unwell
THURSDAY, AUGUST 2 — 8:35 AM
Officer Paz finds the Winter Soldier’s address in a NYPD database of felons on parole. Although James Barnes was technically pardoned for his crimes, he still had to register in the database with everyone else.
So, he’s not difficult to find.
Thursday morning, Julia Paz and Agent Woo drive to Brooklyn—a little limestone townhouse on a little street in Park Slope—and head up the sidewalk to the house of the Winter Soldier. It’s almost like walking to Iron Man’s front porch, or strolling through the Black Widow’s backyard. Who knew that her quest to find her brother Charlie would take her down the path of superheroes?
As they approach, they can hear people arguing. A woman and a man. “…have to talk to Nick Fury. He can help.”
A gravelly, male voice: “I’m not going to ask SHIELD for help. Can’t trust any of them, not even Fury.”
The woman: “Fury’s one of the good ones.”
“Don’t be naive—none of them are good ones.”
A third voice, a man: “Bucky, please.”
“No—we’re not gonna sit around and pretend like those SHIELD bastards are gonna help! They’re all heil goddamn Hitler —they’re not gonna help us find a kid. They’d rather take him themselves and use him to commit war crimes.”
The third voice again: “That’s not true—“
“You remember what they did to me!”
“That wasn’t SHIELD, that was HY—“
“They’re all—the fucking—same! Honest to God, that’s probably who took him! That’s the first place we should’ve looked! Fucking SHIELD—”
Julia and Woo exchange looks and, before any more shouting can commence, she presses the rusty doorbell.
The talking stops almost immediately, followed by some hectic shuffling, footsteps towards the door, and a strained voice: “Bucky, Buck, hey, stop, stop—”
Pressure against the door; there must be someone against the door and an eye against the peephole, because the door moves slightly in its frame. Frantic whispering.
Before long, the wooden door is opening and three people stand beyond the frame—three instead of the one whose name is on the deed to the property: a dark-eyed guy with his hands in his pockets, a strawberry-blonde woman with a pregnant belly, and a blond guy with blue eyes. She starts abruptly, “Is this the residence of James Buchanan Barnes?”
As soon as she says the name, the sullen man gets only more so, his stance stiffening, his gaze darkening, his jaw settling. The blond man nods. “It is,” he says. He looks familiar, like a television star or a—
“Steve Rogers?” Jimmy Woo blurts out, before Julia can even complete her thought. “Wow. Wow. It’s—it’s such a pleasure, sir.”
It is . The muscled blond, dressed in just a T-shirt and sweatpants, is the superhero whose name is plastered on every high school textbook, whose emblem is printed on every kid’s pajamas, whose uniform is every child’s dream Halloween costume. Yet he stands in front of her like he’s an average neighbor. The man grimaces, almost sheepish. “Nice to meet you, too,” he says. “Can I ask what this is about?”
The other two—the pregnant woman and the sullen man—remain silent.
“Well,” starts Officer Paz, “we were wondering if you could help us with a case.”
Steve Rogers and James Barnes sit so closely that they look almost like a couple—all gentle nudges and shared looks and knee bumps.
“We’re kind of,” continues Steve, when she asks them again to help with Charlie, “busy at the moment. Personal matter, you know.” The two supersoldiers sit next to each other on the left side of the couch
Julai nods her chin at the pregnant woman, who has yet to introduce herself. “With her?”
“Her son ran away,” he says stiffly, as the pregnant woman shuffles in her seat. “We’re helping her find him.”
Julia Paz immediately wishes she could take the words back out of the air where they hang, thickly, like a dark cloud. “My condolences,” she says. And then, to the woman: “When are you due?”
She looks uncomfortable. “November 3rd,” she replies.
It’s August now, which would mean she’s in her last three months. “Oh, wow. Third trimester. Nausea getting better?”
The woman shrugs.
“I’ve got two of my own, you know,” she says. “A boy and a girl.”
The woman shrugs again.
Forget it. She’s not getting anywhere with this woman—and besides, she’s not here to talk to Steve Rogers or his pregnant friend. Maybe that’s why she’s not talking. Maybe it’s Steve’s love-child. That’d be a story for the news. “Well, every missing person is someone’s child, you know. If you, Mr. Barnes, could just help us find our missing person, then that would be wonderful. A map to these bunkers, or coordinates to their locations, or—”
The sullen Barnes’ curt response: “No.”
