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English
Series:
Part 3 of Administrivia , Part 3 of Sonder
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2017-07-23
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3,513
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1/1
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Damage Control

Summary:

How do you tell a fifteen-year-old boy he has to take the blame for blowing up the fucking Washington Monument?

The Chitauri core incident catches up to Ned.

Spoilers for Spider-Man: Homecoming.

Notes:

(See the end of the work for notes.)

Work Text:

“I hate this construction,” Janet grumbled as she fed paper into the photocopier. “Feels like they’re hammering that crap right into my skull.”

“Amen to that.” Not that they had the option of refusing it. The Department of Damage Control had been right about one thing: their security measures were abysmal. Shocker had brazenly attacked a student (two, technically, though no one but Ken counted Spider-Man) on campus grounds, and Toomes’ associates had waltzed right into the school. It wasn’t even beyond possibility that Toomes himself had had something in his pocket the few times he visited. The collective pressure from the parents and the Department of Damage Control meant that security improvements were a foregone conclusion no matter how many Hulk-sized holes they blew in their budget.

“At least you have an office to block some of it out.” Janet peered at him strangely. “You okay, Ken? You don’t look good.”

“Sugar’s a little off today,” Ken mumbled back, gathering up his memos.

“Do you need to see the nurse?” Larry asked from the door, frowning over his coffee.

“Nah. Just bring a stretcher for me when I keel over.”

Janet and Larry exchanged a look. “Not funny.”

“Sorry.” Ken ducked past Larry’s suspicious eyes. “I’ll be fine. Anything I need to know before I bury myself in my inbox for three hours?”

“Oh, yeah.” There was an odd note in Janet’s voice. “Ned Leeds’ parents called. He’s not coming in today.”

 

The words Damage Control had become verboten in the office. Nobody said it. Everyone knew it. It came out in little pauses and furtive looks, the emphasis when people said they. It was ironic how a government department meant to protect them (or at least prevent alien artifacts from hurting them) suddenly sounded like Voldemort, He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named.

No one had to say anything. It was there in every day reminders: a boy missing classes for the day, the hordes of construction. Everyone was on edge—teachers, staff, and students alike. All those cameras, scanners, and worse made the building feel more like a penitentiary than a school. There’d been one comb-through of the school when Toomes’ case first blew open as they tried to figure out whether his daughter was involved; now there was a second as officials tried to figure out Ned’s place in this tangled web.

Ken walked through the hallways, eyeing the workers as he passed. He didn’t even recognize half this stuff. Granted, he wasn’t exactly erudite on the cutting-edge of technology, but he had to wonder how the hell accounting had managed to squeeze this through the budget without resorting to students and staff bringing their own toilet paper to school.

Not that he could say anything. All this came down from the top, way beyond his paygrade. He was only here because IT was complaining that the workers had screwed up one of their fibre lines.

He spotted a burly man in a too-expensive suit who seemed to be directing the workers installing the way-too-shiny tech. It set him on edge; he didn’t have good experiences with suits. He went up to the man anyway. “Excuse me—”

The man turned around and the words died halfway out of Ken’s throat, alarm bells ringing in his head. He didn’t know the man, but he had seen his face, many many times, shuttered in the background of brighter stars. Someone who was important, but not front and centre. Where, where…?

“Yes?” The man said impatiently.

Ken opened his mouth. He meant to say who are you? Instead, what came out was a blank, “Stark Industries?”

As soon as the words slipped out the memory solidified: shot after shot on TV, cameras flashing, reporters shouting, this man clearing the way for Stark…and Potts. Someone high up. Someone close to Stark.

What the hell was Stark Industries doing here?

The man frowned. “Yes, I am.”

Ken’s temper flared at the admission, all of his grievances with Stark flooding in. “Who are you?” he demanded. Some part of him noted the man did not ask him who he was.

