someday (i'll make it out of here)

ONE

MONTH

LATER

WEDNESDAY, MAY 9 — 1:04 PM

“Give me the update.”

“Yeah, uh… That shit’s broken.”

“Broken? He just sent you the new one.”

“Yeah… The prototype he sent us last week—didn’t work, man. We tried it on like...deer and shit, but it’s just like a blast with some blue light. Nothing like what you told me. Just injures ‘em kinda bad.”

“But he’s got everything he needs , right? You’ve been giving him the supplies?”

“Well, yeah—”

“Then what’s the problem?” A frustrated sigh. “You’ve had him under lock and key for a fucking month , Keene. And you’re telling me he couldn’t make one little weapon in all this time when he does it for a living?”

“I mean—I’m doin’ my best—he’s motivated, that’s for fucking sure. Sends a new gun every week. This one was better than the last one—”

“—and no better than any weapon the army possesses. You’re not getting supplied for nothing, Keene. I don’t have time for you to sit around getting high while people start poking around in Stark’s life. Pick up the pace or I’ll cut you off!”

“No—no—we’re making real progress, good progress, you got nothing to worry about, sir—yeah? Keep giving us our shit, and we’ll keep doing what you want. We—uh—we just sent someone over to him to pick up the next prototype today. We’re gonna test that one as soon as it gets here.”

“Fine—that’s fine. I’ll call again later. Don’t let me down.”

“Yes, sir.”

WEDNESDAY, MAY 9 — 2:07 PM

Everything is blurry, the world slurred before his eyes. His mouth tastes like syrupy sleep and he can’t find the strength to sit up. He’s in the lab, he knows, because the floor is cold and smooth and gray. How long has he been here? A migraine builds behind his eyes, and he presses a palm to his left temple, trying to ease it. It comes back in pieces—Peter’s tired, bloody face, a high-pitched screeching, a little girl’s crying. A hammer. A knife. A wire.

The guilt floods in. “Peter,” he chokes out, and the room comes into focus. Weapons parts litter the floor, glimmering in the hazy, fluorescent light. A half-made gun— fuck, he remembers now, through the aching, pulsing in his head. He was building it for him. For Charlie. So that he could get Peter back home safe and sound. The guilt inside of him grows more, swelling into a rancid pit. There are blueprints covered in crossed-out ideas and hastily written formulas scattered over his desk, and DUM-E whirs nervously in the corner, organizing and reorganizing a set of tools.

He’s on his side, sprawled about between a few attempted power sources and a stack of scratch paper. Propping himself up with weakened arms, he sits up. 

He’s alone.

Tony’s never felt so alone. He must’ve passed out at some point, but he can’t remember when. Is that normal? He doesn’t sleep, not now, not with Peter on the line, not unless his body collapses and his mind gives out. He’s never worked this hard before. Even when he was trapped in that cave in Afghanistan when he resigned himself to build or die. This is different–this is his kid , and that brings out a whole other universe of pain, a thousand times worse than being waterboarded. Seeing Peter in pain is a kind of all-consuming, world-ending suffering that keeps him up all day and night, just working.

Tony’s made three prototypes in the month he’s been given. He struggles to his feet, grabbing the lab table beside him for support; before he can stand, his weakened legs buckle beneath him. With a cry, he falls down again, but a robotic arm catches him. It’s U, his other hydraulic arm, and it whirs worriedly at him. “Thanks, buddy,” he croaks. His head is spinning. “Take me...over there.” He gestures vaguely to the couch nearest to him. U takes his arm gently, as though it knows just how fragile he is, and rolls slowly where directed. Tony leans on the robot and tries to catch his breath. He’s not hungry, just nauseous, but he knows he needs to eat something. God knows how long he was passed out like that. Hours? Days? What if he missed a chance to see Peter again?

U settles Tony in the middle of the couch, where he collapses with a gasp. Sometimes, he forgets how old he is—right now, he feels every bit of forty-eight years old, or maybe twenty years older. “Thanks. You always...got my back. Think you could hand me the prototype? And...some water?” U picks up a half-empty glass of water and rolls over to him, whirring excitedly at his findings, and then moves on to find the weapon. Where did he put it? Spotting it on the floor, a few screws loose, he knows he must’ve dropped it when he passed out. It turns around, looking for the weapon. “Look down, buddy. Be careful.” Amused, Tony watches as U stares confusedly at the fallen object. “I know… It’s been a while since I’ve made stuff like that, hm? Well… Not my idea.” His robots—one of which is clearly confused by the situation and keeps reorganizing the entire workshop—are his only form of social interaction in this hell outside of Charlie’s phone calls, and he’s so, so grateful for it. “I don’t know what I’d do without you idiots,” he says, gulping down the water U gave him. “You keep me…” He finds himself thinking of Pepper again. “...sane.” The way her hair smells, the way she’d wrinkle her nose every time he opened a bag of Doritos. That’s disgusting, she’d comment. Take it somewhere else or I swear I’m kicking you out of the house.

They’re Doritos! he’d protest.

She’d move across the room, laughing, mock-coughing, and covering her nose. They’re awful—oh my god, I can smell them from here! When did you even have time to get those?

Well, he’d start, crunching on another chip, there are these wonderful contraptions called vending machines in the main building—

Ugh! Take them out of here, Tony—or I’ll empty every vending machine I see, I swear to God!

Fine, fine! He’d wrap up the bag. I’ll save it for later. For now…  He’d come at her for a kiss, and she’d squeal, running away.

No! Ohmygod—those damn Doritos—hey! No! Not until you brush your teeth— She’d fake gag. I’m gonna sue the CEO of Doritos if you don’t— They’d chase each other around the kitchen, laughing and screaming and running until Happy came in asking what was wrong.

He shakes his throbbing head, ridding himself of the intrusive memory. She could never forgive for how he hurt her; she’s not coming to save him. “No…” he croaks, remembering what he did to her. He can’t stop thinking about it—the look of raw betrayal on her face, the tingling in his right palm, tears welling up that she blinked away. It replays in his head, over and over. “How could I hurt you, honey, how could I…” His face is wet again, tears slipping down his face, as poisonous guilt seeps into him. “I had to—” he chokes out, and then he’s sobbing. He’s still exhausted, so the tears come easy, spilling as a tidal wave of shame hits him, and he crumples, pressing his hands over his face in the hopes that it’ll all go away. He wishes he could fucking erase it all—start over from when he first met Peter, from when he first told Pepper he loved her, from when he first realized he’d made a family for himself. “God—I’m so fucking sorry!” His throat is thick with sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry , and his breath hitches each time he tries to calm down. He fucking hates himself for what he’s done. Because of him, Peter’s in pain, and Pepper thinks he hates her. He claws at his hair and his neck, and that horrific feeling of shame congeals over his skin, making him want to scream.

This whole month has been like a nightmare he can’t shake. Every time he passes out, he wakes up thinking it’s over and is forced back into the realization that he’s in hell. Day after day after day of watching his kid tortured, of so little sleep that he sees double sometimes, that he hears voices pinging off the walls…

The doorbell is ringing, beeping incessantly, and icy fear kicks him in the gut. How long has that been going on? How did he miss it? He pulls himself up, but it’s difficult; his body is stiffened from his stint of unconsciousness, so he calls U over, and the one-armed robot helps him to the door. It’s Sunday, he remembers, and that means they’ve sent that black girl to the lab to give him his supplies and collect his latest prototype. His latest model, one using a different firing mechanism,  is nowhere near ready. (Honestly, he doesn’t know if he’ll ever be able to make a weapon that satisfies Charlie’s needs, but he can’t think about that.)

It takes him a couple tries to open the door. His shaky fingers won’t let him push in the passcode. Finally, he manages, and the metal sheet blocking her entry slides out of her way, and the girl waves from the other end. She’s wearing a blue T-shirt and jean shorts, and when she picks up the cardboard box at her feet, she struggles. It must be heavy. Her kinky hair is tied low into twin buns, and she nudges the door open with her foot.

Peter has those shoes, too.

Converse—pink ones. Really? Tony said when he saw the kid wearing them for the first time. Pink?

It’s 2018, Mr. Stark, Peter laughed. He was sitting on one of Tony’s lab tables next to a soldering kit, kicking his legs out and adjusting his goggles with one gloved hand and reaching into a bag of Tostitos with the other. Everyone’s gotta have something pink. Otherwise, you’re, like, supporting the patriarchy. He stretched his legs out so they were closer to Tony, and the kid grinned. I love them.

Tony rolled his eyes. I wasn’t complaining about the color choice, buddy. You don’t have to hound me about deconstructing masculinity, Peter—I own fourteen silk shirts in varying shades of pink and a suit in fuchsia. Sometimes, you just gotta shake things up.

That’s what I think! cried Peter through a mouthful of chips.

No talking with your mouth full—jeez, whoever taught you about toxic masculinity forgot to teach you about table manners, good lord, you’re gonna choke—

Peter just grabbed another handful.