He’s been saying no for the past hour.
“Sir,” tries Agent Woo from beside her. “I understand that you’re hesitant to reveal these kinds of…sensitive locations, but this information will remain classified, I can assure you.”
“No,” he says again.
This ‘James Buchanan Barnes’ is really starting to piss her off. They’re so close to finding Charlie—and he’s going to stop all of this progress? “Mr. Barnes, please . Just give me a good reason you can’t help us.”
The man narrows his eyes. When he finally speaks, his voice is low and scratchy. “I’m not going back there,” he says firmly.
Julia tries, “Then if you could just give us a map—”
A sharp shake of his head. His long hair trembles. “I’m not giving that kind of information to a civilian.”
Julia sighs, rubbing her forehead. “Then what if… Captain America took us? No harm there, right?”
His face twists. “No. He’s not going there.”
“Bucky,” says Steve Rogers from beside him, and he touches the Winter Soldier’s arm like he’s not the most well-known assassin on this side of the planet. “I can handle it. It’s okay—I’ll go.”
James Barnes—or, Bucky, as Steve just called him—scowls darkly. “Fuck that.”
“Then you two can both come!” Julia suggests, in a moment of desperation. “I don’t care how you do it, just take me to the bunkers—I have to find him. Mr. Barnes, you’re my only chance of finding my—of locating my missing persons. If you can’t help us, then these people could be in serious danger.”
“Not my problem,” says the Winter Soldier.
Captain America nudges his knee with his own. “Buck,” he says.
The man’s scowl grows impossibly deeper. She realizes, in that moment, that the Winter Soldier is wearing gloves. “No one’s getting into those bunkers. No one.”
She sighs. “Look, we have reason to believe that they already are . I’m not sure exactly why they’re in these bunkers, but with the tattoos—”
“Tattoos?” echoes the man.
“That’s how we found out that HYDRA bunkers were a clue,” explains Agent Woo. “We’ve recovered several bodies of the missing addicts—all of them had tattoos of the HYDRA symbol on various parts of their bodies.”
“So, what?” asks Steve, with a frown. “You think they’re recruiting?”
“Could be,” says Officer Paz. “Or experimenting. We have no idea. That’s why we need to get access.”
The whole room seems to turn to James Buchanan Barnes.
The Winter Solider is statue-still, unfazed by the eyes on him. “Were there any numbers on the bodies?” asks James Barnes, without a splinter of emotion.
“Numbers?”
“Tattoos,” he clarified.
“No, no—other things. Flowers and like, regular tattoos. But no numbers.”
“Then it’s not HYDRA,” he says, and then he shuts his mouth.
They’re back to their stalemate. “Well, if it’s not HYDRA,” says the officer, “then what’s the danger in looking for my people?”
A painfully long silence. Steve settles his hand against Barnes’ shoulder, and the Winter Soldier seems to relax, just a little bit. “Fine,” he says. “I’ll take you. But I’m not going inside.”
TUESDAY, AUGUST 7 — 3:15 AM
Peter’s been acting weird. Really weird.
He doesn’t talk to her much anymore. He doesn’t play games with her or come up with new escape plans. He doesn’t pick up the food when it comes to their door. He doesn’t open the cans for her or tell her to make sure she doesn’t cut herself on the cans’ metal rims. He mostly lies on the ground like he’s sleeping, but with his eyes open.
Instead, it’s Cassie’s job now. She snaps the can opener closed on the lid, then twists and twists and twists, and pries up the lid with her fingernails. She only cuts her hand a few times, and they have enough bandages in their Treasure Chest that she can tape up her fingers all by herself.
She thinks it’s because Mr. Beck keeps coming in. Ever since that day with the book. Every day, even twice a day, maybe fifteen times ever since she got the book, Mr. Beck has come to visit. He usually comes in late at night when everyone else is asleep, tending to wait until Riri’s asleep or gone on a run—because, as he tells Peter, “She’s sticking her nose where it doesn’t belong.” He’ll come in with a present in a plastic grocery bag. Toothpaste. Apples. Hand sanitizer. Protein bars. More pop-tarts, mostly. He’ll tell Peter to get on the bed, although it’s not much of a bed without a mattress or blankets. Peter will do as he says, and then Mr. Beck will get on, too.
