some supervillain's vendetta against Spider-Man. It was every teacher's worst nightmare, and Harrington felt paralyzed with horror at the mere idea of it.
He spent hours online, looking up everything he could about Spider-Man, going through every sighting in the last year. Some of the videos left him numb and shaking a little, as he imagined Peter under that mask, in the midst of that kind of danger. The kind of risks he had taken without anyone even realizing it was a teenager behind that mask were insane. Would some of these criminals have stopped if they'd known he was a child? he wondered. Probably not. Adrian Toomes certainly hadn't. Harrington re-watched the accident at the ferry and the recording from Germany and forced himself not to count how many times his student had almost died in the past year.
The worst video was the shaky, hazy recording of Spider-Man in what was basically a red and blue jumpsuit, walking out of a destroyed warehouse, weary and in pain. It only had a few thousand views and had obviously been captured at a distance by a bystander with a smartphone. The date and timestamp showed it had been uploaded on the night of Homecoming.
Harrington watched it over and over again, not sure why it was this video that disturbed him the most. Maybe it was knowledge that this had happened on a night when Peter should have been safe at school, dancing with the girl he liked. Maybe it was how vulnerable Peter looked in his handmade costume, or the painful knowledge that this had happened when Peter had been completely alone and without allies.
And still, despite that, he'd kept on fighting.
Harrington was beginning to understand what Stark had been trying to tell him, that nothing would stop Peter from being Spider-Man. Harrington could report this to Morita, he could get CPS involved, he could even report it to the press...but it would make no difference. The kid would still find a way to be out there, doing this, every day, with or without his anonymity.
In the end, it was this realization which made Harrington's decision for him. He knew he had to step up and help this kid, this brave, stupid, selfless kid who tried every day to help others, no matter what it cost him. If Peter could do that for strangers, then he deserved to have someone brave enough to look out for him too.
Harrington closed his laptop and sat quietly, looking at the sheets of paper strewn across his desk, covered with notes and bullet points and legal definitions scribbled over the past two days as he'd struggled and questioned and second-guessed everything. Making the choice brought some relief, but only a little. Harrington knew what he was signing on for; he knew that it wasn't just going to be just this one decision but a series of impossible choices. It was going to be three years of stress and heartache and constantly second-guessing himself, and he would face it completely alone.
If he was truly going to help Peter, then he had to do more than just keep his identity safe. He was a teacher before he was anything else, and he couldn't overlook the way Peter's grades, his attendance and his focus had all slipped as a result of Spider-Man. He would have to do something about that, too, even if it meant breaking more rules and crossing more uncrossable lines.
Harrington took a long, deep breath, making himself face the enormity of it, truly hold it in his mind. Then, he reached for one of the many pens that always lay on his desk for grading, and he signed the NDA in red.
…
On Saturday evening, Harrington sat at a table in Peter Parker's living room, trying not to show how tense he was. Across from him, Tony Stark watched him carefully. Peter's aunt hovered nearby with a restless air and an unsettled expression. She was vibrating with nervous energy, far too wired to sit down. Harrington was reminded strongly of Peter on his more fidgety, frenetic days.
He looked again at his student, taking in the rigid shoulders, the carefully controlled breathing and the dark circles under his eyes. He was sitting beside Stark, who had a calming hand on his shoulder. The billionaire glared in his direction. "Well?" he demanded. "You gonna leave us in suspense all night?"
Harrington instantly felt terrible. While he'd been getting his bearings and gathering his thoughts, they'd been on the edge of their seats, anxiously awaiting his decision. Quickly, he drew the NDA out of his bookbag and tried to hand it to Stark, who inexplicably jerked away from him. "I don't like to be handed things," he said.
"Uh, okay." Harrington put the NDA down and slid it across the table, nonplussed. He looked Peter right in the eye, his expression as earnest and reassuring as he knew how to make it. "I signed it. Your secret's safe with me, Peter. I promise."
The kid closed his eyes and inhaled deeply, his shoulders sagging as the tension left him. Stark also let out a shaky breath, hands darting forward to snatch up the NDA as if he was half afraid that Harrington would try to take it back and change his mind.
"Thank God," May Parker's voice was choked with emotion. Shakily, she sank down in the chair adjacent to Harrington, her nervousness finally bleeding out of her. "I really thought that was going to be it. I was sure you were going to..." She shook her head and gave him a shaky smile of pure relief.
"I'm sorry I caused you all so much worry over this," Harrington said. "I just wanted to be completely sure before I agreed to anything."
"And are you?" Stark's eyes were sharp and assessing on Harrington's face.
"Yeah, I am," he said firmly. "No second thoughts." He paused, watching as they all relaxed further. "That said, I do have a few concerns about this that I need to discuss with the two of you in private. If you wouldn't mind giving us a few minutes, Peter?"
"Wait, what?" Peter looked shocked and discomfited, even a little betrayed. Over his head, the other two adults exchanged surprised glances. "You want to talk about me while I'm gone? Why?"
"It's nothing bad," Harrington assured him. "I just need to run a few things by your aunt and mentor."
Peter sounded heartbreakingly young, a bewildered crack in his voice as he asked, "But why can't I be there?"
Harrington's resolve hardened. "For the same reason that every teacher has the right to request a private meeting with a parent or guardian," he said pointedly. "Spider-Man or not, you are still a kid, Peter. I'm doing this in your best interests."
Looking mulish, Peter opened his mouth to argue, but thankfully, his aunt intervened. "Honey, why don't you go buy us some sandwiches from Mr. Delmar's? A No. 7 for me, please. I'm sure Mr. Harrington and Tony won't mind if you get them your favorite No. 5."
"What? But that's blocks away, May! And it's not even dinnertime yet!"
"Isn't it always dinnertime for you?" Stark snorted. "Trust me, I've seen the way you eat, Pete, and you could easily eat the Hulk out of house and home. And I would know; I used to live with guy."
"I do not eat that much!"
May cleared her throat, shooting her nephew a humorous look. "Uh huh, sure you don't."
"Come on, skedaddle," said Stark. "Let the adults have the parent teacher conference. I may never have been to one myself, but I think I know how this works. May, do you have any embarrassing baby pictures of Peter on your phone? We can start with those, right?"
"Oh my god, Mr. Stark!" Peter looked mortified, glancing in horror at Harrington, who was barely able to contain his laughter.
"Go on, honey," said May, shaking her head in amusement. "We'll be done before you know it."
Still looking disgruntled, Peter glowered at all three of them before he finally let out an aggrieved sigh and headed out the door. The mood immediately grew more serious when he was gone, as the other two adults watched Harrington warily.
"So, I went over the NDA, and there were a couple of things that-"
May held up a hand. "Give it a few minutes. He has enhanced hearing."
Oh.
That explained why she had sent him blocks away instead of just to his room. The silence was painfully awkward as they all waited. Then, finally, she said, "Alright, he should be far enough away by now."
Harrington straightened his shoulders. "I have a few concerns," he told them. "Three, to be exact. The first is the security at the school now that we have Spider-Man in attendance."
Stark nodded. "I can take care of that."
"Good." Harrington let out a relieved breath. "We would need a full course of ALICE training for the entire staff and student body. That's active shooter and emergency training; the 'Run, Hide, Fight' protocol. It's the most effective way to deal with threats, but we haven't had the budget to pay for it, so we're still doing traditional shelter in place drills, which are outdated by now."
"I'll donate enough for every school in the district to undergo ALICE training," Stark promised. "Anything else?"
"Yeah. I want panic buttons in every classroom alerting NYPD and every superhero in the city in case there's an emergency."
"Done," said Stark.
Harrington took another deep breath. If he had a man like Tony Stark at the table, he might as well stretch his generosity as far as it would go. "I also want those measures kept in place after Peter graduates. Regular ALICE training and drills every year, and I want two Gunshot Wound Kits in every classroom. And we get to keep the panic buttons."
"Fair enough," said Stark. He looked a little startled by Harrington's intensity. "None of that seems unreasonable."
"It's terrifying that you feel like you need all that," May remarked, "and also really, really depressing."
"Tell me about it," said Harrington.
"What else?" Stark asked. "You said there were three things."
"Yeah." Harrington paused, taking a moment to arrange his thoughts. "I was wondering if you could add a, uh, I guess you could call it a caveat, to the NDA."
"You already agreed to keeping this a secret," Stark protested. "You can't back out of it now."
"I'm not backing out," Harrington said sharply. "I read through that document six times over, from cover to cover. I might not have understood every word of it, but I did understand the part which said that if I reveal my knowledge for any reason, then I'll have to forfeit the right to seek employment in the fields of education, research or any STEM related industry. That would basically render me completely unemployable, but I still signed it. I understand the consequences. I'm not trying to get out of this."
May Parker was staring at Stark, aghast and a little outraged. "Oh my god, you actually put that in writing? Tony, what were you thinking? Were you trying to convince him to not sign it?"
"I was trying to protect the Spiderling," said Stark defensively, though he looked a little shamefaced, "but yeah, that might have been a little... if you want out of that clause-"
"I don't, actually," Harrington said, surprising them both. "If Principal Morita ever finds out I knew about this and didn't say anything, I would be fired on the spot. He wouldn't want to do it, but I'm a mandated reporter for the state of New York, and I'm knowingly allowing a child to put themselves in potentially life-threatening situations on a daily basis." He paused and let the weight of that sink in. "This NDA at least gives me some protection. It probably won't be enough for me to keep my job, but I can say you pressured me into signing it while I was overwhelmed and traumatized by the attack on SI."
Stark flinched, and exchanged a troubled, guilty look with Peter's aunt. "So what did you want to add, then?"
Harrington's chest felt tight, his words coming out choppy and a little breathless. "Something that says if I'm forced under duress to reveal Peter's identity, to protect the lives of other students, then I can do that freely. Not that I would want to, ever- but if I have to…to choose, between Peter and a class full of innocent kids, if it's one against-" His voice fractured, his hands clenching into a white-knuckled grip on the arms of his chair as his pulse spiked with anxiety.
"Oh my god." May Parker was horrified and distressed, and Stark was staring at him, pale.
"It probably won't come to that," Harrington said, trying to convince them as well as himself. "I hope it doesn't. I just...I just want to be prepared."
"Yeah, I can add it in," said Stark, shaken. "Would you, uh, like me to add other exceptions? I mean, if you were the one being held hostage-"
"No," said Harrington hoarsely. "That's not necessary."
They stared at him again, speechless, and he looked away, uncomfortable under their scrutiny.
"I don't even know what to say," said May finally. "We're obviously grateful. And, uh, I'm so glad you asked Peter to step out of the room. This isn't a conversation I would ever have wanted him to hear."
Harrington nodded. It was the reason why he'd insisted.
"Actually, I'd like to add another clause to the NDA," said Stark suddenly, surprising him. "If Peter's identity is ever revealed by accident and you end up having to pay the price, SI's legal team will help you with any legal charges you might face. You'll also have a standing job offer from SI's R&D department. I know you have advanced degrees in Chemistry and Physics from Culver University, so you're obviously qualified. And of course, you'll be very well-compensated."
Harrington absorbed this and felt some of his anxiety dissipating. There was one concern assuaged, at least. "Thank you," he said.
"What was the third thing?"
Harrington felt his shoulders relaxing for the first time since this conversation had started. This, at least, was familiar ground for a parent teacher conference. "I've been having some…concerns, since the end of last year, about Peter's academic performance," he told them. "Nothing too serious; he still works hard, and he still gets mostly A's. But he's missed some assignments and tests that have hurt his grade. I checked before I came here, and right now, his overall GPA is at a 3.4. That's good, but not good enough for a student like him. It needs to be higher if he's going to get into schools like MIT or Harvard or Columbia. Especially when he's also given up some extra-curriculars that would have looked really good on his college applications."
"He said he didn't have time for Band and Robotics," said Stark in guilty realization. "Damn, I never thought…"
"It won't be a big deal if we can get his grades up," Harrington assured him. "He has the internship at SI. If he gets a recommendation letter from you, no college is going to care that he dropped Band his sophomore year. I'm more concerned about his academic performance. He's a smart kid, but this is a rigorous school for very high-performing kids. The workload is high, and even the brightest students- and Peter is one of them- need to stay on top of their schoolwork and finish assignments if they want to get good grades. Things will only get more intense in 11th and 12th grade when he starts taking more AP classes."
May Parker's expression was pinched as she shook her head in frustration. "I've already told him he needs to put his schoolwork first," she fretted, "and he does try, he really does, but if someone needs help, then he just has to go out there and do something about it. He can't help himself."
"Yeah, I got that," said Harrington drily. "I understand that some absences and missed work can't be helped given his situation, but I do have a potential solution. It's going to involve a lot of…creative manipulation of the system, but I'm not seeing a lot of other choices."
"We're listening," said Stark intently.
"The problem here is that there are only so many hours in a day, and in that time, Peter can't be out there, being Spider-Man, and also finish everything else he needs to. If he just had more time, if teachers gave him deadline extensions on homework or let him make up tests later when necessary, that's all he would really need. And if we could get him permission to leave the building during the day sometimes, that would take care of the problem of having too many unexcused absences on his record."
"How would we do that?" May Parker asked, frowning. "It's not like we can just tell them he's Spider-Man. It would be one thing if he had a learning disability, or ADHD-"
"-or if he was struggling with his mental health," Harrington finished for her, watching as they both stilled. "Look, the fact is, Peter's been through an awful lot. Losing both his parents, then his uncle. It would make sense if he had a few unresolved issues. I'm not trying to diminish what he's been through by using it as an excuse, but he is only fifteen. Every single one of his teachers would understand if those traumas had finally caught up with him. If he struggled with anxiety sometimes or needed extra time to finish an assignment. Or if he needed to leave during the day, to see his therapist, sometimes."
Stark was staring at him, a stricken expression on his face, and May looked upset and shaken. "You're not even that far off," she said. "He'd never say it aloud, but I know my nephew. He's never been able to forgive himself for not saving Ben."
Fuck, if that isn't the most heartbreaking thing I have ever heard, Harrington thought.
"I'm truly sorry for your loss, Ms. Parker," he told her, "and I'm also sorry for bringing all this up. I would never, ever have tried to use this, if it wasn't for…"
"No, yeah, you're doing it to help Peter," she said, giving him a watery smile. "Ben would have understood. So do I."
"So how would this work, exactly?" Stark asked.
"Well, you would request the school to put him on a 504 Plan," Harrington told them. "For that, he would need documentation from someone licensed. My recommendation would be to take Peter to see a therapist and get the paperwork you need. After that, you can call a meeting with Principal Morita and the school psychologist and explain the situation. Accommodations like extended deadlines shouldn't be a problem; we have lots of other kids in that situation. What's going to be more tricky is getting him permission to be able to just up and leave school in the middle of the day. No school would ever be comfortable with that, but if you gave Principal Morita a convincing reason..."
"We could say he has a shrink close to school," said Stark. "It would make sense for him to need to leave, if his therapist lived nearby and was available to help him. I can definitely arrange for that."
Harrington couldn't hold back a wince. Stark was a man of infinite resources, and he could obviously finagle any paperwork he needed in a matter of hours, but the idea that he might completely invent a psychologist to sell this story didn't sit right with Harrington. The billionaire must have sensed his misgivings, because he frowned and asked, "Is something wrong?"
"No, I just..." Harrington faltered, not sure how to explain his unease. "I know the lie is necessary, but there are kids who really do need these kinds of services, and not just to cover for..." He gestured vaguely towards the skies. "I just- I guess I hope you don't take advantage of the system, or…"
"I get it," Stark told him, and Harrington thought he saw a hint of approval in his eyes. "I won't just fake some paperwork; if we're doing this, he really is getting help. You have my word."
"Thank you," said Harrington, relieved.
"We're the ones who should be thanking you," said May. "All this, everything you're doing for Peter..."
"I'm just doing my job," said Harrington dismissively. "It's nothing."
"It's not nothing," Stark disagreed. "After we talked on Wednesday, I was almost sure you were going to report him. I was drawing up plans to deal with it; I even prepared a press release to handle the situation on our terms...he said he wanted to go up there and announce it by saying I am Spider-Man." He snorted, shaking his head at the thought, but the humor was fleeting. "I thought you were going to be a huge pain in my ass, and instead here you are, helping us fix a problem we didn't even know he had."
Harrington ducked his head, not completely sure how to respond. "Uh, anyway," he said. "The important thing is, if we're on the same page about this then when Peter gets back we should run it by him and see what he has to say about it."
As if on cue, a key turned in the main door. Peter stood in the doorway, watching them all with a wary expression, his hands full of takeout containers. "Are you guys done?"
"Yeah, kid." Stark gave him an affectionate grin, waving him inside. "That smells amazing. I can't wait to try these famous Queens sandwiches."
"So everything's okay, then?" Peter asked, still looking uneasily between them. "What did you guys talk about?"
"Well, you won't believe this, but turns out your aunt did have some naked baby pictures-"
"Oh my god, Mr. Stark, could you please just not?"
"Why don't you have a seat, Peter," Harrington broke in with a warm smile. "Everything's fine; you don't have to worry, okay? There's just a few things we'd like to explain."
...
TBC…
Up Next:
Morita leaned against the side of the door, watching him closely. "I just wanted to check in. How are you doing?"
"Pretty good," Harrington said with fake cheeriness, "I had a very relaxing-"
"Cut the bullshit." Morita strode into the room and took a seat across from Harrington, facing him squarely. "You left my office in tears last week. You asked for days off, which you never do. And now you're coming off a four-day weekend looking completely exhausted. So really, Roger. How are you doing?"
Notes:
Notes:
From Washington.edu https://www.washington.edu/doit/what-difference-between-iep-and-504-plan, “A 504 Plan is a plan developed to ensure that a child who has a disability identified under the law and is attending an elementary or secondary educational institution receives accommodations that will ensure their academic success and access to the learning environment.” And yes, anxiety, depression and mood disorders also count as disabilities. From what I’ve researched, the accommodations could be things like extended deadlines, excused or modified assignments, permission to leave and see a counselor or even things like scheduled breaks to call your parents if you have separation anxiety. It is not quite as hardcore as an IEP or Individualized Education Plan, because that’s a fully separate learning plan and needs a lot more paperwork.
I thought long and hard about this, and I feel like Peter would definitely have some mental health issues which need to be addressed. I’m not sure if he would really need a 504 Plan if he wasn’t also moonlighting as a superhero, and that is the part which is a little bit morally iffy. I hope I was respectful about that and made it clear that Harrington didn’t want to just use it as an excuse.
Also, a fun fact: Harrington really did go to Culver University, and he also happened to meet Bruce Banner while he was there, stoned out of his mind. Watch this hilarious scene in The Incredible Hulk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=shzkrI73IKE.
Chapter Text
On Monday, as Harrington drove into school an hour early, he couldn't shake a deep sense of uneasiness and disquiet. He thought back to his conversation with Stark, Peter and his aunt two days ago. He'd thought the conversation with the adults had gone fairly well, but it had not been the same case when he'd explained everything to Peter. When Harrington had gone over what accommodations under a 504 Plan usually looked like, Peter had clammed up, looking very unhappy and not at all convinced that this was a good idea. The evening had ended on a sour note.
Harrington didn't really know what to think. He was good at projecting confidence when he needed to, and he'd spoken to Tony Stark and May Parker as if he knew exactly what he was doing, but it wasn't like he had ever been in a situation like this before. He had pulled out all these stops and manipulated the entire system to get Peter the help he thought he needed, but what if he'd been wrong? What if Peter needed something completely different, and Harrington had completely missed the mark?
Trying to shrug off his dark misgivings, Harrington unlocked his classroom and focused instead on the massive pile of worksheets that had sprouted on his desk over the two-day absence. He worked quietly for a long time, losing himself in the monotonous work until he was interrupted by a light knock on his door fifteen minutes before the first bell. He looked up to see Jim Morita standing in the doorway.
"Hey, Jim," he said, smiling in greeting. "How was last week? Did everything go okay with the sub?"
"Yeah, it all went fine." Morita leaned against the side of the door, watching him closely. "I just wanted to check in. How are you doing?"
"Pretty good," Harrington said with fake cheeriness. "I had a very relaxing-"
"Cut the bullshit." Morita strode into the room and took a seat across from Harrington, facing him squarely. "You left my office in tears last week. You asked for days off, which you never do. And now you're coming off a four-day weekend looking completely exhausted. So really, Roger. How are you doing?"
Harrington's barely held together façade evaporated under Morita's gaze. After thirteen years of working with the man on a daily basis, there wasn’t much he could conceal from him. Morita had been one of Ashley's teachers too, back before he'd become the principal. They'd taught her together and mourned her together and picked up the pieces of the Class of 2009 together, alongside Monica, who was the only other teacher still left from that year. Morita had seen Harrington break down in the doorway of his classroom, unable to look at the empty spot where Ashley's desk had once been. He'd talked him off that ledge and calmed him down enough to walk back into class and teach that same day. He of all people knew exactly what it looked like when Harrington was struggling. Harrington dropped the pretense and let his shoulders sag.
"It's just been a really rough year," he admitted. "The disaster at Washington, Liz being forced to leave like that in her senior year, then walking around in the middle of an attack in a museum, again, looking for another missing student..." He swallowed through a suddenly tight throat. "I don't know if I can do it again. Lose another of my kids. I don't know if I can survive that. There's not a day that goes by when Ashley isn't..." His voice broke.
"Yeah, me too," Morita's face was full of pained understanding. "I think about her a lot, too. She was such a great kid, so much going for her, and then to have it all just..." He trailed off. "She would have been twenty-six now, right?"
"Twenty-seven."
"Yeah. Damn." Morita sighed heavily, leaning backwards in his chair. "I can't imagine what last week must have been like. I don't know what to really say to make it easier, but try to remember that Peter's safe now, okay? Everyone is. We don't have any more trips scheduled this year. There's no reason to think we're going to have another emergency."
Except that Peter wasn't safe, Harrington thought. He went out every night and he threw himself into danger, and Harrington had just signed on to watch it happen, for days and weeks and years, an unfolding emergency that he couldn't do anything to stop. But Harrington couldn't say any of that out loud. "Yeah, that's true," he said half-heartedly.
"Just make sure you keep taking care of yourself, yeah?" Morita told him. "Keep seeing your therapist, find some time to relax, drink some wine when you get home today. You can take more personal days if you need them, too. I just don't want to see you burn out because of this."
Touched, Harrington straightened his shoulders, feeling genuinely bolstered by the show of friendship. "Yeah, I'll do that," he said, "Thank you." The reminder about the therapist was a good one. He hadn't scheduled an appointment in a few weeks, but he knew, with all this, that it would definitely help.
"Anytime," Morita said. His eyes fell on the clock on Harrington's wall and he stood up when he saw the time. "I know you probably have stuff to do, so I'll leave you to it. Have a great day, Roger."
"Yeah, thanks," he returned with a smile. "You too."
...
In class that morning, Peter was quieter and more subdued than usual. He didn't once raise his hand to answer a question, and he wouldn't even respond to Ned when his friend leaned towards him and whispered something. Instead, Peter kept looking in Harrington's direction with a troubled, conflicted expression on his face. At the end of class, he hung back after everyone had left, biting uncertainly at his lip.
"Uh, Mr. Harrington? Do you have a few minutes?"
Harrington took in his tense shoulders and the unhappy line of his month and knew this was going to take longer than that. "Sure. Which class do you have right now?"
"Study Hall," Peter answered. "That's why I thought this was a good time."
"Sure, have a seat. Let me just email Ms. Ansari so she knows where you are, okay?" He shot off a quick note, then closed his laptop and focused completely on Peter. "What's going on?"
"I- I just-" Peter's hands twisted together nervously. "This whole thing- it's just been so much. Last week and everything with the 504 Plan. Like, I get it, I know I've missed homework sometimes because of Spider-Man, but..."
"But?"
"I just don't feel right about this," Peter said in a rush. "The accommodations. The extended deadlines and getting a chance to make up tests if I miss them; having teachers treat me like I'm emotionally fragile or whatever. It's not-"
"You're not emotionally fragile," Harrington protested immediately. "Just because you need some help-"
"No, but I shouldn't though," Peter interrupted forcefully. "School was always the one thing I had going for me, the one thing I never needed any help with. And now here I am, needing all this stuff, a whole elaborate plan just to get my work done? This isn't me, Mr. Harrington."
Peter was breathing hard by the time he finished, obviously close to tears. Despite his agitation, Harrington could only feel a perverse sense of relief, hearing this. He'd been so very worried that he was in over his head with Peter, but this, the anxiety about grades, the difficulty with accepting that he needed accommodations, this was all too familiar. This was a conversation Harrington knew how to have.
"First off, your brains are not the only thing you have going for you," Harrington told him. "You're also kind and brave and generous, and most importantly? You have a heart of gold. I've been your teacher since freshman year, and if I had a nickel for every time I've seen you tutoring kids right before a test, or for all the times you didn't show up Flash in class when you easily could have, or for every time you held back on raising your hand just to give someone else a chance to shine too, I'd be richer than Tony Stark."
Peter stared at him, looking thoroughly shocked at having been read so clearly.
"There is absolutely no shame in getting some extra support," Harrington continued. "It doesn't make you less smart. It certainly doesn't mean you failed in some way. In fact, the very purpose of giving students accommodations is to set them up for success, to clear away any barriers that might make them fail. Let me ask you this- did you choose these powers? Did you want to become Spider-Man? How did all this happen to you in the first place?"
Peter flushed at the question. "Remember the field trip to Oscorp last year? So there was this genetically modified radioactive spider..."
"Oh my god." Harrington was so aghast, he completely lost his previous train of thought. "Are you kidding me, Peter? Are you physically incapable of going on a field trip without some kind of disaster falling?"
"I got lost!" Peter exclaimed defensively, "I was taking pictures of stuff for my blog- this was back when I wanted to be a photographer, which, like, such a dumb idea, really- and then I took a wrong turn, and there was this room with a bunch of creepy spiders, and I spent a few minutes checking them out because they were seriously awesome, and I guess one of them kind of escaped from a container?" He shrugged. "I'm not sure how it really happened, but it bit me and then I killed it, and the next day I woke up and was all..." He gestured vaguely at himself.
"Did no one notice you were gone that long?" Harrington still couldn't get past the fact that this had happened on a school trip. "Who was your chaperone?"
"It was, uh, Coach Wilson," Peter answered hesitantly, and oh, Harrington thought, fuming, of course it was. Of all the neglectful, careless, incompetent-
"I was only gone for like five minutes!" Peter exclaimed. "Or maybe like fifteen or twenty, tops. I just got super fascinated with all the cool genetic experiments- they were seriously so cool, Mr. Harrington; you would have loved them. There was even this weird green sea spider suspended over a tub of slimy mucus which- oh-kay, now you look mad and grossed out, wow, okay, shutting up now."
Harrington continued to stare at the kid in complete disbelief and exasperation. "I think we made a very good call banning you from ever going off-campus," he said.
"I'm kind of relieved about that, too, actually," said Peter, surprising him. "I mean, it'll suck to miss Academic Decathlon competitions, but if my friends are ever in danger because of me, or if I have to choose between saving them and protecting my identity..." He sighed. "I just don't want to have to make those kinds of choices again. At least this way, it's out of my hands."
Harrington felt his previous annoyance fade. "Those kinds of choices are exactly what those accommodations are there to prevent," he said. "You shouldn't have to choose between being Spider-Man and being a good student, Peter. And you're far from being the only kid who needs this kind of help. There are lots of other smart, brilliant kids exactly like you who are also on a 504 or an IEP. You're not the only one."
"That's different, though," said Peter. "They have actual issues. They're not superheroes."
"It's not that different," Harrington disagreed. "Do you know there's a name for kids who are identified Gifted and also have a learning disability? We call kids like that twice exceptional. They come in all shapes and sizes- kids who struggle with managing their time despite their obvious brilliance, kids who struggle with anxiety, kids who are dealing with trauma, kids who were forced into a life of super-heroism because of forces beyond their control-"
"I wasn't forced-"
"Sorry, maybe that was the wrong word." Harrington paused for a moment to arrange his thoughts. "I'm not saying you were forced to go out there and help people, but these abilities you have, they aren't something you asked for any more than someone asks to have social anxiety or dyslexia or ADHD. You aren't alone in this, Peter. You might be a superhero, but you're also still just a regular kid. We all need a little help sometimes, and there's no shame in admitting that and accepting it if it's offered."
"So not very exceptional at all despite the fancy label, huh," Peter said, smiling a little. "Is that what you're trying to tell me?"
"You bet." Harrington returned the smile.
The good humor faded from Peter's face as his expression grew more serious. "You're right," he said. "I guess it hurts a little because I just didn't realize how much I did need help, but…I guess that's okay, too."
The soft words struck a chord deep inside Harrington, helping him clarify his own actions and see himself with fresh eyes. He'd been so conflicted about all this, so unsure that he was doing the right thing, but maybe the only thing that really mattered was that he'd acted with courage and tried to help a kid who'd needed it.
