someday (i'll make it out of here)

Tony Stark is a survivor of horrors. 

Countless horrors. He’s survived so many things—kidnapping and torture, open heart surgery, chemical poisoning, his father, a  skirmish with an alien wormhole—and still he remains standing. He’s suffered much more than the average person.

And before now, Tony thought he had intimate knowledge of the dark intricacies of horror. That he knew just how bad it could get.

But on April 7th, 2018, nearly two years after the Avengers broke up, Tony found out just how wrong he was.

He never imagined the unimaginable pain of watching Peter Parker bleed. Every. Single. Day.

FRIDAY, APRIL 6 — 12:28 PM

Peter's been acting weird all day.

Even now, Ned watches as his best friend takes a deep inhale and blinks at the windows of the cafeteria. His posture is rigid—Peter hunches over his plastic lunch-tray but still hasn’t eaten any of its contents: a large carton of chocolate milk, a couple turkey sandwiches, two raspberry yogurts, and three oranges. Instead, he’s shredding the orange peel piece by piece, digging his nails into the meat of the orange before tearing off its leathery skin. 

Now, usually, Ned wouldn’t usually say anything. Sometimes, Peter is weird. But it’s Friday, and they’ve got a pretty important decathlon competition tomorrow. He needs Peter to be on his A-game—so spacing out during class and hiding in the bathroom isn’t going to cut it today. “Peter,” he says, trying to get his friend’s attention. As Peter Parker's best friend and 'Guy in the Chair,' it is always his duty to inform the sixteen-year-old when he's acting suspiciously superhero-y, and now is one of those moments. 

Peter blinks his brown eyes a couple times, and looks at Ned like he just realized he was there. “My bad,” he says, with a weird chuckle. “Spaced out.”

He ignores it for now. In Peter’s backpack, Ned knows, he’s got a hoard of protein bars for extra calories, but he hasn’t touched them all day; he fishes through Peter’s backpack for a protein bar, and he pushes it across the table to his best friend. Maybe Peter’s just hungry. “Okay,” he starts, as Peter tears into the bar one massive bite at a time, “now about the decathlon tomorrow…”

Their next class—AP chemistry—goes about as well as lunch.

Even though the class is his favorite, Peter spends the day in a sort of trance. He’s so out of it that even their teacher checks on him, asking if he got enough sleep. About halfway through class, Peter asks to go to the bathroom; he still has a strange, detached expression on his face. “Sure,” says their chemistry teacher with a worried look. “Go right ahead.”

The class works somewhat silently on their chemistry work, students occasionally going to the front to ask for help. Then Peter’s been gone for five minutes—then ten minutes—then fifteen. The teacher calls him up to the front. “Ned,” he says, “why don’t you go check on Peter?”

“Yes, sir,” he replies. He was a split second away from asking to go to the bathroom himself to check on his friend.  There’s something seriously wrong with him today. 

He gives Ned a hall pass and a note. “If he needs to go to the nurse, go ahead and take him.”

Ned nods and hurries off to the nearest bathroom. Inside, he finds Peter sitting by the window, head trapped in his hands. He’s covering his ears, and his eyes are closed, and he’s hunched over muttering to himself. 

“Peter?” he calls out, and the kid jumps, startled, before sitting back down.

“Jesus, Ned—you scared me.”

“What’s wrong with you today?” says Ned. “You’ve been acting, like, super weird.”

His smile kind of fades. “I don’t know, I… My spider tingle? Or whatever? It’s been going off, like, since I woke up, dude. I think something’s gonna happen. Something big.”

Ned sits down next to him on the radiator; its heat blasts against his calves. “Like supervillain big? Or like losing the decathlon big?”

He shakes his head. “I don’t know. I’m trying to tune out…” Peter claps his hands over his ears, mouth pressed into a thin line. 

So it’s a Spider-Thing. Sometimes, Peter gets like this: his spider-sense starts going off like an alarm bell and he finds it easier to tune everything out so he can figure out what the danger is—a bomb, a bad guy, a pervy substitute teacher… 

“Hey,” says Ned, trying to read the situation. “You’ve got your web shooters, right?” 

“Yeah,” his best friend responds.

“Then what could go wrong?” He elbows Peter’s arm. “You’re Spider-Man, dude. Nothing can take you down, right?”

Peter nods; he nods and nods like he’s convincing himself. “Right. Yeah. What’s the worst that could happen?”

Ned elbows him again. “Exactly! Come on, let’s get back to class. Tune out your spidey-sense—we’ve got the decathlon tomorrow. You’re probably just worried about that.”

“Yeah,” he says. “Yeah, okay. You’re right.”

Ned grins. “I know I am.”

FRIDAY, APRIL 6 — 2:11 PM

Maggie Paxton is tired.

She’s had a long day at work; all she wants to do is collapse on the couch and take a nap, but Cassie keeps climbing to the top of the couch, crying out, “Geronimo!” and leaping on top of her, all elbows and knees.

“Cassie,” she says, annoyed. “That’s enough.” Her seven-year-old daughter gives a mischievous little grin and hops onto her again; Maggie pushes her off. “Mommy’s tired, honey,” she says. “Go play.”

Jim comes home not soon after; her new husband is a significant part of Cassie’s life now, and she squeals when he comes through the door. “Jim!!” little Cassie shouts, and she barrels at him head-first, running straight into his leg and squeezing it tight. He’s a tall man, and she’s always been so small—they’re a perfect fit. “Can we get ice cream? Can we get ice cream?”

Cassie’s used to getting ice cream every time Scott comes to visit—but not today. It’s so easy for her to get mixed up with multiple parental figures in her life, but Jim gently kneels and says, “Not now, Cassie. You’ll spoil your dinner for later.”

“Plus, we’re eating early tonight,” chimes in Maggie from the couch. “We’re going somewhere special tonight, remember?” Cassie will see her biological father next weekend; she can eat ice cream nonstop then.

Jim Paxton taps his stepdaughter’s nose. “C’mon, Cassie, we’re having ramen tonight! You know how much you love ramen!”

Cassie giggles and tries to catch his hand before it leaves her face. “I love ramen!” she squeals, throwing her hands into the air. She’s completely forgotten about the ice cream question now. “Ramen, ramen, ramen…” She lapses into a sing-song rendition of the word “ramen,” over and over again, spinning around on her stool. “Ramen, ramen, ramen!”

Jim and Maggie share an amused glance. “I know, honey,” laughs Maggie, “we had it last week, too.”

“You wanna guess where we’re going?” suggests Jim. 

He's taken off the back half of his Friday to go to the zoo with Cassie. Jim knows he’ll never be Scott Lang—who Cassie loves with her entire heart—but Cassie has started to see him as this glowing person in her life. To Jim, Cassie is every bit his daughter. “Where?”

Jim mimes a lion, then a tiger, and then some animal even Maggie has trouble with. “The zoo!” he shouts, miming an elephant now.

That gets Cassie’s attention. Their little girl spins around again to look at Jim, her eyes wide with anticipation. “Really?”

“Really, really,” replies Maggie. Cassie’s excitement is practically infectious; Maggie can’t help but smile. “You wanna go?”

Cassie beams. Both Maggie and Jim know that Cassie loves the zoo more than anything. Seeing the animals always sends her screaming around the place. Tonight, they’re having some special event with the aquatic animals—Cassie’s favorite. “Yes, yes, yes! ”

At the sound of the doorbell ringing, Jim gets up from his kneeling position to answer the door, and Cassie clambers into Maggie’s lap, throwing her arms around her mother’s neck. “Thank you, thank you!” Maggie can hear Jim speaking to someone at the door; vaguely, she wonders who it is. The mailman, probably. “You think we can see the belugas this time? I wanna see the belugas!”

Maggie kisses her daughter’s forehead. “Of course we can, honey. What kind of mother would I be if I didn’t let you see the belugas?” She wasn’t sure what belugas were, to be honest; some kind of dolphin? At thirty-seven, she should probably know this by now. “Those are like dolphins, right?”

Cassie looks scandalized. “Mommy, they’re whales !” she exclaims. “They’re white, with big heads, and they can dive up to two thousand feet below the water, that’s what Miss Smith told me!” She continues with all the facts she has about belugas, her new favorite animal. Every kid has their obsession—for Cassie, animals are her addiction. 

At the door, Jim’s voice is loud now, echoing down the hall to the kitchen. “—telling you, we didn’t order a package. You’ve got the wrong—” His voice comes to a strange halt, followed by a massive thump, so startling that even Cassie looks up from her rant about beluga whales.

“Jim?” Maggie calls out, concerned now; Cassie hops down from her lap. “You okay, honey? Jim?”

As she turns the corner, she sees them: Jim sprawled facedown on the floor like a corpse in a bad horror movie, red coming down the side of his face, and two men and a woman crowded around him, each wearing a brown UPS uniform and wielding a gun—a couple handguns and an automatic.

Like a rough slap across the face, Maggie’s terror strikes her hard and fast. She shoves Cassie behind her and they bolt into the kitchen together, then towards the stairs—

“—there’s the kid! Grab her, quick—”

—and screams for her to run: “Cassie, run!” Her mind screeches, Get Cassie out, get her out of here! and she grabs the first thing she sees: Cassie’s tennis racket, and a punch of pain rips through her arm, and the handle slips from her fingers. Shot. She’s been shot . With her other hand, she grabs the next item—an expensive ceramic bowl—from the shelf beside her; as a hand wraps around her wrist, she spins and smashes it against her attacker’s head with an animalistic scream. She scrambles to her feet again, something hot spilling down her forearm, and leaps into the kitchen, heart pounding, searching for her next weapon, anything , leaping for the rack of kitchen knives—

“Hey!” A heavy blow to her side, and she is on the ground again, coughing and wheezing and praying that Cassie escaped. An arm around her neck, locking her in a stronghold, and then there’s metal against her temple. “Get the fuck up, get up! ” Maggie struggles against the person behind her, grabbing a handful of red hair and yanking hard, scraping at skin with her fingernails. “ Ow! You fucking bitch! ” Hard metal slams against her temple, and Maggie’s brain slips away.

Blood roars in her ears. Cassie, Cassie, not my little girl! Muffled screaming: “Get the fuck out here, Cassie, or I’ll kill your precious mommy! You want that? You want your mom dead on the floor? I’ll kill this bitch! I’ll kill her, I will! Cassie! Cassie! ”

Maggie clings to the one bit of lucidity she has and cries out, “No, Cassie, don’t—”

And pain crashes over the side of her head, a torment of black waves, and then nothing.

FRIDAY, APRIL 6 — 4:33 PM

Another fist slams into Scott’s mouth, and pain blossoms across his jaw. He spits on the ground, a splatter of red, and glares at the man in front of him. “Fuck you,” he says, and he’s surprised by his own profanity. He gave up swearing once he found one-year-old Cassie shouting “Shit!” every time she wanted one of her stuffed toys. But now, after four hours of this angry motherfucker and his brass knuckles, he’s about to snap. He’s trying to stay positive, but the fact that no one even knows he’s gone is really grating on his mind right now. He doesn’t even have a plan to escape; currently, his only plan is to annoy this guy until he breaks.