They’ll make noises and move around as Mr. Beck talks a lot in that low, low voice. Wrestle on the bed above her and make more weird noises. Mr. Beck will talk and grunt and shout and talk some more. Mostly, Peter doesn’t say anything at all. He doesn’t usually stay for long—half an hour or less—and then he’ll hop down, fiddle with his pants, and leave without a goodbye. He doesn’t look at Cassie anymore.
Cassie will stay under the bed; Peter will… He’ll keep acting weird. Sometimes, he’ll stagger to the toilet and throw up until there’s nothing left. Other times, he’ll crawl over to the corner and collapse over there, and he’ll just lay there like he’s sleeping.
Cassie doesn’t see it; she just hides and pretends she’s not there. She doesn’t understand what’s going on. Beck’s not hurting Peter; he doesn’t bring any knives or hammers or syringes. He doesn’t drag Peter outside or beat him with his fists. But still Peter acts like he’s been hurt.
Today, Peter’s sitting beside the sink and lathering himself up with that lavender soap. He does it in a kind of daze, his eyes glazed over. “Peter,” she says, “can I try?” She’s careful to be quiet; she knows better than to be loud.
“No,” he says.
“But it smells—“
“I said no, Cass.”
His words are slow and clunky, like he’s having trouble remembering that he’s awake.
When Mr. Beck comes today, Peter’s asleep on the floor beside the bed; he’s really tired these days. As soon as she hears those footsteps down the hall, Cassie yells and scrambles for the her safe spot under the bed but Peter’s sleeping body is blocking the way. Panicking, she dives to the toilet and cowers behind it instead of under the bed.
Mr. Beck spots Peter sleeping immediately. “Good,” he says, and he stands over Peter. Stepping over his sleeping form, he placed one foot on each side of Peter’s hips, standing over him like he’s just won a fight.
Then he kind of sits down on top of him, trapping Peter’s hips under him.
Cassie feels frozen.
He slaps at Peter’s face and Cassie starts crying. Peter wakes up, bleary, and then he starts freaking out , kicking his legs and flailing his arms until Mr. Beck catches them and pins them down. He’s choking out words: “Wait, Cassie’s not—wait—Beck, please—she’s gonna see—please, she’s gonna—”
“Shut the fuck up,” says the man, and his free hand is on Peter’s jumpsuit. “She doesn’t mind, does she? She’ll learn eventually.”
Peter starts screaming—like, scary movie screaming. “NO, SOMEBODY—SOMEBODY! BECK, STOP—STOP—”
Then Beck shoves his hand over Peter’s mouth, “Shut up, shut up! You want everyone else to come here and watch? I’m sure they’d love to… Little fucking entertainment for the crew, huh? Free of charge? You wanna be our little movie star, Parker? Do you?”
A muffled response, more like a sob into Beck’s palm, and Peter’s furiously shaking his head, tears streaming down his face.
“Then shut the fuck up!” By this point, Beck’s gotten all the buttons open on Peter’s front, and he grabs him by waist and, by shifting his knees, flips Peter over so that he’s on his stomach.
Peter starts sobbing harder, his hands scrabbling at the concrete. “Beck, please… Please…”
Beck pushes his head down into the concrete and starts yanking at his jumpsuit, pulling the collar down over his shoulder, then over the other to reveal each pale, skinny joint. Another yank, and it’s down to his waist. “Fucking relax,” hisses the man. “Or this is gonna hurt.”
When it’s over, Peter sits still. She can see him from where he sits, but only some of him. He is against the wall, legs bent into a pair of slanted triangles. He’s shirtless, his prisoner’s jumpsuit pulled down to his stomach—or pulled up now, she supposed, over his lower half. She doesn’t usually see him like this, not unless she’s helping to fix some of his wounds, and she can see every single one of his ribs from the front. His hands rest on his knees. His back is on the wall, but she can see up to his chest. He’s breathing like he's never taken air into his body before: slowly, in uneven fills, like he keeps forgetting how.
