And Then I Wrote Marvel

Approved (dad!Steve Rogers/Peter Parker x Reader)

"You left her?"

"I-I'm sorry, Captain Rogers, sir, but she told—"

"I don't care what she told you, Parker! It was your responsibility to bring her back safe and sound, and you failed."

"Steve," Natasha interjected, "you have to give your daughter some credit, here. If she told Peter to leave her at the base, she had her reasons."

"Parker was the senior agent between the two of them. He could and should have overridden her command," the enraged captain argued.

"Cap, you know that's not how they work," Sam reminded him. "They're a team, not a commander and a unit."

"One of us has to take charge sometimes, and ninety-nine times out of a hundred, it's (Y/N)," Peter added, barely daring to speak in front of the rage-filled Steve. "Based on precedent, she wouldn't've listened to me if I had told her that I wasn't leaving her."

"She would have insisted that he leave louder and more confidently," Natasha backed him up.

"I bet money that's what happened," Tony agreed absentmindedly, barely looking away from whatever he was doing on his laptop.

"Tony, my daughter is alone at a Hydra base and you're more concerned about gambling?" Steve accused.

"Sounds about right, yep," he answered. "You know me, all about the money."

Steve muttered a few curses under his breath, but decided ultimately that his quarrel was not with Tony in this moment. He took a deep breath, then turned to Peter. "Tell me exactly how it happened," he demanded, quiet rage lining his voice.

"W-well, which part do you want to hear?"

"The part that you decided that it would be okay to leave my daughter alone at a Hydra base."

"Oh, okay, so we were almost done and out of the base when we were intercepted by at least twenty agents, most of which were at least twice our size," Peter recalled. "We could have handled maybe ten or fifteen, but ten to one are pretty bad odds, even for a second generation supersoldier and a kid with the proportional strength of a spider."

"I've handled worse than that. We all have on several occasions," Steve growled.

"Steve, they're just kids!" Sam exclaimed. "We're professionals that have built our lives off of bad odds, but they're teenagers."

"(Y/N) has been training for these things since she could walk, so she has no excuse. What's your excuse, Parker?"

"Twenty men twice our size," the boy repeated. "I don't know if you noticed, Cap, but nothing is twice your size anymore."

"Being a smartmouth isn't helping your case!" Steve barked.

"Sorry, can't help it. Helps with the nerves," Peter apologized quietly.

"'Being a smartmouth isn't helping' says the biggest smartmouth in New York," Bucky scoffed.

"What happened next, Pete?" Natasha prompted before Steve could retaliate.

Thankfully, Peter caught on and answered quickly. "They were smart as well as huge. The first thing they did was separate us so we couldn't fight together. If we had been together, we probably could have taken them down, no problem, but once we were separated, it got a lot harder."

"Synergy," Bruce piped up. "The effect of the components combined is greater than the sum of their effects individually."

"Exactly," Peter exclaimed. "They separated us and pushed us into corners. They were airing some kind of heavy static on the same frequency that the our comm network was on so that we couldn't use them--we need to fix that, by the way--and they were all shouting really loudly, so we couldn't hear each other. They made sure that we couldn't work together at all."

"That's a really scary thought," worried Wanda. "They must have learned that you two are practically invincible when working together."

"I've watched you two kick both Steve's and Bucky's butts enough times to know that," Sam smirked. He caught Steve's glare, and his smile melted. "Let's move on," he said.

"When did you decide to leave (Y/N) behind?" Steve questioned accusingly.

"When she told me to!" Peter exclaimed, becoming more frustrated by the second. "The static on the comms let up for a few seconds, and she told me to leave. She didn't even let me argue."

"What exactly did she say?"

"I have the transcript of the comms," Bruce piped up, clicking something on his laptop. "(Y/N) told him, quite articulately, I might add, 'Get your cute little butt out of here before I make you, Parker.'"

The scientist and a couple others snickered quietly at that, while Peter's face reddened. It was as if you had known that those words were exactly the comic relief that the debrief needed.

Steve, of course, didn't seem to think so. "I need to have a talk with that young lady," he sighed.

"Where did her sense of humor come from?" Sam whispered to Natasha. "Sure as heck didn't come from her parents."

"I think she got it from her uncles," Natasha whispered back. "Mostly you and Barton."

"Anyway, that can't be all she said, Banner. Parker'd better have backbone than that," Steve groused.

"Peter did refuse, but then the static started coming back in. She did get to say just a little more before the comms were useless again," Bruce affirmed. "'Tell my dad I'm sorry, but tell him that he knows I can hold my own, too. Don't take too long coming back, 'kay?'"

"It's like we said before, Steve," Bucky piped up. "You've gotta have faith in your kid."

"We all trained her, remember? She'll be fine. We just have to go pick her up," Natasha added.

"Who wants to go on that extraction mission? We should leave within the hour," Rhodey initiated.

"I'm the only one that's going," Steve said. "That's final."

"No, I'm going, too," Peter asserted.

"Who votes that Steve doesn't go?" Bucky called out. Everyone else in the room, including a very timid Peter, raised their hand. "Sorry, pal, looks like you've been outvoted," he shrugged unapologetically.

"You can't do that!" Steve shouted, suddenly on the defensive. "She's my daughter, and I have the responsibility to keep her safe."

"Funny, you were just trying to pass that responsibility off onto Peter," Natasha pointed out.

Steve gaped, suddenly realizing that he had backed himself into a corner. "Fine," he conceded. "Fine. Parker, you lead the rescue mission, and I..."

"You will stay here and calm down," Tony said.

"Oh, now you're paying attention?" Steve scoffed.

"Yeah, sorry about trying to make contact with your kid this whole time," Tony snarked. "I got through to her for about a minute before that layer of static got in the way of communications again. Good news, she's been hiding in the vents this whole time and is perfectly fine."

"Barton taught her well," Natasha chuckled.

"Bad news?" Steve inquired.

"I don't know where she is, specifically, at least. She just knows she's still on the second floor of the base."

"We can work with that," Peter said hopefully. "I'll just...quietly explore the second level until I find her."

"I'll work on taking down whatever Hydra is using to block the comms," Tony said. "Who's going as backup?"

"Who do you want as backup, Pete?" Natasha asked. "We could make it a Spider-People outing, if you wanted."

"Or we could make it a Bug-People outing," Scott suggested, speaking for the first time.

"I-I was actually thinking—" Peter paused and took a breath before turning to Steve. "Cap, do you want to go as backup?"

Steve was taken aback, and felt a little humbled. He had just been on a path to beat the kid to a pulp, but that kid was ready to forgive him and make amends within the blink of an eye.

"Yeah, that would, um..." he cleared his throat. "Yes. I think that's a good idea."