The man snarls and launches another fist at him, furious. “You think this is helping anyone, Lang?” he growls. “You wanna be ripped to pieces?”

Scott can’t remember what this guy’s name is. Max? Mark? “Well, it wasn’t on my schedule, Martin, but I mean, if you’ve got nothing else to do—”

Another fist, this time to his knee, and Scott gasps with the sudden pain of it. That was more than a punch. He heard something snap. “You and your fucking jokes,” says Probably-Martin. “I’m sick of them. How about I take out your fucking tongue this time, huh? How’d you like that?”

Scott shrugs, as nonchalantly as one could while tied to a chair and aching from hours of torture. “It’s the twenty-first century, buddy; I’d just get myself one of those Stephen Hawking things, maybe learn some sign langua—ah!”

Pain surges through his foot, so horrible that he can barely breathe, and Scott screams, his cocky smile dropping from his face. When he finally gathers himself, taking shaky gasps of air, the man smirks, victorious. “Next time I hear another one of your jokes,” snaps Probably-Martin, “I’ll smash your hand instead.”

Scott bites the inside of his cheek, just to keep himself from crying out again. He doesn’t want to look down at the damage that has been just done to his right foot, but he has to. He takes one glance...and immediately regrets it. The pain of his new injury seems to grow the longer he stares; Probably-Martin stepped on his foot so hard that it looks broken and smashed and wrong; Scott’s hands tighten around the arms of the chair. Stay strong, he reminds himself. Someone will come save you. Hank or Hope or the police or even the Avengers. And then you’ll be okay.

There’s another man in the room now, one with a brown beard and wild eyes. Bearded-Psycho, Scott dubs him, proud of himself. He smiles weakly, lifting his head to watch Bearded-Psycho and Probably-Martin argue. “I told you not to touch his hands, Mason!” Ah, thinks Scott. Mason. That was the man’s name. “It’s not like we can do this for him! We need those fucking hands!”

“I didn’t touch his hands!” Mason protests.

As they argue, Scott lets out a shaky breath. He liked to think of himself as one of those happy-go-lucky, jokester superheroes, like Iron Man or even that Spider-Guy from Queens, but right now all he doesn’t feel like a superhero. He doesn’t want to admit it, but he is terrified. He shoves the fear to the back of his head with every ounce of composure he has—if he loses his sense of humor, he’ll lose his mind. Somehow, cracking jokes at his abuser makes it seem less grave in his mind, like he can break free of his bonds at any moment. Humor keeps his hope alive and burning in his chest.

“And his head!” Bearded-Psycho snarls, and Scott flinches in his bonds. “We need his head!” Shit, he thinks, embarrassed at his involuntary display of fear. The only way to fight back against these guys is to laugh in the face of fear, but here he is, jumping like a little kid watching a horror movie. “Why the fuck would you think it’s a good idea to smash his head around? He’s practically bleeding out of his ears!”

“Charlie,” Mason attempts, “I didn’t—”

Bearded-Psycho (or Charlie or whatever his name is) is huge compared to Mason, so when he suddenly grabs the other man and slams his head against the wall—“Shit! Charlie, wait!”—until there’s blood running down his face, he makes it look easy, like beating up a kid.

Scott doesn’t feel the victory of watching his torturer bleed against the wall; all he feels is the electrifying anticipation of pain spiking through his body. This man, this Bearded-Psycho… He could crush Scott if he wanted to. Scott tries to make himself as small as possible. Any movement he makes will surely turn Charlie’s violent rage onto him. But even as Scott wills his body to stone, Charlie still turns around, wipes his hands on his jeans, and trains his eyes on Scott.

Fuck. Ready for another blow, probably ten times more painful than Mason’s, Scott winces, tensing his whole body and squeezing his eyes shut. Where will he hit him: his stomach, his legs, his feet?

A low chuckle greets him instead. “Look, Lang,” says Charlie calmly, as Scott opens his eyes with caution, “we’ve given you chance after chance to agree to our terms.”

Scott coughs. Yeah, he remembers the terms. It was the first thing that Mason said to him. “Sorry,” says Scott, laughing nervously. “Felonies aren’t on my to-do list, Chuck. No thanks.”

Charlie’s smile is nerve-wrecking, like Scott’s submission is inevitable, and Scott squirms, uncomfortable. Pain swirls in his foot, and he grits his teeth. Sweat trickles down his back. “If you say so, Lang.” His voice is calm. Too calm. Standing up abruptly, he shouts at Mason, who’s currently on the floor, moaning about his head. “Keep going, Mason. Don’t stop until I come back. And for fuck’s sake, leave his hands and his head.”

Mason pushes himself into a sitting position and groans a reluctant “fine.” He’s angrier now, fueled by pain as well as frustration, and Scott swallows hard. When Charlie finally leaves the room, Mason growls, “Fuck you, Lang. You see what you did to me?”

Dread drenching his thoughts, Scott grits his teeth. “I’m pretty sure American Psycho’s the one who busted your head open, ‘cause he’s not the one tied to a chai—”

Another debilitating punch smashes into his body, this time cracking a rib and splattering across his chest. As Mason rubs his knuckles, Scott struggles for air and prays that someone will save him soon. He doesn’t know how long he can stand this.

FRIDAY, APRIL 6 — 5:01 PM

As the ringing stops and goes to voicemail, Officer Julia Keene sighs and puts her phone down on the table. It’s the third time that night she’s tried to call her brother Charlie, and still nothing. Although she’s a police officer and he went off the rails years ago, she still loves him more than anything. He always spared time for her—at least for a text or a phone call—every couple of days.

But Julia hasn’t spoken to Charlie in a while. It’s been too long since she’d talked to him, and she’s worried . Sure, Julia is a thirty-three, twice-married, working mother of two living in Queens, and Charlie is a twenty-eight year old drug addict living on the streets with a couple of prison notches on his belt, but Julia needs to know he is safe. He is her brother. Her baby brother. It was always Julia and Charlie against the world, and even though they split off years ago… She rubs her temples and tries not to think about it too much.

“You called him again?” says someone behind her. It’s her husband of ten years. His dark hair falls over his eyes as he slides into the chair beside her, sliding his hand over her back and rubbing gently.

Julia falls into his touch, taking his other hand in hers. Her husband keeps rubbing her back in slow circles. “It’s been weeks,” she sighs. “ Weeks . And I… I know something bad happened to him. He’s never gone this long without talking to me.”

Her husband shifts in his chair. “Look at me, mi vida ,” he says, voice gentle. “I don’t know too much about your brother, but I do know that he’s a mess. He lives his life from one fix to another.” He squeezes her hand. “I know he loves you, but he’s a slave to his life of drugs …and crime. It’s not your job to check in on him all the time. He’s an adult, Julia, and he can make his own decisions. And he’s always fine. He’ll be fine .”

Julia nods into her husband’s shoulder. “I know, I know, he’ll be fine.”

Her husband smiles and gives her a quick peck on the lips. “You okay?”

She nods again, this time meeting his eyes. She’s still unsure, but at least she feels better about the whole situation. She loves Charlie, but her husband’s right. Charlie Keene can make his own decisions. He’s a good kid—well, he’s not exactly a kid anymore. He’s twenty-eight. 

Still… She’s his big sister. She’s going to worry. If this goes on much longer, she might report him missing. 

FRIDAY, APRIL 6 — 6:37 PM

Peter Parker has spent most of the past month in Tony’s lab , working on what they like to call “Project Kevlar,” after the substance that made bulletproof vests. Peter himself came up with the project, recognizing that many of the lower-income families of New York who experienced danger on a daily basis felt helpless to the violence they experienced and couldn’t call the police for help. Police officers often left the most vulnerable of the city’s community—poor, gang-ridden, and homeless citizens—exposed to harm.

“It’s like what they use on college campuses,” Peter had explained, pride lighting up across his face. “The blue light system, you know?”

Tony had chuckled lightly. “What do you know about college, kid? You’re only—”

“I’m sixteen now, Mr. Stark,” Peter had reminded him, “and I’ve been on, like, three college visits! I know what it’s like!”

The mayor of New York gave Stark Industries explicit permission to implement the system in the city; it was simple but brilliant, really. They would place tiny alert buttons all over the city in public areas, each fitted to survive any weather conditions, and people could press the alert buttons to call for help.

Currently, they’re working together on a vital part of the system: the GSS, or the gunfire sensory system that could would automatically alarm them if a gun was used within the immediate vicinity of the alarm button. Tony is sprawled out on the couch, typing furiously on his laptop, as Peter bends over the worktable, a soldering iron in one hand and a circuit board in the other. To the left of Peter, a record player screeches ‘Killer Queen’ as the dark-haired boy nods his head to the beat.

Glancing away from his screen, Tony frowns, temporarily halting his humming. “Peter!”

The dark-haired boy’s hands jerks at the sudden noise. “Geez, Mr. Stark, a little warning next time!” A huff of frustration escapes him. “Now, I gotta solder that all over again.”

Tony throws a pair of goggles at him in response.

“Hey!” Peter protests, catching them only inches from his face.

“You know what I said, kiddo,” Tony announces. “Rule Number One: No Soldering Without Goggles.”

“I thought Rule Number One was No One Touches My Records,” Peter shoots back, chucking a pen at the older man. “And, by the way, if I hear another Queen song come on, I’m literally gonna throw that thing out the window.”

Tony sits up straight, mouth open in mock surprise. “How dare you! Queen is the best! Queen is… It’s the greatest band to ever walk the planet!”

Peter rolls his eyes. “You know, Mr. Stark, sometimes I forget how old you are! Listen to some AJR or something, come on!” But nonetheless, Peter slides the goggles on his face.

Before he can grab the soldering iron again, however, Pepper pokes her head into the lab, knocking gently on the glass. “Tony? We’ve gotta get going soon, we—” Her eyes land on the teenager perched at her fiancé’s worktable. “Oh, Peter! I didn’t know you were here.”

“Yeah, sorry,” Peter stammers. “Didn’t mean to interrupt your night, Ms. Potts.”

Pepper laughs, sitting down on the couch next to Tony. “That’s totally fine, Peter. You know you’re welcome here anytime.” Closing Tony’s laptop with one manicured hand (he protests with an irritated “hey!”), she turns back to the teenager. “You do know it’s a Friday night, don’t you? Shouldn’t you be out with your friends?”

Peter scratches the back of his neck, grinning sheepishly. “Yeah… It’s just I had this new idea for Project Kevlar, and I asked Mr. Stark, and he said it was okay, and…” He glances nervously at Tony. “Sorry. I’ll be gone in a few minutes, Ms. Potts.”

Pepper smiles gently at him. “You know you can call me Pepper; I’m not that old.”

Peter shrugs awkwardly. “The only adult I call by their first name is May! She’d kill me if I ever called Mr. Stark” —he cringed— “Tony.”

Tony chuckles, throwing his arm across the back of the couch. “Well, we’ll work on that one, kiddo.”

