light a fire in my stomach
TUESDAY, MAY 15 — 11:35 AM
Secretary Ross is not happy.
The death of Ava Starr is all over the news. She was found with a hair— one fucking hair —in her pocket that led to the reopening of that missing kid’s case: Cassandra Paxton-Lang, Ant-Man’s kid.
Starr’s not the first death. There’s been a couple overdoses, a couple more violent deaths—which she supposes it what happens when you put a bunch of poor, stupid, drug-addled menaces in a bunker and give them an unlimited supply to their drug of choice.
It’s an occupational hazard. It’s not like he made them overdose or fight each other, so obviously it’s not his fault, but it is his responsibility to take care of the bodies to make sure they don’t get caught.
Ross tried to shut down a thorough investigation of the body, to have it settled as the death of a homeless bitch who no one cared for, but they found her fucking identity barely five hours after the body was pulled from the lake. Once they found out it was Ava Starr, former enemy of SHIELD and Ant-Man, then SHIELD took complete control. Once SHIELD got involved, he had no power over the case; everything superhuman always goes straight to SHIELD.
He can’t touch this goddamn case. He should’ve known those idiots would find a way to fuck this up. If another body drops, he’s gonna have to start piling them up in the Raft just to keep them out of the news.
He can help them with the corpses—acid to melt it, tips on how to remove the teeth and fingerprints—but these days, a professionally desecrated corpse draws more attention than a random bitch dropped in a lake or shoved in the back of someone’s car.
People these days watch too much true crime.
They want everything to be a fucking conspiracy; so what if they’re right? It makes Ross’ project so much harder. How’s he ever gonna get anything done when people keep interfering ?
He advised Charlie’s crew on where to drop the bodies; the first two overdosed on Ross’ donated drugs, but they were easy. They weren’t murdered. An autopsy of a couple overdosed, homeless addicts wouldn’t draw any suspicion. Drop them deep in the Bronx, and no one would bat an eye.
But the Starr bitch? She is the most inconvenient thing to happen to him all week. He watches the news on the TV in his office. When her face comes up, brown-skinned and green-eyed and mopey in her SHIELD-official photo, Ross wants to throw the whole television out the window and watch it shatter on the sidewalk below. They’re going to call her a victim?
The news anchor is a man. He says: “ Twenty-three-year-old Ava Starr was murdered last night, and her body was found in Lake Champlain, Vermont. The Argentina native has been a high-profile missing persons case in the United States and Argentine since she was witness to her parents’ death and illegally taken in by former SHIELD agent Bill Foster. Her abduction caused major rifts between the Argentine and American governments. Pre-its 2014 purge, SHIELD lost track of both Starr and Foster, who suddenly disappeared from public eye. Just recently, Foster and Starr came to the forefront of Califronian news when they committed a mass of felonies in San Francisco, including the kidnapping of a minor and the murder of a federal agent, and fled the country.
“Now her brutal death has been related to the disappearance of Scott Lang and his biological daughter Cassandra Paxton-Lang back in April. Forensic teams discovered a hair on Starr that belonged to Paxton-Lang, and further analysis suggests that she has been heavily drugged but is still alive.
“Some believe that the father is the cause of Starr’s death. Others believe both Paxton-Lang and her biological father Lang are victims of a drug ring that Starr was involved in. In any case, the connection between Starr and the Paxton-Lang blended family remains unclear— ”
He pauses the TV as it is, displaying all three of their faces: mugshots of Scott Lang and Ava Starr, and an elementary school photo of Cassie Paxton-Lang. Those vultures—if they keep digging, they’re going to find out. They’re going to uncover the connection between him and Ava Starr, and then Ross’ll be screwed.
His office door opens, and Ross moves to turn off the television, but it’s a wall-mounted flatscreen; his secretary can see it from where she stands in the doorway. “Kate!” he snaps. “What did I say about knocking?”
Kate Bishop is a college student who is much too stupid to be a secretary, but her mother pays him too well for him to get rid of her. The girl apologizes deeply and places a file of papers on his desk . “From the Secretary of Defense, sir.” Plus, she’s not too hard on the eyes, and she’s fond of those tight, cropped shirts that show exactly how young she is.
Her eyes glance up at the television, where Paxton-Lang’s, Lang’s, and Starr’s faces still glow. “Oh, I heard about that,” she says, with a curious nod. “They’d closed the case already, I heard. And like, they thought the dad did it, but then they found a hair—”
“I don’t pay you to talk,” snaps Ross. Well, he doesn’t really pay her at all. It’s an unpaid position that will set her up for her future career. “Is there anything else?”
Kate shuts up, as she should. “No, sir.”
The Bishop girl isn’t going to be here for very long; she’s taking a semester off from NYU to be his assistant, so he has her until the end of the summer, when she’ll be going back to school. For now, he’ll drink her in. The long ponytails, the eyeliner, the sheer tights, the crop tops… The girl’s got taste, much more than his wife ever had.
“Um, actually,” adds Kate, “you did get a delivery.”
He stares at her. Is she stupid? “Then where is it?”
Kate nods, laughs nervously, and says, “Oh—sorry! I’ll get it!” with a hasty exit.
She returns with a worn, well-padded box labeled FRAGILE and places it on his desk. “No return address, sir, but it was labeled Project Manticore. Did you want me to open it for you?”
Finally! One good thing in this utter shitshow of a day. “No, just leave it here and get back to your desk.”
Another “Yes, sir!” from Bishop, and she vanishes into the hall; Ross locks the door this time. He opens up the box: inside is Charlie Keene’s newest prototype, plus about thirty sheets of paper bound in a ratty manila folder. Blueprints.
Originally, eh was going to call it Project Pegasus, like the original SHIELD project attempting to harness the power of the Tesseract, but it felt it was too on-the-nose. This project is more than that; using his resources, Thaddeus Ross is going to replicate the power of the Tesseract. And fine, does it require a little arm-twisting to get his results? Sure. But soon he will have power, true power: a power source that can disintegrate a person at mere touch or control the minds of soldiers or create explosions massive enough to destroy a city yet contained enough to avoid any radioactive side-effects.
Imagine—an bomb with the strength of the atom bomb that leaves the land untouched.
