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Tony Stark was a villain.
Well, to be technical, Tony himself wasn’t the villain; Iron Man is. To the world, Tony Stark was still just Tony Stark -- billionaire, playboy, philanthropist, and all those other names they call him. He could hardly be bothered to remember them all.
Although, if he wanted to be even more technical, he’s not really a villain, per se. He’s more of an antihero. Sure, what he did was illegal, but he didn’t usually wreck havoc for the hell of it. He’s not a psychopath. Just tired of being underestimated and taken advantage of. And a little bored.
So you could say Tony’s been at this supervillain gig for a while. Which means he knew a fresh face when he sees it. Metaphorically speaking.
Spider-Man was about as fresh-faced as they came in this field. And sure, Tony had heard of him. He’s seen a bit of his work, but Tony didn’t venture to Queens much, either as himself or as Iron Man. He rarely had a reason to, in both of his lives. Spidey has only been around for couple years or so from what he knew, and frankly the young vigilante has done nothing to end himself up on Tony’s list of people that are of particular concern to him.
Today that changed. Today, Tony was destroying a building full of unauthorized weapons when something sticky hit him in the back of the helmet, knocking his aim off center.
“What the hell–” His fingers found the goop on the back of his helmet and came away sticky. He knew immediately what it was, and he found his lips drawing up into a smirk. Finally.
Iron Man spun in the air, finding Spider-Man perched on the roof of the building across the street. The vigilante actually waved at him. “Hey there! You might have missed this memo, but – destruction of property is not cool, dude.”
Tony snorted inside the helmet, but didn't dignify Spider-Man’s taunt with an answer. After all, it's not as if the other man would believe him if he told him it was a building full of his property.
He let his repulsors speak for him.
The first shot went right over Spider-Man’s head. It's a clear warning shot, but he didn’t even flinch from it. “Is that the best you’ve got, tin man? Your aim sucks!”
Then it's on. Tony fired shot after shot at Spider-Man as they danced around the air, his suit twisting and levitating as Spider-Man bounced from rooftop to rooftop with an unnatural ease. It's almost as if he sensed every single shot before it gets too close to him, anticipating where they're going to be before Tony has even consciously decided.
It's infuriating.
It's fascinating.
“What are you, bug?” Tony muttered, as Jarvis struggled to track the other man’s rapid movements across his HUD and calculate the best plan of attack. He's unpredictable and flighty, and neither his AI or his own brain could seem to make sense of it.
Somehow, the words seemed to reach Spider-Man’s ears, though Tony had certainly not intended for them to carry.
“Bug?” Spider-Man practically squawked, indignant. “Spiders are arachnids, not bugs. And I’m Spider-Man. Think that's all you need to know, given the circumstances.” He yapped even as he continued dodging Tony’s multitude of shots and even the occasional bullet from his shoulder canons, barely sounding out of breath.
Superhuman, then? Or just really good tech in the suit, to be able to hear Tony from so far away?
He can't be sure, not from just this encounter. But after several minutes of sparring, the explosives Tony has rigged start to detonate, and Spider-Man’s attention shifted from him to the burning building with the employees still inside. Which was fine by Tony. It was high past time for him to go.
Spider-Man’s gaze flicked from him to the building, hesitation clear in every inch of his coiled form. He's perched on the edge of the building again, unwilling to turn his back on Iron Man to head toward the building but clearly more concerned about the screams coming from within than apprehending Iron Man, now.
Iron Man simply inclined his head to the other man, letting the repulsors repel him backwards a few feet, away from the scene. “Better get in there if you want to save them.” It's not even a taunt, just the truth.
He saw the way a muscle in Spider-Man’s jaw jumped at the words, skin tight as that poor excuse for a suit was on him. But the choice was quickly made.
“This isn't over,” Spider-Man told him, and just like that, he's pushing off the roof, swinging toward the wreckage of the building.