Pepper clicks her tongue. “As much as I’d love to watch you waste your childhood in Tony’s lab,” she tells Peter, giving him a playful look, “Tony and I have somewhere we need to be.”

“Where?” chorus Peter and Tony.

Pepper gives Tony the stern I-told-you-this-months-ago look that she always uses. “The charity gala? It’s for the Yemeni Women’s Union.”

“Ah, right… the charity thing.” He pouts. “Do we have to go?”

“Yes!”

Pepper tosses his tie in his lap as Peter scrambles to stuff his supplies back into his backpack. “Sorry again, Ms. Potts! Have fun at the gala, Mr. Stark!”

“It’s Tony, kid!” he declares, just as the Spider-Kid jumps to the door.

Peter gives him a mischievous smile, slinging his backpack over one shoulder. “Bye, Mr. Stark.”

Pepper’s still laughing to herself when the door closes behind the kid.

FRIDAY, APRIL 6 — 7:09 PM

Sometimes, Charlie’s guilt aches like an old gunshot wound, sending painful spikes of regret spilling down his throat. Sometimes, his plan feels like shame, not pride, so he has to force himself to continue, one foot in front of the other. It’s in those moments when he needs his fix the most: angel dust, most days, sometimes with a spike of something else.

He pops a couple pills in his mouth and swallows hard. His sister once told him that taking drugs like this means he loses control over his body, that he relinquishes his throne to the drug instead of his brain, but what the hell does she know? Charlie is more in control than he’d ever been.

Charlie feels a warm buzz crackle through his bones, a familiar sensation, as the pill he’d just taken finally starts to work. Charlie lets out a relieved sigh, laughing a little. Everything seems to come back into focus: the plan, the future, the people… He knows. He knows.

Renee, his wife, will be back in a few minutes with the one thing they need to force that asshole Scott Lang to do what they wanted. And once they have Scott under their control, everything will fall into place, like dominoes.

From the other side of their base, he hears the door creak open, followed by the sound of a child crying and a woman yelling. “Charlie? Charlie!”

When he stands up, he staggers a little, but he quickly recovers, moving to meet Renee and the rest of them at the entrance to the base.

Renee has the girl by her waist as she squirms, crying through her gag and wiggling her bound wrists. “Sorry I’m late,” she says. “Traffic was terrible.”

Charlie grins. Finally. “You got her!”

“Yep,” she says. “Those motherfucking parents were a pain in my ass, but I still got her. Any luck with Lang?”

He shakes his head as the little girl lets out a pained wail. “He just cracks jokes and refuses to help us.”

Renee smirks and shoves the girl to her feet. “Walk, kid. Walk.”

Now that Charlie has a good look at the kid, she looks a lot like Lang. Scott Lang’s Asian features are prevalent in the kid’s hair and face, and that defiant look in her eyes had to come from him. Her dark hair hangs scraggly around her head, and her face is red and swollen with tears. It hits Charlie, all at once, how young she is: probably six or seven years old. Her face is so full, her eyes so big, her body so tiny… He shakes his head. It doesn’t matter how young she is. They need to get Scott Lang on board, and Cassie Paxton, or Lang or whatever the hell her name is, is their ticket.

He leads Renee to what they’re starting to call the Room, the place where the whole show’s gonna happen. It’s a small space: ten feet wide and ten feet long, with a metal chair bolted into the center. On one side is a sink and a toilet, and the other has a folding table of various weapons and other materials.

Currently, Scott Lang is strapped to the chair in the center, his head hung low, murmuring to himself. Mason is taking another swing for Scott’s knee when Renee yells, “Hey, we’ve got her!”

The back of the chair is facing them, so when Scott lifts his head to the sound of voices, he can’t see Charlie, Renee, or Cassie. But Mason can. His shoulders slump in relief as Renee shoves the kid into the Room. “Finally!”

Lang’s looking terrible: his bruised face has swollen and darkened, his legs are damaged beyond repair, and it looks like at one point he pissed himself. Yet still he manages to conjure a shaky, Tony Stark-worthy grin and croak, “What’s next, fellas? The Iron Maiden?” in Charlie’s general direction.

“No,” snaps Renee, and yanks the kid before Lang’s eyes. “She’s next.”

It’s mesmerizing how quickly Lang’s grin melts; he goes pale, glancing from Cassie’s terrified face to Charlie’s victorious one. “No,” he manages, “no, no, no, no…”

“Take her,” Charlie says, nodding to Renee and Mason. Lang’s still gasping “no,” over and over again, like a broken record, as though the fact that his seven-year-old daughter is actually in front of him has just struck him. Just as Cassie leaps for her dad, Mason grabs her by the back of her hoodie, pulling her back before she can touch him. “I’ll stay with Lang.”

Scott Lang’s shaking his head now, frantic, his arms fighting maniacally against his bonds. “No, no! Please, no, she’s just a kid, leave her alone, please—please, you can’t, please, you wouldn’t—”

Charlie hits him across the face so hard that his hand stings after the blow; a buzzing feeling goes through him, something like electric triumph, upon seeing Lang like this. Scott Lang is broken now, begging for mercy, after hours of torture, and all it took was one scared scream from the kid.

“—p-please, I’m begging you, I’ll do anything, just don’t hurt her—”

“Shut up!” Charlie picks up Mason’s hammer as a warning. “One more word out of you, and this is going straight through your skull, understand?” Now, he understands why Mason is so frustrated. Lang talks too much.

Lang trembles and tries not to make another sound. An odd, sickly silence follows, in which Lang shifts in his chair. Soaked in blood and urine, his pants squelch against the wood as he cranes his neck to try to see Cassie. His breathing transforms from pained groans to fearful, shallow panting, his fingers white-knuckled against the arms of the chair.

Then it comes: a little girl’s blood-curdling scream, wet and painful and horrible, so Lang goes berserk, thrashing in his chair like a madman, words spilling from his mouth: “No, no—I’ll do whatever you want me to, please, oh, God, please, leave her be—Cassie! Cassie! Oh, fucking God, fuck, please, no, leave her, take me instead, I’ll do it, I'll do anything, anything, just leave her alone—Cassie, Cassie, Cassie!”

Charlie watches it continue for ten seconds, thirty seconds, a minute, until finally, the screaming dies down and Lang, reduced to a sobbing mess, cries, “I’ll do it. I p-promise you, I’ll d-do it!”

Charlie’s shoulders relax a little. “Good,” he says calmly. “Now, that wasn’t so hard, was it?”

FRIDAY, APRIL 6 — 7:42 PM

“On the way back,” May Parker announces, “you’re driving, you little liar!” She’s driving with one hand on the wheel, the other dabbing on lipstick. At a sudden bump in the road, the tube misses her mouth, smearing pink on her chin, and she swears loudly.

“I didn’t lie!” Peter whines back, stretching his legs out. “I am tired!”

May wipes at her chin with the back of her hand, trying to make the pink go away. “You haven’t gone on patrol today, Peter!” Realizing she missed their turn, she makes a screeching U-turn before facing her nephew again. “How are you tired?”

Okay, so maybe he’s squeezing the truth a little. Sure, he only hung out at Tony’s after school instead of patrolling like he said, but he hates driving. It sets his teeth on edge. When he drives a car, everything is a possible danger, and whenever he’s nervous like that, his Spidey Sense (or, as May likes to call it, his Peter tingle) goes insane. “School,” he claims, picking at his cuticles. “I had a calc test today; it sucked the life right out of my body!”

May rolls her eyes as she pulls up to a stoplight. “Sure it did, kiddo. But you’re still driving on the way back. I’m gonna have some wine tonight, and no scaredy-cat teenage boy’s gonna tell me that I have to drive him home. You’re the designated driver tonight, Petey.”

He slaps her arm. “May! Don’t call me that.”

“What? You let Tony call you that—hey! Don’t change the music! That was a good song!”

“It was Bruce Springsteen!”

“Exactly!”

Peter groans in protest. “No, please, don’t make me go back! I can’t survive another Springsteen song!”

May gives him a devilish grin and changes the radio station back to its original song.

“No! You skipped Say Something!”

“My car, my rules, Peter—what’d I say? Don’t touch the radio—”

“But it’s Justin Timberlake’s best song!”

“I don’t care! Driver picks the music—”

Fire races up Peter’s neck, flooding his system: danger. He jerks his head to the left, blinding white headlights— “May, look out!”

He throws his arm out to protect her, because there’s no fucking way she can react fast enough to move the car out of the way, and then everything is—

—chaos and spinning and jolting, pain splitting up his left arm, jerking around, his skull smashing against cold glass, screeching and whining, until finally—

—tentative stillness, the car’s unbalanced rocking, and warmth trickling down (up?) his arm; his head whirs, dotted with pain, and it takes him a moment to realize that the unnatural heaviness of his head and the pull on his joints means he is upside down. The car is flipped upside down.

Peter opens his eyes and fumbles for his seatbelt, his heart pattering in his chest. He turns—Aunt May. She hangs in her seatbelt like a broken arm in a sling: there is red everywhere. He chokes on his shock (one, two, three, get up, get out, you have to do something) and then calls her name: “May? May! May!”

A click on his right side; the door swings open, and he nearly sobs in relief. “Help her,” he gasps. “Get her, she’s bleeding, help, ple—”

Someone yanks him roughly from the car, and as he hits the ground he realizes: something is wrong. His Spidey-senses are a whirlwind of panic, and he glances up at the figure above him to realize that this is not a rescue attempt. Just as the man’s arm swings down, something thin clenched in his fist, he recognizes—this is an attack, and rolls hard to the right, away from the car. But he’s not fast enough—his head still rings from the impact and his left arm hangs limply at his side, so Peter’s not at his prime right now. So the object plunges into his arm instead of his chest, which he automatically thinks is a win...until he knocks it away and realizes it wasn’t a knife. It was a syringe. What the fuck? His body feels a little heavy, like he’s covered in wet cloth, but he still manages to shake off the strange feeling and keep going.

Get up, Spider-Man! he thinks, and then he’s on his feet again, dodging and punching and twisting and hitting until finally there’s four masked figures on the ground, unconscious or wishing they were. He doesn’t have time to quip or crack a smile; he barely has time to check himself for injuries as he rushes to Aunt May’s side of the car, flinging the door open. She’s still unconscious, upside down, her hair lolling back and forth with the rocking of the car. As he reaches for her, checking her pulse, his mind spins as the strangeness in his limbs worsens; his fingers press against May’s neck, and the faint flutter of a heartbeat he feels there sends hope scattering through his chest. Who are these people? They’re dressed like fucking villains: matching black, armored suits and facemasks. Matching weapons, even—massive guns and black-handled knives that they tried to use on Peter. Not including the syringe, and God knows why—

Something pricks in his back, and Peter whirls back around to see another masked man holding an empty syringe. Numbness creeps up his feet, oddly cold, and Peter trips over himself as he swings his fists at the man; his body feels wrong, heavy, yet still he keeps fighting. This isn’t just a mugging in an alley—this is Aunt May’s life in his hands. Minute pain tickles his arm, and then ice creeps over his arms, spreading over his skin. Where the hell did that come from? There must be another one—he counted only five of them. Fuck. He knows the feeling by now—sickly sweet, numbing sensations ripple through his muscles. Peter turns around—his head is cotton candy, yanked apart piece by piece, and he tries to punch his new attacker, but he keeps missing. How? Spider-Man doesn’t miss, he thinks vaguely, as the icy cold reaches into his brain and squeezes. Spider-Man doesn’t…

He’s on the ground now, his face pressed against grass, and his limbs flop uselessly at his sides. “Why the fuck did it take so many doses?” snaps an angry voice, just as the paralysis climbs up Peter’s jaw.