Thaddeus Ross will be put in the history books after he’s done with this.
This—the power of the Tesseract—will make him not just a good leader, but a great one. This could grant the United States complete global military control.
The Secretary of Defense—a man named Johnson who is entirely too young for the job—is more than happy to fund his project. Naming it Project Pegasus also would’ve drawn too many eyes, so instead, Ross calls it Project Manticore, after the fire-breathing creature of fantasy: the epitome of strength. With Ross’ promise of a new, clean, contained power source, Johnson provides him with three billion dollars of funding for the year, given in smaller portions every month.
Johnson doesn’t have to know how much of it goes towards funding the drug habits of a couple dozen addicts from the dregs of New York City.
He will never know. No one ever will.
Ross takes Charlie Keene’s prototypes and makes them shine . Every time he gets a new prototype, he replaces rusty metal parts with gleaming steel, replaces the ratty cardboard box with a shiny suitcase, and exchanges its torn newspaper packing with custom-cut foam casing. Then he presents it to Secretary Johnson as proof of his Project’s advancements in technology.
Really, Ross was doing all the work: he turned Project Manticore from a pile of Stark shit into something beautiful . Without his work, without his dedication, no one would even glance at the Project. He tells this Johnson, this stupidly naïve Secretary of Defense, that he has a team of American engineers who creates each weekly design. Ross also tells him that they outsource the parts to different countries, and assembly of the parts occurs, obviously, back in America, at a factory in Michigan. Ross knows it’s the details that matter. All Johnson cares about is that the Project is manufactured by Americans, cheaply outsourced, and impressive.
Right now, though, they’re barely far enough to create a Project Manticore handgun, let alone a power source, and it’s flimsy. Stark isn’t working fucking hard enough or fast enough. This new prototype better be impressive, or Ross is going to call Charlie and put his ass on the rack.
TUESDAY, MAY 15 — 12:00 PM
Helen Cho’s first round of tests yields nothing, but Pepper’s increasing nausea and sudden fever a few days later brings her back to Dr. Cho for a second round of testing.
With some medication, her fever is down to a manageable level, and Pepper Potts is lying on her back on the examination table, nude save her medical gown. She has folded her clothes nearly on the chair in the corner. Her underwear and bra are tucked inside of her folded pants, and her shirt is on top. She bought that shirt with Tony; he said it looked like something her Uncle Morgan would wear, with all of the florals, and it made her laugh so hard that she ended up buying it anyway.
She can’t remember why she wore it today; it seems stupid now.
Helen is readying a syringe for her blood draw when Pepper finally starts, “Can I ask you something?”
Helen says, “Anything.”
Pepper looks away as the needle gets close—the rubber tourniquet is tight around her arm, and her vein feels as exposed as the rest of her when Helen finally pricks her inner arm. “Why would someone threaten to kill themselves? Do they have to be…suicidal?”
At first, Dr. Helen Cho doesn’t answer. She finishes the blood draw with careful, practiced hands, removing one vial and placing the next. “Pepper,” she says calmly, “are you experiencing—”
“No,” she clarifies. “No. I’m not. It’s just a question, I swear.”
“It’s normal for people in high-stress positions to experience depressive thoughts, suicidal ideation—”
“Helen, I’m serious.”
Helen gives her a look of poorly disguised disbelief and returns to the vial. “Alright. Well… Is this about a real person?”
“No one you know,” Pepper answers.
Helen sighs. She waits, filling the next vial with Pepper’s blood, and removes it before she answers. “Does this person have a history of suicidal thoughts? Or attempts?”
At her question, Pepper tries to draw a picture of Tony’s mind in her own. After his kidnapping, Tony wasn’t exactly suicidal, but at the very least he was lacking in a desire to live. He seemed both intensely focused on his survival while, at the same time, being horrified by it completely. Although Tony refused to talk to a therapist after Afghanistan (he wouldn’t see one until years later, after the wormhole), Pepper did ask someone about Tony’s troubles. The therapist acknowledged his furious survivor’s guilt and post-traumatic stress disorder, both of which led to a hyper-vigilance concerning his body and his loved ones, but not his life.
After Afghanistan, Tony would have left that arc reactor inside of his chest until it killed him; but as long as he could protect his body from anyone trying to interfere, he would have refused medical help. Even if it meant saving his life.
All of this meant… Tony’s relationship with his survival was complicated.
“Kind of,” she answers finally, and her mind flashes so quickly to that moment: the gun pressed into Tony’s chin, his twitching trigger finger, his misery-filled eyes— “Thoughts, maybe.”
Helen finished filling the final vial, and she now removes the needle from her arm, pressing a cotton ball to the spot before it can well with blood. “I’m not exactly qualified in the psychiatric realm,” she starts, removing her gloves with a snap, “but if you want, I can get someone to come talk to you, someone who can get you a real diagnosis. Psychiatry isn’t really something I can help you with, unless all you need is some conversation. I do know some people, though. I could get someone to you within the week.”
“It’s not about me,” reiterates Pepper, although she’s speaking to the ceiling. “It’s not.”
Helen tells her that the blood testing will take less than a half-hour, so Pepper leaves the exam room. She collapses into a waiting-room chair next to a coffee table covered in magazines. These last few weeks have taken such a toll on her; she comes home every night to an empty bed, and she wakes every morning to an empty pillow. At night, she dreams of the way his hair smells and the way his hands move. It’s like Tony is dead instead of just locked away in his lab.
Footsteps from down the hall.
Pepper looks up to see a large man at the end of the hallway: Happy. He shuffles forth with his phone in hand. “Is this a bad time?” Happy asks. “Your secretary told me you were down at the clinic, but I didn’t think…” He stares down at her medical gown and her bare, unshaved legs. “Uh… Are you okay?”
Happy looks different; how did she not notice he’d grown a beard? He shuffles from one foot to the next. He’s always looked like an awkward teen in a grown man’s body, like he never got used to having bulk or muscles. “Just a checkup,” she says, nodding even though her fever is still making her sweat through her shivers. ‘What do you need?”