Tony just watched him go, a little smirk curling up his lips. The other man was undoubtedly pesky, but also fascinating. And he'd still completed his goals, so, no harm done, really.
“I sure hope not,” he said, once Spider-Man is far enough out of range he's sure he won't hear. And then he's off, too, speeding toward the safety of his tower in the distance.
He had quite a lot of research to do.
~~~
In retrospect, maybe Tony should have guessed that Spider-Man would get wrapped up with the Avengers.
He wasn't one of them – at least not officially. But apparently the scale of Iron Man’s destruction was large enough today to merit their intervention. Which was all part of the plan, of course. To lure Captain America into his trap. Maybe even get the opportunity to punch him in his perfect teeth before Tony killed him.
What wasn't part of the plan was the arachnid that also appeared on the scene, and before he knew it, Spider-Man was tracking the distress signal meant for Captain America, ripping open a blocked ventilation shaft from the roof and jumping right into the building.
Tony sighed despite himself, sending some dummy suits to keep the rest of the Avengers entertained as he followed Spider-Man into the building.
By the time he got inside, Spider-Man was already studying the gas canister he'd had ready to use, a special formula he'd created, meant to make even a super soldier woozy. Tony grimaced at the sight, crossing his arms in the suit.
“I'm gonna need you to put that back.”
Spider-Man’s shoulders tensed, and he turned around, slowly, the canister in one hand. “Not you again. Look, you have to know why I can't do that. Anyway, what would be the point?”
“The point is I've spent weeks preparing this trap,” Tony deadpanned. “And you're not the one it's meant for. So I'll give you one more chance, Spidey. Put the canister down, leave peacefully, and I'll let you walk.”
“You'll let me, huh?” Spider-Man snorted, tossing the canister from hand to hand far too casually considering how dangerous it was, and how expensive it was to make. Sure Tony had backups but those were equally expensive and he really did try not to be wasteful. “How about this: you leave now, I turn this over to the property authorities, and we don't have to fight. You can have a real good head start if you go now, tin man.”
Tony had to give it to him. Spider-Man was ballsy. Especially considering he had no idea the gravity of what was in that canister. Tony’s suit had a filtration system, which was great, because breathing that in would kill a normal person. Tony wasn't particularly keen to kill himself or Spider-Man today.
That could change, though.
That was of course also assuming the boy was normal. And Tony's been around enough enhanced individuals to be pretty sure of one when he sees it. It's in the agility, the crazy reflexes, the off-the-charts of human possibility hearing. His research had yielded nothing if not more examples of that. He somehow doubted the person behind the suit is entirely normal.
Maybe that's why he didn't hesitate. He just smirked, knowing Spider-Man couldn't see it in the suit but would be able to tell by the tone of his voice. “Suit yourself, bug,” he quipped, and he fired off a single shot.
Spider-Man jumped out of the way, and the shot missed him by a wide berth. But it was never aimed at him to begin with.
The lenses of the Spider-Man suit blew wide when he realized his mistake, but it was too late.
The backup canister he'd planted exploded. Spider-Man flew back from the pure force of it, and only Tony’s repulsors flaring kept him in place. The second canister exploded on Spider-Man’s impact with the wall, and the other man sucked in a huge, gasping breath just as the gas billowed out, clearly winded from the collision.
Tony waited, hovering nearby and watching the lenses of the other man’s suit flicker as Spider-Man struggled to refocus after the blows, fighting the effects of the gas. He coughed, pushing himself up with shaky hands, and made a fair effort in putting on a show with his dramatic hand waving and nose pinching as he got to his feet.
“Dude, that stuff stinks! What is that?” He coughed again, and that, at least, sounded legitimate. Considering he’d inhaled enough of it to probably kill Rogers and was still just appearing winded, he imagined it was.
“That was a toxic gas formulated to severely incapacitate a super soldier,” Iron Man drawled. “Which you detonated two canisters of and are somehow still standing despite it. Care to explain?”