“I… I don’t know,” admits the second. “Let’s just get this over with, okay?”

“We gotta take care of her first, Haroun.” Peter’s breath halts, slanting in his throat. Her could only mean one person: May. “We can’t afford to get caught.”

A beat. “Take care...of her? I’m no killer, man. I may be helping you, but I’m not killing her. She didn’t do anything.”

An irritated groan. “She wasn’t supposed to be here. It was just supposed to be the Spider guy—”

“Just leave her, Jon. She’s gonna die before anyone finds her, anyway. Just look at her.”

A horrible silence, as Peter awaits their decision. To them, it’s a matter of getting caught, but to Peter, they’re threatening his entire world. May is all he has left—frantic desperation rips up his spine, and he uses all the will he has left to try to move again, but nothing happens. Come on, Spider-Man! Come on! Peter couldn’t save Uncle Ben, but he has to save May, he has to— “Fuck, fuck, fucking fine, let’s go. Grab him.”

There’s a moment of strained relief followed by shuffling as Peter tries to move his arms, jerking his heavy arms in the voices’ direction. “Fuck! He’s still awake!”

A sharp pain in his neck, a bloody fist, and then blissful darkness.

FRIDAY, APRIL 6 — 8:02 PM

Maggie’s eyes are sticky, like she’s been asleep for a dozen years. Cold, stiff sheets. Aching pain. A voice calling her name.

She squints up at a green-clothed man in front of her; he’s the one saying her name. “Blink if you can hear me, Mrs. Paxton.”

She blinks, confused. “What… What happened?”

He frowns. “You sustained several severe blows to the head. What’s the last thing you remember?”

“I…” She takes a moment. She remembers going out to breakfast with Jim in the morning, picking up Cassie from kindergarten—

Cassie. She scrabbles at the blankets; her right arm is useless, bound in thick bandages, so she pushes herself up with her other hand. “Cassie!” It all rushes back to her: Jim unconscious on the floor, the attack, the gunshot, the wild realization that they wanted Cassie— “Oh, God—where is she?”

The nurse gulps and clasps his hands together tightly. “I’m not authorized to—”

She’s never felt terror like this before—it’s horrible and electrifying, whipping up a frenzy of needles inside of her chest. She swings her good arm forward and grabs him by the collar; he winces. “Tell where my daughter is, asshole!” Pain ripples over her torso.

He looks like an ant beneath a microscope, squirming beneath the intense heat of her eyes. “They took her, ma’am,” he confesses, and her grip on his scrubs loosens. “The police went after them, but it’d been too long. They were already gone by the time the neighbors called 911.”

They took her. They took her. They took her. Maggie’s brain won’t function. “But how—” She chokes on her words. “No, no, no…” She grabs at her hair, and pained dread pangs in her neck, leaking down into her heart. “No, God, no…” Nightmarish thoughts peel at her head and spear behind her eyes, and anguished nausea swirls in her stomach. She wraps her arms around her belly, clawing at the bandages there.

“Mrs. Paxton, the police are doing everything they can. They’ve already sent out an Amber Alert, and they’ve alerted all the nearby hospitals to any children matching your daughter’s description.” He looks uncomfortable, even guilty, and he backs away from her hospital bed. “I’m terribly sorry, Mrs. Paxton. So, so sorry.”

Maggie can barely hear him leave; her daughter, her baby, her Cassie… Horror wracks her mind, darkness pries at her mind—her seven-year-old, her baby girl, scared and hurt and crying for her—and she presses a shaking hand to her distressed mouth, trying to keep all her horrified thoughts pinned inside of her.

There’s nothing worse than this, the absence of Cassie at her side, knowing that gruesome, unspeakable things could be happening to her at any moment; Maggie cries into her hands, sobbing. Cassie…

The doctor comes about an hour later to trade places with the nurse; she’s antsy, constantly shifting from foot to foot as she speaks, like the elephant in the room of Cassie’s kidnapping can just be ignored. After several choked-out apologies, she explains most of the medical implications of the attack in an apologetic stammer, telling her has several broken ribs, a gunshot wound to the forearm—“Just a graze, ma’am, you got lucky,” she says—and a minor concussion. “We stitched up that cut in your forehead,” the doctor says carefully. “But you have take it easy for now.” Maggie wraps her arms around herself. “We’ll keep you overnight for observation, but after that we’ll give you medicine to take home…”

Everything after that is blurry, shadowed by the knowledge that Cassie has been kidnapped. She visits Jim’s hospital room; he wakes up a couple hours after her, but he doesn’t remember anything before the night prior. “What’s wrong?” Jim asks. He’s still got that hopeful look in his eyes. “Why do you look so…”

Maggie knows the word he is trying not to say. Devastated. Like her entire world has been ripped away from her fingertips. “She’s gone,” she croaks. “They took Cassie.”

FRIDAY, APRIL 6 — 8:29 PM

The doorbell rings for a second time, and finally Julia, sprawled across the couch next to Cristian, lets out annoyed groan.

“Not it,” her husband chirps.

“Honey, you can’t do ‘not it’ with two people! It doesn’t work!”

He shrugs and snuggles deeper into the couch. “Nose goes,” he says, tapping his nose.

“Same rules, Cristian!”

He only laughs, so finally Julia relents. “Lazy ass,” she complains, swatting his thigh as she gets up. “You’re getting up next time.”

She heads to the door; the occasional ringing has now evolved into frantic banging. “I’m coming, I’m coming!” she calls out, mildly irritated. It’s probably one of their neighbors asking about a lost pet. That kid next door can never keep track of his toy poodle. She peers through the peephole first.

Instead of a mailman or a neighbor, she finds a tall, black teen, probably eighteen or nineteen. She knows him well—as a police officer, she has frequent run-ins with this one: Ty. He isn’t dangerous, just a drug addict like her brother. He looks odd—not sober, just odd—like he’s about to vomit all over her front porch. She cracks the door open. “If you’re gonna puke,” she warns him, “do it in the grass.”

He shakes his head. “No—I gotta—I’m not sick—I gotta tell you somethin’, miss, somethin’ important—real important, miss—” He rubs his already messy dreads into a chaotic pile. “Can I—can I come in?”

Briefly, Julia thinks of her children. Ty isn’t dangerous, she reminds herself, and she’ll be with him the whole time. After they instruct the kids to stay in the basement while they talk, they sit Ty down at the kitchen table—Cristian and Julia on one side, Ty on the other. He’s nervous, but assures then repeatedly that he’s unarmed. “I don’t wanna hurt nobody,” he says, “promise, miss.”

She wants to say something to him, something like “I know” or “It’s okay” to calm his anxious nerves, but she can’t do it. He is too young, too unstable, too terrified, and it puts her on edge, like someone’s father will come sprawling in at any moment drenched in drunken rage.

“They’re gone,” he says finally, after a century of painful silence. “Charlie, RJ, everybody.”

Julia and Cristian share a concerned glance. “What?”

He explains what happened in shaky sentences; Charlie, Julia’s brother, had been Ty’s dealer for the past few months. “None of the hard shit,” he promises her. Charlie and Ty met once or twice a week, and Ty often hung around Charlie’s crew—a group of drug addicts who were so far gone that Ty’d never once met them lucid, let alone sober. They were always on something, whether it was coke, dope, speed, or dust. “An’ I know they didn’ always do good, but they was good, promise. They kept talkin’ about how they was gonna change the world, make it a better place…” He trails off. He tells Julia that a couple of weeks ago, Charlie had missed their weekly meetup without any warning. Originally, he dismissed it as Charlie being too high to deal that day, but when he tried to get into contact with some of Charlie’s guys to see if they would deal to him, they were gone, too. He checked with everyone in Charlie’s tight circle of drug addicts; they’d all vanished. “Last time I saw them, their place was some abandoned, creepy-ass dungeon or some shit, fuckin’ snakes on the walls…” But when he tried to find them, he explains, the place was empty. They were gone.

Finally, Ty sighs. “I didn’ know where to go, miss. I can’t trust none of those cops but you. Anybody else woulda put me in jail, and I can’t go back there. I’m just scared ‘cause these are my people, you know? And they ain’t done nothing wrong, but I think somethin’ happened to ‘em.” He stares emptily at Julia. “Somethin’ bad.”

FRIDAY, APRIL 6 — 9:05 PM

Cassie is cold. So, so cold. She’s never been hurt like this before. Not when she tripped in soccer and sprained her ankle, not when Jim accidentally hit her in the face with a softball, and not even when her grandma died a year ago. At least then, she had Daddy or Mommy or Jim with her.

Now, it’s just Cassie. Cassie, the toilet, and the weird scratches in the walls. It’s a tiny room with gray walls, gray floor, and a gray ceiling. There’s a toilet and a sink in the corner, but nothing else. No bed, no chair, no table. The door is gray, too, reinforced with metal bolts, and only a slit, almost a rectangular hole, in the center of the door signifies that there’s any outside at all. She’s all alone, in this tiny room, and there’s blood all over her arm and she’s scared. She doesn’t want to remember that the Red-Hair Lady grabbed Mommy and smashed her head against the wall. She doesn’t want to remember that Red-Hair Lady took her knife and cut her arms open. She doesn’t want to remember any of this.

But when it’s just Cassie, all alone, all she has is her thoughts, and she can’t help but remember how much it hurt.

She whimpers and draws her knees to her chest, pulling at the sticky, bloodstained sleeves of her hoodie. She doesn’t like this. She wants Mommy and Daddy and Jim… She wants Jim to hug her and cook her some ramen. She wants Mommy to rock her and read her a bedtime story. She wants Daddy to sing her favorite song…

Daddy. She remembers seeing his face before Red-Hair Lady took her away, before the hurt— She squeezes her eyes shut. She remembers that he was tied to a chair, that he was scared and he looked like he was hurting a lot. And when he saw Cassie, it was like his whole world had fallen apart. She’s never seen him like that before, and now she’s more scared than ever before. She starts to cry, sobbing into her knees; she wants Daddy, she wants Daddy, she wants Daddy!

Red-Hair Lady and Big-Man locked her in here. When she cried and begged for them to let her go, Red-Hair Lady grabbed her by the throat and threatened to cut her tongue out unless she shut up. Cassie reaches into her mouth and touches her tongue, just to reassure herself that it’s still there. She can still remember Red-Hair Lady and the terrifying fury of her words.