He stares at her shoes, and she ducks his gaze, watching the floor intently. “Um…” she starts, just to fill the silence. “Can I…” Just seeing her sickens him, and he flinches when she comes closer, carrying a cardboard box. “I, uh… I brought you more food. Sorry nothing’s fresh, Charlie doesn’t want us going to grocery stores, you know, too conspicuous or whatever, only McDonald’s drive-thrus, so we just, uh… Nevermind. I’ve got fruit this time, though.” She strains to carry the box, shifting it around in her arms. “I’ve gotta, uh…” She gestures with the hand that’s trapped under the box. 

It’s clear now that she’s trying to get past him, and Tony shuffles back against the wall, watching the whole way, to let her carry it through the hallway and drop it with a clunk onto the nearest table. Every movement she makes is like a stab to the heart; he hates her with a blaze that he can’t quite explain. The girl visits him once a week, every Sunday, mostly in the night or early morning. “Peaches, pineapple, mixed veggies… Oh, yeah, plus more beans.” She sifts through the box, cans clanking as she does. “Enough for the week, I think, but I’m no nutrition expert, you know? I tried to get enough protein, Renee says you need sixty grams of protein a day, and I got real confused, but at least they put it on the label, or I’d be screwed. I did my best, but Charlie said it didn’t matter too much, as long as I got you enough calories to last…” Her voice trails off as she looks up at him again, and as their eyes meet, something in her face changes. He hopes his eyes cut into her; he hopes she knows how much damage she’s done through his glare alone. “Um.” She averts his gaze once, and then her eyes flit right back, staring openly at his face. It must be obvious that he’s been crying, and that he’s a fucking mess, but Tony doesn’t give a fuck. “Are you okay?”

His nostrils flare.  Like a pot of boiling oil dumped over his head, that ripping, tearing anger that’s been inside of him all this time breaks through, and all of a sudden he can’t even breathe. “O-okay?” he garbles, and the word is so twisted in his mouth that he can feel it drip acid onto his tongue. “Y-you’re asking—you—m-me i-if–” He hasn’t talked to anyone face-to-face in weeks (his only social interaction being the girl, who he avoids talking to at all costs), and it shows, because somehow all the words are coming out wrong. 

“Um,” says the girl again. “Sorry. I’ll just keep, um, doing, the…” But she doesn’t move, unable to break their locked eye contact, and Tony’s rage builds. How can she stand her, looking so normal and innocent, when she and her friends do all that shit to his kid?

He wants to tear this girl to fucking shreds—she’s the one who did this, the one who tortured Peter and made his kid scream for him, put him in so much pain that he sobbed even when no one was touching him at all. Without thinking, Tony lunges at her with both hands outstretched, staggering forward with his aching body, blood-tinged fury edging his vision. “Y-y-you did this!” he shouts, and although his voice sounds more like a raspy screech, he means every bit of it.

Startled, the girl ducks his grasp, slipping over stray papers and running to the other side of the lab. “I didn’t do anything!” she yells back.

He barely has any control over his body; he throws himself, all quivering muscles and soured rage, in the direction of that sadistic girl. “Y- you —”

“I’m not like them!” When he comes closer, she bolts again. She’s too fast for him, especially in this state, and he keeps tripping over his own feet and falling into walls. “Stop—stop! I didn’t do it, I promise, I didn’t—” 

“Y-you—how could—you—you—”

“It’s not me, I didn’t hurt him, I’ve never—ah!” She trips over Tony’s prototype and ends up sprawled on the ground, and before Tony can stop himself, he falls, too, his legs stumbling over empty air, and falls only a few feet from her. She can get up again, Tony’s on his way to her, moving frantically, half-crawling and about to grab her, when the fucking phone rings.

Tony stops in his tracks, hand only a foot from the girl’s arm; a chill spirals down his back. She freezes, too, and then scrambles away from him. It keeps ringing, the nauseating sound pulsating through the room, and Tony can feel the blood drain out of his face and gather in his chest, weighing him down. No . The girl doesn’t look victorious or smug, even; in fact, she looks just as scared as he feels. She looks young then, in her wide, scared eyes and her shaking limbs. 

She looks like Peter.

The girl glances in the direction of the phone, swallows, and then looks at him. He doesn’t want to look at the TV or the phone; he shakes his head a little, blinking, and when he gets up, the dizzying world tilts on its axis, and he crashes straight into the nearest table, stomach tightening with dread. The only thing that kept him running was his anger, and now that that’s died in anticipation of another phone call, all he feels is weak. His limbs quiver helplessly, and now he’s floored on his side like he was when he woke up today, crushed by the unspeakable weight of his thoughts. Tony fucked up...badly. What would Charlie do to Peter now that he’d tried to attack the girl? What was he thinking? What, was he going to attack a girl probably the same age as Peter? 

His legs shake; battered shame flushes through him, forming aching stones in his throat and stomach. Now he has to answer for what he’s done, and Peter will pay the price.

He struggles to get back up, and when he does, he has to grip the lab table for support. Tony forces himself to look to the phone, finding not only that the ringing has stopped, but that the girl has picked up the phone and is holding it to her ear. She stares at Tony, and planets cease to orbit in her irises. “Hey,” she says into the receiver, all the while watching Tony with this helpless, conflicted gaze, “it’s me.”

Garbled, angry shouts grate on the other end.

“No, he wasn’t. He—no—I’m fine, I promise. He wasn’t trying to hurt—”

More shouting.

“No—no, don’t do that! You can see him, too, can’t you? He’s on the ground, he’s not, like, a danger to anybody. He’s just sick.” What is she doing? Sweat trickles down his neck and from his armpits as his dread of the situation builds. “No, no, he didn’t. He was just confused. Like, uh, feverish.” She frowns, eyeing the prototype on the floor a few feet from her worn pink Converse. “No! No. Seriously. I think I should stay with him.” Stay with… “He can wait in the car—seriously, I can help him finish the prototype and everything. He’s in no shape to do it by himself.”

Frustrated talking.

“Yeah. No. You can watch the whole time. I’m just trying to help the process, just—” Her eyes meet Tony’s. “I know. Yeah. I will. Yeah.” The corners of her mouth settle into a firm line. “Ok. Got it. Thanks.” Her shoulders fall. “Love you, too. Yeah, I got it. Bye.”

Then she puts the phone back into its cradle like she’s placing a baby in its carrier. 

Instinctually, Tony glances at the TV screen; it’s black, thank God. “Wh-what was that?” Tony manages.

The girl’s gnawing on her lip. “I got you till five.”

“To what?”

“Finish the job.”

WEDNESDAY, MAY 9 — 3:28 AM

Behind his eyes, the world bleeds, white to red to black and back again. Pain bubbles over his skin and drenches him, seeping into his bones like a cold bath. One piece at a time, his senses return to him. He’s laying on his side with his hands folded over his stomach; when he twitches his fingers, blood slides between them. His head swims with pain; maybe Charlie used his hammer again. He strains, but he can’t move without searing pain spiking through his stomach. His memories of the past couple of days are so...blurry. A hammer. A knife. A wire. 

Someone is whimpering in the corner, and he remembers—Cassie. His lips feel numb, but he mumbles, “Cassie?”

Across their shared cell, a little girl curled in a ball stops her crying and sniffles. “Peter?” She can’t crawl, not with her bad hand, but she half-scoots over to him on one hand and two knees until she’s only a foot away from him. Tears glisten in her eyes, shining in the fluorescent light flickering above them. “You wouldn’t wake up,” she whimpers. “I thought—I thought—”

“I’m okay,” he groans. His back hurts, too. Stripes of pain all the way down. “Don’t...worry.”

“You were bleeding so much, Peter!” 

“I know, kiddo. You’ve seen me bleed...before, though, right? I was...fine then, I’ll be...fine...now.” Every word gets more difficult to say, every breath shallower than the last. There’s so much pain piled in his gut that it’s even hard for him to concentrate. “What…” Through the weeks they’ve been here, Cassie and Peter have had to make something of a life for themselves, and part of that means picking up their broken pieces after Charlie and their other captors have had them. Sometimes, that means Cassie relaying the past day to Peter after a particularly hard session with Charlie; sometimes, it means he sings her songs and tells her stories so that she’ll forget that she might not ever see her family again.

He looks down at his stomach, where something went in, probably a knife, down near his right hip. He’s lucky they didn’t hurt Cass that time, but honestly, he can’t remember. It’s all so… slippery in his mind. “They didn’t,” he starts, and when he moves, his muscles scream, so he slumps back to the floor. “...touch you, did they?”

She shakes her head. Her knees stay curled up to her chest, and she sniffs again, upset. “No. Just you.”

He relaxes a little. If there’s nothing he can do here to help Mr. Stark or anyone else, at least he can protect Cassie. She’s only seven, and she doesn’t deserve this. No one does. The top of his jumpsuit is unbuttoned, open wide, and at his stomach is a mass of something; as she moves it to get a better view of his injury, he finds a ratty strips of cloth bundled up against the source of the bleeding. “Can you tell...me what happened?”

Cass looks like she’s gonna start crying again, but she’s become somewhat hardened over the past weeks. “Yeah… Charlie...got you. When you came back, you were bleeding. A lot. I had t’put my stuff on it. And your head was bad, too. Did Charlie use the—the—” She doesn’t have to say it.

“Yeah, Cass. It doesn’t feel” —he winces, nauseous— “too good.”