“Well, uh…” He glances down at his phone, which she now realizes is gripped tightly in his hand. “I wouldn’t bother when you’re, uh, busy, but… I can’t get ahold of Peter. And it’s worrying me, ‘cause usually I let the kid do his own thing, and I know he’s probably having a grand old time at his internship, but he’s been gone a long time. They said he might stay through summer break, but I can’t go all that time without checking at all, right? So I called the number that they left in the informational email and—straight to voicemail. I’ve called it so many times that it says the mailbox is full , Pepper. I don’t know why I didn’t call it before—I just assumed…”
Pepper stares at him.
“Parker,” he clarifies, after a beat. “Peter Parker. You know…” He looks around and his voice drops to a whisper. “Spider-Man?”
“I know who Peter is,” she states, with a tone of annoyance. She tries to look as CEO-esque as possible while sitting against a wall in a damp medical gown. “But… What? So they gave you the wrong number?”
Happy pauses where he is, and then he takes a step towards her, twisting his phone in his hands. “That’s the thing—it’s not a wrong number, Pepper. The voicemail: they claim to be the internship. And I left voicemails—a ton of them, but no response. It’s been like a week, and still nothing. And I can’t get ahold of May, either…” His face pinkens. “I know she went with him, but still. It was so sudden, and I haven’t heard from either of them…”
“Well, he’s doing research, Happy. Biochemistry in rural Alaska. It’s important work, and they said he was excited, but service might not be the best.”
Happy doesn’t look convinced. “Pepper, I’ve tried every angle. We should’ve gotten the place checked out—their website doesn’t lead anywhere, not even to a different phone number. And sure, there are names for the scientists, but they’re so general that it could be anyone , so it’s hard to find—”
“Happy,” she says, summoning the sliver of calm within her and trying to transfer it to him. “It’s just an internship. And maybe it wasn’t the fanciest, but he’s getting school credit and he’ll be back. I know you miss him, but I’m sure he’ll let you know as soon as he’s back. Right?”
“Pepper, come on. I mean, you’ve seen him with his phone. He can’t stay away from that thing! Do you honestly think he’d be gone for this long without contacting us?’
Pepper’s too tired to have this conversation. “Happy, he’s a kid. He got an internship he wanted, so he went.”
“But—”
“Look, if you’re this worried, then go ask his friends.” She fumbles for her phone and remembers she’s wearing her medical gown, and her phone is still sitting in her purse in the exam room. “I have their numbers, so I’ll text them to you, okay? I’m sure they’ve been keeping contact with him. Kids always find a way.”
Happy hesitates, and then he nods, and nods again. “Thanks,” he says, looking relieved. “No, you’re right. You’re right. He’s probably fine. Sorry to bother you.” He turns to leave, and then he turns back to her again. “Uh…forgot to ask. “How’re you feeling?”
Pepper sighs, and she puts on a smile for him. “I’m fine, Happy. Don’t worry about me.”
He nods, and he turns to leave again.
Pepper puts her head in her hands. Then, she hears him pivot, and she perks up, trying to seem normal again. Happy starts, “I, uh. I had a girlfriend once who… She had something like what happened to you, uh, happen to her, and she started kickboxing at this place upstate, not too far from here. I think it helped. I could give you the address, if you want.”
Pepper smiles, but she can’t force it to reach her eyes; it’s her official Pepper Potts smile, and there’s nothing behind it. “Thanks, Happy.”
Happy doesn’t say you’re welcome . He just makes a close-mouthed smile, kind of nods, stands there for a second as if to say something more, and walks away stiffly.’
Dr. Cho returns with the results barely ten minutes after Happy leaves. “Finally, something,” she says as she taps open her tablet. “Nothing too strange, but… Your hormone levels are unusually high: hCG, progesterone… I tested for some others, too, but those came back normal.”
Pepper is on the exam table again, hands crossed rigidly over her ribcage.
“But there is something,” the doctor continues. “It’s a start. From here, we can test for other hormones linked to the ones your test alerted.” Cho continues to click on her tablet; Pepper watches as form after form flashes on her screen. “You know, if I didn’t know any better, I’d think—” She pauses suddenly, stylus poised over the tablet. “You have an IUD?” she asks, blinking suddenly.
“Yeah,” answers Pepper from her lying position. Lying down seems to cure some of her nausea, although she does still feel hot.
“What kind?”
“Uh, Nexplanon? It’s one of the hormone ones.”
“I know,” says Helen, not to be pretentious but in medical agreement. “How long have you had it?”
Her doctor is now entirely engrossed in the tablet, and she has begun tapping away furiously. “Uh,” starts Pepper, intelligently.
She wishes she were clothed; having a conversation where she doesn’t know the exact answers doesn’t help her embarrassment when part of her gown-exposed ass is pressed to exam-table paper. She’s had IUDs since the early 2000s, but she only really gets them replaced when she remembers to. Ever since she became CEO of Stark Industries in 2008, she hasn’t been keeping up with medical appointments as well. She’s, well, busy . She barely makes time for checkups and mammograms. How is she supposed to remember the last time she went in to get her IUD replaced? So much has happened in the past decade: Loki’s takeover, Aldrich Killian’s kidnapping, the HYDRA-SHIELD fiasco, Ultron, the Avengers’ breakup, Peter… She can barely tag those to a date, let alone her IUD.
“Three years?” she settles on, finally. “Maybe?”
“Forget it, I got it,” says Helen, baring the tablet to her. “Does February of 2012 sound right to you?”
“Sure?” 2012… So, six years ago? How long did her IUD even last for?
“Okay, and your last period?”
Her neck is strained form looking up at Helen for so long, so she sinks it back into the papered headrest. “Don’t think I’ve had one for the past few months, Pepper says. “Maybe… Three months ago? I mean, I’ve been having them, but they’ve been…spotty. They’ve been getting lighter and lighter—but that’s normal, right? IUDs do that, my gynecologist said…” Helen is staring at her. “What? What’s wrong?”
“I’m sorry,” says Dr. Cho. “I didn’t think…” Finally, she puts her tablet down: facedown on the counter behind her. “I should’ve thought of it—I just thought, since Tony was gone…nevermind. I made an assumption as a friend, not as a doctor, and for that I apologize.” She wheels her stool forward, and Pepper realizes her gloves are back on. Her voice drops a little: less urgent, more gentle. “Can you tell me the last time you had sex?”
