nowhere to run
THURSDAY, AUGUST 23 — 7:09 PM
Tony’s tremors have become debilitating; his hands shake so badly from lack of sleep that Dum-E has to pick up the phone and hand it to him when Charlie Keene calls. “Another day, another dollar, right, Stark?” laughs the junkie. “What should we do to your boy today?”
Peter’s strapped faceup on a table; they’ve buckled something around his head—a blindfold—and he’s throwing his head from side to side in failed attempts to get it off, slamming his skull against the metal table in loud bang s.
Tony hates that he knows what hurts the least; a beating, maybe, or a knife. He doesn’t want to see the kid get waterboarded again. “Please,” he begs, tears already pouring down his bearded face. “I… I’ve been working so hard… The weapon—it-it works, it does, it’s just not magic , I can’t recreate the Tesse—”
“Shut the fuck up!” shouts Keene. “I didn’t ask for your excuses! You think you’re smarter than me, Stark? You think you know better than me?”
“No,” he says, quickly and without complaint. He shouldn’t have said anything at all. On screen, the kid is screaming even though no one’s touching him. No words. Just an endless loop of panic-stricken screaming.
“Could someone shut him up! ” A man in khakis with a brown beard jumps at the opportunity, moving forward and pinning Peter’s head to the table before shoving a hand over his mouth and saying something into his ear.
Peter thrashes suddenly, his limbs fighting the restraints so violently that red slides down his wrists and ankles, still screaming and screaming through his raw throat: a high-pitched, terrified sound, barely muffled through the man’s hand.
“Parker!” Keene screams. “You need me to shut that mouth for you? I’M HAVING A CONVERSATION HERE—SHUT UP OR I’LL CUT YOUR FUCKING TONGUE OUT!”
It’s like Peter doesn’t even hear a word the junkie’s saying. He. Just. Keeps. Screaming.
Baring a mouthful of teeth decayed by meth, Charlie scowls deeply, turns, and lunges at the kid.
“No!” cries Tony, helpless panic surging through his exhausted body. “No, he doesn’t know, he doesn’t know, please… Please…”
But Charlie Keene has dropped the phone. “I SAID SHUT UP! ” He gets on top of the kid, straddling him on the table, and Peter goes ballistic, hips bucking, his screams becoming shrill and alien.
The man gets two hands around the kid’s throat and squeezes.
Peter’s screams wane into strangled mewls and then—croaky, frantic gagging. “I TOLD YOU! FUCKING SPIDER-BITCH! I TOLD YOU TO SHUT UP!” His grimy fingers press into Peter’s windpipe, and the kid’s face is going red.
“PETER!” sobs Tony. “Please, please, he doesn’t know, he doesn’t know… LET HIM GO! HE CAN’T BREATHE! LET HIM GO!”
Peter flails against his restraints, back and forth and back again; more blood trickles down the vibranium-reinforced straps. The kid kicks and thrashes and kicks again, and then his movement slows, his hands opening and closing, Charlie’s hands still lock-tight around his neck.
“ You’re killing him! Stop, stop , stop, YOU'RE KILLING HIM! ”
Some of the other junkies in the room seem to notice, because a couple of them come forward, pulling at Charlie’s hands as Peter goes deadly still. They manage to get him off after some encouragement, and after some puffs of air into the kid’s unconscious mouth, Peter coughs back to life, stirring dazedly, eyes still closed. He groans, his voice sounding like a rag in a broken wringer.
Clutching the phone to his ear, Tony curls up on the floor, listening to his boy make those horrible sounds.
Tony sobs.
THURSDAY, AUGUST 23 — 7:16 PM
The screen shakes; Bucky watches someone sticks a needle in Peter’s thigh and plunges; the kid jerks awake after a few seconds, whimpering, his voice now raspy and quiet.
“Get me a location,” Pepper demands. “JARVIS, what’s the location?”
“Unable to retrieve location,” JARVIS announces. “But there is an audio coming through the phone in the main room. It seems a call has been going on since seven o’clock.”
“Put it through,” she announces, typing away on her phone.
The audio crackles and fizzles; a voice comes through, sharp and loud. “—please, please… ” Stammery sobbing. That’s Tony ’s voice. “Oh, god—Peter, I’m so sorry… I’m so—so sorry…”
And then, in the background, a male voice from far away: “…TAKE ME, TAKE ME, PLEASE, HE’S JUST A KID!”
Bucky goes cold.
He knows that voice better than he knows his own.
That’s Steve.
“I know where they are,” he says, and he turns rigidly to Pepper. “Where’s the Quinjet?”
Her face goes blank. “It’s—it’s upstate. We haven’t moved that stuff yet. Where—where are they?”