She scoots closer to where he lies and touches his head gently. They’ve done this many times before; Peter turned it into a game so it’d be easier to remember. It’s called Poke , he said, and when she asked how to play, he explained, If you can see red on my head, then that means there’s something wrong.

But there’s red all ove—

I know, I know… That’s why we’re gonna play, okay?

O-o-okay.

You’re gonna, he continued, take your finger, and gently, gently, you’re gonna poke at my head. Her eyes went wide. And I’m gonna say numbers, from one to ten, and once we get to the highest number I’ll tell you to stop.

Why? she asked, still shaky from seeing the blood on Peter’s head. 

Peter grimaced. Because we’ve gotta figure out where it hurts the most so we can fix it.

Now, Cassie pokes and prods, and Peter tells her how much it hurts. “Two. Three. Four—ah! Seven, seven, okay, that’s it…” 

She knows what to do; she gets water from the sink and rinses out the most painful spot on his head before pressing a bandage to it. “Sorry I didn’t do it before, Peter… You were sleeping.”

“It’s okay... “ he tells her. “You did good… Promise. Really good. Just keep...pressing on it.”

“There’s more blood this time. And more on your tummy, too.” It’s so strange, the way she says it: this time and tummy and Charlie got you. It makes their horror show of a life sound more like a game than a nightmare. 

Peter winces. “I know…” He can’t remember what he did to earn this kind of punishment. His head and limbs are tingly from loss of blood, and when he looks at the wound, removing Cassie’s balled-up bandages, it’s a severe gash. He’s no doctor, but he’s seen enough Supernatural to know what counts as deadly, and this one’s awfully close. Charlie tends to save his more extreme methods for days when either Peter or Mr. Stark has done something to warrant it. So what happened? “Can you go over...to the Treasure Chest...Cass?”

She nods, crawling back over to their Treasure Chest. Cassie insisted they call it that, even though, as a dented metal bucket bolted into the floor, it looked nothing like a treasure chest. However, it does contain every good thing they currently possess, mostly the little things slipped in with their food by those who took pity on them. Gauze. Candy. Advil. Bandages. Needle and thread. Stickers. Children’s Tylenol. Disinfectant. Mostly, it comes from the one who gives them their food every day: Ava.

She’s the only person in this place who doesn’t treat them like absolute shit. She’s an addict like the rest, that’s for sure, but she always slips little gifts in with their food. Toothpaste. Soap. Medicine. Snacks. He doesn’t know where she gets all of it, but it’s clear that she’s a little like them. There’s this pain that patters behind her eyes, but it’s the pain of a victim, not an aggressor. Her steps are hesitant, not angry like Charlie’s. They always know when she’s coming. Ava gives them the blessing of cavity-free teeth, lessened pain, and full stomachs on those wonderful, random days.

They keep all of their special treats in what Cassie named their ‘treasure chest.’ In it, they put the toys from their Happy Meals, the medicine, the reused bandages, and all of the other gifts they’ve been given. They only open it when they absolutely need to, because their supplies are worryingly limited. “What should I get?” the little girl asks. 

“The blue bottle” —he automatically moves to point, but sorely regrets it as pain rocks his entire torso, hissing sharply— “and the needle...stuff. See it?”

There’s not much to rifle through in the Treasure Chest, so, as Peter expects, she says, “Um, yeah.”

“...good.”

The past month in this place has been like hell. They tend to stay away from Cassie, which is good, but the people who are holding them captive don’t care very much how they’re keeping two kids alive. They eat McDonald’s three times a day unless Ava gives them something else, and it’s not enough for Peter’s fast metabolism (something he’s yelled through the food slot when the hunger pangs sift through his head and squeeze into his belly in mad desperation), but he has to deal with it. Three Happy Meals a day. That’s it. That’s all they get. Each one comes with a toy, which is one of their few blessings in this place, so inside their Treasure Chest is quite a collection of different toys from their first month here—toys with National Geographic Kids imprinted on the bottom, mostly, tigers and frogs and stingrays. He was never one of those animal-obsessed kids—he’d always say his favorite animal was a dog, but Cassie knows them all by heart. That’s a bottlenose dolphin, she told him, holding out the plush toy to him with a smile. 

Yeah? he asked, because Cassie doesn’t smile a lot these days, what do they do?

Cassie’s smile grew even bigger. They’re like porpoises! But they’re… She can talk about animals for hours on end (sometimes, she does), and Peter never grows tired of it. It’s hard to keep his hopes up these days, especially with the extensive damage to his body and their failed escape attempts.

However, as they moved into May, their Happy meals stopped coming with animals and instead came with miniature games wrapped in plastic. Hungry, Hungry Hippos and Connect 4 and other things. Cassie was hesitant at first, but she quickly realized it meant they could play games that she didn’t have to picture entirely inside of her mind. She loved Hungry, Hungry Hippos, even though only one of her hands was able to play it. Yesterday, they even got a game of Trouble with their burgers. Or was that last week?

It’s so hard to remember things now.

He worries, sometimes, that he’s forgetting what they look like—Mr. Stark, Aunt May, Ned, MJ… Even Flash. He can’t bring Flash’s face into his mind, and that scares him to his core. This is their thirty-third day inside of this room, and it’s hard to believe that they’ll get out anytime soon. They found a loose nail under the bed—with it, they keep track of the days, to the best of their ability, by making shallow scratches in the leftmost wall, by the sink. Their scratches are horizontal, in groupings of ten. Why don’t we make it up and down? Cassie asked him once he started making the tic marks in the wall. When I do them, they always go up and down.

Peter didn’t know how to explain it to her. The entirety of the back wall, the one behind their bed, is covered in tic marks. Some of them are grouped together, yet some aren’t, almost like there have been different people inside of this room before. He didn’t know how to say if they stayed here for a long time (if they were never rescued), then he didn’t want their tic marks to get mixed up with the ones of prisoners from the past. 

How is he supposed to explain that to a seven-year-old girl?

Cassie’s coming over to his side now, holding the bottle of disinfectant and the needle and thread. His hands are shaking; he holds them out to her, thanking her weakly as he takes the items from her. “It’s bad?” she says, quieter.

She knows it’s bad because Peter tries never to use their stash of supplies.

He blinks in defeat. “...yeah. It’s bad.”

Although he’s done it a few times since they arrived, suturing his wounds closed (like some kind of teen-movie Frankenstein) doesn’t get any less scary. Especially now, with his swimming vision and shaking hands, but the practice does make the act itself easier. He’s no seamstress, nothing like May with all her revamped, thrifted clothes; why is it suddenly funny to him that the only thing he’s ever sewed is his own skin?

He has her talk to him as he does it—otherwise, he gets lost in the pain and the blood and can’t pull himself out. “Why did he…get me so...bad this time?”

Cass looks wounded as she answers, tucking her greasy, dark hair behind her ears. “You don’t remember it?”

“No, Cass…”

“We… You…” Miserable, she stabs at the floor with her fingers. “We tried to get out again.”

He blinks. “Wha—I…” He closes his eyes for a second, pausing in his process, as he tries to remember.

“Escape Plan,” Cassie reminds him, with a capital P. “Remember?”

“No… You wanna tell me...what we did?”

She blinks at him, frowning, and lets out this small, tired sigh. “It doesn’t matter. We didn’t do it.”

“How...far?”

“We got all the way to the hallway...” She pokes at the floor again. “And then I could hear Daddy so I went to him, but... he was the other way and you told me not to—”

Fuck. He remembers, all right. “Oh,” he says now, like someone just punched him in the stomach.  It’s half there in his mind—blurry and drenched in a drug-tainted haze, but it’s there. He remembers screaming Cassie—no! as she slipped from his grasp and ran for her dad, and how he stared at the doorway and thought— I could leave without her —and was body-slammed by one of the other guards before his idea could fester into reality. “Oh…” How could he think that—to leave this little girl to fend for herself just so he could escape? It’d be the same as killing her. If he was gone, their leverage over Mr. Stark would be gone, and they wouldn’t need the rest of their hostages. They’d kill them all, most likely. How could he think something so horrible ?

After he ties off the thread and slumps on the floor with a pained sigh, he beckons Cassie closer. “I’m sorry we...didn’t make it,” he says. “And I’m sorry...we can’t...see your dad.”

Now she’s crying, but they’ve gotten so used to crying around each other that Peter knows what to do. “C’mere—careful,” he says, and he moves his arm so that she can lie down and curl up in his skinny arms. Once she’s comfortable, he wraps his arm around her and holds her close. “It’ll be...okay,” he tells Cassie, and the little girl cries more, burying her face in his bloodied shirt.

Peter wishes now that there was someone here to tell him everything would be okay, but it’s just him and Cassie. There’s no Mr. Stark to fix everything this time.

He holds Cassie and tells it to her instead.

WEDNESDAY, MAY 9 — 4:12 AM

A clattering noise behind him startles him so much that he jumps to his feet, one hand jumping to his hip. It’s only Maggie, dressed in sweatpants and a towel robe, rubbing her eyes at a pan on the ground. “Sorry,” she says, and Jim drops his hand. “Couldn’t sleep.”