Spider-Man went still, and Tony knew he was realizing, in that moment, what he'd just unwittingly revealed, and that the supervillain in front of him had been smart enough to piece together. Still, he made a fair effort to brush it off, voice entirely too chipper. “Nope! And I feel like that's not the issue here, besides. You didn't answer my question before. You're clearly after Captain America today, but not at all the time. Your crimes don't make sense. What are you gaining from all this? What's the point?”
Yeah, Tony wasn’t going to touch any of that with a ten foot pole. Apparently he hadn’t been the only one doing research.
““Oh, it's most definitely the point, bug. You're enhanced,” he pointed out, voice sharp. “You’re getting in my way. And you just made me waste two cans of a multi-million dollar drug with no visible results!”
Which was kind of astounding, actually. What the hell was this guy? His body must be metabolizing the gas at a frankly incredible rate to be feeling seemingly nothing right now.
“Oops,” Spider-Man said, voice heavy with false sincerity. “Maybe you miscalculated.”
Tony thought back to the lab full of unconscious Stark Industries employees, sprawled across floors and tables in R&D after he'd released a microdose of the gas to test it. It was easy enough to pass off as an accident, and yet still a very effective test. Everyone woke up a few hours later with only a few headaches among them, and Tony had sent them all home for the rest of the day. No harm, no foul.
“I don't miscalculate,” was all he said aloud. “Which means you are superhuman. Or maybe not human at all.”
Spider-Man flinched at the words, and Tony sensed he'd hit a nerve. “You don't know anything about me. You'll never find–”
The building shook suddenly, and Jarvis chimed in from inside Tony’s helmet, “Sir, the Hulk is trying to bust through the side of the building. I estimate structural integrity will be compromised in–”
“Yeah, yeah, get out, got it,” Tony muttered, attention still on Spider-Man, who's looking at him with his head cocked like a confused puppy.
“Who is that?” Spider-Man asked, sounding a bit perplexed, and Tony realized quite suddenly that his super hearing was very real and very easy to weaponize at this distance. As in, Spider-Man could hear everything he was saying inside the suit at close range, and every time Jarvis spoke to him.
“Oh boy, more questions with no answers. Hey, tell you what, maybe next time you answer some of mine and I'll answer some of yours. But for now…” Tony lifted off again, throwing a mocking salute to the vigilante. “It’s time to go. I'd suggest you kick rocks before the debris crushes you and you're nothing more than a dead bug.”
“What debris?”
As if on cue, the building rumbled again. Tony knew that a supporting wall had been taken out by the way the floor immediately started to lilt and crumble.
“That debris. See ya!”
Tony rocketed out of the building, hovering just long enough – though he couldn't say why – to look for the telltale blur of red and blue, intact, and swinging away from the wreckage. He blew out a heavy breath and issued the recall order to all of his suits before speeding in the opposite direction.
~~~
The next time, Tony was prepared.
In fact, he was almost over prepared for the goal of the day: find out more about Spider-Man.
He'd set up an easy enough trap to lure the vigilante in. Nothing fancy – just a seemingly abandoned warehouse on the outskirts of Queens, rigged with dummies stuffed with Hot Hands to create fake heat signatures and a recording of a woman screaming to get his attention.
Once Spider-Man was inside, the building would lock down tighter than Fort Knox, and it would just be Iron Man and Spider-Man. Well, and Tony’s little surprises for him.
See, Tony had tried to find Spider-Man after their last encounter. He found the other man fascinating, not to mention a threat. His powers were a potentially complicating factor in any of Tony’s plans, as proved by the whole mishap with the supposed-to-be toxic gas. Not to mention his penchant for just showing up unannounced.
Except Spider-Man was covering his tracks infuriatingly well. And though narrowing down the areas, days, and times he frequented most often was a cake walk, it got difficult from there. Unearthing the Spiderling's identity was proving to be complicated.
