Chapter 11
Peter thought he was isolated before. He naively thought, What could possibly be worse than this?
This is worse.
This is so much worse.
This isn't living without friends and family, only being able to check up on them every now and then without them knowing. This isn't going out to patrol all day and then coming back to a basement with a list of names he could have saved next to a crayon drawing. This isn't not knowing if he's going to have enough food for the week.
This is not caring whether or not he has enough food. It's isolating himself in the basement of that foreclosed pub, body wasting away to nothing but skin pulled tight over his bones and weak muscles. This is not being able to make sure that Ned's still alive because he's too scared to see for himself or to even look it up online. It's never leaving the basement for anything except to relieve himself once or twice a day because his body is so dehydrated and so empty that he can literally spend an entire day not needing to get up.
It's wondering if everyone he's ever met is still alive, or if their throats have been slit, too. It's being completely numb to the cold that settles over his bones, the only warmth coming from the pain and grumbling in his concave stomach. He doesn't know what day it is, but he's pretty sure Thanksgiving has already passed.
Whenever he wakes up from exhaustion-induced sleep, he stares at the door, idly wondering if it's his turn to get his throat slit and bleed out all over the floor. Someone is bound to come down here eventually, and when they do, they'll find a teenage boy's body rotting away and have no clue who it is because nobody knows who he is.
Monsters haunt his sleep and his demons plague his consciousness.
He just wants it all to end.
Somewhere, deep in his mind, he wishes Infinity, Eternity, and Death had just let him flicker out of existence all those months ago.
It's been a while since any of the entities, even Death, have spoken to him. Rationally, he knows they're probably just busy, but the self-destructive part of him claims it's because they're done with him.
His hand is tucked into the pocket of his sweatshirt. In his palm he holds tight to Aunt May's wedding ring. He should have left it with her body, but he needed a fragment of her to keep him from completely losing his grip on his life. It's a simple silver band with a single shining diamond. The wedding ring Uncle Ben proposed with had a smaller diamond, and she usually kept it on a back lace around her neck. Peter wishes he had taken that ring instead of this one, not even knowing the man Aunt May was engaged to.
The ring in his hand is the only thing that grounds him as he drifts back and forth from reality.
•
Somewhere deep in the fog of his mind, Peter makes out footsteps. They're heavy. Clunky.
There's a heartbeat, lungs expanding and releasing air.
The door creaks open. There's a faint clink when it hits the wall. The footsteps get louder, but Peter's too far gone to react or do anything other than lie there with his eyes closed and body limp.
There's a moment of silence, then there's movement, clothes shifting and more footsteps. A fastened heartbeat.
Faintly, Peter feels something warm on his neck, then a sigh. Seconds later, he feels like he's floating.
His mind slips not too long after that, and everything blurs into oblivion.
•
The first thing that Peter registers is the warmth. It settles deep inside him, enveloping him like a hug. Then, his ears prick, head shifting slightly as he picks up the sound of a steady beeping somewhere to his right. And something smells like strong disinfectant, like the citrus kind Aunt May would use to clean the bathroom.
Senses slowly coming back to him, Peter keeps his eyes closed and just relishes in the foreign warmth encompassing his body. There's a slight weight on him, so he assumes it's his blanket, but then he realizes that his blanket smells like rotten bananas and cigarette butts and definitely isn't as heavy as this blanket is.
That's when everything barrels into him like a bus.
His eyes snap open. The ceiling comes into focus—white and plain—and he has to blink a few times for the blurriness to go away. As soon as it does, his eyes flicker to his right where the beeping is coming from. A monitor and an IV stand greet him.
His gaze follows the IV line to the injection site at the back of his hand, along with a heart-rate clamp on his middle finger that connects to the monitor. He lifts his head a little, panicked, but the panic doesn't fade even when he notices the familiar layout of the room. There's a glass wall where the door is, and on the wall opposite of that is a rectangular window that overlooks the sun rising over the city. There's a small couch and a chair on the far wall. It takes a few seconds for Peter to realize that Steve is occupying the couch.