"Thank you, Mr. Harrington," said Peter. "I think I really needed to hear that."
And I think I really needed to say it.
Harrington let out a slow breath, his heart feeling lighter than it had in a long time.
…
The next three days passed by uneventfully. His students were engaged in their classes and he had no major behavioral issues. He was experiencing one of those rare lulls between assignments and had little grading to do, and for the first time in a long time, Peter seemed more like his usual self, chattering with Ned and MJ, participating in class and working hard. Harrington was just beginning to be cautiously optimistic that he could finish out the week without anything strange or unusual happening when then his phone buzzed on Wednesday evening with a call from an unknown number.
"Hi, this is Harrington."
"Hi, Harrington, this is Tony Stark."
Harrington almost dropped the phone in his shock. "What- uh- hi?" he stuttered. "This isn't the number I have saved."
"This is a more secure line," Stark answered. "I figured if I was going to be talking to you about certain Spiderlings on a regular basis, we should be able to do it without being afraid that any nefarious supervillains are trying to listen in. Or any 'Big Brothers' from SHIELD. Especially if they're bald and have eyepatches; those are especially dangerous. If you see any, I advise you to run in the opposite direction."
"...what?"
"Never mind, not important," said Stark. "I'm just calling to discuss a few Peter-related things, if this is a good time."
"Uh, sure," Harrington stammered.
"Turns out, he's got a whole boatload of issues," said Stark, still in that glib, casual tone. "We found a former SHIELD psychologist who lives in Manhattan, someone who still has a high enough security clearance level that Peter should be able to spill all his spider-related secrets-"
"Wait, didn't you just say you didn't want SHIELD to overhear us?" Harrington asked, thoroughly confused. "I thought you didn't trust them."
"Ehhh, they're probably okay for now," said Stark airily. "I mean, assuming they didn't get overtaken by a right-wing Nazi organization again, but I'm not expecting that to happen again for at least another four-ish decades, so I think we're good."
Harrington's brain was starting to hurt, trying to keep up with this conversation. "What happened with the psychologist?" he asked.
"Yeah, she met with Peter a couple days ago, for what I thought was going to be a standard one-hour appointment, but he ended up talking to her for two and a half hours straight. That kid sure knows how to ramble on endlessly, huh?"
"I guess," said Harrington.
"Yeah," said Stark. His voice finally grew more serious as he added, "I was waiting for him outside, and I just kept waiting and waiting...I actually burst in there, thinking something had happened. But apparently he just had a lot to get off his chest." Harrington's heart clenched painfully at the image of Peter sitting on a couch, pouring his heart out to a therapist because he was finally getting the help he'd desperately needed. "I can't believe I missed it," Stark continued, his worry and guilt plainly audible. "It shouldn't have taken you to point out that he was drowning."
Harrington was suddenly struck by the surrealness of this conversation. He'd had discussions like it before, on phone calls and in PTA meetings with parents who cared too much about their kids to keep pretending they were all cool and put-together. He would never in a million years have cast Tony Stark in this role.
"He's a stubborn kid," he reminded the billionaire, sensing he needed the reassurance. "You told me that yourself. He's not someone who likes admitting to weakness."
"Yeah, no kidding," said Stark ruefully. "Anyway, I thought you should know, since you're...well, involved with all this now. She diagnosed him with anxiety, a mild case of PTSD, migraines and sensory overload, and insomnia. Apparently, he's been having a lot of trouble falling asleep lately. "
Involved, thought Harrington. Yeah, that's one way of putting it.
"Thank you for keeping me in the loop," he said. "I'll make sure to keep an eye out for any issues. From what I can tell, the therapy's already doing him some good."
"Really?" Stark asked in surprise.
Harrington paused, considering again what he'd observed of Peter in the last few days. "He just seems a little more cheerful," he decided. "The way he's talking to his friends, it seems a lot less wired and manic, and a lot more genuinely happy and excited. I can't be sure, of course; it's only been a couple of days, but I still feel like I haven't seen that in a long time."
Stark's tone was instantly brighter. "That's good to know."
"Yeah." Harrington smiled.
They hung up, and Harrington felt a sense of certainty settle over him again, something he'd been missing for days. The assurance that he had done the right thing by Peter grew stronger. If it had led to the kid finally getting the help he needed, then maybe Harrington really had made the right choice after all.
…
TBC…
Up Next:
"That is not what I'm mad about," Harrington hissed through clenched teeth. "Peter, for God's sake. I can't- you're just a kid, okay? You're fifteen years old. Just please, whether it's a drill or not, you can't go rushing out in a lockdown. For once, could you just be a kid and not throw yourself into danger? Any situation involving an active shooter on campus is the one time you have to be a regular student. Rushing out to stop someone with an assault rifle or a semi-automatic is not an acceptable thing to do. Please, just when it comes to this- don't be a hero, okay? Run the other way. Can you do that?"
Notes:
I think there's a pretty solid argument to be made that a Gifted teenager with superpowers could be called "twice exceptional." I even discussed it with a couple of other teachers, one the Gifted and Talented teacher from whom I learned that term in the first place, and we all agreed it kind of fits him. I know Peter's powers aren't a learning disability, but they are something that he didn't choose, and in this context, they are holding him back from reaching his true academic potential. I still remember Toby Maguire's Peter Parker struggling through college, missing deadlines and losing jobs because he was "brilliant, but lazy." Peter might be a superhero, but he's also just a teenager. And as any teacher will tell you, even the geniuses need to finish their homework on time.
Chapter 6: Leader
Notes:
Trigger Warning: This chapter contains detailed descriptions of ALICE training, lockdowns, and school shooting drills. Specifically, it references the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary that took place on December 14th, 2012. I have quoted verbatim excerpts from the 9-1-1 calls made by adults in the building that day. Apparently, those calls are often played in ALICE training sessions for teachers. Heartbreakingly, that includes the teachers in Parkland, who listened to those calls in an ALICE training session a month before the shooting at their own school.
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
Harrington had come to terms with his own choices regarding Peter, but adjusting to the reality of having Spider-Man as a student proved harder. On a day to day basis, Peter was still the same kid he always had been, and Harrington did his best not to treat him differently. Now that he knew who he was, though, the endless images and video clips of Spider-Man stopping speeding car crashes and diving in front of subway trains to prevent terrible accidents took on a much more terrifying meaning than they ever had before.
Harrington spent most days walking around with a coil of anxiety deep inside his chest, terrified that Peter would suddenly stop showing up to school one day, finally bested by a supervillain or an alien attack or worst of all, a mugger or drug dealer with a gun. While teaching, he was able to push through it, because his students this year were bright and enthusiastic and had a lot of energy which buoyed him through the day. After school, when Spider-Man was out patrolling, he found himself exhausted and wracked with worry.
Therapy helped. Harrington's therapist was an amazing woman, kind, candid and very perceptive. He'd been seeing her on and off for close to a decade. She had helped him deal with some of the worst moments in his life- the breakdown of his marriage four years ago, the everyday stresses of teaching, and the gut-wrenching horror of losing Ashley. Yet, sitting across the couch from her and trying to explain why he was so wound up that he was having anxiety attacks again for the first time in years, Harrington realized he couldn't come completely clean with her either. He could trust her completely with his own crap, but she wasn't a SHIELD certified psychologist. Spider-Man was a secret that endangered everyone who knew it, and he couldn't do that to her, or to Peter.
He finally settled on a half-truth, saying he had a situation with a student in danger which was causing him a lot of anxiety without going into the specifics. She probably assumed it was a case of homelessness or someone in a rough living situation, and she advised him to start meditating again, reviewing a few of the old techniques they'd used when he'd first started seeing her ten years ago. She also prescribed him a course of anti-anxiety medication and some mild sleeping pills, which at least helped him get through more nights than he otherwise would have.
The worry and stress were compounded by the start of ALICE training, which hit him far harder than he had anticipated. About ten days after the meeting at Peter's house, Morita called a schoolwide staff meeting in the auditorium and announced that there had been a generous anonymous donation on behalf of the district to the ALICE Training Institute. He went over the measures they would be adding to beef up security, going over the addition of panic buttons, Gunshot Wound Kits and surveillance cameras in the hallways.
"Are they installing metal detectors?" someone asked.
"No," said Morita. "The deputy superintendent decided against it. They don't actually work that well, because kids can always figure out ways to get around them. And we want to make our kids feel like they're safer, not like they're in prison."
A few people frowned, not fully satisfied, but Harrington found himself nodding. There were few people more paranoid than he was about gun violence, but even he couldn't imagine walking through a metal detector every day to get into school.
"I have some more amazing news, though," Morita continued. "I'm not sure what we did to deserve this, but the donor who paid the ALICE training institute has also decided to give Midtown Tech an additional donation...of three million dollars."
Harrington gasped loudly, stunned by the extravagance of the amount, even as several teachers broke into spontaneous cheering and applause. As Morita talked about what the school would be spending the money on (more teachers, more psychologists, raises, better professional development), Harrington was only half-listening. He wasn't that surprised that Tony Stark had been more generous than just donating money for school security, but he would never in his wildest dreams have expected anything this excessive. An amount like this would be life-changing for generations of students and teachers at Midtown.
And Harrington realized, it would also be life-changing for Peter. With this much money, they would never again need to worry about buying expensive lab supplies or stretching the school budget for new tech. Most importantly, they could get all the resources they needed for Gifted students, maybe even hire a few more Gifted and Talented teachers. This was Stark's way of making sure that Peter would have the best possible education he could get, no matter what other threats and challenges he might face over the years.
The initial mood of celebration lasted for a week after the announcement, but the actual start of ALICE training brought everyone back down to earth pretty quickly. They might suddenly be in a very well-resourced and well-funded school, but it was still, at the end of the day, an American public high school. No amount of security or training and no number of panic buttons would ever be enough to stop a determined kid with a semi-automatic, and they all knew it.
The introductory training seminar for teachers took place in the school auditorium and was led by a man and a woman, both ex-cops, who now worked at the ALICE institute. Horrifyingly, they began the session by playing the 9-1-1 calls of teachers at Sandy Hook Elementary.
"Newtown 9-1-1, what's the location of your emergency?" came the male dispatcher's voice.
"Sandy Hook School," said a woman, sounding breathless with barely controlled panic. "I think there's somebody shooting in here, in Sandy Hook School."
"Okay, what makes you think that?"
"Because somebody's got a gun," the woman said, her voice shaking. "I saw a glimpse of somebody. They're running down the hallway."
"Okay-"
"They're still running, they're still shooting. Sandy Hook School, please."
As the recording ended, several teachers looked somber and uncomfortable. The ALICE trainers didn't give them much time to recover, going straight to the second call. It was a female dispatcher this time, talking to a teacher who'd been shot in the leg.
"Okay, are you safe right now?" the dispatcher asked.
"I think so," she said, perfectly calm. "My classroom door is not locked."
"Okay, is there anybody that can lock the classroom door without- being safe? Is it safe to do so?"
"No."
"Okay. Alright, just try to stay where you are."
"There's children in this room, too."
"Okay. Try to apply pressure okay?"
"Yeah." There was not even a slight tremble in her voice.
"Okay," said the dispatcher again. "We have people coming. Okay?"
The recording stopped, and for a long moment, no one spoke. Harrington's hands were hands clenched into tight fits on the arms of his chair. He was shaken by how absolutely calm the woman had sounded, especially in comparison to the first caller. He recognized it instantly, the brave front a teacher always had up when there were students around. Dell, who was sitting next to him, laid a hand on his shoulder and looked at him with worry. Harrington couldn't even muster up the energy to pretend he was okay. He looked away from Dell and his eyes caught Monica Warren's. She looked just as shaken as he did. A moment of pained understanding passed between them as they both remembered their own 9-1-1 calls from a decade ago.
"I know that was really hard to listen to," the female trainer said somberly. "Sometimes, we get a lot of flak for playing these clips. We've had people leave the room, get sick, break down sobbing. It's awful, it's traumatizing, I know. Still, I always make it a point to play those calls every time I do this at any school. Because there is a very real chance that you'll be the one making that call someday. Every one of you are leaders in your classrooms, and you're going to be making these decisions, sometimes in a split second. Sometimes, the shooter might be a floor above you, or there might be two of them, or they could be two buildings over, or they could be in your classroom. Depending on the situation, you might have to fight back or run away. It's our job to train you to figure out when to do that. Alert, Lockdown, Inform, Counter, Evacuate. That's what ALICE stands for, and that's what we're going to teach you in the next few months."
She looked around the room and stood taller, as if drawing strength from the steeliness in their faces, the way even those who were in tears looked at her with determination mixed in with their fear and grief. "Let's get started," she said.
For the first two weeks, the trainers ran the drills with only the teachers after school. The training covered things like when to run and when to shelter in place, how to identify the sound of a gun going off in a closed hallway- as if Harrington could ever forget- and how to barricade doors effectively.
It was hard. Gut-wrenchingly so.
There was one point when one of the trainers talked about what teachers should do if they realized someone was missing from their rooms. "I know it's difficult to face, but you have to lock your doors. You can't let anyone in, not even if they knock, not even if they call out to you crying to be let in. Because in that situation, you have no idea who could be out there. You can't risk the rest of the students inside your room."
Hearing this, Harrington had to step out of the auditorium, nauseated and trembling as he remembered Ashley's eyes staring up at him, and Liz falling through his fingers down an elevator shaft, and the awful moment of looking across a panic room at Stark Industries and realizing that Peter was missing. Morita followed him quickly after his hasty exit, not saying a word when he found Harrington half collapsed against a wall, just standing beside him and offering quiet support as he watched Harrington try to pull himself back together.
The panic button was installed in his classroom within a week. It was right by his desk, an incongruous black button which now always loomed large on the peripheries of his awareness. Cops and trainers from the ALICE Training Institute examined Harrington's room carefully, just as they were doing for every other room in the building. They analyzed every blind spot and made suggestions about furniture placement and where to keep office supplies so they could be grabbed and thrown easily. They considered the view through Harrington's windows and stuck lines of red tape on the floor to mark off blind spots and safe areas.
They also advised him to move a sofa he had bought several years ago at a yard sale for $90, much beloved by his students. It had helped hundreds of fidgety, restless kids find a place to stretch out comfortably while working. The experts from the ALICE institute wanted it moved to the back of his classroom into one of the safe areas, so students could shelter behind it if they needed to. It shouldn't have mattered; he'd moved it around the room before, but it still hurt something deep inside Harrington to see furniture he'd bought with his own money, to benefit his students' learning, suddenly being taken and repurposed for something like this.
When he came to school the morning after the sofa had been placed in its new spot, he stood frozen for a long moment at his door, just staring at the thing and trying not to picture teenagers cowering behind it as gunfire erupted in the hallway behind him. Shuddering at the vivid and disturbing image, he shook it off, forced himself to walk over to the whiteboard and write the date and the lesson objectives just like he always did, getting ready for another day of classes.
The ALICE trainers also announced that there would now be a change in the severity and frequency of active shooter drills. There would be more unannounced drills than ever before, and they would also be much more realistic. Police officers in plainclothes would shoot real guns with blanks, simulating the experience of a real shooting.
Shocked muttering ran through the room at the announcement. Some teachers nodded approvingly, in agreement with the extreme measures, but others protested. They pointed out that this seemed too extreme and traumatizing for both themselves and for the kids. Besides, it wasn't fair for teachers to at least not be informed in advance. What if they themselves panicked, or what if a student struggling with anxiety wasn't able to take something that stressful?
"All I'm saying is, we can't be effective if we don't know what's going on," Monica Warren said loudly over the din of conversation. She was on her feet, and it was clear from her ashen face and her shaky voice that she was very close to breaking down. The teacher sitting beside her gently tugged on her arm, forcing her to sit back down, and wrapped an arm across her shoulders.
"The fact is, in a real emergency, you wouldn't know what was going on," the trainer pointed out, "but you would still have to keep it together. That's the whole point, to prepare you for that."
Morita cleared his throat and added, "As for the kids who really struggle with severe anxiety or panic disorder, we'll follow the same procedure we always do," he said. "Mary or I will ask them to come to the main office or go to hers before a drill is scheduled, so they can wait it out in a safe place." He looked from Monica, to Harrington, to the rest of his staff, his eyes pained. "Guys, I know this is hard, but we need to be as prepared as we can be. That means seeing what the real thing would look like and practicing how we would respond to that."
And what about those of us who have who have already experienced the real thing? Harrington felt cold as he remembered crawling through the dinosaur displays, the echoes of gunfire and the screams of panicking students ringing again in his ears. Again, he had that familiar, desperate thought, wondering if it was worth all this, if it wasn't time to just quit and leave with what little he had of his sanity. It was a thought that was coming more frequently every year, but just as he had always done, he shoved it away. There was no quitting this job; he loved it too much. There was no walking away from these kids, especially not now, when he had Peter to worry about. He would just have to suck it up and deal, like everyone else.
Despite how hard the training was, Harrington didn't anticipate the biggest problem all these new changes would cause. He had overlooked the fact that Spider-Man was now a student at Midtown Tech, and of course that complicated everything, even a Code Red active shooter drill. As an ALICE trainer walked his 10th grade class through the emergency procedures, Harrington noticed Peter becoming increasingly tense and worried.
"…going to be genuinely hard to tell if there's a drill," the trainer was saying, "There's going to be real cop cars, guns fired in the hallway- with blanks, of course. We'll send out mobile alerts to your families right before they happen, but inside this building, not even your teachers are going to be told until an "all clear" is sounded."
"Wait," said Peter. "You're saying that Mr. Harrington, and Mr. Dell, Ms. Ansari and Ms. Warren- none of them will know? So that means they..." His voice trailed off, an expression of sudden alarm on his face.
"That's right," said the trainer. "I know it's going to be scary, but it's the only way we're going to be prepared."
"What if someone hits the panic button without knowing if it's a drill?" Peter asked.
"The police will be informed in advance," the trainer explained, "and the panic buttons will be disabled for a short time. It shouldn't be a problem."
Peter exchanged a dark look with Ned across the room, then not-so-surreptitiously grabbed his phone and began to text someone frantically under his desk. Frowning, Harrington walked over to him and lightly touched his shoulder. The teen nearly jumped out of his skin, then shot Harrington a guilty look, shoving the phone back into the pocket of his jeans. A minute later, Harrington's phone buzzed in his pocket. He glanced down for a quick check and did a double take when he saw the name flashing across his lock screen.
Harrington, if the kid has no way of knowing it's a drill, he's going to end up doing something stupid by rushing out and revealing himself, Tony Stark wrote tersely.
His phone buzzed again. And the panic buttons can be disabled for the cops, but never for me. I don't make sub-standard products.
A third message. Call me.
Furious, Harrington shoved the phone back into his pocket with far more force than necessary. Of course, of fucking course nothing involving Peter Parker could ever be simple. By the time the bell rang at the end of class, he was vibrating with frustration. As his students began to gather their belongings, he snapped at Peter to stay back for a few minutes. There was a sudden, shocked silence at his uncharacteristic harshness, and it should have made Harrington feel guilty, but right at that moment, he was too angry to care. All he wanted to do was to grab Peter's shoulders and shake him.
"I'm sorry I was on my phone," Peter blurted out as soon as the room had emptied. "It won't happen again."
"That is not what I'm mad about," Harrington hissed through clenched teeth. "Peter, for God's sake. I can't- you're just a kid, okay? You're fifteen years old. Just please, whether it's a drill or not, you can't go rushing out in a lockdown. For once, could you just be a kid and not throw yourself into danger? Any situation involving an active shooter on campus is the one time you have to be a regular student. Rushing out to stop someone with an assault rifle or a semi-automatic is not an acceptable thing to do. Please, just when it comes to this- don't be a hero, okay? Run the other way. Can you do that?"
"I can't," said Peter wretchedly. "You know I can't. What if there's a shooter, and I'm the only one in the building who can stop him? What if that shooter's coming after me? I can't just hide when people I care about are in danger, Mr. Harrington." His voice broke, his eyes growing shiny and desperate. "I did that once, and it cost me my Uncle Ben. He was shot and he bled out in my arms, and I can't, I won't do that again, okay? Not now, not ever."
"Peter, Jesus," Harrington said weakly. "You-"
"We literally just spent the last hour learning how to hold a fire extinguisher so we could knock someone out. We mimed throwing books and scissors and test tubes across the classroom. The other kids in this class don't have extra powers, so that's all they have. That's not the case for me, and that means I have to do something. This whole training protocol is called 'Run, Hide, Fight,' and Spider-Man can't run or hide. I have to fight, Mr. Harrington. I have to."
Staring at Peter's helplessly determined expression, Harrington knew this battle had already been lost. He sank into a chair, feeling exhausted down to his bones. You signed up for this, he reminded himself. This was your choice.
"Okay," he said finally, watching Peter's shoulders sag with relief. "We'll just have to- I don't even know what, honestly. But okay, Peter. You win."
"Thank you," the kid told him, brown eyes painfully earnest under his tousled curls.
Harrington's breath caught. He looked away quickly, blinking against the sudden sting of tears. "Don't thank me. Not for this." He was quiet for a long moment, only looking back at Peter when he could trust himself to speak again. "About the unannounced drills. We've had them before, and you didn't go rushing out then. Why is this different?"
"I have enhanced hearing, remember? I always knew when a drill was going to happen. I heard teachers talking to each other about it, and when I didn't, I could use my ability to sense danger to tell there wasn't actually an intruder. But I can't sense everything. If there's going to be strangers running through the hallways shooting actual guns, then…"
"Yeah, I see why that would be an issue." Harrington paused and thought for a minute. "There's the obvious solution. If you were on the list of kid's called to the psychologist's office-"
"No," said Peter immediately. "My anxiety isn't that severe."
"Peter, everyone would understand. There is absolutely no need to repeatedly expose yourself to this kind of trauma-"
"I can handle a lockdown drill," Peter interrupted him with a fierce expression. "I need to know what the protocols are for every situation. I can't just ride it out in a quiet room, away from other people. I need to have a plan in place for every scenario, for what I would do as Spider-Man, how it would play out if I was in your class, or upstairs in Ms. Warren's, or in the cafeteria during lunch, or if we were all in the hallway between classes. These are drills for Spider-Man too, Mr. Harrington. I refuse to not be prepared."
And who the hell was Harrington to argue with that? After all, hadn't he himself been the one to ask Tony Stark to arrange for all this? Hadn't he spent hours on the weekend, watching YouTube tutorials on how to correctly use a GSW kit? He was doing everything he could to be prepared, too, and it would be hypocrisy to deny Peter the same right.
"Let me think about it," he said finally. "We have a few days before they finish the training. I…I'll figure something out."
…
In the end, the solution was simple. If Harrington knew when the drills were going to happen, he would be able to warn Peter, who could then tell Stark. Two days after his conversation with Peter, Harrington walked into Jim Morita's office, and for the first time in his thirteen-year teaching career, he asked for a mental health accommodation for himself.
"I still have nightmares every week," he said candidly. "And yeah, it's not as bad now as it was back in those first couple of years- you of all people know what a mess I was then. I'm going to therapy, I'm on medication, I'm handling it. But if we're doing these hyper-realistic unannounced drills with fake gunmen in our hallways…" He shook his head. "It's too much. I know we need to be prepared, but I already know how I would react in a real emergency, Jim. I don't need to be constantly reminded of that. Neither does Monica. We both deserve to have some advance warning before these drills, if only to preserve our sanity, you know?"
Morita stared at him for a long moment, then sagged at his desk, looking stricken. "I'm sorry, Roger," he said contritely. "We all talked and planned for supporting students who couldn't handle it, but we completely overlooked you guys. And that was when I saw how hard the training was on you. I should have thought of this myself."
"It's not your fault," Harrington reassured him. "You don't need to apologize for- for my not being able to deal with it and just...do my job."
"Yeah, I do." He watched Harrington with troubled eyes. "Look, I know you're going through a lot right now. I mean, we talked about Ashley and the field trips the other day, but it's not just that, is it? I can sense there's something else too, but you don't seem to want to talk about it. Which, fine, okay; I'm not going to push, but I hope you know my door's always open. As for the drills, I'll make sure to let you guys know at least a day beforehand, okay? You have my word."
The relief he felt was immense, hitting Harrington like a freight train. He had only asked for this for Peter's sake...but Harrington realized now that he should have asked anyway, for his own. He smiled at Morita, finally feeling like he could breathe a little easier, now that he had this.
...
TBC...
Up Next:
"What are you trying to hide? None of the other superheroes hide behind a mask. Don't you think people deserve to know the truth about who he is?"
"Spider-Man almost gave his life to save New York," Stark said furiously, silencing the entire crowd as he lost his tenuous grip on his temper. "I think he's entitled to a little privacy after that, and I will do everything in my power to give it to him. We're done here."
Notes:
I read in the news recently that March 2020 is the first March since 2002 with no school shootings in America. That is really how often they happen, and it is deeply depressing that it took a pandemic.
This was a difficult chapter both to research and write, for obvious reasons. I thought about what ALICE training would be like for educators (or anyone, really) who had survived a shooting themselves. I've read articles about teachers and students at Parkland two years after the shooting, still forced to do these drills and feeling upset and traumatized because of the memories it brings back. I also have colleagues who have told me stories about teachers who needed to step out of ALICE training sessions because they were too upset, or because they were themselves survivors of a shooting.
I am not sure these hyper-realistic unannounced drills with guns going off in the hallways of schools are really a good idea at all, or if they're just too traumatic and real for kids (and teachers!). It is, however, a reality in hundreds of American high schools today, and it is the reality a Generation Z Peter would have grown up with. Speaking from personal experience, even a regular lockdown drill is very scary when it's completely unannounced, especially when you have 6th graders who either can't/won't stop talking or who freak themselves out to the point of screaming or crying. Anyway, I hope I was able to do this whole thing justice. I'm curious to know what you all thought.
P.S. I might slow down a bit with updates after this because our spring break is over and I have classes starting on Monday. This fic has been completed, but the edits and beta-reading for each chapter do take time, so daily updates might be a bit harder. I'm still going to try to post one chapter every 2 or 3 days, though.
Chapter Text
The next few weeks coalesced into a new kind of normal for Harrington. From the outside, his life probably looked very similar to what it had always been, but he knew there were fairly significant changes. The Code Red drills were the biggest one, of course, taking two or three times a month and eating up far more instructional time than any teacher was happy with. They were just as intense and scary as the trainers and cops had warned but knowing about them beforehand did make them a little easier to deal with. Harrington had called Tony Stark after he settled the whole thing with Morita, explaining to him that he would be able to warn Peter before a drill. Stark had been relieved, asking Harrington to always send him advance warning too, so that both he and Peter would always be prepared. Sending a quick note to the two of them was routine now, every time he got word from Morita that a drill was scheduled for the next day.
The other change was the low thrum of worry he now carried with him, the extra weight and awareness that came with knowing that Peter was Spider-Man. There was no way around it, despite the therapy and the medication and all the conversations with his therapist about self-care and the need to switch off and separate his own well-being from his student's. It was good advice which she'd given him before, but it didn't really help him now. He began to get used to living with the spike of anxiety that came every time Peter got into a Spider-related scrape, trying to avoid the news as much as possible during the week for his own peace of mind.
November melted into December, and the fall semester finally drew to a close. As he had done for years, Harrington ended the year by distributing packets of home-baked Christmas cookies and optional, "challenge" level assignments consisting of chemistry equations and a few science puzzles, just in case anyone needed some extra mental stimulation over the two-week break. Most of his students laughed at him good-naturedly, telling him he had wasted a lot of paper and time putting that together for them. Still, he caught the intrigued looks in their eyes as they looked through the packets, and he knew at least a few kids would try their hand at it.
Christmas break that year felt even more welcome than usual. Harrington embraced the chance to switch off from school and get out of New York, heading back home to Providence to see his parents. He relished the chance to get fussed over and eat homecooked food without having to be responsible for anyone else. It was exactly the reprieve he'd needed after the last few stressful months, and when he headed back to New York after one week in Providence, he felt buoyed and ready to face the new semester.
And then New York was attacked by aliens again.
Harrington turned on the TV one day to footage of Spider-Man and Ironman going toe to toe with a huge, alien spaceship shooting laser beams. His heart in his throat, he watched Peter flying through the air, caught on a shaky camera feed by someone's Starkphone. He hurled himself off the top of a building, webs flying upwards to latch onto windows and fire escapes and balcony ledges, and Harrington's breath caught in his throat more than once, as he tried not to consider just how many stories the kid might fall if he missed. Ironman zoomed around him yelling instructions and shooting blast after blast at the spaceship.
Finally, there was a deafening, terrific explosion. It was never quite clear what exactly had happened, but the spaceship burst apart with a bright, pulsing beam of light that blinded everyone in a three-mile radius. Afterwards, in the grey morning sky, Spider-Man was sighted hanging limp and unconscious in Ironman's arms, streaking through the skies leaving a trail of blood in their wake.