She knows Daddy will come for her. He has to. He always promised that he’d keep her safe, no matter what happened. She believes in him. Maybe he can turn into Ant-Man and slip free! Then he can come save her. She nods to herself. Yes, Daddy will come save her. He is brave and strong, and whenever she’s in trouble, he is there—

A loud beep and then the locked door before her clicks open. Cassie perks up, her sob caught in her throat. “Daddy?”

A snort of laughter is her reply. “Don’t you wish, cutie.”

Cassie shakes in her fear. It’s the Red-Hair Lady and Big-Man, and they look mad. “No, n-n-no! I d-do-don’t wanna go, p-please!” She is crying again, so hard that she can’t control it. “I wanna go home!”

Red-Hair Lady leans down to meet her face-to-face. “You’re not going home for a long time, cutie. So get used to it.”

Cassie cries harder—“I wanna go ho-home!”—and Red-Hair Lady slaps her.

She’s never been slapped before, and it’s startling, a violation of everything she’s ever known. She can still feel Red-Hair Lady’s hand on her cheek, a ghost of the blow. “Shut up,” snaps the woman. “Don’t be a fucking baby.” As Big-Man grabs her by the waist and slings her under his arm, kicking and wailing, Red-Hair Lady storms out of the room. “Charlie!” she shouts. “Lang’s taking too fucking long!”

Cassie can hear broken protests from the far end of the hallway. Once, she thinks she can hear her name among the desperate words.

The tall, bearded man is now talking feverishly to Red-Hair Lady. “He says he’s going as fast as he can, Renee. Mason, put the kid down.”

Big-Man shifts nervously, glancing at Red-Hair Lady. “As fast as he can?” Red-Hair Lady scowls. “Bullshit! At this rate, it’ll be days before he’s done. We need this, and we need it now. Lang just needs a little motivation, that’s all. Something to get those fucking fingers moving.”

The other man hesitates. “Fine,” he says. “As long as Lang does his job.”

Renee smirks. “I’ll make sure he does.”

Cassie’s not stupid; she knows that they’re talking about Daddy. “I want Daddy!” she wails. She knows he’s here, somewhere, and the combination of the cuts on her arms, the swelling in her face, and the Red-Hair Lady’s presence has made her frantic and desperate. “Please, please, I’ll be—”

When Red-Hair Lady whirls around this time, Cassie stops abruptly, squeezing her eyes shut and trying to squirm away from the oncoming blow. But she’s still not prepared enough. Red-Hair Lady’s palm hits her in the face, and pain sparks behind her eyes. “What’d I tell you?” She yanks Cassie from Big-Man’s arms, sending her sprawling on the ground. “Hey! Look at me!”

Cassie doesn’t want to look at her, she doesn’t want to look, she doesn’t want to—

Another slap, this time on the other side of her face. “Look at me!”

Cassie pries her terrified eyes open, every bone in her body vibrating in alarm.

“You don’t talk unless I say so, got it?” Her red hair swishes as she talks. “Got it?” Her voice is dangerous now, like quicksand, and Cassie nods furiously. “Good.”

She drags Cassie to the bad room, the bad room—not the bad room, no, no—and straps her to the table—the bad table, the bad table, not the bad table, she doesn’t want to hurt again—

There’s fingers at her arm, yanking up her sleeve, wiping the crease of her inner arm with something cold. Cassie is cold, so cold, and she shuts her eyes, crying silently and hiccuping. “Don’t move,” instructs Red-Hair Lady, and then there’s a prick in her arm.

“Ow!” Suddenly, there’s what feels like fire spreading over her skin, lighting her up and tearing her apart.

Cassie can hear something, something high-pitched and horrible and bad—she wants the bad to stop, it hurts so much, but it’s all she can feel and it’s swallowing her up—

Her throat is raw—she’s screaming, screaming, screaming for anyone, anything to help her.

But no one comes.

FRIDAY, APRIL 6 — 10:11 PM

“Holy shit, Chlo, pull over!”

Chloe Tanner jerks his head to the right, where her boyfriend, John, is pointing. “What?” Then she sees it: a car upside down, a mess of crumpled metal and red-spattered earth. “Oh, shit!” She yanks her car to the right, parking abruptly a few hundred feet away from the crash. There’s no police cars near it, or any people standing beside the car. What the hell happened here? Someone has to do something. What if there’s someone in there? John and Chloe rush out of the car. Shattered glass crunches beneath Chloe’s sneakers as she and John approach the vehicle. “Hello?” John announces, and Chloe runs to the front door.

There’s a dark-haired woman inside, blood spreading across the front of her lavender blouse, hung upside down by her seatbelt. Her face is startlingly flushed, probably from all the blood settling in her head, and her head dangles limply as Chloe opens the car door. “Shit, shit! John, call 911!”

John slams his fingers into his phone, almost frantic. “Um—he-hello? There’s a car crash here—a lady’s i-in the front…” He steps over the scattered glass to stare at the woman.

As he talks to the 911 operator, Chloe presses her fingers to the woman’s neck. A faint, fluttering pulse meets her fingers, but that’s all she needs. “She’s still alive!” she shouts. “What do we do?”

John puts the phone on speaker and describes the physical state of the woman, stuttering out that she is upside down and he doesn’t know if they should move her.
“Don’t move her,” instructs the operator. “Find the source of the bleeding, if you can, and put pressure on it until we can get to you. It should only be a few minutes. Keep checking her breathing and her heart rate, okay? If it stops, I’ll need you to perform CPR on her. Do you know how?”

Already pressing her scarf to the woman’s slashed thigh, Chloe stammers, “Ye-yeah, I know how.”

Those few minutes seem like hours as Chloe keeps pressure on the gashes and John checks her heartbeat. Finally, the ambulance arrives and four paramedics in matching uniform pour out, walking firmly towards them with a stretcher and medical supplies. “We’ll take it from here,” says one, just as they reach the woman.

Chloe reaches for John’s hand and grips it tightly, backing away from her. They ride with her to the hospital, where the police interrogate them about what happened, but neither of them know enough to further the investigation. “We didn’t see anything,” Chloe assures the first officer, a woman with a blonde ponytail named Officer Bone. “Just found her, that’s all. I think it’d already been here a while by the time we got here.”

Officer Bone nods, scribbling something down. “Well, we’re really grateful you found her. If you hadn’t, she could just as easily be dead.”

Chloe gulps. If she hadn’t pulled over the car… If they hadn’t done anything… If John had been asleep… This horrible realization washes over her: this woman could have died. “Is she… Is she gonna be okay?”

Bone glances wearily behind her. “Her head looked pretty banged up, so I can’t tell you for sure…” She removes her hat. “But I have your contact information. I’ll keep you updated on her condition.” She sighs. “Are you sure you couldn’t find anything about her identity?”

Both John and Chloe answer with a simple “no.” The paramedics gave all the woman’s belongings to the police, and they didn’t find a wallet or a phone on her; there were no frantic police calls on missing middle-aged women, either.

Bone clears her throat. “Well, until we find something, she’s a Jane Doe until she wakes up or someone comes for her.”

As Officer Bone leaves to talk to the other policemen, Chloe slumps into one of the waiting room chairs. She hopes that this woman, whoever she is, will be okay.

FRIDAY, APRIL 6 — 11:21 PM

They spent the past few hours chatting with semi-drunk socialites and businessmen; Tony dazzled them with half-hearted tales of Iron Man’s adventures while Pepper approached the hosts with financial propositions.

Pepper looks sleek tonight, her strawberry-blonde hair pulled back into an elegant bun, and her cocktail dress is a rich, deep purple that matches the color of Tony’s suit. Tony, to say the least, matches his elegant partner, a silk tie loose around his neck. Pepper has always been the more formal one, rarely able to tell a story about herself to someone she didn’t know well. From where he currently stands, Tony can hear her laugh as she chats about Tony and his bad habit of showing up late to everything. “I’ve started marking everything in his calendar an hour before they actually start, just so he’ll be on time!”

Tony grazes his hand along her waist, alerting her to his presence just as he appears beside her. He can hear the exhaustion in her voice. “Sorry, ladies,” he says, nodding to the other three women, “but I’ll just be borrowing Ms. Potts for a moment.”

As soon as they are out of hearing range of the other guests, Pepper sighs. “Thank God,” she says. “I don’t think I could’ve done that for much longer.” She kisses his cheek.

“What, are they boring you?”

She wrinkles her nose. “No, I’m just tired of socializing, at least for today.” That, at the very least, Tony can understand. Pepper had spent almost the entire day in meetings and making calls to various companies. Her eyes light up with something mischievous. “Come on, let’s get out of here!”

Tony stares at her in mock shock, taking on the richest accent he can muster. “Leave the gala? Oh, the scandal, my dear!”

Pepper stifles a giggle. “God, Tony, your British accent is the worst.”

He pouts as she hooks her arm around his and leads them towards the exit. “I thought it was awesome!”

“Awesomely terrible,” she reminds him. “Any British person within a ten-mile radius would be offended, I’m sure. And stop saying 'awesome.' You've been spending way too much time with Peter.”

Tony grins. “Pepper, my love, you wound me.”

She rolls her eyes, opening the door for him. “Come on, Shakespeare, let’s go find some pizza.”

This time, it’s Tony’s turn to break into a smile. “Pizza!”

FRIDAY, APRIL 6 — 11:43 PM

When Ty finally leaves, Julia goes upstairs with Cristian. The kids are already fast asleep, but they kiss each of them good night before heading back to their room. After Julia changes into some pajamas and gets into bed, Cristian climbs in beside her. “Piensas que nos dijo la verdad?” he asked softly. Do you think he told us the truth?

Julia nods. She’s lying on her side, facing him. “Ty may be an addict,” she replies, “but he’s not a bad kid. He wouldn’t lie about something like this, and, I mean, just look at him. He could barely talk, he was so…” She doesn’t know how to explain it, but she knows that look in his eyes well. Terrified. Distressed. Helpless. “...scared. You can’t fake that.”

Cristian pulls her closer to him, and he presses his face into her hair. “What are you gonna do, Julia?”

“It’s gonna be hard,” she confesses, “but I’ve gotta report it. I’ll leave him out of it—I don’t want him going back to prison—but there’s no way I can’t report this.” The people Ty cares for so much are drug addicts and ex-cons; the New York Police Department cares little for them. She’ll have to use her strong reputation as a high-ranking officer to advocate for Ty and his missing friends. And her missing brother. Charlie, she thinks immediately, and now she feels desperation clench around her heart. “I have to—I have to find my brother.” She tries not to think of all the horrible things that could have happened to him, but her mind barrels forward. “He’s my baby brother, I can’t—” Her voice cracks.

Cristian slides his arm around her waist and shushes her. “I know, I know. You’ll find him, I know you will.”

Julia prays to God that she will, too.

FRIDAY, APRIL 6 — 11:58 PM

Happy drives them to Pepper’s favorite pizza place, one that sells Chicago-style deep dish. It’s hard to forget that Pepper was a Chicagoan (honestly, she still is), for Chicago always seems to seep into her daily life, whether it be her odd taste in pizza, her obsession with the Chicago Cubs, or her uncanny ability to survive any cold weather without blinking.