Bucky's voice is low and sharp like a newly sharpened knife. “New fucking Hampshire.”
Bucky doesn’t waste a single second.
They instruct Pepper and Happy to go upstate to rescue Tony; Rhodey and Bucky ride the motorcycle, Rhodey hugging Bucky from behind and yelling, “Oh my god!” every five seconds because he’s clearly never been on one. He dials Nat as he’s whipping past cars and running red lights. “Meet me at the airport,” he says as soon as Romanoff picks up the phone.
“We’re not driving up to the compound?” calls out Rhodey, hugging Bucky tightly to avoid falling off the bike.
Bucky ignores him. On the phone, Nat says, “What happened?”
He continues, “Get anyone else you can—i’m sending you the location. I’m gonna find a plane.”
Driving all the way would take seven hours at least. He doesn’t have that kind of time. Steve’s in trouble. “A plane?” echoes Nat over speakerphone.
Bucky takes a hard turn at a spotlight and hits a pothole hard . He’s driving this bike faster than he ever has, whipping around corners and slipping between parked cars. “We’ve alerted local police to the situation, but they’re gonna need a lot of help. Find Barton, Banner, whoever—I don’t care. Every second counts, you hear me?” says Bucky, and his voice is so loud that the phone crackles. “Every second , Nat.”
“They got Steve,” she says, not a question but a sudden mutual understanding. She goes quiet for a moment. “ETA seven minutes. Meet you on the tarmac.”
They make it to the nearest airport in record time—LaGuardia in Queens—and Bucky stops the bike in a no-parking lane before running inside. Rhodey runs in after him. “We should probably wait for backup!”
He ignores him; they have to give up their weapons before security, and then Nat gets them through to a medium-sized passenger plane sitting off the runway where Sam Wilson and Clint Barton stand next to it. “They’re all I could get on short notice,” Romanoff says. “Friend of mine runs ghost flights from here to Boston. I can get us close to the coordinates.”
“We have anyone else?” asks Rhodey, and Bucky startles. He forgot he brought Rhodes here with him. “Got no clue where to find Point Break or Banner.”
“They’ll do,” answers Bucky, his voice dry of emotion. “How soon to liftoff?”
Romanoff lifts her chin. “Thirteen minutes.”
“We need a copilot?”
“That’s what Wilson’s here for.”
“Good,” he says darkly. His voice doesn’t sound like his own. “Let’s move.”
THURSDAY, AUGUST 23 — 7:41 PM
Steve can’t unhear what’s going on down the hall. Sounds and protests and pleas and begging as they go down the hallway, and then—
Crying. Sobbing.
Screaming.
Screaming and screaming.
Coughing and gagging.
Then silence.
The silence is the worst part.
Steve is a big man—muscular and formidable—but he feels bodily weak. There’s nothing he can do. He can’t break the cuffs. He can’t break the door down.
Steve Rogers is helpless.
Completely, utterly helpless.
The little girl hides beneath the bed the entire time, occasionally whispering to herself but mostly remaining quiet.
When they finally bring Peter back in, they toss him facedown on the ground and leave him sprawled there before they lock the door behind him.
Bile rises in Steve's throat.
“Peter,” he tries. His chest hurts from the bullet wounds, but he can feel them closing up. He’s still got super healing; he thought that Spider-man had super healing, too. Why isn’t he healing?
The kid just lays there, limp. Five minutes pass. Ten minutes. Fifteen. Twenty. It's like he’s unconscious, but he’s not breathing like someone who’s unconscious. And then he’s making these horrible gasping sounds; he’s not even saying words, just these sounds.
“Peter,” he tries again, because he has no fucking clue what else to say, “hey—hey—they’re gone. They’re gone. You’re safe now.”
No response.
Minutes pass, and eventually the boy makes these gasping, shuddering noises. His whole body is shaking. Then Peter shakily coughs against the ground—a spatter of saliva—and he gags and shudders and then he gags again, and then he pukes all over the middle of the floor.
Horrifically, Steve recognizes the food from earlier: his stomach contents are just a slimy, barely-digested pool of tomato sauce and sliced peaches.
Peter collapses next to the vomit.
The little girl crawls out from under the bed then, crawling over Steve’s legs; she climbs onto the bed and reaches up to the pipes above, where strips of cloth hang. They look like real strips of clothes—faded kid’s clothes and jeans and T-shirts. She grabs a handful with her good arm and climbs down to the floor to start cleaning it up.
This is not the first time she’s done this.
Automatically, Steve moves to help her but the girl nearly jumps out of her skin when he moves, so he backs off again.