“Peter?” she says. He doesn’t say anything back. She knows that Beck is gone, but he’s been sitting for too long by himself. She wants to go to him. She wants him to hug her and rub her back and tell her everything’s okay because she’s not sure what just happened. She just knows that Peter is doing the same thing he does when he comes back from his sessions with Charlie. He’s still breathing funny. She wonders if it’s possible for someone to die like that. Forgetting how to breathe. It has to be, right? Maybe she should make sure he isn’t going to forget. “Peter—”
“Stay there, Cass,’ he says quickly, cutting her off. His voice sounds like a stoplight or a yield sign or a speed bump. He barely moves when he says it, just lifts a few fingers from his knee.
“But he’s gone—”
“I said stay there, Cassie!”
His whole hand is up now, and it’s trembling, pointed at her like a gauntlet, and she can’t see his face but she’s sure he’s looking at her. She shrinks back against the wall. He’s mad again.
When Renee gets mad, she knows what will happen. The same with Charlie, too. But she doesn’t usually see Peter mad , and certainly not at her. Well, not until lately.
“Did he hurt you?”
Peter starts crying.
She’s more urgent. “You’re not bleeding, and I didn’t hear him hurt you—you didn’t make noise like normal—”
“No,” he says, but he won’t look at her, “he didn’t hurt me, not like that.”
“Then why are you crying?” Tears are coming down his face fast. “Peter, I don’t understand. Peter. Peter. Peter.” He won’t answer her. “I don’t understand,” she says for the millionth time. Maybe Peter hasn’t heard her yet. “Mr. Beck’s nice! He’s really nice! He gives us presents, I don’t understand—”
“I know you don’t understand! I know you don’t understand! I know! I know you don’t….” He’s crying. Sobbing. “Just—give me a second, okay? I know you… you don’t…”
He makes this low sound in the back of his throat, a deep groan, like he’s just been stabbed in the gut and is feeling the blood leave him fast, in a flood. He raises his hands to his face and drags down, slowly, fingers dragging his dirtied face into a grimace, stretching the skin with his clawed fingers like he’s trying to rip his face off completely. Down his fingers go, down his chin and his neck until they’re scraping down his bare chest and Cassie realizes he’s leaving a series of pink lines down his skin. They stop somewhere at his stomach, where he takes his hands from his skin and looks at them, his fingers attached to his hands, staring in horror at them like they’re Charlie’s hands.
Still Peter groans, like a zombie.
His hands shake; they’re still arched like claws, and he stretches them out in some kind of mixture of horror and disgust, and then he closes them into fists so tight his knuckles go white.
And then, in a moment of profound intensity, Peter grips the back of his thigh with one hand and slams his fist down onto his bad knee, and he screams .
She’s heard him scream before. She’s heard him scream in pain so many times that she can tell what they’ve done to him just by hearing it. A long, bloodcurdling one—the blowtorch or electric shocks. Short, raspy screams: they were using a knife. grunting and screaming through his teeth, all in one breath—they were beating him. This isn’t a scream of pain. It’s… It’s anger. He’s angry . He throws his fist down on his leg and cries out—then throws it down again, and again and again, into the spot just above his knee. Again, and again, and again. Faster and faster and faster. Harder and harder and harder, until he starts to cry out with every blow. He throws every bit of energy into each punch, punching his leg and punching harder and harder and harder until Peter’s face is pink and Cassie starts to feel flu-sick in her tummy, and she screams, “Stop, Peter, stop, I don’t like it, I don’t like it!”
He’s too loud—they’re both way too loud, and Cassie’s scared.
He keeps going, and his fist is like a needle. Stab, stab, stab. She can’t help it—she imagines a giant syringe and Peter stabbing into his own leg, and the pain that would flood him. She knows how much his leg hurts him on a daily basis; she can’t imagine how much it hurts him now.
Eventually, he tires out, and he stops hitting his leg to sob into his exhausted hands. “This isn’t—supposed—to happen—anymore!” He’s saying words—words that are all jumbled up. “You weren’t supposed to… I can’t…”
He stops answering her after a while, just lost in his crying, bawling like a little kid. “It’s supposed to be over,” she hears him whisper. “It’s supposed to…be better…”
THURSDAY, AUGUST 9 — 4:29 AM
Bucky Barnes gets up early in the morning.