The funny part about it was that Tony didn't even want to hurt him. Not really. He always had reasons for the shit he did, even if no one on the outside knew that. He didn't kill just for the sake of it. In fact he operated – on a non-exclusive basis of course – more as a punisher or enforcer on the people that did act out that way. He found, despite hours and hours of stunted research and the way the younger man kept showing up to mess with Iron Man’s plans, that he had a lot of respect for Spider-Man. Liked him, even. Which was pesky at best and dangerous at worst.
Which was why Tony needed to know more about him. Partially because he couldn't let the other man continue to get away with interjecting himself in the middle of his supervillain plans and doing nothing about it, but also partially because he had to have a weakness. If Tony could figure out what it was, he could blackmail the boy, or distract him, and keep him both out of Iron Man’s business and out of the line of fire.
But given the way he'd walked off the super-soldier toxin, attempting to brute force him into revealing a weakness clearly wasn't going to be the way to go. That left only mind games. And lucky for Tony, he was quite good at those. Had to be, with the double life thing and all.
Speaking of which – his latest brilliant plan had been aided by the research of one of his disgruntled former employees turned small-time supervillain, Quentin Beck. Beck had been fired for more than one legitimate reason, although his pet project’s ability to be weaponized and how bad that looked when being presented to a former weapons manufacturer was probably the least legitimate of them. But hey, he'd already arranged an accident to get rid of Beck, and Tony had improved upon the initial concept so much it didn't really resemble the design anyone else had seen anymore, so he wasn't expecting any problems.
All of this had led them here. To Tony Stark waiting in his Iron Man suit in the dark of the warehouse, poised and waiting for Spidey to take the bait.
He didn't have to wait very long. He almost felt bad, knowing that Spider-Man had probably barely started his patrol and he would be in no state to go back to it when they were done. He reminded himself that wasn't really his problem.
Spidey burst through a conveniently-open window on the other side of the warehouse, tucking and rolling as soon as his web snapped and bouncing back to his feet with ease. The lenses of his mask narrowed and flitted around, taking in the dummies and the seemingly empty warehouse even as the recording of the scream continued.
The younger man gave himself a small shake, mumbling something as he searched for the source of the sound and shut it off. He didn’t even seem to notice the window sealing shut behind him.
He rubbed his forehead through the mask, and Tony realized that the sound of the recording might have been hurting his ears. The woman’s high pitched screaming was annoying to anyone else, maybe, but to Spider-Man, with his enhanced senses, it must have been ear piercing.
That was good to know, but it didn't give him much. It was a potential weakness, sure, but Spider-Man presumably navigated the day to day life in the city and every single destructive, noisy battle he's ever been in just fine. It would take more than just an annoying noise to incapacitate him.
Luckily, that had nothing to do with what he had planned for the other man today.
Today, what he was banking on was Spidey’s smart-mouth and natural curiosity. This was very obviously a lure, and Spidey would want to figure out why. Would look around, sticking his nose where it didn't belong until he uncovered exactly what Tony wanted him to.
He did. It didn't even take long. Tony watched from his perch in the rafters, quiet, as the vigilante combed the warehouse, confusion growing with every low-tech item he discovered. The stupid dummies, the tape recorder that had been playing the sound, the bare, crumpling walls with no obvious riggings or hiding places.
Discarded in the back corner as if forgotten, or dropped while in a hurry, there was a pair of glasses. Spidey finally found them, studying them with clear suspicion. He held them up in front of his face as if peering through them, and, after a long moment of indecision, moved as if to put them on.
That was all it took. The band snapped in place around his head, securing the glasses in place over his mask and lenses. Spider-Man hissed out a startled breath, immediately pulling on them to try to get them off to no avail.
Iron Man dropped from the rafters, landing with a loud thump right in front of Spider-Man, startling him enough that he jumped back, hands dropping from the glasses reflexively. “Don't bother. Even ripping your mask isn't going to get that off.”
Spider-Man stared at him, looking a bit ridiculous with the large, wire framed glasses strapped over his already goofy-looking eye lenses. “Dude, don't you have anything better to do than this?”