It was a visceral and awful and terrifying sight. Harrington sat frozen on his couch, feeling a powerful, cloying sense of dread. As those first hours stretched and elongated, he wrestled with himself, paced around his room, then finally broke and sent Stark a quick message requesting an update on Peter. There was no response. His phone stayed depressingly silent and still, and Harrington's fear only grew. The lack of information was completely paralyzing, and he desperately wanted to reach out again, to call Stark for answers or news.
He even thought a few times about reaching out to May Parker, but every time he found himself dialing her number into his phone, he forced himself to stop. This wasn't his place, to bother them at a moment like this. If Peter was really badly hurt, it wouldn't be appropriate to call his aunt at a time like that just to assuage his own concern. At the end of the day, he was just Peter's teacher, and this was Christmas break. He had already texted Stark once, and he couldn't keep harassing him with more panicked messages.
As days passed with no news, Harrington felt himself spiraling. The worry was consuming, stealing sleep and peace of mind, and even when he tried to meditate, even when he tried to talk himself out of it, he couldn't seem to get a grip on it. Through it all, there was no word from Stark.
The video clip of the attack played on loop on every news channel. All of New York was in a furor at seeing one of their favorite superheroes hurt and out of commission. People camped out in front of Stark Tower, speculating endlessly and waiting for updates. After three agonizing days, Tony Stark finally emerged to address the crowd of reporters gathered outside his home. With bags under his eyes and pale, exhausted features, he announced to the world that Spider-Man was safe, alive and recovering. There were shouts of relief and loud cheers from the crowds who had been waiting.
In his modest apartment in Queens, Harrington closed his eyes and slumped back on his couch. For a few minutes, he was too overcome with relief to register anything else. When he opened his eyes and focused again, the initial jubilation had passed, and the reporters were now firing increasingly invasive questions.
"How bad was he hurt? He looked pretty close to dying."
"He's a fighter," said Stark. "He'll be fine." He tried to smile, but it fell a little flat.
"When can we expect to see him up and about?"
"Whenever he's feeling up to it," said Stark, with another attempt at a grin that didn't quite land. "I'm sure we'll all see him up and swinging soon, chattering criminals into submission by force of wit." Harrington could see that he was trying to maintain his usual charming persona before the cameras, but he seemed exhausted and on edge, and the joke hadn't been that funny.
"Can we talk to him? The people of New York would like to see for themselves that he really is doing fine."
"The people of New York can wait until he's recovered fully." Stark's lips thinned in annoyance, his nostrils flaring. "The only thing Spider-Man needs to do right now is focus on his recovery, in private."
"What are you trying to hide? Are you trying to cover up the true extent of his injuries?"
"Of course not," Stark snapped through gritted teeth.
"Don't you think it's time that Spider-Man reveals himself? None of the other superheroes hide behind a mask. Don't people deserve to know the truth?"
"Spider-Man almost gave his life to save New York," Stark said furiously, silencing the entire crowd as he lost his tenuous grip on his temper. "I think he's entitled to a little privacy after that, and I will do everything in my power to give it to him. We're done here."
He turned on his heel and stormed back into Stark Tower, his expression thunderous as the reporters clamored behind him, yelling out more questions. Harrington muted the TV, then reached for his phone with trembling fingers. His relief had disappeared, coalescing into a leaden feeling in his stomach. Stark had just announced that Peter was fine, but he hadn't looked it himself. He'd acted more as if the kid were on death's door.
Harrington typed and then retyped a second message to Stark, second-guessing his word choice several times as he tried to strike a professional tone of generalized concern without revealing how badly he himself had been affected by all this. Hi, I'm just writing to say I'm glad to hear Peter is doing better now, was what he finally settled on. Please let me know if he's going to miss any school days, so we can start planning ahead to arrange any make up assignments. Thanks, and Happy New Year!
The last part was complete bullshit; the last thing Harrington cared about right now was make-up assignments, but at least it gave him an excuse to text Stark again. More than anything, Harrington just wanted to know the kid was okay. He hit send and set the phone down on the coffee table, numbly watching the headlines flash across the bottom of his TV screen, followed again by that awful clip of Peter limp in Ironman's arms, drops of blood falling from his suit as they flew through New York City.
Please, thought Harrington, desperately. He grabbed his phone again, squeezing it tightly in his hands. It remained stubbornly quiet and still under the whites of his knuckles. Please be okay, Peter. You have to be okay.
…
Stark's press conference went viral within hours of his blow up at the reporters. It was the rawest, least polished version of the billionaire the world had ever seen, and it quickly racked up millions of views, surpassing even his infamous "I am Ironman" speech. Most people were touched by his obvious protectiveness of Spider-Man, and hundreds took to Twitter to express their support. There was even some speculation that the two superheroes were in a secret relationship, which made Harrington cringe in disgust and immediately turn off his TV.
The internet was also ripe with renewed debates about the Accords, and there was a lot of commentary about how New York was now vulnerable with only two superheroes still active in the city. This attack had been scarily similar in scope to the Battle of New York in 2012, but there had been only two superheroes fighting it this time. Spider-Man had barely made it out alive, and what if the threat had been bigger? Or what if there was another threat now, while he was unable to fight? CNN hosted a primetime debate on whether the Avengers should be pardoned, inviting prominent lawmakers and a few military personnel to participate.
On the first day of the spring semester, Harrington walked through the frigid parking lot at Midtown Tech in the semi-darkness of dawn, feeling almost more tired than when he'd left. He tried to convince himself not to be too crushed if he didn't see Peter today. If it took a few days for the kid to be back at school, it wasn't anything to be overly concerned about. Stark had said he was recovering, he told himself over and over again. There was absolutely no need to think he wasn't.
He spent the hour before school rearranging desks into pods around the classroom, printing a new seating chart and writing out notes on the whiteboard. As he was laying out copies of worksheets on student desks, he heard the slam of a locker in the hallway. He glanced at his watch; there was still a good twenty minutes before first period. He was surprised that a student had arrived this early on the first day back. Harrington sped up, wanting to finish quickly so that he could be out in the hallway and greeting kids as they came in. He was just writing the date on the whiteboard- January 8th, 2018- when there was a knock on his door. He turned and saw a bright-eyed, curly-haired teenager peering into his classroom, smiling warmly in greeting.
The whiteboard marker fell from his hands.
"Hey, Mr. Harrington, how was your break? I wanted to stop by early and ask if- whoa, are you alright?" Peter took several quick steps inside, his expression alarmed.
"Peter," Harrington said weakly, one hand braced against the whiteboard. His face was ashen, and his breath was coming in short gasps. "You're okay. Thank God."
"Why wouldn't I be okay?"
"No reason, just…" Harrington faltered, reeling under the release of so many days' worth of tension. "It doesn't matter. Did you need something?"
"No, but I think you do?" Peter's expression was full of worry and confusion, his eyes sweeping quickly over his face, and Harrington knew he was seeing everything, the exhaustion, the telltale sheen in his eyes, the dark circles ringed beneath his eyelashes. "Is this about the attack?" he asked. "But you saw Mr. Stark's announcement, right? He told everyone I was fine days ago."
"Yeah, of course," said Harrington, his cheeks reddening with embarrassment. "It was just- Spider-Man hasn't been sighted for a while, and then with the press conference, I thought…never mind what I thought. It doesn't matter. The important thing is that you're safe." He smiled again, too relieved to try to conceal how happy he was.
Peter stared at him with a stricken expression, as if he was suddenly realizing exactly what kind of hell Harrington had been through in the past week. "You…Mr. Harrington, if you were that worried about me, you could have texted Mr. Stark," he said. "You have his number, right? Why didn't you ask him? Or like, you could have called my aunt or even sent me an email; I've just been lying in bed doing nothing for days. I would have replied."
"I didn't know that," said Harrington. "Besides, I wasn't going to write to you about Spider-Man using the school email system." At Peter's suddenly frozen expression, he exclaimed, "Oh God, Peter, please tell me you didn't!"
"Um. There might have been like, a couple of memes," Peter stammered. "To Ned. In Physics class, because you know how Ms. Warren keeps our phones in the 'cell phone jail,' so we can't really text each other, and sometimes if we get bored, we just...you know what, never mind. Please don't tell her I said that. You didn't answer my question: why didn't you text Mr. Stark?"
"I did," Harrington admitted. "I didn't hear back from him. He must have missed it; it's not a big deal. He was probably too worried about you to be checking his phone."
"Yeah, but that's…" Peter shook his head, frowning heavily. His expression was guilty and dismayed. "He should have replied to you. I'm really sorry that you were in the dark this long; I mean, if I had known you were freaking out, I would have said something for sure-"
"It's not your fault," Harrington interrupted. By now, he was completely mortified and desperate to change the subject. "And as long as you're safe, it doesn't really matter. Now, what did you want to ask me?"
"Oh, yeah, it was those chemistry equations you gave us," said Peter, still watching Harrington with troubled eyes. "I was going stir crazy with boredom these last few days, so I started working on them, and I got completely stuck on this one. Could you…?"
"Of course," said Harrington, relieved to be past the awkward moment. "Have a seat. Let me take a look."
…
The joy and relief of finding out Peter really was okay had Harrington walking on air the rest of the day. He crashed hard as soon as he got home, falling into bed and sleeping like the dead for three hours straight. He woke up groggy and tired at 8:00pm, but still feeling substantially better than he had in days. He lay in bed, savoring the quiet of the evening, before reaching for his phone. His sense of calm evaporated when he saw the text message flashing on his lock screen.
Is this a good time to talk? As Harrington stared down at the text bubble from Tony Stark, sitting right below his two previous unanswered messages, he blew out an uneasy breath. He typed out a quick yes, and his phone began to buzz seconds later. "Hello," he said hoarsely.
"Harrington," said Stark briskly. "It's come to my attention that I may have fucked up a couple of things even worse than usual, which, as my fiancée will attest to, should not surprise anyone who knows me. But since I just got reamed out by a certain Spiderling and his hot aunt, I thought I owed you a phone call. Not that it's the first time I've been taken to task by a hot, angry woman, of course, but Peter is another matter entirely. That kid's puppy dog eyes could break even the most heartless of supervillains, and I'm actively trying not to be one these days."
"Uh," said Harrington, his brain still too sluggish to keep up with this lightning-fast, rambling train of thought. "Is... did something happen?"
"Yeah, something did," said Stark, speaking more directly now. "I'm sorry for ghosting you over Christmas. Which makes me sound like a bad boyfriend in a rom-com, but regardless, it was a dick move."
"Oh, that's really not necessary," Harrington told him, feeling his face heat once again. He really had worked himself up into a completely unnecessary panic over this, and after seeing that Peter was perfectly fine today, all his worry felt ridiculous in hindsight. He wished he'd been a little less transparent. "I understand why you didn't respond. You were busy taking care of him, and I'm just his teacher. You really didn't have any reason to-"
"Wait, you're kidding, right?" Stark let out a disbelieving laugh. "Do you have any idea how much that kid adores you? He was doing extra chemistry equations during Christmas break in between fighting supervillains and aliens-" a disgruntled note entered his voice "-and he wouldn't even let me help him because apparently, 'I want to let you help, I really do, Mr. Stark, but Mr. Harrington would want me to try and figure this out on my own.'" It was a great impression of Peter's earnest tone, and Harrington couldn't contain a snort of laughter. "I've been dying to get my hands on that packet for days."
"Oh, it's nothing special," Harrington said, surprised. "It's from a Gifted and Talented resource book I bought at a conference a few years ago. It saves my life about three times a year. I can send you a picture of the title if you're really interested."
"Please do." Stark let out a huff of air. "Seriously, though, I shouldn't have forgotten to keep you in the loop. You have my word it won't happen again. And, uh, May wanted me to tell you that you can always text her too, if it ever does...which it won't, because that woman is scary."
Harrington felt something inside him unclenching at the promise. "Thank you," he said quietly.
There was a short silence.
"So, was there anything else?" Stark asked. "Is the kid doing okay at school, with his grades and all?"
"I mean, it's the first day back," said Harrington with a shrug. "So everything's fine so far...oh, actually, there was one thing," he remembered.
"Yeah?"
Harrington shook his head wryly. "Peter may have let it slip today that he's been...less than careful about what platforms he's been using when talking about Spider-Man."
"He's what?" Stark's voice rose. "What the hell did the kid do?"
"Nothing too bad, I don't think," Harrington answered. "Just typical Gen Z stuff. He said he sent a few memes to his friend Ned using his school email account. If he's done that, then I don't want to think about what his Snapchat looks like. Maybe you should talk to him about being more careful."
Stark groaned, a sound of pure parental frustration. "Goddamnit," he huffed, "I have never met anyone worse at keeping secrets. Did you know he spent all of last year hiding his suit under a bunch of lockers at school? Which he would lift with his bare hands in full view of the hallway in between his classes. Not to mention webbing his backpack, which had his school ID in it, to random dumpsters around the city while swinging from rooftop to rooftop. Honestly, it's a damn miracle his identity is still even a secret at this point."
Harrington completely agreed, hearing this. "I hope he's not doing that anymore," he warned. "There are cameras in every hallway now, with the new security measures."
"No, yeah, I discussed that with him; he knows to be more careful...though not about social media, apparently." Stark let out another long, exasperated sigh. "I'll talk to him; make sure it's taken care of."
"Great."
They hung up, and Harrington felt a deep-seated sense of relief wash over him, his shoulders relaxing even further. It had finally happened, the thing he'd been dreading since November. Peter had been hurt, badly...but he'd pulled through it. Harrington would never stop worrying about him, but at least he knew now that he would never be left spiraling like that in the darkness again. That was all he could really ask for.
...
TBC…
Up Next:
Peter cleared his throat. "I kind of think it's messed up that it's impossible to tell the difference when it's a drill," he said. "I uh…I was right around the corner when my uncle was carjacked last year. I didn't see it happen, but I heard the gunshot, and I got there right before he-" his voice cracked, and he breathed in sharply. "I really can't tell, even when they're shooting blanks. It always sounds exactly the same as it did that night."
Notes:
This was inspired by something most people probably don't realize, which is the fact that teachers get very invested and emotionally involved with their students but are not actually considered 'family,' and are therefore often left out of the loop. I've had it happen to me multiple times, especially during vacations, and when I described this chapter to a couple of teacher friends, they were like OMG, that's so true. I am never a wreck about it the way Harrington is here, but I also don't have his history, or-thank God- Peter Parker as my student.
Chapter 8: Defender
Notes:
Trigger Warning: This chapter goes to some pretty dark places, covering the reaction of several characters to the Parkland school shooting that took place on Feb 14th, 2018. It also takes a strong critical stance on the NRA and American gun control laws. I said at the start of this that I wanted to write a realistic story, and I can't see characters like Harrington and Peter not being affected by Parkland. I have not pulled my punches and have included a lot of upsetting detail about the shooting, but I tried to end on a hopeful note (or at least a somewhat uplifting one). I really hope I did this justice because to me this particular chapter felt like the most important one to get right out of all the chapters in this story. It was the hardest, but also the most cathartic one to write, and I hope you'll feel the same as you read it.
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
As more weeks passed, Harrington began to feel as if he had found some kind of equilibrium. His life slipped by in lesson plans, grading, bursts of worry about Peter, therapy sessions and the inevitable regularity of active shooter drills, which were beginning to feel increasingly normal and mundane as time went by.
In early February, however, there was a particularly intense drill which shook up everyone. It stretched on for longer than usual, with deafening shots going off in the hallway for a full five minutes, leaving everyone anxious and afraid. The NYPD then spent ten minutes banging on classroom doors, claiming to have lost their copies of the classroom keys and asking to be let in. Harrington was immediately suspicious. They had been told to never open the doors to anyone. He refused to let them in, but by the time the police officer finally did unlock the doors, Harrington was very rattled and many of his students were nervous wrecks. He also learned that some of his coworkers had not passed the test and had ended up opening their doors too early. It was, all told, one of the worst, most intense drills they had ever experienced. That was why, when news broke of a school shooting in Parkland, Florida only days later, it hit everyone that much harder.
It happened on Valentine's Day. After spending the morning watching kids exchanging flowers and candy and decorating each other's lockers, Harrington ended his day sitting on his couch, watching in numb horror as Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School became the latest addition to a list that was already far too long.
Florida was nowhere near New York, but this didn't feel far away or removed. For Harrington, every school shooting was personal. He stared at his TV screen with blurry eyes, watching as they showed pictures of parents clutching their kids close, teachers blank-faced and shaken, trying to keep it together for the cameras. What hit him the hardest was an interview with a 15-year-old girl, describing to reporters in a shaking, tear-filled voice how she had run through the hallways, looking for classrooms with doors open or spaces she could hide. She hadn't been able to find one, because the teachers at MSD had been trained to lock their doors immediately in a Code Red Situation, just like Harrington himself had been.
A few teachers at the school had broken protocol, holding their doors open for a few more precious minutes. They had saved dozens of lives by doing so. Stacey Lippel and Scott Beigel were two of those teachers, and Harrington listened as another student described how they had worked together, holding their classroom doors open until the last possible second, pulling kids into their rooms from the hallway even as the shooter walked down the same path, spraying bullets everywhere. The kid's voice shook as he described how Mr. Beigel had saved him by physically shoving him into his coworker's classroom. In those last moments, as she locked eyes with the masked gunman, Mrs. Lippel had grabbed for her door handle and screamed to her colleague to shut his door. She'd been grazed by a bullet, but she'd managed to lock her door in time.
Mr. Beigel hadn't. He'd died in the doorway of his classroom, seconds too late.
Harrington felt cold as he heard that awful story. He couldn't help picturing himself gunned down in his own classroom, blood soaking the floors, soaking the cushions of the favorite, careworn sofa, splattering the bookshelf by his desk- Harrington turned off the TV then, knowing that he needed to stop before he drove himself completely over the edge. The next day, America woke to the news that the death toll from Parkland had risen to seventeen, officially making it the deadliest high school shooting in history.
That morning, Harrington walked into his 10th grade Advanced Chemistry class braced for what he knew was going to be a difficult day. His students were pretty jaded by now, but this shooting had hit a nerve in everyone. After the intense, hyper-realistic drills they'd had over the past few months, they could easily picture themselves in the same shoes. If Harrington, an adult, was reeling from this, he could only imagine how they felt.
So he mentally readjusted his lesson plan for the day and stood before them at the beginning of class, speaking as directly and compassionately as he could. "I think it's important that we address what happened in Parkland yesterday. I know it was hundreds of miles away, but I'm sure you have some feelings about it. I know I do. I think it's important to give you the space to talk about it, but of course, if this is too much and you'd like to step out, you're welcome to do that too."
Cindy stood abruptly, her face pale. "I, uh- my cousin goes to that school. I don't know if I can- I mean, she's fine, but she left her phone in her backpack when she ran, so we spent hours yesterday waiting to hear back..."
"Go, you don't have to be here," Harrington told her immediately. He was a little shocked that this had hit so close to home. He hadn't expected anyone to be personally connected to the tragedy, and it made everything that much worse.
Cindy hurried out and Abe jumped to his feet, moving to follow her. "She was melting down for hours yesterday," he explained. "Can I please go sit with her, to make sure she's okay?"
"Of course," said Harrington. "I'll call you both back in when we're done."
The door closed behind him, and a tense silence descended on the classroom. "Alright," Harrington asked again. "Does anyone have anything they'd like to say? How are you all feeling about this?"
"Scared," said Betty after another weighty pause, "and also just like- oh God, not another one. I mean, how depressing is it that that was my first thought?"
"You're not the only one," said Charles. "I thought the same thing."
Betty continued, "It's also super disturbing, because like, I saw an interview on Twitter yesterday, and this girl said people couldn't even tell if it was a drill or if it was real at first. They thought it might be the police shooting blanks outside. And that got me, because we literally had that exact drill two days ago, so what the hell is the point? Like they were prepared too, and so many people died. I feel like we should stop doing these crazy realistic drills. I want to be able to tell the difference if it's actually happening."
Peter looked at her in grim agreement, and Harrington wondered if he was going to say something, but it was Flash who spoke first, shaking his head in fierce denial. "We need to be prepared, though, and we can only do that if it feels real. I mean, what if it happened here? How would we react? Would we know what to do if there was a fire alarm and an active shooter situation at the same time? That was why so many people died, because they all got caught outside..."
"The trainers from ALICE addressed that," Harrington reminded him. "You would ignore the fire drill and go into lockdown immediately, because a Code Red always trumps a Code Yellow."
Flash huffed out a breath, frustrated. "Yeah, that's true in theory, but the actual situation would be different, right? I mean, they knew that too. This still happened."
Peter cleared his throat. "I think it's messed up that it's impossible to tell the difference when it's a drill," he said. "I uh…I was right around the corner when my uncle was carjacked last year. I didn't see it happen, but I heard the gunshot, and I got there right before he-" his voice cracked, and he breathed in sharply. "I really can't tell, even when they're shooting blanks. It always sounds exactly the same as it did that night."
Harrington's heart broke for the kid. He could tell by the shocked looks exchanged over Peter's head that most of his classmates hadn't known he had witnessed his uncle's murder. Ned shifted his chair closer to him, his expression sympathetic, while MJ watched them with her lips pressed tightly together.
"I'm sorry you had to go through that," said Sally, the first to find her voice. Peter jerked his head in a short nod, his cheeks flushed with self-consciousness at the combined stares of his classmates.
"It must make these drills pretty hard," said Flash, and for once there was not a hint of mockery in his tone.
"Yeah, it does," said Peter evenly, not trying to pretend otherwise.
"What about you, Mr. Harrington?" Betty turned towards him suddenly, startling him. "You survived a shooting too, right? Ten years ago, at the Museum of Natural History. I looked it up when you mentioned Ashley Priest in that interview. Your name was in a couple of the articles from back then. All this must be pretty tough on you too. How do you deal with it?"
Harrington's breath caught in his chest, not sure how to answer at first. Finally, he gave her a wan look that did little to conceal how painful the question was for him. "It's never easy," he said. "I didn't sleep a whole lot last night. I've been in therapy for several years, and that helps. Speaking of which, you should all remember Ms. Wong is available if this ever becomes too much. And of course, my door is always open, too."
Peter was staring at him in shock. "I didn't know you were in that shooting," he said, shaken.
"Ms. Warren and I were chaperones," Harrington said, then smiled at the kid wryly. "I guess you're not the only one with terrible luck on field trips."
Peter flinched, staring at Harrington with guilt and dismay written across his features.
"It makes you wonder," said Ned, visibly disturbed. "That kid, Anthony Borgess; he took five bullets to save his classmates. He's in 9th grade, younger than we are, and he literally stood in the doorway and held the door closed while being shot at. It's completely insane. Like, what was even going through his mind?" He glanced quickly in Peter's direction. "I don't get how anyone could be that brave."
Peter shrugged his shoulders almost imperceptibly. "Maybe he felt responsible for them," he muttered.
"He wasn't, though," said Ned, glaring. "He was just a kid. That wasn't his job."
It was clear they weren't talking about Anthony Borgess anymore. Harrington, looking at Peter's best friend, thought, Thank God for you, Ned.
"What about the teachers?" Betty asked. "Some of them died taking bullets for students. Cindy said her cousin was pulled into a classroom by a Math teacher she didn't even know, and this woman straight up was like, 'He'll have to shoot me first to get to you.'" Betty shook her head in disbelief. "I mean, who even says that? Could you really give your life for us, Mr. Harrington?"
She'd said it offhandedly, as if it was rhetorical, but it was clear that she really wanted an answer. Harrington felt caught, put on the spot by this desperately unfair question, as his students watched him with fear and hope mingling on their young faces. "Do you really have to ask?" he answered fiercely and heartbrokenly. "Of course I would."
Peter inhaled sharply, his hands clenching down on the arms of his chair. Harrington glanced in his direction, questioning, and the kid just shook his head jerkily, watching him with a furiously protective expression.
"We shouldn't have to ask." MJ's eyes glittered with anger. "I don't expect my teachers to be willing to die to defend me. I just need them to teach me. It's our government that's really broken. Our politicians have all been bought and paid for by the NRA, and all they can give us are their thoughts and prayers. Meanwhile, my parents want to buy me a three-hundred-dollar bulletproof backpack, as if that would even help. Like what would I even do, hold it over my chest while I was running away from the guns?" She scoffed loudly.
"It makes me so mad when I think about it," said Jason. "Like, how many people are going to have to die, for people to actually take this seriously?"
"Trump said something yesterday about arming teachers," Seymour said, considering. "And yeah, eighty percent of the stuff that comes out of the guy's mouth is complete crap, but like, maybe he's on to something with that." He spread his palms outwards. "If there'd been a teacher in the building who had a gun, they could have stopped the shooter before he killed that many people."
Harrington felt revulsion churn in his stomach at the mere suggestion of any teacher bringing a gun into a school building, but he forced himself not to react. The floor was theirs today, not his, and he didn't want to use his authority to stifle any of their voices.
Thankfully, MJ had the matter in hand. "Dude, are you kidding me right now?" she exclaimed. "You want to give guns to the same teachers who opened their doors when the cops told them they'd lost their keys? I mean, I get it, it was a stressful drill, teachers aren't perfect, whatever, okay. But they're not trained to handle guns. I mean, can you imagine someone like Coach Wilson having a weapon in school? We'd all be dead in a week."
"Hey, come on." Harrington couldn't let that pass unchallenged, even if he agreed. "Let's avoid naming any names here, please."
"Sorry," said MJ, not sounding very sorry at all. "But seriously, it's not even about the school security or the drills. It's like, we're trying to find all of these different solutions to this problem as if it's super complicated and impossible to figure out, when really, it's not. At the end of the day, it's about guns. And the only way to fix it is by taking them out of the picture. It's that simple."
"It's not that simple," Sally disagreed. "I mean, sure, yeah, gun control is important. But this kid was pretty messed up, right? The shooter; he used to go to the same school until he was expelled the year before. I just am like, what were all the counselors and psychologists and teachers doing? Didn't someone notice he was mentally unstable? Maybe they could have stopped it if they had."
Peter cleared his throat. "I don't think you can really expect teachers and psychologists to catch on to every kid that might be a potential shooter," he pointed out. "Like, sometimes people can be messed up and be bullied and have no friends, but they'd still never bring a gun to school. And sometimes they can seem like they're super normal and nice, but they turn out to be batshit insane. I mean..." He paused. "Remember Liz's dad?""
And oh, Harrington wasn't the only one in the room to flinch at that.
"Exactly." MJ held up her phone, displaying a Twitter feed. "That's why these kids from MSD are already out campaigning for stricter gun laws. It's been less than a day since they were being shot at, but they know this matters, so instead of mourning their friends, they're making speeches and planning marches and tweeting, #NeverAgain, #MSDStrong. They're calling for a walk out next month. 'March for Our Lives.' It's got thousands of retweets already."
"I'm going," Betty decided immediately. "I'm sure there'll be one here."
"Yeah, I think they're saying Central Park on March 24th for NYC," said Sally as she scrolled through her phone too. "And also Columbus Circle; that's closer to here…"
"We should get permission from Principal Morita to let us participate," Ned suggested. "Mr. Harrington, could you talk to him? If we could get permission-"
"I don't care if we get permission," MJ snapped. "I'm going anyway. I don't care if I get in trouble for it."
As murmurs of angry agreement spread through the room, Harrington tried to calm them, caught off guard by how quickly the conversation had escalated. "Um, guys, can we just take a breath here? We don't even know anything concrete about this protest yet. You said yourself it was announced just this morning. We need to know a little more before we decide to go marching through the streets, okay? Just hold on a second."
Harrington could see MJ opening her mouth to argue, angered at what she probably saw as a lack of urgency on his part, but Peter beat him to it. "No, Mr. Harrington," he said in a dark tone that silenced everyone. "We can't hold on anymore, not when this could just as easily have happened to us. It did happen to me when I lost my Uncle Ben. And to you, on that field trip." He shook his head angrily, letting out a sharp exhalation of air. "I don't think we can afford to wait anymore. Do you?"
Over the next few hours, Harrington had versions of the same conversation with each of his classes. Ned wasn't the only student who asked for permission to walk out of school. When he dropped by Morita's office at the end of that day, the man took one look at him and groaned out loud. "Oh God, not you too. You're the fourth teacher today."
"It's all the kids are talking about," Harrington commented, taking a seat across from his friend. "You'll have a riot on your hands if you don't let them walk out next month."
"Yeah, I know," Morita said with a pinched look on his face. "I want to. God knows they have every reason to be out there, but it's not that simple. I'll have to talk to the school board and the district superintendent first. And the parents will probably have opinions about it, too."
"So will the teachers," Harrington reminded him. "This is probably a good time to mention that I want to walk out with them too. I'm sure I won't be the only one." He paused and added in a slightly strained voice, "Betty Brant asked me today if I'd be willing to die to save them."
"God." Morita stared at him in shock. "What the hell did you say?"