Pepper has never talked to Helen Cho about her sex life, and she never planned to. But Pepper is fearing the path the doctor is heading down, so she answers, “April. The…sixth.” She doesn’t want to clarify why she remembers exactly, but this moment is something she thinks about a lot. It was the night of the charity gala for the Yemeni Women’s Union, and Pepper had just put on that silky cocktail dress, and she was leaned over her vanity comparing earrings. Tony stood openmouthed in the doorway, stopped halfway in whatever he had just been saying. His tie still draped around his neck and his shirt half-open, he approached her with that stupid grin. Pepper Potts , he said, with his voice all low, and she laughed and shook her head.
We’re gonna be late , she said, pointing an earring at him. Don’t do it. I just need you to zip me.
He grinned and grinned and grinned like a Cheshire Cat.
Oh my God, Tony, she said, a playful warning. Don’t…
Fine, fine, he murmured. At last he got to her, and he ran his hands over her arms, her waist, her back, until finally he zipped the back of the dress: slowly, gingerly, careful to move her unfinished hair out of the way. She felt the warmth of his breath on the back of her neck then, with her hair swept away. That familiar buzz rose within her, and her breath quickened. Tony .
Mm? He was so close to her then, his lips barely a hair from her neck. I’m not doing anything .
She turned around then to find his eyes half-closed; she slid her fingers under his collar and pushed him slightly backward, so that his legs hit the foot of the bed, his knees buckling from bumping the mattress, and gravity pulled him into a seated position. We’re going to be late , she says again, but instead of scolding him she moves forward so her knees are between his, and she nudged her leg forward to widen the gap.
Tony smirked and leaned back, chin up, still sitting at the foot of the bed with his arms propped up on his palms.
Pepper stood between his open legs and wound both ends of his loose tie around her hands, bringing his neck forward so that his face was closer. His open mouth… You ruin me, Tony , she said.
He said, Gladly, Ms. Potts.
What did she do wrong? What could she possibly have done between that moment and FRIDAY’s shutdown that could’ve caused him to hate her like this? To hate her enough to…
She rubs her head, as it has started to hurt. “Yeah,” she says. “April sixth.”
Pepper doesn’t want to think the words.
Dr. Cho keeps saying it, but Pepper’s mind skips over it. It’s too much. Instead, in an entirely unhelpful way, she imagines Tony beside her, making quips about gynecologists and holding her hand. He’d say something like, Damn, Helen, ask her on a date first . He always was the worst at telling jokes, but it was always the worst jokes that made her laugh.
They do a proper examination, in the stirrups and everything. Dr. Cho finds the IUD poised perfectly at her cervix, and, with a bit of localized anesthesia, removes it with barely a prick of pain. Helen then calls a colleague of hers—an ultrasound technician—who rubs translucent goo on her belly before drawing the plastic wand over her stomach.
“There it is,” says the technician, and he points at the sonogram on the screen beside Pepper. It’s a grainy image, but she supposes all sonograms are. It’s black and white. in the cave of her uterus on the screen, there’s a… He’s right. There it is. “We could do a transvaginal ultrasound for a better picture, but you can see pretty well here.” He points again, drawing a circle with his gloved finger at the screen. “We can get you an accurate conception date, but I do a lot of these, and I’d guess we’re about…three months along at this point.”
The figure on the sonogram has a head and visible arms— “Helen,” Pepper breathes, and she’s feeling faint. “Helen—I… I don’t understand. I had the IUD, I didn’t… How can I…”
Helen comes to stand beside her. She is ungloved again, and she takes Pepper’s hand in hers. “Some IUDs can last that long, Pepper, but not the kind you had. Nexplanon usually expires after about four years. And every day after it expires, your chances of pregnancy go up. You had an expired one for over two years . Something had to give.”
“But I…” she starts again. She swallows, and she tries to remember she’s Pepper Potts, CEO of Stark Industries. “This isn’t how it was supposed to…” Why can’t she finish a single sentence? “I don’t have…”
Tony is what she wants to say more than anything. I don’t have Tony .
The technician continues talking, but Pepper isn’t listening. “The IUD was hormonal, but luckily it had almost entirely stopped releasing by the time we got to it, so it looks like it hasn’t affected the fetus at all, so there’s no need for worry on that front. Plus, I think the fever was just your body’s reaction to some leftover hormones released by the combined IUD and pregnancy…”
“Fetus,” echoes Pepper. A wave of nausea as powerful as usual bubbles up in her chest and into her throat, but now she knows it’s not simply illness. This isn’t just something she can fix . “Oh, God.”
It’s not just nausea. It’s morning sickness.
TUESDAY, MAY 15 — 12:41 PM
The doctor becomes less amicable as the day goes on.
His pleasant demeanor turns into something dark and sullen; the gravity of his situation weighs on the man. He keeps staring off into space. At some point, he removes his rubber gloves and grasps the Star of David around his neck. He kisses it: once, twice, three times, and Riri turns away before he can do it again. It feels far too personal to watch. He then puts on another set of gloves and works on Peter. He gets every single wound, even the ones not worthy of stitches, taping closed little slices on his arms and dabbing numbing ointment on his bruises. It’s completely unnecessary, but he does it nonetheless.
Eventually, he finishes that, too. “We’ve done all we can do for now,” he says.
For some reason, his comment really pisses Riri off. “You’re not done,” she insists. “He still looks like…”
“Like he’s been to hell?” he prompts. “Well, he’s still there, hon.”
“But—”
“He’s not just going to magically get better as soon as I lay my hands on him. That’s not how medicine works. Sometimes the best you can do is sit and wait.”
They don’t tie him back down. The doctor stops her the first time she tries, so she doesn’t try again. She doesn’t really want to do it again: the leather straps around skin-and-bone, tightened to the point of chafing. She doesn’t want to see Peter’s—Parker’s—face as he wakes: the strangling panic of realizing he’s tied down, followed by the terror of being unable to move, and then the all-consuming grief as he realizes he won’t be able to escape. She can’t do it again.
Parker half-wakes at some point as the guard outside is changing. Now, it’s that tall girl and Haroun. “I'm tired,” mumbles Peter, and his words feel as though they are drenched in sweat. He opens his eyes, but they’re pink and so watery that when he blinks, liquid spills down his temple. “I'm so tired, Mr. Stark… Please… I just wanna go home… Please, please…” He falls back to sleep almost as quickly as he wakes.