That startled a laugh out of Tony. Of all the things he was expecting Spider-Man to say, that wasn't on the list. “Maybe. But the only way I can get on with that comfortably is by finding a way to ensure you don't interfere.” He shrugged. “Hence, this.”
It wasn’t even an overstatement. He’d put everything else on hold to perfect this technology he’d taken from Beck and use it to devise a plan to get into Spider-Man’s head.
Spider-Man crossed his arms, attempting to give off an air of unconcerned annoyance that was almost convincing. “Yeah, real clever and all. Well, I'm here, and you're doing a great job of wasting my time, but like… This might be the most boring trap I've ever walked into. What's the big idea? Are these glasses meant to just embarrass me enough I won't try to escape because I don't want to be seen with them on? Which won't work, by the way. I know I look ridiculous right now but there are far worse pictures of me on the internet than this.”
Tony found his lips curving up despite the chattering. “Yeah, me too.” As Tony Stark, not Iron Man, but he wasn’t going to be divulging that little tidbit just then. “But you'll be delighted to learn they have another use besides just making you even more difficult to take seriously.”
“Yeah, somehow I doubt delighted is the right term–” Spidey hedged, already starting to back away before Tony even spoke.
“J, fire it up.”
“Wait–”
Too late.
Right in front of their eyes, the glasses hijacked Spider-Man’s hippocampus, and the drones hidden in the corners come to life. Projected in between them was a hologram so realistic of the Iron Man suit that Tony wouldn't know it wasn't real if he didn't already know.
All the drones were showing was what was going on in his head. And since there was no other stimuli present besides him, it was showing Spidey’s most recent memory of him.
Spidey yelped. “What the hell–”
“Relax, there's still only one of me. Now, let's talk about something fun, huh?” Iron Man took a step toward him, and Spider-Man retreated two steps in return, eyes flicking under the glasses from the real Iron Man to the projection as his own words echo back over the loudspeakers at him. “I'd like to know who you are.”
“Yeah, never going to happen–”
But Spidey couldn’t help his own thoughts, and before he had a chance to even get the words out, the memory was changing in front of their eyes.
A girl, with dark, fluffy hair and serious eyes, fixing the boy under the mask with a look.
“Somebody will find out eventually, Parker. If I figured you out, who else can?”
Parker. A last name, probably, but a start.
Spider-Man flinched back from the memory as if scalded, hands shooting back to his head. “How are you–”
The memory changed. An older woman than the last, long, brown hair and watery eyes as she leaned over Spider-Man in the memory.
“Peter Benjamin Parker, how long have you been keeping this from me?”
“May, I didn't mean to– I didn't want to scare you, or put you in danger, or–”
“You don't think it's a bit late for that?”
“I'm sorry–”
Another flash. A maniacal cackle that made even Tony’s hair stand on end, and he saw the same girls – both of them, dangling over a bridge, held by some crazy contraption Tony could tell was barely holding together long enough for him to make the very apparent choice in front of him.
“I'm sorry, I'm so fucking sorry–”
“A bit late for apologies, isn't it, Spider-Man?”
“No, no! Stop!”
Spidey was clawing at his face with a renewed panic, trying to get the glasses off. Tony felt something in his gut twist, but he didn't turn it off. Not yet.
A name was a good start, but it wasn't enough. He needed more.
“Show me a weakness,” Tony ordered. “Or a time he was beaten. Something, anything I can manipulate.”
Screams cracked through the air again like a whip, and Tony saw them both, falling. In real life and in the hologram, Spider-Man crumpled to his knees.
There's flashes of crumpled bodies and blood and hospital beds, enough that Tony got the sense that at least one of them had survived that initial drop, but the body was so obscured by wires and machines he couldn't tell which it was. Not to mention the memory was being seen through blurry eyes.
