36 - The Gang

Liberty's P.O.V

I had explained my past what felt like a million times before, so you would've thought that I would have figured out how to word it all by now, but boy would you be wrong. Sat there with the friends who I had actually known for quite a while and trying to explain everything so it all made sense very quickly was even harder than me telling Peter and Ned put together. But I did suppose I enjoyed the fact that they weren't amazed by the whole 'oh my god your dad is Captain America, that's so cool, I wish my parents were superheroes' thing, since they already kind of understood that family demographic, so that was one less thing that I had to touch on in my explanation.

"So..." Penny started talking, filling the silence that had been filled in my own brain by my thoughts moving backwards and forwards at top speeds, I was glad someone else made the first word, I felt too nervous to do it myself.

So... what are the chances," Max carried on, making the group of us laugh slightly, making me feel a little less jittery and anxious, I guess it kind of helped that we all already knew each other mostly.

"I... erm... I guess you kind of want to know how and why and when and-" I stuttered, fiddling with my hands out of nerves, I hadn't really even noticed that I was doing it until Astrid, who was sat next to me at the time, put her hand over mine, the warmth from her fingertips was pleasant and it seemed to calm me right down.

"Let's just start with one of those, just taking it one step at a time," Astrid said caringly, smiling at me, the rest of the gang were looking at me, no longer staring, I felt better towards the thought of speaking about my past yet again.

I went through the same things as to what I told Ned and Peter that night that was almost three whole years ago. I told them about the ice, Nat and Clint saving me from the mouse room, and when I mentioned about my mother and my little sister Lizzie, Penny knew exactly who I was talking about,

"Great-aunt Peggy was your mom?!" Penny gasped, "And Aunt Elizabeth is your sister?!"

I nodded, it was nice that I'd found yet another person who had known the two of them whilst I wasn't here.

"Wait, your 'Great Aunt who was from England'... you were talking about mum?!" I gasped, all of the information sinking in.

From what Penny told me, both mum and Lizzie had been heavily involved with her when she was younger, whilst Tony was busy with work things and Avengers things.

I went on to explain about my 'trip' to England and how it wasn't really a trip at all, it was so that both me and dad could keep our cover of what family life was like, how we had both known that it wasn't going to be forever, just until the whole drama blew over like a short gust of wind.

The group of them just sat and listened, just as Peter and Ned had before. Once I was finished, we started hanging out as if all of what I had just said was now just a part of our friendships and I did genuinely feel so much better because we did do this, I hated being the centre of attention, even before I went under the ice, and Lizzie could vouch for me on that one.

We sat and had a joke around, laughing more than I remembered doing since before I moved to England for that two-year span of time since that night I spent with the boys before what happened on the news the morning after. Obviously, I did actually get even more questions about me and Peter, just as they had at school, but I did feel like I could talk to them about it, considering that they were also partly involved in the whole Avengers thing I imagined. I told them about how we were obviously friends for a whole beforehand and that he was one of the people who turned to ashes when Thanos did his grand snap. They thought that it was kind of cute how we didn't seem to really realise our feeling for each other until we were taken away from each other like that.

It was then that there was suddenly a knock at my bedroom window, which did scare me slightly, but in the back of my mind, I knew exactly who it was. I walked over to the window, making sure that none of the others followed me, it would impress them I guess, and be a bit of a nice surprise for them.

"Speak of the devil," I said, opening the window, a slight breeze flowing in as well as the one and only Spiderman.

As he crawled up from my window and onto my ceiling, just hanging there waiting for me to move again. I closed the window again, shivering a bit from the cold.

"Ya cold?" Spiderman joked I could even sense him laughing from beneath the mask,

"Oh shut up Bug Buy," I laughed, yanking the mask off him and kissing my boyfriend on the lips. I heard the audible gasps that came from Penny, Astrid, Max, Hunter and Oliver who were still sat on my bed or some of them were sitting on the carpet on the floor.

"AGH!" Peter said as he fell to the floor, it seems like he had completely forgotten that we had visitors that night, even though we had been talking about it almost all day. I laughed as he laid on the floor, groaning as he had actually just fallen from quite a height, helping him up off the floor.

"Is everything okay in there?" I heard dad's concerned voice from outside the door.

"Yeah, Peter just arrived," I answered, causing dad to open the door to welcome him in properly, even though he knew full well that his daughter's boyfriend had just climbed into the house through her bedroom window.

"Peter?!" Everyone else chorused, making Peter look towards who my visitors were, his facial expressions becoming shocked just as mine had been when they had first arrived.