And because Pepper craves deep dish pizza on a weekly basis, they’ve become intimately familiar with one pizza place in particular, one called Lou Malnati’s, but they are not familiar with the teenage girl at the register, who gapes unashamedly at them as they enter the building.

“Hey, order for pickup?” announces Pepper, smiling expectantly, “For Potts?”

The girl doesn’t move, simply staring, starstruck, at them. “Uh…”

Tony sighs. He doesn’t need another fangirl right now, not at eleven at night when all he wants is a dumb pizza. “Look, kid, can we just get the pizza?”

The employee next to her, one who has seen them countless times before and has grown used to their presence, announces, “Of course, Mr. Stark, right away, sir!” The employee slips into the back as the other girl stands with her mouth open.

But as he watches the girl’s face break into a blushing smile, he realizes she isn’t even looking at him. She's looking at Pepper. “M-Ms. Potts,” she stammers, her voice so high it’s almost a squeal, “I-I’m a huge fan of yours; I’ve loved you since I was little when I read that article about how you…” The girl is full-on rambling, spilling every fact she knows about Pepper, and Tony watches his fiancée’s smile grow wider with every word. Iron Man fans are like pebbles, commonplace, but Pepper Potts fans are something else entirely. “...and as the only female CEO in—and, I mean, of the most powerful company in New York? You’re amazing! An inspiration! I can’t believe you’re standing here, wow—” The girl adjusts her hijab anxiously, tugging at the edges. Her nametag reads AYOMI. “It's such a pleasure to—um—to see you—um, um—could I—do you think I could—um, maybe—”

Pepper, being the wonderfully empathetic woman that she is, reaches across the counter and places a calming hand on Ayomi’s starstruck shoulder. “A picture? Of course!”

Tony thinks the girl is going to faint, right then and there. Instead, however, Ayomi’s eyes brighten and she nearly trips over herself getting to the other side of the counter, just as the other employee returns with their pizza. “Thank you, thank you!” she gasps.

Tony almost bursts out laughing at the expression on Pepper’s face. Pepper Potts can stare down a roomful of angry reporters, counter death threats, and command all of Stark Industries, but in the end, she is just as nervous as the fan herself. The negative attention she receives as CEO of Stark Industries is miles away from this glowing praise she is receiving from the young woman standing in front of her.

Ayomi clears her throat. “Um, Mr. Stark, do you think you could…” She holds her phone out to him, already in the camera app.

Tony is, in a word, bewildered. He hasn’t been asked to take someone else’s picture since...well, ever. But nonetheless, he takes the phone and snaps a dozen photos of Pepper and Ayomi. He knows Pepper is beyond ecstatic to have this kind of attention, and that over-the-moon feeling is washing over him, now, too.

God, he loves this woman.

After finally getting the pizza and giving about four goodbye hugs to Ayomi, they head back to Stark Tower. By that time, they are starving, so they devour the pizza in the car.

“Watch the seats, watch the seats!” complains Happy. “I just got those cleaned.”

Pepper and Tony share a knowing look with each other, glancing down guiltily at the pizza sauce smeared on the seat between them. “Oh, yeah, definitely!” Pepper declares, as Tony tries to clean up the mess they’d made. “Seats are fine, Happy; you’ve got nothing to worry about.”

Happy gives a Scroogelike grunt, muttering under his breath. “Yeah, yeah.”

By the time they are back inside, kicking their shoes off, it’s midnight, and they slump in the bed together, Pepper literally groaning with delight. “I wanna go to sleep,” she mumbles into the pillow, “and never wake up again.”

Tony laughs. “Come here, baby, I’ll take your hair down. You don’t want to go to sleep like that.”

He gets a muffled moan in response.

Tony scoots up the bed on his knees. “Come on, Sleepy, turn over.” She flops onto her back, groaning in protest. He lifts her head into his lap so he can remove the bobby pins, one by one. “Wanna watch a movie?”

“Yeah,” she mumbles. “Something without people.”

“What, a nature documentary?” He plucks another pin out and tosses it on the nightstand.

Her eyes are still closed. “No… A cartoon. Something with little animals…”

Tony smirks. “A Disney movie? I’ve got just the thing.”

Before long, Finding Nemo is playing on the screen, and they’ve stripped out of their restricting gala outfits and into T-shirts, curled beneath the covers.

The best thing about their relationship is that it’s entirely beyond the physical, nothing like Tony’s previous relationships. Before Pepper, his dating pool had been entirely based on physical beauty and social status, even attainability, but not mutual compatibility. Obviously he’s attracted to Pepper, but it goes so far beyond that. With Pepper, he’s more himself then he’s ever been. He can watch dumb Disney movies with her, he can eat pizza at midnight with her, he can cry in front of her… He doesn’t need to impress her, and she doesn’t need to impress him. They know each other too well.

“He’s kinda like you,” Pepper mutters, yawning.

Tony snaps back to the present. “What? Who?”

Pepper looks so beautiful now, the ends of her mouth twitching into an amused smile. “The dad fish… What’s his name again? Merlin? Marlin?” She yawns again. “He loves his damn kid so much…”

Tony combs his fingers through her hair. “Pep, we don’t have a kid. That doesn’t—”

“Peter,” she interrupts, “is Nemo. Does something dumb, the world implodes on him, and eventually you’re there to save him.”

“Well, I don’t think—”

“Last December,” she continues, her eyes still closed, “you took him to see Hamilton with us.”

Tony snorts. “He’d been listening to the soundtrack nonstop! What was I supposed to do?”

“In March,” she says, ignoring him, “when he got shot in that robbery, you made him stay in the Medbay for the whole day, and you didn’t let him patrol for a week, even though it’d fully healed by the second day.”

“His body was still recovering!” Tony protests. “And—”

“Once a month, you take him to your favorite sandwich place.” She is sitting up now, blinking groggily at him.

“What’s so bad about that?”

Pepper rubs her eyes. “You only ever take me there, dumbass. Or Rhodey. You’ve never even mentioned it to Happy or anyone else.”

Tony’s face flushes pink. “Well, I mean, it’s personal, knowing that, and, uh—”

And still Pepper rattles on. “You let him pick the music in the car, you brought his lunch to school when he forgot it, you left an important meeting so you could go to his decathlon meet, you went out for ice cream with him when he had a fight with his friend, you always ask how he is, you’re always checking with his AI to make sure he’s okay, you—”

“Okay, okay!” Tony huffs. “You’re right, fine. It’s just like… If I had a kid, I’d want him to be like Pete, you know?” He sinks his face with the nearest pillow, groaning.

Pepper laughs beside him; what a privilege, he thinks suddenly, it is to hear Pepper Potts laugh. “Baby, Peter’s already your kid. You’re just too thick headed to see it. He’s here at least twice a week, Tony.”

Tony mumbles a fragmented response into the pillow. Pepper snakes an arm around his side, “C’mere,” she says, pulling him closer. “I’m cold.”

Tony welcomes her presence at his side; she snuggles into him, pressing her cold toes against his bare calf— “God, fuck, Pepper, your feet are like ice! Keep those things to yourself, Elsa!”

Drowsy, she giggles a little, clasping onto him tighter. He follows her freckled arm around his torso to hold her hand, and he turns onto his side so that her chest is pressed against his back. This is how they usually cuddle: Tony, the little spoon, and Pepper, the big spoon.

Pepper falls asleep first, snoring lightly against his chest. Their legs are intertwined, and Tony’s sure he’ll wake up with his feet asleep if he stays like this, so he gently shifts, untangling their limbs. In the background, Finding Nemo plays, and he mutes it with a quiet order to FRIDAY. As he watches, Marlin tries to convince the leader of a school of moonfish to tell him how to get to his son.

If I lost Peter, Tony thinks, I’d be a lot better at finding him than this dumb fish. Satisfied, he turns the television off and burrows beneath the covers, watching Pepper’s chest rise and fall in a deep sleep. What did he do to deserve a woman as amazing as her? He smiles to himself, closing his eyes. What did he do to deserve a kid as great as Peter?

Before long, he is snoring, too, slipping into the peaceful realm of sleep with his fiancée at his side.

SATURDAY, APRIL 7 — 2:04 AM

Scott’s wrists spike with pain, and he pauses to rub them, the action made awkward by the handcuffs locked around them. He’s not in the Chair anymore—he’s in a hard chair before a metal table, set with a laptop and other computer supplies. He’s got more freedom now, at least; his arms and legs are cuffed, but they aren’t attached to the chair so that he has enough freedom to work. It’s odd to him that the crushing pain of his mutilated legs has faded with the mission before him, fueled by his mind, the computer, and his throbbing hands. Well, they gave him a little painkiller a few hours ago, too, solely because he was too delirious with pain to work, so that helps. And they added some adrenaline to the mix, so Scott is wide awake. Charlie or American Psycho or whoever was right: the only thing Scott needs is his head and his hands.

Three times since he first arrived here, he has heard his little girl scream. It’s not anything like the false screeches in horror movies or Cassie’s usual happy squeals. It’s the sound of pain, horrific agony coursing through the air, and it’s so violent and terrible and sickening that when Scott hears it he can barely breathe.

The worst part about it is that he can’t see her, but he knows that’s her voice. He knows better than almost anyone on the planet what Cassie sounds like, even if it’s just a whimper or a sob. That’s his daughter. He can’t touch her, can’t hold her, can’t tell her a joke, can’t sing her a lullaby… It’s agonizing. Forget his legs—it’s like an entire chunk of his heart has been torn from his chest.

Scott knows there’s only one way to get Cassie out of here: doing what he’s told. Even if it means breaking dozens of laws and putting others in danger, he’ll do anything if it means that they’ll stop hurting Cassie. He never used to understand the blind, ultra-sacrificial love that parents held for their children when he was younger, but after he learned that Maggie was pregnant, he knew. He knew that he would do anything to protect his child.

Just knowing that Cassie is in pain now is putting his heart through a meat grinder; he types faster, clicking and hacking and typing until his fingers are a blur at the keyboard.

At the sound of the door at the end of the hallway, Scott jumps; he can’t help it. Last time that door opened, that sick fuck, Renee, came through with his little girl. This time, he listens hard, typing faster than ever. If he shows any sign of slacking, they’ll make Cassie scream again. And he’ll do anything in the world to not hear that sound ever again.

It’s not Renee, Charlie, or Mason—his three main captors are busy getting high on the other side of the place—warehouse? Base? Building? Lair? He realizes quite suddenly that he has no idea where he is. He could be in a cave, for all he knows. There’s no windows, not that he can see, and the cold air seeping through the vents does nothing but tell him that they’ve got air conditioning.