The next memory was the vigilante crushed under a pile of rubble on the ground. No, rubble wasn't even a good word for it – they were mostly intact large, concrete pillars, apparently aimed at taking the building down with him in it.
In the hologram, Spider-Man made a pained noise as he ripped off the mask, gasping for air. The vigilante caught a glimpse of his own reflection in the puddle by his head, blood trickling from his ears and nose as he fought to stay awake.
Tony felt himself take a step back, away from the sight. That face was so… young. So broken. So similar to what he'd looked like when he'd return from Afghanistan – haunted, gaunt, with so much emotional turmoil inside that the exterior, however shattered, could never match.
On a teenager, it's even more devastating.
Wait. A teenager.
Spider-Man – or, Peter Benjamin Parker, if his memories were to be believed – was little more than a kid. And even if he was an adult now – which he couldn't be sure of, not yet – Spider-Man hadn't been on the scene for long enough for these memories to be more than a year old, at max.
The memories come more quickly as Parker spiralled into the midst of a panic attack.
Several variations and iterations of him stitching himself up or cleaning wounds in a bathroom mirror, his battered body on full display.
A final glance toward a pretty young girl, different than the last two, dressed to the nines and watching him with disappointment as he walked away and pulled on his mask as soon as he was out of sight.
Funeral after funeral after funeral.
The wreckage of a plane crash, still smoking around him, his own infant cries sounding in his ears.
Villains, some Tony recognized, like himself and the Vulture, and several he didn’t, like the man in the green suit he'd heard cackling in the earlier memory, and a man in a yellow suit, fists crackling with electricity as they connected with Spidey’s ribs.
“Fuck– make it stop make it stop–”
The broken cry pulled Tony’s attention away from the holograms and back to the man– no, the kid on the floor. The one he was actively terrorizing with his own worst memories. Oh, he'd really done it this time.
“Shut it down, J.”
The drones turned off, and with one mighty pull, the band snapped on his glasses, releasing from Parker’s face and dropping to the floor. Neither of them moved to catch them.
Tony turned back to the boy, still crumpled on the floor, clutching his head through the mask like he was thinking about ripping it off and only barely thinking better of it. His breathing was still too fast, and he quivered like a leaf at Tony’s feet.
“Kid–” His own voice surprised him, coming out hesitant and something dangerously close to gentle.
“No! Get– get away from me!” Parker scrambled back, shooting a web clumsily toward the window.
“I didn't—” He faltered. Didn't what? Didn't know? Didn't mean for this to happen? Didn't want to hurt him? Thirty minutes ago none of those were true. But now…
Now he did know. That Spider-Man was a kid. That, by the look of his memories, had lost everybody.
Tony knew all too well how that felt.
Peter continued scrambling back, until his back hit the wall just under the window. He didn’t hesitate to put his fist through the glass, and they both flinched at the sound as it shattered on impact.
Tony didn’t say anything as Peter wildly swiped an arm through the broken glass, clearing enough of it to make a person-sized hole in the gap. He didn't say anything at all to try to stop the vigilante, didn’t even reach for the glasses. He just watched as Spider-Man, still shaking, crawled out the window and disappeared.
He had a feeling Spider-Man wouldn’t be showing up to bother him again for a while. Somehow, though, despite all the work that had gone into tonight and Tony getting exactly what he’d wanted out of it, he didn’t feel like celebrating.
His eyes found the blood dripping from the pieces of the broken window, the only sign that anyone besides him had ever been there. He blew out an unsteady breath.
“J, let’s get a sample from that blood trail, and then…”
Then what? He didn’t even know. Use it to formulate something that would work on him? It didn’t sit quite right with him, not anymore. After everything he’d seen tonight…
“Then, sir?” Jarvis prompted, pulling him back out of his thoughts.
“Then…”
An idea was starting to form in his head. Dangerous, sure, but when was anything he did ever particularly safe?
“We use it. To find him, again. But not like this, not again. I think… I think it’s time Peter Benjamin Parker met Tony Stark.”