Stranded

Thankfully, there was nobody in the hall, and the cameras were still down too. Peter swallowed heavily in tense relief, tilting his good ear up towards the ceiling. There were multiple sounds in his hearing range now, and it set his teeth on edge. They were all still above him from what he could tell, and they were beginning to congregate, almost, somewhere to his right. Which was... something.

Left it is, he thought to himself, spinning on his good heel and using the wall to hobble not-at-all-steadily in that direction. 

He didn't really have much of a goal in mind for where to go except away from everyone else currently inside the Tower, anyways. Though, finding somewhere with some food or water would be a plus, considering the fact that his stomach had apparently decided to try for the part of black hole in whatever D-rated horror movie this was.

Maybe it was a bit optimistic of Peter, but he also wanted to head towards the outer edges of the building. Even though the windows were almost just as near-nuke proof as his own room’s were, there’d at least be a chance that whoever came to help would end up spotting him. At the very least, he'd head towards the front so they’d probably reach him quicker. 

His balance faltered and he instinctively put his weight on his mangled ankle, which drew a sharp hiss from his throat as he squeezed his eyes shut, hands balling into white-knuckled fists. “Ffffuuuck,” he cursed lowly, kissing his teeth. He could feel fresh blood well up from the abrupt shift of pressure against his snapped bone, and it seeped into the torn strip of his sweater that he’d wrapped around the wound during a spare second. Peter really had to hand it to Bucky; the man sure knew how to bake the double layered cake of pain and incapacitation! One would think that Thor, with his multiple extra centuries of experience, could do better than that instead of just giving Peter a few broken ribs and minor lung puncturing. Like, honestly, future Ruler of Asgard who?

A weak laugh bubbled out of Peter’s sore throat as he hobbled along, and he let himself bask in the brief levity. He could probably make a whole rating thing out of that: which Avenger has caused Peter the most harm? 

Oooh, but that could get split into mental versus physical harm - like with how Natasha didn’t actually snap his neck but had definitely given her level best try at it. Would it be weird to associate well-manicured feminine hands with imminent death now? Honestly, first doors and now this.

Anyways, for his imaginary lists, Sam was definitely at the bottom of both, bless the man. Sure, he’d helped Clint out with getting those alcohol bottles in the first place, but he didn’t actually get that much of the flammable stuff or glass pieces onto Peter. It could be argued that Steve was at the bottom instead since he technically didn’t do anything to Peter, buuuut Peter did very excruciatingly dislocate his shoulder trying to escape the guy and also nearly fell to his own death doing the same, and that’s without mentioning how Peter also had the extremely dubious honors of being the first - and probably only - person ever to see the full force of the United States of America’s beloved Captain America's glare of pure, unadulterated hatred and rage! That definitely had to be every teenage girl's dream.

Back to the point, bottom up was Sam and then Steve in Peter’s humble yet wise opinion, but things got a little more tricky from there. Mr. Stark also didn’t actually touch Peter himself, but Peter was pretty sure having a fully automated murder robot stand in your place was a good enough alternative to count, as attested by Peter’s nearly fourth-degree burned torso, the gash in his side, and the ringing in his ear. Wow, now that Peter thought about it, he hadn’t even realized how Mr. Stark had gone to the temperature extremes too - torch him first, freeze him later. Yeah, so Iron Man definitely wasn’t that low on the list. It was probably Clint who was actually third up from the bottom. Sure, he’d broken Peter’s nose, strangled him, and struck him better than Sam had with the alcohol and the glass shards, but that was still less than everyone else outside of the bottom two, so kudos to Clint for that. 

Between Nat, Tony, Thor, and Bucky… hm. Purely physically, Black Widow was firmly at the bottom, even with the substantial stab wound she’d left in the back of his shoulder and the successful attempt at bodily arson she’d committed on him. Neat trick, that was. Had him questioning how much cognizance the Avengers actually still had.

As for the other three, Peter’s snap answer would probably be Tony, Thor, then - to top it all off - Bucky, but those rankings were a little more muddled than the rest. Tony was Tony. He was Mr. Stark. He was Peter's mentor and his sort-of maybe kind-of tangentially father figure. So. Yeah, that'd... not been fun. He didn't really want to think too much on that. As for Thor, sure, Peter had choked on his own blood because of the god's hits literally forcing Peter’s rib to stab into his own lung - weird involuntary self-betrayal that was - and he may or may not have considered giving up in the face of it all then, but. Well. Peter felt sort of guilty for saying it’d been worse with Bucky, but it’d totally been worse with Bucky. It wasn’t Bucky’s fault, though - it wasn’t any of the Avenger’s faults, obviously! It was just - Bucky had been the last one Peter had encountered (blatantly ignoring the vents situation with Mr. Stark because that wasn’t a physical confrontation), and everything had just kept adding up, with Clint, then Sam, then Clint again, then Natasha, then Steve, then Tony, then Thor, and then Bucky? It… yeah. It added up. 