The little girl keeps cleaning, wiping up vomit and rinsing out the rags in the sink until the floor is mostly clean, and then she goes down to Peter and starts whispering. God damn it. She's seen him like this before.
Peter doesn’t make a move to tell her that she’s heard her. She takes a clean can—an empty one—fills it with water, and places it by Peter's head. Then she sits against the wall with her arm around her knees, quiet. She has that blank stare, too. Like a sheet of paper or an empty parking lot or a licked-clean plate.
She sits, and she stares at Steve.
She just stares.
She’s swaddled up in his sweatshirt—it was a gift from Bucky, actually, and it's a cotton hoodie, royal-blue with Coca-Cola on the front: the old fashioned logo. It has strands that she pulls tight, looking like a turtle in a shell. She tucks her knees into the torso, huddling inside.
The little girl just keeps staring at him as the minutes pass.
Steve didn’t see what they did to Peter Parker while he was gone—but he can see the collar of hand-shaped marks forming around his neck, layered over old scars and older bruises. When Peter opens his eyes, Steve sees the red bursts of popped blood vessels in his eyes; they strangled him.
Eventually, Peter stirs, and then, weak and clearly in pain, he crawls to the corner opposite of Steve and just collapses there in the fetal position, curled into a ball like a dog who knows it’s going to die.
What the fuck. What the actual fuck .
THURSDAY, AUGUST 23 — 9:03 PM
It takes some time for Peter to become lucid again; even when he’s up and blinking, he still doesn’t say anything, wincing as he swallows and coughing weakly into the open air. Even then, he doesn’t talk to Steve. He hasn’t said anything to him since the sweatshirt incident, even as Steve tries and tries again to come up with an escape plan. “I have a knife,” suggests the little girl, and she pulls something shiny and metal from her pocket.
Peter makes that hiss between his teeth to hush Cassie, and the girl goes quiet.
The ‘knife’ she’s referring to is small scalpel, an itty metal thing that probably couldn’t cause much harm. But it’s something . They’ve got the can opener, too, and that could do some damage if it’s swung hard enough.
Soon the little girl climbs into Peter’s lap, and the touch doesn’t seem to bother the kid. He simply holds her like she’s his own child, wrapping his arms around her and stroking the back of her buzzed hair. She starts crying at the gentle touch, burying her face into his shoulder, and whispers to him so quietly that Steve can’t hear it, and he kisses the top of her head.
It’s in such contradiction to what he saw a couple of hours ago—the violent fear, the trembling sobs—now replaced by a numbed warmth. Peter doesn’t seem all the way present; his eyes spacey and delirious with pain, his hand moving in minute, gentle strokes over the little girl’s head. He holds her as a parent holds a child, not as a random kid he’s been thrown into a cell with; the girl cries herself to sleep, eventually falling quiet with tear-tracks dried on her face. He continues to cradle the girl, breathing in raspy half-gulps of air. He hasn’t spoken any words since he got back—Steve thinks they may have royally screwed his voice for a while.
Although the kid seems exhausted, his eyes drifting closed, he keeps forcing his eyes back open to watch Steve—staring like Steve’s a rapid dog and he’s a kid on a front porch. If anyone’s a rapid dog here, thinks Steve, it’s Peter—with his bloodshot eyes and crazed focus on Steve, he looks like a rabid dog that’s gotten a scent of spilt blood, like he would jump Steve at any moment. Eventually, though, the kid gets too tired to keep his eyes open and pushes Cassie—past Steve’s crossed legs—under the bed, sliding the girl underneath. Then he pushes himself beneath the bed, too, blocking Cassie with his prone body.
Steve feels a sudden wave of disturbed realization; Peter Parker is using himself as a human shield for the little girl. He is the dam, the shell, the door to the girl’s panic room. So if Steve ever tried to get anywhere near the girl, Steve would have to pry Peter from the bed. The little girl is protected on all sides: by the wall, the legs and bars of the bed, and the last side is Peter. Peter, the fortress of flesh.
What the hell have these people put him through?
By the time their door opens again, Steve has chafed his wrist bloody trying to get out of the handcuffs.
Vibranium is stronger than bone, he thinks. Vibranium is stronger than bone.
Steve just needs to get enough weight on the cuff—he could shatter his thumb-bone against the vibranium cuff and slip his broken hand through the metal ring.
The door closes behind the man.
This time, it’s only one man who enters instead of a crowd of drug-addled addicts. He’s brown haired, with thick brows and dark brown eyes. He’s tall but well-built, maybe forty, and he reeks of cigarette smoke. His fly is down.
The man clicks his tongue, a soft sound, and he smiles . “I heard they brought in a couple of peeping toms,” he says, with a lilt of amusement to his voice. He doesn’t seem as high as the others, but he does seem a little off—drunk, maybe.