They don’t talk much anymore. Maggie works part-time at a nursing home, but she stopped working once Cassie was kidnapped. She spends most of her time in bed or near-comatose on the couch as the TV flashes in front of her. Only recently has she gotten up and been more productive, visiting the nursing home to put in her hours, going to the police station with him to inquire about their daughter. Yet still, she’s nothing like the woman she was before.

To be fair, Jim isn’t anything like the man he was, either.  With Cassie gone, there’s a void in their lives that can’t be filled with booze or sleep or punching bags. Cassie is now a gaping hole in his chest that he can’t make go away, no matter how many times he calls for updates on her case.

“It’s okay,” Jim says with a shrug. He doesn’t look much better, dressed in the same T-shirt he’s been wearing for the past couple days and boxers he’s been wearing for me. The police force put him on temporary stress leave after he recovered from his head injury, so he hasn’t had anything to do but ‘harass the station to no end,’ as his coworker Julia put it. “What time…”

“Four,” Maggie answers. She looks exhausted, and her hair is pulled back in a scraggly half-bun. “I’m gonna make...breakfast. You want anything?”

She’s swaying on her feet.

Jim shakes his head. “Sit down, honey. I’ll make you whatever you need.” She doesn’t fight him on it; she just slumps into a seat at their kitchen counter and buries her head in her arms. He starts cooking, cracking eggs into a pan and adding shredded cheese, ham, and red peppers to it. This is how Maggie likes her eggs; Jim knows it by heart. He forms it into a messy omelet and slides it onto a plate. “Here. Need anything else?”

Maggie shakes her head tiredly, and Jim goes. Maggie would much rather be alone these days, anyway. He takes his mug of coffee upstairs with him. He’s supposed to be back on the force next week, but he doesn’t know what he’ll do once he is. Once he became Cassie’s father, his whole world changed. Now, he doesn’t know what he is. As a police officer, he knows the statistics. Cassie’s most likely dead, or… Every time he thinks about it he wants to drink until his face goes numb.  Julia and the others swear they’re giving him every update they can, but there’s not much evidence to go off of, so there are scarcely any updates at all. 

Maggie’s like a ghost, and Cassie is truly gone. 

Without them, Jim is lost.

WEDNESDAY, MAY 9 — 5:59 AM

“Hand me the, uh…”

Riri passes him the screwdriver she’s holding.

Tony takes it from her and then makes a grunt of frustration when it doesn’t work. “No, the, um…” She takes the screwdriver back, replaces the screw head with the smaller one, and hands it back. “Oh...thanks.”

Tony tries to work it, but his hands are shaking so badly that Riri slides the weapon to her side of the lab table and does it herself, twisting each screw into place. “What’s wrong with your hands?” she asks. There's been light conversation between the two of them for the past few hours, usually pass me that or don’t touch that, but conversation nonetheless. 

“Nothing,” the middle-aged man snaps, and he slides over to the computer. “FRIDAY—” He stops, falters, grumbles again, and staggers to the other side of the room. He doesn’t look good. Riri’s seen her fair share of broken men, and Tony Stark is one of them. He looks tired to the bone, hunched over his computer now, typing clumsily. 

She clears her throat. “Do you think this one’ll work?” she asks, just to ease the tension. 

“No.” He finishes tapping at the keyboard and returns to the table.

“No?” Riri doesn’t know a lot, but she does know about Tony Stark. He was her icon—that’s what makes this so strange. After Riri’s brother Eric was killed doing drug deals, she lived with a foster family that saw her love for robotics and computers and catered to it. They got her her first Iron Man poster and took her to coding classes, where she learned as much as she could before Charlie came back into her life. “What—are you, like—what do you mean?”

Tony Stark ignores her.

Riri frowns. “Mr. Stark…” He gives her such a rigid glare that her voice dies in her throat.

He keeps tinkering with it, sliding parts into place until finally he raises it. It seems mostly finished, but he says, “None of them will work the way your friend wants them to.”

“He’s not my friend,” she responds quickly. He's my... What is Charlie to her, anyway? He and her brother Eric were like brothers at some point. What does that make him, her uncle? Her mentor? Her guardian?

Tony lifts the weapon with both hands, points it at the wall, and fires with a blazing explosion of light. “So you’re not… helping them...torture my…” he rambles, his voice dry.

“No,” she interrupts. “I’m not like them.”

Tony scoffs darkly. “Sure.”

“It’s true! I’m—” The truth is, she doesn’t really know who she is. Sure, she ran away from her family to join Charlie and his friends, but it wasn’t because she wanted to hurt anyone. She just missed her brother and thought that, well, Charlie would make some of that aching pain go away. He didn’t. All he ever managed to do was dig her grave even deeper. And now he’s got her mixed up in this… “I just…”

“You just what? Help?” he snaps. “Watch as they... As they do that to him?”

“No! You’ve seen what they do—I hate it! I wanna be in school, I’d rather be anywhere else! What they’re doing to Parker—”

“Peter.”

“Yeah, Peter, sorry, and Lang and that little girl—it’s horrible. I never thought they’d—they’d ever do something like that! I just wanted a family, that’s all. We weren't... This wasn't the original plan. It was never supposed to...” She shrugs a little. "It was never supposed to go on this long."

He frowns. “How old are you?” he asks. 

“Fifteen,” she answers. 

His eyes are like shattered glass. “Then why…” He shakily adjusts a wire with some pliers. “...are you...with them? You could...”

“They’re my family,” she says simply. It was true. Charlie and Renee and their friends had taken care of her ever since she left her foster family, providing her with food, shelter, people who cared about her well-being… Sure, most of them were drug addicts, but they were the last connection she had to her late brother. “I can’t just leave them.”

“They’re torturing my kid,” Tony Stark chokes out, and his hands are shaking more now. Riri didn’t know Peter was his son—Jesus Christ. “How can you just…”

She ducks her head; shame flickers through her. It’s something she thinks about a lot. How can she stay with them, knowing all the shit they do? Knowing they tortured people? Tortured kids? She’s not a bad person, but does staying with them make her one? Charlie and everyone else…are they bad people, too? “I… I don’t know. I guess… They’re the only people I have left.”

Stark stares at her for a couple more seconds, but he doesn’t say anything. They sit in silence, Riri with her palms sweating as Stark adjusts the gun. He finishes fixing the weapon on his own, screwing a metal plate in place, and finally sets it down. “I think it’s done,” he says.

“I thought you said it wouldn’t work—”

“It won’t.” He sighs. “What Charlie wants… I don’t know if I can make it for him.”

“He just wants your, you know…” She gestures over at a dead Iron Man suit that’s stationed, limp, in the corner of the room. “...arc stuff. Just like HYDRA had.”

“HYDRA had a Tesseract.”

“A what?”

“It’s had…” He scratches his graying hair. “...a lot of names. It’s advanced, alien technology—something I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to replicate.”

“But your arc—”

“—gets close to it. I keep trying to strengthen it, but I don’t know...if I can ever…” He coughs. “...get close to what Charlie wants. Disintegrating people. Making it so they...never existed.”

“He doesn’t want to disintegrate anyone,” Riri assures him. Charlie’s no killer. “He just wants...the power, you know? The bigger stick.”

Tony gives her another fiery glare and doesn’t respond to her comment. “Take it,” he says, pointing to the weapon sitting between them. “It’s done. Bring it back to him.”

For some reason, she doesn’t want to take it. “Are you gonna be okay?”

Tony Stark—the merchant of Death, Iron Man, billionaire, Avenger, the world’s greatest hero—looks at her with teary eyes and a broken face, and shakes his head.

WEDNESDAY, MAY 9 — 7:34 AM

Scott hums as he works, scrubbing over the metal chair. He doesn’t get a lot of supplies from his captors, but they give him plenty of water and soap, enough to clean up the room after each nightly session. “Can’t be messy,” he reminds himself. “Can’t be...messy…” He laughs a little, to himself. 

He can almost hear Cassie’s little voice behind him, squealing, “Daddy! I made a mess, I made a mess!”

He turns his wheelchair around and spots her, there, a phantom of a girl, wearing her shark pajamas, her dark hair tied back into two braids. “What’d you do, Cassie-pie?”

She raises her hands, giving him a big smile. “Me and Jim were painting, see?” They’re covered in bright blue, and as Scott glances around the room, he sees it all; she has made quite a mess.

“I see,” he says, smiling. “We’ll have to get that cleaned up right away, before Mommy sees, right? Where’d Jim go?”

“He went to wash his hands—look, I’m all blue!”

“Yeah, you’re really blue,” Scott answers. “Lemme help you clean up, honey—c’mere.”

She giggles and climbs into the big chair. “Sorry, Daddy!”

“Don’t worry about it—we’ll wash it all out, I promise. Think you can stay still for me?” She nods, still as he washes the blue from her hands and the streaks of paint off of her face with gentle strokes. Is the soap okay for kids? He and Maggie always buy the kind that doesn’t sting if it gets in her eyes. Cassie hums carelessly. “What’re you humming, Cassie-pie?”

“Lucy,” she replies pleasantly. Yes. Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds, Cassie’s favorite song of all time. Somehow, she could remember every word of the song, even the strangest of lyrics.

