"Well look who finally decided to come back."

Silence.

"How long has it been since you were here last here? Almost three weeks?"

Tony was in the middle of making a smoothie in the kitchen when the elevator doors had opened, revealing a face he had not been expecting to see.

"I'm just here for a textbook," Peter grumbled, not even bothering to look at Tony before heading down the long hallway towards his spare room.

Tony sighed, shaking his head slightly. For someone so small, there were moments where Peter managed to have as much attitude as Tony if not more. Peter had barely spoken to him the past few weeks and while he was slowly patching up things with Rogers, Peter was proving a lot more difficult to make amends with. He was a smart and compassionate kid but his stubborn streak often resulted in holding onto grudges for long periods of time. Tony hoped that once (Y/n) was back in New York and that whole mess was resolved, Peter would come around but now he wasn't even sure of that.

Either way, he still stood by his choices and actions. He regretted the chaos that had ensued as a result of the contract but not the creation of the documents themselves. He had seen people try to take advantage of his friends too many times to not get involved when he had felt Rogers was in over his head. Not to mention (Y/n) had always been so reserved, never talking about herself or her personal life. In his experience that normally meant a person was hiding something. Maybe he had assumed too much too quickly. He had conceded that at this point, it was fairly obvious (Y/n) was not after Steve's money. Even so, he still felt like the existence of a contract was important and he was tired of having to justify himself for trying to protect his teammates.

Tony tried to clear his thoughts, pouring the contents of his smoothie into a glass and was about to take his first sip when Nat entered the kitchen from the door that led to the tower offices.

"Do you have anything stronger?" she asked, nodding towards Tony's drink, pulling out one of the barstools and taking a seat at the counter. "I need to give myself a lobotomy after listening to Sam talk about the different ways he can use Red Wing to pick up women."

"I'd take Sam over the kid," Tony replied, opening a drawer and pulling out a metal straw. "He's still in a mood."

At that moment, Peter appeared again, textbook in hand, making a b-line for the elevators.

"Peter, hold on!" Nat called out. Peter hesitated for a moment, clearly torn between not wanting to spend any more time in the tower, and not wanting to be rude to Nat. Eventually he turned to face them, revealing a blank expression with dull and lifeless eyes.

"We haven't talked in a while, come catch up," Nat continued, pulling out the stool next to her and patting it lightly.

"Can't, m'busy," he mumbled, backing away towards the elevator.

"With what? You going to go look for (Y/n) again?" she asked, raising an eyebrow.

"No, I'm not doing that anymore."

Silence fell over the group. Nat glanced at Tony raising an eyebrow while Peter stared blankly into the distance. It was clear to Nat that Tony had know idea Peter had stopped looking for (Y/n) or why. For a while it had seemed like that was all he had cared about, and now he had done a complete one-eighty.

"Why did you stop?" Nat asked, crossing her arms over her chest.

"Because she's better off without all of us," he replied shortly, shuffling his feet. "Took me a while to see it but now I get why she left, why she shouldn't come back..."

Nat looked at Peter skeptically. She knew he had been struggling without his best friend but hadn't realized how much of a toll the situation had taken on him. Tony had called him a kid, and yet he looked like he had aged five years in the past couple weeks alone. He seemed to be shutting down and transforming into someone completely new. He was hardened, serious, and closed off from the people around him. It was a coping mechanism he had learned from someone close to him. From someone who was just as stubborn but many miles away, unable to help.

"Don't you think you're overreacting a little?" Tony interjected, making Nat tense up. Tony had a bad habit of making heated conversations go from bad to worse. "Sure things are rocky at the moment but she'll come around. You made a mistake but you're human, she'll see that eventually."

"Are you really going to lecture me about making mistakes?" Peter said, his voice starting out soft but getting louder as he continued. "If you had just left her alone none of this would have happened!"

"Watch it kid," Tony warned, his eyes narrowing. "Show some respect."

"I'm not a kid!" Peter shouted back, glaring fiercely at Tony. "You only ever see what you want to see. I'm still the clueless fourteen year-old-boy I was when we met and (Y/n) is the lying gold-digger? You don't know me and you don't know her. All you ever saw was the worst in her, so don't stand there and pretend like you know what she's thinking or what she's going through."

Tony's jaw tensed but remained shut as the two shared heated looks.

"Leave her alone. You've done enough damage already. We all have... If you truly want what's best for her then leave her alone."

Peter didn't even give either of them a chance to respond. He turned back to the elevators, leaving Nat and Tony alone in the kitchen. Tony's cheeks were tinted red, although Nat couldn't tell if it was from anger, embarrassment, or guilt. Maybe even a combination of all three?

"He's right in a way," Nat said cautiously, breaking the silence. "You shouldn't have forced Steve into that contract... getting involved was wrong."

"It's interesting you say that," Tony replied, his voice was even but there was a tense undertone warning Nat that the man was anything but calm. "Anything you want to confess? Any secrets you've been keeping, Widow?"

Nat stayed quiet, watching as Tony grabbed his smoothie off the counter and took a sip.