He grabs the front of his pants, adjusting himself, and Steve looks away.
Peter’s still unaware, motionless, under the bed where his body still shields the little girl. Steve’s not sure he’s even conscious. “Hey,” says Steve, trying to draw his attention away from the boy. “What’s going on here, huh? He’s just a kid.”
The man’s eyes light up a little at that, and when he gets close, close enough to reach Peter, Steve lunges at the man’s legs, trying to take him out, and the man swings— crack!
Steve didn’t realize the man had a weapon.
It’s a metal thing, maybe a hatchet or a hammer, but he can’t tell because Steve’s now flat on his back, his head ringing with the impact, groaning. He presses his hand to his skull as he hears the man start to talk. He turns his head and sees the man crouch by the bed, attention completely focused on Peter. He licks his lips and says, “Petey?” with a little smile on his face.
Peter Parker jerks awake, and he suddenly looks like he’s been sucked dry—the fear is palpable in him, in the way his fingers scramble for purchase in the concrete floor, in the way he quickly backs further under the bed despite the obvious pain he’s in.
“Come on out, Petey,” the man says, in that sing-song tone.
There’s a moment, and then Peter slides out from under the bed, his whole body trembling. He clutches tightly at the bed-railing opposite Steve, like he knows better than to run, and the man crouches by him.
It clicks suddenly in Steve’s mind: the undone zipper, the lone approach, the focus on Peter…
Oh, fuck, no.
“Charlie brought us a little spectator, huh?” He’s closer and closer to Peter, but Steve’s head is still swimming from the hit, and he can’t see straight until the man’s already dragged the boy into the opposite corner. “You want America’s favorite Star-Spangled suit to watch?”
The kid is shaking his head; tears pour down those bruised cheeks.
Pulling against his cuffs, Steve tries to reach the kid, but, lightheaded, he collapses when he tries to get up. His head . “Get away from him,” he says, trying to sound threatening through the haze of nauseating pain filling his head. “Hey— hey, get away —” He lunges again and the cuff catches him, sending him to the ground again.
The man chuckles, not even bothering to turn away from Peter. “Captain, you’re not getting out of those things, so I wouldn’t even bother trying.” He touches the kid’s face, and he cries harder, and Steve pulls harder against the restraint. “Peter’s been here a good long while, and he’s never broken out, have you, sweetheart?”
Tears stream down the boy's face; he squeezes his eyes shut.
The man ignores Steve’s shouts and protests; he grabs the kid by the jaw and holds fast, and Peter makes a croaky whimper when his fingers touch the developing bruises on his neck. In his woozy vision, Steve sees Peter stop moving.
He wouldn’t. He wouldn’t , right?
Peter’s mouthing words he can’t get out, and it takes Steve a moment to realize what he’s trying to say: please . The man’s still talking. “I think we could give Captain Rogers here an eyeful, huh?” he laughs. “Maybe we should get all the Avengers in here, give ‘em a show, right, Petey? Maybe I should fuck you in the chair, make Tony watch, huh? You want your little Iron Hero to watch Spider-Man bend over for me, huh?”
As this unfolds, there’s a sound—like metal against concrete—and Steve looks down to find a small scalpel passing through the bed-railing, pushed through by a small, dirty hand. It’s the little girl; the hand vanishes just as fast as it came.
Steve slips the scalpel into his palm.
The man continues his rant, undeterred. “…bend over for Captain America? Bet he’d love a little taste…” The kid’s shaking his head hard, and he moves, his arms clawing at the ground like he’s trying to get away, and the man pins them above his head. “What, did you fuck him already? Huh? Your little childhood hero?” He’s laughing, something low and lewd in it. “You little slut. You did . You fucked him.”
Peter’s crying so hard that mucus runs down his nose, but it’s silent, the only air coming out of him raspy and pained.
“ HEY, PERVERT! ” Steve shouts. “HEY! GET AWAY FROM HIM!”
The man looks at him, almost bored. Something swings at his belt—a rusty hatchet. That must’ve been what hit him. Steve’s been yelling the whole time, but that word caught him— pervert , and drew his attention to Steve. “What’s wrong, Captain?” he says, leaving Peter to come at Steve. “Can’t wait for your turn?”
“Fuck you,” Steve says, and he spits in the man’s face. “You stay away from Pet—”
He slams the blunt end of the hatchet across Steve’s face, and he collapses on the ground, his mouth on the concrete, and he pushes himself back up. “It was a fucking rhetorical question, Captain .”
Steve sees stars; he keels over, feeling his face swelling, but he’s doing it. He’s catching the man’s attention, and it’s working . The man turns around to get to Peter, and he shakes his head again; the man gets him by the throat and, with the other hand, unbuckles his belt.