The man is sitting with his elbows on his knees as he scrolls through his phone, his brow creased. He's wearing a gray long sleeve with dark jeans.
Peter lets his head fall back to the soft pillow and closes his eyes, releasing a breath.
In place of his suit, sweatshirt, and jeans are a white t-shirt and gray sweatpants.
So much for keeping his identity a secret.
His eyes snap open. Where is his sweatshirt? It had Aunt May's ring in it, did they lose it? He tries to remember what happened, if he had put it somewhere, but he can't remember anything after falling asleep for the thousandth time in a haze of grief.
His glances back at Steve. Wonders what happened.
How is he there? How did they find him? Why did they bring him to the med bay?
Peter's too caught up in his confusion to notice Steve glancing up from his phone. The man's lips press into a thin smile as he slips his phone into his pocket.
"Hi," Steve says, followed by, "how are you feeling?"
Peter looks up to the monitor beside him before pushing himself up into a sitting position with his back cushioned by the pillow. Surprisingly, the pain in his abdomen isn't so sharp. "I'm fine, Sir."
He nods, smiling gently. "You can call me Steve."
Right, like that's going to happen. Peter never called him anything other than Mr. Rogers before, and he doesn't see that changing anytime soon.
When Peter doesn't reply, just looks down at the IV, Steve sits forward and says, "I'm sure you're really confused, and we'll explain everything soon, but you should know that you're safe here."
"How did you find me?" he asks, narrowly cutting off the end of Steve's sentence.
The blond super soldier hesitates. "Tony was the one who found you."
"How?"
"By sticking a tracker on your suit after that lizard squabble," Tony's voices chimes in as he waltzes in. Peter and Steve turn their heads to the billionaire as he strides in and stops by the foot of Peter's bed. His brown eyes find Peter's as he says, "And it's a good thing too, otherwise you'd still be rotting away in that basement."
Tony stuffs his hands in his pockets and raises his brow as if daring Peter to challenge him.
Looking down at his IV, Peter murmurs, "It wasn't that bad." It's not like he would have actually died; the entities would have saved him before he could.
Right?
"No?" Tony looks back and exchanges a look with Steve. Lifting a hand to count on his fingers, he says, "I mean, you're only recovering from hypothermia, dehydration, and being nearly starved to death. Not to mention you're, what, fourteen?"
"Sixteen."
Tony continues on like Peter hadn't said anything. "And I found you curled up in an old pub basement with only a small, ratty blanket for warmth. Give me one good reason not to call CPS right now to get you back home to your parents."
Because everyone's dead?
The revelation sends a deep pang through his chest.
He really is all alone now, isn't he?
Peter sits up straighter and meets Tony's expectant gaze. "Where's my sweatshirt?"
"I'm sorry, did you not just hear—?"
"Tony," Steve interjects, warning him.
Tony sighs and looks back to the skeletal teenager sitting in the bed. "It was old, smelly, and torn—I threw it, along with those oversized jeans, away."
Fear grips Peter's heart. The ring.
Before he can protest, Tony reaches into his pocket and fishes out a diamond ring much too simple for Tony Stark to possess. He presents it to Peter propped between his thumb and index finger.
"Found this in the pocket. Figured you'd probably want it."
He flicks it at Peter, who effortlessly catches it and holds it firm in his palm. Turning it over, he glances up at Tony. "Thanks."
"Whose ring is that?" Steve asks.
Peter encloses it in his palm. "No one's. Mine, now."
Hesitantly, Steve glances to Tony before his gaze falls back on Peter. "So it's stolen?"
"If he stole it, he probably would have cashed it in for money by now," Tony says. He gives Peter a look. "Right, Underoos?"
"I didn't steal anything." Did they really think Spider-Man was a thief?
"So it holds sentimental value," Tony guesses. "Although, I wouldn't say you didn't steal anything."
