Chapter Text
Peter Stark wasn't born a Stark. He was not born Peter either, but that is a story from another time. For the first years of his life, Peter was a Parker. As his mother before him and his grandparents before her. His mother once told him that their family name had not always been Parker, but that somewhere along the way his great-great-grandparents had to give up their names for safety reasons. She never told him why, only that it was a story about entire families losing their homes to a very bad and terrifying war. It was a sad story that Peter's mother promised to tell him about once he was older enough to not have nightmares. His mother never saw him growing older enough to learn about the very bad and terrifying and sad story. He knows about it, though. At least, about the general thing. He knows about what is in the textbooks, about what you can find on the Internet. Peter knows what everyone else knows, or at least should know. What he does not know, however, is the story his mother promised him. The one about his family. The one that matters the most. Because his mother died before she ever had the chance to tell him anything. She died when he was too young to remember her the way he believed he was supposed to.
Mary Parker died, and with her Peter Parker died too.
Peter Stark was born in his place.
Anthony Edward Stark, a.k.a. Tony Stark, was not someone anyone would consider to be “father material”. He was a drunk and a partygoer with no sense of responsibility who slept with anyone attractive enough to hold his attention for more than three minutes, regardless of gender. Tony was also someone terrified of the prospect of being a father. Needless to say, he didn't handle the whole “surprise fatherhood” in the healthiest way possible.
The first time Tony learned about Peter's existence, was before he was even born.
Once Mary found out she was pregnant, she thought that the decent thing to do would let the father know. The father did not want to know and let his opinion be known in a very colourful and rude way, he also offered to pay for an abortion she didn't ask for. Mary punched him in the face, breaking his nose. She told him that she would most definitely have her child and if someday he decided he wanted to stop being an arse, she would think about the possibility of allowing him near her child.
Mary never spoke with Tony again after that.
He did cover all her medical expenses and all the child support his legal team recommended, as his PR team told him that he did not need the scandal of not paying child support on top of being a deadbeat father. Furthermore, he also made sure to make her sign an obscene amount of NDAs and every other document and contract his lawyers cooked up for occasions like that. But yeah, Tony never talked with Mary again. He also made an effort to never learn if the child was a boy or a girl, or even their name.
Ignorance is a blessing, as the saying goes.
Tony was too ignorant for his own good.
The first time his father met him, Peter was in a hospital waiting room. Peter hates hospitals. He understands why they exist, and is grateful for it. He still hates them anyway.
Peter went to the hospital for the first time when he couldn't breathe. He was two and terrified. The doctor was a nice old lady with pepper-salt hair and a kind smile who looked like someone's grandmother. She gave him candy and explained to him that he had asthma and that sometimes breathing would be difficult, but he could always ask his mother for help. She also tried to teach him how to use an inhaler but gave up once she saw his little hands would not be any help with that.
The second time was only a few weeks after he discovered he had asthma. He was driving home from the zoo with his grandparents. Peter was asleep in his baby seat in the back, his grandfather was at the wheel and his grandmother sitting by Peter's side, absent-mindedly singing along to the radio. None of them saw the car running the red light. Peter had a concussion, a punctured lung and broke his arm in two places. His grandfather, who didn't like wearing his seat-belt, was thrown out of the car, while his grandmother was hit by a large piece of glass that hit an artery. No one ever told Peter that the piece of glass that hit his grandmother was headed towards him, no one thought a child needed that kind of information. Peter later found out that the driver of the other car was drunk. He wasn't arrested, just paid a fine and that was that. A few years later Peter saw his name on the news, another car accident, another family destroyed. This time he had more than just a few superficial scratches. Peter can't say he was saddened by the news.
After that, he would simply come and go as he went through the aftermath of the crash.
By the time Peter was three, he already loathed hospitals. But the day that made him hate hospitals was the day his mother was the one who was rushed through those white corridors. She fainted. They were laughing and dancing, making pancakes for breakfast, and she fainted. Peter cried and called for her, but she would not wake up. Peter vaguely remembers running to the neighbour's house and asking for help. The red lights when the ambulance came to take his mother away. The impersonal and uncomfortable waiting room. The frenzy of doctors, nurses, and patients going up and down the corridors. The long wait where no one told him anything because he was just a child. Once his mother finally woke up, she told him everything would be just fine. The faint was a fluke, and it would not happen again. That was the first time his mother lied to him. Because it happened again and again, and it just kept happening.
Eventually, Peter's mother told him what was really happening. He cried and kept on crying. The doctors did their job. They tried everything they could to help his mother. In the end, there was nothing they could do.
When Peter was four, Death visited him for the third time, and he lost the only parent he ever had.
On that same day, a couple of hours later, the man who was supposedly his father entered his life.