"What was I supposed to say?" Harrington asked bitterly. "What other answer is there but yes?"
"That's not-" Morita shook his head, distressed. "I don't expect any of my teachers to be willing to do that. The ALICE training does not require you to die for your students. You don't ever have to promise a kid you'll do that, Roger."
"Yeah, I know," said Harrington, "and I know not everyone would have answered the same way, but I don't have a wife or kids, so it's probably a little easier for me to say it."
"Hey, just because you aren't married and don't have children doesn't mean you're somehow expendable." Now Morita looked even more upset. "I can't believe you'd even-"
"No, no, I know," Harrington hastened to reassure him. "You're right. I'm sorry, I don't know why I said that. I just wanted to let you know that I want to go for the march too." He met Morita's gaze, letting some of his emotion show. "I feel like I have to go. For...for Ashley's sake."
Morita stilled. A pained understanding passed between them.
Two weeks later, he made the announcement officially in a schoolwide staff meeting; Midtown Tech would be open on March 24th, but anyone who wanted to walk out to join the march going to Columbus Circle would be allowed to go, whether they were students or teachers. "This probably goes without saying, but please make sure any signs you bring are appropriate," Morita reminded them. "No foul language, and nothing too political. Please don't get caught on camera holding up an 'F Trump' sign. Or worse, a pro-Trump sign."
Harrington raised his hand.
"Yes, Roger?"
"Would it...would it be inappropriate if I carried a picture of Ashley Priest?"
A hush fell over the room at the question.
"Of course not," Morita said, a little roughly. "I can't think of anything more appropriate."
Monica spoke up from a few seats away. "I ran Yearbook the years she was a student. I have some great pictures of her; not just the boring class profile ones on the official records, but actual shots of her having fun with her friends and goofing off. I'll share the folder with you on Google Drive."
Harrington remembered with a pang that Ashley's favorite subject had always been Physics. "We can pick it out together," he offered.
Monica swallowed hard. "I'd like that."
Looking around the room, at his colleagues, Harrington felt a swell of gratitude that he was being allowed to do this, to remember her like this. There was a deep sense of sorrow that nothing had changed in the ten years since that shooting, that kids were still dying like this every day. And yet, for the first time, after all these years of worrying and preparing and hoping this violence would somehow pass them by, it felt empowering to actually do something, even if it didn't change much. Even if it was just showing up to a peaceful protest to honor the memory of a seventeen-year-old girl who'd died too young.
On March 24th, 2018, Harrington walked towards Columbus Circle, mingling with a crowd of teenagers and adults; some talking, some shouting slogans. Jim Morita and Monica Warren were at his side, and so were Peter and his aunt, MJ, Ned, and Flash, Betty, Cindy, Abe, Sally, and several other teenagers and their parents. Many of the students carried signs they'd made by hand in Art class, reading things like "Protect Kids, Not Guns," "The only arms I want around me are Thor's" and "We call BS."
Harrington's sign wasn't pithy or clever, but it still stopped people in their tracks when they saw it, making strangers tear up and reach out to shake his hand. It was an image of Ashley sitting with her legs dangling outside a classroom window on the ground floor, body half turned, a notebook and pencil clutched loosely in her hands. Her head was thrown back in laughter as she looked at someone behind the frame. Below the photo her full name was written out in purple, swirling handwriting, a zoomed in image from her Yearbook signature. And under that, in stark contrast, Harrington had written in harsh, angry black print:
My student should have been 28 today.
#NeverAgain
…
TBC…
Notes:
All the details of the Parkland shooting in this chapter are factual, including the stories and names of the teachers and the kid who saved 20 classmates by barricading the door with his own body. The Math teacher who told students that the intruder would have to shoot her first is “Mama Trezzino” (that’s what her students call her). She and another teacher describe their experiences here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j9gDtgz1-z8. There is also this ‘This American Life’ podcast which includes interviews with two MSD teachers. https://www.thisamericanlife.org/659/before-the-next-one.
There are others whose names I didn’t mention, but who still deserve recognition- Aaron Fies, the football coach who died shielding students with his body, Chris Hixon, the athletic director who died running towards the gunfire to help kids flee, Peter Wang, a 15 year old who was killed holding doors open for his classmates instead of running to safety, Ernie Rospierski, a teacher who risked his life holding a door closed with his own body to stop the shooter from entering a hallway full of his students.
The student protesters from MSD (most prominently Alfonso Calderon, Sarah Chadwick, Jaclyn Corin, Ryan Deitsch, Emma González, David Hogg, Cameron Kasky, and Alex Wind) really were out there making speeches the same day the shooting happened. With their campaigning and the March for Our Lives Protest they were able to pressure both houses of the Florida legislature to vote for stricter gun control that month, which increased funding for school security and raised the minimum legal age to buy a gun in Florida from 18 to 21. They were shortlisted #4 for Time Person of the Year in 2018.
Finally, the exchange between Harrington and Betty where she asks if he would give his life for his students, and he says, “of course I would, do you even have to ask?” is an actual quote from a conversation that took place in a classroom a few days after Parkland, described in this article: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/19/us/teachers-school-shootings.html#commentsContainer
On a personal note, I want to clarify that what Harrington says about how not having a family would make it easier for him to die is not something I believe personally. It was based on conversations I have had with other teachers. As a teacher who is single and childless herself, I definitely don’t agree, but I know there are people who do feel this way, and I think it makes sense for this particular character. I don’t think educators should ever be expected to die for their students. I hope that I was able to honor the heroes of this tragedy without glorifying them.
Chapter 9: Guide
Chapter Text
As more weeks passed, Harrington realized he was nearing the end of his time as Peter's teacher. He only taught 9th and 10th grade chemistry, and Peter was almost finished with his sophomore year. In a few months, he would be moving on to the next grade level, and he would no longer be Harrington's student.
It shouldn't have bothered him so much. Any other year, with any other class, with any other kid, it wouldn't have. Harrington had been doing this for long enough that he knew how to let go of a class when a school year ended, no matter how attached to them he became. After all, that had always been a part of the job, too.
Yet the situation with Peter was different. His needs were unique because at the end of the day, he wasn't just a regular teenager who only had to worry about school. As a superhero, he faced burdens that went far beyond what any other kid his age had to deal with. An entire city depended on him, he was on call with SHIELD, he fought alien spaceships and armed supervillains on a weekly basis.
The trouble was, Harrington was the only adult in the building who knew any of that about him. He knew that so many of the steps he had taken to help Peter had only been possible because he'd seen him every day. From arranging his accommodations to the conversations with him after class to checking in with him about active shooter drills, he had become a huge part of Peter's support system. There was a sense of obligation and weight in that. He couldn't do anything about it, though, so he tried not to let it get to him.
Until, at the end of April, suddenly Harrington could. James Cobbwell announced that he would be leaving Midtown Tech and moving to Chicago to be closer to his girlfriend. He was going to be hard to replace since he was both experienced and highly qualified. He'd taught AP Chemistry and AP Physics 1 for years, two of the most hardcore and intense 11th and 12th grade science classes. There weren't a lot of experienced, qualified teachers out there who could handle that kind of load, but Harrington knew he was one of them.
He had never taught AP classes before, but he had graduate level qualifications in Physics, Chemistry, and Science Education. He already knew the students and what they needed, and he was a hard worker. It would mean completely losing the comfort and familiarity of teaching 9th and 10th grade, as well as the massive wealth of resources and materials he had developed over the years. It would mean hours of extra work and planning as he started from scratch with two new classes...but Harrington knew he could do it.
Two days after Cobbwell's announcement, Harrington knocked on Jim Morita's door and informed him that he was interested in applying for the job. Morita gaped at him, floored by a decision that probably seemed completely out of left field. "Wait, why would you want to do that?"
"I just feel like it's time for a change," Harrington tried to explain. "I've been in my comfort zone for a long time with 9th and 10th grade. I don't want to stagnate."
"But you love teaching the freshmen and sophomores," said Morita. "You always have. What's changed?"
"Does it really matter?" Harrington asked. "You need someone qualified and experienced, and you know I am. I can do this, Jim."
"Of course you can do it, that's not the point," Morita said, still frowning at him, "but this just seems completely out of character. I need an actual explanation here, Roger."
Harrington tried desperately to think up a good excuse, but he couldn't find anything that would fool someone who knew him as well as Morita did. "It's Peter Parker," he said finally, deciding to just be honest for once. "You know he's had it really rough these past couple of years, especially after his uncle died. He doesn't open up to people easily, but we have a good relationship. He doesn't have a lot of people in his life who he can actually talk to, and I don't want him to lose that. He's the kind of kid who could go out there and invent something amazing, like a smartphone with an undying battery, or sustainable energy solutions for the developing world. I want to make sure he gets there in one piece, you know?"
Morita stared at him in an assessing silence, and then he exhaled slowly, his face going wry and fondly exasperated. "I should have known," he said. "I know you really love this kid; I figured that out the day you asked me not to suspend him after almost getting you killed. Still, even for you, this is a bit much."
Harrington shrugged and smiled ruefully. "There's always one or two who really get under your skin. I'm sure you remember how it is."
"Of course I do," Morita returned. "But changing your entire job description and taking on a whole new course load just for one student? You work too hard as it is. This year has already been very tough on you. You really want to take this on now, on top of everything else?"
"I don't want to, exactly," Harrington explained. "I just feel like I need to? I'll always regret it if I don't step up for him now. Besides, it's not all bad. These are advanced classes, and I could do worse than teaching the most brilliant kids in this school the most rigorous and challenging curriculum we have to offer. That's not exactly a punishment."
"I guess." Morita frowned at him for a few more moments, then sighed and shook his head. "Well, on your own head be it. I'm going to give you a week to change your mind, but I won't try to talk you out of it. Especially since getting someone who can take on two AP science classes isn't a gift horse that I can afford to look at very closely." He grinned and added teasingly, "But I'll be expecting lots of 4's and 5's on the AP tests next year. You'll be in the big leagues now with all the college-bound kids."
"Gee, thanks, that makes me feel so much better about this," Harrington shot back, but he found himself relaxing, knowing the job was his.
The position change was announced on the Midtown Daily Newscast in May, and though Harrington had been a bit worried his sophomore class might be dismayed by the prospect of having him as a teacher for four years in a row, most of them seemed pleased, or at least indifferent. As for Peter, when he heard the news, the kid fixed him with such a bright, relieved grin that Harrington knew instantly he'd made the right decision.
...
Peter's sophomore year ended quietly, and summer vacation passed with blissful uneventfulness. For once, there were no big disasters requiring superheroic intervention. By the time July had melted into August, Harrington was actually feeling rested and recharged, ready for whatever the new year would bring.
The fall semester also proved a lot less eventful than the previous one had been. Peter buckled down and worked hard, embracing the reprieve just as much as his teacher. New York's crime rate was at an all-time low, Peter's grades were at an all-time high, and as more months slipped quietly by without anything catastrophic happening, Harrington was beginning to hope they could get through an entire year without any major disasters.
And then, of course, there was yet another alien invasion over Manhattan, the third in six years. This one was led by an overlord named Thanos, a balding, purple-faced, hideous giant that terrified the entire nation but also launched a thousand hilarious memes on Instagram and Twitter.
It was clear from the start that this threat went even beyond the scale of the 2012 attack by Loki and the Chitauri. The newspapers were full of vague, hysterical speculation with very little concrete information, but from what Peter told Harrington in a harried conversation seconds before he rushed out the door, it had something to do with a race to find six all-powerful 'Infinity Stones' that could wipe out half the universe. Over the course of seven days, Spider-Man and Ironman fought multiple battles against Thanos's army, first in New York, then in Cleveland, then in Michigan, then in Mexico, and then in New York again. Then, as one week stretched into two, May Parker sent an email to Morita and all of Peter's teachers, attaching an official diagnosis of mono from a doctor named Helen Cho. It would excuse Peter from school for a full four weeks if need be.
Harrington was wracked by the now-familiar anxiety that came with knowing Peter was in danger. The camera angles dramatized the events, making them look damningly theatrical and catastrophic. If it hadn't been for Stark's quick, terse texts after every battle assuring him Peter had made it through, Harrington knew he would have spiraled into the same dark place he'd been last Christmas. He was grateful the billionaire had remembered his promise even in the midst of all this.
In school, Ned began to wear a pinched, worried expression on his face, losing half his usual energy and good cheer as more days went by. Harrington could tell that MJ was worried about him, but Ned couldn't exactly explain himself to her. Harrington and Ned had never acknowledged to each other that they both knew Peter's secret, not once in the past year. It had seemed safer somehow not to cross that line. Now, though, Harrington recognized in the kid the same lonely worry he himself carried, and he knew he had to say something.
"I know this is really bad, Ned." He met the boy's eyes and addressed him as an equal, because in this, at least, they were. "I know you and I aren't that close. We haven't really talked that much this past year. You've always seemed like a bright, happy kid, you don't get lost on field trips, and you've always done well in school. You've never given anyone much reason to worry about you, but I do understand exactly how hard this can be. I hope you know that you can come by my room anytime to talk."
Ned stared at him for a moment and then sagged, looking nothing like his usual, sunny self. "I'm just really scared," he said. "It's never been this bad, and usually I'm at least involved. I'm supposed to be his Guy in the Chair." At Harrington's frown of confusion, the kid explained, "You know, the guy with the headset, who sits at the computer and helps the hero and tells him where to go and stuff? It was a whole thing. But now Peter's out there fighting all these insane threats, and he didn't even respond to the last two memes I sent him, and he keeps saying he's fine. I just wish I could actually be there, you know? I wish I could be helping him in some way."
"Yeah," said Harrington. He experienced an acute feeling of kinship with the kid, united as they both were in their love and concern for Peter Parker. "I know exactly what you mean."
...
With how outmatched Ironman and Spider-Man clearly were, there were growing calls for the Avengers to be allowed to return from exile. Captain America issued a statement from Wakanda, saying his team was ready to come back and fight if asked. A grim-faced Tony Stark helped negotiate a pardon for his former teammates, dark rings under his eyes as he answered reporters' questions and talked to prominent lawmakers. Thanks to the need of the hour, the exiled Avengers were back in New York within days, receiving a hero's welcome at the gates of Stark Tower.
The battles and skirmishes with Thanos's army continued. Even with the Avengers, they were still outmatched, and both the property damage and the death toll began to inch upwards. Then, the world watched in horror as Ironman went up against a massive battalion of Thanos's spaceships in the middle of Brooklyn, taking them out in a huge explosion that rained debris and ash over New York City. In the aftermath, the superhero was seen plummeting from the skies over Brooklyn, only caught spare seconds before he hit the ground by Thor. He was rushed away to Stark Tower by Thor, and Spider-Man was seen swinging after them as fast as his webs could carry him. The next day, Pepper Potts released a statement informing the world that Stark was in a coma, fighting for his life.
Harrington wrote an email to Peter that same evening, his heart tight and heavy in his chest as he imagined how the kid must be feeling. He wished, for a moment, that he'd saved the kid's cell phone number from that field trip to SI over a year ago, wanting nothing more than to talk to him in person. But texting a student's private number was not a professional line Harrington ever intended to cross, so instead, he wrote a carefully worded email.
Hey Peter,
I just wanted to check in about how you're doing. I understand you're still pretty sick right now. I realize how challenging that is, but you've got this, Peter. I know you can beat it, and I'm rooting for you.
Best,
Mr. Harrington.
He wasn't really expecting a response given how crazy things were out there, but he got one within minutes, sent from Peter's phone with none of the usual care he took when communicating with his teachers. Thanks mr Harington means a lot to hear from u especially now. Im okay
It was the last he heard from Peter for ten days. Harrington watched with pride and fear as Spider-Man went toe to toe with a thousand strong army of Outriders, carrying heavy powered weaponry alongside his web shooters. The Outriders were huge, multi-limbed creatures that towered as high as the skyscrapers surrounding them, straight out of humanity's worst nightmares. Harrington couldn't even believe the reports he was reading, stories of how Captain America was depending increasingly on Spider-Man, giving him more and more responsibility. He couldn't believe he was watching Peter alongside the Avengers now, being tossed into the air by Thor, being carried away from danger by the Hulk, standing beside Captain Steve Rogers at the head of a Wakandan army.
God, that is a sixteen-year-old kid, he couldn't help thinking. Don't you know how young he is? Can't you tell by his quips and his unbroken voice that he's still a fucking child? What is he doing out there, in the middle of all that?
Through it all, Tony Stark slept through his coma. Harrington knew, from watching Ironman and Spider-Man fight threats on his TV screen for years, that Stark would never have allowed this to happen if he'd been around. He had always tried to keep Peter out of the worst danger when he could. It didn't always work, and Peter sometimes got hurt, but most of the time, Stark was always there, guiding him, yelling instructions to him, taking on the hardest blows. Harrington hadn't realized it until now, until Stark was gone, just how much he had protected the kid by his sheer, indomitable presence. Without that, Peter seemed in far graver danger than he had ever been.
In the end, Thanos and the Outrider army were finally defeated, turned to ash by a snap of the Hulk's fingers. It was brutal and devastating, and no one knew exactly what had happened because only glimmers of it had been caught on camera. When the dust finally settled, the damage to the city was even worse than what they'd suffered in 2012. Several hundreds had died. Under Captain America's direction, the superheroes assisted with rescue, recovery and clean up. Now that it was all over, Harrington waited for Peter's return to school but instead saw footage of Spider-Man helping where he could, lifting collapsed beams off trapped civilians, moving debris with his webs and his strength, and carrying dead bodies away from wrecked buildings.
Fuck, he thought again, feeling cold down to his bones at the images flooding every TV screen and smartphone. They really don't know how old he is.
When Peter finally returned to school after a four-week absence, Harrington was extremely relieved to see him. The teen smiled tiredly at Harrington in greeting and submitted to the fierce hug Ned folded him into without protest. As days passed, though, he seemed exhausted and worn down, fragile in a way he hadn't been since the fall of his sophomore year. His friends hovered around him worriedly, but he barely seemed to be talking to them at all. He sat through his classes without raising his hand, blank-faced, his gaze distant.
Harrington tried to talk to him, asking him how he was doing on his first day back.
"Fine," the kid answered dully. "Thanos is dead, so everything's back to normal."
"And what about Mr. Stark?" Harrington asked carefully.
Peter flinched violently. "I'm late for AP Calc," he said. "I'll talk to you later."
After that, he avoided Harrington's attempts to speak with him again, rushing out the second he heard the bell. Harrington had other classes to too, and only so many free periods during the day when he could actually have a conversation with the teenager. It was hard to pin Peter down for a discussion when he was going out of his way to avoid it.
At the grade level team meeting that week, several teachers expressed their concerns. Peter had weeks' worth of work to catch up on and had made little attempt to talk to his teachers or even respond to the emails they'd sent him about what he needed to do. He was ghost-walking through each day. Then, in the evenings, Harrington would turn on his TV and see compilations of hours of footage of Spider-Man out in the city, helping civilians, sometimes as late as one or two in the morning.
In sheer desperation, Harrington picked up his phone and dialed May Parker one evening. She sounded frazzled and harried when she answered, right in the middle of a punishing shift at the hospital where she worked. "I know he's struggling," she said. "I- these last few weeks have just been so..."
"Yeah, I know."
"I don't know what to do," she said. "I know he's really worried about Tony, but he won't talk about it at all. I usually try to be home when he gets back, but we're slammed right now with the injuries from all these battles. I keep telling him to stop going out there, but he's just so stubborn, and I'm not home enough to make sure he's actually following his curfew-" She paused, and Harrington could hear a man calling her name in the background, his voice loud and urgent even at a distance. "Crap, sorry. I have to go."
She hung up, and Harrington felt a deep swelling of sympathy for her. May Parker was a nurse in a New York City hospital in the aftermath of a series of terrible attacks, and she was also a single parent on a fixed income, trying to feed and house a teenage superhero. There was only so much she could reasonably do. With Stark out of commission, this was down to Harrington, now. The following day, at the end of AP Physics 1, he stood at the door of his classroom a full minute before the bell rang just so he could catch Peter before he rushed out.
"I need a word with you," he told him. "Could you please take a seat and wait for a minute?"
"Uh, but we have English right now-"
"I'll write you a pass and apologize to Ms. Godwin later," said Harrington firmly. "Sit back down, okay?"
Peter's lips pressed into an unhappy line, and he stared at Harrington with a mutinous expression, but he slunk back to his desk, his shoulders stiff and tense. When his classroom emptied, Harrington took a seat across from him and tried to meet his gaze, but Peter stared determinedly at his feet.
"You can't keep doing this, Peter," Harrington said. "You're killing yourself, being out this late every night. You haven't even taken a second to breathe after the final battle."
"I can't stop going out," said Peter, gesturing towards the still smoking skyline, visible through the classroom windows. "You have no idea how bad it is. New York needs me right now."
"New York can wait," said Harrington decisively. "If Mr. Stark were here right now, what do you think he'd say, huh? Would he really let you be out there, pulling buildings off corpses, and neglecting all your schoolwork for-"
"But he can't see me right now, can he?" Peter finally looked up at him, and Harrington caught his breath at the anguish written on his face. "It's been weeks, and he hasn't woken up, and it's...he's..." He crumpled suddenly, brown eyes filling with tears.
"Alright, okay," Harrington murmured quickly. He rose from his chair and moved closer, laying a hand on Peter's back as he hunched over, shaking apart. His heart was heavy. The entire situation was awful and distressing, and there wasn't a lot he could do to make it better right now, so he just let the kid cry.
"If he dies..."
"He won't."
"He could, though." Peter sat up, his face blotchy and his cheeks wet. "No one really knows if he's going to wake up. And I was right there, too, but I couldn't get to him in time. God, if Thor hadn't caught him-"
"Hey, no, don't even go there. He did, okay? He saved him, and Mr. Stark is alive. He will wake up, and if he doesn't-" Harrington ignored the way his own stomach swooped at the thought- "then we'll find a way to deal with that too, one day at a time."
"I can't lose him too," Peter said almost inaudibly.
"I know." Harrington's chest tightened again at how distraught the kid sounded. "I can't imagine how hard this has all been. Fighting against threats like that, working with the Avengers and being under all that pressure."
"It was terrifying," Peter confessed. "I've been in fights before, but never anything this big or insane. There was so much riding on this. We could all have died, like half the planet wiped out in seconds. So many people did die right in front of me, and I couldn't even…" He took a shuddering breath, twisting his fingers together. "I keep dreaming that we lost, that Thanos managed to find that last stone and snap his fingers. Half the universe would have been turned into dust, just like that. It was a miracle it didn't happen, and now all these buildings and streets are half destroyed, and there's so many people who need help."
"But you have your teammates, don't you?" Harrington reminded him. "You don't always have to be out there all the time."
Peter sniffled, scrubbing an exhausted hand over his face. "Captain Rogers keeps saying we need to step up and do our part."
"But you have done your part," Harrington said, frowning.
"Not as much as the others," Peter explained. "After the 2012 attack, a lot of people criticized the Avengers for just up and leaving. Captain Rogers wants to make sure we don't make those mistakes this time, so everyone's there every day, helping. Except me. I'm in school all morning. And he's been nice about it so far, but I can tell he doesn't really get what could be more important than helping out right now. He looks at me with this disappointed expression when I get there in the afternoons..." He swallowed hard. "It makes me feel so guilty. That's why I stay as late as I do. My webs and super strength have been really useful for lifting and moving stuff. I wanted to skip school another week to keep helping but May put her foot down."
Thank God for that, thought Harrington. "Can't you talk to Captain Rogers?" he asked.
"And say what?" Peter asked. "He thinks I'm a full-time superhero, basically an Avenger. He probably assumes I'm being paid by SHIELD like the rest of them are. Nick Fury knows me. What could I possibly say to explain why I need to cut back? 'Sorry, I'm a kid and I have to go finish my homework?'" He shook his head and scoffed as if the idea was ludicrous, but Harrington found himself unable to dismiss it as easily.
He rose and walked over to one of the windows, staring out at the soccer fields as he considered Peter's options. The kid was drowning here, and something needed to be done. Harrington had never been more painfully aware that that this wasn't his world. He was a teacher, not a superhero. Avengers, supervillains, alien overlords, and all-powerful magic stones which could apparently destroy half the universe if someone snapped their fingers, it was all way above his pay grade. But someone needed to guide Peter through this mess. He clearly needed more than Harrington could give him right now. Harrington had spent over a year fiercely protecting the kid's identity, carrying this secret alone, not even telling his own shrink...
...but maybe one other superhero would be okay. Maybe Captain America, leader of the Avengers, would be okay.
"Do you trust Captain Rogers?" he asked slowly, turning and leaning back against the closed window. "I mean, leaving aside the mess with the Accords, do you believe he's someone who would keep his word?"
"Yeah, of course," said Peter, frowning in confusion. "He's a great leader and a good guy. He literally just helped save the world; of course I trust him."
Harrington nodded, then crossed his arms over his chest and surveyed Peter from where he was standing. "What do you think he'd do, if he found out you were a kid?"
Peter's expression morphed quickly from confusion to angry denial. "No," he said vehemently. "No way."
"Peter," said Harrington. "Think logically for a second, here. You know you can't sustain this crazy schedule, or something's going to give soon. You have school to worry about, and I'll bet you haven't even had a chance to go sit by Mr. Stark's bed and hold his hand. Am I right?"
Peter flinched and looked away, which was answer enough.
"He's treating you like you're a full-grown adult who's doing this fulltime," Harrington continued. "And that would be fine if you were, but you're a junior in high school. He's Captain America. He kept state secrets during World War II, he helped take down two alien invasions, he outed a Nazi organization in SHIELD. Even when he was a war criminal, we were still playing his PSA's in Health Education and P.E because no one really doubted that he was a good guy. So seriously, I'm asking you: do you really think something bad would happen, if he knew who you were?"
"I don't...that's not the point." Peter shook his head angrily. "You really want me to just go up to Captain Rogers and what, take off my mask and introduce myself? 'Hi, I'm Peter Parker, I'm sixteen, and I'm from Queens. Oh, but wait you already knew that, so. Also, sorry I tried to steal your shield way back when, but you know, we also fought the world's ugliest alien together and won, so like, bygones.'"
Harrington smiled at this characteristically rambling intro. "You should say it exactly like that," he said.
"If he finds out I'm only sixteen, he's going to be really mad," said Peter.
"He'll get over it."
"No, not just mad at me. He'll also be angry with Mr. Stark too, for getting me involved in all this."
"Yeah well, so was I," Harrington told him with a matter-of-fact shrug. "It's not exactly an unreasonable reaction."
Peter looked surprised. "You were?"
"Of course I was." Harrington made a wry face as he remembered how furious he'd been that day. "You were fifteen, you were my student, and I'd just found out he had you fighting against fully grown superheroes in Europe and getting torn apart on ferry boats in Staten Island. I was beyond horrified." He walked across the room and sat back down beside Peter, meeting his gaze reassuringly. "But it didn't take me long to realize how much he cared about you. That man is an open book when it comes to you, Peter. Captain Rogers might be mad at first, but he'll realize the same thing I did: Tony Stark will always have your best interests at heart."
"Yeah." Peter let out a deep, unsteady breath of air. "I really miss him."
Harrington reached out again and laid his hand on the kid's shoulder, and another minute passed in silence.
"I get what you're saying," Peter said finally. "I know Captain Rogers is a good man, and I do trust him...but I've never actually told anyone. You, Aunt May, Ned, Mr. Stark, you all just found out by accident."
"Maybe that's all the more reason to change that, then," said Harrington. "The other superheroes will find out eventually, with how closely you're all working together now. It's only a matter of time. Maybe you could avoid the stress and drama of being revealed by accident if you just tell Captain America now. If he's half the man people say he is, he'll understand."
"But I don't..." Peter paused. "I don't want them to stop taking me seriously. I know I'm a kid, I know I can't keep staying out till 1:00 am helping move buildings and lifting people to the hospital. I know I'm not a full-time superhero...but I still want to be out there helping people, you know?"
Harrington shook his head, half fond and half exasperated at the sheer ridiculousness of the kid in front of him. He hadn't even asked for the break yet, and here he was, already worrying about being sidelined.
"I doubt that even Captain America would be able to find a way bench you completely," he said drily. "You're entirely too stubborn for that. If Tony Stark couldn't do it, I don't think anyone could."
"Okay," said Peter. He looked terrified, but there was a glimmer of hope and determination shining in his eyes. "I guess…I guess I'm doing this, then. Today."
Harrington smiled at him, proud and encouraging, and repeated the same words he'd told Peter in his email a few weeks ago. "You've got this, Peter."
…
TBC...
Up Next:
May let out a ragged sigh. "It's not good," she said. "He hit his head pretty hard. I talked to Dr. Cho, and with an injury like that, at Tony's age, especially with everything his body's already been through? There's about a fifty percent chance he wakes up at all."
Chapter 10: Refuge
Notes:
(See the end of the chapter for notes.)