There’s an almost eerie silence following the opening of the door, and then a thump, the all-too-familiar sound of a body hitting the ground, and fear prickles down Scott’s back. What if they caught another one of his loved ones: Maggie, Hope, Hank, or even Jim? The fear that overcomes him in that moment drains him of his energy. He’s barely clinging on to his composure as it is, but this… Then, vaguely, he remembers the first thing he was asked to do: hack into Tony Stark’s computer system and locate what Stark designated as “SKM7.” Scott discovered several hours ago that SKM7 was a moving target, which he found to be strange, but he figured it was a vehicle or Stark-created piece of technology. There’d been nothing in the files he’d hacked about SKM7 stating that it could be a person.

As the door to the room swings open and two of Charlie’s black-clothed guys drag a limp form between them, Scott understands with violent precision: SKM7 is a person. By the look of him, a young person. “No, no, no,” Scott croaks, panic splitting him. “No, no…”

Then there’s Charlie, leaning on the doorframe like he’s just won the Olympics, and high as a fucking kite. He grins at Scott, and poorly masked aggression pours over his body. “Put him in the chair,” Charlie announced, his words a little slurred. “Now.”

As they lock him into the Chair, the one he was in only hours earlier, Scott’s horror augments. SKM7 is a pale teen with brown hair; his head is completely slack, as the men strap him in, and his eyes are closed. One of the men pushes his head back and checks his eyes for any sign of consciousness. Nothing. It’s unnerving how limp he is, like a rag doll. He’s a wiry kid, a little muscle on bones, and he’s got a wide face peppered with bruises. He’s wearing a Star Wars hoodie, a bright blue one with “Trust me, I’m a Jedi” printed across the front, but the sleeves, as well as his hands, are spattered with blood. Probably fourteen or fifteen, this kid… His youth is obvious in everything about him: his neon green shoes, his sweatshirt, his oddly colored jeans, his hair… He’s even got a math formula scribbled across the back of his hand. And the fact that he’s unconscious, bloodied, and locked to the Chair by his wrists, ankles, and torso makes everything worse. “He’s…” Scott gasps, and Charlie’s smile only widens. “He’s just a kid. You made me track down a… a… teenager? So you could kidnap him, too?”

Charlie shrugs. As he stalks towards Scott, every step threatening, Scott feels every hair on his body stand on end; his body screams, Danger! Danger! Get out! “Thanks, Lang,” Charlie says, ignoring the fact that there’s an unconscious fifteen-year-old behind them. “You did great.” He raises his hand—no, no, fuck, no, he can’t take any more, he’ll break—and claps Scott heartily on the shoulder. “I should give you a raise.” He chuckles to himself.

Scott’s blood boils, and he tries to swallow the fury rising in his throat, but he can’t— “So kidnapping a seven-year-old wasn’t good enough for you? You had to get a fifteen-year-old, too? What the hell?”

“He’s sixteen,” Charlie snaps; his expression before was tight, like he trapped all his anger inside of his mouth, but now it’s exploded all over his face. “And this was all necessary, you dumb fuck. I don’t go around kidnapping kids for fun.”

“Could’ve fooled me,” Scott growls, and Charlie hits him so hard that he sees stars.

“Don’t forget” —Charlie’s face glistens with sweat, and his eyes narrow— “that’s your pretty little seven-year-old I’ve got here. Next time you talk to me like that, I’ll take off one of her fingers, how’d you like that?”

Scott’s eyes widen, and his mouth bubbles up with blood and frantic pleas; Charlie backs away from him, muttering in disgust. “P-please, d-d-don’t—”

“You’ve got a new job, Lang,” interrupts Charlie, moving to stand beside Renee. He curls an arm around her shoulders, and she smirks. “If you do it right, your brat will be just fine.” Charlie smiles with his teeth this time, and Scott can see the drugged high leak into his too-wide grin. “With your help, we’re gonna change the world.”

SATURDAY, APRIL 7 — 2:46 AM

The door opens with a bang that seems to shake the room, and Tony jumps to his feet. Instinctually, he grabs his watch, slamming his fingers to the activation button that transforms it from a wristwatch to an Iron Man Gauntlet, raising his arm to—

“Peter?” says Pepper. She’s standing, too, but her hands are held out in comfort instead of aggression, her eyes trained on the figure who has now entered the room.

It’s Peter, there’s no denying. He’s drenched from head to toe; his brown hair is plastered against his forehead and his red hoodie is now a wet shade of scarlet. His jeans cling to his skinny legs. There’s a blend of blood and water on his forehead, and he’s shaking, trembling like a wet leaf, his chest heaving.

Immediately, Tony transforms his gauntlet back into a watch and approaches the kid carefully. He’s never seen Peter like this before—terrified, panicking, anxious—and it chills him to the bone. He’s shivering now, breathing hard, but the air whistles through his throat in a dry whine. “Kid?” he calls out, taking a careful step forward. Peter’s hands are on his head now, fisting tightly in his dark hair as though he’s about to tear it from the roots. His eyes are blown with panic, darting around, and he won’t focus on Tony. “Kid, look at me.” Tony locks eyes with Pepper; her expression betrays the concern and fear that he feels. “Peter.” Nothing. He tries again. “Pete, kiddo, it’s me. What happened?”

Pepper moves forward, reaching out towards the kid, and alarm bells crash through Tony’s head. “Don’t,” Tony snaps, startling even himself with his bluntness, and Pepper immediately stops. Tony knows better than anyone what being mentally absent means for someone with superpowers; he doesn’t need another Bucky Barnes on his hands.

After Peter’s arms finally drop, and his gaze lifts to Tony’s, the whole world seems to stop. “M-Mr. Stark?”

Tony’s shoulders slump in relief, and he takes another step towards Peter, still cautious. “Yeah, it’s me. You okay, kiddo?”

Peter presses his palm against his forehead, looking a little shocked when it comes back bloody. “Yeah, I just…”

Tony has never felt this worried before; anxiety cuts through him, hot and sharp. What happened to his kid? “Are you okay?” A million questions collide in his mind. Who did this to you? What could scare you like this?

But he chokes them all down as Peter stammers, staring at the newfound blood stemming from his head. “I’m bleeding…”

Fuck, this can’t be good. Something is wrong, gut-wrenchingly so, and Tony knows it. Peter can barely recognize the pain he is in, let alone the fact that he is bleeding, soaking wet, and standing in the middle of Tony’s kitchen. “Let’s sit down, okay, kiddo?” By the time Peter blinks in confused recognition, Tony has moved all the way to the kid, scanning him for further injury and guiding him to the kitchen table by placing a hand on his back—

Peter jerks away from him so violently that even Pepper startles, and the kid transforms from mentally absent to a terrified mess, his body vibrating in fear. But instead of attacking with his webshooters or hyper-reflexes like Tony expected, he curls in on himself, squeezing his eyes shut. What the hell? This is not the result of combat trauma or too much time in the field. This… This is something deeper, darker, sourced in something more sinister than Tony originally thought. “Okay, okay,” says Tony, thinking fuck, fuck, what the hell is happening— “You’re okay, Pete, you’re just fine; no touching, okay? I got it, I won’t touch you, you’re safe...”

He continues talking, coaxing Peter into at least a sliver of safety, until finally Peter opens his eyes again, gasping, “So-sorry, Mr. Stark, I’m sorry…” He looks pale, too pale, and it’s now that Tony realizes his lips are blue. Fucking blue.

Tony’s heart twists violently. “You’re okay, kid, there’s nothing for you to be sorry for.” Tony’s left arm is throbbing now, that dull ache that always resounds when his anxiety spikes, and he tries to control the flutter of panic in his chest. “J-just come over here, okay? We’ll sit by the fire, you can warm up a little—you’re looking a little cold, Pete.”

Peter wraps his arm around himself as if suddenly noticing the fact that his teeth are chattering; glancing nervously at Tony, he nods slowly, following the man to the fireplace at the other end of the room. “FRIDAY,” says Tony, trying to stay calm for the sake of the kid, “turn up the heat, please.”

Thankfully, FRIDAY remains silent in her obedience, avoiding possibly startling the kid. Tony turns around to share a worried look with Pepper, then faces the kid again. Peter’s relaxing a little in the warmth of the fire, and before he knows it, Pepper’s beside him, holding out a blanket and a fresh change of clothes: Tony’s sweatshirt and a pair of sweatpants Peter had left with them weeks ago. “Peter, honey?” she says, her voice gentle. “I brought you some dry clothes, do you want to—”

“No,” Peter croaks, suddenly tense again. “No.”

Peter’s clothes are dripping wet, and Tony knows how hypothermia works. He has to get him out of those wet clothes. “Kid?” he says, worry lacing his features. “You wanna take off your hoodie, at least, change into somethi—”

“No!” This time, Peter’s response is frantic, almost wild, and Tony immediately regrets his suggestion. “No, p-please—”

Horror flashes through Tony’s head; everything comes to a screeching halt. Please. It’s just one word, but it’s enough for Tony to know that something bad happened to his kid, something that brought Peter to such a point of suffering that he begged for it to stop. Tony wants to help him, to hug him, to hold him and tell him everything’s gonna be okay, but he can’t. Peter won’t let him touch him, and Tony’s not planning on violating his kid’s personal space when he’s scared. Tony’s not Howard; he won’t do that to Peter. Only one question flashes through his mind, burning hot: who hurt Peter? This whole situation is fucking terrifying Tony, and dark thoughts needle at the back of his mind, poking sharply—don’t be stupid, Tony, you know the symptoms, you know what happened to him, why else would he be so scared of taking off his clothes—and Tony’s hands clench into horrified, tense fists. No. Not Peter. No. He refuses to believe that. It’s too horrible to think about.

The kid shivers, his teeth clacking like typewriter keys.

Tony doesn’t want to force the kid to do anything, not in this fragile state, but he’s becoming seriously anxious about Peter’s physical health. He has to focus on something he can fix, and right now, Tony can help Peter stay healthy. “FRIDAY,” he orders, as Peter takes the blanket and wraps it around himself with trembling hands, “Peter’s vitals, please.”

“Peter is currently experiencing a body temperature of 96 degrees, sir,” she responds carefully, “and rising. His heart rate is elevated. Otherwise, vitals are normal. He is in no immediate danger, but his brain waves signal significant distress.”

Peter doesn’t even look up at the sound of the familiar AI. He just stands by the fire, shivering. Tony feels like there are two spools of thread tightening around his lungs, one tugging him towards Peter to comfort him, the other yanking him away, reminding him of the expression of absolute fear on Peter’s face when Tony touched him earlier. Tony gulps and presses the palm of his hand against his quickening heart. He has to help him. Although FRIDAY told him that Peter’s life isn’t in danger, he can’t keep himself from panicking. Significant distress, he echoes. Significant fucking distress. He’s never been in a situation like this before; Tony knows how to handle aliens, terrorists, and Stark Industries, but not the distraught, trembling, terrified mess of a kid in front of him. His kid, no less.

At the sound of a muffled whimper, Tony’s head snaps up to find Peter Parker sobbing, snot and tears and all, into his hands, his shoulders quaking. Peter Parker, this fucking invincible kid that he loves so much, crumples like a tin can without warning, collapsing to his knees.