Maybe it’d been partly the concussion handed over to him by Thor’s throw and added to by Bucky slamming Peter face first into the tiles (yay for nose break number two!), but Peter hadn’t had such an intense, all encompassing sense of hopelessness in any of the altercations before Bucky’s - not even against Thor. Sure, Peter had briefly wanted to give up during his ‘fight’ (if you could call it that instead of just a one sided beatdown) against the god too, but it’d just… hit harder, somehow, with Bucky. And it was almost unfair how guilty that made Peter feel both then and now. Sure, it’d been that burgeoning guilt - mixed with a hefty dose of determination that welled up from the stores within Peter that he’d thought had already been sucked dry - that’d gotten Peter out of that situation alive, but now, Peter was concussed enough to excuse himself for still feeling resentful over the emotion. 

It was part of who he was, practically intrinsic to his being, at this point, to care for the welfare of others even over his own, but now? Was it really so selfish of Peter to want to put himself first for once?

He didn’t mean that he wanted to beat down the other Avengers until they couldn’t attack him or anything like that. No, even if Peter was strong enough to do such a thing - which was highly debatable especially against the heavy hitters of the team - just the thought of it made him physically ill (more so than he already was). 

He didn’t become Spider-Man to hurt, to maim. He never, ever hit harder than he had to, and he always relied on his webs whenever he could. Just the thought of the force it would take to bring down Steve? Bucky? Thor? 

Images of broken bones, bruised and swollen faces, bloody and disfigured forms of people he cared about - loved - flashed through Peter’s pulsing vision, overlapping with Ben’s limp and dying body strewn across his blood-soaked lap, and Peter had to quickly swallow back the urge to vomit, diaphragm spasming as he pressed his fist hard against his mouth and swallowed convulsively around the saliva flooding it. 

Don’t think about it, he told himself, shaking his head despite how it made his skull pound and another surge of sickness rise up. It didn’t matter now, anyways. Even if he might’ve stood a chance at beating them before, he was less than useless for it, now.

None of that had been the point, anyways. Peter only meant to question whether it'd be so selfish to put his own care ahead of the others’ now. Even saying it like that wasn’t exactly right, but. Like, with Bucky, Peter had escaped way less for himself and way more for Bucky’s continued mental well being, which - sure, it was good for Peter in the long run, but it also kind of really sucked that he'd had to put himself through that for someone else. If he went back in time, he'd obviously still choose to do the same thing, but it just... really did suck. Maybe it sounded horrifically inconsiderate of Peter to ask why it was his job to care about what Bucky wanted (in this case that want referring to not killing someone he cared about while being under mind control), especially since Bucky didn’t currently have his mental faculties, but he didn’t have a better way to put it.

It was probably just the exhaustion with the concussion getting to Peter, making him think like a toddler bordering on a tantrum - like he’d been a little kid but then suddenly got switched roles with his parents, forced to take care of them instead of the proper other way around. 

Peter huffed sharply through his nose, beginning his shambling walk again now that the bout of nausea had passed. 

Maybe that little kid comparison was more on the nose than he’d meant it to be. Peter knew he made a fuss about it now and then, but there was no denying that he was treated as something of the baby of the group, probably because he was over a decade younger than their second youngest member, Sam. And now Peter had to watch out for all of them instead, both for his own wellbeing and to ensure that he didn’t traumatize any or all of them with his gruesome, bloody death at their hands. 

…That got a little darker than he meant it to. It was pretty much the truth, though, so… Peter shrugged, wincing slightly when the motion pulled at his shoulder and his burns. And his ribs. And the gash on his stomach. 

Man, today was really a big old pity party for him, wasn’t it? 

Thinking about parties inevitably had Peter’s rapidly clouding mind drifting back towards cakes, since parties and cakes usually went hand in hand, and his stomach gave an audible grumble, gnawing demandingly at his insides.

Hopefully, he found something to keep him going soon. Even if - when - he did, though, he was quietly sure he wouldn't be able to survive another run-in with any of the Avengers. 

He hoped the rescue party came soon.

-

The message wasn’t from his account, and it was only three words, but May knew immediately that it was from Peter. There was not a single doubt in her mind that the notification she received - a simple, ‘I love you' -  was from her nephew, and dread had immediately sunk its way beneath her skin and into her very bones with the surety she felt in it.

Because that meant Peter was in danger - an understatement if she'd ever heard one.

She had called him immediately, but it’d gone straight to voicemail. If she had been worried before, she'd started panicking then, and she’d already grabbed her keys and was slamming the door closed behind her before she’d even rang Tony. 