Chapter Text
A few hours later, Harrington stared out at the city skyline from his apartment window, his gaze towards Stark Tower. He wondered what Peter was doing right now, if he was taking off his mask and explaining to Captain America that he was Peter Parker, a junior at Midtown Tech. He wondered how the Captain would receive it, the realization that the Avengers had been fighting multi-limbed giant monsters and leading Wakandan armies in battle with a kid barely over driving age. Would he level Peter with the same earnestly disappointed expression he used in his detention PSA's? Or would he be shocked, or even angry?
Harrington had told Peter that Captain America would get over it, but Harrington couldn't help but worry now. He wished suddenly that he could have been there himself, just to look out for Peter as he bared his face and identity to this man. Why hadn't he insisted on going? Harrington reminded himself he had never inserted himself into Peter's other life like that, had never pretended to have any say in that strange world of superheroes and alien invasions which his student also inhabited. He told himself that Peter could probably handle a conversation with Captain America after weeks spent taking down the worst threats humanity had ever faced.
Harrington forced himself to turn away from the window and stop thinking about it. He spent the next few hours on his couch with Netflix playing in the background as he graded a set of lab reports. Just as he was finishing up the first stack, his phone began to buzz, an unknown number with a New York City area code flashing on the lock screen.
"Hello?"
"Hi, am I speaking to Roger Harrington?" The voice on the other end was male, and sounded vaguely familiar. "Peter Parker's science teacher?"
"Uh, yes?"
"Okay, great," the man said, obviously relieved. "I got your number from May Parker. I thought we should probably talk, given what I just learned today." He paused and added belatedly, "This is Captain Steve Rogers."
Just as he had when Tony Stark had first called him out of the blue over a year ago, Harrington nearly dropped the phone in his shock. "Uh, hi?" he stammered. "Did something- is Peter okay?"
"Honestly, I feel like I should be asking you that," said Captain Rogers. "I cannot believe I had a sixteen-year-old fighting a war beside me for four weeks, and the only person who knew about it was his high school teacher. And Tony, of course." He paused and added disapprovingly, "Who apparently decided it was a good idea to bring a child to Germany and involve him in a mess that was only supposed to be between him and me."
Harrington felt a surge of defensiveness for Tony Stark, who at the moment was lying in a hospital bed somewhere in Stark Tower, unable to speak for himself. "I think he was doing the best he could," he said. "He cares a lot about Peter, and the fact is, he wasn't the one who brought him into this life. Peter was Spider-Man for months before Germany even happened. He's been doing this since he was fourteen."
"Yes, because that makes it so much easier to stomach." Rogers now sounded even more unhappy. He added in a tone of horrified realization, "Oh God, did I drop a jet bridge on a teenager's head?"
There was a time when Harrington would have paused at the image, but after watching Peter face off against exploding drones, alien spaceships and monstrous Outriders, a jet bridge didn't strike him as all that bad. "If it's any consolation, Peter feels just as bad about trying to steal your shield," he said.
"I know. He apologized about a dozen times."
There were a few beats of silence. Harrington wondered exactly what Rogers wanted from him, here. This conversation felt surreal, and he had no idea where it was going.
"So... you've known about all this for a while, right?" Rogers sounded hesitant, at odds with the confident delivery of his educational PSAs. "He said you were the one who talked him into telling me, so you had to have known."
"I've known for about a year and a half."
"Then you must know Peter pretty well." It was more a statement than a question. "Do you think...is he doing okay, with all this? It's just, I knew he was young, but when I saw his face, I couldn't believe the hell we put him through. In hindsight, I can't believe I didn't see it. He wouldn't stop babbling in the middle of fights, and he was so obsessed with his phone- like kids are these days- and he always wanted to film everything. Not to mention all the references to 'really old movies'... but then, I don't really understand those myself."
Harrington remembered, then, that the man he was speaking to was almost a century old. No wonder he hadn't been able to tell Peter's age, not without having any frame of reference. Though that did nothing to explain how the other Avengers had missed it, but then again, who in their right mind would assume that Spider-Man was in high school? Harrington never would have guessed it himself. If it hadn't been for the superhero yelling "Mr. Harrington, watch out!" in that painfully familiar voice, he'd have been just as lost as Captain America was now.
"You had no reason to think he wasn't an adult," he said.
"Still, we asked him to take on so much. He saw so many people killed right in front of him, and all that time, he was-" Rogers exhaled sharply, the sound crackling through the connection and making Harrington wince. "What does that do to a child? Seeing all of that? Moving bodies out of wrecked buildings, and there I was telling him he needed to do more..." He trailed off.
Harrington's confusion cleared as he finally understood the reason behind this call. He felt his previous tension and worry dissipate. The fact that Captain America had taken the time to call Spider-Man's high school teacher just to check if he was doing okay was all the assurance Harrington needed that he'd been right to trust this man. "He's been through a lot, and not just in the past month," he said. "He's lost a lot of people and seen a lot of evil, and of course it's left its mark. How could it not? But don't let his baby face fool you. Peter's a resilient kid, and he's been doing this for years. It was hard for me to accept once, too, but this is his calling."
"Yeah, the kid definitely does have heart," said Rogers wryly. "I tried to tell him to go home, but he got really intense and defiant about 'not being treated like a kid.' And this, after he'd literally just told me he was sixteen. He insisted on staying two hours to help out before I could finally convince him to leave."
Of course he did, thought Harrington, rolling his eyes.
"You're not going to have much luck trying to get him to take it easy," he warned. "He's ridiculously stubborn...but bear in mind that he is struggling right now, just not in the way you're probably thinking. The battle he can handle, but Tony Stark is a different matter. Until he wakes up, Peter's not going to breathe easy."
"Yeah, we all noticed how close the two of them were, that first week," Rogers answered. "He was completely distraught when Ironman went down." A note of bewilderment entered his voice. "I never would have thought that Tony of all people..."
Harrington remembered how surprised he'd been too, those first few times Stark had called or texted him to check on Peter, asking him how he was doing at school, whether he was keeping his grades up, whether he seemed low after an active shooter drill, or wondering if he needed more accommodations. "Peter has a way of growing on you," he said. "It's a combination of the puppy dog eyes and the earnest, 'always need to do the right thing' personality. I don't think Tony Stark ever stood a chance."
"I'm not sure I do either, if I'm being honest," said Rogers. "Do you think it would be okay if I called you sometimes, just to check on him? Maybe once a week or so? At least until Tony's awake and can do it himself."
Harrington let out a huff of air, more in disbelief than annoyance that this was his life now. Between Ironman and Captain America, he'd apparently somehow been made the official switchboard operator for Superhero Central when he wasn't looking. Yet it was a relief to know that Peter had another person who already cared this much, especially now.
"Of course," he said warmly. "You can call me anytime."
...
The following afternoon found Peter sitting in Harrington's classroom, working on a chemistry assignment. It had been a fairly quiet, uneventful day. The teen was stretched out on the sofa, earbuds plugged in and laptops on his knees. He was going through the lesson slideshows Harrington had sent him during the first week of his absence. So far, he hadn't said much, but it was good to see the kid finally starting to catch up on his pending schoolwork. He was very bright, but even for Peter, missing four straight weeks of school was no joke.
An hour passed in silence, and then Peter closed his laptop and began to gather his things. "Done?" Harrington asked.
"Yeah. I handed in both the assignments on Kinematics on PowerSchool."
"Good, that's Week 1 taken care of," said Harrington. "I'll grade it right away so you can start working on Week 2 by tomorrow. Did you email your other teachers yet?"
"Yeah, I did. Some of them haven't mailed me back yet, but Ms. Godwin said she'd help me with the Socials/English paper tomorrow." Peter paused, hesitating as he moved towards the door. "Is it okay if I keep working here after school, until I catch up on all this stuff? It's just easier to get it done before I leave here so I can just focus on patrolling without worrying about it."
"Of course," Harrington answered. "I'm usually here until around 4:30, so you're more than welcome to stay if you want to." He paused. "Are you headed to meet the Avengers now? They don't know who you are yet, do they?"
"No, though I think the Captain might have hinted about how old I am." Peter hesitated, shifting from foot to foot. "But I'm not going to see them right now. I'm, uh, actually going to see Mr. Stark."
Harrington straightened. "That's good," he said. "Is he...?"
"No, no change."
Harrington sighed. "I'm sorry, Peter."
"I just thought- you were right, yesterday. I haven't even seen him in weeks, and it would be nice to just...see for myself that he's still breathing, you know? And-" the kid swallowed hard- "Dr. Cho says that he might be able to hear me, even when he's unconscious. So...so maybe it would help him, if he could hear my voice."
"Of course it would." Harrington met Peter's eyes encouragingly. "I know this whole thing has been so hard, but hang in there, yeah? He will wake up eventually. He's survived worse, and he's a fighter. Don't start losing faith in him now."
"I won't." Peter squared his shoulders, looking a little bolstered. "Thanks, Mr. Harrington. I'll see you tomorrow. Have a good night."
…
Over the next few days, Peter began to make more of an effort in school. He raised his hand at least once or twice a class, even if sometimes it seemed like he was making a conscious effort to participate. He seemed a little more rested, and he began to stay back in Harrington's classroom for at least an hour after school every day, making steady progress on the assignments he'd missed.
But even as his colleagues expressed relief at these positive changes, Harrington found himself growing more concerned. There was a cloud of worry looming over the teen, growing darker with every passing day. His smiles had lost half their brightness. During class, he would sometimes stare out of the window, an anguished look on his face, looking towards Stark Tower. When Ned or MJ tried to engage him in conversation, he responded with a dullness and lack of energy that was clearly distressing to both of them.
Towards the end of that week, May Parker returned Harrington's phone call, this time sounding a little less frazzled and tired. "I'm sorry I haven't got the chance to speak to you properly until now," she apologized. "Things have just been crazy lately at the hospital, but it's finally starting to ease up a little. There's still a ton of damage, but at least with the fighting over, we don't have a constant stream of injured people coming into the hospital."
"That's good to hear," said Harrington.
"I wanted to thank you for taking care of things last week when I couldn't," she continued. "Telling Captain America was definitely the right call. He's very protective of him already. At least I can breathe a little easier now."
"I'm glad. Do you...?" Harrington found himself hesitating, not entirely sure if he wanted to hear the answer. "I haven't wanted to ask Peter, because I don't want to upset him. But is there anything new about...about Mr. Stark? Exactly how bad is it?"
May let out a ragged sigh. "It's not good," she said. "He hit his head pretty hard. I talked to Dr. Cho, and with an injury like that, at Tony's age, especially with everything his body's already been through? There's about a fifty percent chance he wakes up at all."
"Fuck," Harrington swore, then winced at the slip. "Sorry."
"No, fuck is pretty much where we're at right now," said May. "I don't know what I'm going to do. I haven't told Peter yet, but he's probably guessed how low the chances are. If Tony dies-" Her voice wavered. "My kid can't afford to lose any more fathers. Even he's not that strong."
Harrington blew out an uneven breath. "Yeah," he said.
They hung up, and Harrington felt a tightness in his chest as he tried not to imagine what it would look like, trying to bring Peter back from losing Tony Stark. Unable to bear the thought, he shoved it forcefully from his mind.
...
Two more weeks passed in the same way. Peter now had dark smudges under his eyes. He'd grown pale, had lost weight and was unhealthy in a way that was painful to look at. He continued to spend his afternoons in Harrington's classroom even after he finished his backlog of assignments, as if he needed the structure of that routine to ground him. They didn't talk much, but Harrington made sure he was there every day, staying even on days when he could otherwise have left early. Twice, Peter fell asleep on his sofa, stretched out in a spread-eagled tangle of limbs, and Harrington stayed until he woke up, knowing the kid needed the sleep more than he needed to get home at a reasonable hour.
Finally, on the Wednesday afternoon of the third week, something changed. Harrington was in the middle of presenting an introductory lesson on circular motion and gravitation when Peter choked loudly and jumped to his feet, knocking his chair backwards onto the floor with a crash. His classmates, who had all been listening intently and making notes, jumped and turned to stare at him in surprise.
"Sorry," he gasped out, his hands clutched tightly over his phone. He pulled the chair upright with shaking hands and quickly stuffed his laptop and notebook in his backpack. "I have to go. Something's come up."
A pit formed in Harrington's stomach. "Guys, excuse me for a second." He quickly stepped out into the hallway, a few steps behind the kid as he rushed out the door. "Peter? What's going on?"
The teen was moving so fast that he was already fifteen feet down the corridor, but he turned at the sound of Harrington's voice. The joy on his face was indescribable. "Dr. Cho just texted me," he said. "He woke up."
A wave of relief flooded through Harrington, and he smiled almost as brightly as Peter. "That's amazing," he said.
Peter nodded once and turned, his feet echoing loudly on the floor as he ran down the empty corridor. Harrington knew he'd be in his suit as soon as he cleared the building, swinging through the city towards Stark Tower. Standing outside his classroom, Harrington tilted his head back and laughed softly. The muscles in his back and shoulders loosened for the first time in weeks.
Finally, he thought. It's about damn time, Stark.
...
Peter wasn't in school the next day, but when he returned the morning after that, it was like he was walking on air. He spent most of the day vibrating with energy, chattered to his friends to the point of irritating MJ and disrupting Harrington's lesson, and spent ten minutes texting under his desk during class with a bright, goofy smile plastered on his face. Pleased to see the kid in such high spirits, Harrington let the behavior slide for once.
When the final bell rang at the end of the day, he wasn't expecting Peter to come by his classroom now that Stark was better, but the kid bounced in anyway, throwing himself on the sofa with a burst of energy that made its legs creak alarmingly. "It's nice to see you so happy, Peter, but please don't break my sofa," he told the kid, amused. "It's not Spider-Man proof."
"Sorry, I'm just so relieved!" Peter exclaimed. "He's still super groggy and he'll need some physiotherapy and stuff, but he's really going to be okay. Dr. Cho said in a couple of months, he'll even be able to put on his suit and start going out again!"
"That's great," said Harrington, smiling. "He must have been pleased to hear that."
"Actually, he got mad at how long it would take," said Peter, "and he was kind of bummed that he missed the final showdown with Thanos."
Harrington nodded. A thought occurred to him and he asked, "By the way, does he know yet that you unmasked yourself to Captain America?"
"Yeahhh," said Peter, making a face as he drew out the word. "That was a whole thing. Captain Rogers came in and sat by his bed in the hospital, and they had a long discussion. They thought I was sleeping, but I heard most of it. Captain Rogers didn't yell, but he was really mad that Mr. Stark didn't tell him I was a minor. They went back and forth about it for a while."
"And what did Mr. Stark say afterwards?" Harrington asked. "Did he discuss it with you?"
"Yeah, at first he was mad at me for telling," Peter answered. "I think because he and Captain Rogers still have some bad blood, because of the whole Civil War situation. I don't really get it, but they're really weird around each other sometimes." He shrugged as if it didn't really matter to him, which surprised Harrington until he realized that Peter was still far too happy about his mentor's recovery to care about such trivial details. "He definitely wasn't pleased that I'd outed myself to his former enemy, but then I told him what you said, about how the Avengers were treating me like a fulltime superhero and how I needed to take a break and ask for help. After that he got all quiet."
"He did?" Harrington asked, a little wary. He wondered if he was going to be getting an irate phone call from Tony Stark tonight demanding an explanation.
"Yeah," Peter confirmed. He shifted his position on the sofa, hooking his knees on its back. "He asked me some questions about the final battle with Thanos, and then what I'd been doing after, and then he told me I did the right thing. He also said he was sorry I had no one looking out for me, which like, isn't true at all." Peter frowned. "The Avengers were there the whole time. And I had May, and you."
Harrington was touched by the casual, trusting way Peter had included his name on that list, as if it was something he took for granted in the best possible way. "Yeah you did," he said. "And now, you have Mr. Stark, too."
...
TBC…
Up Next:
Stark absorbed this, then let out an explosive breath. "Well, fuck," he said. "What the hell am I supposed to do now? This is about Spider-Man, isn't it? He wants to stay and protect New York. That's the real reason he doesn't want to go. He's going to blow off MIT because of Spider-Man."
Notes:
This is just a quick note to let everyone know that this story is now going to be thirteen chapters long instead of the planned twelve. I've been adding and rewriting a lot in these past few chapters (especially this one, which I basically wrote from scratch in two days). All these revisions have ended up adding a whole chapter's worth to the story, which I wasn't expecting. Hopefully the phone call between Steve and Harrington and the fluffy ending made it worth it!
Chapter 11: Advisor
Notes:
(See the end of the chapter for notes.)
Chapter Text
Slowly but surely, Tony Stark recovered from his prolonged unconsciousness. As he grew stronger with every passing day, Harrington watched a sense of calm and peace settling over Peter, a return to normalcy after several weeks. The rescue and clean-up efforts finally ended, and two months after the first attack, Peter was able to start patrolling the streets again, returning to his old practice of going after neighborhood crimes, stopping muggings and giving directions to confused tourists.
He also began to ramp up his work as an intern at SI, spending at least four or five hours a week working there. Now that there were so many other superheroes based in the city, the burdens on Peter and Stark had eased, and they were both able to spend more time in Stark's private research labs. Within two months, Peter had a patent filed in his name for a chemical compound he'd designed.
Through it all, Peter continued his routine of working in Harrington's classroom after school. Harrington grew accustomed to his presence in the afternoons. Sometimes, there would be other students present, but more often than not, it was just the two of them, working quietly. Occasionally, Peter would look up from his laptop and share stories about Captain America and the other Avengers, or dazzle Harrington with a rapid-fire description of some brilliant piece of research he was working on with Stark, or he'd make him snort with laughter as he recounted hilarious things he'd overheard New Yorkers say.
The rest of junior year slipped by peacefully, and Peter's senior year arrived. Harrington almost couldn't believe how quickly it had come upon them. It was always this way, of course, every school year going by faster than the previous one, but it still made him straighten in surprise when it struck him one day that it had now been two years since he'd signed the NDA.
Harrington had now fully transitioned into his role teaching 11th and 12th grade, but he was sometimes still caught off guard by the intensity of the focus on SAT prep and college applications, so different from teaching sophomores and freshmen. The first big assignment the seniors had that year was writing application essays for their AP Lang class. Their English teacher, Kelly Godwin, commented wryly that it was the one assignment that all her students took seriously since her subject often drew the short straw at such a hardcore STEM school.
The seniors spent weeks drafting the essay, working painstakingly on every paragraph. They also panicked and complained about their perceived lack of life experience, about how boring they were, and how nothing interesting had ever happened to them, and like really, Mr. Harrington, what am I even doing here? Who in their right mind would let me into their school? I've literally done nothing with my life, like seriously.
Knowing how important it was, Harrington sometimes discussed the essay with them in the first few minutes of his own AP Chemistry class. He didn't pretend to be able to teach English, but after three years, he did know his seniors almost better than they knew themselves. He reminded MJ how she'd once refused to go into Washington Monument because it was built by slaves, watching her straighten as inspiration hit. He recalled how distraught Flash had been over the first test he'd failed, and the kid had darkened with embarrassment and then grew thoughtful.
Peter smiled serenely through these discussions but rarely contributed. He seemed completely sure of what he wanted to write about, even if he wasn't sharing this with anyone. Harrington was intrigued by his silence, wondering what this kid, with all his myriad and exciting experiences, would possibly put in a college application essay.
Luckily, he didn't have to wait in suspense for long. Kelly Godwin was one of those teachers who was always sharing stories about their students with anyone who would listen. She was relatively new to the profession, the kids amused her, and she adored them. She often read out little snippets of their writing in the lull before team meetings or sent pictures of their work to the teachers' group chat punctuated with hearts and emojis. Because she knew Harrington was very attached to this particular class, she would sometimes send him entire application essays to read if she thought he'd find them interesting.
MJ's was a particular favorite, an account of the searing moment of watching Hilary Clinton lose the election to Donald Trump in 2016. She talked about how disillusioned she'd been about her own place in the world as a young woman of color trying to make her mark in the male dominated STEM field. She spoke of her furious determination to break down barriers, to make her mark and change the world. Harrington was left a little breathless by the end of it, her writing was so raw and angry.
Ned wrote a moving piece about living through other people's hardships, how important it was to be loyal to your friends and find joy even in darkness. He made several oblique references to supporting a close friend through a trying ordeal, and Harrington felt a pang of guilt, as he often did when it came to Ned. It was obvious that being Spider-Man's "Man in the Chair" had not left the kid unscathed, and Harrington wondered if he should have done more to be there for him.
And then finally, as she graded her way down her alphabetized list of students, Godwin sent him the screenshots of Peter's essay. I can't believe it, she wrote along with the attachment. Do you think he made this up? I hope he did, because oh my god!
His curiosity piqued, Harrington read through the two-page essay quickly. When he'd finished, his chest was tight with a nameless, bittersweet emotion. There was no doubt in his mind that every single word of this was true. Of course this would be Peter's origin story, the real one, predating the accident of getting bitten by a radioactive spider. It explained everything about who he was and why he'd made the choices he had. As he read through the essay a second time, Harrington couldn't help but think, there's really nothing surprising about this at all.
By late October, college application mania was sweeping unabated through 12th grade. It was all any of the seniors would talk about, which colleges were best, which colleges were cheapest, which ones were too expensive, or too ambitious, or too safe. In an intense and high-performing school like Midtown Tech, college was taken seriously by almost every student, and most seniors already had a clear idea of where they wanted to go.
Peter was no exception. "MIT," he told Harrington when asked. "It's basically any science or tech person's dream school, right. Plus, it's Mr. Stark's alma mater, and he knows some of the professors there, and he says they're brilliant. He said he's going to write me a recommendation letter. And uh, maybe make a couple of calls on my behalf."
With his high GPA, working on getting a second patent filed, and having Tony Stark behind him, Harrington was confident that Peter would get into MIT or any other college he wanted to go to. He'd stopped worrying about the kid's academics since his junior year, confident that Peter had figured out a system that worked for him.
Which was why it was that much more surprising when Harrington received an email from the school counselor Sandy Dunham in the first week of November. Dunham was good at his job, meeting with students frequently starting in their sophomore year. By the time they reached senior year, Dunham usually had a firm grasp of what they wanted and needed from him. It was pretty unusual for him to reach out to another teacher for help, which made the whole thing all the more alarming.
Hey Roger,
I'm writing to let you know that I'm a little worried about Peter Parker's progress on his college applications. I met with him this morning and asked which schools he's applying to, and he only mentioned one, MIT. But when I asked him a few questions about it, it was obvious he's barely even looked at the college website. He didn't even know that the Early Decision deadline is coming up in two weeks. When I pushed him on whether he'd looked into any other colleges he might be interested in, he became very evasive and clammed up completely. I don't really know what's going on, but a lot of ED deadlines are coming up soon, and we're running out of time. I know you guys have a good relationship. Could you talk to him and figure out what's going on? I would hate to see him mess this up.
Thanks,
Sandy.
Shocked and concerned, Harrington sat back in his chair as he read through the email again. What on earth was going on with Peter? He'd talked about MIT only days ago, and he'd seemed completely sure about wanting to go. What could possibly have changed?
That afternoon when Peter came into his classroom to work, Harrington barely even waited for him to sit down on the sofa before he was walking over to him, pulling up a chair. "So I spoke to Mr. Dunham today," he said, getting straight to the point. "He said you haven't been working on your college applications at all?"
"Um," said Peter, shooting Harrington a guilty look. "It's not a big deal. Like, I know I need to get on top of it, and I will, I swear. I still have time."
"Not a lot, you don't," Harrington pointed out. "Not if you've barely even looked at MIT's website yet and have to be reminded that the ED deadline is in two weeks. I don't understand- isn't this your dream school?"
"Yeah, of course it is," said Peter.
"Then what...?"
"It's not that I don't want to go to MIT," said Peter. "Like, how could I not? But I keep thinking about what MJ would say if she knew I had a billionaire calling and using his influence for my sake. I don't want to be like Aunt Becky's daughter, you know? I mean, that lady from that really old sitcom who paid off USC to-"
"I know who Aunt Becky is, Peter." Harrington frowned, both at the strange leap of logic and at the realization that Full House was now apparently considered a really old sitcom. "But I don't think this is the same thing. Tony Stark isn't fudging grades you don't deserve, he's not faking transcripts, and he's certainly not paying off a college to get you in. I don't see why this would stop you from applying to MIT."
"It's not just that." Peter fidgeted with his shirt sleeves, looking uncertain and distressed. "It's also like- this is still really hard sometimes, you know? Even though things have calmed down after the attacks and all the Avengers are here now, it's still difficult to get all my work done sometimes, even with the accommodations. What if I can't sustain the workload at MIT?"
Harrington frowned. Peter was making valid points...but shying away from hard work had never been his style. "I think you can handle the workload," he said. "MIT plans for that, actually. They don't give grades the first year so students can adjust to the expectations and the intensity. Also, you would get the same accommodations you have now. Midtown has all of that stuff documented for you carefully; you just need to hand it over to the people there."
"Yeah, that's true, I just..." Peter stared at the floor and raised both his shoulders in a half-shrug. "What if something happens in New York, while I'm gone? What if I can't get back here in time?"
"Won't the Avengers be able to take care of it?" said Harrington. "If you're in Boston, you're not going to be able to come racing to New York every time there's a minor threat...unless that's the real problem." Seeing the strained look on Peter's face, Harington knew they had arrived at the heart of the matter. "Peter, you know you can take a break from New York to go to college, right? You're allowed to live your life and go to your dream school. You don't even have to stop being Spider-Man. There's crime in Boston too."
"But I don't want to be Spider-Man in Boston," said Peter, clenching his hands together in his lap. "New York is my home. I've lived here all my life. And it's not even the big, dramatic stuff I'm worried about. The Avengers can handle the alien invasions and the organized crime, but what about the muggings, the drunken assaults, the bike thieves, the gang activity in shady neighborhoods? I'm the one who takes care of that stuff. If I'm gone, who's going to step up and do it? And besides..." He drew himself up straighter, speaking with ferocious conviction. "I love this city. I love its people, I love how crowded it is, I love how it's always busy even late at night. I even love Times Square and the subway. Everyone I care about- May, Mr. Stark, Ned, MJ- they're all right here. Why would I ever want to live anywhere else?"
Harrington sat back in his chair as he absorbed this. It wasn't the first time he had encountered students who were afraid to leave, afraid of change because they'd lived their entire lives in one place and couldn't imagine anything different. Harrington had experienced the same hesitation before he'd gone to Culver, and he'd never once regretted his decision. He usually encouraged students to leave if they had the chance. New York would always be there, he'd tell them, but college might be their one chance to live somewhere else and experience something a little different. In Peter's case, though, he knew it wasn't that simple.
Harrington himself was a resident of Queens. He knew people personally who'd been saved by Spider-Man; students, coworkers, friends, and acquaintances. Not all of those stories made it to social media. Kelly Godwin had twisted her ankle walking home late one night after a party and Spider-Man had helped her back to her apartment. Harrington's neighbor had once had his bike stolen, and Spider-Man had webbed it to his doorway an hour later with a friendly handwritten note. A single mom who worked as a waitress at a local restaurant had once gushed to Harrington about how Spider-Man had found her a year ago, crying and broke on the curb outside a grocery store. He'd swung into the store and bought her baby formula and groceries. Those were small, quiet acts of goodness, but maybe they mattered all the more for that.
Harrington knew it gave Peter a sense of purpose to be able to be able to help his community in that way. As much as it was the case that New York wouldn't be New York without Spider-Man, maybe it was also equally true that Spider-Man wouldn't be Spider-Man without New York. And who was Harrington, really, to step in the way of that?
"You shouldn't go to MIT if it doesn't make you happy."
"What?" Peter's head jerked up, his eyes wide with surprise.
"Your education matters, but not more than your happiness," Harrington told him. "If you feel this strongly about it, you should stay. There are some great schools right here in the city. Columbia and NYU both have cutting edge STEM courses. Then there's Kings College, and Yeshiva, and Baruch. You should make a list of the best schools, apply to them, and see where the chips fall. This doesn't have to be either/or, Peter. You shouldn't have to choose."
Peter was still staring at him with a faintly stunned expression. "I really wasn't expecting you to say that," he admitted.
"Why?"
"I don't know, you've just spent years making sure I keep my grades up," Peter said, "I have the GPA now, I have an internship at SI, and I have Tony Stark's letter of recommendation. I should be jumping on MIT, right? I'm surprised that you're okay with me not doing that."
"First off, I never once said you had to go to MIT," Harrington pointed out. "It was always you who said it was your dream school. As far as I'm concerned, as long as you still get a rigorous STEM education, it doesn't really matter where it is."
"Yeah," said Peter. "I don't know what I'm going to tell Mr. Stark, though. He talks about MIT like it's the only option that makes any sense. He always gets super excited about it, and I mean, I get why. They have some brilliant professors working there. He attended MIT when he was fifteen, he met his best friend there, he wrote the first lines of JARVIS's code on a paper napkin at a college bar. He told me once he'd spent his entire life surrounded by people who couldn't keep up with him, and MIT was the first time he finally felt like he'd found his people. He wants that for me more than anything."