“Ah,” Scott says, and he joins in, humming loudly to the lyric about cellophane flowers of yellow and green…

“Shut the hell up!”

Scott jolts at the sudden voice, glancing at the chair where Cassie was and starts humming faster and faster, hoping his little girl will come back. 

A door slams open. “Who the fuck are you talking to, anyway? The computer?”

Scott scrubs harder at the blood-splattered metal, wishing he could walk away, but he can't. Not in this wheelchair. He swallows. “She… She…”

“Answer me, dammit! Can’t we get one second of peace without you going completely fucking crazy?” 

Scott shakes his head, shakes it hard. “She’s… Hm…” He can see glimpses of her in the corner of his eyes, but he refuses to look. “Don’t touch her, y-you… can’t…” He shakes again.

The man approaching him—Jon, he recognizes, one of the younger ones—waves from beside him. “What is it, Lang, huh? What the hell is wrong with you?”

“D-don’t—”

Jon kicks at Scott’s wheelchair, sending him wheeling back into the wall, and Scott squeezes his eyes shut. “I didn’t—please, I didn’t—”

“Shut up!” he shouts. “Any more of this, and I’ll go get your kid and—”

“N-n- no! ”

“That’s what I thought—so keep quiet, Lang!”

He nods furiously, eyes open. Jon slams the door to the room, and Scott’s alone again. 

It’s better alone, he knows, because whenever they’re here, the room is filled with screams, and the chair is stained with blood. Cassie’s blood. Peter’s blood. His blood.

He keeps scrubbing.

WEDNESDAY, MAY 9 — 8:04 AM

A book slams on the table in front of him beside his plate of untouched cafeteria food, and he jumps. “Uh—”

It’s a Stephen King novel—Misery, he reads on the worn cover—and it belongs to two brown hands in two gray sleeves of a sweater dress belonging to one Michelle Jones. “That’s it. I’m done with this. Come on—we’re getting out of here.”

“Dude,” Ned replies tiredly, “I’m still eating my lunch, the—”

“Let’s not kid ourselves, Nedward ,” she snaps, throwing his half-done homework into his backpack and lugging it over her free shoulder. “You’re not gonna touch that stuff—Jesus Christ, what do you have in here, bricks?”

“Books,” he mumbles. And although she hates how she says it, she’s right. He’s less hungry these days—he either eats until he’s stuffed himself silly or forgets to eat altogether. These days… He lives from one day to the next, shuffling to each class with his head down, unable to focus on his next task. There’s still a box full of Legos for a Quinjet that he and Peter never finished. Dude—it’s the Quinjet ! he exclaimed when they spotted it online. Haven’t you, like, ridden in it?

Peter’s eyes were as big as saucers, and he tapped on the screen of Ned’s laptop. I wish, Ned—that’s so cool! Wow, it’s got the turbine fans and everything! Man, I wish Mr. Stark would let me ride in it sometime.

Dude, dude, dude! If he lets you ride the Quinjet you gotta ask to take me, too, okay?

Peter elbowed him. Of course! I’ll never ride without you, I swear.

Ned aches at the thought of his best friend, but MJ keeps tugging at his arm. “Fine, whatever, let’s go.”

He sighs. “Lunch isn’t finished—”

“I’ve got food, don’t worry about it. Now get your butt up.”

Clearly, MJ is not planning on letting this one go, so Ned sighs, wraps up what he can of his lunch, and shoves it into his backpack. “Where are we going?” he grumbles, starting to stand up.

MJ doesn’t answer, stomping through the hallway like she’s about to flood it with stormtroopers. Ned follows, turning corner after corner until they make it to the art room, which is empty of any other students. The room is strewn with paintings and sculptures and sketches, some of which Ned immediately recognizes as MJ’s unique drawing style. There’s even a pencil drawing of Peter and Ned hanging in the corner. Ned swallows.

MJ sits him down at one of the wide art desks and then turns the chair next to them so that she’s facing him. “Okay,” she starts, “I know about Peter.”

Ned’s too exhausted to feign surprise; instead, he just hardens in irritation. “Yeah, he’s gone for a research program—”

“—in Alaska, yeah, I remember what you said, but I’m sick of you lying to me, dude.” She looks stern, nothing like the usually apathetic MJ that he knows. “That’s bullcrap, and I don’t think I have to explain to you all the reasons why it makes no sense.”

Ned shrugs his shoulders. “I told you the truth already, MJ. You’re making a big deal outta nothing.”

MJ glares at him. “Ned—we’re friends . I don’t,” she huffs, “have many of those. And the ones I do, they’re my friends because I trust them. That means I know when you’re lying—I’m not stupid. I figured out Peter’s Spider-Man.”

Ned snorts, but his face warms. “Peter’s not Spider-Man. Spider-Man’s gotta be, like, a college student or something. Have you seen the videos? He can, like, throw cars and stop trains and stuff. Peter can barely manage three pushups in gym class.”

“Ned…” She frowns, flipping the rest of her natural hair over her shoulder. “I remember the weekend before he left for his ‘research program’ or whatever. You hadn’t heard from him. And that Monday, remember that?”

“Yeah, well, he forgot to tell me when he was leaving for the program, so what—”

“So you didn’t know, ” she emphasizes, scooting her chair forward. She examines his face. “I know what you look like when you’re freaking out—you do it before every decathlon competition. And you were freaking out .”

Ned shrugs. “That doesn’t mean anything.”

She huffs again. “Do I really have to spell this out for you, Leeds? You don’t have to keep covering for him—”

“I’m not—”

“—because I know! The day Peter left for his ‘program,’ Spider-Man stopped showing up to save the day. The crime went up, Ned. I’ve done my research. Robberies, muggings, kidnappings, everything. Spider-Man’s not around anymore.”

“I know that,” Ned mumbles, and he fiddles with his sweatshirt, trying not to look at her. How does she know so much? He guesses he shouldn’t be surprised; MJ’s the smartest one on the decathlon team (that’s why she’s club president), but he never thought this would happen. “That doesn’t mean…”

“Plus, I’ve heard you guys talking about Spider-Man before. You never shut up about him.” She chuckles nervously. “Before this, I thought you guys were just, like, obsessed with him—like Flash is—but turns out it’s ‘cause Peter is him. It’s awesome!”

Ned lets out a frustrated breath. “Can you just let this go?” he says, disgruntled. “So, great—you think you’ve figured out the big secret, that some high school kid in Queens in Spider-Man. Congratulations. Can I go now?”

MJ, who’s looking a little pleased with herself now, blinks in surprise. “Dude,” she says firmly. “I didn’t bring you here just to talk about Spider-Man.”

“Then what do you want to talk about?” he snaps. “‘Cause lunch is literally gonna end soon, so if you don’t have anything important to say, I’m gonna go finish my lunch somewhere else.”

Instead of that half-triumphant expression she had on just a moment ago, MJ’s face now fades to dejection. “Dude,” she says again, “I wanted to talk about you.”

Ned shakes his head. “Me?”

“Yeah, I—”

“Well, I’m fine." She's still watching him. "Are you done?”

MJ holds fast. “No! No, dude, I’m not done! You’re not fine!” 

Ned rolls his eyes, but inside him, his heart starts to race. “Oh my god—”

“You barely talk to anyone anymore,” she starts, flustered. “To me or any of the others. You rarely come to decathlon practice, and I’ve seen you sulking in the band room when you were supposed to be in calc!”

Sulking? Ned glances at the clock above the paint-spotted door. How much more of this will he have to take?

“Ever since Peter left for his thing, you’ve been...seriously depressed.”

“I’m not depressed,” he barks. “I miss my best friend—is that a crime?”

Taken aback, MJ shakes her head. “No, Ned. Of course not. I just… I know what you’re going through, okay? That’s what I wanted you to hear. I miss him, too. But he’s Spider-Man, he’s probably off doing Avengers stuff with all the rest of them, you know? He’ll be okay, I believe he’ll be okay, I know how you’re feeling—”

“Just stop, MJ. You don’t know anything about what I’m feeling!” He stands up, and his teeth press together so hard that he can feel them grind. “There’s nothing wrong, there’s nothing going on, so just leave it alone! You’re always trying to find the conspiracy, aren’t you? Always trying to get to the bottom of things, but there’s nothing here, so drop it!” As if on cue, the bell rings, alerting the whole school to the start of the passing period, so Ned heaves his backpack onto his back, holding the straps, and heads for the door. “Stay out of my life, MJ. It’s none of your business.”

She stands before him, mouth slightly open. But before she can say anything else, he walks out into the crowd of students, desperately hoping she’ll forget all about Peter and Spider-Man.

WEDNESDAY, MAY 9 — 10:15 AM

Pepper never wants to eat eggs again. As they climb up her throat and she vomits into the toilet, the rancid taste of them seems infinite. As someone raps softly on the bathroom door, she clutches each porcelain side and vomits again. “You okay in there?”

It’s Rhodey’s voice. He’s at the house too often now, checking up on her and asking for updates about Tony. He’s gone over to the lab a couple times to try to coax Tony out without any luck. 

He knocks again, but he doesn’t open it. “Need anything?”