The true fear hit her when the man didn’t answer either.

Tony always answered her calls. The amount of times he hadn’t, she could count on her hands, and even then FRIDAY had responded in his place and had him call her back immediately when he could. 

Not this time. 

This time, his number went straight to voicemail too. May had never thought something so innocuous could fill her with so much chilled terror, but it did.

It was only five minutes later, after she’d already gotten into her car and started zigzagging her way haphazardly through traffic while ignoring the angry honks and curses thrown her way as well as the multitude of traffic laws she'd definitely broken, that she remembered she had another number: Bruce’s. They’d exchanged contacts after Peter started working with him in the labs as well.

She knew the man wasn’t at the Tower at the moment, but that didn’t matter. It was better, even, because if there was something going on at the place and was obstructing everyone’s calls from going through, then Bruce’s phone might’ve had a similar problem if he was there too.

As it was, he picked up after a single ring.

“May,” he hissed through his teeth, a growl edging along the back of the word. The dread clawed deeper into her.

“What the hell is happening, Bruce?” she spat out, vengefully flipping off a taxi driver as she swerved in front of him. 

“The Tower’s under attack,” he told her bluntly, clearly either not wanting to or unable to mince his words as usual at the moment. She figured it was closer to the latter, considering he sounded about halfway to turning into the Hulk.

“By who? Bruce, is Peter okay?” She stressed, slamming the flat of her palm down on the horn at the buggy in front of her. They gave her the finger through their rearview mirror, and she barely resisted the urge to rear-end them just to shove their car out of the way.

There was a telling hesitation on the other end of the line, and she had to swallow the urge to scream, jerking the wheel hard to the left and narrowly avoiding clipping the damn buggy with her bumper, her tires squealing in protest. 

“Fucking - Bruce!” she shouted, somewhere in the back of her head apologetic but not at all at the same time because this was her child, and he’d just sent her a message that said ‘I love you,’ and she needed to know why the fuck he'd said that and if he was still goddamn alive. 

“I’m working with SHIELD right now to infiltrate the Tower,” Bruce said in a rush, breathing through his nose hard enough that it crackled over the line. “It was a gas attack. The building was empty except for the Avengers, and most of them got hit.”

May swallowed convulsively, knuckles already white around the steering wheel. That could mean… so many different things. Was it a sedative? Poison? Some other type of drug? Was Peter amongst the ones hit? She opened her mouth to ask that very question. “Was Peter…” she trailed off, unable to finish her words, her tongue feeling like it’d swollen up to the roof of her mouth as her throat constricted. Traitorous tears welled up in her eyes, but she furiously blinked them away. Peter was going to be okay. He had to be. 

“...Peter was the only one it didn’t reach.” Bruce’s words should’ve been a relief, a comfort, but the tone in which he said them made it anything but. 

“What does that mean?” May demanded, her gaze continuing to flicker to the left where she could make out Stark Tower peeking through the high rises even as she continued to weave with increasing speed through traffic.

Bruce sighed heavily on the line, and there was a dull thud that accompanied it a moment later. “It’s - we’re working to get in as soon as we can - the Tower’s on lockdown, but I’m hopeful that we’ll have it lifted within the hour. SHIELD’s interacted with a similar drug before, so they’re formulating a potential antidote as we speak, alright? It’s going to be okay, May,” he swore. 

“I don’t wanna fucking hear that it’s gonna be okay!” she screamed, tires screeching against asphalt as she swerved the wheel to the right and onto the shoulder of the road, braking hard. Apparently, even if she got to the Tower, now she knew she couldn’t even pretend she’d be able to do anything there. Not with it locking everyone out. She panted, roughly pushing back the loose strands of hair that’d fallen out of her messy bun and into her face. “Tell me why my baby sent me a message that said ‘I love you,’ Bruce. Tell me.”  She almost wished he didn't.

“It’s a form of non-interactive brainwashing,” he started, picking and choosing his words for all of one sentence before giving up and giving her the cold, hard truth. “The rest of the Avengers aren’t in control of their faculties at the moment; the only parts of their brains that are fully active are the emotional parts, centered around rage and… hostility, as best we can figure. It’s advanced enough that the victims of it can ‘recognize’ one another; they’re programmed to find and attack anyone who isn’t also gassed.” There was the single unspoken name to finish his explanation, and it was as clear as day: Peter. 

The implications of what Bruce just said hit May like a sledgehammer.

She blinked slowly. Far away, she could hear the ocean in her ears, with how her blood pounded in them like waves crashing against the sand. Distantly, she was aware that she was going into shock. Her hands shook as she reached for the ignition, restarting the car. She hadn’t even realized she’d turned it off. 

She needed to get to Stark Tower. She needed to be there when Peter got out. She needed to see him come out alive.