"I understand that," said Harrington, "but Peter, he would want you to be happy more. MIT isn't the only school that has brilliant students and professors. Columbia and NYU are both fantastic options. You just have to explain to him why this is what you want."
The kid nodded, but he still looked unsettled and conflicted. Harrington could tell, from the guilt and uncertainty on his face, that it was going to be very difficult for Peter to sit Stark down and talk to him about this. Not because his mentor wouldn't understand, but because this was the man who Peter idolized more than anyone else in his life, for far longer than Harrington had ever have guessed. He could see why it would be hard for Peter to admit that he wanted to deliberately walk away from the path Stark himself had walked a few decades ago. So hard, in fact, that Peter had repeatedly told everyone his dream school was MIT, as if saying it enough times would make it true. Watching him biting his bottom lip now, Harrington was suddenly afraid that the kid might decide to just grit his teeth and apply to MIT just to make Tony Stark happy.
Harrington knew he couldn't let that happen.
…
"Hi, Mr. Stark. Thanks for getting back to me so quickly. There's a few things I'd like to discuss with you."
"Why do I feel like I'm about to be sent to the principal's office?" Stark's usual glibness sounded a little forced, even as he continued in the rambling style Harrington was by now accustomed to, "Not that I actually went to school myself, of course, but my dad's private tutors were pretty scary and being sent to Howard Stark's office is a fate more traumatizing than fighting Thanos... not that I would know, since I basically slept through all of that action." He paused for a breath, then abruptly abandoned any pretense of lightness. "You've never been the one to call before this, Harrington. Is everything okay?"
"Peter's fine," Harrington said. "He's safe and healthy; it's not anything like that. I'm just calling to talk about his college applications."
"What's there to talk about?" Stark's tone lightened again immediately. "With his GPA and two patents in his name? I already called one of the deans at MIT, an old friend. He told me Peter's practically a shoo-in. There's really nothing to worry about, Harrington. The kid is getting in."
"I'm not sure Peter actually wants to go to MIT," said Harrington.
"What?" Stark asked in confusion. "Why wouldn't Peter want to go to MIT? What other school would even compare? I mean, the chemical engineering department alone- he'd get to study under Raul Hammond, he's working on a vaccine for Ebola, and Dr. Armstrong, he's trying to create this amazing fertilizer that would really help in certain drought-prone regions, and then there's Dr. Medha Galloway, I'm sure you've heard about how she invented this amazing substitute for gasoline which would basically have wiped out the entire private petroleum industry overnight if it wasn't for-"
"I know MIT is amazing, but Peter doesn't want to leave New York," Harrington interrupted, knowing that if he let Stark go on for much longer, he wouldn't stop until he'd named every amazing invention a chemical engineer at MIT had ever made. "He grew up here. Spider-Man was born here. You and his aunt both live here. He doesn't want to move to Boston for four years."
"But that's..." Stark stopped, inhaled sharply. "When did he tell you this?"
"This afternoon." Harrington hesitated, then amended, "Well, actually, he didn't even tell me. I got an email from the school counselor, saying that he hadn't even looked at MIT's website or done any legwork for college. Any college, not just MIT."
"Wait, so he doesn't even want to go to college now?!" Stark's voice rose in alarm. "Since when is that even remotely an acceptable option; God, May's gonna lose her shit-"
"No, no, that's not what this is about," Harrington broke in, trying to allay the parental panic Stark was descending into. "It's not that he doesn't want to go to college, he just doesn't want to go to MIT. The problem is, he knows how bad you want him to go to MIT, and so now he's stuck in limbo and not looking at any colleges because he's afraid of what you'll say."
Stark absorbed this, then let out an explosive breath. "Well, fuck," he said. "What the hell am I supposed to do now? This is about Spider-Man, isn't it? He wants to stay and protect New York. That's the real reason he doesn't want to go. He's going to blow off MIT because of Spider-Man."
"It's not just that." Harrington rose from his couch and began to pace around his tiny living room, trying to figure out how best to put this in a way that would get the point across without being too painful. "I mean, yes, he wants to stay in New York and look out for the little guy. I don't see anything wrong with that; it's what makes Peter who he is. That's not ever going to change. But I think the other reason he wants to stay is you and May. He's already lost so much, and he almost lost you only a few months ago. He didn't say it, but I could tell- he wants to be here to look out for you guys in case something goes wrong. And honestly, after everything he's been through, and with all the crap New York gets, I can't even say I blame him. There's something to be said for keeping the people you love close."
"But that's even worse, though," said Stark, now sounding even more unhappy. "I don't want him to stay here out of fear."
"It's not fear," Harrington disagreed. "Come on, this is Peter. He's the bravest kid either of us knows. He's making a choice to stay because this is important to him. Yes, he would do very well at MIT, but there are also excellent schools in New York. Besides, are you really telling me you wouldn't be happier if he was closer to home?"
"That's true," Stark conceded, sounding a bit more cheerful as that realization sunk in. "He'd be able to keep working with me in the labs." His tone grew thoughtful as he added, "I should look up some of the professors who work at Columbia. I'm sure one or two of them have invented something passably interesting."
Harrington couldn't help but laugh. "Maybe talk to Peter about it first, this time?" he suggested. "You never know, maybe he'd prefer to go to NYU. Or CUNY."
"I'll start my own university before I let him set foot in any of the CUNY colleges," said Stark, sounding so aghast that Harrington laughed a second time, amused by the man's ridiculously high standards.
"I guess New York really would be okay," Stark continued after a few moments. "Sometimes I wish he wasn't quite so stubborn, though. Or so brave."
"Well, you have only yourself to blame for that," said Harrington lightly. "After all, this is the same kid who got inspired by Ironman to wear a plastic helmet at the age of seven and then tried to take on one of Justin Hammer's drones."
There was a choking noise on the other end. "I'm sorry, Peter did what?"
The smile slipped from Harrington's face. "Wait, you didn't know?" he asked. "I thought for sure he would have told you."
"Harrington," Stark said sharply. "What the hell are you talking about? When did Peter ever take on Justin Hammer's drones when he was seven?!"
Harrington grimaced, realizing that he had put his foot in his mouth, but it was too late now. "Do you remember the Stark Expo in 2010?"
"What does that even…oh my god." Stark's voice rose in disbelief. "There was a kid. Are you telling me that was Peter?"
"Yeah." Harrington shook his head as he remembered the incredible story. "Apparently, you landed behind him and told him, 'nice work, kid.'"
"He could have been killed," said Stark. "What the hell was he thinking, running out into that? Jesus, that gave me nightmares for years, and it was him, all that time? He never said a word…"
"Yeah, I'm sorry about that," Harrington said. "I wouldn't have mentioned it if I'd realized you didn't know."
"And when did he tell you, exactly?" Stark asked with a hint of displeasure.
"He didn't, actually," Harrington answered. "His English teacher sent me a picture of his college application essay. They were supposed to write about a defining moment that changed their lives. That was what he wrote about. The first time he met Tony Stark."
"…oh." Stark sounded stunned, almost winded. "Wow. That's…"
Harrington smiled, realizing how much this probably meant to the billionaire. He also realized that Stark would never be able to bring himself to ask him for the details, so he decided to tell him everything anyway. "He wrote about how scared everyone was, and how much he wanted to help," he said quietly. "He described how it felt to see you there behind him. He spent months thinking he'd taken down that drone himself, and it made him feel brave and important, like a superhero. When he finally figured out it was you a few years later, he was disappointed, but it made him look up to you even more. He spent years hoping he could be as smart as you one day, that he could design something amazing like the Ironman suit or the Arc Reactor, something that could really help people. He said being an SI intern has been one of the most meaningful and important experiences of his life. He said that's what he wants to do in college, even all these years later. He wants to be exactly like you."
There was a long silence when Harrington finished speaking, punctuated only by Stark's uneven breathing. Harrington walked over to his window, letting the man have a few moments. He looked towards Stark Tower, somewhere beyond his view of the smoggy New York skyline, and imagined Tony Stark standing in his penthouse, looking out at the same view as he learned how much his son loved him.
"Thank you," said Stark finally, his voice a little rough. "For telling me that. That was…"
"You're welcome," said Harrington. "Just do me a favor and don't tell Peter I told you, okay? He'd be so embarrassed."
Stark let out a bark of laughter. "I wouldn't dream of it," he said.
…
TBC...
Up Next:
"And Roger?" Morita's expression was grave as he stared Harrington down. "This can't happen again. I understand why you did it; I know how much you care about this kid. But you can't just decide stuff like this on your own and leave me out of the conversation. Not when it's something this big."
Notes:
I wanted to write a quick note about Peter staying back with Mr. Harrington every afternoon because that was inspired by one of my own sixth graders this year. I stay back until 4:30 pm at least two or three days a week to offer after school support for students who need it. When students have a big assignment due, they stay for help, but there is also this one kid who is just there regularly, working quietly and getting his work done. He told me he likes to finish his HW in school, so he won’t have to worry about it later. I didn’t realize how much he needed the structure until we transitioned to distance learning a month ago and he became one of the kids struggling to get his assignments done on time. Regardless, he is a great kid, and now that I’m thinking about, he looks a bit like a preteen Peter Parker might, only with black hair and rounder cheeks. I will leave you with that adorable image until the next update.
Chapter 12: Well-wisher
Notes:
Trigger Warning: It makes me sad this has to be a warning at all, but I know from my comments that I have at least one high school senior among my readers, so I wanted to give everyone a head's up that this chapter has a detailed description of a high school graduation ceremony. In the universe of this fic, Peter is a member of the Class of 2020. I know reading about a fluffy, emotional graduation might be tough for anyone who is supposed to be graduating this year. This chapter is dedicated to the Class of 2020, some of whom include my own former students. Know that your teachers- even the ones from middle school like me whom you've probably half-forgotten about by now-are thinking of you and wishing you well. We all want to see you walk across that stage.
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
Peter's crisis of decision-making was quickly resolved once he knew he had Stark's blessing and approval. He was much more enthusiastic about the college application process now that he knew he was staying in New York, and Harrington never received another complaint from Sandy Dunham.
In mid-December, the Early Decision results for several colleges were announced, and Peter surprised no one at all by making it into his top choice of Columbia University. He told everyone that he was waiting on a financial aid offer before making any final decisions, a comment which made Harrington want to laugh every time he heard it. As if Peter would ever have to worry about money for college when he had Tony Stark so invested in his future.
Several other students received good news as well. Betty was headed to Northwestern; Cindy and Abe had managed to get into Miami University in Ohio. Ned made it into NYU and celebrated enthusiastically with Peter that they would both get to stay in the same city. MJ was accepted into Harvard, as was Flash. MJ had a few choice words to say about that, because Flash was a legacy student, and she was not. She glowered at him pointedly when he announced his Ivy League acceptance, making him flush and trail off even in the midst of his self-congratulation.
The next two months sped by. One afternoon in April, Harrington found himself pausing, struck by the bittersweet realization that they really were nearing the end of this now. He watched Peter where he was sitting across the classroom, cross-legged on the sofa with his laptop on his knees, putting finishing touches on a paper for AP Human Geography. They only had a few more weeks of this left before Peter graduated and walked out of his classroom one last time.
The knowledge came with a complex tangle of emotion- relief, heartache and pride. In many ways, Harrington reflected, this felt like the end of a long, eventful field trip. There were lots of amazing memories, but also the profound relief of knowing that his own responsibilities to Peter were finally almost over. These had been the toughest, loneliest years of Harrington's teaching career, and he couldn't pretend that it wasn't going to be a load off his soul to not have to carry around Spider-Man's secret every day.
And yet, at the same time, Peter was also perhaps the most beloved of all the students Harrington had ever taught. He had protected him, lied for him, and worried over him far more than he had for any other kid who’d sat in his classroom. He knew that the coming years without him would be less stressful, but he also knew his room would feel a little less bright without his presence.
Sensing his teacher's gaze, Peter looked up, his expression quizzical. "Mr. Harrington?" he asked.
"Sorry," said Harrington as he realized he'd been staring. "I was just thinking."
"About what?"
"About how different next year's going to be," Harrington answered, adding wryly, "and about how much I'm going to miss having you around next year."
"Oh yeah, same," said Peter, his lips quirking upwards. "But I think I might just miss your sofa more, if I'm being honest." He patted the cushion next to him and Harrington laughed. Peter's expression grew more pensive. "I can't believe high school is almost over. I mean, it was freshmen year when the whole Spider-Man thing started- four years, and I still feel like I barely know what I'm doing." He shook his head and then added with a slight laugh, "Actually, sometimes I can't even believe I made it to the end of high school at all."
Harrington didn't smile back, the comment hitting a little too close to home. He'd spent years fearing that Peter wouldn't survive to the end of this, that he'd lose him exactly the same way he'd lost Ashley. After carrying that for so long, the fact that they were having this conversation at all felt like a rare and fragile miracle, one which he would never take for granted.
"You've definitely been through the wringer these past few years," he said, "but don't sell yourself short. You know exactly what you're doing with Spider-Man. Remind me again, how many times have you turned down Captain Rogers' offer to join the Avengers?"
"Um," said Peter, flushing. "Like, four? I mean, I feel bad, but he won't stop asking."
"See?" said Harrington. "You clearly have the 'friendly neighborhood Spider-Man' thing figured out if you're confident enough to say no four times to the first Avenger. I'm just glad this past year has been quiet enough to allow you to do that. You deserved a normal year of high school."
"Thanks," said Peter. "So did you. What with the field trips and the aliens and Thanos, and the rest of it, I'm sure this has been a nice change of pace."
"You've definitely added a few grey hairs to my head," Harrington agreed, laughing.
Peter didn't share his amusement, his expression unusually serious as he asked uncertainly, "It wasn't all bad, was it?"
"Of course not," said Harrington. He smiled at the kid, letting all his affection for him shine through, unvarnished. "I wouldn't have traded it for the world."
...
The final months soon melted into the final weeks, and Harrington was consumed with a flurry of end-of-term prep for the upcoming AP exams. The last weeks of school was always the busiest time of year for him, so even though he was aware how quickly time was passing, he was too preoccupied to be thinking ahead to the last days of school. That was why he was caught by surprise when Peter approached his desk with a tentatively worded request.
"Uh, Mr. Harrington? Can I talk to you about something?"
Harrington didn't look up from his laptop. "Yeah?"
"It's about graduation." Peter took a deep breath, and Harrington looked up, noting the conflicted expression on his face. "I know this is a lot to ask, and you can totally say no if it's too much trouble, but uh… do you think there's a way for Mr. Stark to be at graduation without anyone else knowing? Like, I know he can't be out in the open or anything, but if he could come backstage, or...I don't know. I'd just really like for him to be there."
"Oh," said Harrington, dismayed. "I don't know why I didn't even think of that."
"Yeah." Peter's hands twisted together in his lap, his knee bouncing with nervous energy. "We talked about it, and he really wants to come, but with the media and everything, he's not sure it's worth it." He shrugged, looking unhappy. "We've kept my identity under wraps all these years, it would be really stupid to blow it open now." Peter shrugged helplessly. "I know all the reasons why we shouldn't risk it, I just..."
"No, yeah, of course you want him there." Harrington sat straighter, his mind already working on possible solutions to the problem. "He should see you up on that stage." The idea of Stark not being there for Peter's graduation was unthinkable, and he knew immediately that he would do anything he could to make it happen. "Getting him backstage probably wouldn’t work because there'll be too many teachers back there," he said, thinking aloud, "but the last few rows of the auditorium are always empty. If he wore something non-descript and put on a hat and sunglasses, we could have him come in through the back gates. No one would see him if he entered through the side door, once the lights were out. But…" Harrington sighed, running a frustrated hand through his hair. "It would be hard to arrange any of this without getting Principal Morita involved."
"Oh." Peter's shoulders slumped, his lips turning downwards in disappointment. "That's…yeah. Never mind then, I guess."
"No, hang on." Harrington drew in a deep breath. "We could also just tell Principal Morita."
Peter's eyes flew up to his, wide with surprise. "What?"
"Think about it." Harrington leaned forward in his chair, trying to project confidence even though he knew he was about to buy himself a world of trouble. He resolutely didn't let himself think about what Morita's reaction was going to be to what he was suggesting. "We wouldn't be telling him you're Spider-Man, just that you're Tony Stark's personal intern. That's not so bad. You told me that too, back in sophomore year."
"I guess…" Peter still looked dubious. "Are you really sure that would be safe?"
"I think so," said Harrington. "He knows how to keep student information confidential; that's his job. He's not going to go around telling people."
Peter shifted in his seat, his face warring between doubt and hope. "I'll have to ask Mr. Stark," he said.
"Do that," Harrington told him. "Talk it over with him, make sure you spend some time really looking at the risks. Have him call me, and if he wants to arrange it, I'll talk to Principal Morita."
"Okay." Peter got up, looking relieved. "I'll ask him today. Thanks, Mr. Harrington."
"Anytime, Peter."
…
"I'm sorry. You wanna run that by me again?!"
Harrington folded his arms across his chest and raised his chin defiantly. "Come on, Jim. It's not that big a deal."
"Not that big a- are you kidding me?" Morita shook his head in disbelief and outrage. "You're telling me that Tony Stark wants to come to our high school graduation, not to make a commencement speech, because that would have been whole different story- but no, he wants to sneak in like a thief in the night and sit in the audience so he can watch Peter Parker graduate, and then sneak out again without being seen? All while he's at a high school graduation where every single family member is going to have their phones out so they can film every second of their kid's moment? How is that not a big deal?"
"Well, when you put it that way," Harrington joked half-heartedly.
"Roger." Morita's lips pressed into a thin line, unamused. "What were you even thinking here, suggesting this? How would we ever pull this off?"
"If he arrives after the whole thing starts, it's not going to be that difficult to do," Harrington argued. "No, hear me out. He can come driving an ordinary car, wearing a hat and sunglasses. The guards probably won't take a second look at him, not with crowds of parents coming in and out all day. He can have a couple of NDA's ready for them to sign in case they do. If you can get someone to cover for me, I can meet him at the back gate and walk him in through the side door. If we time it properly, he'll be in and out before anyone even notices."
By the end of Harrington's speech, Morita was glaring at him, shaking his head. "Okay, the fact that you've clearly planned this whole thing out without even discussing it with me first is completely beyond the pale," he said. "Also, the part about the security guards signing NDA's- did you dream that up, or have you actually been talking to Tony Stark about this insane plan?"
Harrington winced and dropped his eyes to the floor.
"For God's sake, Roger!" Morita looked truly angry now. "I know we go way back, but did you forget that I'm also your administrator? You can't just decide to do things like this without consulting the principal of the school! I'm responsible for everyone in this building, and that includes the security guards and the students and the teachers. If I say no to this now, after you've apparently as good as confirmed it, you're the one who'll pay the price for Stark's anger. How am I supposed to do my job and protect your interests if you completely leave me out of the conversation?"
As the question rang between them, Harrington felt a sharp pang of guilt. He knew Morita was right. He didn't regret what he'd done, exactly, but he was reminded of what he'd always known, even all those years ago when he'd sat in Stark's office and argued with him about what was best for Peter- he could never have told Jim Morita about Spider-Man. His friend may have once been a teacher, but he wasn't one anymore. He no longer had the luxury of risking it all for one child, not the way Harrington could. Still, Harrington was committed to this now, and he knew he couldn't let it go. He only hoped that Morita was still enough of a teacher to understand his reasons.
"I'm sorry," he said. "I know I should have asked you first. Maybe I got carried away, but it was for Peter's sake. Leave aside Tony Stark for a second and think about this kid. His mom, his dad, his uncle; none of them are alive to see this. There are going to be kids at this thing with parents, siblings, cousins, aunts, uncles, and grandparents flying from out of state to be there, and Peter only has two people. Are you really going to deny him that?"
"You think I want to?" Morita asked. "I know Peter's history, and of course I feel for him, but what about the other kids, Roger? What happens when their graduation gets swallowed up in the media circus that would descend on us if people find out Tony Stark tried to sneak into a high school graduation because of a previously undisclosed relationship with a teenage boy?"
"Don't make it sound gross," Harrington said, disgusted. "It's not like that at all. He's his mentor."
"Well I wouldn't know, would I?" Morita said pointedly. "Since you saw fit to keep that from me."
"Hey, he told me about his internship in confidence," Harrington chided. "I promised I would protect his privacy. You know I'm obligated to do that."
Morita stared at him in silence for a long moment, obviously unhappy that he'd been left out of the loop, but then he nodded grudgingly. "Fine," he said. "I guess I can see why you wouldn't mention the internship; it's Peter's private business...but this isn't. I don't really know what to do here, Roger. I hear you; I know he's a great kid, I want him to have a good graduation. I still don't know how I can say yes to Tony Stark being here. If it was out in the open, that would be one thing, but he wants us to cover for him and lie for him. I don't know how I can sign our school on for that."
"I really think it will be fine," Harrington said. "You know what that day is like. Come on, do you really think anyone is going to be looking towards the last row of the auditorium during the ceremony?"
Morita was silent for a long time, thinking it over. Harrington didn't interrupt, trying his best not to reveal just how anxious he was about this. He knew Peter would be crushed if Morita said no, and the thought of seeing any kind of dimness in the kid's eyes on the day of his high school graduation made Harrington's heart clench.
Finally, Morita let out a long, slow breath. "Fine," he said. "I don't really want to have to say no to a man like Tony Stark when you've already committed us to this. But I want to make this very clear- no one on my staff is going to be pressured into signing any NDA's. If the guards recognize Mr. Stark, he'll just have to deal with that and face the consequences. Okay?"
Harrington absorbed this, then nodded, accepting the risk. "Yeah, fine. Thank you."
"Don't thank me." Morita fixed him with a stern look. "I want to be looped into everything from here on out. Every email you send to Peter's aunt or Tony Stark about anything to do with this, you're going to copy me. Okay?"
"Yeah, I hear you."
"And Roger?" Morita's expression was grave as he stared Harrington down. "This can't happen again. I understand why you did it; I know how much you care about this kid. But you can't just decide stuff like this on your own and leave me out of the conversation. Not when it's something this big."
It was all Harrington could do not to flinch from his friend's gaze. He was suddenly very aware of how many times he had left Morita out of the conversation, of how many lies he'd told for Peter over the last three years. He had to fight hard to keep his face expressionless. "Of course. I swear, it won't happen again."
…
A day before the end of school, the seniors spent a few class periods rehearsing for graduation. They went to the auditorium and practiced the entire ceremony- where they would sit, how they'd walk up on stage, which side they would exist from. Morita practiced too, calling them up one by one and making sure he could correctly pronounce all their names.
Harrington stood and watched with a few other 12th grade teachers, supervising. After the first run-through was over, Kelly Godwin, head of the Graduation Committee that year, went up on stage to go over some guidelines. These included reminders about how to dress, how to behave, when it was appropriate for the seniors to throw their caps up, and a good-humored warning to the girls about walking in high heels.
"Trust me, ladies, you do not want to be up there looking like a duck crossing an icy street," she said bluntly, eliciting a burst of laughter. "I'm not saying don't wear heels if you want to; I would never say that. This is your day. But if you're not that comfortable with walking in them, or if you're as clumsy as me-" she made a face, and Harrington saw Peter duck his head and hide a grin- "it probably isn't a good idea to choose tomorrow to wear them."
"That's funny," said a familiar voice. "Ducks slipping on ice. We should definitely remember that for next year."
Harrington looked up to find that Morita had come down off the stage and was standing a few feet away, watching the rows of seniors with an indulgent expression. He was relieved to find no lingering rancor in his friend's face after their tense conversation in his office. "I'll let Kelly know you appreciated it."
"Yeah. This was a good class," Morita mused. "Lots of bright kids, not a lot of discipline issues."
Harrington nodded. "Yeah, they were pretty great." His eyes drifted to MJ, who was watching the proceedings with a slight smile, to Betty, nervously practicing her valedictorian speech under her breath, to Peter, whispering to Ned across the three seats separating them, his eyes alight with laughter.
"Four years is a really long time to teach the same group of kids." Morita glanced sideways at him, knowingly. "You're going to miss them a lot next year."
"Yeah," Harrington said simply. "I am."
…
On Graduation Day, Tony Stark drove to Midtown Tech in a non-descript SUV, arriving twenty minutes late at the back gate. He was dressed in black jeans, a loose-fitting but inexpensive dress shirt, and his face was shaded by the brim of a hat and a pair of sunglasses. The guards didn't even give him a second glance, nodding him in like he was any other straggling parent when he flashed his invitation card.
Harrington met him at the gate and they shook hands, Harrington a little awkward as he realized that despite the many conversations they'd had on the phone, they hadn't actually met in person since the tense and emotional discussion in Peter's kitchen. That afternoon felt like a lifetime ago, now.
Stark was oddly quiet as they made their way through the school. Harrington noticed him looking around the building as they walked through it, taking the school in. He felt strangely self-conscious, wondering how Midtown Tech was measuring up to Tony Stark's expectations. The school wasn't overtly fancy or beautiful to look at, even three years after receiving a three-million-dollar donation from him. There was brand new technology inside the classrooms, but the furniture in the common areas was well-worn, and some of the lockers were scratched up and a little dented. The walls were brightly painted, though, and there were colorful bulletin boards outside every classroom they passed. There was a big banner up outside the auditorium, reading "Congratulations, Class of 2020!" in large, cheerful letters.
Harrington ushered Stark into the auditorium through the side door just as Morita finished up his commencement address. With only dim light reaching from the stage, most of the audience was cast in shadow. Unnoticed by anyone, Harrington guided Stark toward an empty row at the back, then sat down beside him.
Stark glanced towards him, surprised. "Don't you have to be up there?" he asked, gesturing towards the front of the room.
"Principal Morita excused me from my duties," Harrington explained. "There are other teachers covering from me."
"I didn't realize you'd have to babysit me."
"I don't mind." Harrington smiled broadly as he looked around the room and up at the stage. "I never get to enjoy this part; I'm usually too busy supervising kids or rushing around backstage getting things ready."
Up on stage, Betty Brant walked up to the podium to make her speech. The audience clapped and cheered for her, the most deafening whoops coming from the three front rows where the Class of 2020 were seated. Harrington grinned and let out an enthusiastic whoop himself.
"She seems popular," Stark observed.
Harrington glanced sideways at him, amused to find the billionaire leaning forward in his chair, watching the proceedings as if they were very deeply fascinating. "She is," he answered. "Three years doing the local news every day, so she has a lot of fans. And she's the one who came up with the idea for the 'Under the Mask: Who is Spider-Man?' segment on the channel, which everyone loves."
"There's a 'Who is Spider-Man?' segment on your school news channel?" Stark turned towards him in alarm.
"Oh, it's not a big deal," Harrington laughed. "They just record people asking, 'Who is Spider-Man?' over and over again in different tones of voice. It's just a fifteen to twenty second segment they do every now and then. It's pretty funny; I think Peter's been on it himself a few times. So have I."
"Oh-kay," Stark said dubiously. "That's…I need to have words with that kid about his sense of discretion."
Betty's years of speaking on-camera served her well. She spoke with confidence and warmth, telling funny stories about her friends, reminiscing about co-anchoring with her "frenemy" Jason. It wasn't all funny and nostalgic, though. Harrington wasn't the only adult in the room who flinched when she made a throwaway reference to the Academic Decathlon team's brush with death in Washington, D.C. The students themselves found it funnier, reacting with irreverent humor to this reminder of their own mortality. There were shouts of "Go Spider-Man!" Abe Brown garnered uproarious laughter when he jumped to his feet and yelled, "But who IS Spider-Man, Betty?"
Harrington remembered that day, how close he'd been to losing his entire team. He still had nightmares sometimes about Liz slipping through his fingers. If it hadn't been for Peter, they would all have died. And yet he'd been so mad at the kid at the time, for sneaking away. He smiled wryly, thinking about how little he'd known.
Betty finished her speech and was met with thunderous applause, after which the Yearbook Committee played a movie slideshow of pictures set to "Best Day of My Life" by American Authors. Harrington's eyes stung at the images of his students laughing, working on projects, play fighting in hallways and hugging each other at birthday parties. This part always got to him, every single year.
Finally, Morita stepped up to the podium again. It was time for the main event. As he called each of their names in turn, cheers filled the room as families and loved ones stood and clapped. When it was Peter's turn, several of his classmates and teachers made it a point to cheer loudly, knowing he didn't have a lot of family in the room.
Peter smiled bashfully as he climbed up on stage in his black graduation robes and cap, looking touched by the support. Morita gave him a warm smile as he handed him his diploma, shaking his hand in congratulations. When the applause died down, Harrington heard Stark clear his throat and say, "Way to go, kid. I'm so damn proud of you."