Besides his random, feverish mumbles, Peter has been asleep for a long time. Dr. Skivorski says it’s normal, but Riri’s not so sure.
“His body’s gone through a lot,” he says. “You can’t do this to him constantly and expect him not to wither like this. The human body is only meant to take so much.”
“He’s not human,” Riri says, like it helps.
The doctor only gives her a dark look.
After that, the doctor sits. He sits and sits and stares at Peter’s unconscious body. The kid looks like a corpse. “Why is he here?” he snaps.
“What?” answers Riri, because she’s not sure she heard him right.
“Why. Is. He. Here.” The doctor shakes his head. “What kind of reason could you possibly have for doing… For making him…” He wipes at his forehead with the back of his wrist. “Just tell me.”
“Um,” she says. She tries to explain as well as she can, mostly because the doctor has started to look at her the way he looks at Jon or Nick—with barely-contained revulsion. She tries to explain Stark’s usefulness, Charlie’s plan, and Peter’s sessions, but as she does, the doctor’s eyes only grow wider and he draws his surgical mask down to his chin. His mouth looks horrified, too. She had thought it would reassure the man, knowing that they were doing this for a good cause, but Dr. Skivorski looks like she just stabbed his kid in the throat. “You’re using him,” he repeats, “to blackmail his dad ? Who is Tony Stark?”
She slaps her hand over her mouth. “Oh, fuck.” She’s said too much. She never mentioned Tony Stark by name, had she? Maybe one of the others had dropped the name… Shit! The doctor isn’t one of her friends, or Haroun, or Zhiyuan, or anyone she could talk to about this stuff. Telling him this was throwing him under the bus and signing him up for his own execution. “You weren’t supposed to know that…”
“You’re blackmailing his dad ?” he repeats, ignoring her comment. It’s strange that he’s focusing more on the dad part than on the Tony Stark part. “That’s why he looks like he’s been torn apart by a pack of wolves?”
“We’re gonna let him go as soon as he gives us what we—”
“It doesn’t matter!” His stool is spun now so that he faces her, and his surgical mask hangs around his neck. His face looks different; it must be because he hasn’t shaved. There’s a bit of five o-clock shadow on him now, stubble freckling his lower face. “You understand what you’re doing, don’t you? You’re—this—this is a crime! This is—this is torture!”
Riri swallows. The good doctor is standing now, and he’s much, much taller than her, and he’s scowling. Riri swallows. ‘You’re making it sound bad. We’re not, like, permanently disfiguring him. We feed him and clothe him and the Lang kid keeps him company… There’s people out there who don’t even have that.”
The doctor is aghast. “ What ?”
“Um,” says Riri again.
“Hon,” he starts, and he sounds like an angry dad. “Look at this kid on the table and tell me that’s not permanent disfigurement ! I have never, in all my days, holy —I’ve never even close to seen someone injured like this—and I'm a surgeon! Have you seen his scarring? He looks like Edward Scissorhands! And we’re lucky he’s enhanced because otherwise—that hit could very well have killed him! Look at him! You see what he looks like now? People don’t just come back from this, Riri! He looks like he’s been… Like he’s… God, it’s sick! You people are sick! How long have you been—this is the definition of torture! How could you do something like this!”
He looks at her, then, really looks at her, and his eyes drop to her hands.
Her gun’s out.
Riri doesn’t remember taking it out—she just knows she’s really scared now and her finger’s on the trigger.
The doctor puts his hands up, fingers spread, but he doesn’t look scared. “Riri,” he says, and he’s calmer, his voice down to a normal volume. “You could get out of here. You’re a kid, just like him. You really want to be a part of this? You want this” —he gestures at Peter— “to be your life? You could walk through those doors and be free—confess, tell them what happened. They hurt you, didn’t they?” He points with a crooked finger at her face, where her bruised eye is already darkening. “They hurt you. You can say they made you do it.”
“I can’t,” she says, still holding the gun. “I can’t.”
“You can .”
“I can’t!”
For the first time since she kidnapped the doctor, Riri feels completely out of control. Her gun-arm is shaking, and she looks at the boy—Parker. Peter Parker. He looks much younger now that he is unconscious. He looks like a doll. A mutilated person-sized doll. She lowers her gun and sits down at her stool. “I’m not like him,” she says, gesturing vaguely with her gun. It’s not hers, exactly. She thinks Charlie bought it for her at some point at a gun show. Something small and easy to use. Something that would keep her safe, he said. “This is my life . It was always gonna be. I can’t just leave it.”
The doctor doesn’t say anything.
“What’s your kid like?” asks Riri, as the doctor rechecks Parker’s head.
“Well,” says Dr. Skivorski, “he likes to fix things. He’s just like his mom—she’s a mechanic. We used to live in Tennessee, you know, and we had a huge yard where we kept old cars and other things… He liked to fiddle.”
“Tennessee?” she echoes. “How’d you end up here?”
“I…” He sniffs. “I used to drink a lot, back then. Harley was…ten. I left him and his mom for a while, after that, and by the time I got sober he was in high school. They’d moved up here, so I found a job close by. We got to be a normal family again, or, as normal as we could be, I suppose, but… I don’t think Harley ever forgave me after that.”
“Is that his name?”
The good doctor smiles. “Yeah. Harley. His mom wanted to name him after the motorcycle, can you believe it? Mechanics.” He’s got one hand on Peter’s now, and Peter has subconsciously curled his fingers around the doctors. “Your name is pretty interesting—how’d they name you?”
“My dad’s name was Demetrius, but everyone called him Riri,” she explains. “So I’m a junior, kind of. Riri, Jr.”
“Where is he now?” he asks carefully.
“Dead,” she says.
“And your mom?”
“Dead, too.”
Dr. Skivorski swallows. “Do you have anyone else? Any other family?”
“A brother,” she says, and she wants to eat his name as soon as she thinks it. “Got killed running around with Charlie.”
The doctor’s still holding Parker’s hand. “Is that why you stick around?”