"It kept bothering me, you know? How this civilian with no experience in staying off the grid has been able to keep off our radar for so long?" Tony said as he walked around the counter slowly, his knuckles turning white as he gripped the glass tightly. "And then it hit me, someone gave her experience. Any idea who that could be?"

He came to a stop in front of Nat's chair. Nat didn't respond, but the look on her face said enough.

"I don't know who you think you're kidding, you're just as involved as I am," Tony accused, his voice flat and eyes stern.

Nat looked away, gazing out the nearby windows. She had known someone would find out about the part she had played in (Y/n)'s disappearance eventually. She had hoped it would be after (Y/n) was already found when it would be easier to smooth things over but that dream had seemingly just flown out the window while Peter's words flew around her head. Took me a while to see it but now I get why she left, why she shouldn't come back. What had he meant by that?

She still wasn't sure. All she knew was that the dynamics of the tower were shifting, getting messier and messier. She wasn't sure how to wade through the pentagon of interconnected people, each with more issues than the next. She had hoped by now Steve and (Y/n) would be able to work things out and that once they were together everything else would be able to fall into place. At this point any sort of resolution was starting to feel like a pipe dream.

"Does Rogers know?" she asked, knowing that this was going to make any possible chance at mediating the situation extremely difficult.

"He knows," Tony nodded as he made his way out of the kitchen and towards the lab.

"And trust me," he called out over his shoulder. "He's not happy about it."

-----------

Pregnancy cravings are a bitch.

You had hit the point in your pregnancy where just the thought of certain foods had you entirely distracted and unable to accomplish anything else until you were able to eat them. On the flip side, other foods made your stomach so queasy that you would spend the next hour sitting by the toilet, head in your hands. All foods were hit or miss making it impossible to predict how you would react to it. All of your pregnancy books had assured you that this phase would not last forever but it was honestly a truly miserable way to live.

"Thanks little bean," you sighed sarcastically, patting your stomach lightly. "But it's okay, mommy still loves you."

In one of the books you had noticed how "bean-shaped" a baby looked before birth, and since you had decided to wait to find out the gender of the baby the nickname had just sort of taken over.

You were currently sitting on the couch, watching a rerun of The Office but your attention was elsewhere. Your family used to summer at a house on Martha's Vineyard and would take day trips to the city every once in a while. On those trips you had discovered what you thought were probably the most delicious cannolis you had ever tasted at a pastry shop in the North End. You needed a cannoli. You desperately craved a cannoli. Your stomach rumbled just at the thought. The only problem was that there was no way of getting to the pastry shop without appearing on multiple street cameras. If anyone was looking, they would surely be able to find you. For a moment you even thought it might be worth giving up your location just to have one. Yikes.

Standing up from the couch you shook your head slightly trying to erase the thought of the cannoli from your brain. You figured if you couldn't get one that maybe fresh air and a walk might help so you put on your shoes and shrugged a jacket over your shoulders before heading out, locking the door behind you.

It was a beautiful night. Spring was on the verge of becoming summer and a refreshing cool breeze blew your hair back as you walked. Your stomach continued to rumble as you passed the neighboring house, failing miserably at pushing the delicious pastry from your mind.

Cannolis were the best. Cannolis never had psycho ex-girlfriends. Cannolis never got you pregnant. Cannolis never broke your heart. You groaned slightly, leaning your head back to look up at the sky, bright stars littering the dark canvas.

You had never really understood everyone's obsession with stars. Wishing for all of your dreams to come true on a giant, flaming ball of a gas was a pointless superstition. A tradition for hopeful fools who were desperate enough to romanticize inanimate objects instead of accepting the harsh realities of life. But not you. You knew the truth. Hope was a curse. Acceptance was the remedy.

What a lot of those naive wish-makers didn't know is that while they thought they were gazing at that night's array of constellations, they were actually looking back in time. Light travels so slowly from space to the Earth and the distance between the two is so great that by the time we see the light from the stars literal years have passed. Take the star Sirius. It's almost nine light-years from Earth so when we look at the star we are actually seeing what Sirius looked like nine years ago. Wouldn't this make the whole notion of wishing on a star completely and utterly pointless? Where is the logic in praying on something in the past to fix your present and future?

In your current present, an uncomfortable and disturbing feeling had crept up on you. As you walked through the neighborhood you couldn't help but feel like someone was watching you. It was an odd and even impossible sensation to literally feel eyes following you but if you've ever felt it you know exactly what it's like. You hoped you were just being paranoid but you couldn't shake the feeling. Turning quickly on the spot you decided to head back to your house where the safety of the walls would protect you more than wishing on a star from nine years ago ever could.

Only when you turned you realized you weren't being paranoid at all.

At the end of the street was the silhouette of a man hidden in shadow. Your heart pounded furiously, praying that you were hallucinating. Blinking hard you willed the image to disappear. You'd rather be having crazy visions than for the sight in front of you to be real. You stumbled back a few steps on instinct only for the shadow to move with you as the silhouette revealed itself, stepping into the light.