Peter's head jerked up as his enhanced hearing caught the words, and he flashed a beaming, tremulous smile in their direction. Then he was walking off the stage, now officially a graduate of Midtown School of Science and Technology.
Stark stood to leave. When Harrington made to follow, he stopped him with a gentle hand on his shoulder. "Don't. I'll walk myself out."
"Are you sure?"
"Absolutely," said Stark. "You're not missing the rest of your students graduating on my account. I'm perfectly capable of finding my way out of here. And Harrington?" He turned so he was looking directly at Harrington, and even though the room was dark, Harrington could clearly read the intensity in his bearing. "Thank you. For making sure I got to be here today, to see this. But also for the rest of it, for everything you did for Peter. I can't ever thank you enough for that. If you ever need anything from me, just call, okay? Whatever it is, don't hesitate."
"Right back at you," said Harrington hoarsely. "Take care of him, yeah?"
Stark squeezed his shoulder again, a final assurance. "Always," he promised. Then he donned his sunglasses and lowered the brim of his hat, slipping quietly from the room, unnoticed by anyone in the darkness. Harrington stayed, and watched the rest of his kids graduate.
…
Afterwards, he stood in the hallway with the other teachers, waving and smiling and taking selfies with kids before they left. May Parker approached with Peter at her side, her face radiant with pride and emotion. She thanked him too, in the same serious tone Stark had used, taking one of his hands in both of hers.
Then, she asked, "Can I get a picture of you guys?"
"Of course, I'd be happy to."
They stood together, Harrington wrapping one arm around Peter's shoulders as they posed for the camera. When May was done, Harrington was about to step away when Peter suddenly turned and threw his arms around him. "Thank you," he said. "I'll never..."
"Yeah," Harrington said, hugging him back just as tightly. "Me too."
They stepped back, both a little teary and trying not to show it. "Is it okay if I text you sometimes?" Peter asked hesitantly. "Like, not about anything big. Just, you know, to talk about college and life and stuff."
"Of course," said Harrington, resisting the urge to hug the kid again. "Big or small, you can text or call me any time. Get my number from Mr. Stark and send me that picture, okay? I'll definitely want to save it. Don't be a stranger, Peter."
"I won't."
Peter smiled again and raised a hand in farewell, then turned to leave. As Harrington watched him walk down the corridor and towards the main entrance, heading out of the school gates for the last time, his heart was full.
I hope the choices I made for you were the right ones.
I hope I made a difference.
I can't wait to see what comes next for you.
You're going to be so great; I know you are.
You've got this, Peter.
...
TBC...
Notes:
I decided against a teaser for the next chapter because I wanted this to have a feeling of conclusiveness. I know I could have ended this story here, and even wrestled with deleting the last chapter, but ultimately decided not to. At the end of the day, this was always Harrington’s story more than it was Peter and Tony's. He did everything he could for this kid and then watched him walk out in the world, but there are things for him that have yet to be resolved, trauma that he still carries with him, and a secret that he’s kept from his closest friend for years. Then, of course, those endless questions- did he make a difference? Did he make the right choices for Peter? The final chapter (essentially an epilogue, except longer and more dramatic than most epilogues probably are) will focus on that.
Also, if anyone would like to see the ‘Who is Spider-Man?’ segment referenced in Betty’s speech, I direct you to this hilarious deleted scene from Homecoming: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z6Ml6telw_c
Finally, I had a question for fellow A03 users. I tried to look this up online but couldn’t find anything helpful. I am low-key thinking about writing a one-shot companion piece to this fic which would focus on Peter’s perspective on the events of the final chapter. IF I decide to write it, I would like to post it as a separate fic, but I am confused about how to alert my subscribers on this story. Do I post an extra chapter on this fic telling people there’s a Part 2? Do I mark this fic as ‘part of a series’ before I post the final chapter so that people can subscribe to the series? (But I don’t know if I want to do that because I’m not actually sure if I’m going to write this story?) Anyway, I would appreciate some tips from A03 writers in the comments before I post the final chapter so I can figure out if I need to make this a series or not. Thanks for reading!
Chapter 13: Superhero
Notes:
Trigger Warning: This chapter describes a school shooting and its aftermath, loosely based on two shootings in recent history. The first was the attempted but unsuccessful shooting at Mattoon High School, Illinois in 2017. The second is the shooting that took place in Saugus High School, Santa Clarita, California in November 2019, ending in the deaths of 3 kids (including the shooter). I have definitely not pulled my punches in this chapter, but that said, this story does have a happy ending. I promise; it’s even in the tags! Okay, onward.
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
During his first weeks back to school in the fall of 2020, Harrington found himself missing his last year's class just as much as he'd thought. He kept expecting to run into them everywhere. Seeing someone other than Betty Brant and Jason Ionello doing the Midtown Daily Newscast was immediately off-putting. In the afternoons, he would sometimes look up expecting to see Peter stretched out on his sofa and feel a pang of wrongness when he didn't.
And then, of course, as more weeks went by, he got used to his new classes, and new faces with their unique histories and struggles made their way into his heart, taking precedence over the old ones. There were two girls now who loved coming in and working in his classroom at least two afternoons a week. There were kids who weren't being challenged enough, kids who were obnoxious and rude, kids who were adorably awkward and funny, making him smile to himself on his way back from work as he remembered the things they'd said. And soon, he stopped missing his kids from the previous year, too involved in the day to day of teaching and loving a new set of students.
Peter stayed in touch with him. Sometimes it was just quick texts, funny science memes or just a picture of something he'd designed in Stark's labs, punctuated with emojis and exclamation marks. Once, in the first weeks of his freshman year, he emailed Harrington a research paper and asked him to read it over before he submitted it. Sometimes, he would also call to talk about college or his new friends, about whether he should finally tell MJ his secret (Harrington told him yes) or to ask if it was time for him to move out and get his own place (Harrington told him no).
He rarely mentioned Spider-Man, not because he was deliberately trying to avoid it but because he had more new, exciting things in his life which seemed more important. That was okay- like every New Yorker, Harrington saw Spider-Man around all the time. No one could escape the sight of him swinging across the city, jumping from rooftop to skyscraper to hot dog stand.
There were always clips of him, too, videos shared and uploaded by anonymous New Yorkers who'd spotted him rescuing a cat from the top branches of a tree or carrying a woman in labor across heavy traffic so she could get to the hospital in time. It made Harrington happy to see him out there every day, living the life he'd always wanted.
And if there were also times when Peter was hurt- burned while rushing into a fire, stabbed trying to stop a mugging, crushed jumping in front of a speeding car, and during one terrible week, kidnapped by a new supervillain named Mysterio and missing for days until the Avengers were able to rescue him- then the spike of worry that always came with it felt as familiar to Harrington by now as a second skin. So was receiving text messages from Tony Stark, which still came without fail every time Peter was in trouble. The man had never forgotten his promise to Harrington, as if he knew without having to be told that even though Peter was no longer Harrington's student, he would never stop being one of his kids.
...
As more time slipped by, Harrington realized he was now nearing the two-decade mark of his teaching career. He didn't quite know how it had happened or when it had crept up on him. Those first years at Midtown Tech still felt like yesterday. Ashley and her classmates, co-teaching with Morita, watching kids leap from Myspace to Facebook to Twitter to TikTok.
He had no illusions about himself- a man in his mid-forties, divorced, childless, and married to his job. He knew how empty it looked from the outside, but he loved the work fiercely still. There was a deep sense of comfort that came with having done this for so long. There was little now that could truly shock him after the tumultuous years of having Peter as his student. The lesson plans, the exam prep, the little crises and heartbreaks, all of it was routine and familiar without ever becoming boring.
Still, no matter how much time had passed, the one thing Harrington never grew used to were the active shooter drills. Nor did it ever stop hurting, no matter how many times it happened, when he turned on the news and saw headlines about yet another school shooting.
During the first Code Red drill of the fall of 2020, Harrington had panicked when he'd realized that hitting the panic buttons would still alert Tony Stark. He'd quickly shot off a warning to the billionaire, annoyed with himself for forgetting this would happen. Later that evening, he texted Stark again to apologize.
Now that Peter's no longer in school, you probably want to readjust the settings on the panic buttons so they can be deactivated for drills, he suggested. Otherwise, I'm going to have to keep texting you every time this happens.
And that's a problem why? came the reply. It's not like it's going to be any different from what you've been doing for the last three years.
Harrington had paused at the response, feeling a little wrong footed. I just thought it might get annoying to have to deal with it indefinitely.
Harrington, I seem to remember that one of the conditions of a certain infamous NDA involved continued protection for the school even after the exit of a certain Spiderling. You held up your end of the deal. Don't make me look bad by trying to talk me out of mine.
Despite the lightness of the words, the underlying seriousness of the promise was clear. And so texting Stark before every drill remained a part of Harrington's routine, and it bought some comfort to have a tangible reminder that if anything ever really happened, he'd have some superpowered help.
It was always a difficult thing to think about. Most of the time, he could ignore it, but it was always there, a quiet fear in the background waiting to be realized even as one year slipped by and melted into two, and then into three. And then, one February afternoon in 2024, it finally happened, the thing he'd been bracing for since Columbine in 1999, since Sandy Hook in 2012, since Parkland in 2018. Despite how often he'd imagined it, he'd never pictured one of his own students' faces behind the loaded gun.
Matthew Atwood Jr. was a lithe, small-built senior who kept his head down, got his assignments done on time, and never made waves. He had dark brown hair, pale skin and dark eyes which crinkled with warmth when he smiled. He was an introverted kid, but he had a close group of friends and a girlfriend who went to a nearby school. He was bright, a member of Midtown's track team, and he also participated in a local Boy Scout troop. His mother, a wiry middle-aged woman, was always polite at parent teacher conferences. Harrington had been Matthew's teacher for a year and a half, and in that time, he'd never had a problem with the kid...
...which was why it was completely incomprehensible when he looked up one day in the middle of class and saw him reaching casually into his backpack and emerging with a semiautomatic rifle in his hands. Instinct born of years of training kicked in. Harrington hit the panic button under his desk hard and lunged forward as Matthew turned and pointed the gun toward the right side of the room. He wrapped his hand around Matthew's in a tight, bruising hold. (He'd never touched a kid so roughly before). Two gunshots went off inches from his ear, and he heard students scream and cry out. With brute strength he'd never known he had, Harrington wrenched Matthew's arms upwards, pointing the gun towards the ceiling.
The kid snarled at him and tried to pull away, but even as they both grappled for control of the gun, Matthew never stopped shooting. Chunks of cement rained down on the room as pieces of wall and ceiling shattered. The shots were deafening, making Harrington's eardrums throb in protest. He felt the recoil of the gun run through his own body over and over again, almost as if he were the one pulling the trigger. Around him, kids were screaming, diving under desks, and Harrington had the stray, panicked realization that he and Matthew were blocking the path to the doorway. His other students were trapped in here, unable to even take advantage of the time he was buying them.
Matthew struggled against his teacher, kicking at his legs, and they both stumbled, careening dangerously through the front of the classroom. A desk toppled to the floor a few feet away, but Harrington couldn't hear the crash at it made, completely deafened by the endless stream of bullets.
For one second, Matthew let go of the gun with one of his hands and elbowed Harrington hard in the ribs, making him cry out. His grip loosened and the gun dipped dangerously low. A bullet shattered the top of a desk, sending splinters of wood raining down onto the blonde-haired girl who'd been hiding under it. A surge of adrenaline at the sight of her panicked blue eyes made Harrington's grip tighten again as he regained control of the gun, even as he realized in the back of his mind that this had been Kristy, not Ashley. Somehow, he kept Matthew's arm pointed upwards even as the kid kept struggling against him with increasing desperation, trying to hit him and stomp on his feet to get him to back off.
Then there was a click instead of a bang. The gun had finally run out of bullets, and it happened just as Matthew managed to wrench himself from Harrington's grasp with all his strength, finally breaking free with a vicious jab to his side which hit him right above the kidneys. Harrington stumbled and fell hard to the floor, clutching his side. Matthew was advancing on him with an expression of blinding rage, grabbing more bullets from the pockets of his sweatshirt.
"You don't have to do this," Harrington choked out. "You haven't hurt anyone yet, it's not too late-"
"Shut up!"
Harrington tried to scramble up in another desperate attempt to grab the gun, but Matthew saw him coming and kicked him. The blow connected hard, and Harrington fell backwards with another cry of pain. His back connected hard with the bottom edge of a desk. His middle-aged body screamed in protest, and his eyes blurred as he watched Matthew finish reloading the gun. The kid aimed right at him, and there was no warmth in his brown eyes now, nothing even remotely familiar about this child who'd sat in his room for a year and a half learning chemistry and physics.
Harrington didn't want to watch this. He closed his eyes.
Glass shattered somewhere in the room.
There was a thud, a cry of pain, a gunshot which made him flinch, and then...
Nothing.
Just the sound of crying kids, and the speaker overhead crackling as the security system announced the Code Red. Harrington opened his eyes, expecting to look up into Matthew's rage-filled face, and instead saw Peter Parker, brown curls mussed and windswept, eyes shocked and frantic as he kneeled beside Harrington.
He was wearing his Spidersuit, but his face was bare, inches away from Harrington's. There was a bloody gash on his cheek, dripping freely down his neck and staining the red of his suit darker. Harrington noticed the mask seconds later, lying inches from his own nose. It was torn and smoking from where a bullet had grazed it. Harrington jerked away from it, fighting back a wave of nausea as he realized what had happened, and then he saw Matthew, webbed to the floor and unconscious. The gun was nowhere in sight.
"Peter," said Harrington, his voice coming out in a croaking breath of air. "Your cheek..."
"I'm fine," Peter dismissed the concern. "It was just a graze."
Lying awkwardly on his side like this, Harrington couldn't see the rest of his students. Panic propelled him upright, his head jerking wildly around the room as he tried to get his eyes on everyone. In his mind, he was already counting. Peter's hands gripped his shoulders, moving so his face was right up close to Harrington's. "They're fine," he said. "I promise, they're fine, okay? No one's hurt, Mr. Harrington. You saved them."
It hit Harrington, then, what had just happened, here, today, in his classroom. He took in the room, the overturned desks, the shattered windows, the chunks of ceiling on the floor and worst of all, the tops of his students' heads cowering behind his sofa, a vision come to life from the very darkest of his nightmares.
He broke down sobbing.
"Hey, no, come on, Mr. Harrington." Peter's voice was pained, his hands tightening on Harrington's shoulders. "I swear, no one was hurt, everyone's fine, come on..."
Harrington barely even heard what he was saying as he wrenched away from his grasp and collapsed backwards onto his butt, covering his face with his hands.
If I'd changed the seating arrangement the way I'd planned, he would have been at the back, out of my reach.
If I'd been standing anywhere else in the room, I wouldn't have been able to get to him.
If he wasn't so small for his age, would we all be dead right now?
If I'd talked to him more, asked him about his homelife...?
If I'd pushed him to talk about his dad, but fuck, that was two years ago, and he always seemed mostly okay...
If I'd partnered him with his friends for that group project, would this have still happened?
If I'd...?
"Harrington, hey, come on, snap out of it. You have to breathe, okay? Please, just- can you look at me for a second?"
Strong hands grasped Harrington's wrists, prying them away from his face with gentle force, and he came back to himself with a trembling start. He sat up shakily, his face wet and blotchy, his side throbbing where Matthew had hit and kicked him. Tony Stark was on his knees in front of him, his Ironman suit standing upright and empty a few feet away. Peter stood nearby, his face pale as his eyes swept around the half-destroyed classroom.
Behind him, Harrington saw five of his students, their own faces streaked with tears, but still pointing their Starkphone cameras in his direction with shaky hands. And fuck, he realized. Peter's face. All these years hiding it and now it was blown wide open and of course his stupid Gen Z kids were filming it because that was what they did, and now it would go viral in hours, and fuck...
Peter correctly read the mute horror in his eyes and crouched down beside him again. "It doesn't matter," he said firmly, though he couldn't quite conceal a flash of fear. "It was bound to happen eventually." He glanced at Stark and added, "Tony has contingency plans in place."
Stark shot him a warm, reassuring look. "You bet I do, kid," he said. And since when had Mr. Stark become Tony, Harrington wondered fleetingly. Stark paused and bent his head low, murmuring into an invisible earpiece, "No, Steve, tell them to stand down. It's taken care of."
Harrington's gaze drifted, falling once again on Matthew. He was awake now, and thrashing wildly, struggling to break free of the webbing, which was holding strong. As Harrington looked towards him, their eyes caught. His entire body jolted from the shock of it, and words were escaping his lips before he even knew what he was saying. "I don't understand. Why would you do this? You were such a good kid. You were kind; you said hello and good morning in the hallways, and you... you just..."
Matthew drew in a deep breath, his eyes glittering with hatred. "Fuck you," he spat in answer.
Harrington reared back as the words seared into him. His face twisted in agony as fresh tears welled up, even as Peter made an angry noise and moved quickly between him and Matthew, obstructing him from view. Stark was trying to talk to him, hands clutching his arm in an attempt to get his attention, but Harrington was sobbing too hard to hear a word either he or Peter were saying. He knew he'd lost something today which he would never get back again. He bowed his head and shook apart on the floor, not even caring that he was being filmed, or that his kids- Peter included- were seeing him completely wrecked after all these years of trying to project strength and confidence.
The next hours passed in a blur of disjointed images and sounds. There were sirens in the distance, then cops standing in the doorway of his classroom, gaping at the sight of Tony Stark and an unmasked Spider-Man standing in the middle of a high school shooting. There was Jim Morita running into Harrington's classroom, chest heaving and eyes wild. His face was thunderstruck as he took in the damage to the classroom, then Tony Stark, then Peter Parker. He'd stared in shocked recognition for a moment, frozen, and then he'd schooled his expression and stepped forward, his voice washing over the room with calm authority as he talked down the shaken students the way Harrington should have been doing.
Soon, police officers were leading students outside. A few of the seniors looked in Harrington's direction with expressions of shocked concern because even thirty minutes later, he had not stopped crying. The embarrassment had set in now, and he kept trying to pull himself together, but every time he thought he almost had, he'd hear the echo of that fuck you and the tears would come all over again. A few kids walked over to him as they left the room, their eyes wet as they first thanked Harrington, then Peter. Through it all, Ironman and Spider-Man stayed at his side, almost as if they were standing guard.
Finally, when the kids had left and Matthew had been removed from the room, Morita motioned to Peter and Stark. The three of them exchanged a few quiet words while Harrington sat numbly on his chair, trying not to think. Then Stark and Peter turned to leave, casting troubled glances in his direction and telling him they would call him later.
Fifteen minutes later, he found himself sitting alone in Morita's office with two police officers- Morita was outside, dealing with the students and parents- as he tried to answer a series of incomprehensible questions.
Can you walk us through what happened today?
When did you notice the gun?
Did you ever notice anything strange about Matthew?
Did he have any enemies, kids he didn't get along with?
Was he bullied?
Did he ever seem disturbed or emotionally distressed to you?
Did he have friends? Do you think anyone else was involved in planning this?
Harrington kept saying "no" over and over again until the word had lost all meaning. The only thing he could give them, after searching his mind for clues over and over again, was the keychain he knew Matthew loved which had a hollow bullet dangling from it. They left him sitting there and he didn't know how much time had passed before Morita came back into his office, looking wan and exhausted. They sat across from each other for ten minutes without a word exchanged, and then Morita drove Harrington home, the silence between them tense and absolute.
He spent the majority of the next day watching the news coverage on his couch, ignoring his phone as it buzzed and lit up with an endless stream of phone calls and messages. Stark and Peter had both called him six times each, Morita had called him four times, and there were countless emails from parents and students and strangers. He spoke briefly to his parents to reassure them he was okay and ignored everyone else as he tried to grapple with the fact that millions of people knew who he was, now.
They had watched him talking to an unmasked Spider-Man, addressing him by his first name. They'd watched him try to talk to his student, who was a school shooter, they'd watched the kid say fuck you back, they'd watched Peter Parker and Tony Stark try to steady him as he'd sobbed like a lost child on the floor of his classroom. He was famous now, Spider-Man's former science teacher Roger Harrington, that guy who lost it on camera. He watched with numb disbelief as news anchors projected his profile pictures from LinkedIn and Facebook, as CNN dissected his life and went over his educational qualifications and experience, speculating about how much he'd known about Spider-Man.
Spider-Man being unmasked as a slender twenty-one-year old with a youthful, sensitive face had been a massive shock. People were suddenly realizing that for three out of the seven years he had protected New York, he had been under the age of eighteen. The reaction on social media was shocked, emotional, and hysterical. People posted stories about the times Spider-Man had saved them, and the phrase #ThankYouPeterParker was trending.
Midtown Tech alums from the Class of 2020 emerged on social media and talked about what Peter had been like as a student. Betty Brant posted a clip from her 'Under the Mask' segment from the Midtown Daily Newscast which featured Peter and Harrington both asking the question “Who is Spider-Man?” with her own reaction of "WTF?!!!!!!" in caption. It promptly went viral. Flash Thompson tweeted a humorous message directly to Peter's Twitter handle. "...So Parker, I guess you did have a pretty good reason for missing Nationals that one time. #ThankYouPeterParker."
A few people also asked what Midtown Tech had been doing all those years when Peter was a minor. What Roger Harrington, who'd clearly known who he was, had been doing. People dug up old viral clips of Peter injured in fights against alien spaceships and crazed supervillains, reposting them with comments like "Omg I just realized he was sixteen in this!" and "Did Spider-Man miss a month of school to fight Thanos? Can I please see what that doctor's note looked like, lmao!" A few people wondered angrily how May Parker and Tony Stark and Roger Harrington and all those other teachers at Midtown could ever have let this happen to a teenager in high school.
Those voices were in the minority, but they made old doubts rear their ugly heads. The choice he'd made years ago to sign the NDA suddenly seemed less defensible now. He felt terrible when he realized that after all these years protecting Peter, his face had been exposed to the world right there in his own classroom because of a bullet fired in a school shooting. The kid's life would never be the same again, and Harrington couldn't help but wonder what everything he had done was for if it was all going to end this way anyway.
In all the noise surrounding the reveal of Spider-Man's identity, the news of another school shooting was lost somewhere. No one had died, so no one seemed to care that another gun had been fired in another school building, that students had cowered under desks in dark classrooms for hours before the police finally got everyone out. Morita sent out an email to the school community, announcing that Midtown Tech would be closed for ten days as they tried to figure out what their next steps would be.
At one point, after hours of sitting in his apartment unable to focus on anything else, Harrington actually attempted to get some schoolwork done. There was a pile of ungraded tests that had been sitting on his desk for over a week. He rifled through the sheaf of papers, feeling strangely disconnected from the assignment in front of him. Then, he spotted Matthew's name written out in neat, careful handwriting. In tears once again, he shoved the pile of papers away from him as if they'd burned him. He knew in that moment that his students would never get this particular assignment back.
On the third day after the shooting, Harrington's hazy, spiraling existence was interrupted by a sharp knock at his door. He opened it to find Jim Morita standing there, his expression grim. There were dark circles ringing his eyes and he looked dead tired. He pushed past a surprised Harrington without waiting for an invitation, heading straight for his living room and sinking onto a sofa chair with an exhausted hiss.
"Jim?" he stammered once he'd found his voice. He crossed the room and sat down across from his friend. "What are you doing here?"
Morita narrowed his eyes and glared at him. "You wanna explain to me why you've been ignoring everyone's phone calls?"
Harrington hunched his shoulders and looked away. "I didn't know what to say to anyone."
"Yeah, well, you better figure that out," Morita snapped. "Because Tony Stark called me this morning to ask why you weren't answering his calls or messages. Peter Parker has reached out to me twice. I've had teachers, parents, students, school board members and reporters calling me off the hook for two days straight, and the only thing anyone wants to talk about is you and Spider-Man. Are you okay, when did you know about him, how much did you know, how much did I know, and I can't answer any of that, can I, because you basically went AWOL on everyone, and because I really don't want to have to explain how much I clearly didn't know anything."
Harrington flinched at the harshness of his words. "I'm sorry, Jim. I've just been..." He sighed shakily. "I know you're furious, and you have every right to be. I would..." He steeled himself. "I would understand if you wanted to fire me."
"Jesus, Roger." Morita deflated with a long exhalation, reaching up to rub tiredly at his face. "I'm not going to fire you. If you think those kids and their parents don't know exactly who saved them that day, you're out of your damn mind. The last thing I'd want to do is fire you." He studied Harrington again, his expression drawn. "I just want an actual explanation. I need the full picture of what happened with Peter Parker when he was in high school if I'm going to be answering questions about it. And also, as your friend? I'm worried about you. Because that video was fucking awful."
"Yeah." Harrington stared at the floor, feeling the ever-present threat of tears. "I haven't...I couldn't watch the whole thing through."
Morita didn't say anything, watching him closely.
"About Peter," Harrington continued, trying to force away the tremor from his voice. "He was bitten by a radioactive spider when he was fourteen. It happened on the field trip to Oscorp during freshman year- yeah I know, the kid's a walking disaster," he added in response to the incredulous expression on Morita's face. "I found out when we went on that trip to SI's Science and Tech museum when he was in 10th grade. There was an attack by Justin Hammer's drones, and he went missing."
"You left the panic room to look for him, didn't you?" Morita recalled.
"Yeah, and I found Spider-Man instead." Harrington let out an explosive breath. "He yelled something at me, and I recognized Peter's voice. Then Tony Stark showed up, and... well. That was how I got involved in all this, I guess."
Morita eyed him with an expression of heavy disappointment. "So this kid is fifteen years old," he said slowly, "and you find out he's throwing himself into danger and practically getting himself killed on a daily basis. And you're okay with that? You didn't think it might be a good idea to report it to CPS, or at least tell me?"
"Of course I did," said Harrington, deeply hurt. "I agonized over it for days. On the one hand I had Stark, begging me to please protect this kid, because if his identity ever became public, his shot at a normal life would pretty much have been over. And on the other hand, there was Midtown Tech and every other kid here, because what if we all became targets because of Spider-Man, what if some villain found out who he was and attacked him at school? The way Adrian Toomes did only months before that. It was the toughest decision I have ever had to make, but I've kept this secret for seven years, and in all that time, I've never said a word to anyone. I know you would have done it differently, and maybe that would have been better; I honestly can't say anymore. But if you think I didn't weigh all of this in my mind a thousand times before I decided, if you don't think I worried about him and everyone else every day he was in this school, and hell, every day after that, too, then you don't know me at all."
Morita digested this, and when he looked back at Harrington, shock had replaced the accusation in his eyes. "You really didn't tell anyone?" he asked in disbelief. "For seven years? Not even your parents?"
"Not even my shrink," said Harrington, and there was a strange sense of relief to have this out in the open at last, to realize that he finally could tell his therapist, now that everyone knew.
When Morita spoke again, his tone was quieter. "Is that all there is, then? Or is there anything else I should know?"
Harrington thought about it for a minute. "Yeah," he said. "The three-million-dollar donation we got that year, that was from Tony Stark. He's also the one who paid for the extra training and security." At the stunned look on Morita's face, Harrington explained, "It was one of my conditions for signing the NDA he gave me. I knew we would be in much more danger because of Spider-Man there, so I asked him to pay for ALICE training and panic buttons that would alert NYPD and every superhero in the city."
"Wait, the buttons call superheroes too?" Morita asked, his eyebrows rising to his hairline. "Is that how Spider-Man got there so quickly?"
"Yeah, I think so," said Harrington. Then, he added fiercely, "But that was all I asked for, Jim. The three million dollars was his idea, and it happened after I'd already signed the NDA. I don't want you to think I was letting him buy my silence, or-"
"No, I know that," Morita cut in gently. "I do know you, Roger."
Harrington sagged in relief, feeling something approaching calm for the first time since the gun had gone off in his classroom. He'd been completely paralyzed these last few days, but with Morita's tacit forgiveness and understanding, he felt like he could breathe at last. Or at the very least, screw up the courage to pick up his phone and call a few people back.
He looked at his friend, taking stock. He had slumped a little into the side of the chair, his eyes opening and closing in the slow, long blinks of exhaustion. In their two decades working together, Harrington could not remember ever seeing him look this drained and tired. Because he was an administrator, Morita had few close friends among the school staff. Harrington was an exception to that because of how long they'd known each other, and now he felt a stab of guilt as he realized he'd basically left his friend alone to deal with this mess. "How are you doing?" he asked.
Morita let out a weary sigh. "There's just so much to do. Mary's recommending that we hire a few psychologists and grief counselors in case students or teachers need support the first couple of weeks back. We're also thinking about getting therapy animals, but I'm still not yet sure how quickly I can arrange that. I also need to email teachers by tonight- we need to be back in the building soon to try and figure out how we're going to get ready for the kids to come back. Obviously, that doesn't apply to you; you can have more time if you need it-"
"I don't want any more time," said Harrington immediately. The thought of sitting here, stewing in his own thoughts for more time than he absolutely had to, was awful.