Riri scowls. Fuck him. “You ask too many questions.” There’s different guards at the door now: skinny, silent Lyle and giant Glenn with his broken arm. Riri can see them from their position in the operating room. “Look—this place, I have a family here. I can’t just up and leave.”
The doctor doesn’t rise to her jab. “Hon, I’ve had time to come to terms with the things I’ve done. Abandoning my family—my son—was the worst regret of my entire life. But I’ve had time to try to remedy my mistakes. To mend my relationship with my son. You… You’re young. You’ve made mistakes. So… What are you going to do to remedy them?”
“I don’t need to remedy anything,” snaps Riri. “This wasn’t a mistake. We’re doing this—we have a plan, okay? And we’re gonna save the world. We don’t just take random people. We’re gonna help people. We’re not—” She’s about to say criminals , but she supposes helping to kidnap a man directly out of his workplace to force him to tend to a kidnapped minor at threat to his life might count as criminal activity. “We’re not bad people.”
“You think good people do this?” he says, gesturing to Parker. “Hon— look at him.”
She looks at Peter. He really does look like he’s been torn apart by a pack of wolves. He looks more Frankenstein-y now than ever—his pale body lined with stitched gashes, half his head shaved and bandaged, unnaturally thin, covered in tubes and medical tape.
“Charlie says,” she starts, “that sometimes you have to do bad things to get good things to happen in the future.”
The doctor just shakes his head. “Is he the one who does all this?”
He doesn’t have to say what; she knows what he’s talking about. “Yeah, mostly.” The doctor clicks his tongue, and Riri gets angry again. “He’s not all bad. He’s just an addict, okay? And Ross gives him what he wants. It’s not like he wants to hurt anybody. He’s a good guy. He’s just not in control.”
With one bloody glove, the doctor waves a hand over Peter. “It sure looks like he wants to hurt somebody.”
“No—he’s just high. He always gets high before he does it. He’s not… He’s not…”
“Riri, listen to me.” The doctor keeps holding Peter’s hand. “I was an alcoholic. I know what it’s like to be an addict. There are some people who… Listen. Yes, I drank way too much. But I never laid a hand on my wife or my son, no matter how drunk I was. I mostly just moped and embarrassed myself. But the point is, I never hit him or anyone because I never wanted to hurt him. When it comes to substances and violence… If everyone got violent every time they got drunk, then we’d be living in anarchy. It’s not about the substance. It just amplifies what’s already there.
“If your friend likes hurting kids when he’s high, then he likes it when he’s sober. It’s just there’s something stopping him when he’s sober. Does he usually look like he’s being forced to do it?”
“Um,” says Riri.
The doctor adds, “How does he look at Peter?”
Riri doesn’t have to say it out loud. Charlie always looks at Peter like he wants to hurt him, whether he’s sober or not.
She knows Charlie had a shitty childhood. Abusive dad, addict mom, the works. He had a sister once, too, but she didn’t get addicted like him. That’s all they really know. He’ll mumble about some of this stuff, about how he misses his sister or how his dad used to beat him with a belt.
It makes him difficult sometimes.
“These are kids,” continues the doctor. “Their lives shouldn’t be like this, no matter what their parents have done. No matter what you need them to do. They’re not toys. They’re people . They’re children .”
They sit in silence for a long time. The doctor keeps fiddling with Peter’s wounds, injecting localized anesthesia into the worst of his injuries and holding his hand whenever he gets too fitful. Dr. Skivorski sits and stares. His expression isn’t exactly sad or angry but something more intense than either—like a serial killer who’s planning where to bury a body. Serial killers don’t scowl , Riri thinks. Charlie doesn’t scowl. Charlie smiles.
Riri hates the silence. With so many people around her all the time, there’s usually someone talking; sitting with the doctor, there’s nothing but brooding silence. She can’t help but talk. Riri talks about Haroun and Charlie and Renee and the other two until finally the doctor looks up.
“The other two?” he repeats. He frowns suddenly. “Wait, wait, wait—who’re the other ones?”
“The other what?”
“The other ones—the other people you took. There’s Peter Parker, and then…” He’s looking for a name, she suddenly realizes, and she’s hesitant to give him one.
She thinks, suddenly, of the way Stark talked about Parker. They’re torturing my son, he said, and he looked at her like he was being falyed alive. Like he was being stripped of his skin in layers, until nothing but pink, bloody muscle remained. He looked like she was killing him, like inside he was screaming as she rubbed salt into his open wounds.
“Lang,” she says finally. “The girl.” For a second, she forgets the kid’s first name. No one calls her that, anyway. No one but Peter and Scott. Scott says her name a lot, in whispers and crazed shouts to no one in particular. “The kid under the bed,” she clarifies, because Dr. Skivorski still looks confused.
“Oh,” says the good doctor. “I forgot about her.” He laughs, but there’s something wrong with the sound. “I forgot about her. Can’t believe I forgot about an entire kid that you took because I’ve been so busy bringing this one back to life.” He shakes his head. “Is she injured?”
“No, she’s… I mean, what do you mean by injured?”
He frowns. “Is she hurt or not?”
She shrugs, sheepish. “Well, not like recently , but sometimes Charlie gets pissed, and he gets ahold of her before anyone can stop him, and he…”
“Go get her.” He sounds like a dad again.
“We can’t. You’re only here for Peter, remember?”
He shakes his head. “It’s my job to help people in need, hon. Go get her.”
TUESDAY, MAY 15 — 1:53 PM
No one talks to Scott anymore.
He knows something is going on, but no one talks to him. Last night, he heard his little girl’s voice—Cassie, Cassie, sweet, stubborn Cassie—screaming for help. Peter! Peter! Peter! Peter! Not once did she scream for him. Peter, wake up! Wake up! Scott could hear her—his little girl—shrieking and shrieking and crying and shrieking more. No, no, no! No, no, Peter, Peter…
She’s screaming about that boy, the one who’s always in the Chair, the one who Scott watches bleed all the time. He saw it happen, too. Mason’s hammer. Jon’s hands. Peter’s head. The collision like a meteor to a moon. Peter, Peter, please! Peter!
He remembers the fear in her voice so clearly, as though it was yesterday: Help! Help! Ava, Ava, Ava, help! Peter! Peter! Wake up!