The man paused a little, as if debating whether to answer. “My name’s Hogan. Happy Hogan.” Despite his namesake, he did not look very happy. “Head of Securities and Asset—” he bit off the last word, consternation flashing across his face.

Ken’s eyes narrowed on that last word. “Asset?”

“I’m overseeing some of the installation,” Hogan said stiffly. A lot of things suddenly made sense: Peter, Stark, and sizable donations.

Ken took a deep breath, his heart hammering angrily in his chest. In the flattest voice he could muster, he said tightly, “I’d like to speak with your boss about a student of mine.”

“Yeah, we get that a lot. Look, your students are really not our problem—”

“When it involves a very specific Stark Industries intern,” Ken cut in, “yes it is.”

Hogan’s face creased with irritation…then puzzlement…then a dawning suspicion.

“Specifically Peter’s super evening activities,” Ken added lowly, clipping the words.

Suspicion crystallized into grim certainty. Hogan backed up a step, hand going to his earpiece. “Boss? We have a problem.”

 

Ken didn’t like ceremony or attention. He had accompanied his grandfather to a few ceremonies at his grandfather’s request, but when Jim Morita’s health precluded travel Ken did not offer to go in his place. Once his grandfather passed he refused to even entertain the notion. He was not a soldier, he was not a hero, and he was manifestly not Jim Morita.  He had met a few of the other Commandos’ descendants once or twice, and he kept an eye out for their names in the news, but otherwise he was content to let them live their lives and let him live his.

He had never met Tony Stark in person, though he had heard of him (who hadn’t heard of Stark by this point?). Their tenuous connection had gone through their ancestors, and even without Iron Man Tony Stark was on an entirely different plane of existence.

He had, however, met Steve Rogers. Shortly after his thaw Rogers had gone searching for surviving Commandos and/or their descendants, and one random autumn day Steve Rogers had shown up on Ken’s doorstep looking for ghosts.

Ken still remembered that day clearly. Rogers had shown up in a sweater and jeans, looking ill at ease and out of place. As soon as Ken had opened the door Rogers had turned white as a sheet and whispered, “Jim?”

“Sorry, Captain Rogers,” he’d said quietly. “My name is Ken.”

He’d invited Rogers in for tea and they’d spent the afternoon talking. Ken broke the news of Jim Morita’s passing, only scant years before Rogers’ second life. Rogers left with thanks on his lips and pain in his eyes. That’d been the first and only time Ken had met Steve Rogers, the legend, the soldier, the Captain America. Different planes of existence.

People thought he’d be Team Cap based solely on his ancestry, and because he hadn’t removed the Captain America films from his school. Truthfully, Ken had no side in the mess with the Accords. On the one hand, he did think the premise was a good one, that power left unchecked was a loose cannon at best. On the other hand, he couldn’t disagree that the current people helming the Accords were the very last people in the world who should.

But all politics aside, he did like Steve Rogers, as much as one could know a man from three hours of tea and too much hearsay. That was the thing about publicized figures; you thought you knew them but it was only their carefully curated image that you saw.

Even so, Steve Rogers curated a much more personable image than Tony goddamned Stark.

Meeting Tony Stark involved a lot less pomp and circumstance than he had imagined. Ken had figured nowadays Stark only happened to a scene in one of his flying suits and with a fifteen limo entourage, and wasn’t he upstate in that new complex anyway? Instead, Stark had rounded the corner scarcely before Ken had finished emailing his staff about taking an early lunch off site. He must’ve been close by to begin with.

“You’re Morita?” Tony Stark appraised him with a irate look like he found him wanting. “I am not pleased to meet you.”

Well, wasn’t he honest. Ken narrowed his eyes. “Likewise.”

Stark glanced over at Hogan like Ken wasn’t worth his time to look at. “You’re what, the janitor? Gym teacher?”

“Principal,” Hogan supplied. He might as well have said babysitter.

Stark snorted. “Living the dream, huh?”

“Not everyone can be heroes,” Ken said stiffly.