His brow furrows. "What do you mean? I'm not a thief, I stop thieves every day."
"You want to know what I think is interesting?" Tony says instead of answering, much to Peter's frustration and confusion. The man steps closer to the bed before stopping and crossing his arms. He meets Peter's gaze, then motions to the ceiling. "I have an AI that runs the building, her name's Friday. She's one of my greatest projects—she can open doors, go through countless databases, run facial recognition on anyone and everyone in the building."
Tony's voice takes a suspicious tilt at the last point.
As much as Peter wishes he could hold Tony's stare, a rush of panic runs through him and he looks down, trying to come up with an explanation for what he knows is coming next.
"Somehow, Friday couldn't find anything on you," Tony finally says. His voice is more curious than anything else. "No records, no name. Nothing."
Steve's attention turns to Peter as he awaits his response.
The gears in his mind clog. How does he explain what happened? That he's not really a part of their world anymore?
"Your AI must be malfunctioning," is the only thing Peter can come up with, and even then, it's spoken with zero confidence.
The silence hangs over them like a heavy blanket for ten excruciating seconds before Tony sighs and leans against the wall. His eyes flicker over Peter's frame. "What's your name?"
Now that's a question he can answer. "Peter."
Tony raises a brow. "Got a last name, Peter?"
"Parker," Peter says, finally meeting his eyes. "Peter Benjamin Parker."
"From Queens," Steve adds, his voice taking on a questioning inflection as if to confirm that what little information Peter told him in their last interaction wasn't a lie.
He nods. "Yeah."
Tony nods, too, then commands, "Friday, search all public and private databases for a Peter Benjamin Parker from Queens, sixteen years of age."
Peter bites his lip and ducks his head. He is so screwed.
He can't just tell them that he used to be an Avenger in training and was basically Tony's mentee but was temporarily killed by a very lonely Death only to be zapped out of existence, then forged back together and thrown into his old life when literally everything about him—memories, records—were wiped.
But he can't just lie, either. Tony's good at picking up on that kind of stuff. And besides, Peter's never had a good poker face.
With all these anxieties rushing through his head, Peter glances out the glass wall.
He remembers the last time he was here. It was a patrol gone wrong—it was a simple robbery, a bad guy with a ski mask and a gun. Peter webbed him up and was about to be on his way, but he missed the hidden knife in the guy's hand. By the time he cut himself loose and aimed the gun, Peter was getting ready to leave for the cops to take over. His senses alerted him of the bullet seconds too late. It went through his leg, so after disarming the guy and making sure he didn't have another secret blade, he sprayed a web on the entry and exit wound to stop the bleeding before he could pass out on his way to the tower. It freaked Tony out when Peter showed up and Friday alerted him that Peter entered the tower with a bullet wound. Thankfully, it wasn't too bad. He did get some visits from the team, though.
They stood outside that glass wall. They were worried.
There's no one in the hallway this time.
Peter ducks his head again as Friday relays, "No records of any Peter B. Parker matching your description, Boss."
"Thanks, Fri."
Silence falls over the three again. Suffocated by it, Peter forced himself to just breathe and think. He tries to close his eyes to focus, but all that does is bring images of Aunt May and Mrs. Carter flash before his mind.
He barely contains his flinch.
"Weird, huh?" Tony remarks. "Nothing. It's like you don't exist."
Peter forces himself to look up at the two men staring him down.
He wants Aunt May. He wants Mrs. Carter, or Ned, or Death, or any of the other entities.
A lump rises in his throat, but he keeps the tears at bay. "What do you want me to say?"
He knows how lost he sounds, but it's nothing compared to how lost he feels.
Tony opens his mouth, prepared to retort, but Steve stands before he can say anything. "The truth. You obviously need a hand, and we can't help if we don't know your situation."
Peter wraps an arm around his stomach when it gives a muffled growl. Thankfully, it doesn't seem like either of the men heard it as Steve continues, "Did you run away from home? Did someone experiment on you? Is that how you got your powers?"