He gets up so early that the sun has yet to rise and Steve is still in bed. He wasn’t supposed to get up for another couple hours, but the anxiety alone has him tossing and turning all night. Four o’clock will have to work. Today, he’s supposed to take that police officer to the HYDRA bunkers.
Why the hell is he doing this? The last thing he wants is to go back to one of those places. Last time he was actually in a HYDRA facility—a couple years ago—he was in HYDRA.
He gets out of bed without waking Steve, and he shuffles through the house with his gun in hand. He checks in every corner, behind every door, past every curtain. He doesn’t shower—although he probably should. He dresses in military pants and an athletic shirt of Steve’s—he likes to keep him close. Black socks, lace-up boots. A blue hoodie that’s also Steve’s, but has switched hands so many times that it’s almost Bucky’s, too. It’s got a Coca-Cola logo, the old one from the 30s, printed across the front. He pulls it over his shirt—it still smells like Steve.
He comes back into the bedroom when he’s done dressing, and he stands over Steve as he sleeps.
He doesn’t wake him for a goodbye.
He meets Officer Paz at six o’clock outside of the NYPD headquarters in Manhattan. She’s dressed to the nines: dark navy collar and tie, matching pants, utility belt, gun in holster, badge pinned to her left breast pocket. “You look pretty normal for a hundred-year-old assassin,” says the officer.
“I get that a lot,” he says dryly.
She points to her squad car about fifty yards away. “You want to drive?”
Bucky shakes his head. He should probably pull his hair back—it could get in the way if they end up fighting someone. “I’ve got my bike,” he says, nodding his head to his motorcycle. “Just follow me.”
He leads the way on his bike, dipping and weaving through traffic
The closest location is actually in New York City, tucked away in the lower levels of an abandoned building deep in the Bronx. “Where’s your partner?” he asks, as they’re loading their guns outside. “The one who came to our house?”
“He’s off working another case,” she says. “Little girl who went missing.”
He hums noncommittally.
“It’s a pretty open-and-shut case, though.” He kicks in the door to an empty first floor—open pipes, pools of dirty water, and the general stench of rotting meat. She continues, “The dad went missing around the same time—staged a little accident, took the kid.”
“Lotta people going missing these days,” says Bucky, thinking of Peter Parker. He and Steve have been working with Pepper for weeks now trying to find the Spider-kid. He’s seen dozens and dozens of pictures of the kid. Half of them are pinned up to a corkboard in his and Steve’s dining room. That bulletin board practically takes up an entire wall. It’s covered in possible addresses, ties to different villains and supervillains, his last text messages, his future plans… That kid’s been missing, what, over four months now?
“Not as many as there used to,” says Officer Paz rigidly.
A beat between them.
He forgets sometimes what people see when they look at him: the Winter Soldier. Killer of dozens. The reason that children never saw their parents again. “I guess,” he mutters.
They pass through another set of doors, down a set of stairs, and into a grimy underground hallway. She starts talking again—a nervous talker, maybe—rambling about her other case. A little girl named Cassie. “But the thing is, the dad never showed any signs of violence or mental instability before taking the girl—and it didn’t seem like he was protecting Cassie from the new stepfather or the mother. They were all normal. Like, picture-perfect family. So I had a thought it might be ties to his old prison gang, maybe he made someone mad, but I went back to his prison-mates. The guy’s well-liked. By everyone. According to his old cellmates, this guy was the life of the party. Made everyone happy. So it just doesn’t make sense.”
Bucky gives her a hard glance. “Are you allowed to tell me about that stuff?”
She shrugs. “Are you allowed to have that gun?” she shoots back.
Bucky clicks the safety off. “I’m sorry,” he says, sarcastic, “did you not want backup?”
“You’re lucky I need you, Barnes.”
He huffs again.
They’ve finally reached the bunker doors. Bucky puts in the code for the first door: 04161900. Arnim Zola’s birthday.
There’s a short hallway—barely ten feet—and then another set of doors. He puts in the second code with gloved fingers: 12031972. Arnim Zola’s death date.