Scott can’t usually hear them. Peter Parker and Cassie are usually too far down the hall for him to hear anything at all. But when they scream… He hears everything.
He never sees Cassie. Usually, she stays quiet, so quiet that sometimes he’s not sure she’s still alive, or even there. He sees her sometimes—flashes of her around the empty room, glimpses of her voice ringing in his ears.
Peter used to give him updates—as little as he could before Charlie came at him with a fist or a knife—about her well-being. As Scott hid behind the computer, Peter would crane his neck to meet his eyes. She’s okay! he’d shout. She misses you!
Now, Peter knows better. The only signal he ever gives Scott is a slight nod in his direction, sometimes accompanied by a glance.
He wants to know what’s happening. All he knows is Cassie is no longer screaming Peter’s name. That’s not enough for him. He has to know that Cassie’s okay. That Peter’s okay.
But no one talks to Scott anymore.
TUESDAY, MAY 15 — 2:12 PM
Cassie remembers once what Peter told her during the first week. It was only the third day, or maybe the fourth or fifth, or was it the first?
Yes, the first day. Before they had tried to take him away and he had stuck his magic hands to the floor.
Before. When they take me , he said, I want you to take the pillow. And you’re gonna take it and go under the blankets and put the pillow around your head, okay? And press down, hard, with your hands. You might hear something, but it’s nothing, okay? it’s nothing you should listen to.
And she kept asking, no matter how many times he said it or how disturbed he looked, asking Why? And she repeated it, asking, Why, why, why, why, until finally he looked at her.
Peter’s eyes looked very brown and his face looked very still. He said, Cassie, just do this. Please. For me. And when I get back we can play another game but only once I get back, okay? Until then, you have to close your ears.
Later, Cassie’s hand was messed up, so Peter showed her how to do it with only one hand, pinning the pillow between the bed and her head, and then putting her good hand over her other ear.
But Cassie is not always a good listener. The first few times, she did as she was told, muffling all the sounds around her with the pillow and hiding under their sheets. But she always heard something . Loud sounds, ones that couldn’t be quieted by a pillow. And she was curious—she has always been a curious kid—so one day, maybe after the first week, she disobeyed Peter. Instead of putting the pillow around her head, she crept over to the food slot, and she pressed her ear against it, and she listened.
She felt so sick when she heard it, like that time she and Daddy got the flu.
It started with begging. She hadn’t heard him beg like that. Peter was strong, right? He didn’t beg. He was never scared—and then she’d heard it. “No…” it began. “No, please, please, no, get away from me, get the fuck away! ”
Eerie silence. Other noises, like a man talking over a phone. Charlie’s voice. These other sounds were quieter, and much harder to pick out from down their room all the way down the hall.
“ Please, no. no, wait, wait, wait—I’ll do anything—Charlie, no—CHARLIE CHARLIE PLEASE PLEASE—GET AWAY FROM ME DON’T DON’T DON’T— ”
And then the screaming.
And “Shut up! Shut up!” from Charlie, the Big-Man.
Then it would stop. and she would hear sighing, crying, broken moans, all of this breathing that was so loud it was almost like Peter was right there beside her. Then more begging. “Please, Mr. Stark, please.”
A cut-off whimper and: “Tell him, Parker.”
Crying. Peter’s crying. “It hurts, please… 'M so tired… I can’t… Mr. Stark, please, just do it…”
And more screaming.
Then it would stop again. Charlie would yell stuff, crazy stuff, stuff she’d heard him say to her, like “I’m gonna rip you to pieces!” or “I fucking own you!” or “Shut up! Shut the fuck up!” She’d heard it all before, but it didn’t make it any less scary.
And then the worst part. Peter again. “NO—no, no—I HATE YOU, I FUCKING HATE YOU—YOU JUST HAVE TO DO THIS ONE THING—PLEASE, JUST THIS ONE THING, I HATE YOU TONY I HATE YOU, YOU NEVER WANTED TO SAVE ME, I—” Screaming that devolves into rapid sobbing. Ragged breathing, each exhale a moan of pain. “Oh, god, oh, god….” Pained breathing. The breathing was the worst part, because she could picture Charlie in those moments, just watching Peter suffer. A sudden yelp. “No more,” he’d moan. “Please. Please. Please, I can’t TAKE IT ANYMORE —”
And it would keep going, just like that, until his time was up. Cassie usually counts with her ears closed, and it’s usually about an hour. Peter always tells her to count sixty sixties. She counts in Mississippi’s, just like Daddy and Jim taught her to, but when she’s bored she counts with other things. Spider-Mans. Ice creams. Bowls of ramen.
Then she’d hear the muffled door slam through her shut ears, and a body would flop onto the concrete floor. She knew to keep them shut still; Peter liked to compose himself before she saw him. Sometimes she could hear him sob beside her, but she pretended not to hear.
Eventually, she’d feel a hand. On her head or her foot or her shoulder. She’d let go of the pillow and remove the blanket from over her head. And there would be Peter, sweating and bleeding, sometimes bent and broken, sometimes so bruised he could barely breathe right. “Hey, Stinger,” he’d say. “Have a good nap?”
He calls her Stinger sometimes because her nails got so long, that when they’d play Poke, having her poke at his head to see where he was injured, it would sometimes hurt anyway, little sharp pokes from her fingernails. They figured out later they had to bite their fingernails whenever they got too long for the extra calories, but the name still stuck.
And Cassie would say, “Yes,” and Peter would nod and she’d get the pillow and put it under his head before helping him tend to whatever Charlie had done that day.
She knows how to sew up gashes kinda well, but only the small ones, and only if Peter was too tired to do it himself. She knows not to touch his head without permission unless it’s bleeding, not to touch any bones that look broken, to put a teeny tiny bit of antibiotic cream on anything that bleeds, to wrap and hold anything that bleeds a lot, and to call for help if things get, as Peter says, “really bad.”
She’s smart, Peter always says, when she learns something new to fix him because he can’t do it himself.
But Peter is gone now and Cassie doesn’t know what to do. Should she pull the blanket over her head and press the pillow over her ears? Should she try to listen for him? It’s not his time to be with Charlie, and he’s been gone way, way too long. So what should she do?