He starts to shake his head, but pauses. "Um. Kinda."
"Kinda?" Tony echoes, eyes narrowing. "You kinda ran away from home, or you kinda got experimented on?"
"It's complicated," Peter elaborates. "It's, I was . . ."
If he says he ran away from home, they'd ask why, and that's just a whole storm of new questions he'd have to answer with lies.
But, he can say that he was kidnapped. That's—that's somewhat true, right? Death sort of kidnapped him at the beginning.
"I was kidnapped," Peter blurts before he can really think it over. Now what? "And . . . And I was gone for a while." Also technically true.
Steve and Tony exchange a look. Ever the blunt one, Tony asks, "Kidnapped by who?"
His stomach growls again. This time, both of the men hear it. Peter futilely tries to hide the embarrassed blush that dusts over his cheeks.
"You must be hungry." Steve looks like he's mentally kicking himself. "I can go grab you some food, what do you want?"
Peter shrugs. "I'm fine, but thank you, Mr. Rogers."
Tony snickers a little at the title whereas Steve frowns. "You haven't had anything to eat since you've come here this morning, and I can't imagine you've had a decent meal in a while."
"In other words," Tony adds on helpfully, "you're underweight and severely malnourished, and we've been idiots for interrogating you instead of getting you a cheeseburger."
"It's fine, I get it—you guys are suspicious of me, and that makes me a threat."
Steve's frown deepens. "You're not—you're not a threat, you're a kid."
"A kid who can stop a bus with his bare hands," Peter counters.
"Yeah, and a kid who'd probably pass out if he tried to stand," Tony says pointedly. "Tell Cap what you want to eat. We've got a cafeteria on the floor below us that's got sandwiches, pasta, pizza, and salads. You can get anything you want, except a salad."
When was the last time he even had a vegetable?
He starts to politely refuse, but then his stomach growls again. This time, the beast has awoken. A sharp pain shoots through his abdomen and he holds his stomach with his arms tighter.
"A sandwich sounds nice," he admits, cheeks blazing red.
A smile touches Steve's lips. "What kind?"
"Anything would be good, thank you."
Steve leaves, and when it's just him and Tony, the billionaire comments, "It's good to see that our youth still values good manners."
Uncle Ben always told him to be polite.
Mindlessly picking at the IV and ignoring the pain, Peter says, "You're not . . . You're not going to tell anyone I'm Spider-Man, right? Or call the cops on me?"
"Haven't decided yet," Tony replies honestly. "And no, I'm not going to call the cops, even though I should."
Peter's head snaps up. "Because of the Accords?"
Tony's brow furrows. "You're a minor, they don't apply to you."
Instead of relief, Peter's worry morphs into confusion. "Then why would you call the cops?"
"Because you stole my property?"
Peter blinks. "What are you talking about?"
"Your suit," Tony says, and his brain just about short-circuits. The puzzled look on his face prompts Tony to continue, "I saw the SI logo on the foot. Also, it's high-tech, including those web-shooter things and the webs themselves. It's nothing someone without a highly expensive lab could make, much less a teenager."
"Like I said before, I never stole anything," Peter enunciates. "And I made the webs and the web-shooters."
Dubious, Tony shakes his head. "Fine. Let's say you did manufacture the webs and the shooters, but that doesn't explain why you have a suit with technology so far beyond what you can find in the streets with my logo on the bottom of the foot."
His stomach makes another audible, painful growl, and he barely hides a wince. "So you're saying you made my suit?"
Technically Tony was the one who made it, but it's not like he knows that.
"I sure as hell didn't," Tony claims, "but someone from my company must have, and you somehow got a hold of it."
Peter raises his brow. That's the theory he's going with?
Seeing the unimpressed look on his face, Tony sighs. "It's more believable than you being the manufacturer."
Peter fixes Tony with a flat stare before shaking his head. There's so much shit he's gone through, this conversation just seems as pointless as everything else in his life.