She’s already at the sink, nausea twisting in her belly as she rinses her mouth with tap water. “No,” she says.

“You sure?”

She dries her face with a towel and finally opens the door. I need my old life back. “Yeah,” she says instead. 

Later, when they’ve settled in the living room, Pepper under two blankets on her laptop as Rhodey flips through news channels. “I thought you said it was food poisoning,” he comments, stealing a glance at her from the other side of the couch.

He’s been staying with her for a couple of weeks, ever since she told him about what Tony did. Even if he’s not sleeping at the compound, he still heads upstate just so he can check on her. “A stomach bug, then,” she says without looking at him. “It’ll go soon, hopefully.”

“Okay…” he responds. He’s giving her that look, the I-know-you’re-lying-but-I-won’t-call-you-out look. “You know, my sister used to get really anxious in high school, and” —he gives up on the news channels, clicking Netflix open on the television— “her stomach got upset whenever she was really stressed out—she’d throw up before tests, that kind of thing.”

She scoffs. “You think this is stress?”

“No—I didn’t say that. Just…”

“What do I have to be stressed about, Rhodey? The company’s doing great, Tony’s out of the picture, I have a lot more free time—”

“Pepper,” he sighs, his mechanically braced legs shifting over the couch.

“What?”

“Let’s not pretend, okay? I know you’re still thinking about Tony—hell, I am, too. I’m worried sick about you and worried sick about him—”

“I’m not thinking about him,” she snaps. “Until he stops hiding out in his lab like a scared toddler, I don’t need to think about him, and it doesn’t look like he’s coming out any time soon.” 

There is, of course, the elephant in the room. Tony hit her. It’s the reason she won’t go back to the lab to check on him and the reason why she refuses to talk to Rhodey about him, but it’s there. Rhodey already knew about it—he was the first one she called when she got back to the house, crying, holding an ice pack to a cheek that would probably not even bruise.

“Of course you’re thinking about him,” Rhodey sighs. “I know how much he means to you—and I know you’re still thinking about it.”

“That was weeks ago—”

“Pepper,” her friend says firmly, “what he did changed everything—it’s not going to be that easy to forget.”

Her throat tightens. She keeps replaying the slap in her mind, just like she used to, trying to figure out what she did wrong. It’s so hard to remember that she didn’t do anything to deserve it that sometimes, she chooses to block it all out instead. “Well, what” —her traitorous throat clenches again— “do you suppose I do? Go and beg for forgiveness? I’m not that kind of person anymore.”

“You haven’t been that person in a long time,” he agrees, “and I wasn’t suggesting anything like that. I just… I think maybe… Maybe something’s wrong.”

“Obviously, something’s wrong—Tony broke his goddamn promise.”

“No,” Rhodey says. “I mean, something’s wrong with him. ” He sighs again, running a hand over his recently shaved head. Now, he’s standing up, pacing, and Pepper’s computer is beside her. “The Tony I know would never do anything like that to you—”

“Well, he did.”

Rhodey grimaces. “I know, but he…” He scratches at his chin. “I don’t know. All of this... Being locked in his lab, acting out towards you—”

“He hit me, Rhodes,” she barks, and this wave of grief hits her as she says it, bringing a fresh wave of tears to her eyes. “This wasn’t a normal fight. He told me he didn’t love me, he told me he didn’t want me, and then he hit me.” Rhodey’s face twists in quieted woe. “I’m not going to sit here and unpack this with you like we’re tween girls at a sleepover, because despite what you think, there doesn’t need to be a reason or an explanation; he did it.” She has to take a deep breath to keep her voice from fading out completely. “He just showed his true colors, that’s all.”

The silence sways between them. She doesn’t look back at him again. She can’t. 

“Fine,” he says after a while. “Then he has to be held responsible.”

“He won’t leave his lab,” Pepper says. “You know that. What are we supposed to do, drag him out of there?”

“If that’s what it takes.” Rhodey faces her. “Tony’s my friend, but he can’t...just hide after what he did. He’s had enough time to feel sorry for himself. He has to take responsibility—for hiding from you and flaking on your company, and for hitting you.”

There’s an anger inside of her, the kind that lights a fire somewhere deep within her but refuses to explode when she needs it to. She stills for a moment, taking in what Rhodey said, and then throws the blankets off of herself. She’s not going to keep moping around the house; she’s gonna face him. He has to know the consequences of what he did. “Then let’s go,” she says harshly, standing up and striding for the front door.

Rhodey’s startled by her sudden movement, and he blinks. “What—”

“We’re gonna get him out of that lab,” she declares, “even if I have to drag that goddamn coward out myself.”

“Pepper, slow down—”

“No,” she snaps. “You’re right—he has to be held responsible for what he did. He can’t keep hiding from us.” She shoves open the door and Rhodey follows close behind her, making small starts of protest. “Now, where do you keep your suit?”

WEDNESDAY, MAY 9 — 2:39 PM

Cassie is jumping up and down on the bed. “Do you think” —one jump— “Ava will” —another jump— “bring us” —third jump— “a treat” —another— “today?”

Peter’s propped up against the wall, half-asleep. He honestly doesn't know where she gets all this energy—Ava gave them extra food today, an apology for the mess of an escape attempt, for the beatings, so their bellies are full for once. Meaning Cassie feels better than she has in weeks. “She gave us one yesterday, Cass.”

“Yeah, but” —an overdramatic flop onto their bed— “I want another one. Like ice cream.”

“You know we can’t get ice cream…” he starts. 

“But ice cream always makes me feel better, and it’ll make you feel better, I promise.”

Promise. She's so sweet. 

"I'll ask her," the little girl says, "she's my friend. I think she'll bring us some."

Peter lets out a weak laugh. Any more than that and he would send reverberations of pain through his entire torso. “Maybe…" he gives, playing along. "But, uh... I don't know if Ava can bring us something like that. It’s too big, remember? Treats aren’t big.” Cassie doesn’t truly understand how everything in captivity works, but that’s the only way that Peter could explain it to her. Ava can’t bring them anything bigger than a band-aid box because, well, Charlie would throw a fit.

Cassie huffs from where she lies. “Just a little scoop,” she says, and there's that little kid whine to her voice. "I really, really want it."

Peter’s body still aches. Usually Mr. Stark is there to pick up the pieces after he gets himself hurt, but now all he has is Cassie. “Cassie…” he says.

He’s using his Cassie-you-know-we-can’t voice, and he’s had to use it enough times in this hellhole that she understands what he means. “Fine.”

Peter’s been living with this seven-year-old for over a month now, and although her tantrums are minimized, he knows when she’s upset. “Wait!” he says, with all the drama he can muster (all his theatre experience being a fourth-grade rendition of Peter Pan ). “I think I found something right—oh, right here, in my pocket!”

From her spot on the bed, Cassie perks up. “What?”

“It’s a—a—ice cream scooper!” His voice isn’t as strong as he’d like it to be, but when he’s playing with Cassie, it always grows a little stronger. “Just gotta find...the ice cream…”

Cassie knows this game well; pretending they have things they know they won’t is their best way of passing the time. “Here it is!” she stage-whispers pointing to the door beside him. “Look, it’s vanilla and chocolate and strawberry…” 

Peter holds out his hand to her. “Here, young lady, would you like to scoop out your own ice cream?” He’s not strong enough to get up and make it to the door to play with her, so he’ll have to improvise. “You can have any flavor you’d like.”

Cassie’s brown eyes light up, and she scooches off the bed and closer to him. “Do you have cookie dough?”

He starts to say of course but something in his torso flares wildly, making him utter a choked whimper instead. 

Cassie doesn’t mind. She takes the imaginary scooper from him and makes pleased noises as she makes sweeping motions with her hands, getting scoop after scoop of ice cream.

As soon as Peter comes to his senses, he adds, in a quiet croak, “Jeez, Cass, how many scoops is that?”

“Twenty-one,” she says promptly, like she's been thinking about it all along. “I took all the flavors.”

“All the flavors? Well, you gotta be careful—keep it balanced... Careful, careful...”

Cassie takes on an expression of amused concentration and holds her stack of ice cream scoops like it’s Excalibur and she's King Arthur. “I got it!” Now that Cassie’s engrossed in her ice cream, Peter finally tunes in to what’s happening outside the door: specifically, the voices. 

He didn’t notice them before. It’s not uncommon to hear the conversations of their captors, but having been their captives for weeks now, he knows when they’re getting fucked up. Slurred words, strange laughter, irregular steps… “...in the world!” one shouts, and there’s a strange chorus of agreement. Peter can hear one of them staggering towards their cell door and vomiting, can hear the splatter hit the cement. “We’re gonna be…gonna be….”

“...it’s all gone…” whimpers a second, farther away. “...it's all gone, everything's gone…”

“...gonna be heroes!” finishes the first. "Set for the rest of our lives, do whatever the fuck we want..."

“Shut up, shut up, SHUT UP!” cries a third voice clearer than the rest, and Peter’s heart clenches. There’s no mistaking Charlie’s distinct voice. “I’m the hero! Me! I’m gonna….gonna save the fuckin’ WORLD! Ross can’t take it from me, no—no one can! I’ll do whatever the fuck I want, as long as I get what the world owes me! I’ll fuck up Lang and—and—that freak as much as I have to, I’ll—”

They’re high, Peter thinks, in the split second before it happens. And when they're high, they’re dangerous.