Steve screams, “You motherfucking pervert! Hey! I’m gonna get you for this! I’m gonna get you for this! ”
The man mock-groans, letting go of the boy to turn to Steve. He stalks Steve, grasping that hatchet with one hand. “Would you shut up? God, no one can have any fun in these conditions! Would you shut up ?”
As long as it keeps the man’s eyes on him. He glances over at Peter, who’s watching them with a horrific intensity, barely blinking, arms pulled around himself. He’s not crying anymore. “YOU KEEP YOUR HANDS OFF HIM— SICK PIECE OF PERVERTED—”
The brown-haired man hits him again, this time on the other side of the face, knocking him to the ground. His head rings and sings with nauseating pain. That’s right, Steve thinks. Eyes on me, perv. Eyes on me.
The man hits him and hits him, the metal end of the hatchet now bloody; his head is fucking bleeding now, liquid running down his face, and now he’s seeing purple. “SAY IT AGAIN!” the man’s screaming, red in the face. “SAY IT TO MY FACE!”
“PERVERT!” repeats Steve, in a shout so loud that the girl flinches and hits her head on the bed’s underside. As he sways on his hands and knees, heavy drops of blood from his head hit the floor.
Another swing of that hatchet, and another, and Steve collapses on the floor; the concrete’s wet with blood. In the corner, Peter is still, very still, and he makes no noise, even when the man spins back around to face him. “Your little hero’s getting on my nerves, Petey.” He laughs, catching his breath, and he kneels over the kid. “You hear me?”
Peter doesn’t say a word.
Steve’s head hurts so badly that he’s going to be sick, bile gurgling in his throat, and he spits on the floor, trying to gather himself. His face is swelling into a mass of blood-pooling flesh and bruised tissue; he thinks his cheekbone is broken. Steve suddenly feels bodily numb. He knows shit like this has happened to Bucky while he was in HYDRA’s custody—but he’s never, ever, ever bore witness to it. He’s rescued women from muggers, rapists, traffickers, and date-rape assholes, but he’s always been able to do something about it. Now, he’s just forced to watch, cuffed to the bed-railing away from the pair, too far to do anything about it. If only he could break the cuffs…
Peter doesn’t fight the man; he’s now so motionless that he looks like a corpse. The man is quick then, straddling the silent boy and grabbing at his clothes, tearing open those same buttons that Peter unbuttoned himself earlier. He yanks down one sleeve, then the other, and a sound escapes Peter—a whimper barely more than a croak. The man laughs darkly. “I knew you wanted it,” the brown-haired man says. “Always begging for it, aren’t you, Petey?” He then leans down with his free hand and grabs the kid firmly between the legs—and Peter goes stiff as a fucking board.
Steve’s vision goes red.
He twists his wrist, settling the metal curve of the cuff against the base of his thumb, and, jumping a little for leverage, he falls straight down, swinging his arm down with all of his might and putting his entire two-hundred-fifty pound body weight on the vibranium cuff.
And. He. Pulls.
Vibranium is stronger than bone.
There’s a snap—hot white pain that momentarily blinds him—and he falls forward. He fumbles for a solid hold on the scalpel, and then he sinks it into the man’s back.
The man howls in pain, and Steve rips it out just to sink it in again; this time the man shifts, rolling off of Peter, and the blade catches him in the shoulder. He manages to get his hands on the rusty hatchet, wrenching it from the man’s belt, and he whips it at the man’s head—a satisfying crack of metal and bone—and the man goes utterly limp, falling on top of the kid.
Dazed and still struggling to hear anything past the ringing in his skull, Steve slumps to his knees beside the kid, using one arm to shove the man off of him.
Peter Parker looks like he’s been shot. He’s pale and trembling, his eyes unfocused and his hair sticking to his sweaty forehead. He doesn’t move, not even when Steve kicks the man aside. That’s when someone rushes in—it’s a woman. It’s Officer Paz . She’s still dressed in her uniform, and she’s got this angry, determined look on her face. She must’ve heard the man yell. She’s got one gun in her hand and another on her belt, which she casually tosses to Steve. “We gotta go,” the officer says, not knowing how long they have. “Now, Steve, we gotta go. They’re pretty high right now—this is our chance.” She turns to the boy, her face twisting with disturbed confusion, and she says, “It’s Parker, right? We gotta go, honey. Right now.”
But Peter Parker doesn’t move. He’s dazed as though struck in the head himself, his mind in an entirely separate place. He does nothing but sway lightly, still sitting against the wall.