“Bet you try. You really do look like your gramps.” Stark’s sharp eyes caught the chain around his neck, and the flash of silver peeking out between shirt buttons. “Wait, is that a dog tag? You really are committed to his image, aren’t you?”

Ken shot him a look that could freeze water. “It’s a MedicAlert tag. I’m diabetic.”

Stark had the grace to look chagrined, though he quickly recovered. “So I hear you have problems with my interning—”

“I have a lot more than just problems with your interning,” Ken snapped. He briefly wondered how the hell the Avengers had refrained from strangling each other long enough to be a team of any stripe when they had this man on board. “But Peter’s extra-curriculars will have to wait. My school is crawling with people above my paygrade, Peter’s best friend got grilled by your black ops, and now said kid is not showing up to school; three guesses as to why.” He stepped right into Stark’s face. “Any ideas, genius?”

Stark scowled horribly. “Maybe you should’ve thought of that before making up an alibi that you had no business making.”

“Maybe you should’ve primed two kids on how to respond to black ops,” Ken grated out. “Or better yet, call them off. Peter’s your ‘intern’, and those are your men. Aren’t you the poster boy of Damage Control?”

“Tony,” Hogan said carefully into the silence, like the air was about to ignite.

Stark’s jaw worked, but he looked away—a concession, if barely so. “I could. But it’s like if the POTUS told you to close down your school. Sure, he has the power, but there are a lot of people in the middle who will ask questions.”

Ken took a deep breath and relaxed his clenched fists. Hogan subtly-unsubtly stepped forward a little, forcing Ken back. “How bad is it?”

“Not bad, not good. You—or Ned, I don’t know—said Toomes’ men dropped the rock at school. But your school’s video surveillance only showed one visit, during which they were already looking for their rock. It’s not anything terribly concrete, but enough that they wanted a second round of questioning.”

“And where’s Ned now?” Ken asked faintly.

“Probably at the local police station with his parents.” Stark made a noise of disgust. “I may have given them a what-for about proper procedures. We work with local law enforcement, not supersede them.”

Hogan coughed something that sounded suspiciously like “hypocrite”.

Well, fuck. “Peter must be losing his mind.”

“Why do you think I’m here? I told the kid that if his tracker turns off for even a second, or if it leaves the school, I will bring a suit around and dump him in Australia.” Stark’s mouth was tight. “If he couldn’t even keep it secret from you…” He narrowed his eyes. “How did you find out, anyway? Peter didn’t tell me you knew.”

“Let’s just say alibis aren’t Peter’s strong suit,” Ken said tersely. “Or Ned’s. I can’t promise no one else put the pieces together, either.” He filed away the info about Peter’s tracker for future reference. “How did Peter—Ned—get that rock?”

Stark looked at Hogan, who grimaced. “Short version? Toomes’ men dropped it on the road. Peter picked it up. Gave it to Ned for safekeeping. And…well.”

Stark ran a hand over his eyes. Underneath all the bluster, he looked strained too. “I figure there’re nine possible ways we can do this, ranging from Peter telling the truth—”

“No,” Ken and Hogan said immediately.

“—all the way to Toomes dropping sparkly meteors during his test flight,” Stark continued as if neither had said anything. “Obviously some alibis are better than others, but I don’t know which one to take. I don’t know what Ned’s been telling them. I don’t know how, in the middle of a goddamned interrogation room, I can get him to change his story. I can’t get Wan—” he broke off with a huff, dark eyes flashing, like he was angry with himself for even thinking it. He finished flatly with, “and you said he can’t lie worth shit.”

Ken pressed his hand to his face, recalling Ned’s stammering when he’d questioned Ned about porn. “He is very good at being loyal.”

“The easiest way,” Hogan broke in, “is he changes the truth just slightly. He could say he picked up the core from the road on his walk home, not Peter. Everything else would match. No video surveillance in residential areas. And the Chitauri radiation has long expired.”