"I'll set out that other place for him at the table," dad then said, closing the door and going back to where the rest of the Avengers were, leaving us in silence.

I walked over to my wardrobe and pulled out a bag that Peter had given me a while ago of some of his clothes, don't ask why, but we did actually need them now. I threw the closed bag over to him and laughed.

"Go get dressed Insect Boy, you're not eating with us dressed like that!" I joked, giving him a quick kiss on the cheek as he went to go get changed in the bathroom.

"Peter is... so that means that Spiderman is... your boyfriend?!" Penny exclaimed,

"But- but I thought that Sparrow and Spiderman were dating?!" Oliver piped up, his face slightly confused. As soon as he mentioned Sparrow I froze. They knew me. Well, not exactly me, well they didn't realise it was me, I just, what?

"Wait, what did you just say?" I asked, surprised.

"Yeah, I thought that Spiderman and Sparrow were going out too!" Astrid said, making me smile slightly. They had said Sparrow, they had mentioned my undercover Avenger name."And that picture of them kissing on during that fight uptown, they were so adorable," Astrid continued, I could see stars in her eyes. What a small world.

My mind shifted from what they had been saying about Sparrow and Spiderman to the glowing arc reactor in my chest. So far, I had managed to keep it pretty secretive and out of the sight of anyone other than Peter and Ned, who had known about it because of that day in the warehouse when I had only just woken up. I had a note from my father and Dr Banner, Oliver's dad, that excused me from getting changed for P.E in front of the other girls and let me get changed in the toilet cubicles. Dad and Dr Banner had suggested me stopping doing P.E at school altogether, since I was doing training with Aunt Nat at the Avenger facilities anyway, so it wasn't as if I was being lazy and just doing no exercise, but I liked P.E so I decided to carry on for a bit and see how it went.

I knew for a fact that they couldn't see the arc reactor through my clothes since I had taken to putting a few layers on every day, but I was suddenly, and very much unnecessarily worried that they would figure me out. In reality, I knew that I'd tell them, it excited me telling them who I really was after telling them all about my past and everything, and now they knew about Pete, it was too perfect to not tell them.

It was then that Peter walked back into the room, now dressed in a sweatshirt and jeans like he normally would be, and I could feel that the group had a million burning questions about the relationship. And, of course, Astrid had to be the first to open her mouth.

"Peter, so if you're the Spiderman, what happened with Sparrow?" She just had to ask him.

Peter's eyes darted straight to mine, which led me to shrug and then suddenly started smirking slightly as I came up with what felt like a devious and great idea. I had my ring on at all times, just as Uncle Tony had told me to, just in case we had an issue and I had to suit up very fast and on the locations. But now, I was about to screw over all of the plans of using the suit and the alias of Sparrow sensibly in the dust.

"Yeah, Pete, what's with this Sparrow business?!" I said, walking towards him slowly, still smiling, my fingers fiddling with the ring on my left hand. Peter got the message and started playing along, his voice filled with tinges of sarcasm and mocking.

"I know, Liberty, I meant to tell you but-" he acted, but yet he couldn't help but smirk back at me, for some reason we were two of the biggest dorks in the history of dorks, we were real suckers for a good solid reveal.

"But what?! You know I can't compete with that," And as I said that I pressed the pad of my right thumb onto the gem in the centre of my ring, the familiar feeling and sensation of the suit forming around every muscle of my body, letting the colours from my arc reactor shine through my chest.

The sounds of gasping filled the room as Penny, Astrid, Oliver, Max and Hunter all recognised the figure in front of them.

"What!", "how?!", "since when?!" They gasped, all of them freaking out slightly as I giggled from underneath my helmet, pressing on the gem on my ring once more, making the suit dissolve away, leaving me in my civilian clothes once more.

Peter and I couldn't even answer their questions, we were both almost rolling on the floor laughing at their reactions. They seemed about as surprised as we had done when we found each other out and then add about 10% more excitement. It was pretty funny really.

"Liberty, you're an Avenger..." Penny muttered, her facial features shocked and surprised. The rest of the gang stopped too, and I could see stars in their eyes. Were they... starstruck? I had never thought of it that way. I was one of the Avengers, did that mean that I was also as influential to people as they are and have been since they banded together all those years ago when the battle of New York came into play. Did they look up to me the way I looked up to people like the other Avengers? Like I looked up to my dad? like I had always looked up to my mother? It really did baffle me, I'd never felt like I was cool enough for all of thsi type of stuff, even when Director Fury had asked us to become Avengers, but it seemed like I actually, finally, was 'cool' enough for all of this... wow.