Steve tries to grab his wrist, and Peter makes another terrified sound—a scream strangled by his swollen throat—and hugs his knees, crying quietly with his mouth closed, his face twisted in terror. The buttons on his front are still open wide.“Peter,” he tries again, feeling sick. “Come on, buddy, we’re good. He’s gone. We gotta go now, okay?”
There’s movement beside him, and then the little girl is tugging on Peter’s arm. “Captain America got him,” says the girl in a whisper. “He’s dead.”
Steve’s not sure about dead , but the man’s not getting up any time soon. The door’s cracked open, and Steve snatches the keys from the unconscious man’s belt. “We gotta go, buddy,” he tries, more insistent. “We really gotta go. We can get out of here. You wanna go home, don’t you? Peter? Peter, come on.”
The boy’s completely unresponsive, shaky breaths coming through him in raspy hisses, and when Steve moves to touch him, he flinches away, curling himself into a pale, shuddering ball.
The officer and Steve share a disturbed glance.
Steve didn’t expect their escape to be like this.
He didn’t think Peter would be so… so fucking traumatized that he wouldn’t know they were escaping.
There’s a man with the officer, too, one Steve didn’t see the first time. It’s the doctor who stitched up his gun wounds—he’s got a gray beard and a ratty labcoat, and he squeezes through the tiny cell to reach Peter. He kneels by the boy and starts speaking to him in a gentle, even tone; soon the kid’s clambering to his feet, bracing himself against the wall, limping heavily with one arm curled around his torso. He looks like a strong wind would blow him right over, and he’s still not looking at anyone.
Impatient, the officer lingers at the door; the brown-haired pervert stirs on the ground, moaning, and Peter goes sheet-white. The kid backs up against the wall, breath coming out of him in quick, rasped huffs, and then collapses again, shaking his head and cowering.
The doctor seems to understand, and he opens his arms, saying something like, “I’ve got you,” and Peter loops his arms around the man’s neck, letting him pick him up like a child—one arm beneath the knees, one at the shoulder-blades.
And they walk out.
They’re quiet, shuffling through the long hallway and trying to make the least amount of noise possible. Even if their captors are high, they still can’t afford to make any sudden moves. Steve’s at the front of the pack, then the doctor carrying Peter, and then the little girl who’s followed at last by Officer Julia Paz, gun still raised.
There’s a sudden voice down the hallway—crazed and high-pitched like a warped record— “Yes! Go, Cassie! Go! Get out of here! GET OUT OF HERE, HONEY!”
Steve freezes. Who the hell—
The girl perks up. “DADDY!” she cries, and the whole world spills into chaos:
Boots storming into the hallway, and another shout: “What the fuck—Julie?”
THURSDAY, AUGUST 23 — 10:02 PM
Charlie's sister is in the hallway with all his goddamn kids, looking stupidly like a deer in headlights. “Charlie,” she chokes out, and the rest of the idiots fucking bolt behind him for the door.
“THEY’RE ESCAPING!” he roars.
Charlie sprints at them, but Julia tackles him to the ground like she used to when they were kids. “ Let them go, Charlie! ” she cries, and Charlie hates how he’s talking to him, like he’s the bad guy. “You have to let them go!”
Rage fills him like helium in a hot-air balloon, and he whips his fist at her face, making contact. “YOU BETRAYED ME, YOU FUCKING BETRAYED ME!”
“Charlie—” his sister says, and Charlie hits her again; this time, blood runs from her nose.
“I TRUSTED YOU! I TRUSTED YOU! I TRUSTED YOU!”
Charlie deserves a fucking throne for everything he’s done. All of this, and Julie was gonna set them all free?
He deserves a throne, a crown, a cape, a scepter, a fucking servant, a maid, a slave, a whole kingdom of idiots to bow before him. His hammer smells sweet—a rusty sweet, the sweet of blood—and finds himself inhaling that fucking tang of power, and he swings— “ Charlie, no! ”
His hammer reeks sweet, like licking paint from a windowsill or tequila from a belly button or blood on a vibranium chair. He swings again, and again, and again, and god , it feels good. HE DESERVES THIS, that salty taste of blood; he does, he does, and no one can stop him. He needs a fucking crown. He needs, he needs, HE NEEDS THIS POWER! SHE WAS GOING TO STOP HIM! The hammer is hot in his hands, the power of the whole fucking world in his hands.
Fuck China or Russia or the whole United States. Fuck Ross, fuck the president, fuck them all.
They all need him. He can do whatever the hell he wants.