And Tony can’t do anything about it. He can’t even touch Peter. Instead, he kneels beside the kid, whispering comforting phrases to him, things he would want to hear if he was having a breakdown. “Hey, kiddo, you’re okay, you’ll be okay… You’re safe with me, just breathe, Pete, you’re gonna be fine...”

If this was a Lifetime movie, Peter would be hugging Tony now, embracing him like a son would do to a father, and he would tell him everything. Then he and Peter would ride off into the sunset, vowing to chase down the bad guy and lock him up for life.

But this isn’t a movie. This is reality. So instead, Tony watches in anxious helplessness as his kid sobs, curling himself into a tight, lonely ball of shame before him. There is no sarcastic bravado or odd humor left in the boy: only Peter, his soul laid vulnerable before Tony’s eyes—

—and Tony is gasping, straining for breath, and there’s a hand on his back, rubbing soothingly. “Bad dream, baby?”

Tony is still grappling with the fact that his heart is racing at a million miles an hour, and it takes him a moment to realize that Pepper is sitting up with him, trying to comfort him.

And the thing is, it wasn’t a nightmare. That moment had been all too real. Peter had arrived without any warning on a cold, rainy day in March, dangerously quiet and unable to be touched without a violent reaction. Tony’s anxiety had never taken such a drastic turn. In the end, Pepper and Tony discovered, through broken sentences and lost whispers, that a man who Peter had known as a child, was back on the streets of Queens. His name is Skip, Peter had said, his voice deadly quiet, and I never… I didn’t think I’d ever have to see him again. They weren’t able to get anything else out of him, and after that he’d come back the next week like nothing had happened, laughing like he hadn’t been sobbing on the floor of Tony’s kitchen only seven days prior.

That was, by far, the worst moment of Tony’s parenthood, if he could call it that. Watching his kid suffer like that… Being completely unable to help him was like being set on fire.

Tony is calmer now, and Pepper’s hand is over his chest, making sure that his heartbeat slows down to normal. “You okay?” she asks, watching his expression carefully.

Tony’s left arm aches, and he grabs it subconsciously, rubbing his throbbing wrist. He doesn’t bother lying to Pepper; she knows him too well. “I dreamed about Peter,” he explains. If he wasn’t still reeling from the vivid dream, he would have cracked a joke about Finding Nemo and Pepper’s persistent fatherhood quips, but he’s too drained at the moment to do any of that.

“About what happened in March?” she suggests, giving him a knowing look.

Tony nods, dabbing at the sweat on his forehead.

“Do you want to… Do you want to talk about it?”

“No…” He swung his legs over the side of the bed. “I’m just gonna go to the lab, get my mind off of things.” He picks up the clock: 2:57 AM. “Oh, shit, Pepper, I’m sorry for waking you up, I know you have to go at like five, I didn’t mean—”

“Hey,” she says with a smile, tapping a finger against his chin, “you know what I always say. You can’t be sorry for things you can’t control, Tony. And you can’t control having a bad dream, right?”

That tightness in his chest loosens at her words, and he takes her hand, bringing it to his lips. He mumbles a “right” against her knuckles.

After Pepper crawls back into bed, Tony pulls on a sweatshirt, some plaid pants, and a pair of flip-flops before heading downstairs. Since his mansion was destroyed in 2012, he moved into Stark Tower; it became the height of his technological prowess and intellectual ability, but after it was compromised several times (and after returning them only reminded him of the broken pieces of the former Avengers team), he sold the Tower and moved into the new Avengers facility. They’ve constructed it and reconstructed it dozens of times, but finally Tony can call it his home, not just his company property. It’s located in upstate New York, in a stretch of lush land surrounded by trees and water, and there are separate spaces for every use, all connected by winding brick walkways. There’s a massive warehouse for storing equipment (connected to a lab for him to work in), a main building where he and Pepper can do official business, an apartment complex for the Avengers (if, for some reason, they ever got back together), a separate house for him and Pepper, and several other facilities. They’d decided long ago that it was healthier for them to divide Tony’s home life and his work life. He used to spend days in his lab, surviving off of coffee and protein bars to finish projects, but now he almost always sleeps in bed with Pepper unless one of them is gone on a work trip. It’s new, specifically for Tony, to have a home that doesn’t belong to Stark Industries, and it’s life-changing. He spends time with his family now, just watching movies with Rhodey and cooking with Pepper and playing dumb video games that Peter shows him, just because he can.

Now, he walks from his house to his lab; the grass is damp, tickling the sides of his feet. The moist air is refreshing, and his head is almost cleared in the five-minute walk to the workshop.

Inside is his refuge: tables upon tables of machine parts, chemical compounds, and computers. He can stay in here for hours at a time, simply tinkering. Tony settles down at one of the worktables, immediately picking up one of his in-progress works: the gunfire sensory system that he and Peter had been creating the night before. He fiddles around with it for a while; giving himself something technological to do usually helps him out of a funk. But even editing the code on Project Kevlar can’t distract him. Not when he’s thinking about Peter.

He contemplates calling Peter, just to make sure he’s okay, but it’s still three in the morning. Besides, Peter barely sleeps as it is without early morning phone calls from his mentor.

So instead, he pops an earpiece into his left ear and orders FRIDAY to call Rhodey.

It takes five calls to reach him. “Tony, it’s three fifteen.” His voice is a low, tired growl.

Tony relaxes in his chair. “I do have a clock,” he quips, but his voice is shaky. “Just couldn’t sleep, Rhodey.”

A series of shuffles. “Are you okay?”

His head throbs. “Just peachy, Mom. Tell me a joke.” Pepper would’ve made him talk about it, to his therapist or to her, but Rhodey always tries to cheer him up instead. It’s the best thing about him; Rhodey knows that Tony’s a fucked up guy, but when they’re together, Tony feels normal.

Rhodey, detecting that familiar, anxious quiver in his voice, doesn’t question Tony’s request. He starts telling a funny story about a cadet and a dog, and Tony loses himself in it, wanting to think of anything else. Rhodey talks until Tony’s mind is numb, disconnected from his nightmare. “...don’t you think, Tony?”

Tony laughs weakly. “You know, your jokes really don’t get better with age.”

“Think so? Bet you couldn’t tell one better.”

“Rhodey, at least when I tell a story, people don’t start snoring after the first—”

A wild screech shakes his eardrums, so violent and fucking loud that his whole body goes taut like a bowstring, going painfully rigid in a failed attempt to escape the sound—

—pain hammers his head, but it’s only a vague afterthought compared to the horrible fucking sound quaking his brain like a speaker on steroids, like an MMA fighter shaking a rag doll—

—colors flashing above him, pale blue and strawberry blonde; his brain is melting, exploding in sound, he can’t breathe, he can’t think, he can’t—

—it dies to a dull roar, and Tony’s whole body uncoils as he comes back to his senses. His cheek against cold floor, thin fingers prying his hands away from his ears, two overlapping voices calling his name—

He can still feel the sound there, like his head’s been filled with a thousand rubber hammers, and somehow he manages to uncoil himself and focus on the woman in front of him. Pepper. “Tony! Tony, look at me!” He blinks; a high-pitched whine oscillates in his eardrums, and he sways with the noise as he tries to right himself.

There’s a sound in his left ear, another voice. “Tony? What’s going on? Can you hear me? Tony!”

He swallows, for the first time since the noise began, and the action itself feels painful. He blinks (once, twice, three times), and finally he can see Pepper in front of him, trying to meet his wandering gaze. “Fuck” is the first thing he says, through gritted teeth. “My head…” He shifts, trying to sit up.

“Don’t get up, Tony,” she warns, pushing him back down. “Just take a second.”

He reaches up and touches his left ear, where the earpiece is still lodged. “Tony?” Rhodey prompts.

“Yeah…” Tony winces. He can barely hear his own voice. “I’m fine, I’ll call you back.” He clicks the end button on the earpiece and pulls it out, still stunned.

As he comes back to his senses, Pepper starts to explain, saying that FRIDAY had been compromised and set off a blaring alarm once her systems recognized an intruder. “That thing in your ear,” she says, picking it up, “played the sound a little too loud.”

Tony nearly laughs out loud. Here he thought that he was going crazy, that he was suffering for all those weapons he’d fired, but it had just been FRIDAY’s odd alarm system. He groans, the ringing in his head now a dull whine. “FRIDAY, what happened? Compromised?”

His lovely AI responds only with unnerving silence. Pepper helps Tony into a sitting position, examining his ear. “Yeah, Tony,” she states, “FRIDAY hasn’t been responding. Not since the alarm went off.”

“Then how’d you turn it off?” he asks, confused.

Pepper shrugs. “You’re the artificial intelligence guru; she just turned off, and she hasn’t said anything since.”

Usually, Tony would be annoyed that FRIDAY had simply shut down like this, but it’s a well-received distraction from the Peter-heavy thoughts buzzing in his head. “Well, I guess I’ve got a job to do, then.”

Once Pepper ensures that Tony is okay, save a little hearing loss, she heads out for her next meeting, one with a Chinese computer company in Boston. “I should be back by this evening, okay?” She kisses his forehead. “Take care of yourself,” she reminds him. “I know FRIDAY’s a little messed up, but that doesn’t mean you can just forget to eat, okay? I’ll send Happy to check on you around lunch. And get Cho to check out that ear. Don’t do anything stupid.”

Tony, back in his spinning lab chair, turns to look at her. “Stupid? Me? Baby, I would never.”

Pepper smirks at him, but it’s playful, and Tony finds himself still picturing her face even once she’s left the workshop. Despite the fact that it’s almost four in the morning, and there’s a little trickle of blood coming from his ear, he still feels a little safer, just because Pepper is here with him.

SATURDAY, APRIL 7 — 4:12 AM

Peter’s mouth is a bitter handful of acidic soap, leaking down his throat and churning in his stomach. There’s a horrible pain in his lower abdomen, spreading wide inside of him, and every inch of his skin buzzes with paralysis. His limbs are heavy; his bones must be made of steel now—he can’t move them, he can’t move at all.

He forces his eyes open, but his eyelids are heavy, too heavy, and he only recognizes flashes of bland color before they shut again. There’s a voice bouncing around him, one he recognizes, male and tired and scared.

Pain dances through his skull—iron dancers with sharpened heels—and a sound escapes him, something low and guttural. He’s so far from reality that he’s floating, but now he’s sinking back down to Earth. He can feel something cold and bad inside him, and he fights it, shifting and stirring and shaking. He tries to talk, to plead for help, to cry out, but his words tumble out of his mouth like loose marbles, and then the background ramblings of the familiar voice stop, overlapped by newer, sharper voices.

“He’s…”

Peter’s hair tugged to pull his head back. Hands on his face.

“Watch…”

Exhaustion washing over him. Cold fingers prying at his eyes, open, open, open.

“…but already…would…dangerous…”

Someone fumbling at his sleeve, ripping. A foreign voice in his ear.

“Doesn’t matter…give…more…”

A pinch inside of his elbow. The world tilting before his half-closed eyes. A rush of cold, and then everything is blurry.

“…going…”

Peter’s eyes roll into the back of his head, and jagged darkness swallows him.