“How do you tell him that?” Ken demanded. His heart was pounding in his head in time with his mounting headache. “Even if you could pass him a message, how do you tell a fifteen-year-old boy he has to take the blame for blowing up the fucking Washington Monument? For screwing around with alien tech without so much as a by-your-leave?” His voice rose in pitch, cracking on the last word. “For nearly killing all his friends?”

It hit him suddenly: that was on Peter. No matter who ended up taking the official blame, that was on Peter.

Fuck. He didn’t know who he hated more at this moment: Stark, for providing the tech, Peter, for engaging in this insanity, or every other goddamned adult and child who was complicit in this scheme. Himself included.

“Calm down before you keel over,” Stark said, halfway between sneer and kind. “I don’t have time to deal with you too.”

Ken sucked in a breath between clenched teeth. “I’m going to the station.”

“To do what, exactly?” Hogan demanded.

“No, he should.” Stark’s brow furrowed, not quite a scowl. “Technically they’d probably want a statement from you too. I mean, they probably could say you were leading the witness. Leading the suspect? Anyway, I’m kind of surprised they haven’t chased you down already.” He shrugged, too flippant to be genuine. “Well, what better escort than Tony Stark?”

That was all the invitation Ken needed. He turned to glare at Hogan. “Car.”

Hogan rolled his eyes. “Make me your driver too, why don’t you.”

 

None of them spoke the entire way to the police station. Hogan was driving. Stark was tapping on his phone furiously like he could fix the situation by being angry at it. The rest of New York crawled by outside the windows. Ken wondered, not for the first time (nor the last), how his life had come to this.

Actually, after that little stunt with Damage Control, he’d half expected to be hauled off too. This was almost exactly like he imagined, except with infinitely nicer transport. He didn’t expect to ride in Stark’s car again in this lifetime.

Hogan parked. Ken didn’t take his time getting out of the car, but he didn’t quite throw himself out either. Neither Stark nor Hogan had volunteered any brilliant ideas of conveying to Ned what was needed (Ken still couldn’t get over the fifteen-year-old taking the blame part of the plan, not that he had any scintillating alternatives either). He wasn’t that worried about himself—he was only a minor witness for this ploy, so long as the greater secret about Spider-Man didn’t bust open—but he had no idea what to expect. And what the hell would happen to Ned?

“Come on,” Stark finally muttered, and the three of them forged ahead toward the looming building. Hogan opened the door and very nearly crashed into a woman coming out. “Oh!”

Ken started. “Ms Leeds?”

The woman blinked. “Principal Morita?”

It definitely was Ned’s mother, her husband a half step behind her. And trailing behind them both, pale and hunched and small, was…

“Ned?” Ken couldn’t keep the incredulity from his voice.

The boy looked up, eyes going wide. “Mr Morita?” His eyes flicked over to Stark, who looked as gobsmacked as the rest of them. “Mr Stark?”

There was a clamour as everybody tried to talk at once. Ken crouched down to Ned’s eye level, barely remembering to get out of the doorway. “Hey. What happened?” He clasped Ned by the shoulders, noting the boy’s fingertips were stained with ink. “Are you okay?”

Hogan shushed the rest of the group (for once, Tony Stark’s presence was soundly ignored). Ned looked up, eyes flicking between the adults. His voice was a little thin, the words a little halting. “Yeah. I’m…sorry for dragging you into this.”

What the hell did that even mean? “What did you tell them, Ned?”

“The truth.” The words pierced like little knives. “I did find that thing on the road the night of Liz’s party. I just thought—when you mentioned those guys at school…” Ned shuddered, full-body, his face pale and drawn. “I thought everyone would be…less mad if they thought I didn’t have it for that long.”

The words hung in the air like nonsense before it finally clicked, a hammer blow to shivers of glass.