He grabs the woman in front him; he finds her, and she smells like fear and blood and she’s making small, gurgly noises and he’s so fucking high . He’s high, like power, like angels, like kings, like the hot, boiling sun. HE’S SO FUCKING HIGH—HE IS—HE IS—HE IS WHAT HE IS—what is he but a once and future king? What is he but a king, his majesty, his eminence, his royal fucking— WHY IS THE STUPID BITCH TALKING?
“SHUT UP!” Charlie screams, and he slams the hammer down again.And again. And again. “I’M IN CHARGE! I’M IN CHARGE!” Charlie is supreme; nothing can touch him now. They’ll all bow to him, they’ll do as he says, and they’ll know the fear—the reek—the stink—the weight of terror in their useless, heavy, flightless bones.
Charlie, though? Charlie’s bones are hollow; they are flooded with angel dust.
He’s gonna fly.
Charlie climbs to his feet, and the entire world bows beneath him; the woman below him is nothing but blood and mush, and he smiles. Another enemy defeated in the name of Charlie. King Charlie.
He clambers through the hallway; blood pulses in his face, his whole face hot with power, and he laughs and laughs and laughs. “WHERE ARE THE FUCKING KIDS?” he screams, his voice raw and mighty. “WHERE ARE THEY?”
There’s people piling through the doors at the end of the hallway, chasing and running, and Charlie goes after them. They climb through the doors and up the ladder and through the cave—finally, they’re in open forest, and they’re running into trees. The air smells like white-cedar and sugar-maple, and he inhales deeply before chasing after those kids—he can smell their fear for fucking miles. “I’M GONNA KILL YOU!” he cries, and he means every word of it. Anyone who betrays him has to die. That Captain America, that Parker, that little Lang girl… He’s gonna kill them before they run around telling the world about their master plan. “GET BACK HERE!”
His crew is running with him, crowds of people dressed in black and so high they can barely walk in a straight line. But Charlie’s running so fast he can taste the oxygen in every breath. “SPLIT UP!” he screams, and sweat pours down his face. “FIND THEM!”
They scatter into the woods, and Charlie follows the scent of blood-soaked terror like a bloodhound. They’re gonna pay.
He finds the doctor and the kid staggering past a group of juniper trees, trying to hide behind a couple fallen spruce logs, and he fires his pistol— one, two, three, four times until there’s a scream and the doctor starts running again, his labcoat catching on tree-bark, carrying the Parker kid bridal-style. It’s fucking hilarious.
Charlie’s shoots once, then twice, and he catches the doctor in the leg; the gray-haired man falls, and clutches the Parker kid as he falls, taking the brunt of the impact. “ Found you! ” shouts Charlie, and he smiles. It’s like hide and seek, and he’s caught them. He did it! CHARLIE’S A FUCKING GOD! “ FOUND YOU!” Then he lines up his gun with the doctor’s head as he tries to crawl away, and Charlie finds himself laughing again, cackling as euphoria floods him. “I FUCKING FOUND YOU!”
He shoves the barrel into the doctor’s chin and pulls the trigger. Doctor-brains explode all over that nice, clean labcoat; blood sprays all over the Parker kid, and he starts screaming at the top of his lungs, eyes wild in his skull.
Fucking moron. Doesn’t he know he can’t escape? No one escapes Charlie, king of the world. Emperor of the earth. President of the fucking planet.
Charlie fires again, pulling the trigger again and again and again until the body is riddled with beautiful holes; dark blood spreads over the man’s scrubs and over the leaves below him. “Taking away…” mutters Charlie, “...what’s mine… ”
He grabs Parker by his disgusting, matted hair and shoves his head into the forest-floor, slamming it down again and again. He’s still fucking screaming. “ YOU CAN’T ESCAPE ME, PARKER!” he shouts, as Peter thrashes against his grip, his little fingernails scratching at Charlie’s hands. “YOU’LL NEVER ESCAPE ME!”
He grabs the kid’s throat this time, and he wishes he could crush it closed; the kid gargles out something unintelligible. “YOU FUCKING IDIOT, YOU—you—you are nothing to me, what are you? JUST A FUCKING FREAK, just a tool we use to get what we want! You’re nothing! You’re not even human! No, no, nonono—you’re nothing, you’re nothing , got that Spider-Boy? YOU GOT THAT? YOU’LL NEVER LEAVE THAT FUCKING CELL AGAIN!”
Peter is choking on Charlie's broad hands, garbling for air, kicking against his hold.
“SAY IT!” he screams, and he can feel the spittle fly from his mouth onto Parker’s pasty skin. “FUCKING SAY IT, PARKER!! YOU’RE THE FUCKING SCUM UNDER MY BOOT, AND WHAT ARE YOU!! WHAT ARE YOU!! YOU’RE FUCKING NOTHING!!”