He supposes even neo-Nazi’s have stupidly easy passwords.
The bunker was empty. Nothing but a couple old HYDRA corpses and a bunch of dead computers. “Tough luck,” he says, but he doesn’t really mean it. He doesn’t want to find anything in these shitholes.
The officer stands beside her squad car, scribbling into a notepad. “Let’s go again tomorrow,” she says without looking up.
“No,” he says. “I’m tired. We’ll go again on Monday.”
She snaps, “No, not Monday. Tomorrow.”
“I’m tired,” he says, “so Monday. Or not at all.”
“Fine.”
Bucky drives his motorcycle home in a daze—and when he gets home, he goes straight upstairs and steps in the shower—clothes, shoes, gun, and all.
SATURDAY, AUGUST 11 — 8:01 PM
Peter’s condition is deteriorating fast. Like, Titanic-meets-iceberg fast.
Physically, the kid’s doing a little healthier, having more nutrients in his system is allowing him to heal a bit better—but it doesn’t change the fact that the kid is the textbook-picture of starvation: rail-thin, sunken eyes, glazed pupils, sallow skin, visible bones.
Mentally, he’s sinking. He barely lets the doctor touch him—the kid spaces out and freaks if anyone puts their hands on him.
Today, they bring him in, dragged between two of Charlie’s guys.
At first glance, the kid’s uninjured but when they drop him on the ground, but then Peter doesn’t get back up. He’s flopped on the ground on his back, eyes half-open. This has happened a couple times—Peter coming back unconscious—but it doesn’t feel any less strange. “What’d you do to him this time?” he shouts before they can leave.
It’s the big blond guy and a smaller dark-haired guy who brings him in today—both are so high that they stumble a little into the doorframe as they walk out. The dark-haired guy motions with both pointer fingers at his temples and then makes a buzzing sound before laughing and staggering off with the blond one.
Oh. Electric shocks.
Dr. Skivorski swallows the bile rising in his throat.
As soon as the doors are closed and locked, he kneels beside young Peter and, after trying to wake him several times, sneaks his arms beneath the boy. It’s not hard to pick him up. He’s light, lighter than any seventeen-year-old he’s ever encountered in his time as a pediatrician, so he scoops him up—one arm under the crook of his knees, and one beneath his shoulder blades. “Alright,” he says quietly, even though Peter can’t hear him. “You’re alright. You’re okay.”
He places the unconscious boy supine on the operating table and starts his work by unbuttoning his jumpsuit. He doesn’t look too bad—some healing burns from yesterday. His IV catheter’s getting a little infected, probably from the constant insertion of all of those supersoldier sedatives, so he gets him some antibiotics for the infection, bandages up the spot in his arm where the catheter was previously, and he inserts another one. he finds one at hish hand that seems mildly usable, so he secures it with a stretch of medical tape—one inch tape and chevron tape to stabilize the vein—after inserting the cannula. He then floods the kid with fluids and extra nutrients, as much as he can, and at last the kid starts to wake, stirring in a dazed panic.
The doctor can’t do anything but observe in moments like this.
He’s still too muddled from the electroconvulsive therapy to think straight, so when he wakes up, he freezes, staring at the doctor like he crawled out of a horror film. “No,” he moans, and then his voice skyrockets into something high and panicky. “No, please… Please…”
“It’s just me, Peter,” he says, backing away a little bit. “Remember me? I’m just the doctor…”
It takes a while for him to figure out where he is, and even when he does, he stumbles off the table and back into the corner, where he wraps his arms around himself and rocks slowly.
“What’s changed?” the doctor asks. “Peter, hon, I need to know.” There’s no sign of major physical injuries—not that Peter lets him touch him for more than a few minutes. “I'm only here to help, you have to know that. I’m just trying to keep you safe.”
Peter rocks and he rocks and he stares off into space behind the doctor’s head. “You can’t keep me safe,” he hoarsely. “No one can.”
“Peter…”
Shaking his head and hugging himself, Peter looks empty. Behind his eyes—there’s suddenly nothing. “I can't do this,” he croaks, and the rest of his body is so still, as rigid as a corpse, that the doctor worries he’s gone unconscious for a second. The only sign of life is his open eyes.