Peter's a teenager—he's seen his fair share of weed passed around high school bathrooms, but whatever it is Charlie and the rest of them like to take... It's not weed. It's nothing he's ever seen. He's spotted it in traces, left in white traces on the noses after they've snorted it, or a clear liquid lingering in an empty syringe. He's seen Charlie take it as a pill—one, then two, then three—and it'll take a few minutes before he's swaying, his head twisting, his eyes going wide, sweat pouring down his face—and then at last that wide, crazy smile. 

His Spidey Sense (his Peter tingle, May would call it) is going off like a bank alarm, and Cassie’s still standing by him with her hands outstretched, talking about ice cream flavors, so Peter figures out far too late— “Mint chocolate chip!" she squeals, and she's way, way too loud.

From down the hall, Peter can hear Charlie’s breathing quicken. 

It happens too fast. Charlie storms down the hallway with a burst of newfound energy, and a few of his crew follow. He’s screaming something about ungrateful kids and something about Cassie, but their words are so foggy that Peter barely knows what he’s saying. 

This time, he realizes with a distinct touch of horror, he’s not strong enough to protect her. “Iron Man!” he shouts, and Cassie looks up, startled. That’s their code word—he’s telling her, get under the bed, hide, I can’t protect you—

But this time, when the door flings open, there’s someone standing in front of it with her arms outstretched, blocking their way. She’s dark-skinned, or maybe it’s just the light, and depressingly thin, with long, tangled hair and twitching hands. “ No! ” she snarls, and her twitching worsens. “I won’t let you hurt them, not again, Charlie! It’s—it’s over!”

“Move out of the fucking way, Ava!”

Another figure moves in front of the door, and Cassie starts crying. “Charlie, stop!” This new voice is young but firm, and the body it belongs to barely reaches Ava’s shoulder. “This isn’t you—they’re just kids!”

“They’re fucking disobeying me!  They never listen!”

“They’re just playing! Leave them a—” Charlie knocks the smaller girl out of the way with his fist, and she hits the ground, lying there without getting back up.

Peter’s heart races. He knows saying anything will make it worse, so he shuts his mouth. He tries to move towards Cassie but— holy shit that hurts— he can’t. His body is a cage, a cage that Charlie molded with his bare hands. He can’t protect Cassie. He can’t stop Charlie from threatening the one good thing in his life. He’s not Spider-Man anymore; he’s too weak. He’s barely Peter Parker anymore. He’s just...a lump of bleeding flesh.

When he looks back up, Ava’s not in the doorway anymore. She’s on the ground, groaning in pain, managing, “Please, Charlie, I—” before Charlie’s fist hits her again. A couple of the others follow suit, pounding the woman into the ground until Peter can hear the squelch of bloody knuckles against her crushed bones.

Cassie cries harder. Thank God she’s not facing the doorway, so she doesn’t have to see all the blood.

But Peter does.

WEDNESDAY, MAY 9 — 3:30 PM

As soon as the last bell rings, Ned’s chem class scatters like roaches. His seat is by the door, so when he looks outside and sees MJ glaring at him from the hallway now filling with students, he seethes with a sudden sense of intrusion. What right does she have to invade into his life like this? What he does with his time is his business, not hers.

She weasels her way into the classroom as the other students (and the teacher, who clearly has somewhere to be) flee the room. “What are you doing?” he complains.

“Just gonna walk you to practice,” she comments.

“I don’t need a babysitter.”

“No, but you do need an escort,” she shoots back. “It’s two days a week, Ned—and you barely come to one now.”

“I’m coming,” he tells her. “I’ll meet you there.”

“Ned—”

“I will!”

She lets out a snort of disbelief. “Even if I’m not your friend anymore” —Ned swallows— “I’m still your captain. Come to practice, dude.” 

“I’ll be right there,” Ned says, adjusting the straps of his backpack. He checks his watch. 3:12—he has to go.

MJ glares at him. “That’s what you said last time, Leeds,” she protests. “And the time before that.”

“I’ll be there!’ he assures her. “Go lead the team—I just have to finish up something for chem. Decathlon can go on without me for a few minutes.”

She gives him a long, hard stare. “Fine,” she says finally. “But if you’re not there in fifteen, I’m putting you on the reserves.”

Ned gives her a thumbs up, and she rolls her eyes, turning on her heel and heading for the auditorium where the decathlon team practices.

Needless to say, Ned doesn’t return to decathlon practice. He rarely shows up to practice now; MJ’s threatened to kick him off the team at least a dozen times. 

Instead, he takes the subway.

He sits at the back of the car with his backpack hugged to his chest. By now, he knows the route; where to get on, where to get off, and where to walk after he gets off the subway.

He travels all the way to a hospital at the edge of Queens, where the receptionist greets him with a kind smile. “Ned! You didn’t come yesterday!”

He shoves his hands into his pockets. “Yeah, sorry… Wasn’t feeling great.”

The nurse smiles at him and gives him a visitor’s pass. “That’s okay, honey. We all have our days.” She waves him away. “Go right ahead—I’ll sign you in.”

“Thanks,” Ned answers, and he pushes through the waiting room of expectant families and anguished friends down the hall, to the elevator, up a couple floors, all the way to Room 317. Once there, he clears his throat and knocks lightly. Someone cracks open the door for him. It’s Trevor, the nurse with long blonde hair who never fails to bring him candy or coffee whenever he accidentally stays too late. “Hey, bud,” says Trevor. “I just did her exercises—how was school?”

Ned shrugs. Trevor’s always so kind, but Ned feels more like a statue than a human being. “Fine.”

“Learn anything cool?”

“Not really.”

“Beat up anyone annoying?”

That gets a low chuckle out of Ned. “I wish.”

Trevor removes his medical gloves in one practiced movement and pats Ned’s shoulder. “Have a good time,” he says.

Ned shrugs again.

As Trevor goes, Ned settles into his usual waiting room chair, the one by the window, and drops his backpack onto the linoleum floor. Unzipping it, he pulls out a handful of books—a series of Star Trek books that are sort of canon—and sets them on the table beside him. “Hey, May,” he says, staring at the woman in the hospital bed in front of him. “Whaddaya wanna read today? More Star Trek?”

May’s ventilator rises and falls.

“Good choice.” It’s nothing more than the usual jokes he makes, but now, in his dull voice, they fall flat. He cracks open the novel they left off at, and he starts to read. He doesn’t know if she’s even into Star Trek (knowing May, she would be), but it’s the only set of books he owns that could last a long period of time. She may never wake up, Trevor told him. Her brain experienced a lot of stress during her accident—that kind of trauma can put people in comas for months. He’d stopped to stare at Ned then. But you don’t know her, right?

No! Ned asserted, nervous. I—um—I just wanna help. Just think everyone should, uh, have some company, at least. Even if she is just a Jane Doe. To the hospital, May Parker is no one. They found her in a car accident without an ID or any other form of identification (which was strange to Ned in and of itself, because May always brought her purse with her everywhere) with significant head trauma, no driver, and possible signs of struggle in the vehicle, a car registered to a Mary Fitzpatrick. To Ned, obviously, he knew that the old car belonged to Peter’s mom before she died, and that they’d never re-registered it to avoid any extra fees or auto insurance. To the hospital and the police, it created a gap of information with a dead registered owner, no driver, and a freshly comatose Jane Doe. Ned wasn’t able to find out where they had taken her until over a week after Peter’s disappearance, where he promptly remembered what Tony had told him and swore to himself never to tell anyone who May was.

Although May’s situation is dire now, he can’t imagine what it would be like if the bad guys behind what happened found out she was here.

So Ned keeps quiet. He comes to the hospital every day after school, if he can, and talks to her. He’ll read or ramble, but it’s better than staring at her lifeless form and all the tubes, needles, and machines. It’s better to imagine she’s just sleeping. She’s the only person he has right now, and he’s not going to leave her to the wolves. He maintains his little facade: to his mom, he’s at daily decathlon practice; to the hospital, he’s a kind young volunteer; and to MJ… Well, MJ’s starting to see right through his cracks. 

Honestly, Ned doesn’t know if he can keep this up much longer. 

WEDNESDAY, MAY 9 — 4:52 PM

The metal mechanisms in the suit enclose over her bit by bit, starting at her torso and spreading over her body until she’s completely encased in the suit. Watching her reflection in the glass, she moves the limbs of the suit, flexing the mechanisms and practicing her movement. She’s lucky he kept a spare suit in their house in case anything happened there. 

Now, she’ll be the invincible one. 

It’s so hard to think about Tony this way—her enemy, she supposes—when her heart is screaming for him to save him. But how is she supposed to love the person who broke her heart? “We made a promise,” she says, the faceplate lifted so she can glare into the reflective glass. “And you broke it.” That promise meant everything—it’s what makes her who she is today, a woman who can stand with her chin high and say that she’s stronger than her past.

Tony brought it all rushing back.