Peter’s slack in his hold, limp as a stupid doll, and Charlie drops the kid onto bloody leaves. This kid’s never gonna see the light of day again.
And the others… Where are the others? He’s gonna get them, too.
THURSDAY, AUGUST 23 — 10:28 PM
Steve runs.
They split up with Peter and the doctor a few minutes ago— ”They can’t catch us all, can they?” said the doctor with a tired smile — and now Steve is carrying the little girl down the mountain and running as fast as he can. He’s barefoot—he doesn’t remember when those people took his shoes, but he wishes he had them now. His bullet wounds have partially healed, as his super-healing has kicked in, but they’re keeping him from running as fast as he’d like. He ducks through trees and tries to run in zig-zags to keep them off his tail.
But eventually, he hears their voices; the HYDRA guys are shouting: “This way! This way!” His heart races. They’re catching up to them. The little girl’s sobbing into his shoulder, confused, crying the way kids do: completely unhinged without any sense of restraint.
They run and run and take a break at the base of a river so that Steve can catch his breath. The girl’s face is stained with blood, probably from the open wounds on his head. He’s so fucking dizzy . “Okay,” he pants, completely out of breath, and he hates that he doesn’t even know the little girl’s name. His head still swims with pain, and he’s pretty sure he lost a tooth from the blunt end of that hatchet. “Listen to me, okay, we’ve gotta split up.”
The girl shakes his head and buries her face in his shoulder.
“I’m serious,” he pants, and he can hear the voices drawing closer. “I need you to run that way, okay?” He points down the river. “I’m gonna run the other way so they can’t find you. And if I make it, I’ll come get you, okay? I promise—I’ll find you.”
The girl’s crying as he sets her down. She’s still wearing that torn sweatshirt of Bucky’s, the one that he gifted to them. “I’m—I’m—scared,” she sobs.
“I know,” he says, and the panic is sinking in. He’s wounded, she’s just a kid, and Peter… He hopes Peter and the doctor got out. “I know, but you have to do it, okay? You can be brave. You can do it.”
“Are you—you—gonna—die?” she cries, through streams of tears.
“No,” he says, although that might be a lie, “of course not. I’ll be okay. I’m gonna go find Peter, okay? Just… Try to find someplace—a police station or a house or something. You’ll be safe there.” She nods, still crying, and there’s so many tears coming down her dirty face that it’s leaving rivers of clean skin. “Now, go! Go, run as fast as you can!” The girl turns and runs along the riverbank, only tripping a couple times before she picks up the pace, sprinting and disappearing into the woods.
She’ll be safe out there.
Steve might not be.
THURSDAY, AUGUST 23 — 10:42 PM
Cassie runs faster than she’s ever run in her life.
She runs so hard and so fast that she can barely feel her feet hit the ground; her legs become blurs beneath her. She trips and falls and pulls herself back up again so that she can keep running. She trips on a tree root and rocks and . Her jumpsuit is sticky, slow to dry, her face still coated in a layer of Captain America’s blood. There’d been so much blood…
There are leaves and trees and more leaves and Cassie trips and falls so many times that her knees and palms are stinging and bloody from catching herself. But she just keeps running. She runs until she doesn’t have any breath left in her body, until her feet go numb, until at last she stumbles upon a house— a house! —beyond a grove of trees, and she runs inside. It’s cabin-like, all wood with yellow lights and woven blankets. She smells food; what is that? It’s sweat and bready, and Cassie realizes quickly that she has no idea what it is even though the smell is so breathtakingly familiar.
The door is not locked; Cassie bursts inside and follows her nose to the kitchen, where there’s something warm and sweet on the counter; quick, quick, quick! She lunges for it, knocking it off the counter, and it lands with a splat onto the wooden floor. she scoops it up with her hands, sweet berries and purple gelatinous mush and crusted graham, and she scoops it in handful by handful, gulping it down without chewing, just shoveling and swallowing and shoveling and swallowing until finally she hears: “Oh my god .”
Cassie had gone into such a complete haze that she didn’t hear anyone coming, and she startles, jumping back from the mushy pile of mostly-eaten pie on the floor and letting out a terrified scream. There's a woman there and Cassie can only think of what she saw just an hour ago—of the bearded man splitting open the police officer’s head like a cook cracking an egg, the blood and meat bursting from smashed bone until the inside of her head looked like raw ground beef.
The woman’s got red hair, and there’s a few people behind her: a white man with a bow and arrow, a black man in a blocky robot suit, a white man with dark hair and black grease smeared over his eyes, and another black man with wings on his back. All of them are holding guns.
“That’s Steve’s sweatshirt,” says the black-eyed man, in this fierce voice, and he takes a step towards her.
Cassie bursts into tears.