“Peter,” he says, “don’t say that.”
Peter's shaking his head and shaking his head and staring off into empty space. “Can’t,” he says, and then he’s gone again.
Dr. Skivorski takes the opportunity to examine the kid. He kneels by him. There’s some bruising around his neck, too, pinker than the rest, and pinkish-purple blotches on his chest.
Not bruises. Hickeys.
Oh.
There’ve been signs before—Peter’s skittishness, his aversion to touch, his inexplicable fear of these ‘new people,’—but it’s never been so obvious.
“Take another second, Peter,” he says, as Peter tries to get off the operating table. “Rest.”
He seems almost distraught at the notion. “I can't,” he says, as he attempts to sit up. “Gotta get back to Cass. They could be—they could be— ”
“Peter, you know they’re not going to come back for a while. You might as well let me fix you up.”
“But they—” His voice is high with panic. “I have to. She’s—she—”
“They don’t usually go anywhere near her, Peter. You know that. They don’t like to hurt her.”
“They could do worse than hurt her,” Peter says.
The doctor sighs. “But they won’t. These people may be junkies and kidnappers and thugs and thieves but they’re not pedophiles.”
The boy suddenly goes from panicked to furious. “How do you know what a pedophile is like?” snaps Peter. “They don’t have fucking warning signs painted on their foreheads.”
“No,” says the doctor carefully, “but I was a pediatrician. I’ve seen my fair share of sexual abuse, Peter.”
Peter goes still. “Oh,” he says, and his throat seems to have closed completely, his trachea swollen shut to block any semblance of vocal sound. “Right.”
“None of these people look at Cassie the way you fear they do, Peter. None of them.”
Peter’s shaking his head again. “There’s new people, Doc. You haven’t… You haven’t met them yet. They’re…” The kid’s eyes go blank again.
The doctor realizes, suddenly, that there’s a question he hasn’t asked Peter. “Peter, have any of them touched you?”
Peter suddenly looks like an entirely different person. Someone older. Someone with a whole life packed in polaroids under a dirty mattress. Someone with a closet of half-liquified skeletons. “What?” he says darkly, like the doctor just asked an entirely different question. “What did you just say to me?”
“Peter—”
“Do I look like someone who that could happen to? For fuck’s sake, I have superpowers.”
“These things can happen to anyone, Peter.”
“Fuck you,” Peter spits. “Where do you get off, saying that to me—”
“Peter—”
“I’m not a little kid!”
“I know,” he says gently. And he does know. Peter’s reaction—that’s all he needed to know. “I know, okay.”
He keeps looking over the kid. He restitches the cuts on his wrists and ankles—those never seem to heal—and then he scans a light over the kid’s eyes and ears. “Peter, can you open your mouth for me?” He’s blinking like a newborn baby, swaying slightly as he rocks. “Hey. Hon. Open your mouth for me, okay?”
This is the only way he can figure out if what he’s thinking is true.
Peter’s in some kind of fugue state, so he opens his mouth a little, and he scans with his penlight. There, in the back of the mouth—a series of red spots by his uvula, and further redness going all the way down his throat.
The doctor sits back on his haunches, defeated. His heart sinks. “Oh, Peter…” he says, and the boy barely even registers his face. “Peter—can I—can I ask you a couple questions?”
The boy shrugs. He’s coming back to himself a little, looking around, anywhere but the doctor’s face.
The doctor feels a surge of loathing for this place, for what these people have done to him. But he puts on his doctor face—a soft, professional expression—and he asks, “Have you had oral sex recently?” His throat is a dead giveaway: this kid’s got an oral disease, most likely sexually transmitted. From the looks of it, it’s probably gonorrhea.
The kid seems hazy; he nods and nods and then he tips his head against his knees, hiding his face from the doctor. “Does it hurt when you pee?”
Peter picks his head back up, and he stares at the doctor. It’s such a haunting gaze—like that of a shell-shocked soldier or a slack-jawed sleepwalker.
The doctor swallows the lump in his throat. “For how long?”
He stares—that empty, thousand-yard stare—and finally, after a few minutes of heavy silence, he says, “A while.”