"Yeah, I thought you'd say that. I'm still figuring out a new classroom for you, too. And then there's..." He paused, looking conflicted.
"What?"
"The school board and some of the parents wants us to add metal detectors now," he said. "I hated the idea once, but we'll probably have to say yes now. If it makes everyone feel safer, then we can't deny them that. But I keep thinking if we had done it earlier, would this still have happened? It's not like we couldn't have afforded it, with three million dollars in the bank."
"Hey, this is not your fault," Harrington said sharply. "You had good reasons not to install them. And most of the school board supported you."
"I guess the important thing to remember is that no one was hurt," Morita said, as if he needed to say it out loud to convince himself. "This was bad, but it could have been so much worse. Thanks to you and Spider-Man, at least we didn't lose anyone."
We lost Matthew.
The thought stole through Harrington's mind, unbidden. He hunched a little but didn't give it voice. The last thing he wanted was to put more burdens on Morita's shoulders, but it was a hard thing to forget- the realization that they had taught and loved and cared for this kid for three and a half years, and all along, he'd been capable of this kind of darkness and violence, and none of them had ever seen it coming.
...
The next day, he found himself sitting uneasily in a corner booth in an expensive Italian restaurant in Soho, waiting for Tony Stark and Peter Parker to arrive. Looking around at the plush seating and fancy décor as he sat under the soft light of a chandelier, Harrington had never felt more out of place in his life. He wasn't sure what he'd been expecting when he'd finally called Stark and Peter back, but it hadn't been this.
Unconvinced by his declarations about being fine, they had both insisted on meeting in person. Stark had even sent a car and chauffer over to his apartment to pick him up, which seemed unnecessarily extravagant, but the billionaire had insisted, and he hadn't protested because his own car was still parked at school. Now Harrington sat waiting, nervously wondering how this meeting would play out. Before the day of the shooting, he hadn't seen either Stark or Peter in person since graduation.
The last time he'd spoken to Peter had been a month ago. The kid had called him to give him a rapid-fire, gushing update on a new, supposedly game-changing alteration he'd made to the formula he used for his web fluid. The conversation had left Harrington breathless with wonder, barely able to keep up with the lightning quickness of his mind. Peter had only grown sharper and brighter with every passing year at college, and the teacher in him had felt a fierce surge of pride at his success, as well as gratification that this kid would still want to call him three years later to discuss chemistry formulas.
He couldn't help but wonder if Peter still held him in the same regard now, or if his image of Harrington had been shattered by watching him fall apart so spectacularly. Perhaps some small part of him might even resent him for being the unwitting cause of his identity being revealed, not that Harrington could be anything but grateful for his intervention.
The troubling thoughts were interrupted by the door sliding open. Tony Stark and Peter Parker walked in, Stark dressed impeccably in a navy-blue Armani suit, and Peter... Harrington gaped as he took in his former student. He was in black trousers and a fitted dress shirt, an expensive leather folder clutched in his hands. He was at least three inches taller than Harrington remembered him, his shoulders had broadened significantly, and the planes of his face seemed more defined. It was so different from the old days of frayed jeans and science pun T-shirts that Harrington felt for a split second as if he were looking at a complete stranger, until Peter gave him a shy wave, bouncing a little on the balls of his feet when he came to a stop.
"Hey, Mr. Harrington," he said as he slid into the seat across from him.
"Hey, Peter," said Harrington warmly, relieved to see the kid he knew was still in there beneath this handsome, well-dressed young man. He nodded in greeting towards the billionaire as he sat down beside Peter. "Mr. Stark."
"Harrington," Stark returned, his brown eyes intent on Harrington's face. "It's good to see you're well and unhurt." He paused as he thanked the waitress who came to place menus in front of them before stepping away. "I'm sorry I can't stay very long, but lunch is on my tab, and you're both free to order whatever you want. The way this one eats you might even come close to bankrupting me."
He cuffed Peter playfully on the shoulder, who glared at him without any real heat. "I do not eat that much, Tony," he protested, and there it was again. Tony, not Mr. Stark.
Stark's hand came up to rest on Peter's shoulder, an instinctive gesture. "Sure you don't." He looked towards Harrington again. "I wanted to remind you that under the terms of our agreement, there's a job waiting for you at SI if you need it."
Harrington was startled at the unexpected offer. "Uh...I don't?" he said, confused. "Not that I'm not grateful, but we're halfway through the year right now, and I already have a job."
"So Principal Morita isn't going to fire you?" Peter asked.
"No, he's not." Stark and Peter both relaxed. Harrington wondered what the hell Morita could possibly have said to make them think his job was actually at risk. It must have been pretty harsh for them to be this worried.
"If you ever change your mind, the offer is always on the table," said Stark. "And, uh." He hesitated, glancing towards Peter for a second. "I also wanted to apologize. I have it on good authority that a certain legally binding document I made you sign seven years ago might have been a little, well, exploitative, was that the word you used?"
"It was more like unfair," Peter corrected, but there was a slight edge to his voice.
"Yeah, well." Stark shrugged. "As you can probably tell, the kid is not happy with me."
"That's really not necessary, Peter," Harrington said, frowning. "He was only trying to protect you. And besides, I thought it through, remember? I knew what I was signing on for. No one was being exploited."
Stark looked relieved at his answer, even if Peter frowned, still unsatisfied. "Alright then," the billionaire said in brisk tones. "I have a meeting with a couple of very influential congressmen to discuss a certain Spiderling's public exposure situation-" he jerked his head towards Peter, who made a disgusted face at his choice of words- "so I can't stay longer. Just one last thing- have you been having trouble with any reporters? I used FRIDAY to make sure no one would be able to get a hold of your home address."
Harrington blinked, startled. That he might have trouble with any reporters had not even occurred to him, though he realized now that it should have. He was touched that Stark had gone out of his way to look out for him, especially in the middle of everything else he and Peter were dealing with. "No, I haven't," he said. "Thank you."
"You're welcome," said Stark. "Let me know if that changes."
"I will, thanks," said Harrington awkwardly.
Stark rose and shook his hand, clapped Peter gently on the shoulder and then walked out, leaving Harrington to study his former student across the table. The moment felt strange and uncertain, and he was reminded how long it had been since he'd seen Peter. He was relieved of the distraction when the waitress approached them again to ask if they were ready to order, and they spent a few minutes perusing the menu. When they'd placed their orders- he tried not to boggle at the price tag or at the number of dishes Peter had asked for- silence fell between them again.
"How are you doing?" Harrington asked. "It's been so long; I can't believe how great you look, and so grown-up-"
"I'm sorry I didn't come and see you sooner." Peter's words came out in a guilty rush, making Harrington stare in surprise. "I know I should have; I really wanted to do more than just call every once in a while, but I was worried that it might put you at risk. Everyone who gets too close to me always is, and you had all these other kids to worry about. I thought I'd been a danger to you and Midtown long enough. I was always so scared all through high school that someone would come after me and get you and everyone else killed. And now I realize you were worried about the same thing too."
As he spoke, he opened the leather folder he had brought with him, and Harrington's breath caught in shocked recognition as he saw the words Nondisclosure Agreement in big, bold lettering, printed under a Stark Industries letterhead. He spotted his own signature in red at the bottom of the first page, and knew it would be on every other page as well. "I never thought I'd see this again," he said softly.
Peter slid it towards him, and he leafed through the thick sheaf with shaky fingers, lost in memory. This had meant so much, once, and he felt a pang of sadness that the whole thing seemed a little pointless now that Peter's identity was out in the open. When he looked up again a minute later, Peter was watching him with a pained expression that made him straighten and shake his head immediately.
"Hey, you do not need to feel guilty about this," he said. "I've appreciated every single phone call in the last few years. I don't have that many students who have actually stayed in touch as long as you, so there's no need to feel bad that you never came to see me in person. I get why you didn't. As for the NDA, I hope you know it was just as much about protecting you as it was about everyone else. I don't regret signing it- I'm just disappointed that it seems to have been for nothing, now. I'm sorry that after all this, you got revealed trying to save me."
"It wasn't for nothing, Mr. Harrington," Peter protested, his eyes going wide and shocked. "How can you even think that? If this had gotten out when I was fifteen, I would have fallen to pieces. Especially in those first three years of high school, I was a complete mess. This is bad, but I'm an adult now, and no can take me away from May. We're moving into the Tower full time for extra security. It's not ideal, but with Tony's help, we can handle it. There is no way we could have, then."
Harrington studied Peter's face, noting the self-assured conviction in his voice and the casual way he used his mentor's first name. Definitely an adult now, he thought. He felt a tension which had been coiled inside him since the moment he'd looked up and seen cameras pointing at Peter's exposed face finally ebbing away. Maybe his life wasn't going to be completely wrecked by this after all.
He went back to leafing through the NDA, making a face as he encountered the convoluted legalese that had scared him so much the first time he'd read it through. "I'd forgotten how complicated this thing was."
"Oh, I had it out with Tony about that, too."
Harrington looked up sharply at his tone. "You're really mad at him about this," he realized, troubled. "You don't need to be, Peter. I'm not sure why he showed this to you in the first place, but he should have made it clear that this was my choice. I knew what I was doing."
"You keep saying that," said Peter, "but I had to sit down with two people from SI's legal department to figure it out, and even then it took over an hour. I have no idea how you possibly could have understood it without hiring a lawyer. Did you?"
"No," answered Harrington. "I didn't want to involve anyone else. I looked up a lot of the jargon online and made a lot of notes. It took a bit, but I figured it out eventually."
"You should never have had to do that." Peter frowned unhappily, and then sighed. "All through high school, I always thought the NDA was just you agreeing to not tell anyone my secret. I never guessed it was more complicated than that until Tony said something about how it was a good thing you'd insisted on installing those panic buttons all those years ago, and that was when I found out all the Code Red drills and extra security at school only happened because you added it in as a clause. I realized there was more to the agreement then I'd known, so I asked Tony if I could read it. And when I did..." His eyes flashed. "Some of these clauses- did you really understand what you were saying yes to? The part about how you'd never work in education or STEM if you did something to reveal me, even on accident? About how you'd be liable even if you were personally in danger and told someone while you were under duress?"
"Yeah," said Harrington. "I actually asked Mr. Stark to leave that in there. I thought it would give me some protection, in case people ever did learn that I knew who you were."
His answer seemed to upset Peter even more. "And that's another thing," he said. "If this had come out then, Principal Morita really would have fired you, right?"
"You were a minor," Harrington reminded him. "He wouldn't have had a choice."
Peter drew in a deep breath, staring at him with a stricken expression on his face. "You were really willing to risk all of that, for me?" he asked. "I wasn't worth that. I wasn't worth your life, or your job." In that moment, despite the formal clothes and the broad shoulders and the added height, Peter looked just like a fifteen-year-old again, the same one who'd looked at Harrington across a conference table years ago and pleaded silently for his protection.
"You were one of my kids." Harrington's hands left trails of warmth on the NDA as he handed it back to him. "You still are. Of course you were worth it, Peter."
The kid took it with slightly fumbling fingers, cradling it as if it were something precious before he placed it gently back into the folder and closed it. For a minute, neither of them spoke, and then the waitress arrived with their food, interrupting the charged moment.
As Harrington ate his mushroom risotto, he watched with amusement as Peter inhaled a plate of lasagna, the first of three main courses he'd ordered. Stark hadn't been kidding about his appetite. After a while, he set his fork down and fixed Harrington with a searching look. "How are you, really?" he asked. "With the shooting, and... you know. All of this." He gestured vaguely to encompass the mess of the last few days.
"Better than I was," said Harrington.
"I still cannot believe you jumped the kid with the gun," said Peter. "It was completely insane, Mr. Harrington. And after, you just closed your eyes as if... I'm going to have nightmares about seeing you like that for years."
Harrington didn't say anything immediately, his eyes stinging again as his thoughts drifted towards Matthew. Fuck you rang in his ears again. "I still can't..." he said with difficulty. "I keep thinking about what I could have missed, with him, and there's just nothing. No sign at all. He really was such a good kid. His mom...she must be completely wrecked. I can't wrap my head around it." To his mortification, a few tears had welled up despite his best efforts, and he reached up to wipe them away quickly. "Sorry. I'm a mess."
"No, you're not," Peter objected immediately. "I know how much you cared about us, Mr. Harrington, and I doubt that's changed over the last three years. You don't have to feel bad for being affected by this. But-" he paused, fixed Harrington with a steely look. "You know you can't hold yourself responsible for not seeing it coming, right? It sounds to me like literally no one did, not even his mom, and sure, it's really, really awful, but it's not your fault. Sometimes, people just...aren't what they seem. I saw that with the Vulture when I was fifteen, and then with Mysterio, and then with so many others over the last few years. It just...is what it is."
Harrington looked at his former student, struck by the strange reversal taking place here; himself in tears, Peter dispensing words of wisdom and assurance. For the first time since the shooting, Harrington found himself really starting to believe it, what he'd already known in his head but not his heart, that maybe Matthew wasn't on him. Maybe he'd done the best he could, the way he had for Peter and all the others.
"Thank you for saying that," he said, feeling bolstered as he met Peter's warm, brown eyes. "It means more than you know, coming from you."
...
Three days later, Harrington found himself driving towards Midtown Tech. As he approached the school gates, a swarm of reporters suddenly buzzed around his car, thrusting mikes at his windows and yelling questions he could barely hear. Overwhelmed, he ducked his head and kept driving, glad that Morita had requested Dell to get his car back to his apartment a couple of days ago. If it had still been parked in school, he would have had to take the subway and enter the gates on foot.
He pulled into his parking spot and took a long, deep breath. There were only teachers in the building today, but even so, coming back here for the first time since the shooting was going to be hard. When he walked into the building, several of his colleagues approached him with expressions of concern and gratitude. The thank yous were embarrassing enough, but the endless questions about how he was doing were worse. After watching him crying on camera, everyone seemed to think he was completely fragile.
They gathered first in the auditorium, and Morita addressed them as a whole staff, talking somberly about the challenges they were going to face when students returned in three days. He talked about how they were going to be easing back into school with no lessons taught for the first three or four days. Puzzles, packs of cards, and board games would be kept in every classroom. There would be extra counselors, therapy animals in the open areas, and there were already volunteer parents and students moving through the building, tying balloons to door handles and bannisters and writing out kind, friendly messages on lockers.
After the meeting, Harrington headed to his new classroom, which was in the 9th grade hallway. "I know it's not ideal, but it's the only room we could find which was big enough," Morita had informed him, grimacing. "We've had it cleaned, and someone should be by later today to put up some new bulletin boards. The projector works, of course. I'll ask a few of the volunteers to box up stuff from your old room and move it here for you. I'm sure you don't want to have to go in there."
Harrington blanched at the thought of walking into his old classroom, grateful that Morita had thought to spare him that. He pictured his old room where he'd been teaching for over a decade and a half, the red and yellow rugs and the lumpy sofa and the boxes of whiteboard markers and the color pencils and sticky notes being moved into the new room which he now needed to make a welcoming space for himself and for his students, and he shook his head. "I don't want anything. You can donate it or give it away; I don't care."
"Are you sure?"
"Yeah."
Morita nodded. He didn't look surprised. "Alright," he said. "But you're going to have your work cut out for you getting a whole new room ready in three days from scratch. I'll assign a couple of teachers to help you."
"No," said Harrington again firmly. "Thanks, but I need to do this on my own."
He spent the next few days hard at work, making multiple trips to Home Depot and Staples and Ikea to get everything he needed. It cost a small fortune, but he didn't care. He spent hours creating colorful, welcoming bulletin boards with light-hearted science puns which reminded him strongly of Peter. He spread new rugs on the floor and blew up two brand new inflatable beanbag chairs and changed his entire desk arrangement to be oriented towards smaller, close-knit groups of friends, at least for the first few weeks.
And yet, when he looked around the room on the day before school was set to reopen, he knew something was still missing. He knocked on Morita's door and said hesitantly, "Hey, so about those volunteers..."
"Yeah?"
"Do you know if my sofa was damaged? Because I think I might want that after all, for my new room."
Morita smiled at him knowingly and said, "Your sofa's fine, Roger. I'll ask Julius and Kelly if they can help move it."
A day later, when his seniors shuffled warily into the new classroom, they gaped in surprise at how completely everything had changed. The shape and color of the rugs, the artwork on the walls, and the color of the bins used to store office supplies were all completely different, and many of them told him it was great, Mr. Harrington, even better than your old room. And still, a few of them gravitated towards the old sofa with relief on their faces, as if they were glad to see something familiar, and Harrington knew he'd made the right choice in keeping it.
That first day back was quiet, relaxed and peaceful, exactly as the teachers had planned. There were dogs and cats in open spaces for kids to pet, and many of them spent hours with them. Harrington spent most of his time just talking to kids, snacking on baked goods sent by their parents and challenging them to friendly board games. Many of them had questions about Spider-Man and what Peter had been like as a student, and Harrington told them as much as he could without getting into anything too personal. It felt freeing to finally be able to talk about it so openly.
The second day was more eventful, because Peter Parker and Tony Stark announced on Twitter that Peter had signed an agreement with the governor of New York which would allow him to keep being Spider-Man, but with the blessing of NYPD, now. They were also addressing the public for the first time in a press conference at noon that day. Naturally, the kids went crazy with anticipation, petitioning their teachers to watch the press conference in their classrooms.
Harrington said yes but felt a swooping dread in the pit of his stomach when he realized that because of an awful, coincidental quirk of timing, the conference would air during his lesson with the same seniors who'd been caught up in the shooting. They'd been hit the hardest by all this, and they were all reeling from Matthew's conspicuous absence, especially the kids who'd been his close friends. They startled at loud noises or when locker doors slammed shut, and many seemed constantly on the edge of tears.
Harrington was worried that he wouldn't be able to handle the pressure of trying to keep it together for all of them, especially since he had no idea what Peter or Stark were planning to say. Thankfully, Morita guessed that he might need some support, sending him a casually worded text at 11:30. Hey, I'm thinking about dropping by your new classroom in a bit. Just to check in on the kids and see how they're doing.
Harrington was grateful for the tact as well as for the gesture. Morita was definitely a good friend.
Right before noon, Harrington couldn't conceal the slight tremble in his hands as he set up the projector and found the link to the live stream. His students were on edge, too, waiting in a mixture of tension and anticipation. Morita shot him a steadying a look from where he stood to the back of the room. Harrington hit play and stepped back, moving to one side of the room as he tried to find a spot where he could both monitor his students and watch the projector.
The press conference hadn't started yet, but reporters were already sitting in the large press briefing room at Stark Tower, their cameras pointed in the direction of a long table covered with a white tablecloth. Beside it was a podium with a dizzying number of mikes attached to it. Then, a door opened off to the side and Peter and Tony entered the room. There was a murmur of surprise amongst the reporters when they were followed by all of the Avengers. No one had been expecting that. Peter looked nervous as he took his seat at the edge of the long table. Stark sat right beside him; his expression impassive, but one hand came up to gently cover Peter's shoulder.
Captain Rogers stepped up to the podium first, holding up a hand to quiet the reporters. "I'm not taking many questions," he said. "This is still Peter and Tony's press conference. The Avengers and I are just here to show our support. We have known and loved working with Peter for several years now, and we consider him to be an honorary Avenger."
"Why just honorary?" a reporter demanded from the back of the room. "Shouldn't he be a full-time Avenger by now?"
"You'll have to ask him that," the Captain responded with a rueful smile. "It wasn't for lack of trying."
Peter just shrugged sheepishly. "What can I say? I'm just your friendly neighborhood Spider-Man."
Captain Rogers stepped away from the podium and then Stark rose to take his place. He carried himself with easy confidence, his shoulders relaxed and his hands open at his sides.
"I know I'm not the main event today, but well, you all love me too much for me to deprive you of my presence," he said, eliciting a few laughs. "I'm actually feeling a sense of déjà vu. If it wasn't for the fact that we already gave you seats, I might have had us all sitting down on the floor eating cheeseburgers again." There was more laughter at the reminder of his first, infamous press conference. Then, Stark's voice was somber in a way it rarely was during public appearances, and the reporters straightened in anticipation, taking note.
"Sixteen years ago, I stood in a room a lot like this one and told a group of reporters that I was going to be closing down the Weapons Manufacturing Division at Stark Industries. You all thought I'd lost my mind, and my stock prices fell through the floor, but I'd seen it up close in Afghanistan, the damage those weapons could do. I knew something had to change. Since then, I've seen evidence of that damage over and over again; in the Middle East, in Africa, in Sokovia. I know I've made a lot of mistakes over the years, but I'd like to think that after a decade and a half of trying to fix it, I have managed to leave things a little better than they were. Which is why it makes me furious that nothing has changed here. A child should not be able to go into a store and buy a gun or order an untraceable kit online. It can't be that easy for them to just walk into school one day and start shooting."
The grim words had a visceral effect on Harrington. For a moment he gave into weakness, closing his eyes and leaning his head back against the wall where he was standing, trying to force back the ever-present image of Matthew suddenly rising from his desk with a rifle in hand. When he opened them and looked around, he found Morita standing by his side and many of his students in tears.
"If you watched that video and focused on Peter's face instead of the kids crying and terrified under their desks and the teacher breaking down on the floor, then you missed the fucking point. Because that's the true cost of all this, and I'm done seeing this play out over and over again in my backyard. Something has to be done, and if that means funding a wide-reaching gun buyback program right here in New York City, then I can do that. If it means going after politicians who won't vote for stronger gun control, or leveraging my money and influence to support politicians who will, then I'll do that too."
Stark stopped and looked around the silent room, his gaze lingering on the reporters hanging on to his every word, on his teammates sitting quietly nearby, and finally on Peter, who was watching him with admiration on his face. "Something needs to change, and it needs to change now, before we lose anyone else. I'm just sorry I didn't do this sooner."
Stark sat back down, and now it was Peter's turn. He stepped up to the podium, dressed in dark jeans and a grey button-down shirt. He looked a little nervous, but still more calm and self-assured than Harrington would have expected given the circumstances. "I don't really have a speech prepared," he said. "Except, well I'm bummed that I didn't get to announce my identity with, 'The truth is, I am Spider-Man.' It has a certain ring to it, like in this really old newscast I saw." The reporters laughed, and Stark shook his head, shooting him a look of fond exasperation. "I'm not really sure how this all really works?" Peter continued with a shrug. "I guess you guys should just ask me some questions."
"How long have you had your powers?" a blonde woman asked from the front row. "And how did you get them?"
"Since I was fourteen. I got them in a lab accident. I won't say any more than that."
"Where do the webs come from? Does your body secrete them?"
"Ew, no, why does everyone keep asking me that?" Peter made a disgusted face. "No, I made the web fluid myself in chemistry class. The formula is patented. And before anyone asks, no, I don't lay eggs, and no, I can't summon an army of spiders. I'm not Ant-Man."
From his seat at the conference table, Scott Lang flashed a smirk at the reporters, raising his hand in a two-fingered salute.
"Which means you've been Spider-Man pretty much from the moment you got these powers," one of the reporters commented. "Right from your freshman year in high school."
"Um, yeah?" Peter frowned. "I mean, didn't everyone already know that?"
"We did," said the reporter. "I'm sure you've seen the comments about how shocked people were to realize you were a minor when you fought some of your most iconic battles. Is there a reason you decided to throw yourself in danger when you were that young?"
"Yeah." Peter's expression grew serious. "I lost my uncle to a man with a gun when I was fourteen. He was carjacked right in front of me and he bled out in my arms. I wanted to do something to stop that from ever happening to someone else." He drew in a deep breath and faced the camera squarely. "I was in grade school for Sandy Hook. I had classmates with family members who survived the shooting in Parkland. I grew up with Code Red drills and ALICE training sessions, and I participated in the 'March for Our Lives' protest in 2018. So did my teacher Mr. Harrington, who lost a student in a shooting years ago on a field trip. This is the second time this has happened to him, and it shouldn't be possible, for one person to survive two mass shootings, but it happens a lot more than it should in our country." He paused for a moment to gather his thoughts. "I can't begin to tell you how horrifying it was, to look around that classroom where I spent years learning chemistry and physics with my friends and see shattered glass and overturned desks and bullet holes in the walls. That could just as easily have been me, a few years ago."
Harrington felt a tightness in his chest again at the graphic description. Around him, he noticed many of his students were pale, some of them holding hands or hugging each other as they watched this, but some were also nodding in agreement, a fierce light of agreement and recognition in their eyes.
"You mentioned your science teacher," said another reporter. "Roger Harrington? In the video, you guys seemed pretty close."
"We are," said Peter.
"He clearly knew who you were." The reporter watched Peter curiously, obviously wondering how he would respond. "I'm sure you've seen the comments and the speculation about his role in all this. Can you shed some light on that? There are a lot of people who are asking why he didn't do anything to protect you when you were in high school."
"He did protect me," Peter protested at once. "He protected my identity so I could have a normal life when I was a kid. He protected my mental health when he encouraged me to see a therapist. He protected my academic future when he helped me get the accommodations I needed. And when someone pulled a gun in his classroom, he tackled the shooter and stopped him from aiming it at his students. It wasn't caught on camera, so maybe that's why no one is talking about it, but if he hadn't stalled the shooter for long enough, there was no way I would have been able to get there in time. He saved every single kid in that classroom just as much as I did."
He was looking straight into the camera, and it was as if he was speaking to Harrington directly, as if he could see him in his classroom where he stood crying once again, completely unashamed this time, surrounded by the kids he'd saved. Because even if it had taken Peter to point it out, he'd finally realized: the thing he had been dreading all these years had happened. Someone had fired a gun in his classroom, and while it was horrifying and awful and would haunt him for the rest of his life, he also hadn't lost any of his kids. He'd spent seventeen years terrified that he'd see another child's blank eyes staring up at him in silent accusation, but when it had counted the most, he had stopped it from happening.
"As far as I'm concerned," Peter said, looking right at him, his eyes fierce, "he was the real superhero that day."
...
END.
Notes:
This is a long final note, so please bear with me.
Harrington’s heroic actions in this chapter are inspired by the real-life superhero teacher Angela Mcqueen, a forty-year-old woman who teaches Math and Physical Education at Mattoon High School in Illinois. She saved her students in 2017 during an attempted shooting in the cafeteria by tackling the shooter and wrenching the gun upwards so the bullets only hit the ceiling. She single-handedly stopped the shooting, saved dozens of lives, and then proceeded to walk around the cafeteria asking if people were okay. She was awarded the Carnegie Medal for her bravery. Here is an interview where she talks about her experiences: https://www.pantagraph.com/video-mattoon-high-school-teacher-angela-mcqueen-talks-about-how-she-subdued-shooter/video_e4249133-a8a6-5e61-a609-f355684f328c.html
The details about the shooter are also based on an actual event- namely, on the sixteen-year-old who shot up Saugus High School in November 2019. I didn’t use his actual name and his age is different, but the rest of it is pretty accurate, including the detail about the keychain with the bullet. No one who knew him saw it coming or had any explanation for why he brought a gun to school on his sixteenth birthday and killed two kids and then himself. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/california-school-shooting-saugus-high-school-suspect-what-we-know/ It is kind of devastating that I had already started this story months before Santa Clarita even happened. I knew all along that the final chapter would have a shooting, but I never dreamed the shooter would be inspired by a real event that happened after I began this fic. The Santa Clarita shooting hit me very hard because of that, and even now, I look up stories about the school and how they’re coping with all this on top of Covid-19. What a terrible fucking school year it’s been for those kids.
Harrington’s anguish over Matthew was inspired by a conversation I had with a colleague. She taught for ten years in an inner-city public middle school and has multiple former students who have died because of gun violence and one former student who is now in prison for shooting and killing another child. She told me, “That kid was one of my kids in 6th grade. I had him for a whole year. And I will always carry that with me, the knowledge that I taught this kid who then left my classroom and killed someone else. That’s the part no one talks about, the fact that the shooters are our students too.” I thought that was pretty gut-wrenching, and I wanted to include some of that here.
As I said in the previous note, I am toying with the idea of a oneshot companion piece writing this whole chapter from Peter’s perspective, basically how he reacted to seeing his old classroom shot up and his favorite teacher almost killed, how he dealt with reading the NDA, his argument with Tony, May’s reaction, coming to terms with his identity suddenly being revealed, etc. I’m not sure I’m going to write it, but I marked this as part of a series anyway, so please go ahead and subscribe if you think you’d be interested in reading that.
Finally, I would like to thank you all for all the comments and the support on this story. It has meant the world to know this made such an impact on some of you, and I’m excited to hear from people about the ending. This has been such an amazing ride.
EDIT: 2020-05-18- For another great Harrington story, please check out iarrannme's "Hamster Wheel With No Breaks" (https://archiveofourown.org/works/21179543/chapters/50414765?show_comments=true&view_full_work=false#bookmark-form). It's a great take on the character after FFH which honors his dorkiness and also takes him seriously.
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