"I didn't make it," Peter finally caves, exhausted. "But I didn't steal it, either."
"So someone made it and gave it to you?" Tony clarifies with a look of confusion.
Another grumble of hunger. Peter flinches and presses his arms against his stomach harder to suppress the ache. Concern flashes in Tony's eyes, but for Peter, this is normal.
Without missing a beat, he says, "You gave it to me."
Tony stills. His brow pulls forward. His mouth opens, but before he can utter a word, the door swings open as Steve strides in with a sandwich on a plate.
More grumbling comes from Peter's stomach at the sight. Steve flashes him a small smile as he hands it over.
"I hope you like turkey subs."
"Anything would have been fine, thank you," Peter assures with a grateful smile of his own, but it's strained. He sets the plate on his lap.
He looks up at the two men. They stare back expectedly, Tony's gaze far more perplexed than Steve's.
Steve nods towards the plate on Peter's lap. "Aren't you going to eat?"
"Oh." Peter looks down at the sandwich, then carefully picks it up. "I thought you guys wanted to talk some more first."
"I think you getting some food in your system is more important at the moment," Steve says.
Tony, however, doesn't seem to be on the same page. Pointing a finger at Peter as the starving teen takes a tentative bite, he says, "I'm sorry, but could you go back to the part where I apparently gave you your suit?" When Steve shoots him a look, he waves him off. "The kid can eat and talk, it's called multi-tasking."
Peter swallows the first bite and has to force himself not to inhale the rest of the sandwich. He opens his mouth, ready to repeat that Tony was, in fact, the one to give him his suit, but then he clamps his mouth shut.
Peter's done worrying about his old teammates thinking he's crazy. He's tired of hiding and keeping everything to himself, but more importantly, maybe them thinking he's crazy is for the best. Oblivion's after people he's close to, and if whoever he recruited to tear his life apart sees him being all buddy-buddy with the Avengers, then surely they're next on the list.
Peter can't have that.
There's no way Tony or Steve—or anyone else on the team for that matter, he isn't sure how many people know about his presence in the med bay—would be okay with releasing a teenager back onto the streets after scraping his frail body off a cold concrete floor. It's obvious he doesn't have parents, or at least a stable home life, so they'd probably get CPS involved or something.
But, if Peter tells them the truth, they'll think he's got a few screws loose and lock him up in some mental hospital, right? And if he's locked up, then they can't be near him, then no one can be near him, and no one else will get killed because of him.
He can't tell how logical the plan is, considering his head is still a little woozy and he's still only one bite into the sandwich Steve brought him, but it makes sense. Or, at least it makes sense right now.
Or maybe he could just tell them about the killer? He glances up at them, scrutinizing them as he evaluated their chances against an entity's hit woman. They're the Avengers, after all; they've fought aliens and a bunch of other intense threats.
But what if they die because of him, too?
Unable to make up his mind while it's a jumbled mess of someone screaming Aunt May is dead because of you over the immense feeling of isolation and the pounding of his headache, Peter blurts, "I stole the suit."
Steve frowns. Tony frowns, too, although it isn't because of Peter's admittance to stealing. "But you just said I gave it to you."
"I lied."
Tony crosses his arms, chin tilted up slightly as his eyes narrow. "No, I think you're lying right now."
Curse his inability to lie well.
Before Peter can even try to come up with a response and cause his head to pound even worse, Steve steps in. "Whether you're lying or not, you still need to eat." He turns to Tony. "Maybe we should do this later."
"Do what? Have a conversation?"
"Interrogate a kid while he's starving and still hooked up to an IV." Steve gives the man a pointed look. "Getting answers can wait. For now," Steve says, turning his gaze to the teenager sitting up in the bed, "you need to rest and finish that sandwich. Someone on the medical staff will be up here shortly to check over your vitals."
Steve takes a step to the door, but when Tony doesn't move, he nudges him and nods to the hall. Huffing out a sigh, Tony follows. Before he can leave, he turns to Peter and says, "This conversation's not over."