Some time between the first Damage Control visit and this one, Ned had worked it out. That if this blew open, he had to take the fall. Mug shot, fingerprints, the whole nine yards. Because it was safer than the truth, but not so far off it would be a lie. Someone had to be blamed for the accident, even if no one got hurt, even if someone (Stark) footed the bill. Someone had to be on record, the incident a permanent stain, and it couldn’t be Peter.

Without corroboration from any adults, any instructions on what to do, Ned had worked it out. He’d taken the blame like they wanted him to, start to finish, like he had done with the porn.

Ken felt like he’d just been punched. He glanced up at Stark, whose mouth had fallen open a little. His own words flashed back at him: he is very good at being loyal.

Ken didn’t realize how tightly he’d been gripping Ned’s shoulders until the boy started squirming. “Ow.”

“Sorry.” He hastily let him go. Ned’s eyes pierced his, shuttered and solemn.

“I. Well,” Stark finally said, gathering his wits, “I guess our presence here is a little superfluous.”

“Maybe Peter needs to come,” Ned mumbled, gaze shifting to his stained fingers. “He knew I had the thing. I’m sorry for dragging him into this, too.”

“Don’t be sorry.” He had no idea what else to say. The irony was sickening.

Ray Leeds forced a hollow smile in an unconscious imitation of his son. “Sorry. I don’t think Ned will be at school tomorrow, either.”

“No, it’s okay,” Ken said numbly. “Take all the time he needs.”

 

The ride back to the school was as silent as the ride leaving it. The world was still spinning. Ken didn’t think it was his blood sugar. Stark sat beside him, lips pressed thin, an aggrieved expression on his face. Hogan flicked glances at them in the rearview mirror, face pinched.

Suddenly, apropos of nothing: “I’m sorry about Harrington.”

Ken blinked, taken aback, and turned to stare at Stark. “Excuse me?”

Stark’s jaw worked, like he was mildly offended at having to repeat himself. “I’m sorry about Harrington. I didn’t know. Peter…should’ve told me.”

Ken felt the tension, the guilt, coalesce in the pit of his stomach. That had been on him too. Another piece of collateral in the bid to protect Peter, except this one hadn’t been willing. “I guess it’s not without cause.” His voice sounded distant to his own ears. “Not if it’d gone on for that long. He was department head, he was responsible for inventory.” It wasn’t that he wanted Roger to have busted Peter, but if Roger had missed that, he had probably missed other things too.

“Hooray, middle management,” Stark said dryly, and maybe that was apology enough.

 

When he finally got home, Ken checked LinkedIn. Query: Roger Harrington.

Roger had updated his profile with a new job; he started just last week. A bit of Googling revealed that his new employer was a subsidiary of (what else?) Stark Industries, some brand-new position that hadn’t existed previously. Ken would bet his next paycheque that it paid at least three times too much.

He ran through his mental list of grievances against Stark. It was a long list, but some of it…some of it he could cross off.

It was a start.

Notes:

Scene #1 in Sub Rosa was too easy of a resolution, but I kept it in the end precisely because I wanted to revisit that issue. I also wanted to make Ned more of a hero (in his own way) and bring in Tony, so hopefully I’ve done them all justice. If it seems like the principal cared more about Ned than Tony or Happy did, that was intentional. It’s not that they don’t care, but their priority is Peter, whereas both of them are Ken’s students.

Given that Ned did bring the core to the monument, I leaned more toward he’d be treated as a suspect under arrest rather than just a witness (hence mug shot and fingerprints and all that jazz), though I handwaved the finer details--I skipped the 48 hour jail cell detainment after arrest, for example. In fairness, there likely are laws in the MCU about handling alien tech if they actually created DODC to take care of it, but I don't imagine Ned will be sent to jail or charged with anything beyond a really, really big fine. DODC is loosely modelled off the feds, who do work with local law enforcement and don’t just “take over” even when they get involved.

Thanks to Nyxelestia for the inspiration about diabetes :D If anyone has suggestions for additional stories, let me know.

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