It’s been weeks, but she can’t forgive him. They buried their trust in each other, through late-night conversations and post-nightmare confessions, like they’d never been able to in past relationships; that was what made them special...or so she thought. She can’t stop replaying what happened in her mind, the way Tony looked at her, the words he said, the way he wound up his hand to hit her, and it’s something that she doesn’t think she’ll ever be able to forget. 

She turns the arms of the suit and shifts her feet. “Rhodey,” she calls out, and her friend enters the room, fully encased in his War Machine armor. His feet make massive thumps as he goes, clanging towards her. “Ready to go?” he asks.

“Yeah.” She slams the faceplate down. In the glass, Iron Man stares back at her. 

She raises one gauntlet and blasts the glass with a blinding burst of white light.

“I’m ready.”

The lab is still on lockdown when they arrive at the front door, their boots torching the brick as they land their suits. Pepper, who’s only been in a suit a few times, has a more rocky landing than her practiced counterpart, stumbling a little once her boots hit the bricks. “It’s still locked up,” announces Rhodey, banging loudly at the metal sheet over the door with his fist. “Maybe I can—” He anchors his fingers at the edge of the doorway, attempting to peel away at its edges. “Nope—this isn’t coming off, Pepper. Got any—”

She blasts the door a few feet from where Rhodey stands.

“Pepper!”

“What?” she snaps. 

He shakes his head as though he’s going to say something, but he remains silent. “Nothing.” He moves away from the entrance. “Let’s just…try knocking first, okay?”

“We’ve tried that enough times,” she declares. “It’s time we get the upper hand.” She raises her hand and, setting her feet, shoots another series of detonations that leave dented, ashy marks in the door. “Come on!”

Rhodey moves back to set her feet beside her, and together, they blast the door to kingdom come. Flames raze the grass at the building’s walls, and the air fills with the thick scent of smoke as they form dents into the metal casing of the door. It goes on for minutes more, but still there’s no response. “Tony, come outside!” shouts Rhodey. “We just want to talk!”

Nothing.

“Tony!” Pepper warms up the gauntlet, and with a particularly strong blast of energy, pounds a big dent into the center of the door. None of it is coming off as she expected it would—their blasts only form marks in the metal. “It isn’t working,” she says.

“If we keep at it,” Rhodey says, his voice muffled behind his faceplate, “then it will. Keep going. We’ll get to him eventually.”

They hammer the door with shots from their gauntlets—annoyed, Pepper says, “Use the one on your back.”

“That could destroy the place,” Rhodey explains. “I’m not going to use it.”

“It’ll be better than this!”

He shakes his head. “It’s too dangerous, Pep—if Tony’s standing behind the door, it could really hurt him.”

“Then don’t you have a higher setting than that? That suit is a weapon of war, Rhodey. Turn it up.”

“I can’t ,” he says. “I don’t want to hurt him.”

Pepper scoffs. “We’re barely making any progress here—he’s probably sitting in there, laughing at us!”

“Pepper,” he warns, “you know that’s not true.”

“Don’t act like you know him,” she snaps, raising her gauntlet again. “He’s a liar and an asshole. That’s all he’s ever been.”

“We don’t know what happened,” Rhodey presses on. “He’s not usually like this; there must be something—”

The indented metal slides away from the door, whining as it scrapes at the front door. Both Pepper and Rhodey stop where they are gauntlets trained on the door, where it reveals Tony. 

He looks different.

His hair is longer and grayer, speckled with light strands, and his beard is scruffy, not like the well-manicured one he usually has. He’s wearing boxers and a gray T-shirt, but his clothes are spattered with coffee stains and grime. When was the last time he showered? He’s thinner, too, noticeably so, and holy fuck, his eyes… 

It’s like his irises have shattered completely. Pepper knows he’s had moments like this, times when she walks into his lab and he’s rocking slowly, curled up under a lab table, whispering to himself, unable to hide his breakdown even once she arrives to pull him out of it. His hand twitches at his side. The other hand holds a… What is that, a gun? It’s some kind of machine with a handle, exposed wires, and a glowing blue center. There’s an earpiece lodged in his ear and a reddened bruise at the edge of his hairline. “Pepper,” he says, in this croaky half-gasp, and he flinches. 

Holy shit. What happened to him?

The fury that filled her only seconds ago starts to die inside of her chest, but she points the gauntlet straight at him, and Rhodey does, too. “Enough is enough, Tony,” announces Rhodey, lifting his faceplate. “It’s time to come home.”

Tony shakes his head furiously, raising the thing by his side. He’s acting strange, all twitching fingers and slow blinks, and Pepper’s concern is overwhelming her rage. “Y-you shouldn’t—be here!”

“You’ve been in there long enough,” Rhodey continues, “It’s time, Tony. Come out of the—”

“N- no! ” Tony raises the machine at his side, and she realizes it’s most definitely a gun. Is that what he’s doing in that lab? “I’m not going any—anywhere—you can’t—make me!” he screeches.

“You’re acting like a lunatic, Tony!” Pepper shouts, and her gauntlet glows with heat. “You can’t keep hiding in there!”

Tony points the gun at Rhodey, then Pepper, then Rhodey again. “I—I’m not—you don’t un—you can’t—I’m not leaving! ” Rhodey takes a step toward him and Tony lets out a strangled screech. “Back—get back! Back up!”

“Tony—”

“Get the fuck away from me!”

“That’s it!” Pepper snaps. “We’re taking you out of here whether you like it or not—you can’t keep hiding from what you did —”

Tony’s shaking his head again. “—you—you can’t be here—I have to be alone, I’m a fucking scientist—I have to—I have to work alone, you can’t— don’t come any closer!” He pulls the trigger and a blast of blue light explodes from the tip of the gun, whizzing past Rhodey’s face.

“Whoa!” Rhodey exclaims, dropping his faceplate. “Tony, whoa, whoa, watch it!”

“You can’t do this to me, you can’t—any closer and I’ll shoot, I’ll fucking kill you all, I’ll do it” —several blasts fire from the weapon, charring the earth— “GET BACK, I’LL DO IT!”

“You’re not gonna kill anyone, Tony,” Rhodey says, inching closer and closer to the man in the doorway. “You just need some sleep—we’re gonna get you checked out, we’re gonna bring you home—”

“NO!”

As Rhodey steps close enough to touch him, Tony takes the gun he’s pointing at his friend and points it up into the soft spot underneath his own chin, holding it tightly in both of his trembling hands. 

Pepper’s heart stops in her chest, and both she and Rhodey stop talking.

“Any—any closer—and I—I’ll pull the trigger! ”

Rhodey puts his hand up. “Tony,” he says, breathless. “Put the gun down.”

Tony jams the weapon further into his chin. “Don’t fucking move!”

“We’re not moving, Tony, just—just put it down. Let’s talk.”

“I said d- =don’t move! I’ll—I-I—”

Pepper’s frozen in place. She’s not angry anymore; she’s terrified. The Tony that’s standing before her right now needs her, but all she’s been doing for the past month is seething at every memory of him. She chokes on his name.

“Put it down, Tony.”

Tears are trickling down his face. “Go— get out of here! I’ll do it, I’ll fucking do it, I don’t even—even care anymore, I’ll d-d—” His sobs creep into his words until he can’t even get another sentence across. “Get—out—or I-I’ll pull the FUCKING TRIGGER!”

His hands jerk with the force of his words, and Pepper lets out an involuntary scream. She grabs for Rhodey’s metal-encased arm. “Okay, we’re going, Tony, don’t” —she gulps— “do anything, we’re going, okay?” She urges Rhodey back. “Let’s go, Rhodey—now, we’ve gotta go—”

Rhodey’s faceplate is up again. There’s a burned streak across the side of his face from when Tony fired the weapon at him. He’s still gaping openmouthed at his best friend. “Tony…”

Pepper pulls at his arm, and finally, Rhodey backs up, one robotic step at a time. 

As they go, Tony stands there with the gun stabbing into his chin, legs shaking, watching them. The entire way back, Pepper can still hear Tony crying.

Something is really wrong here.

WEDNESDAY, MAY 9 — 6:34 PM

“Julia?”

Maggie watches as Jim’s face takes on a strange expression. “Yeah,” he says. “Okay. Okay. Yeah.” He looks at Maggie, wide-eyed, and says, “Uh-huh. Yeah. Okay. We’ll—we’ll be—be right there. Yeah. Of course. Yeah. Okay. Bye.”

Maggie stares at him and pulls her cardigan tighter around herself. 

“That was Officer Paz,” Jim gulps. “She says… They’ve got a lead on Cassie.”

“A...lead? Are they—where? What is it?”

Jim’s already shoving his feet into his shoes. “They haven’t found her, but they found a body—not Cassie—dropped in Lake Champlain, on the Vermont side. It’s a five-hour drive.”

“Why—who is—who is it? What does it have to do with—with Cassie?”

“It’s not Cassie, they told me that,” he explains, “and they’re still running tests, but so far all they’ve got is that she’s a black young adult female, and they found some hair and other trace DNA on her—one of which belonged to Cassie.” He tosses Maggie her jacket and picks up the keys. “We gotta go to the site to see if we recognize anything—anything that could help us find Cassie.”

“O-okay. Let’s go.”