The visitors in her room are gone now, but the handcuff remains. No one remembered to take it off, she thinks, but they did take off Peter’s before they took him.
He’s warned her about what they might do if he’s ever gone. If that happens , he told her, you have to get under the bed and stay there. It’s not like she has much choice now, handcuffed to the leg of the bed. She knows she’s safest here, so she’ll stay.
Cassie feels like crying.
Charlie hates it when they cry. If he can hear it, he’ll come to their Room and throw open the door and grab her by the hair and hit her really hard if Peter isn’t fast enough.
Peter says it makes him feel guilty. The crying. That’s why he doesn’t want to hear it: because it reminds him that he’s doing something bad.
Cassie thinks Charlie is just bad, bad, bad. He is, right? she asked him once. Bad?
Peter was lying on his back with the IV sticking out of his arm. He looked at her with his sleepy eyes. Asking the hard questions today, huh, Cass?
She shrugged. Mommy says people who hurt other people are bad. Evil, like Darth Vader.
Peter slow-blinked. You watched Star Wars?
Just the first one. Mommy said Jim shouldn’t’a showed me ‘cause people die in the movie and the white people killed Luke’s parents and then Darth Vader kills Oni Wan and then they all win.”
He blinked again. The what now?
Remember? When he hits Oni Wan with the lightsaber and— Cassie demonstrated with her good hand: swing, swing!— then he’s gone! That’s ‘cause he killed him. That’s what happens when you hit somebody! You go away and your clothes are on the floor and you’re dead and you come back but you’re see-through and blue like a ghost. ”
Peter laughed and then he winced. I meant the white people, Cass. Who’re the…” He stops . “The stormtroopers? You mean the stormtroopers?
Yeah, them! They killed Luke’s parents and left them all burny in the sand.
Those weren’t his parents. Those were his aunt and uncle—and please for the love of God, do not call them white people again. He was laughing. It was a good sound to hear from Peter—he didn’t laugh a lot anymore. He has a funny laugh: high and free and so, so happy.
She was still confused about the movie. I don't get it, she said. They took care of him, so why aren’t they his parents?
I mean, I guess they are. Kind of.
Clearly, Peter didn’t know what parents were. She told him, matter-of-factly, Jim says parents are the people who take care of you. And it doesn’t matter if they’re related to you, okay, because we’re family, and family means you take care of each other, and family makes sure—makes sures—make sures—family makes sures you are safe and have enough to eat, and family loves you no matter what… She trailed off. Wait, how old are you?
How old do you think I am?
She thought about it. Thirty?
His sleepy eyes bug out. Thirty? he repeats, and he starts laughing again. Wow, Cass, you’re really dragging me down today. God. I literally don’t have one gray hair.
Forty? she tries again.
I'm sixteen, Cass.
Cassie's jaw drops. But you’re a superhero! You save people!
What, sixteen-year-olds can’t be superheroes?
She shrugs. I don't know. Daddy’s a superhero and he’s super old. He showed me—he has lots of gray on his head now. Mommy calls it salt and pepper. She wrinkles her nose. But you don’t have the gray hairs, right, so are you old enough?
Old enough to what?
Be a…a Mommy. A Daddy. A parent.
Peter's laughter died. His head turned, and he looked at her then so strangely. What are you talking about?
Well, that’s what you are, right? You do everything Jim does, everything Mommy and Daddy do… and you’re not related to me but Jim isn’t related to me, so that’s okay. And you’re a little grown-up, but some grown-ups are more littler so you’re my parent, too, right? That’s how it works.
Only silence from Peter. She can feel him breathing against her side.
You wake me up in the morning and you tell me stories at night and you make sure I have food and you keep me safe from the bad guys. That's a Mommy or a Daddy or a Jim thing.
More quiet. Just Peter’s slow breathing. I guess so , he said, and Cassie was too tired to talk anymore, so she hugged Peter's bruised-black arm—he breathed in sharply, and then settled—before hiding her face in the sleeve of his hoodie.
Now, it’s hard to have conversations with Peter. He’s always so tired. He sleeps a lot, and he watches her play from his spot on the floor, but he can barely move. When it’s time for them to go to bed, they don’t bother trying to get him up on the bed anymore. He’s too tired and in too much pain to move up there, so they sleep on the floor, under their blanket, with their pillow beneath Peter’s head and her head on Peter’s stomach. They only have one pillow, so it works this way.
She wants to cry again, but she doesn’t. She waits and waits and waits. They’ve taken Peter at strange times before, but never for so long and never like this.
Without him, she is frantic, almost wild with worry, but she knows she can’t cry. Crying means Charlie will come and take her and beat her bloody or hand her off to the Red-Haired Lady to put the needle in. The thought of that needle, the needle with its fiery pain that bites like shark teeth, of the white-hot pain that comes and keeps coming… It sends a wave of fear through her so powerful that she feels like the needle’s already in her.
She listens as hard as she can. What if Renee’s already coming? What’s that sound? Is it the Red-Haired Lady, readying her needle?
She can’t help the tears that come then, and she stifles as much noise as she can, hiccuping and gasping, snot running into her mouth, her breathing growing uneven and stilted with terror. Peter’s gone; he won’t be able to protect her this time. She tries to think about what Peter would do, but she’s so blinded by the fear vibrating in her chest that all she can think is Iron Man, Iron Man, Iron Man.
When the door opens this time, just like she knew it would, she screams and immediately closes her mouth to try to muffle the sound. She knew they would come, because she’s crying when she’s not supposed to. Who will it be? Big-Man and his hammer? Red-Haired Lady and her needle? She stretches back as far as she can under the bed, but her cuffed hand only lets her go so far. Her hand is stuck there, out in the open where it can be grabbed or hit or twisted, and she knows how bad that is.
The door is open but whoever is on the other side is lingering in the doorway. She is so exposed like this, her good hand cuffed to the bed’s leg and her bad one still wrapped up in her hoodie. She’s useless , unable to protect herself at all.
The intruder is not one of the men but one of the girls. The black one. She is much cleaner than the last time Cassie saw her, and she is dressed in strange clothing—turquoise pants and shirt, and a matching cap stretched over her tight curls. “Hey,” says the black girl. “Cassie, right?”
Cassie bursts into tears.